How many times have you had to ask a company for a change/assistance for something you knew was within their guidelines/regulations/contract of carriage, only to be told by their "Customer Service" rep "no can do"

All airlines have been guilty of forcing their passengers to play the game of "I'll keep calling until I get a Reservationist that understands the policy".

If the OP had praised NW for going out of their way or aything extraordinary then I'd side with Channa 100%. But the praise was simply "a nice gesture". Not worth a thread in my own personal opinion, but is refreshing to see a compliment instead of a complaint.

And to give the RedTail a little more credit than I might normally do, let's forget the rulebooks for a few minutes and put things in perspective with the current situation at NW... their poor customer service personnel are taking the brunt of this labor dispute along with us passengers. The Agent whom the OP spoke with is probably receiving call after call with complaints and changes needed due to an operational issue. To handle NWAOldtimer's request quickly, without question and to the customer's satisfaction, deserves a little credit. Yes, yes, I know... that's their job. But you have to admit that the times are a little more trying right now than usual and isn't a single one of us who wouldn't find it a little difficult to keep up the "cheerfulness".

Reminds me of the time I was on Frontier roundtrip Dallas-Albuquerque via Denver for a quick weekend trip to visist Mom in Santa Fe. A sked change resulted in my ABQ-DEN flight changed to arrive DEN after the last DFW departure. F9 e-mailed me the fact that my res had changed, but didn't point out the fact that I now had an "illegal" connection. Luckily, I did notice it and called them. The Res Agent's first response was that sked changes happen and since te arrival time of my flight back at DFW hadn't changed by more than a few minutes, I didn't have a valid complaint. I had to ask her 3 times to look at my arrival/departure times in DEN before she understood what my concern was. She then offerred to change me to the early flight out of ABQ (at the time, F9 only had the 2 trips ABQ-DEN). I said that was un-acceptable since that would take away a whole day from my 2 day trip. I asked her to re-book me on the Santa Fe-DEN evening commuter flight which would still connect to my original DEN-DFW. Nope..that flight wasn't on F9 so she can't do that. I arugument that this was all due to changes F9 made and that the SAF-DEN flight was marketed as an F9 flight all came on deaf ears. She finally put me on hold for 10 minutes she she could "check with a supervisor". The final resolution was that I could re-book the early flight, stay on the original (sked changed) itinerary with the overnight in DEN at my expense, or they would waive the penalties and refund my ticket 100%

So I liked hearing that NWAOldtimer had no problems.
I've heard that F9 is a good little airline. I must've had a bad apple. I also have not given them my $$$ since. Following policies and/or common sense in the customer's favor can go a long ways in in maintaining long term customer loyalty in those situations when these operational problems happen.