I agree that, at least 75% of the time, the tags are completely useless. Some airports are much better than others, though.

I call every year to get two additional tags so when I travel with my family, we have tags on all our bags (not that it helps much). I was told the other day that "two additional tags is the limit". Now this was for extra tags, not for replacement tags. But there's no way that the OP agent would know if you really lost the tags or not.

You should be able to get at least two tags, UNLESS this is estabished based on Elite status (I am Plat). Give it a try.