Have heard stories about CO comping the change fee for elites. Is this true? Anyone have experience with this?

You need to be a bit more specific. Are you talking about award seats? Revenue seats? Same day standby? What CO status? Plats get award changes for free.

Revenue ticket. Gold Elite.

I understand that they discount/comp the same-day change fee for getting an earlier flight as per the website elite benefits, but have never had luck as a silver/gold getting them to comp the change fee for altering an itinerary ahead of time.

Same Day ChangeCustomers holding restricted* tickets can make same-day flight changes for a discounted fee of $50 or a $25 fee for OnePass Gold Elite Members. OnePass Platinum members may request a same-day change at no charge. The following conditions apply:

The itinerary must be wholly operated by Continental**.
The same-day flight change option will be available within 24 hours before your original scheduled flight. Requested flight can be in any fare class and be departing within the next 24 hours from when you are making the request. Changes must be made prior to your original scheduled flight.
When the original ticketed fare class is available within 24 hours of departure, the same-day flight change fee will apply.
When the original ticketed fare class is not available within 24 hours of departure, the same-day flight change fee will apply (instead of the change fee stated in the fare rules) plus any additional collections or refund due.
You may standby if seats are not available in the purchased fare class. In these cases, the Same Day Change fee will apply, but will not be charged unless you are assigned a seat on your alternate flight. Changes in routing are not allowed when standing by. Standby may be requested on the day of departure at the airport kiosk or with a Continental airport representative. Once you are added to the flight standby list, you can check your real-time standby status at continental.com/info.
Upgraded tickets will be automatically added to the upgrade standby list at your applicable upgrade priority. Once you are added to the upgrade standby list, you can check your real-time upgrade status at continental.com/info.
Changes are only available for the exact origin and destination airport. Connection points may be changed provided the new routing is permitted by the fare purchased.
Same-day flight changes may be confirmed when checking in online, at any airport kiosk, by calling your local Continental Airlines reservations office or with a Continental airport representative.

* Excluding fares that do not allow changes of any kind, such as continental.com Weekend Specials and tickets bought through certain wholesale outlets (e.g. where you do not know the identity of the airline until after you buy the ticket).

** Includes Continental Micronesia, Continental Express flights operated by ExpressJet Airlines, Inc. and Chautauqua Airlines, Inc.; Continental Connection flights operated by Cape Air, Colgan Air, CommutAir and Continental Connection bus service.

Expand the section below for more information same-day flight changes:

For Gold Elite it is $25 for a same day standy (free for Gold and above on Delta within 3 hours of flight time). They should be more leinent to their FF's!

If you're Gold Elite this year, it means you may have flown as few as 25k miles last year with the generous DEQM promotions they ran. This year's Gold Elite customer really isn't all that special. Next year's Gold Elite customer looks like they'll have flown all the miles to earn all the miles, unlike this year's Gold Elites (and Silver and some Platinums).

What does frustrate me is the �100 change fee that I have to pay for altering a revenue itinerary ahead of time.

You could certainly purchase a changeable ticket, that wouldn't charge you any change fees. These are often multiples of the cheapest ticket, though.

True, the problem, as you say, is that the changeable tickets are prohibitively expensive. I average a single change per itinerary, meaning that my tickets effectively cost an extra �100, whereas buying a changeable ticket would increase the per-ticket cost by �500-1000.

Sounds like you're getting quite the bargain then, no?

I'm quite happy to pay change fees on the occasions I need to make changes; my overall total cost of travel is still MUCH lower than it would be if I bought a flexible ticket every time.

Agree. You have to look at it over the long-term and not on a ticket-by-ticket basis since there will be times that a cheap fare with two or three changes will equal the cost of FC travel.

Don't you be rational with me. It's my day off, and I'll have an irrational grumble if I want to!

I'll have none of this logic spoiling a good whinge.