I've got about 26K in my CO account - I generally earn on NW when I fly CO, so those miles were 15K from the CC & 10K from random things in the past. I've got no status whatsoever on CO & have never credited a single flight mile to them. As my roommate watches my dog almost all the time when I'm out, I've agreed to give her 25K award plane tickets as often as I can & let her use my miles if the cheapest cost of a flight is over $300 (I'm not selling her my miles, I just told her if a ticket to SAN costs less than $300, I'll just buy it for her) & I'm giving her 2 tix/year.

My roommate was trying to go to fly IAD-SAN & on a Th-Mo pattern & there was no 25K award availability on CO.com for CO metal & the only outbound available for 25K was an AS flight IAD-SEA-SAN which would have been a hell of day for travel (MR, yes - award ticket, no). Anyways, I ended up using CO.com to search for availability, nothing. My roommate emailed me with her ideal itin - which had DL codeshares - none of which showed up on CO.com. So, I called CO directly - after a 10 minute hold (non-elite's have to wait a long time to spend money with CO), the agent was able to help me out & get me the exact flights I wanted - and since I couldn't book the itin online, he said they'd waive the phone fee - so the total cost for IAD-CVG-SAN-ATL-IAD at the exact times & dates that my roommate wanted? 25K miles & 10.00 in taxes/award fees (unless that 10.00 is the cost of the phone fee??)

Anyways, I've just cashed out almost all my CO miles (less than 1K left) & I had a pleasant experience with CO - no hassles & no problems!

For all the complaining you will hear and see on this board, I personally find the CO reward system to be great. I just returned a $1500 (refundable, but in COACH) ticket for next week, EWR-SXM-EWR since I was able to get a standard reward ticket on the same flights.