Anyone rebooked reward seats yet?

Asking on several forums as I am beginning to panic now!

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of rebooking from an open ticket (due to Covid cancellation) where their original booking (and therefore also the new one) is with miles?

The outbound flights that I want to rebook onto will be released on Monday and I called up yesterday to check the procedure. The operative that I spoke to (not a FC specialist as you are routed to the call centre) insisted on a couple of things that I have previously been advised quite differently:

(i) that I need reward seat availability not just cabin availability - I have been previously told otherwise and have this on a text!
(ii) that as my ticket states it is a return (bearing in mind that I am flying out to Atlanta and back from Orlando so it isn't really a 'return') I can't book the outbound leg first as I need to book both together. I tried to explain that I have always booked reward seats separately as soon as they are released and they have then been 'joined' as a return, and that if I wait for the return leg to be released there will be no reward seats left for the outbound, but she was insistent that I couldn't do this

Seems to me that this is almost discriminating against FC customers who have had a flight cancelled if this is really true so I was wondering if anyone had experience of rebooking reward seats yet? Thanks

Hi
Try again, if there are reward seats available ask them to put the ones you want on hold in your booking with a note that the return is out of range. Then when the return is available secure that and the booking will be confirmed. They will not be able to ticket until return is added and they will not be able to tell you any price difference (taxes) but they should be able to at least secure the seats.

Good luck

Cheers - I tried yesterday to get a different response from VA using text, Whatsapp and FB messenger and late last night got a reply on messenger saying exactly this - they advised me to contact them on that channel and they will hold the flights for me.

Now - do I try to pursue the refund that I'm still owed from March on this channel as I have had no luck elsewhere!