I'm gonna share a "I Love my CSR" story.
I've been planning a trip to Europe for summer 2020. I had put AA award tickets on hold, but ended up letting the holds expire last month while I worked out my itinerary. I checked yesterday, and the AA award tickets had gone up to 56K miles one way from 30K miles (economy) per person. DH didn't understand why I was unhappy about that, until I told him that was the difference in
one of us flying home vs. all
three of us flying home from Europe on his AA miles (he has 96K AA miles). Then he got it.
This morning I looked at using UA miles since DH has 130K in his account and we have URs to transfer if needed. The itinerary I looked at for biz lie flat seats would cost 310K UA miles per person round trip as an award ticket.
Cash ticket price on UA's website was $4,560 per person for biz class or $2412 for econ.
Then I searched through the CSR UR portal, and for the same flights I could buy the biz class tickets for $2534 per person*, but because of the CSR's 1.5x multiplier, I instead used 175333 URs (= $1753.33 cash out value) per person. I did put $12.54 on my CSR so that I have an easy way to prove I put the flights on my CSR for travel insurance purposes.
End result - I have biz class airfare to Europe and back for less than I would have to pay cash OOP on United's website for economy tickets. The "opportunity cost" was $5,260 cash out value vs $13,680 for three biz round trip tickets or $7,236 for economy. We'll check out the United Polaris lounge in EWR on the way out and the Polaris lounge in ORD on the way back. I'm super excited!
*It's not strictly apples to apples since the DEN-EWR leg is in economy but all the rest is in UA Polaris biz or First class seats.
ETA: The CSR saved me 105,366 URs compared to the same tickets using a CIP/CSP. I'll pay the $55 net difference in annual fee any day for that.