I'm a little taller than average, so being able to prebook exit rows for free even when travelling on the cheapest economy ticket was worth it's weight in gold

I'm a little taller than average, so being able to prebook exit rows for free even when travelling on the cheapest economy ticket was worth it's weight in gold (or platinum. Ho ho!). I was doing a lot of transatlantic at the time, so it really was a big deal. Your status must come up when you book ("Oh, you travel with us a lot. We'll just ignore the overweight bag fees today then...") and on the passenger manifest (more than once I had free drinks given to me, or better brands of drinks brought back from First). Now that I have no status they don't go out of their way to do those things, despite having a ton of miles i'm slowly working through, and a bunch of unusable upgrade stickers. Meh. The recent flight to Hawaii paid for with some of my miles made up for that though.