the first time i called, i was told there was a 10-day waiting period to redeem travel on a new acco

the twitters and blogs were abuzz a week ago on the news that you could get a cheap seat on alaska budget airline tickets to amsterdam airlines by buying and using icelandair saga points  (due to the low value of the króna, purchase bonus, budget airline tickets to amsterdam and low award redemption value). i quickly bought 20,000 (well, 20,400 budget airline tickets to amsterdam due to the way the bonus worked out) miles and after a couple of tries, i got my ticket!
the first time i called, i was told there was a 10-day waiting period to redeem travel on a new account, but later learned that rule was done away with. i called the next day (icelandair has really odd hours, especially for people on the west coast) and got really close to getting a ticket issued, but was told they couldn t get me certain flights because they were a codeshare with american (why they even appeared at all to pick from, i don t know). i called again today and voilà, either space opened up or this person had some ninja skillz (i didn t change anything, though i did try to book from SJC and we came close, but couldn t confirm for some reason, so back to SFO it was).
the 20,400 miles cost me $231.93 (my new bank, simple , does not charge an international transaction fee!), and the taxes were about $116 (i think she said, ouch, quite a chunk of change will know for sure once the ticket is issued), for a total of less than $350. doing a quick kayak search shows DL/AS for $784, AS alone for $939.