Northwest Airlines miles are useless

This is the second time I've attempted to redeem Northwest Airlines Worldperks miles for air travel. This is the second time I've been completely out of luck.

This second time around, I was trying to book an Alaska Air flight to Vegas. Alaska Air is a partner, and a lot of my Worldperks miles were earned ON Alaska flights. Since Northwest the website claims they don't fly to Vegas, it shouldn't be a problem - Alaska has like 10 flights leaving Seattle for Vegas everyday.

First, the Alaska Air website doesn't allow you to use their partner's miles to book flights. They refer you to the telephone number for Northwest.

Northwest's web site will happily list flights that you should be able to book using miles. When you select the flights, however, it then dumps you back to the search screen with a message that says (paraphrase) "Whoops, you didn't mean THOSE flights, I can't book THAT".

Dialing Northwest's so-called "customer service" was also ineffectual. At 8pm I dialed their line, gave the robot some itinerary information, and was told that I should expect a 15-minute wait. After an hour on hold, I hung up.

Dialing them today, they made no pretense of wanting my business - after talking to the robot, they said "Due to call volumes, we can't take your call right now." which is the customer service equivalent of "FUCK OFF". A decent customer service operation almost never "busies out" their customers, certainly not on a Thursday in October.

Ironically, I had to book with Southwest instead. Which was a completely painless operation, since cash was involved.

At this point, I think I'm going to gift my Northwest miles to charity and tell them never to contact me ever again.