Reserving Seats on KL Flights (DL cust serv useless)

Hi everyone -

I'm a DL plat and travel a lot on KL, thus getting EC for free.

But the problem is, DL has taken over KL customer service in the US, so, as far as I can tell there is now no way to contact KL directly if you are in the US (an 800 number I have that used to go to KL now forwards to DL).

That would be fine, but when DL reserves seats on KL flights, the seat reservations DO NOT SHOW UP IN THE KL SYSTEM (the DL agents think that they are reserving the seats successfully)!

To my chagrin, I learned this a couple weeks ago when I had reserved all my seats by calling DL, but when I got to the airport, none of the seats were in the system (the seats had even shown up when I looked at my reservation on the DL site). Once in AMS, the agents were able to put me in EC, and said, "oh, yes, the systems are not properly synced up yet – that happens."

Another example: logging into the DL site for an upcoming itinerary, it has me in 11J on a KL leg, but when I look at the reservation on the KL site, it has me back in regular economy. And, of course, I can't select the seat on the KL site because I'm DL not Flying Blue.

So... anyone have any idea how to reserve seats on KL flights? What a mess! Should be simple, no?

Thanks a lot for any advice...