Anyone know of any consultants or agents who specialize in taking on
(for a fee) attempts to book high-value award travel using frequent
flyer miles? Has anyone encountered or had any luck using regular
travel agents to do this?

[Not wanting to spend frustrating hours attempting to extract a couple
of high-value seats from United's Mileage Plus system, and not having
any flunkies or staff assistants on whom I can dump this chore, if I
could pay a modest fee to someone who knew the inside secrets of these
systems and could get results, I'd be way ahead.]