International seat assignment and US call centre

[pilot]

I'm flying SYD to JFK via LAX in J class with my family in Oct. Since I want to make sure we get seats together, decided to try to ring the US call centre to get seat assignments. Searching the forum, sounds like the only way to get a seat assignment is via calling. I can see my booking on the Qantas site but no way to choose seats.
Talk about long waits, tried yesterday twice and now today and have been holding 20 minutes plus each time. I've given up since I have other things to do.

How are these wait times acceptable, typical for Qantas? Maybe bcz I'm not a travel agent or QF FF, but for people just wanting to ask a question, this is worse than calling Microsoft or Dell with pc problems.