All it took was my talking to the so-called "customer service" person @ the USCIS phone number...letting them give their shpiel...explaining that the petition was now beyond normal processing times, and requesting an expedite, which I based on USCIS error - being that it was beyond normal processing time...He gave me no argument - put in the expedite request immediately. I have NO idea whether it helped or not...but I was going to go for every angle until someone finally looked at our petition.
Like I said, we were approved less than a week later.
