Originally Posted by
ckpeter
Out of curiosity, was it a prepaid type of consultation, or was it contingent on acceptable itinerary found? Did you talk to the consultant about what you already found, or did you wait to hear from them?
I don't recall the specifics, but I believe the $49 was contingent on them finding an acceptable itinerary. That is, if they had totally struck out, I wouldn't have had to pay. But since I knew in advance they wouldn't totally strike out, I knew I'd be paying the $49.
Also, before you engaged them, how much time do you estimate yourself having spent to find the same routing that they did?
Maybe an hour or so...
I imagine that's part of the pricing situation with these kinds of consultations. The consultant has to average his work complexity - if everyone booked the easy trips themselves and only come to the consultant for the extremely complex trips, the cost (and price) will have to be well north of $200 - $400, instead of just $49.
To pay $200+, I'd probably want someone who could not only execute the reservations for air/hotel but who also had solid local knowledge of my destination. For that kind of money, I'd want them to book local reputable guides/drivers and that kind of thing. In fact, I'd probably pay more for the local knowledge...even if they weren't any better than I am at using award searching tools.
Originally Posted by
belfordrocks
10 years ago!? Did you account for inflation?
My service is that you don't pay if I can't find you anything.
I am fairly sure my agent was U.S.-based, so I guess that'd be about $62 in 2011 dollars. Like I said, I was fine with it in the end since it gave me peace of mind that I had indeed achieved the optimal itinerary. And the agent *did* make the phone calls to place the reservations on hold and get the seat assignments with several airlines: I only had to make the two calls to actually issue the awards from my accounts.
Tonight I'll go looking through my old emails to see if I can find out any further details...and also maybe figure out if this agency is still in business.