Award booking services - a list and some reviews

Updated^

I contacted Gleff on March 27th. He said he'd put me in contact with his 'associate', Steve Belkin. Either one of us has herpes and they are avoiding contact, or they don't want/need the biz - no further communications.

OP updated with better link, however see the warning;

http://crankyconcierge.com/ (Word of warning: contrary to other services this require full pre payment)

I am looking for the name of some reputable award booking companies. I know there are a few out there but were wondering have anyone used these services and if so who do you recommend.

I am looking for an award booking to Tahiti in June of 2013 and was looking for some help with doing the booking with miles. I am a newbie and it was recommended to try out one of these services.

The only company i am aware of is points pros which i contacted and we were doing good by email then all of a sudden no contact what so ever for over a week and multiple emails. So i am now looking to give my money and service to someone else.

Thanks
Brad

I've never used a service myself as i enjoy making my own award bookings too much I can't make a recommendation. To get you started, heres a thread with a listing of options.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ices-list.html

I'll send this off to the travel tools forum for further discussion.

Interestingly one of the bloggers just blogged about this subject yesterday: The Frequent Miler, boarding area . com. Folks added their comments/experiences/recommendations -- here's one:

Scott says:
August 21, 2012 at 5:29 pm
When I couldn’t find award space for a trip I had been planning, I contacted Ben(lucky) from pointspros to book an award for me. He initially got back to my request very quickly and told me i’d hear back from him with several options within 24 hours. that was the last i heard from him as I never did receive a reply after that.
I then contacted gary leff of view from the wing blog. within 2 days of initial contact, I had an itinerary on hold, in my preferred dates, ready to book. I was extremely happy with the service provided to me and will go back if I need to make another booking.

Does anyone know of a "pay for" service for assistance in routing and booking award tickets... Lucky Ben used to be the BEST at it but I don't think he is doing it anymore. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to scour the sites to determine best routes and values. Thanks for the recs, FT!!!

I'm a regular reader of Gary Leff's blog....he's a very savvy guy.

I haven't used his booking service, but If I were to do so, he would be my first call

http://www.bookyouraward.com/

The following thread has a list:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ices-list.html

Moving this over to the Travel Tools forum for further discussion.

I wanted to share a thought. 9 months ago when I decided to ramp up my mileage collection, I thought I'd have to use one of these services because yes, the search process was daunting. However, since then I've learned an awful lot, and now feel competent to do it myself. You need to read FT and know the nuances, you need a search tool like Expert Flyer or KVS, and you need some patience.

I'm not at all putting down the use of paid help, if you don't care to go through the learning process it can definitely be worthwhile, and if you only book tickets occasionally and/or have miles on multiple alliances such that you'd have to learn the search-and-destroy, er sorry, search-and-book procedure for multiple alliances, it's likewise a better decision to pay than to learn yourself. I found the learning process informative.

Another thing is, I don't know how the paid services work, but I assume they limit you in terms of tradeoffs of time and routing. I just booked a trip for my wife. I assume you can tell an award service "I have miles on Skyteam and Star Alliance, I want to go on these dates, I have this much flexibility, and I want this class of service." When I booked the trip for my wife I had a huge number of tradeoffs. Book now on a decent routing or wait for an ideal one. Book with Star Alliance miles, which are the easiest to use, or Skyteam, which are the hardest, and save the *A miles for later. How much better is business class on the A380 than on the 777? Leave at 7AM and connect once, or leave at 11AM and connect twice? Not to mention that I didn't have enough USAir points to book a certain trip I had my eye on, but was expecting some to post shortly, and then just saw a promotion that allowed me to buy the last points I needed. If you can do it yourself, you will have a lot more flexibility.

Again, I am no way criticizing the decision to use a paid booking service.

Scott at milevalue.com just did a great job booking two business seats to Morocco for me. Within 24 hours he came up with several options that met my criteria. Then he booked the ones I selected, and re-booked when I changed my mind. There were many details that he brought to my attention, and he answered all my questions. He was friendly, professional and knowledgeable. I am so happy -- I could never have found these flights myself. His price was very reasonable and well worth it - $149 for two tickets on the same itinerary.

Added^

I hope I'm not violating any rules by posting this...

As noted above, I've learned quite a bit about bookings in the past few months.

I'm offering, free of charge, to help one or two people book award trips. Strongly prefer domestic or Europe, because those are what I'm most familiar with. Why would I do this? I just booked my wife's summer trip and she said "I'd like to learn what you do." So rather than pick a phony trip and pretend to look for it, I'd rather have a real case to work on.

Of course if you don't like what I come up with, you don't have to book it.

Offer only good for weekends she's here (she lives in another city) and for the next 7 weeks (until my KVS subscription runs out). But this weekend would be good.

Good spirit^

Based on this above review, I gave Scott a try. I was looking for 2 tickets to Paris business class and he was able to nab them. He responded to my initial e-mail on the same day I sent the e-mail and, within a day, provided me with some good choices. I am a newbie so others may not need this service but the $149 for the 2 tickets, for me, was well worth the value. He basically walked my wife and me through the entire process and it was done fairly quickly and painlessly.