My advice is if you can't complete the booking online yourself, do not call AP reservations/main line, but call Web support. Seems AP reservations agents are genrally unsympathetic to anyone's plight, but Web support is. My guess is, the regular reservations agents ahve to do a lot internally to justify waiviing the fee, while Web support may have more leeway since they are specifically there to help those with problems with the Web site.