I just spent a pleasant two hours being transferred back and forth between booking agents, ticketing agents and various supervisors.

My goal was to change a mini-RTW booked prior to the points inflation. I found the flights on ANA and the Aeroplan website as I always do, and gave the agent my new itinerary.

Things went south when I was told several LH first class seats I was seeing as available on AP.com could not be booked. Apparently, it's due to a glitch on AP's new system where they see *A flights as available, but when they proceed to book, it comes up negative. I was suspicious, so checked on ANA while still on the phone with the agent, and they actually did show as unavailable there too. So that's fine, it happens -- though it's really annoying that they switched to this new system 6 months ago and the dimwits at AP's IT dept could still not fix this glitch.

Anyway, when the agent tried to price out the taxes she couldn't so she checks with ticketing and comes back with the same excuse for an ANA flight in my itinerary -- shows as available in First on the website, but actually not available. This time, it was showing as available on both ANA and continental.com, so I asked to speak with a supervisor. She was actually very apologetic and called ANA to confirm that there was availability, and then proceeded to ticket the new itinerary.

The whole thing took close to 2 hours. Part of this time was wasted arguing with the booking agent about how I am not required to pay additional mileage since I'm staying within the same award zones and I booked before July 15. She had to check with her supervisor, and wouldn't you know it I was right.

All in all, a very pleasant afternoon spent chatting with the good folks at AP.