Originally Posted by
orbitmic
...what is an "award booking service"??? Don't tell me some people charge money to book award seats? It sounds most dodgy to me.
Lucky/Ben (the blogger at One Mile at a Time) has a
service whereby he or one of his employees will book awards for people. I'm not sure what all the prices are for all the various services that exist (there are ~5-10 seemingly reputable people/companies doing this). They exist mostly for people too busy or too impatient to book themselves. I've used the services a couple of times, most recently with Ben's company, and it was $300 to book two first *A award tickets using United miles. I was thrilled to be able to pay experts to do this for me, since I had no time to research this myself (I do have the tools, KVS and expertflyer.com, but not the time for this one), and UA gutted the program for using partner miles (so if you wanted to fly a good airline using UA points, the mileage price went up substantially on 1 February, so time was of the essence in getting this done), so it was great that I could offload this research.
Not dodgy at all. Also, if they don't find what you're looking for, you don't pay anything.
Inside Flyer (the paper magazine, not sure about whether or not they had it online) recently had a rundown of some of the offerings out there, along with the prices. Something to look into if time is tight (whether you're busy or coming up to a deadline) and if the prices work for you.