Originally Posted by
Himeno
Why do you assume that some booking a RTW ticket only does so from where ever their payment method happens to be registered?
I have booked tickets via the tool, from Australia, with an Australian credit card, starting in Japan or Korea. No issue, and charged at the Japan/Korea price (as it should).
I don't think that's in line with the fare rules.
Taking an ex-ICN DONE3 fare, for instance (and this is a standard restriction in the xONEx fares),
Code:
Sales restrictions
...
WHEN TRAVEL ORIGINATES IN A COUNTRY FOR WHICH
THE SPECIFIC LOCAL CURRENCY FARES IS PUBLISED AND
THE TICKET IS SOLD IN ANOTHER COUNTRY THE FARE
WILL BE THAT PUBLISHED FOR THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
CONVERTED TO THE CURRENCY OF THE COUNTRY OF SALE
AT THE BANK SELLING RATE.
THE RESULTANT FARE MUST NOT BE LOWER THAN FROM
THE COUNTRY OF SALE.
EXCEPTION-
NOT APPLICABLE WHEN BOTH TRAVEL ORIGINATES AND
SALES ARE MADE WITHIN EUROPE.
I read that as, if the ex-SYD price (say) is higher than the ex-ICN price, and you book out of the SYD office (virtually or otherwise), you will be charged the ex-SYD price.
Were you charged in JPY/KRW or AUD? If it was the earlier then the country of sale was the country of origin, which is fine. Maybe that loophole was closed and they now pin your country of sale to your card billing address?
Most of the fare rules are not validated for autopricing so probably the GDS+online tool cannot validate this without human intervention. Speculating, an easy way around that would be for the website to reject cards having a billing address in a different country. Although from your experience that is obviously not implemented properly, it might be in place for certain countries. Another speculation would be that the tool is trying to process the rule now and it just gives up when it realizes the pricing was wrong.