Originally Posted by
Calchas
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),
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.
The current rules stupidly say that the higher of country of origin vs country of sale is paid. So you simply make the country of origin the country of sale - ie, have an agent in that country to issue the ticket.
The tool assumes you are in the country of origin and send the fare to the first marketed carrier's (or to AA in the case of JL, LA, RJ and a few others) local ticketing office.
That silly rule has always been there for as long as I've been getting tickets. There used to be a rule allowing tickets to be sold in Canada at the price of the country of origin converted to CAD. That rule was removed ~2 years ago.
The tickets I have been getting recently are xONE3's - which do not exist for travel from/via South West Pacific, South America or Africa.
I have always been charged in JPY/KRW with the bank doing the conversion.
I have used the tool to book DONE3's from JP/KR for 3 of the 4 I've booked. The 4th was issued via an agent in Toronto when the Canadian Exception was still around because the tool wasn't working (the tool has always been buggy).
I am in the process of getting a ticket issued over email with CX Tokyo.