Well to be fair to you, time is money, and I do put a cap on how long I search for a deal too. I have to be pragmatic since I make so many bookings. 20 minutes is my max on shorthaul for example. OTAs are superficially very attractive: easy websites, reasonably robust, gets the answer you want quickly, appears to save money. I'm lucky in that I can get to a skilled BA agent more or less immediately 24 hours a day, I know the real world is different.