Originally Posted by mightyducksman

I'll just share my recent experience; I can't get too irritable with OZ since they have great mileage rates and I've never flown with them, just tx SPG points. Every call the hold was 15-20 minutes but agents were relatively efficient (not always seeing the correct information as mentioned in other posts) once I got through.

So I wanted to book myself and wife in TK biz IST-ATL in August (40k miles + $220 fuel charges pp, paid identical taxes/fees to those shown on ITA matrix), so transferred from SPG (took 5 days for wife --> me, then 65k SPG --> OZ took 2 weeks).

- 1st call once miles posted, first agent cannot find the flight availability (UA, AC, ANA all show 8 seats in biz), HUCA
- 2nd call new agent could find availability, said I have 0 miles, transfers me to an Asiana club agent who confirms I have miles, but can't book ticket; offers to transfer me back but I declined (couldn't wait longer on hold at that time), HUCA
- 3rd call agent finds flight availability, but informs me that I need to have my wife on my family plan to book for her (I now know that this was known around the internet but not well publicized)
- 3 days spent getting family plan authorized since wife and I have different last names, end up sending marriage certificate, passports, after 1-2 days successful
- 4th call agent finds seats, books, and transfers me to another agent to ticket and pay for fees. Successfully booking took about 30 minutes total including hold time.

Then IST bombing and more so military coup lead us to decide to reroute our trip. Found ZAG-VIE-IAD on Croatian/Austrian in business.

- 5th call yields seamless change from original ticket to new ticket, again transferred to pay new taxes (prior tax payment to be returned minus $30). This call took about 30 minutes as well.

So the overall process was quite arduous (3 weeks from SPG transfer initiation to booking!), but overall worth it. Just make sure you prepare in advance by linking them via family plan if you're booking for family members, too.