TLDR: I used Juicy Miles to help book a trip to New Zealand in premium cabins for the Mrs. and me. James was very helpful, and if I really needed assistance I would use Juicy Miles again.

I am taking my wife to New Zealand next March. I looked through this thread and also did some internet searches and made a few phone calls trying to pick a booking service. I settled on Juicy Miles because the price was reasonable compared to most other services I looked at, and I figured that since it is affiliated with a blog that they wouldn’t want bad press since it would affect a couple of income streams (if they were awful the blog would likely lose sponsorships- maybe I’m wrong on that). Juicy Miles charged me $250 for the round trip service.

I contacted them more than a year out and gave James my parameters, my various points balances, and tried to be flexible in my available departure airports (I’m on the East Coast in the mid-Atlantic region) and James got back with me fairly quickly with some “masked” itineraries. East Coast City – Asian City (or middle East city) – Auckland, cost of XXX Chase/Amex points and approx. XXX dollars in taxes and fees. He had four options going each way. At that point I paid the fee and he got back with the unmasked data, showing airlines, itineraries, etc. A real jerk could probably figure out what the itineraries were based on the masked data, but if you have that kind of time just search for them yourself rather than trying to cheat someone who’s trying to make a living.

After some discussion based on the initial options, and some changes I made based on what James said was available once we could talk freely about the various options, we figured out that I would be able to fly onto the North Island and leave from the South Island, which was something I really wanted to do. I settled on a Korean Air outbound (in business) from IAD-ICN-AKL. I needed to pick up some additional Chase points to make that happen, so James put the itinerary on hold for 30 days (which he eventually extended to 60 while I waited for the points to post). This required 195k (97.5k each person) Chase points transferred to Korean Air, and a little over $600 in taxes/fees.

For the return I’m going with CHC-MEL (QF) in domestic first, then MEL-NRT (in J on a JAL 787), NRT-ORD (JAL F on 777), and then ORD-DCA on AA. The return was booked with AA points, which I had plenty of. This priced as two awards, but if it was all in J it wasn’t that much more than a direct, which NEVER seems to open in sAAver (I had watched that a little on my own- that’s what led me to look for a booking service). This way I’ll get to try out JAL’s F, which I’m excited about. It’s ultimately going to be four legs when in a perfect world 2 or 3 might have been possible, but I went into this with my eyes open and I’m comfortable with it (and happy to try JAL’s F). This cost me 240k AA miles (South Pacific - Asia 1 in J, 40k each; Asia 1 - US 48 states in F, 80k each) a little over $200 in taxes.

Everything was done over email. James was very communicative- overall there were 38 emails back and forth (according to my iphone) and I rarely had to wait very long for a response. I asked a lot of questions about different options before deciding what was best for me. He walked me through setting up a Korean Air account and how to set up the family member stuff (you can only book tickets for direct family members on Korean), and worked with me extensively on getting my itinerary as close to ideal as we could. I recommend these people if you're looking for something out of your normal expertise; just understand that they aren’t miracle workers.

Also the payment to Juicy Miles coded as travel, so I (unexpectedly) finished the last $80 of my CS Reserve travel credit on the transaction.