Originally Posted by
guv1976
My understanding is that this will not work. If an itinerary is bookable on line at the correct price, having an AA agent place the itinerary on hold will trigger the telephone-booking fee even if you purchase the held award on line. The exception would be if aa.com misprices an itinerary as two separate awards, and an agent then reprices it correctly; in that particular situation, there should be no telephone-booking fee charged when you go ahead and purchase the (now correctly priced) held itinerary on line.
Has your experience been different?
Yes it has, but perhaps it is because our calls are only when the itinerary can't be booked online. We have never incurred a phone fee for award reservations that were put on hold by an agent and booked by us after the call was terminated. However, if it can be booked online, then we book it. If it can't, we call. We call regularly (every couple of months or so) regarding complex itineraries that we'd like to combine into one reservation, or segments that can't be booked online, or segments that were put on hold one by one as they were released across time/date zones, and then need to be combined. We also call if we find segments on, say BA, and they aren't showing on AA.
This is all more ambitious than our novice OP is likely to tackle, and thus the OP should perhaps, indeed, expect a phone fee for the agent's help.