Thought I'd share my experience booking with IAP and then using the Travel with Confidence Policy. SPOILER: It
was successful, and it
was a royal pain, and your mileage
certainly will vary. This post will be a bit long, sorry, but hopefully it helps anyone looking at using IAP!
I was sharing on here a couple of weeks ago when I first started my attempt at making changes, and talked about how two different AMEX agents had no idea about the policy and were quite reluctant to make things happen. A lot happened since then!
Here's my full timeline:
Day 1: Bought JFK-TBS-JFK at $140 less than QR's
Day 15: After the 14 day wait, called to change to LAX-MLE-LAX, spent 6 hours on the phone with 4 different agents who called Amex supervisors or QR agents
- One QR agent said that only the destination can be changed (wrong), quoting me $4400 in fare difference per ticket
- One QR agent said that the origin can only be changed within 1500mi so I can only change it to DFW/ORD-MLE (wrong)
- Two Amex supervisors said this policy is not on Amex's instruction list, so even if QR gave the Amex agent the waiver code, they were not authorized to use it
- Final agent succeeded at getting the code and everything but needed QR to ticket it and QR's hours are now apparently 9-6 M-F and it was already Friday night so I was told to call on Monday
Day 18: Called to put the change through, No success, and the R availability was gone
Day 21: Called again with new R availability dates, 1 agent, 1 try, she called Qatar, got the waiver code, put it through, success!
- Called QR a few hours later to select seats and they said "the reservation has been changed but the ticket hasn't"
- Called Amex to make sure the ticketing had gone through. "Yup, everything looks good on this end"
Day 22: at midnight JFK time, we got a cancellation notice for our itinerary. Called Amex, found out that Amex ticketing had failed to complete the ticketing in time (over a day and a half) so QR cancelled the ticket. Amex agent tried to reinstate but the R availability was now gone again, and it was Friday night so she couldn't get through to QR so she said wait til Monday (devastating and frustrating, especially since we booked hotel)
Day 25: Spent over 4 hours on the phone with 2 different Amex agents who told me there was nothing they could do and whose supervisors told them that even if Qatar gave them waivers, they would not be allowed to use it because it wasn't Amex sanctioned. They attempted to change to DFW-MLE dates that had R availability and quoted me a fare difference of over $3K/ticket because the origin was different. I hung up and screamed so loud I nearly blew out my vocal cords
Day 26: Found LAX dates with R availability, called, got an agent who listened to my whole situation, called QR, made a 3-way call, I gave the very helpful QR agent my info, and just like that, it was ticketed. Fully ticketed by Qatar, with Qatar Airways ticket confirmation email and everything, and in fact QR took control so it is no longer with Amex at all. This final interaction was a dream and felt like exactly what I was hoping for from the beginning. This was over a week ago and we're still good to go!
tl;dr- Booked JFK-DOH-MLE through AMEX IAP, and after about 11 hours on the phone with Amex over the course of over a week, successfully rebooked to LAX-DOH-MLE. I would say it was 100% NOT worth the money I saved by booking through IAP. But that was just my experience. Again, YMMV.