You don't have to deal with Expedia, but most people seem to want the convenience of booking online, earning 2X or 5X bonuses, and don't want to pay the fee for using Platinum Travel Service.
I actually only just started using Platinum Travel Services and I thought there was supposed to be a booking fee, but thus far they haven't charged me a fee for any of the bookings I've done with them thus far. Not only that, but the prices for the flights I booked with them was LOWER than the price I could get directly from Delta.com (not by a huge amount, but definitely less).
Another thing is that the PTS agents told me I *would* get 5x on all my bookings through them. I didn't think I would, but all the agents I spoke with told me I would, even though I was using my business Platinum instead of my personal. So, we shall see. I don't see the 5x points yet posting but I'll see what happens. If it doesn't I'll call them back.
The biggest downside is it takes much more time to book tickets - waiting on hold, etc. It has been, however, very well worth it. The agents are super knowledgeable and even fun to talk to, as well as very enthused about their work.
Originally Posted by
bocastephen
When the online booking tool works, and nothing in your reservation changes, it's perfectly fine - but quite often the booking tool doesn't return anything close to what you can find on other sources, and I needed a PTS expert to show me that any type of complex itinerary with specific transit points and flights needed to be constructed manually using the multi-city option and ignoring the fare quote until you finish building it. Not very intuitive.
When that itinerary blew up thanks to Air Canada, it took me literally two hours across multiple phone calls and escalations to get my new itinerary confirmed with replacement flights - something that should have been handled easily by PTS, but they could not because it was booked online.
The "booking tool" as we keep saying is just a skin on top of Expedia. PTS can't help you with those reservations because they're using a real booking system, not Expedia, and so anything you booked online is forever inaccessible to them. Of course Amex doesn't advertise this but it's the reality. I am quite sure PTS is much more expensive than Expedia to run, which is why they encourage people to use Expedia and direct people to the Expedia phone line instead of PTS. But it also makes sense that the two services are completely disjoint - PTS are Amex employees and are incentivized to do a good job for the Amex brand and Expedia doesn't care about Amex per se as a brand.
I'm not sure what options Amex has because they clearly don't have the ability to build Expedia themselves. They are caught in a difficult situation.