The issue of credit card hold and actual charge is an interesting one: I noticed that once my credit card was authorized at the time of sending PNR to ticketing, the hold never changed (even as the PNR was sent back to reservations to apply additional payment methods) until the real charges hit the credit card a day or two later. In other words, one could not see the exact charges until they posted. In addition, e-ticket receipt made no sense and did not reflect real amounts charged; however, one has to trust that since the amounts quoted never changed and all the charges were correct in my case, I would be able to obtain correct refund if one was needed. But overall I think American's ticketing process needs a lot more to be desired.

Finally, let me just say that I fully agree with all the comments earlier that we were all running against the clock to lock in what seemed and indeed was a good deal! Thanks to the flyertalk community we became experts in RTW products and its various rules!