Originally Posted by hgwatts
It has not been my experience to need a certificate to talk to an agent. I have always talked to a travel agent, found the flights that worked, and then redeemed the points for a confirmed flight (it shows up on the Thank You website as a "certificate").
I'm not sure why the GI travel agent wouldn't talk to you without the certificate. If that happened to me, I would try to talk to another agent/manager until I got them to find the flights for me before redeeming for a certificate.
exactly! is s/he saying they redeemed miles for a cert, then was unable to use? If so, that is a different game than the standard redmeption of TY points for miles via GI. Standard redemption of points for flights does not require any certificates.