No TA here. I've seen too many people (including myself) steered towards weird routings/airlines/fares just so the travel agent could make an extra buck on me (in order to win a contest, make an "override" commission, etc.)

I had a very similar experience to cordelli at the last company I worked for. There, I was forced to use a TA for "cost control" reasons, and absolutely hated them, mostly because they managed to provide inconvenient times on unreliable airlines and out-of-the-way hotels at high cost. I once entered their cube and found it plastered with a powerpoint slides from a presentation about a contest that the agent was obviously trying to win, involving increasing volume on a specific (low-reliability) airline in selected city-pairs). After a few scuffles, and once they realized I knew what was going on from my travel industry internship way back, we settled on a compromise: myself and my team would pick online the flights and routings and fares that made the most business sense, and they would ticket just that. On my part, I would stop highlighting to the relevant people in the organization their little scheme and how, at the end of the day, the company travel costs were higher both in $$ spent and in productivity losses, notwithstanding the snow job they were making to the unwary finance guys with official-looking CRS printouts alleging lots of savings.

I also felt it fair that part of the savings should go to me or my team members, but the fact that we didn't have to fly those insane routings on those insane airlines was a benefit enough! BTW, the company went bankrupt.