Originally Posted by
rens
jgold,
1. there is absolutely no problem in having a Canadian travel agent assume your reservation, if that is your primary concern on this option. Using a travel agent is easy, since most will accept a US credit card and FedEx the ticket to you. This seems by far the easiest route, although some agents may charge a fee.
According to AA's RTW desk, it would in fact be difficult for an AA agent to assume the reservation. Now, part of that may have been due to the fact that I'm waitlisted on a couple of segments, but it didn't seem to be as easy a process as I'd thought it would be for a travel agent to take over the reservation. Obviously an agent could build the reservation from scratch...
Just fyi, the Canadian travel agent I did contact quoted me a price of $500/ticket. This seemed a bit high.
Originally Posted by
rens
2. Have you checked the taxes, credit card fees, and costs for the positioning ticket to get to Santiago? If the saving over buying in the US is only $1,100 these may eat up a significant portion. Or did your cost savings estimate include these costs?
The cost to get to/from Santiago from New York is 60,000 AA miles/ticket + $55 taxes/ticket. When combined with the DONE5, this gives us two stopovers in South America, then a break in the USA en-route to Asia (along with six segments in the USA). We finish in South America at the end and take our mileage ticket home 11 months later.
Also, in terms of the cost savings more broadly, our plan was always to return home after South America and before going to Asia anyway. Because of the anti-backtracking rules (i.e., starting in the US, flying down to South America, then crossing to Asia with a <24 hour transfer in the US), we were planning on using a mileage ticket anyway to go home for a week, so the use of a mileage ticket at the front of the itinerary (rather than in the middle) nets out (actually, it better than nets out, because we can still explore South America at the end of the trip, before returning home on the mileage ticket).
One open question is the taxes for starting in Chile. AA has not been very forthcoming in pricing out the different tax (VAT?) implications of starting in one South American country vs. another. It's been suggested to me by another person on this board that the differences may be considerable. However, AA, for what it's worth, suggested otherwise. I'd be very happy to hear others' views...
Originally Posted by
rens
3. If you buy in Canada but do not want to use a travel agent, seems simplest to merely book and price via the RTW desk in US and buy in Canada at an AA ticket counter. Depending on where you are located, flite and perhaps overnight costs may be minimal. Be sure you can change an existing US credit card to a billing address in Canada; this may vary by issuer and some may view it as a significant change impacting card validity.
This is an interesting point, and is part of why I posted this in the first place. The way it was explained to me is that if I buy the ticket in Canada (i.e., if I am physically at the AA Canadian counter), I can use an AMEX with a U.S. billing address. Alternatively, I can pay by telephone without going to Canada (or from the steps of the Canadian embassy perhaps ...
), but in that case I would have to have the tickets sent to a Canadian address and the billing address would have to be in Canada. My understanding was that this was an either/or thing, not a both/and (i.e., I either had to have a Canadian billing address OR be physically in Canada at the AA ticket counter when I make the purchase). Is that understanding incorrect? Thanks much for the replies.
Also, fyi, I had checked with AMEX as to whether I could change my billing address to Canada. AMEX said they didn't care.