bchandler02

Yep. I had pretty much sworn off this tool last year due to it being a 3rd party, but still occasionally check it and would consider it if it was significantly cheaper.

I did have a trip booked last year that ended up getting cancelled due to the hurricane in New Orleans. That trip turned into a trip credit in my AA account, and I successfully used that recently directly with AA, so that part at least worked.

VegasGambler

Are the discounts for this better than the ones you see booking on AmexTravel (with the platinum or centurion card)? That's usually 5% off main cabin and possibly more for premium cabin (some people have reported some really huge discounts on that but I've never gotten anything more than 5%)

PKTRCR

Not to resurrect an old thread, but to add another data point (sorry it's long-winded): I started with a huge corporation back in March of this year and we are a corporate customer of both AA and UA. I've been a UA Plat for a while now and have used the Break from Business fare discount a few times this year. It's like 5-10% off so not much but it basically pays the taxes, and it's easy to use because it's a direct booking through UA. Two months ago I booked a trip (leisure) on business.aa.com because it was about $200 cheaper than UA. To be clear, it was the same price as booking direct through aa.com, but I figured I'd try it out because I wasn't familiar with the program, and didn't know if maybe booking through there would come with extra perks (like how being a Corporate Preferred customer on UA can be an upgrade tie breaker). I am a Plat with AA right now too due to status match, so I figured everything would be fine. I still got my free seat assignments, etc. Website is horrible, but I booked it and everything was great. It showed up in my AA account just like any other flight would. Cool.

Fast forward to last night, I realized I have a tournament the afternoon of the day I'm supposed to return home. Okay whatever, let me change my flight to early morning... Well for some reason I couldn't do this through the AA app. Before I engaged the CS line, I just did a search on 1-ways to see if they even had a schedule to fit what I needed. They didn't, so I went ahead and booked a 1-way on UA and called AA to attempt to cancel my return flight for a credit. They told me that the ticket number indicated that it was issued by a travel agent... "Well I booked it on business.aa.com. My company is a corporate customer for AA so I'm not sure why that is...I didn't use a travel agent or anything..." She told me I needed to call my travel agent and that was basically that. So I go on the business booking website and call the number from there. Hour long wait so I requested a call back. When I FINALLY get a call back, I explain the situation, the rep tells me that my new fare will be $x, and I will have to pay a $25 agent fee to have it changed... lol what. Okay fine whatever let's do it. New fare is $223 for the one way. Tickets are reissued. Rep asks me for my seat preference to which I reply that I was already assigned seats. She explains that because the tickets were reissued, I have to pick seats again. I ask her to simply pick the same seats I already had because they should've been released when the original booking was effectively cancelled. She grabs the same seats and we're done. I now have a $370 credit. Cool.

Fast forward to this morning, I look on AA app and the same 1-way outbound is only $167... Quite a bit less than $223. Okay well let's use the credit I have and book that, then cancel the reservation from last night... Can't do that. Credit can only be used by the travel agency from which it was originally booked... Screw it, went ahead and booked the $167 1-way ticket through AA directly with my CC.

In the end, I now have $593 in travel credit through ITS that I am almost afraid to use because of the lack of flexibility. I'll wait until a relative has a trip and just book it for them I guess (and pay another $25 to use it apparently...). Hopefully I'll be able to do that even though it's in a different name.

Let this serve as a warning to all - ITS: not even once.

seawolf

Buried in the terms is that this is an agency issued ticket.

NYC Flyer

It seems AA has massively overcomplicated this by using a third party. I suppose there are profit/accounting motivations, but when I was in banking we were permitted to book the corporate discounts on AA and maybe others (I just always flew AA) through the firm's captive in-house travel agency and paying a $35 ticketing fee (I'm sure it's been long outsourced by now). The discount was also the full 20-30% off negotiated by the firm with carriers, so it was a real perk!

Unfortunately, the "credits" you have with ITS are more than likely separate unused tickets which can't be combined or transferred (so two new trips to book in your name).

PKTRCR

Unfortunately, I think you're absolutely correct

Oh well, I've learnt more expensive lessons before so I guess I should just consider myself lucky it was a quick hop over to Florida and not a $2k+ trip to Europe or something lol.

bchandler02

Unlike United who just displays their "break from business" fares on their own search engine and books direct with them. It's 1000 times better than this AA crap.

At a minimum, AA could have just issued coupons to those that qualify instead of outsourcing it to a 3rd party which is a total scam and joke.

donotblink

What's nuts is that companies that have Concur, allow users to have a button that allows people to sync their corporate fare ticket designator with their aa.com profile and book using those fares directly on aa.com.

bchandler02

Yep, we have concur but are not allowed to book personal travel via it - even paid personally.
You'd think if anything, it would help companies negotiate better rates if they showed more business being done with them, but oh well.

mvoight

Do you get BE points for these bookings?

bchandler02

Looks like this trainwreck of a program has ended as of 12/31/22 per the (now former) website.