roki

Welp, they gave me 2K TY points for my troubles, and assured me the ~$150 I had to pay would apply under the statement credit policy.

I would have found plenty of good ways to use the $200 credit without this nonsense, though.

mightyducksman

I'm not certain if this happened when flying with my wife, but if it did we were seated together. Even if not seated together we typically just trade seats with someone, assuming both of us weren't condemned to middle seats. Obviously it's a bit of a gamble. Glad to see you'll get your refund much as the way you used it was crappy.

dw

This is definitely new. I've never had problems in the past with the Citi flight booking portal pricing trips out at a higher price compared to ITA/airline websites, but right now it would appear that everything is pricing out at about $5 and change more (for an itin I just booked, $5.78).

It's not enough that I'm going to spend time calling them to inquire, but a heads up to everyone.

beltway

Huh. Lots of people have in the past observed their usual practice of increasing the price on the sly: that is, listing the same price as other sites, but giving a slightly lower redemption ratio for TYP. (They did this on a ticket I booked about 10 days ago.) I wonder if they're now double-dipping by charging a higher dollar fare and skimming fractional TYPs.

dw

At least in my case, for an AA flight, the TYP deducted were at the correct 1.6 cent/point rate... but applied to the HIGHER airfare that was initially listed.

B/c it initially shows you a dollar amount and the corresponding TYP amount in a grid organized by N/S and connections, it was easy to compare it with the grid on ITA and see the variations.

Checking my receipt on AA.com, it confirms the lower fare. So for this redemption, I actually only received 1.57 cents per point.

So perhaps we're basically talking about the same thing then... they're just displaying ti differently now.

y2chen

EDIT: Comprehension not my strong suit today. Mine was a fully different fare class that Connexions wasn't displaying online, not the same fare class, just priced higher by ~$5.

==
I had this happen to me on my last booking on an AA flight.

I believe I called Connexions and asked what they saw for the routing, and then reported the fare that I saw on AA.com and any number of OTAs (Orbitz, Expedia, etc). At first, the rep made the usual claims about how perhaps AA shows a lower fare on their website, but after I brought up all the other OTAs (and after he looked it up for himself I think), I was sent to a different rep who manually priced the flight and the points required, and booked the award for me.

In the end, I did the $ -> TYP conversions manually on my side, and they matched up with the expected ratio. So if you're seeing something wacky, don't be afraid to call them up and ask. In my case, I think the difference was something like 2k+ TYPs per person.

mxhjustin

Purchased AA tickets using partial points partial cash. Got AA miles for the flight.

roki

I'm pricing out a flight for my wife next month on US Airways. It prices out to $379 booking through US Airways, but it shows as $408.20 on the ThankYou Matrix (25,512 TY points with my 1.6x Prestige). I've never seen inflated prices on the TY matrix, but I haven't booked using TY points in almost a year.

Does anyone have experience with this issue, and does calling a rep to book the flight solve the problem? Reminiscent of the arbitrary companion pass ticket price bump.

beltway

I'm pretty sure the prices have been inflated for over a year (albeit not by that much). I've seen several reports IIRC in http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/citi-...0-0125-pt.html of people calling, pointing out the fare discrepancy, and getting the price lowered.

Chupacabras

I just checked and a domestic trip I was planning didn't appear to have any price inflation compared to travelocity.

FallenPlat

Could one possible explanation for the US price discrepancy be that the TYP portal prices through the AA website, which in turn typically (or at least somewhat frequently) prices US flights a bit higher than the US website itself does?

I've started resorting to pricing all AA/US itineraries twice, once through each website, and then going with the cheapest -- for the exact same flights. You'd think they'd be the same price, but they're often not.

I'm just speculating here, of course.

roki

Google does that for me, actually. It prices as $379 through US and $394 through American, but neither shows the $408.20 on the TY portal (for either US or AA). If we end up deciding to book this flight, I'll give the Prestige line a call.

FallenPlat

Interesting, and it's weird that you have to call to get the "real" price. Getting the "real" price is obviously the key to whole value proposition of the 1.6x thing.

mia

I just priced one-way AA first class MIA-EWR. Citi's engine returned a price of $448.63 (28,039 points). aa.com priced $379.09. I bought the tickets on aa.com. Using the points would have returned $0.0135 which is respectable, but not as advertised. I will slug it out on another occasion when I have more time.

dw

It's unfortunate that this is either popping up again or just hasn't been fixed for months.

Since I actually just purchased an AA JFK-DCA ticket through AA.com, I went in to check how the Thank you portal would have priced the same ticket.

AA.com: 274.20
Thank you portal: 280.09 or 17,505 TY points

It's not a huge difference, and the redemption value ends up being 1.566 cents/point, but it's odd that the discrepancies seem to be all over the place. If it was a flat $5 and change, I'd suspect it was a hidden booking fee, but that doesn't seem to be the case.