Using a TA to book xONEx
 

My company requires employees to use a designated travel agent to book travel. Does anyone forsee any problems with this?

(I once tried to get the TA to book a SQ-only RTW, and it turned out that the fare basis was not visible to her; she had to call a special TA number at SQ to get it done.)

I do all my RTWs thru a TA. He does many of these. Makes my life very easy, since i just email him when i need changes, reissues etc.
He charges a fee, but i believe it is well worth it because it saves me a lot of time.
But i also heard horror stories from friends who used inexperienced TAs which had to call the help desk every time and made everything more complicated.
So the answer is: it depends on the TA. Find a person inside the agency who has done this before and know the rules better than you.

Then your TA didn't know what the **** she was doing. The SQ only RTW fare basis is visible on all GDS's. And even if she didn't see it, what was she planning to do? Price the ticket herself?

I see that you are in NYC. If your TA has never done one before, you might give him/her the number of the AA RTW desk, 800-247-3247 just in case.

Thanks. I suppose I can't help her by first building and saving the itinerary on the oneworld website, right?

Of course you can. She won't be able to book directly from it but sending her the itinerary is an easy way to show the exact flights you want as well as having done some validation yourself.

If I recall correctly, my TA in Perth was able to "grab" and ticket the RTW reservation I made with the RTW desk.

YMMV

Happy wandering

Fred

Or you can do what my moron TA did once. I had reserved a RTW through the AA RTW desk, but my company would pay for it directly (as opposed to getting reimbursed) if it went through our corporate TA. So I gave him the itinerary and the record locator.

Moron TA couldn't "grab" the record for ticketing, so moron TA rebuilt the itinerary segment by segment and priced each segment independently. Fortunately, I caught that pretty quickly before the sweeper went by and canceled everything because I was double-booked in 16 segments.

I ended up paying for it and just getting reimbursed, kept that thing far far away from the TA's capable hands.

If you proceed through the booking process on the website, past the point of putting in a name and FFQ number, you reach a page with an exact fare breakout, listing all taxes, airport fees, fuel surcharges etc.. I'd print that out, together with the itinerary, and deliver it to the TA to ensure that they obtain exactly what you want.

Even if you follow wandering_fred's idea of having the TA "grab" the reservation from the AA RTW desk, it would be a good idea to print out this fare breakout page so that you ensure that everything by the TA has been done correctly. The final amount may differ by a few dollars more or less (due to FX differences between the time you put the itinerary on the oneworld website and the time the TA actually tickets), but you should be suspicious if there are material differences.

Not surprisingly, I am having a hard time with my TA booking an AONE3. Everytime I request something (and this includes fixing errors like flights booked in the wrong bucket), they say they need to send a message to BA, and BA takes something like 2 days to get back to them.

Now when I call BA's RTW desk, someone picks up the phone immediately, talks to me and tells me that my requests are all valid, but they can't make the amendments I want because the flight was booked by a TA.

So is my TA being just inefficient and lazy (eg not willing to pick up the phone and talk to BA) or is there some TA protocol about sending messages to airlines that I don't know about?

It takes 3 steps to 'take over' a booking. Or rather - its called CLAIM. Once its been claimed, everything on the PNR is exactly the same as it is including the pricing.

Do you know if this procedure is widely known?
I'm pretty amazed at how much time I've wasted with my company's TA. It has been almost a week and they still can't get the reservation right, while in the meantime I'm a couple of clicks away from booking this myself on oneworld.com.
It's pretty horrendous - they need to talk to their own rate desk (and the person working there doesn't have the latest version of the OW RTW rules so I have to keep requesting fixes all the time) and then they have to get BA to confirm the itinerary.

A side note - do you think my TA is just simply bad - if it is I should recommend that my company uses someone else.

You hit the nail on the head, buddy!

Any have any recommendations for a good corporate TA? Someone that actually knows more than I do?

My company insists that we use the company TA because they are supposed to check that we are flying within the rules (eg cheapest nonstop fare). The irony is that my company TA's website is so terrible that it often doesn't find the cheapest nonstop fare anyway (kayak does much better), so I have a pretty good case to get my company to switch if I actually know that there are other agents that can do better.