Progress with DONE4 ex-WAW
 

So as this didn't get lost in any of the other threads I decided to start another.


Received an email from Tal this afternoon saying my ticket had been issued and was ready for collection. They have agreed that I can organise a courier to collect it. I have a FedEx account so I have contacted them to collect the ticket. Arranging to have a package collected in another country but billed and delivered to me was not as easy I had though but it looks as though it is organised.

The charge was not showing on my Amex but a quick call revealed a pre-auth for $5246. On aa.com my reservation is showing as "Ticketed". I am very pleased with the cost. $246 in taxes and charges for 20 segment ticket with 4flights to/from LHR is excellent. The total price works out at about £900 ($1700) cheaper than BA were charging ex-WAW.

Tal were a bit slow in responding to emails and it was difficult getting the right person on the phone but my persistence has paid off.

I won't be entirely happy until I have the ticket in my hand and checked it over but after a few frustrating months I do see light at the end of the tunnel.

For the rest of us, would you say Tal, after the initial hiccups, is now ready to deal efficiently with OWEs by email? or is phone the only way to get things done, and done well?

Questions???
 

Greetings:

I have just completed the AA RTW desk work......Starting in WAW in May,have my dates and flights (which I now see will have to be adjusted) they gave me a price of $5000.00 + tax all based on WAW.

Could you pass on the E Mail address, your contact and anything else you might be able to add on using WAW as the starting point for a DONE4.The E Mail would be of great help, I am very hard of hearing (deaf) AA was great but I hate to think what might happen dealing with someone in WAW by phone!!! :confused:

Needless to say this is my first DONE4.

Thanks much,

TomT

I can't really add any more than what I said in my OP. It took Tal about 3 days to respond to emails if they responded at all and when I telephoned, the Sales Manager always seem to be in meetings or out the office. On the occasions he was in he seemed reluctant to take my calls. In the end I never spoke to him but talked with one of his staff. For every 3 email's I sent I was lucky if I received 1 reply.

I am still waiting on FedEx confirming the pick-up. For a global organisation organising that prides itself on efficiency organising pick-up from another country is not easy. I could not do it on line and had to call Customr Services. They send me fax that I had to complete and fax back to them. I did that yesterday. They emailed me this morning saying the fax was illegible and I had to send it again. I've done this and asked for confirmation the pick-up has been booked but so far I've heard nothing.

All Tal contact details are available at www.talaviation.com

The people I spoke to were relatively fluent in English so it wasn't too much of a problem. Written English was very good.

I got excellent service from Tal Aviation.
They do accept credit cards also, VISA, MC and AMEX.

Best

Thanks for the infomation
 

Greetings:

Thanks..............As I work with them I will try and add info. :D

TomT

This week I bought two seperate AONE3 tickets (for myself and a friend). For both, I called BA in Poland and asked them to quote a fare as well as calling the AA RTW-office in the US. The trip is ex-WAW. BA came back (eventually) with a fare around US$1000 more than AA. I asked the BA agent how this was possible and she had no idea.

I went ahead and bought the tickets with AA. However, for one itinerary the quoted in US$ and the other in PLN. I called Tal in Warsaw, gave them the locator and they charged my UK-AMEX card in US$ for one ticket and PLN for the other (almost equivalent amounts). I was able to have e-tickets issued as it was for less than 16 segments and only BA, CX and AA.

At one point AA did not want to quote a fare as one of their conditions is that you have to fly "across water" with AA. I only had domestic flights booked with AA. Fortunately, they codeshare with CX on SFO-HKG and that got me round the rule!

One strange thing did happen. As it was I had two identical itineraries booked (on with AA and with with BA). I didn't give AA my FF number in order to prevent the computer picking up the fact that I had two seats booked in my name. Once the tickets where issued with AA, I asked AA for the BA (amadeus) booking ref. I need that to access the flight from BA.com to choose seats etc. For one of the itineraries, they gave me the same booking ref. as the one BA Poland had given me. I thought this was very strange. For the other it was a totally different reference and therefore felt comfotable to call BA to cancel the booking. I told BA that for the other booking, AA have somehow linked the 2 bookings. The BA agent said that this was imposible and said she would investigate before she cancels the booking.

I'm now worried that BA will cancel my booking. Can they, if AA have already issued a ticket? Any thoughts on what I should do?

It is strange. I normally do it the other way around: I let AA handle the booking and then, using the AA locator (Sabre) go into ba.com, feed it the AA locator and let it pull the itinerary (only works if you have a BA flight). When ba.com finds the itin it then assigns an Amadeus locator to it, which appears as note on the AA locator, and enables me to get into checkmytrip.

Perhaps you can try the above, just to see what Amadeus locator ba.com comes up with.

ba.com came up with the same locator for the AA booking as the flights held by BA WAW. This is very strange. For my friends reservation, the AA-RTW and BA-WAW bookings remained totally seperate and we then cancelled the BA-WAW booking once the AA-RTW booking was ticketed. Prior to that he had 2 BA (amadeus) booking references. However, for my bookings somehow AA-RTW got linked to my BA-WAW (amadeus) locator.

So I'm not sure what will happen if BA-WAW decide tocancel the reservation.

I do not know. I do know, however, that if the AA booking is cancelled then the BA one gets wiped out automatically, so let us hope the reverse is not true.

Does that apply even when the booking is ticketed and paid for?

I have never tried to cancel a ticketed booking so I really don't know what would happen, but keep in mind I was talking in the very limited context of a booking made with AA and then, through ba.com, pulling a BA itinerary locator (amadeus).

The tickets have finally arrived. It took FedEx almost a week to collect them from Tal but 24 hours after they did I had them in my hands. As suspected the tickets are hand-written.

Unfortunatley there appears to be an error on two coupons. On ANC-ORD and MIA-LAX the booking class is shown as "D" and not "A". I'm not sure if this will cause any issues so I will discuss with AA.