Last week, I completed the booking process for my upcoming DONE4 and have reqested ticketing. The CMB CX agent has the funds (Nearly SLR600,000: I used 'Telegraphic Transfer' to avoid a 3% CC levy).

Last Wednesday I received an Email "I'll instruct the ticket office to issue your ticket.".

I still have no confirmation of ticketing. The Amadeus Record Locator is showing the booking's segments but there is, as yet, no ticket number at the end of the page. (By way of contrast, a ticket number is showing in other ticketed bookings I have.)

I am quite keen to see this booking ticketed as, 1)There is a routing in it that was OK when I commenced the process, but is no longer valid (Since 15th August, -MEL-PER-CNS-) and 2) Fuel levies increases are imminent.

Does anyone have experience in how long this 'final' part of the process should take?

edit: CC fee -- assume you mean charged by the CMB agent.
Then on top of that you'd also have international credit card fees.


OT: But Wizard has just launched a Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard
-no fees, 55 days int free BUT more importantly no international purchase levies. Very useful card for overseas holidays, or booking foreign air fares.
(and a relatively low interest rate)
http://www.wizard.com.au/creditcards/task.aspx?id=580

The changes you mention apply to all tickets issued as of/after 15 Aug. So it depends on what you mean "commenced the process". If you are referring to the booking process then you are out of luck - booking does not lock you into the prices and rules as of that date. If you are referring to ticketing and your ticketing occurred before the date of the rule change then you are OK.

Having an illegal routing probably explains the lack of a ticket number. Probably the agent is trying to convince the ticketing authority to allow this routing; strictly speaking it is not allowed in the rules unless they back-date the ticket issue to be 2 days before you "commenced ticketing". Obviously that is fraudulent but perhaps normal practice in CMB. You may have problems with any reissue catching the rule violation if the original issue date is after August 15, usually this is checked fairly thoroughly on reissues (presuming that the ticket will be issued at all for this routing).

As to your question of how long it takes, all OWE tickets that I have purchased were complete in less than 24 hours. However CMB may have limited ticketing facilities (I have no idea on whose stock they issue the ticket).

I have used the CMB CX office for an ex-CMB ticket to the US. I found them to be superb communicators and very quick to make the changes that I requested. However, my ticket experience was other than anticipated. I sent them a scanned copy of my passport photograph page and back and front copies of my credit card in order to get the ticket issued before arrival in CMB. In fact, they issued the ticket after i arrived, leaving me quite confused as to what the point was of having me email scanned documents. In my case, I ended up having to eat a 3% credit card service fee that only took effect on July 1. The downside for you appears to be even greater than for me. Perhaps a phone call is in order?

Yes there would have been a credit card fee charged by the CMB office. By using TT saved me about USD180.

I do have two available alternate routings; -MEL-PER-DRW-MEL- gets the same QFF SC's but the times suck & -MEL-DRW-CNS-MEL- nets 20 less SC's but the times work better. Both give me less miles, but it's not the end of the world.

What I would really like is some feedback at least, yay or nay. I will give it another day.

Well I have received an email from CMB and the news is good:Thankyou to all for your advice and help so far; this is an ongoing project as I have not yet locked down all my flights.

As for how I was able to ticket with that itinery, maybe I scraped in as I had already paid � before the changes came in on 15th August.

There were two main reasons for this: 1) For security reasons my bank has a limit on what I can TT in any one day & 2) I wanted to be sure the funds went to the right people so did not 'put' all my eggs in the one basket.

I have found the CMB CX office to be very professional and one of the most helpful offices around. They do have their problems sometimes in issuing tickets promptly, but if one reminds them by email or phone they take care of it.

I hope this is a misunderstanding and relates to the typical 3% added to foreign transactions by many issuing banks. Visa and M/C charge 1% and your "unscrupulous" bank often adds another 2%. "Unscrupulous" because it's strictly a gouge - they do nothing to earn it. Fortunately there are still a few customer friendly banks who don't add the charge.

If airlines are suddenly adding 3% of their own to c/c charges I'd be surprised.

JohnAx,

No was Not the 1-2% bank fee, it was detailed in the very first e-mail I received from them:Note the earlier post here that confirms this:The "CMB Fare Group" is an agency as the bank a/c name I transferred the funds to was: "FINLAY AIRLINE AGENCIES LTD.".

That's fascinating. I wonder what the relationship between them and Cathay is? When I booked with them I was using a contact that I got from the North American CX res office, and never had an inkling I wasn't dealing with Cathay.

Since they're an agency, I wonder if it's worth asking for typical agent-type services, such as Fedex'ing tickets.

I would be especially surprised because such credit card surcharges are illegal in many states (incl. California), and contrary to credit card issuers' contracts. If it were me, I would seriously consider paying the surcharge, then disputing it with your bank. In California, by law you're actually entitled to recover three times the surcharge wrongly collected -- so in principle you could even make money on the surcharge (putting aside the time and effort required to collect, which could be considerable).

I would really be quite surprised in Californian law applies to transactions which take place in Sri Lanka. Credit card surcharges (or discounts for cash - the same thing in practice) are very common in many parts of the world.

Even in the UK it is quite common; e.g. see question 7: http://www.travelbag.co.uk/contact_us/faq_credit.html