Interestingly - I played around with the OW online booking tool and whilst I couldn't get it to match the itinerary perfectly (it doesn't like the Aus surface sector and I was unable to choose some of the codeshare flight #'s and instead had to use the princiapl carriers flight #'s), I nonetheless got it almost the same (especially the transcons and US flights) and the QF quoted taxes came to $695NZD?

Well it was all going too easily - fell down at point 11 serfty. Dublin priced it all OK but I have spent the last 3 days trying to pay the $4800NZd amount with an Australian credit card. Seems to have all gone pearshaped and ticketing in Sydney are arguing that I can't possibly pay for something in NZ$ with an Australian Amex.

So any advice on what I should do. I'm actually in AKL on Monday and HAVE to leave on this LONE4 on Wed. I can't afford not to be on the plane?

Also if anyone has the toll free number for AA NZ can you let me know - the one I have is disconnected and I keep having to dial via the Aussie one at great cost in NZ no doubt.

Thanks

Could anyone explain what does the "maximum of 2 stop-overs in the region of origin" entail? Does it anyhow overrule the maximum 4 segments per region?

Tks,

No - they are completely independent. You may only stay more than 24 hours in two places in the region of origin. I don't know any way of explaining that more simply I'm afraid. You may have 4 segments in your region of origin.

For example, my current AONE3 goes:
MNL-xHKG-JFK......LHR-HKG-NRT-xHKG-MNL
where x indicates a transit (stay of less than 24 hours - in fact the first one in HK was overnight). I have two stopovers in Asia (region of origin): the second HKG and the NRT. I have 4 segments: MNL-HKG, HKG-NRT, NRT-HKG, HKG-MNL.

It sounds like they don't know how to enter the currency code for the CC charge (absurd!).

AA has no GSA in NZ, but res number is New Zealand 0800 445 442

AA ticket centers info lists nothing for NZ (but has South Africa and lots of countries AA does not fly to!). https://www.aa.com/aa/pubcontent/en_...ckets/main.jsp

If you cannot pay by CC, consider paying by wire transfer. They should be able to handle that (but it takes 2 days, so have to do it now). Western Union is another alternative to bank transfer. Last resort phone AA RTW desk in US and tell them the problem, they can help you though it is not their job and they are very busy these days (also their best agents have retired). Personally I would pursue bank wire transfer by Monday at latest.

Thanks for the clear explanation.

Rgs,

AA closed their ticket office in AKL The 0800 number is probably not available for calls originating outside NZ. I'd call the Australian number back and try again. Your country of issuance of credit card is completely irrelevant.

Apologies, those instructions were cut and pasted from a thread about booking a xONEx commecing in Oz.

At least you have a NZ$ price; other than that I would go the way of the last two posts ... noting that it's now a weekend you have little time.

Thanks for the updates guys. I'll be on the phone to AA first thing tomorrow morning. I tend to think they are having problems entering the CC details and maybe they have a number wrong or something.

I'll keep you updated. The wire transfer is not a good option but I guess it is a last resort if all esle fails.

Honestly it just should not be this hard!!

Well after much to and fro with the AA office in Australia they simply outright refused to allow me to pay the NZ$ price with a credit card that has an Australian address.

After a quick ring round of kiwi friends it was detemined that no-one had the spare credit limit on their card that I could use at 6hrs notice (the credit crunch hits home)

So - deciding there was more than one way to skin a cat I decided (and I'm not proud of this ) to become a Kiwi for a few days. Well one of my Amex cards did!! I called the card services centre and changed my address to a NZ address of a friend.

Left it about 20 minutes to make sure change had registered in the system and then called AA back and let them know that my Amex "NZ" card with the required NZ address was now found and I would use that to pay. "Fantastic mr paul4471 we'll get into ticketing stright away". I called back 3hrs later on way to PER airport and asked for an update, CSA said not ticketed but she could see it was being worked on and promised to call back 20mins later. 20mins later she called back and said tickets were now issued.

I'm now in AKL and at least 50% confident that all will be ok when I check in tomorrow moring for my first flight AA7337 from AKL-MEL. Confidence is based on money coming out of credit card account and AA website now shows ticket status as ticketed. Lack of confidence comes from general experience and the fact that I'm booked under the codeshare number.

Thursday will see a call to Amex and me revoking my temporary honorary kiwi status.

Thanks all for the advice and I wonder if this "changing of address" might be a solution to a lot of the other problems that folks have been experiencing. I can see that in future I may be RSA based or even Sth Korea for credit card billing purposes for at least a short period anyway

Glad you got ticketed, but good grief what are they on?

I think this is just Australians being Australians. It's never been a problem for me to book in various countries round the world with credit cards with billing addresses in various other countries.

One dirty little secret of the credit card industry - for many markets the billing address is not validated so you can often get away with simply giving a false address. I have used this workaround with, for example, iTunes, which isn't available in principle to people with HK Billing addresses (which all my cards currently have).

I don't believe this is really the case. They do have some rules, perhaps sometimes confusing them.

Interestingly, Mindpearl operate the AA call centre in Brisbane and most staff are multi-lingual (They handle calls to AA from Australia, NZ, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia). In my dealings with them it seems patently obvious that, for most, English is not their first language - having said that, their understanding of 'Strine is generally pretty good (and one or two orders of magnitude better than the previous CAAll Centre in IndiAA).

More on this topic here:(Note the neo insider posts from Connected1)

aa.com showing "ticketed" is definitive. It really means a valid ticket number exists (and the only way that I have ever found on the web to actually show this; sadly only works for aa issued tickets). All the other ways to view ticket numbers that I've found (and there are many) are not quite definitive (they can show both false positives and negatives).

Glad to report I am back in PER after having successfully commenced my AA ticketed LONE4 from NZ. Thanks for all the tips and advice. Hopefully this can be useful to others down the track.^