So! Tickets finally booked, with thanks to all the helpful suggestions from forum members here. But it turned out to be a bit of an adventure. In case this is useful to someone else, here's what happened.

Decided to go with two (nested) RTWs, one ex-LHR and one ex-ICN. After polishing the itinerary, I decided to try using the OW RTW booking tool. Since one ticket would not be much good without the other, I built the itineraries simultaneously on two different computers, and hit the "book" button on both right around the same time.

The Korea one seemed to work pretty well. I was quoted the correct fare in Won, got a prompt to enter my CC info, and it told me I'm ticketed and ready to go. Excellent! But, turns out it was not quite so easy. Shortly after, I got an "urgent" email from an employee of Qantas Korea, saying that I needed to provide a copy of my passport and credit card. Hmmmm. Long story short, I verified through Qantas that this was indeed a legit request. Once I complied, I was ticketed in short order.

The LHR ticket was another story. Instead of a prompt to enter payment, I got a statement that I'm reserved, a PNR, the correct price quoted in pounds, and instructions to call BA for payment and ticketing. Hmm, that made me a bit nervous after reading some of the stories . . .

First call was to BA's US RTW desk. There was a holdup when they saw it was quoted in pounds, so they transferred me to a rep in the UK, who I have to say was extremely helpful and nice. However, there was a problem on her end too; their system is not set up for credit cards with a U.S. mailing address. She said she'd try to get this taken care of, I should call back the next day. I asked how, and she said I should call the US RTW desk and ask them to transfer me to the UK.

Bright and early the next morning, I did what the UK rep suggested. Um, I think that was my first rookie mistake. The US rep wouldn't transfer me to the UK, even though another rep had done exactly that. Instead she said they could take care of the payment by converting the fare to dollars. I asked, "will that be the fare I was quoted, converted to dollars?" She said, "I imagine so. Call back in an hour." Rookie mistake 2, I should have been wary of "I imagine so."

I hung up, and a couple of minutes later, what do I get but a call from the very helpful UK rep, saying she thinks she's got everything sorted out and can take my payment. I told her about my contact with the US folks and she said "let's try to take care of it and see what happens." Well, we tried several different options but her system would not accept my credit cards. She suggested I buy the ticket either at the ticketing desk in the U.S. airport, or when I arrived in London. I mentioned that the US people were trying to convert my fare to dollars, and she looked and said, "well, it looks like they've done that already." When she told me the amount, I realized with a sinking feeling that this was the price for ex-US, not the ex-UK fare converted to dollars. A not insignificant difference.

So, time to be creative. I called the US desk, told them the rates did not match, and asked them to convert it back to pounds. Then I headed out to the airport to talk to a human being face-to-face. The woman at the desk "got it"--she looked at the history and figured out what had happened and why it was an issue. She called someone at the rate desk (? or whatever they call it) and I have to say this guy was apparently a true hero. He had to jump through a number of hoops, doing conversions on each leg separately. But, a few hours and a couple of additional phone calls later, finally I'm making payment for the correct fare with a US credit card. Whew!

To give credit where it's due, out of my substantive dealings with the BA folks, five out of six were either extremely helpful or at least tried to pass me in the right direction--they were just up against a system that made it hard for them. The remaining one unfortunately sort of gummed up the works. Kudos to the Qantas folks too; they immediately understood why I was concerned, said they were concerned too, and worked to address my issue.

So, depending on your needs, booking thru the RTW tool might work well for you. But if you're buying an ex-UK ticket from elsewhere, one of the other options, such as trying to ticket via AA RTW or a travel agent, might make for smoother sailing.

Interesting story. Just want to make sure I have this right, -- you physically paid for the ticket at a BA desk in the US and it was the ex-UK price?

Well, I would have paid for the ticket at Heathrow if it had proved necessary. Some helpful BA agents were able to spare me the delay, but I would not expect it as a matter of course. Their system seems to actively discourage it.

I'm wondering about "the correct price quoted in pounds". Could you see exactly how much fuel surcharge was added to the ticket? I ask because I had understood that much of that could be avoided by issuing the ticket via AA ticketing services at LHR, where they would have had no difficulty in processing US based credit cards.

I'm trying to understand whether the online tool, in addition to causing you literally hours of inconvenience (at the airport) due apparently to BA IT issues re credit cards also caused you to spend lots of [avoidable] money on surcharges.

Fair question. I did get somewhat hammered on taxes and fees. The original quoted price for a DONE4 via the online tool was 4,685 GBP. The "fare estimator" on the OW site indicates the price of a DONE4 ex-UK should be 4,139. So that's 546 GBP in taxes and fees I assume, or about $786. My issued ticket charged me $981.41 in taxes and fees. So I guess doing it in the US cost me about $200 extra. Not exactly great, but I was far more concerned about getting the base fare I was originally quoted.

I'd love to know how much of the $981.41 could have been saved by avoiding having ticketing done by BA.

If it's a relatively minor amount, then so be it.....but if we're perhaps talking $500+, it probably would be worth clarifying that for future FT travellers using ex-UK xONEx products....

It seems likely that AA may have pushed back on ticketing the OPs exLHR itinerary as I don't think you can get a single AA flight out of it. Even with codeshares, you typically have to connect to an AA operated flight. I'm not sure if that's a strict requirement, but every case I've heard of that seemed to be the case. I might be missing something.

That may be right. It was partly out of concern for this issue that I decided to try ticketing via the OW online booking tool. But once you do this, you give up control over who tickets you. It was odd that the tool ticketed my ex-South Korea itinerary via Qantas, because I am not flying any Qantas metal on that ticket! The Qantas folks pointed this out, but they also ticketed me.

I would be interested to hear if anyone tries ticketing an xONEx fare using AA where there is no AA metal on the ticket. It's not all that crazy if you think about it; AA is happy to sell you a codeshare ticket for flights all over the world if you want to buy it from them. When you get right down to it, isn't that the point of a codeshare?

I have had two ATWs (1 DONE4 that has been ticketed that I am currently traveling on and 1 DONE3 that is currently on hold, with taxes calculated - just need to issue) that were reserved and issued with AA in SEL. Both of these ATWs did not have single AA segments but AA ATW desk set up the reservation and gave me full pricing quote with taxes... for both of these fully utilized 16 segment DONE4 and DONE3 had taxes around KRW 550,000 (which is around 380 USD). So, taxes are a big deal breaker on these ATWs. With the 10% discount, my DONE3 is priced just barely above 4,000 USD all-in.

Perhaps I got very lucky to have AA book and issue these ATWs without any AA segments, but technically there is no rule saying that the issuing carrier must be part of the itinerary nor be the over-the-water carrier (pacific or atlantic).