KyRoamer

Years ago, Randy had a service to help people find award seats. He charged a fee for trying whether a seat was found or not. Now http://bookyouraward.com says it preforms that service for free unless it finds you a seat and then you pay $250 for up to two.

Anyone ever hear of this site? Gary Leff, Senior Moderator and member-elected TalkBoard President of Flyertalk.com, seems to have created it. If it does what it claims, it is a steal.

I recently arranged flights for a South American trip (75,000 miles business) and a high season trip to Europe (100,000 miles first). It took hours of my time. I would have gladly paid a success fee to Gary.

Hope gary is more successful at this than Randy and stays with it.

FrequentFlyer9000

I wouldn't call it a steal but it seems like a decent deal for people who don't have time.

Djlawman

Conde Nast Traveler rated Gary's service very highly.

DoubleJ

Gary is now ex-Senior Moderator and ex-Talkboard President of Flyertalk. He recently resigned these positions to take on other interests outside of FT.

As for being successful, Gary posted on his blog recently that he has "reserved over 80 million miles worth of awards during the past year for folks." Now I don't know if all of that amount is just this program or also includes reservations for friends and family, but either way 80 million miles worth of awards reserved is a lot and tells me that Gary knows exactly what he's doing!

johndeere19

Many FTers offer a similar service including Lucky (onemileatatime) and yours truly, among many, many others.

KyRoamer

Perhaps there should be a thread with contact info about travel related services. I know we want to avoid ads, but these are valuable services that could well benefit members.

sbm12

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/5.0.0.591 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

And many help out for free here in the forums when folks post their desires.

Lots of options out there.

newaroundhere

Used Gary's service and was generally very pleased. He is especially good about supporting the trip after you've booked it - i.e. supporting changes to the itinerary, seeing if seats open up, etc.

gleff

Indeed, and I'm still happy to offer my advice and thoughts here and Flyertalk and elsewhere for free as I always have been. In fact, I'd rather help folks learn to maximize their miles than take a fee for making a booking on someone's behalf, if they're so inclined to invest in learning to do so.

But there are plenty of frustrated people out there, not the kind to spend time on places like Flyertalk, who just can't seem to get value out of their miles.

I only like working on projects for people who believe that the $250 or so that they'll pay me is the best value money they've ever spent, perhaps they wouldn't have known even where to start and they didn't think it was possible to get what they were after.

If you're not sure whether it's worth paying me, don't.

KyRoamer

I'm pretty good at getting what I need but what with a billing rate of over $250 an hour it seems counter productive to do it myself. Now you could argue that my personal time is not worth that much, but it has some value.

On my last trip I called three airlines and spent over two hours on the phone. I got coach down and business back. After follow-up calls on 10 different days I got one business class seat going down. The next 30 calls (no wait list available) got nothing.

So much time and aggavation. Not sure if gary would have gotten that last seat, but he sure would have save me time and distress.

My next flight took less than two hours and I hit a home run. So likely I'd make a call or two before calling Gary. But I am glad to know he is out there.

mia

My reading is that the charge is a flat $250 per trip, not per hour.

KyRoamer

My rate is per hour; his per trip for two. That is why it seems such a bargain to me.

Jim055

+1 on Gary's service. It's a bargain.

Question for the award experts. Which tools do you use and why?

Thanks. Jim

TravelinWilly

I think that this is a key question for a lot of people. I used Gary's service and couldn't be happier, however I did wonder what tools he used to find the great options he found. I didn't care enough to ask directly, because I'll likely never have the time to learn them all, and ponying up $250 for his service (or Lucky/Ben's or whomever's) is of real value to me.

But as far as educating others, yeah, knowing which of the tools our experts use (e.g., expertflyer? ITA? KVS?) would probably be quite helpful to those who are inclined to do it all themselves.

stevens397

I have the greatest respect for Gary. His blog is the first one I go to every day. And thanks to him and others, I have gotten somewhat savvy regarding this stuff. So a few observations:

1. My friends think I'm nuts! Then they have an issue and ask for advice/help which I am more than happy to provide. Then they take their trips and go back to thinking I'm nuts!

2. More to the point, I do the Sunday NY Times Crossword every week. I see the challenge for award tickets in the same light - it's a puzzle that I get to solve. My time is worth a lot, but in terms of leisure time, this is fun for me while for others, it is a mystery and a major frustration. If I fell into the latter category, I'd use Gary in a heartbeat. And I truly believe what he wrote above. Getting premium tickets that you could not or would not get on your own for $125 per ticket is a STEAL!