damon88

Thanks for that heads up. Me too!

StartinSanDiego

A friend, who has recently joined the ranks of miles and points collectors, wants to go to Japan this summer as a party of either 2 or 3.

I took a quick look for her, and saw only horrific business class redemption options. 300k points one way, etc. It used to be that a quick search for a friend could yield some results, but I spent nearly an hour looking here and there across alliances, with no good suggestions for her. I then consulted this thread and sent her a couple of booking service links.

SanDiego1K

Quick thought. Does she have AMEX points? UR points? Is she flying from a Singapore Airlines gateway city? If so, I would check award availability on Singapore. They have a nonstop from LAX-TYO. Check before she moves AMEX points or UR points into her account. I just checked random dates in July. There are some days with one way business award seats at 123K. And for the same point level, she can book a layover in NRT and fly on to Singapore, then fly the nonstop back to LAX.

damon88

We still have a little time before we can book our May 2024 flights but I am getting nervous since we have never booked award travel on Emirates. I have booked lots of award seats on numerous airlines in the last 20 years but I've been hearing it is getting tougher and tougher. We would like to pay someone to assist us this time, even for just expert advice. We are only interested in First Class travel that would get us from SoCal to Cape Town. Our thought was Emirates FC from LAX to Dubai and then Cape Town. I was hoping Jasper could help but I haven't been able to reach him. Any other services you could recommend?

Jasper2009

Thanks for the kind words.

And my sincere apologies for not replying to a few PMs. I believe I've now replied to everyone who's tried to contact me recently.

damon88

Hi Jasper. Just sent you a message

i originally reached out last month. Looking forward to connecting.

TPA us ff

I’ve read older reviews of award booking services but was curious if anyone has recent experiences? Looking for travel to/from Viet Nam in October or November and the AA award booking site is of little or no value, especially when looking for partner travel. Thanks for any insights on these booking services.

ZenFlyer

I'll note fwiw that I had a great experience in the fall using the 'concierge service' of point.me to book an award trip to Australia. In particular, I felt they did a great job of listening to my specific requests and constraints, and working within them. My trip was on UA though, so I can't comment specifically on AA or OneWorld options, though I imagine they would be similar. (Although it does not approach the level of information and options you would get through the concierge service, note that the point.me website also has a self-service search feature that you can use temporarily for a nominal charge.). Good luck!

Runner123

I used point.me concierge a number of times and was happy with what I got, but all those flights were cancelled because of COVID. So if you have an ordinary request, I would not hesitate to recommend them. However, if you are looking to do an ANA RTW ticket, their new pricing is now, IMHO, unreasonable. It is $300 and $200 for every city after that. I had previously booked two sets of flights to Thailand and a RTW ANA ticket. All had to be cancelled. The ANA ticket was for a cruise January 2023 that was cancelled by the cruise line for the second time.When I contacted my concierge about rebooking the ANA, I was told the new pricing. I said that was very high as and a preexisting customer with points already
parked in ANA, perhaps they could give me a courtesy discount. (I paid $300 for the initial booking, now it would have been $1800!!!) He said that was not possible and that there was no way I would be able to book it myself. I declined to pay six times what I paid before, and successfully booked it myself with all flights in business class. But I won't ever use Points.me again.

dmax801

I balked at point.me because it looked fairly expensive. We're planning a RTW (like everyone seems to be doing) and using them would cost $400 to start (two fliers) then, with 9 stops, a total of $4000 just for them to figure out booking. Of course, using 400K MR for our tickets means that the RTW flights would "cost" us about $8000 total. Such a deal. But such a hassle!

But, you can buy *A RTW in J for about $24K (on our itinerary) and there's no need to look for award seating, no need for date/location flexibility, no hours on the phone with ANA agents, and the ability to move the flight dates when needed. I'm thinking that it might be the thing to use my retirement bonus to offset, and then use MR/UR to book lodgings.

abaheti

Sounds like they have just decided that this kind of ticket is not a business line they want to be in or develop the expertise to handle, so they are pricing it to make it unappealing/prohibitive? Happens in some services companies -- never have to so "no" or "we don't do that" but effectively get to that result on the natural. :-) I had a boss who used to coach sales reps on how to "fire" clients that wouldn't hit the margins needed and pricing way high was one way to do it. Curious if anyone has reached a human to ask if there is better pricing for RTW or if this is just off the website giving automated pricing? I'm sure I missed this detail above in the thread.

Based on my prior experience, I plan on trying them for a trip this fall if I can't figure our something reasonable myself, but my trips are very simple not like RTW territory.

dmax801

Following up on the "should we be using point.me for RTW bookings?" I sent email asking about it a few days ago and this just showed:

damon88

A quick update. Jasper emailed me asking for details and then I never heard back. I decided to book it myself. I have learned a ton about Emirates and so far have been very successful (on our outbound- our inbound flight has not loaded yet) Fortunately, Emirates is pretty simple to navigate and points transfers from Amex and Chase have been instantaneous (Emirates also will hold bookings for a few days) As it turns out I am glad I was forced to book it myself. The old adage holds- if you want something done right . . .

weezl

HI, does anyone use Awardlogic? I find it useful for sorting out the lowest cost mileage flights when I have to fly a certain date/time. The site has been down for a couple days, do they lurk on FT to maybe give us an update?

Jy10871

if someone can find a good booking, I will happily pay the award ticket search fee. Many vendors listed here have their sites down so looking here.
I’m looking to find mileage reward redemptions for a one way flight from EWR to Taiwan (or an adjacent city) around 40k points for economy flight hopefully under 26hrs of travel time around November timing. For some reason I’m having trouble finding any good flights even after searching all carriers since I have a ton of United, American, Chase, Capital One, and Bilt rewards. I even tried partner airlines like Air Canada, Virgin, ANA, JAL, etc, but hoping someone here knows of more advanced searching techniques they can share with me. Would love to see some good business or first redemptions for comparison too.