This startred of as a post in the ITA section of "miles" but think the outcome now belongs here. It seem the airlnes are using credit card tactics to make all kinds of extra charges/ rules to increase income.
I purchased a flight where the return is from Bari connecting in Rome to LAX. Turns out friends will be in Rome at the time (3 months from now) so I will take the train Bari-Rome one day earlier and then take the same Rome-Lax flight. In other words, all I want to do is cancel the Bari-Rome leg. Called OTA and they said it will cost me $740 a ticket. The claim they must cancel and then repurchase the return flight,

Is there any reason other than greed that they have to do it this way? I admit, I purchased the saver ticket which said changes were possible, but still?

That is pretty much the case these days when wants to change the routing that one has to cancel and repurchase the ticket at the current fare. Many do not use an OTA because they can have additional costs over booking directly with a specific airline.

Further, the increase in price maybe due to the routing. While one might think ROM->LAX would be cheaper than BRI->ROM->LAX but that is not always the case. Which is more or less the case of hidden city ticketing. Do search on the these routings to verify.

In the end not a scam but how things work today.

It may be worthwhile to visit with your friends in Rome, then buy a new train or air ticket to return to Bari to catch your originally booked flight.

No scam: Your ticket is being repriced at prevailing rates and would be regardless of how you booked (or where* you book, fly and even which decade). Your ticket may be (or is) no-changeable, non-refundable, non-reroutable. Can't just drop the BRI-FCO segment else it'll cancel the rest (as you probably are aware of).

* - supposedly may be some exceptions for tickets sold/ticketed in Italy.

If you want to see and example of a real ticket change scam, my sister fell for earlier this year was when she wanted to change her (somewhat flexible) directly-through-MH-ticketed ticket. She mindlessly used the Safari search agent on her iPhone and got some scammy site that charged her a substantial amount for the (free or cheap) change which she could have made for free by contacting the MH call centre directly.

The ticket price optimization model can definitely create too many bad feelings when it comes to ticket pricing. In the meantime happy and safe travels!

yes
I would be very careful of the links provided on kayak.
Clicked on the link for a flight LAX-Paris on Air Bee and was sent to a site that pretty much just booked the tkt through Air bee and then charges me an extra $2300 for the booking fee and $50 a seat to reserve even though seat choice is free if you book directly.My credit card agency was able to let me get our of this luckily and I booked directly through the real Air Bee website.,

Again- outside of making more money is the any reason to cancel the original tkt and re purchase at a higher price?

I fail to see how kayak fits into this at all. If you are unable to fly your ticket as booked, you either need to toss it or change it. The airline industry has functioned this way for the past 30+ years.

You bought BRI-LAX cheap Now you want FCO-LAX which is not cheap. Your ticket was presumably non-refundable and non-reroutable. If you wanted to change, you should have purchased a more-expensive refundable/changeable ticket. It's the way it's been for years. If you could travel back 20/30+ years when tickets were still paper coupons, you could have done what you want to do at no cost and the airline(s) would be none the wiser until you were safely home.

No use complaining here. You are not going to get much sympathy.

That�s not OP�s issue. OP said in the first post that the ticket is changeable. But as with any change before flying any segments, this refares the trip, and the fare difference is due. OP just wants to simply drop a flight without refaring, arguing that they already bought the whole thing and just now want to use half of it, so why should that cost more. The classic hidden city ticketing argument. Refundable tickets wouldn�t change anything here.

Semantics aside, you and YVR Cockroach are saying essentially the same thing.

But, lest the "hidden city" concept gets lost in the shuffle, I simply want to point out that FCO-LAX nonstop is monopoly product offering of ITA, whereas a dozen airlines sell BRI-LAX with a single connection. Therefore, ITA can command a premium for the former. Furthermore, when you attempt to change from the latter to the former, it's logical to get hit with the fare difference, regardless of whether or not they charge an additional fee for the change itself (some fares have change fees and *some OTAs assess their own service fees in lieu of or on top of these).

Most airlines operate this way, which is why in pretty much every airline forum on FT there are threads about taking positioning flights to random outposts to start trips and/or terminating trips at hub airports even though the actual destination is a random outpost.

Ditching final segments is usually pretty easy, but striking hidden cities on the front end or mid journey is not (unless you're prepared to pay up).

*OTAs adding their own fees is the only part of this process that could possibly rise to the level of "scam". But, when these fees are present, they are usually disclosed upfront, and there's a decent chance that you chose to book with the OTA because their upfront price was favorable.

We”re not saying the same thing. Purchasing a changeable/refundable ticket as suggested would not have prevented a refare. (Even aside from the fact that it’s what OP already did.)