Joke of the day- AMEX (UK) TA fee
 

Today I went into an AMEX travel shop in Sheffield intending to make a rez for my first ever longhaul flt (CAI-NRT, KE business class) that will take place in April. The dates have not been finalised yet, and that's why I haven't already bought the ticket from expedia etc- even if it's fully flexible, I am not keen on having to make changes over the phone. The helpful agent took a few minutes to find my desired itin, which for some reason she couldn't process as a through fare (I had no problems doing that online). Therefore she suggested to price it up as two separate tix, raising the total by a couple of hundred pounds, something I was less than happy with. But the icing in the cake came when she calculated their TA charges. The latter were only a modest 78 GBP .

That's right, almost €120/$150 JUST FOR ISSUING A STANDARD TICKET (for which they presumably earn some commission from the airline as well- it's not like I asked them to book me the latest FR online special). I have been on flts that cost far less than that! Does anyone actually pay such insane fees? :confused:

I suppose if I had a customer walk in the door who seemed not to care too much about paying an "extra couple of hundred pounds" for a ticket than he should have, I might try to get every penny I could out of that person.... :) :)

But I never agreed to pay the extra couple of hundred pounds in the first place!

Our former corporate TA used to charge S$200 (>US$100) for booking any long-haul flight... which, not coincidentally, is one of the reasons we dumped them. The upside to this is that you can get them on the phone 24/7 and that when most needed they can often perform miracles in minutes, which is very useful when your schedule is unpredictable and your plans change a lot. (The other reason said TA is now a former TA is that they weren't very good on this part either.)