When is refaring worth the trouble?
 

So I have a SEA-MEX in November that I booked for $337.02 (actually $237.02 since I had a $100.00 type B cert), and the price has just dropped to $334.10.

That's a grand total of $2.92 in savings.

Having read the hassles some of you have gone through to get a refare voucher (months!), I wonder at what point is it worth refaring?

Secondly, just wanted to confirm that my type B cert acted as cash, so I would still be able to refare.

Not worth it in this case, especially if you usually book online, since you would have to go to the airport to use the voucher. If I were already going to the airport and were 1K without booking fees I may consider a $20 voucher, but nothing less since I'm missing out on online booking bonus.

IME, no... but others here say they have been successful.

Also, for me to re-fare is ANYTIME, even for a buck..... I am just interested in getting the voucher, as then I will combine with a CS voucher... take to my local counter.... it magically makes the live ticketing fee go away.

**unless it makes me lose a confirmed upgrade.

Use of refare vouchers is, according to the T&Cs "noncommissionable." You do not pay the fee if you send these in by mail. I did this all the time when I was a 2P/1P.

My normal tactic is to book and hold the fare online, then call to ticket. That way, you get the online booking bonus as well, paltry as it is.

Interesting - I inquired about the live ticketing fee over the phone to the ICC and at the airport. Both the ICC and the CSR told me that the fee is waived when booking with a B-type travel cert as long as you hold your itin on .bomb first.

The ICC was also helpful enough to tell me the ideal times for live purchase for that day (he said that the ticketing desk would have most availability between 8-10pm). Anyway, that's a topic for another post.

You may not be able to refare online (I don't know, but it's possible you can't), but you can certainly refare in general (i.e. by calling, if you can't do it online). Guaranteed airfare rules apply to every e-cert and voucher I've ever seen, so you should be able to refare one way or another.

Use of these vouchers waives the booking fees regardless of status (as has been mentioned by a few previous posters already, apparently).

I assume that refaring grants a type-B voucher?

You assume correctly. That is, of course, if you ever get the voucher. :D

I am not sure if you are questioning my motivation..... but this is EXACTLY why I do this... kind of like a "get out of jail free" card.

Even if possible, IME never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever re-fare online.... it has ALWAYS taken me some sort of intervention to get the credit (usually 4-6 months later).

Unless you have already confirmed an upgrade, you should absolutely refare. Why wouldn't you?

As others have said, the refare vouchers can be combined, and if you do ticket-by-mail you don't have to go to the airport or pay a ticketing fee.

Again, the only time I would ever say "don't bother to refare" is if you already have an upgrade confirmed with a CR1 and you would lose your upgrade. Otherwise, $2.92 is money in the bank!!

As of a few months ago, this is no longer necessary. They are not supposed to charge the fee to anyone using paper voichers. A few CSRs still don't know the rule, but the majority seem to.

Before that rule went into effect, I would go for any voucher (my smallest was $0.02). Now, I usually don't bother for anything small.

sorry don't mean to go off topic...but I thought you got charged a $100 fee even on a refare (like a change fee for adjusting a tikcet), so if the exact fare didn't go down by over $100 it was not worth it. If I'm wrong, I'd love to know. Also, does the itinirary need to be exactly the same to get the $$$ back or just the dep and arr airports and dates?

If you want the difference in cash, you get charged the fee. If you take a voucher, there's no fee. This is for non-refundable tickets, of course. With a refundable ticket, there's no charge, but be careful since you may refare to a non-refundable fare.

Yes. Refares are for the exact same flights on the exact same days. Otherwise it's a change which invokes the appropriate change fees.

You're wrong. Do you love knowing? ;)

Refaring falls under the "guaranteed airfare rule," which basically states that you are not penalized for booking early if the fare should fall at a later date. Refaring in no way changes the itinerary... you are exchanging the ticket for one on an absolutely identical itin. The change fee is applicable when changing the itinerary (e.g. dates, times, routing, etc.), not when invoking the Guaranteed Airfare Rule. Any agent who says differently is incorrect.

(Caveat: as mahasamatman pointed out, for a nonrefundable fare you are assessed the change fee if you wish the difference back in cash, while there is no change fee if choosing the voucher option.)

To refare under the Guaranteed Airfare Rule, the itinerary needs to be exactly the same. If you change anything about it, you will be subject to the Voluntary Changes portion of the fare rules, which means assessment of the change fee for nonrefundable fares. However, it's possible that by changing the itin (new times, new route, whatever) that you can save more than the change fee... in that case it may be worth doing, but that does not fall under the Guaranteed Airfare Rule since the new itinerary is different... in that case you're just getting the fare difference from an itinerary change, not refaring.

So this relates to a thread I started a few weeks back but never got any response on (I'm still mystified how that could have happened here on FT :eek:).

Anyway, I tried to re-fare a ticket LAX-IAD-RDU-IAD-LAX for September. I had obtained the original fare through the multi-city function in order to 1) break up married segments on the outbound and 2) obtain a pair of flights on the return that wasn't offered to me on .bomb. I used the same multi-city method when I discovered the price had gone down. When I called CS, the rep told me that the price used as comparison had to be the one based upon "round-trip" search method (not multi-city). I thought this was BS, but CS rep was insistent. Anyone know what the actual rule is? And have you ever re-fared a ticket where you've used a "workaround" such as multi-city search for achieving a lower price?