I spent my afternoon yesterday on the phone with American Express trying to rebook a pricey British Airways ticket. And failed. It’s a good (additional) warning to think twice about booking your airline tickets directly with American Express.
“Flexible” American Express-Issued International Airline Ticket Is Not All That Flexible After All…
An Award Expert client divides her time between the USA, London, and Kenya. She’s a lifetime British Airways Gold member and is happy pay for a pricey first class ticket when award space is not available. During the pandemic in 2021, she was scheduled to travel on a first class ticket from the USA to London. The ticket cost $7,775.47 and she had to cancel, but we banked the travel credit.
We booked the ticket through American Express because generally due to her schedule constraints the best use of her Membership Rewards points is simply to offset the cost of her paid tickets.
Now she’s in Kenya and needs to travel to London. Her round-trip ticket from Nairobi to London cost roughly the value of the travel credit, thus representing a perfect opportunity to use it. The AMEX website is so clunky that anything requires a call to complete. I called to cancel her original itinerary and I called again to rebook it.
As always with the poorly-trained agents at American Express Platinum Travel, it reliably takes 15-20 minutes for them to review the fare rules to determine if your credit is valid. Of course, it was.
However, when I provided the new flights, I was told, “Sir, your flight must originate in the same country.”
Here’s the thing. That was never clearly disclosed when booking or canceling the ticket. More on that in a moment.
I called British Airways, hoping it would agree to take over the ticket so I could reissue it. An agent told me the travel credit was valid on any route and there were no country of origin restrictions. But the agent also said BA was unable to take over the ticket since American Express was still in business (the agent explained BA can only take over travel agency tickets of defunct agencies). I called again just to make sure and got the same story.
Again, I called American Express and was connected to a very nice agent. I went right to the point of origin issue and asked her to call British Airways and see if she could work out a solution. She promptly agreed to call.
Fast-forward two hours. We were all on the phone together and British Airways insisted that the ticket could be re-issued with a point of origination in Kenya. But though the agent tried, her system simply would not let her. Perhaps a clever agent can find a way around this, but at this point I had already sunk several hours into this fool’s errand and had no additional time to spare.
We booked a new ticket…but via British Airways directly. Forget the Membership Rewards points.
In terms of my own client, money is not really an object and she will use the existing flight credit at some point this year originating in the USA. I could have saved myself a huge headache by simply booking a new ticket from the very start. But it’s hard to spend another $7K, even if it is not your own money, when you have $7K in credit sitting right there. It’s actually really absurd and represents the sort of archaic technological restriction that is unacceptable in 2023 from a leading worldwide travel agency.
But for your own knowledge, I combed through the AMEX website for the fine print on changing flexible airline tickets and found this:
eTicket Flight Credits FAQs
eTicket Flight Credits may only be redeemed with the same airline from the original booking. Travel must depart from the same country as on your original ticket. The currency of the country of origin cannot be changed from the original ticket.
I consider that bait and switch due to the lack of clear disclosure, but at least I am now on notice. So are you.
CONCLUSION
Hopefully, you can learn from this cautionary tale when booking an airline ticket with American Express. While the 5X Membership Rewards points and the ability to use your points to offset the ticket price is attractive, keep in mind that even on fully flexible tickets, you will not be able to change the country of origin. That makes unrestricted tickets in reality quite restricted.
I had the same issue with an OS ticket issued through Capital One Travel. The agents insisted that the origin and destination could not change. I called three times, talked to supervisors, called Austrian, and ended up losing about $1,000 as I could not fly it.
It’s a ridiculous self-imposed limitation.
I wonder if this is different if it is booked by the real play travel people, not the Expedia garbage agency.
Problem is I don’t even know how to get through to them these days. They made changes in the beginning of COVID…
I had a small voucher issued by Austrian Airlines in 2018 as a courtesy due to upgrading to Premium Economy while they were still testing the product so I didn’t have the full experience. In 2919 I used AA miles to fly to Europe and then of course the next year the pandemic started so I wasn’t able to travel again until last year. Didn’t realize at the time it was issued, but the voucher was in Euros and trying to use it for another flight originating from the US didn’t work. I ended up booking my flight last year without using the voucher. Sent Austrian a message and asked if they could change the voucher into USD which they actually did quite promptly. Hoping to use it soon as it expires this year.
Also I was looking at flights from CHO rather than IAD so I wouldn’t have to take Amtrak up to NOVA and of course the voucher doesn’t work for those because United is the first airline even though the remaining flights are with Austrian. Very frustrating!
I have had success, twice, with United taking over an AmEx travel credit. That was as a 1K – soon I will be a lowly Platinum, so it will be interesting to see if they are still willing…
I’ve never had an issue getting UA to take over a ticket issued by a travel agency (like AmEx) and often you can even make changes to those tickets via united.com. The only big issue is that if you rebook to something less expensive, you won’t get the difference back as a flight credit unless you go back to the agency. Many other airlines are hesitant or even refuse to take over a TA booked ticket.
How do you get United to take over a travel agency ticket? Just call and ask?
Yes although often you can actually just make changes yourself on united.com I don’t know the details of how their system works but I’ve made a lot of UA bookings through AmEx and I never call AmEx to make changes to them.
AA does the same thing. Must depart from the same currency area. But booking with Amex travel is a very, very bad idea. Millions of horror stories everywhere. If your client really doesn’t care about money that much, simply use MR to pay down the credit card. No need to complicate matters with Amex Travel
While one can pay down one’s AMEX account with MR, using MR to pay for tickets with an AMEX Business Platinum card provides a 35% MR rebate which for me at least makes the quirks of AMEX Travel worth it.
I also book with AmEx to use the 35% back but I intentionally chose United because if I need to change anything it’s easy to do through UA directly.
“ In terms of my own client, money is not really an object and she will use the existing flight credit at some point this year originating in the USA.”
I’ve never known anyone that money was not an object. I thought the richer you were the more an object it became. I wish I could get to that point (not materially but mentally).
Interesting point, certainly a grain of truth in money becoming something to think more carefully about if one has more of it and the opportunity cost moves from simple delayed gratification around spending on things like luxury trips, cars, and home improvements to serious investment opportunities.
I think that a lot of people who are self-employed and/or own small businesses have elaborate accounting arrangements which mean there’s a grey area between personal money and work money, and the obfuscation may work together with multiple levels of taxation to make the psychological aspect easier to deal with- a thinking process along the lines of ‘if I don’t spend this money, it will be taxed as corporate profit at 20% and then I will have to pay it out as a dividend and pay another 35% on top- screw it, life’s too short’.
I also noticed that sometimes Amex has those special pricing, especially on AA. If for whatever reason, the original itinerary is cancelled, and there is special pricing available on the new flight, Amex will not be able to book it at that price and must be the normal public available price.
that’s why you make the big $$$ Matthew. You are BUCKaroo Banzai!
I’ve had multiple horror stories working with Amex travel. Strange that their Corp Travel (GBT) is so easy to work with while personal travel via Amex is a nightmare if you have to cancel, rebook. I spent 2+ hours trying to get a simple domestic itin reissued. The topper, after we discussed and reviewed the flight, the agent booked the wrong flights/dates. I was livid because that meant I had to waste another couple hours with their inept staff getting their error fixed
Another idiosyncrasy with Amex is that you cannot combine multiple credits for a re-issued flight. If you have a $500 credit and a $200 credit, you can only use one and must pay the difference.
I just spent another 4H05M on the phone with the idiots at AMEX yesterday. Trying to issue ticket for my son to Japan and me to West Coast. They couldn’t find my residual/MCOs, placed on hold 9x and had to call American Airlines 2x and the agent was asking AA how to do XYZ. Pathetic. They screwed up in April’22 and issued my son’s MCO in my name and they were fighting me on allowing me to use it for my son, since it was originally his. OMG what a total shite-show. Then the most amazing thing happened, awoke to emails from AMEX saying my trips were cancelled. Why? I’m dying to know. One part said the voucher I used for the flight was previously use…..uh, NO IT WASN”T, we just validated that multiple times while on the 4 hour call and with American Airlines. OMG, how can they be so stupid? So I had to call them, reached a clueless agent who said that it appears I didn’t authorize the use of my credit card….it’s on tape, I did authorize it and you charged me, I can see the charges on AMEX.com. Clueless agent said she needed to talk with a supervisor, already on hold 20 mins. F*CK AMEX Travel.
I’ll learned long ago to avoid booking via any credit card travel portal whenever possible. Sometimes you must, just to burn points. That being said, My experience with Chase Ultimate Rewards has been OK for the most part. Due to service issues at AMEX and at Centurion Clubs I got rid of my AMEX cards about six years ago. Never missed them.
@ Matthew — The lesson is NEVER use AMEX travel to book air travel, no matter how much money it may save you. The agents are mostly complete idiots. I have better things to do with my time that be infuriated by their s***show. Such a shame, as this renders the 35% points rebate on the AMEX Plat Business card useless. It is beyond comprehension why AMEX doesn’t get a new vendor to handle their travel bookings. If I was CEO at AMEX, I would be embarrased by their travel agents.
This is why I avoid third party bookings in advance at all costs. The myriad of archaic rules and a lack of patience to read through them leaves me cold stone opposed. It’s just not worth it in the end unless it’s the day of or before you travel and there is no chance you are going to have to change or cancel the flight.
Unfortunately airlines aren’t always that good at selling you their own fares.
I may need to fly from Cape Verde to Greece in the spring, and TAP publish a fare which allows two transfers with the last flight not just being operated by Aegean but sold under an A3 code. It’s all bundled in with a great price on ITA matrix, but the TAP website wants an extra €200 for it. The bookwithmatrix hack works fine and gives the right price, but it only has the cheapest fare whereas I may want to change the fare from ‘discount’ to ‘basic’ in order to include luggage and/or pay an extra €30 to get a booking class that gives me more miles.
So I can’t really buy this online, while calling TAP is likely to take forever and may also culminate in an argument about the call centre ticketing fee (and that’s assuming they can even get it to price up as it should). Consequently, I may well end up getting in touch with Amex Travel UK- they are definitely not a fantastic travel agent, but they can at least be relied on to pick up the phone and pretend that they will try to find a solution. The alternative is to spend a couple of Saturdays visiting the tiny travel agency shops serving the Indian/Pakistani/Chinese diaspora in the hope that I stumble upon an agent on whom I can rely for my complex bookings.
I had tried Propeller Travel once (has been pretty popular with Flyertalkers etc) and they did come across as knowledgeable, but they ended up booking me a ‘Classic’ fare which LH insisted that it was a ‘Light’ one and I would have had to pay for two pieces of luggage as a result- happily, their ticketing systems suffered a meltdown when I was trying to check in at CDG and they ended up not bothering to issue me with an MCO and spared me the subsequent argument with Propeller. I would probably have used them again, but by the end of the saga I got the impression they weren’t really interested in my custom [and I don’t blame them for that, they want the type of client who uses a travel agent to book two weeks in a resort in Maldives while I’m more of ‘alright, are there any direct offers going for my 3-night stay at the Novotel/NH in the suburbs, or should I look for an alternative through snaptravel?’]
I have booked a few flights through the Amex on line system as sometimes prices are cheaper, to use my MR Points, or use my Amex travel credit (Platinum benefits are different in Canada). When I have had to cancel, I did so directly with Air Canada resulting in a travel credit issued directly by the airline. Using it for another booking made via their website was always easy. I don’t know if this option was available (canceling via BA vs. Amex), as it would appear th have solved the problem.
If your trip is cancelled or delayed Amex is not the vendor to use/ We had LAX to Taipei to Kyoto..Lax leg cancelled due to typhoon so called amex told us to buy a ticket …at $7000!!! no help at all…..
I normally don’t add my 2 cents into these forums as I read them like a “Dear Abbey” column and roll my eyes.
But this one I had to, as both a FORMER (about 12 years ago) Amex Platinum and Centurion Agent and as a current Independent Travel Agent. So this is going to be a VERY long post. Might be to long for this forum but I figured I would try.
So lets break down this persons complaint.
First by seeing why Amex is horrible just to deal with and then also looking at the airline agents also.
Hiring Practice/Training at Amex Travel
Amex will either higher supposedly experienced agents (that just means they had a travel job before) or a “new higher” which is someone who never worked in travel. They may use different terminology now as I left over a decade ago.
If you are an Experienced Agent you have a 2 week training course basically teaching you about the Amex product.
No verification of how up to date your travel skills all. In fact in my indoctrination course (AKA training class) the trainer on several occasions gave us examples of what to do even though it was guaranteed to make the customer miss the flight (Only 1 other person in my class caught that…so that is how experienced your experienced agents are).
If you are a “New Higher” (again verbiage may be different now. You get about 4 weeks in a class and 2 weeks phone practice booking cars or hotels only. Now remember the previous comment about the trainers ability.
Well to make matters worse they don’t even teach them the system, only how to use a point and click system that is an overlay. Majority of the class is still just Amex indoctrination.
To make matters even worse, the real supervisors or team leads as they are called are not being hired with a travel back ground. They literally are coming in from Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Target, etc. Even the GM of the call center I worked at never had a job in the travel industry!
Technology
Amex doesn’t like to have anyone educated except in the Amex protocols.
So they used to have an overlay system that would always freeze up and take forever to preform a function. It was so bad that they actually paid us to sit and do nothing for the first 15 minutes of our shift.
All because it took 15 minutes or MORE for the system to get up and running. Even if someone had just logged off and you logged on.
That overlay system would also prevent you from doing the majority of tasks in the native SABRE system which would be much faster and they didn’t teach anyone how to either.
They now use a system called Encore (though I hear that is on the way out) and its basically like the old overlay system but even more restrictive so if it goes down you can’t even go into native SABRE. That system came online after I left so everything I heard about it is from former co-workers who are still there.
So this is why everything takes so long when you call them, aside from most likely the agents not knowing what they are doing from lack of training. FYI Amex also penalizes workers who have longer “average handle times” even though their system can make it almost impossible to meet the average handle time goal.
Now lets move on to the airline, who supposedly is so perfect because they told the customer what they wanted to hear.
First off the majority of airline tickets do not allow changes to the country of origin.
This is either by fare rules or contract of carriage. This is dictated to all agents by the airlines period.
However I have seen cases where airlines have 1 set of rules for tickets issued thru them over the phone, versus their website versus a travel agency. They do this on purpose
So it is possible BA could have a different set of rules for internal versus external.
However European carriers tend to be very strict with their rules.
Most likely this is a case of airline agents not knowing the rules due to lack of proper training or knowing it is not possible but wanted to tell the clients what they wanted to hear so next time they would book directly
Unfortunately we will never know for certain.
I though I will say that I have caught many airline agents in a lie just so they have to get out of helping.
So hope this helped give a small glimpse of travel reality.
If not feel free to not post it.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome Matthew.
However this isn’t even 1% of the insanity that occurs at Amex Platinum and Centurion Travel division.
Not to mention our industry as a whole. If you ever want to hear from this side feel free to reach out.
What Mike B wrote is accurate. As a 25 year trave industry vet, it’s rare that the city of origin can be changed. It’s because of the currency of the fare basis. The base fare of a ticket originating the us will be USD, London GBP, and Nairobi KES. Even if the traveler is charged in their own currency. The breakdown in the linear fare will have the base fare in the original sting countries currency. In this case, the BA agent was wrong, and Amex is right. A ticket issued in GPB can’t be exchanged for any base fare in KES. Requiring the same originating country is the industry standard.
Chase quoted the same rule about originating in the same country on a Lufthansa ticket. The only reason to ever book through the ota sites of credit card companies is if you believe nothing ever goes wrong with airline flights….
It should always be buyer beware,..
1st class tickets in the US are fully refundable. That’s pretty much why they’re so expensive, because of the flexibility you get. So the whole “travel credit” thing is extremely odd and makes this story hard to believe. That aside, yes, AMEX’s travel platform needs a significant upgrade since years ago. I once couldn’t complete a booking online and had to call an agent to complete my flight reservation. By then, the price significantly had changed and AMEX did NOT respect the price difference, although it was clearly their fault for having such a terrible backend system. That was the last time I booked any travel directly with them.
What Mike B wrote explains a lot.
AMEX Travel has been hit and miss for me. Mostly miss.
Had booked a US-Europe Air France Premium Economy itinerary that cost about $1300. Plans changed and I had to cancel the itinerary and bank the credit.
Fast forward to when I was ready to re-book. I saw an Air France itinerary for about $1300 in Premium Economy on BOTH the Air France website and the AMEX Travel website.
When I called to re-book to that new itinerary, the agent seemed to be searching by exact times of day rather than by fare like we all do when we perform a Google Flights search. The itinerary she came up with was over $4000!
When I asked her to search using the exact $1300 Air France flights that I found, she came back with a pricetag of over $2000. She insisted I can’t pay the fares that I found because of the “type of ticket” I had originally purchased. She couldn’t explain exactly what “type of ticket” meant I had to pay much more money than the published fares when using the banked credit.
I hung up and called later that day and got an agent who knew what he was doing. He quickly booked me on the $1300 itinerary.
I felt lucky to have this resolved. While it is tempting to use AMEX Travel when their fares displayed are a little cheaper than the airline’s published fares on their websites, it’s best to avoid them and book with the airlines directly.
Who ever reads the fine print till it’s tooooo late!!!!
I have found it easiest to book directly with the A/L in question. If they want to hold onto your business, they’ll bend the rules. I got AA to do this by splitting an outstanding credit among two separate PAX on the same flight. Saved me a small fortune.
I’ve always just deposited my Amex Reward points directly to the carrier I am using – then book thru the carrier directly. I also find that the discounted price of tickets is not a big enough savings to merit booking thru them – again I book with the carrier directly. I find you can basically use your points on most carriers as most are in an alliance. Experience- penny wise, pound foolish.
I totally agree that the AMEX travel agents are poorly trained. I bought a premium economy tix on JAL through AMEX travel and JAL without any notification downgraded my tix to economy, I only found out when I tried to assign my seat. I called AMEX and asked to cancel my tix but they declined to do so claiming that my tix was non-refundable. I explained that the airline breached the contract therefore I’m entitled to a refund. It took an hour on the phone for them to read through the rules and to contact JAL before they agreed to issue a refund which took another 3 weeks to credit my account. I’m booking directly from the airline from now on.
I stopped booking with Amex for precisely this reason, years ago. Trying to rebook a ticket was always a huge hassle. I only book directly with airlines today.
I spent over 35 hours on the phone with AmEx Travel and spoke to 8 supervisors to try to rebook a trip from SFO to London with a credit. AmEx and Virgin Atlantic were sending me back and forth for a while, no one wanted to fix it or take accountability. And then American Express system wouldn’t allow a rebook even when I was following all of their stipulations. So they had $7500 of mine and no solution. And this is a lot of money for me so it felt like fraud. It was honestly the most frustrating customer service experience I’ve ever had. I’d love to tell my story so people learn from my mistake and don’t book travel through AmEx Travel.
Just dealt with this too. Took 3 calls and finally I was able to resolve via chat (which was nice to be able to do other things while the agent “reviewed the rules”). Every time I called, a new restriction would show up. Same class of service, same origin. I was convinced the next time I called, they’d tell me that since the original flight was on a Wednesday, I’d also need to rebook on a Wednesday lol.
I concur, it’s a little better with U.S. carriers, but when it comes to international airlines, you’re on your own. I learned my lesson with a cost of 60K MR points to change my itinerary. I couldn’t even pick my seats. I had to call Lufthansa When it comes to international carriers it’s best to deal directly with their American websites as a one shop because Amex,Chase, are seen the same as Expedia or Orbitz and so on.
You were not dealing with Amex. Amex has outsourced Travel to Expedia. It’s absolutely the worst. The agents know nothing, and just make up rules.
There are numerous FT threats on this subject.
Even as an Amex Platinum member I will not use them to book travel anymore. I had one simple issue with them prior to Covid and it took days of phone calls to fix. The more I looked into it the more I realized it was not just a me problem
Only time I will book through them is if I am burning off Amex points.
Rule of thumb – book via OTA when YOU know you’re going for sure.
Another fact – Amex travel has ‘tier 3’ which sits in the US. Always ask to speak with them. But prepare to be on the phone 3 hours.