I actually don’t fly frequently to Asia – it was my second trip. But to get to Palau, you have to fly Continental, or take a boat. They’re the only carrier servicing that country other than a tiny island hopper “airline” with one plane (which I’m not sure even flies regularly) (even if you manage to book on another airline, you’ll be on a continental plane from Guam to Palau). I also have about a gazillion continental miles, so I’d ordinarily be inclined to look there first, but for the fact that they’ve become a total pain in my a**.

The one thing I forgot to mention in my original post, which a lot of people brought up later – I had to book over the phone rather than on the web, even though I could chart out the flights on the computer, because back in 2005/2006, there was no way to book an upgrade to a paid-for ticket with points on the computer. In addition, there was no convenient way online to ensure that I would be able to buy an “upgradeable” ticket, because, nowadays, you can only upgrade on certain classes of tickets.

One trick to get around paying a fee for using a voucher: make the reservation on line and get a 24hour hold, but don’t pay for it. Proceed directly to the airport with record locator number and voucher in hand and wait in the check-in line. I did that last summer. The ticket agent booked my ticket and didn’t charge me a fee to use the voucher. Or, maybe the fee wil stilll appear on my credit card statement some time in the future, it’s only been 8 months, after all. :)

If you frequently fly to Asia, I’m amazed you wouldn’t already be using Asian airlines over American ones at every possible opportunity.

But when you don’t have the technology in place to allow the customer the option to do something for free, you should not be charging for it.

It shouldn’t surprise me; United is always lagging technology-wise with respect to the other domestic carriers.

2) A ticketing fee in itself is ridiculous. It is a fee charged to you to pay. I do not understand how the online world is getting away with it. Can you imagine the outrage in any brick store if anyone would be charged a ‘check-out fee’ at the cash register? “Well sorry mam, we have to pay for mortgage, and do you know how expensive it was to build this box store?”. And what’s worse is that in the case of a real brick store, the argument is more true than with a website. Any store is more expensive than a website.

3) I am pretty sure Kristine MD is not sorry at all about the customer disappointment. So, thats a lie too.

I am also peeved by the fact that you can not book open jaw or multi city AADvantage awards on their site – you also have to call and pay a fee.

Clearly this technology exists – you can book open jaw and multi city REVENUE tickets on their website. They’re just choosing not to offer it for AAdvantage awards.

The reason I actually tried to fight it though, was that it showed up on my credit card as a separate “paper ticket fee”, when I booked everything with e-tickets. I called to complain, because I hadn’t requested paper tickets (and, obviously, if they were required I certainly hadn’t received them in the mail and they were going to need to be tracked down). It was at this point that they informed me that it wasn’t a paper ticket fee at all, but a fee for speaking to a live person. Which I was never informed of at the time I booked the flight. They certainly didn’t care. They also claimed that this piece of important information about charges to my credit card that I clearly hadn’t authorized was apparently part of the pre-recorded boilerplate that you’re apparently supposed to be paying close attention to during breaks in the “on hold” muzak.

It was only $10, and it certainly wasn’t going to break me on a ticket that cost me over $3K, but the principle of it still bugs me to this day.

Needless to say, on my most recent trip to Asia, I flew Singapore Airlines.