I had no idea about this until tonight.
In early January I booked 2x award tickets for Mum and brother using Mum's AA account. She has zero status with AA.
It was on CX connecting to MH, so I had to ring up the call centre. I always ring the US number with the 1800 free call trick (now I use Skype for free) and spoke to a lovely agent who outlined all the fees - in US dollars, as expected. Mum's cc is used because the miles are from her account. It takes ages to ticket, so I called after the first and second weeks of checking to confirm what is going on and get told it is being processed.
The ticket finally gets sent through and appears to be fine.
Mum later asks me why she has charges of $35.84, 35.84 and 160 from AA - all in Australian dollars - on her cc statement.
FWIW the taxes were US $31.80 per person and US $25 phone booking fee per person.
I ring up a couple of times - the first time I don't get a good reason why this is the case and the second time get told that because Mum is not an AA elite, they cannot process the phone booking with an international (non-US) credit card. It has to be done by the local (currency of cc) ticket office - which is why the agent told me there were remarks about the ticket being set up from the Sydney office. So the AUD $80 per person phone booking fee is an expensive lesson learnt. I guess there wouldn't have been another way to get around it anyway...
Has anyone come across this before?
I guess that is another advantage of AA elite status..
In early January I booked 2x award tickets for Mum and brother using Mum's AA account. She has zero status with AA.
It was on CX connecting to MH, so I had to ring up the call centre. I always ring the US number with the 1800 free call trick (now I use Skype for free) and spoke to a lovely agent who outlined all the fees - in US dollars, as expected. Mum's cc is used because the miles are from her account. It takes ages to ticket, so I called after the first and second weeks of checking to confirm what is going on and get told it is being processed.
The ticket finally gets sent through and appears to be fine.
Mum later asks me why she has charges of $35.84, 35.84 and 160 from AA - all in Australian dollars - on her cc statement.
FWIW the taxes were US $31.80 per person and US $25 phone booking fee per person.
I ring up a couple of times - the first time I don't get a good reason why this is the case and the second time get told that because Mum is not an AA elite, they cannot process the phone booking with an international (non-US) credit card. It has to be done by the local (currency of cc) ticket office - which is why the agent told me there were remarks about the ticket being set up from the Sydney office. So the AUD $80 per person phone booking fee is an expensive lesson learnt. I guess there wouldn't have been another way to get around it anyway...
Has anyone come across this before?
I guess that is another advantage of AA elite status..
