US Dividend Miles - Award Booking Questions and General Discussion

[Shanye2233]

Firstly I would like to say a huge thanks for all the information I have been given over the years I wouldn't have been able to leave the county on my budget.

Secondly just a quickie for the experts I made a booking which I later called and made changes too. I was charged a change fee of $150USD per pax which is fine. But when I look at my intin in us airways it still shows my old flights as well as my new ones so I rang them and they said they could only see the new segments. So I check on UA which was one of the flights I cancelled and it shows as cancelled. But I'm still worried because with my confirmation number in us airways site it's showing all flights . And obviously I can't be on two flights at once and if I miss one il be stuck so any help would be greatly appreciated as always.

lastly I wanted to make a further change but was told I was not allowed to make any changes to this booking . I believe there is a note on my booking that agents are reading and then not allowing any changes or saying they can't see any availability on that route. So how can I erase that comment in the system to allow further mods.

happy Australia Day

 

[bcworld]

My experience with food in OZ J is not great...I wouldn't assume it will be better.

 

[anat0l]

My experience with food in OZ J is not great...I wouldn't assume it will be better.

Considering the insipid food I saw of CA F resembled something from a can of dog food, plus the remaining courses looking equally lifeless, I'd be prepared to stake a bet on OZ.

My last food with UA J was a creamy halibut fish with seaweed pasta. Delicious. I'd probably avoid a beef dish, unless possibly it is bibimbap or bul go gi (but the latter could be gristle country...)

 

[zainman]

My experience with food in OZ J is not great...I wouldn't assume it will be better.

I had a seafood meal with OZ last month SYD-ICN-NRT and I have to agree.. It was 'okay'. Ramen was good though

 

[hossein_au]

What is the best tool people use for finding award availability? I usually use ANA, and I have used other tools intermittently, but I'm finding ANA needing exponentially longer and longer playing time as number of awards decrease across the board... Of course free tools would be great, but I'm happy to pay nominal fees for a tool with strong recommendation from the experts here.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

What is the best tool people use for finding award availability? I usually use ANA, and I have used other tools intermittently, but I'm finding ANA needing exponentially longer and longer playing time as number of awards decrease across the board... Of course free tools would be great, but I'm happy to pay nominal fees for a tool with strong recommendation from the experts here.

United.com is generally fine for most purposes. Gives you a reasonable indicator. It's easy to use and if you need to double check you can always use ANA. (never any guarantee USDM will be able to see what is available anywhere else anyway)

 

[bcworld]

What is the best tool people use for finding award availability? I usually use ANA, and I have used other tools intermittently, but I'm finding ANA needing exponentially longer and longer playing time as number of awards decrease across the board... Of course free tools would be great, but I'm happy to pay nominal fees for a tool with strong recommendation from the experts here.

I happily pay for KVS. It's installed on my work and home computers and I'm finally putting the mobile browser based version to some use.

If you're likely to access on the move on a tablet or phone then Expert Flyer is probably a better choice being fully web based.

 

[anat0l]

What is the best tool people use for finding award availability? I usually use ANA, and I have used other tools intermittently, but I'm finding ANA needing exponentially longer and longer playing time as number of awards decrease across the board... Of course free tools would be great, but I'm happy to pay nominal fees for a tool with strong recommendation from the experts here.

I generally use ANA for specific routes. The best use of the tool is with the 7-day availability search. Because ANA doesn't use any fancy scripts or Flash or the like, you can very quickly flick through weeks or months of availability. (The 7-day search is only valid for direct routes, one class at a time - but you can change the class of service searched whilst viewing search results).

I think United has a similar kind of feature that lets you see at a glance which dates have availability.

I sometimes use Awardtravlr to help with my brainstorming process for routes that I've never been to before. I generally don't rely on it to search for availability because it can be slow, a bit buggy (EI is not part of the Star Alliance!) and actually doesn't find all the various combinations of routes possible (i.e. it pays to do a bit of research yourself and stitch your own itinerary together, or change the search points on Awardtravlr to some mid-points).

All of these tools are free.

 

[appaz]

to the guy trying to 2x F to the US...

seriously consider EVA Air (BR) royal laurel to JFK on the 77W... less points and probably just as good or better then any F you will may or may not be able to book 2x seats for

 

[zainman]

What is the best tool people use for finding award availability? I usually use ANA, and I have used other tools intermittently, but I'm finding ANA needing exponentially longer and longer playing time as number of awards decrease across the board... Of course free tools would be great, but I'm happy to pay nominal fees for a tool with strong recommendation from the experts here.

I have used KVS & ANA but my choice is United.com.

 

[VH-OEG]

Hi all,

i have a little issue that I am hoping you may be able to help me with ...

Background.
I have a USDM booking to the holy grail of GUM for March which is now sorted out. Original booking had to have a date change due to work changing my leave slot, all good and secured the dates and routing that I wanted with absolute ease !
The trouble came with re issuing the tickets. Two calls, a heated argument with a supervisor who was feeding me lie after lie, and I finally had to escalate to customer relations. Got a great lady who responded really quickly, she listened to all my calls to the usdm centre, worked out what happened and set it right .... NEXT ISSUE is that I want to book 2 trips, another one for November and again in March 2015 ... I am led to believe that I have Some Micronesian Heritage and this first trip is about seeing if there is any truth to it... USDM just happens to be my way to get there at a very good price...

i called led again last week locked in a similar itinerary to what I already have but they are now telling me that the routing is invalid and instantly cancelled the booking.

My worry is that when I call back again ill suffer the dame fate.

now I've read through this entire post and I cannot make heads and tails of the routing needed or what the USDM GUM SWP to SWP same region award actually are ?

can anyone spell them all out ? I live in Sydney need t get to GUM. Prefer F but will do J if I have to. Don't really need stopovers as such but will do the -24hr stopover where I can just to break the journey a bit ..

I'm so grateful to this forum for putting me in touch with an easy way to get to GUM I expensively, and will be even, ore grateful for your help on the actual ins and outs... I figure if I have the knowledge nothing should <hopefully> go wrong !

thanks everyone

VH-OEG

 

[zainman]

Hi all,

i have a little issue that I am hoping you may be able to help me with ...

Background.
I have a USDM booking to the holy grail of GUM for March which is now sorted out. Original booking had to have a date change due to work changing my leave slot, all good and secured the dates and routing that I wanted with absolute ease !
The trouble came with re issuing the tickets. Two calls, a heated argument with a supervisor who was feeding me lie after lie, and I finally had to escalate to customer relations. Got a great lady who responded really quickly, she listened to all my calls to the usdm centre, worked out what happened and set it right .... NEXT ISSUE is that I want to book 2 trips, another one for November and again in March 2015 ... I am led to believe that I have Some Micronesian Heritage and this first trip is about seeing if there is any truth to it... USDM just happens to be my way to get there at a very good price...

i called led again last week locked in a similar itinerary to what I already have but they are now telling me that the routing is invalid and instantly cancelled the booking.

My worry is that when I call back again ill suffer the dame fate.

now I've read through this entire post and I cannot make heads and tails of the routing needed or what the USDM GUM SWP to SWP same region award actually are ?

can anyone spell them all out ? I live in Sydney need t get to GUM. Prefer F but will do J if I have to. Don't really need stopovers as such but will do the -24hr stopover where I can just to break the journey a bit ..

I'm so grateful to this forum for putting me in touch with an easy way to get to GUM I expensively, and will be even, ore grateful for your help on the actual ins and outs... I figure if I have the knowledge nothing should <hopefully> go wrong !

thanks everyone

VH-OEG

there's a reason why they say 'never call the airline'.

 

[bcworld]

SYD-GUM without a >24 hours stopover for 30/40k should not break any of the clearly defined rules.

The MPM is 8231 miles so a routing like SYD-BKK-HKG-GUM or SYD-BKK-TPE-GUM or SYD-ICN-TPE-GUM should be OK.

The only rules I think you could fall foul of are those that are more open to interpretation...right down to ultimately US decides what is reasonable

 

[Alanslegal]

i called led again last week locked in a similar itinerary to what I already have but they are now telling me that the routing is invalid and instantly cancelled the booking.

US is really judge and executioner on this one, whether the passenger is actually right or wrong. As always, best to be polite and HUACA. I know you may be correct but having a heated exchange doesn't help and who knows what the US agent can / is allowed to do following such a phone call, after all, it is subjective. You might think its heated, they might think its real anger / abusive etc.

 

[Flashback]

to the guy trying to 2x F to the US...

seriously consider EVA Air (BR) royal laurel to JFK on the 77W... less points and probably just as good or better then any F you will may or may not be able to book 2x seats for

1/2/1 config, flat beds and Dom... sounds perfect to me! :mrgreen:

 

[MEL_Traveller]

SYD-GUM without a >24 hours stopover for 30/40k should not break any of the clearly defined rules.

The MPM is 8231 miles so a routing like SYD-BKK-HKG-GUM or SYD-BKK-TPE-GUM or SYD-ICN-TPE-GUM should be OK.

The only rules I think you could fall foul of are those that are more open to interpretation...right down to ultimately US decides what is reasonable

maybe they reviewed the SYD-BKK-NRT-GUM intineraries, with stopovers, and decided enough was enough.

 

[PapaRubbery]

1/2/1 config, flat beds and Dom... sounds perfect to me! :mrgreen:

Ha, may try Eva on the way back!

Still shooting for a NYC-via-FRA-BKK approach on the way there though.

Thanks for the others who posted too, will be booking once the flights open.

 

[appaz]

1/2/1 config, flat beds and Dom... sounds perfect to me! :mrgreen:

i had 5 glasses of Dom, pre ordered my meals online and slept for 9 hours straight... best flight of my life

highly recommended (i flew SIN-TPE-JFK all with them)

 

[smit0847]

Will do a full TR when I get home but I'm currently in Guam. Some initial thoughts:

- it is GHETTO. That is the one word that keeps coming to mind. Most of it is really, really run down, roads are terrible and style left town 20 years ago.
- most locals are indigenous Chamorros, not 'Caucasian' Americans. Locals very friendly and polite.
- food and drinks (esp alcohol) very, very, very cheap. Both are promoted heavily in local media.
- every local I have spoken to has never met an Australiam and asked 'why Guam?!'
- shopping is fairly good- not as dated as I expected.
- military presence isn't obvious as they arrive, live and stay on base.
- weather changes very, very quickly here. Had a heap of rain even though it's dry season.
- 3 or 4 nights is enough time here.

 

[VH-OEG]

smit0807 - your post was a great insight

May I ask where your staying ?
Do they have US stores such as Macys, Gap etc ?
what stye of food are you dining on ?

cheers
VH-OEG