Amex Travel

[Professor Calculus]

Hello I am a new member just wanted to ask anybody have any experience of Amex Travel ?

[Bill]

Used them for hotels. No problem

Haven’t used them for flights due to not being competitive price

[Rob]

Unless there is a price or benefits reason to use them, generally best to book direct these days. If covid issues return, the airlines in particular won’t speak to you as their contract is with Amex.

Hotel bookings, unless FHR ‘pay on departure’, don’t qualify for elite benefits or hotel points.

[Aston100]

They were excellent with getting me a refund from Qatar early Covid times.
In fact, they proactively offered it to my surprise.

[Luca M]

Although I ended up not booking with them
, I did few searches for flights via Doha early in the summer, and actually they had very competitive prices, so worth checking through them as well. It works best if you already have a precise itinerary in mind and/or specific flight from a quotation from another OTA.

The search function can be done flight by flight with specific times so you end up with the exact same flights as the alternative OTA and/or ITA Matrix

[Paul]

For flights they are more expensive which is no doubt their commission. Service is however where they have let me down and I won’t use them anymore. They are slow, ponderous, lack knowledge and even platinum travel agents need to refer up and put you on hold. As Rob says nester to book direct as you have greater control.

[John]

The main reason Amex Travel is more expensive is that some airlines add a GDS fee to tickets not booked directly with themselves, which could be up to £20 or so on a return flight.

Also Amex Travel doesn’t tend to offer the option with the lowest perks i.e. HBO. Note that on many airlines, the booking class may be the same for various bundle options, and there may be no way to choose on Amex Travel.

Amex Travel is mainly useful if you want to pay with Amex as it converts the currency of flight prices to GBP at the IATA exchange rate, so you can avoid the usual Amex forex fee, and also get the extra points on the Gold card.

However they are not going to be that helpful if airlines change flights. You can argue about your “rights” with them and they will “pass the message” onto the airline, but when the airline replies “no” then Amex Travel isn’t going to continue arguing on your behalf.

[zapato1060]

I bought with them for a flight in April. I usually book direct (my halifax card was playing about) but found the same price so booked with them as I did not want to miss AMS-SJU-LHR economy £225. Only after booking did I notice I basically bought with any other OTA. For a supposed “prestige” Platinum service they are a poor mans Expedia.

[memesweeper]

You can buy a BA select or select plus fare through them. You can’t (yet) do that direct with BA.

[R]

Amex Travel had my first name on the ticket as Mr.
I couldn’t check in online, and they’d only call the airline with me on the line. I gave up in the end and let them deal with it in the airport.

I’d avoid them in future.

[Blair Waldorf Salad]

I recemtly got HH Diamond benefits on FHR pay in advance stay

[Paul]

Does anyone have details of American Express Travels complaints procedures?

BA cancelled a flight booked via Amex. I called and requested a full refund and nothing happened. Then my flight was rebooked by Amex. It took 5 days to resolve the rebooking and have the flights cancelled and being advised that a refund would be made. The refund invoice they have sent is worth £83 while I paid £207. No one I speak to has clue, and you are passed pillar to post.

I am tempted to dispute the charge as it has simply gotten out of hand now

[zapato1060]

Paul wrote:

Does anyone have details of American Express Travels complaints procedures?

BA cancelled a flight booked via Amex. I called and requested a full refund and nothing happened. Then my flight was rebooked by Amex. It took 5 days to resolve the rebooking and have the flights cancelled and being advised that a refund would be made. The refund invoice they have sent is worth £83 while I paid £207. No one I speak to has clue, and you are passed pillar to post.

I am tempted to dispute the charge as it has simply gotten out of hand now

To be honest I made an error thinking as I had Platinum that AMEX travel was a legitimate entity with general powers like booking direct (as I normally always do). How wrong was I, they are as good as booking with ANY other OTA like flyup, gotogate, fly4meargentina, etc etc. Quite shocking really.

[Aston100]

I must be the only person to have had a decent experience with them.
Wonder if I was just lucky.

[tiberius]

Hi all, I’d like to make an amex travel hotel booking for a trip to Doha to take advantage of the current spend 300 get 75 off offer.

The offer is on my Amex platinum which I intend to cancel in January but I wish to book now for a July stay and pay in advance on my platinum to trigger the offer.

Would cancelling my Platinum card in a few weeks time cause issues – I hold the BA premium and Nectar amex cards so the amex link wouldn’t be totally severed. Thanks!

[weeble]

I booked 2 one ways to SIN via a stopover in KUL for a good price which saved the Euro forex fee which I would have paid by booking direct as we are starting from DUB .

Trouble is no Avios are showing on my BAPP account. I’d be annoyed to find that I didn’t earn the 5000 or so I was expecting ( although they are worth only half of what I saved!)

[BBbetter]

weeble wrote:

I booked 2 one ways to SIN via a stopover in KUL for a good price which saved the Euro forex fee which I would have paid by booking direct as we are starting from DUB .

Trouble is no Avios are showing on my BAPP account. I’d be annoyed to find that I didn’t earn the 5000 or so I was expecting ( although they are worth only half of what I saved!)

Which offer are you referring to? Who did you book with?

[weeble]

@BBbetter, no it wasn’t an offer. I’d been looking at prices for that trip for a few months now. OTAs showed the best prices and then I saw a reasonable price on Qatar.com but would have had to add the forex on top for the AMEX.

In another thread somebody mentioned AMEX Travel so I looked there and found a reasonable price in £.

Does anyone know whether you still earn avios on your BAPP with AMEX Travel?

[Bill_B]

weeble wrote:

@BBbetter, no it wasn’t an offer. I’d been looking at prices for that trip for a few months now. OTAs showed the best prices and then I saw a reasonable price on Qatar.com but would have had to add the forex on top for the AMEX.

In another thread somebody mentioned AMEX Travel so I looked there and found a reasonable price in £.

Does anyone know whether you still earn avios on your BAPP with AMEX Travel?

AFAIK there’s no special Avios bonus when using the BAPP with Amex Travel. You should earn the standard 1.5 Avios/£ like any other expenditure. It normally takes a day or two for the Avios to get added after the transaction is showing as processed, so if you’re not seeing anything that’s probably why.

You do earn Avios on the flight if you put your BA membership number in.

[weeble]

@Bill_B, you’re exactly right, they’ve posted today. I wasn’t expecting any more than the 1.5 but was wondering why it took a few days for them to post. So, anyway, got the 5200 Avios ready to be transferred to BA now.

And I’ve added our Exec numbers too.

[Flying doctor]

There is also a difference in the way a booking is made, online via the Amex website is powered by Expedia whereas a booking made on the phone is via a different entity belonging to Amex. We made a group booking for family travel to Euro Disney over the phone and had good service. Competitive pricing, flights and hotel booked with no hassle. If booking online, probably makes no difference if booked with another OTA.

[trickyuk]

Do you still get tier points if you book with Amex travel ?

[weeble]

Certainly hope so. I’ve flown with QR having booked through an OTA before and got the TPs.

[cats_are_best]

I’ve used them a many times and been happy, maybe service level depends on card type?

Where I’ve found them handy…
* booking for aged relative, now sadly dead, from Australia to UK, they tracked his progress, alerted me and rebooked him on the next flight when he missed a connection (his mistake)
* booking multi-leg itineraries that the BA website chokes on
* emergency travel, arranging flights and transfers on the fly
* getting pre-agreed early/late checkouts with hotels in places where commms can be patchy/slow even using global chains, Amex did all the calling/emailing to arrange things
* the free limo service for UK airport transfers (8 round trips/year)

…these were all over the phone, as above I’d guess doing it online is no different to an OTA.

[BBbetter]

Deleted.