Unlike Ben, I don’t have a “sixth sense” when it comes to pricing fuel surcharges. Nine times out of ten he can guess the taxes and fees on a given award within $15, which is a pretty cool party trick. I do, however, have a good “general sense” of how much things should cost, particularly…
Continue reading: My Award Taxes And Fees Are How Much?!?!
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
i recently booked a business class round trip from jfk to hong kong on korean air with transferred Ultimate Rewards points.. i paid $323 for taxes and fees. did i paid too much?
i did not know you could negotiate the amount.
It is painful hearing US Air reps fumble around with your reservation even after you spoonfed them the flight info you researched. The worst part is that the reps who have worked there for a while; their frustration with the system is obvious and they take it out on you when they lose their patience. There have been points where it felt like I had to provide them customer service instead of the other way around.
"Agent: It’s illegal for us to divulge what each of the fees is."
???!!!
I admire Mac's restraint in response.
I just got an Skymiles award ticket (Using Delta site) for my sister for Budapest - Cincinnati - Budapest on Delta, simple straight forward route. paid $1750 !!!! in taxes and fees over the 220k miles. OMG.
So really, this was just a commercial telling us that we should use PointsPros. 🙂
I kid, I kid, great post, Tiffany!
(And I've use PointsPros, and will vouch for you guys any day)
I had a similar experience booking my first ever award redemption a few years ago with US Airway miles. I didnt really know what I was doing but I knew that $1,000 bucks in fees for two coach tickets to europe with only one stopover was way to high. I eventually just let the hold lapse and booked it again. Fortunatly the tickets were still available and the fees came down by 80%.
@ steven k -- That sounds like the right amount. Korean Air does levy moderate fuel surcharges on awards, and they use a computer to calculate the fees.
We're not really negotiating the amount, more asking the fine folks at US Airways if they're really confident in their arithmetic.
@ Pat -- No kidding! Sometimes I feel like they should be paying me the Dividend Miles "processing" fee!!
@ meegabroad -- Well, keep in mind his primary airline is Delta, so he's well practiced at exercising restraint 😉
@ Endre -- That does not sound correct. Delta does charge higher fees for originating in Europe, but that's just ridiculous. May I ask what your routing is?
@ TravelinWilly -- Hahaha! If it were a commercial we'd have only needed to call once for it to be magically perfect :p
Serious inquiry: How much would you charge for 3 pax if you recheck the fees I paid on my award for next summer? I think I paid too much
@ Nkk -- Did you book through US Airways? Have you tried pricing out the ticket through ITA like I showed up above?
@ meegabroad Funny comment! @Tiffany Thank you for the comment! I called diamond desk at Delta. They sent me to someone else from first agent, and came back that it was incorrectly calculated , and now it is $600.70. Go figure.
The route is: Budapest -(KLM)- Amsterdam - (Delta) - Newark - (Delta) - Cincinnati - (Delta) - Minneapolis - (Delta) - Amsterdam - (KLM) - Budapest
Details - Taxes/Carrier-imposed Fees -
Total: 600.70
Itemized: 11.20 AY 5.00 XA 7.00 XY 5.50 YC 3.80 FE 31.60 HU 18.40 CJ 17.20 RN 5.20 VV 460.80 YR 35.00 US
Fare Details
BUD KL X/AMS DL X/EWR DL CVG0.00CSM625/FT231 DL X/MSP DL AMS0.00CSD1000/FD231 KL BUD0.00CSM500/FT232 NUC0.00END ROE1.00 EXEMPTX
@ Endre -- Wonderful! That breakdown looks much better, glad they were able to fix it for you.
Yes I booked through US Airways. It's one of those north asia/ europe awards so it is a little complicated. I did follow your example above but wasnt able to quite reproduce...
Itinerary also include an intra-europe award on BA (from AMS to LHR and then LHR to MAD)
Full itenerary here: dca-jfk-hkg-nrt-hkg-ams-lhr-mad-phl-dca (late june 2015). Any help is appreciated!
Thanks for the great "social engineering" advice!
I had almost the exact same experience with BA a couple of years ago, charging outrageous "taxes" on a AA domestic leg. They wouldn't budge during the booking process, so I booked the ticket and called back afterwards -- like you did. They provided a refund and thanked me for calling.
If they hadn't changed it, I could have simply cancelled the ticket since I was within the 24 hour limit.
Tiffany, I am super excited to see you blogging! And I'm definitely bookmarking this for when I use up some of my US Air points!
As an aside, it was amazing meeting you at FTU DC on Sunday afternoon. Thanks for letting us pick your brain for a bit. You were fantastic!
@ Nkk -- Ah, in that case I'd look up each segment separately and add all the fees together at the end. It won't be exact, but that should give you a general range. Keep in mind you do pay fuel surcharges for flights on BA (coded as YQ or YR).
@ TheInternationalLine -- So interesting that they thank us for calling, isn't it?
@ Kris -- Hah, thanks, and it was truly my pleasure! I'm excited to see how you end up using those miles!!
,,,and, on BA, those fuel dumps just keep rising. A one way US-Continental Europe itinerary we booked in "F" in 2011 cost us $280 taxes/fees per person then, would be $490 now. No wonder BA availability is so much better than anyone else's.
With hindsight, the biggest mistake of my miles and points hobby was spending $1000 out of pocket to buy 90,000 US Airways miles. I called the call center for the first time the other day, and boy, their agents AND system are worthless. Everything I've read about how retarded they are is true.
Ha! If only you post this two month earlier!
I had a itinerary booked in October that involves traveling on Qatar and Cathay Pacific and British Airways' european routes and two-way 24hr transit in LHR. Was charged roughly 760 USD per person in taxes and fees. Asked for the rate desk to check and talked to a supervisor, who told me it's 700 USD "airline imposed fees" and there's no break down for that, and you "either pay it or you don't fly".
A terrific, practical case study. Thank you! There are so many gotchas in booking an award. Getting what's due to your clients must be a great satisfaction.
@ Tiffany -- what would you have done if US refused to fix the fees? Because US allows a hold, you don't get an option to redeposit without a fee, right?
On a tangential note, also had a fun experience with US agents. After I'd flown an outbound first leg, there was a minor schedule change on a return leg of a domestic round-trip award. Two agents told me that if I don't accept the change, I'd get 1/2 miles back on top of fee reimbursement; it's not something they allow normally, of course, but I figured perhaps it was an exception similar to refunding a nonrefundable revenue ticket when a schedule change occurs.
Given there was a more convenient flight on another airline, I decided to take them up on their offer. Lo and behold, I got $5 back but no miles. Long story short, first two agents were wrong and not supposed to get miles back. Had to escalate by filling out an online form to get the miles back as a one-time exception.
@ Ivan Y -- I would have just kept calling. Someone would have fixed it eventually, they always do.
Glad you were able to get some miles back, that's definitely not the official policy!
I've just been hit with an overcharge. Have one BA segment, so was expecting about $240 or $245 in YQ based on ITA (and seeing what AA would charge on the route, that's spot on). Hit with $414. I'm guessing I'm in for some pain on this, since there should be some YQ but not as much as I was charged. Anyone have tips for dealing with that?
Outbound is DCA-AA-JFK-CX-HKG-CX-KUL-MH-DPS in domestic F/international J. Inbound is HKG-CX-LHR-BA-IAD in F. I can't come up with the exact amount of YQ they charged me based on revenue bookings, but adding in the CX YQ/YR would get close to the $414 they charged me. (And for the avoidance of doubt, I've reviewed the fare breakdown using Saudia to confirm that it's $414 in YQ. Also, they did mange to avoid charging me UK APD. I had kind of hoped that was the error, as that would be easier to battle after the fact.)
@ Mitch -- So they're actually not totally wrong. The roundtrip fuel surcharge on Washington to London is $828, and they simply charged you half of that. It seems you're going off the London to Washington fuel surcharges, which is artificially low when originating in the UK due to the APD.
So while other agents may have interpreted it differently, they're not really technically that wrong. Charging you the fuel surcharges just for the London to Washington segment as if you were originating there wouldn't have been correct either, since that fuel surcharge is based on having originated there.
Realize that might not be all that helpful, but at least it hopefully helps you understand how they arrived at that number. Good luck!
@lucky — That's a totally bizarre way to calculate the surcharge, but it would fit with US Airways "logic". The WAS-LON YQ is $414, so I'm wondering if the agent didn't just look at that and assume that it was symmetric. A LON-WAS r/t in F has YQ of $479.60, so I don't think that the APD argument you make is on point. (You pay APD on a round trip regardless of origin.) I've done some experimenting with AA's system, and a simple IAD-LHR-IAD in F gets $828 in YQ. However, things get really weird if you do JFK-TXL on AB and return LHR-IAD on BA. Then you get $428 in YQ, which is half of the JFK-TXL YQ on BA. (JFK-LHR YQ is $828 just like IAD-LHR.) Now that even AA's usually sane systems are doing confusing things, I really have no idea what the "right" answer is for what I should have been charged. (Although if you run the whole routing through ITA all at once, even with it knowing the US origin, it charges ~$250 in YQ.) I figure it's worth at least one try to find a US Airways agent who agrees with my logic of "just look at the actual flights that incur YQ and go from there".
Thanks for your input. I'll come back and share the result after I find time to give it a call or three.
@ Mitch -- Let me know how it goes! Totally agree what they did ultimately wasn't necessarily right, but keep in mind what they're doing with calculating fuel surcharges just on BA is sort of unprecedented. There simply isn't a correct way to calculate fuel surcharges on one airline as part of a continuous journey, since it's all dependent on the origin and destination.
Good luck and let me know how it goes!