John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
> Rind wrote:
> > Sometimes that doesn't even help; I'm a member of a yahoo group for
> > foreign women with Japanese husbands and on numerous occasions women
> > have reported/complained that when they're husbands give the names for
> > the tickets (that are booked at the "japanese" discount rate) they
> > actually still try to charge extra for the foreign wife... have you
> > ever heard the likes of it. Makes me sick to the stomach.
>
> I'm really surprised. I must have flown from Japan maybe a couple of
> dozen times over the years, and it's always my Japanese wife who makes
> the bookings. She gets a quote from different agents (sometimes
> cross-checking with the actual airline itself) and then we decide which
> one to book. Her double-barrelled foreign-sounding surname doesn't get
> mentioned until then, and there's never been any question of the company
> trying to revise the price at that stage.
>
> We've used No. 1/H.I.S. a number of times.
>
> John
> http://rarebooksinjapan.com

I myself used No.1/H.I.S a few times when I was single to go to
Singapore and Malaysia I found them really cheap; around 30,000 for
return tickets, but these women were really peeved with their
experiences. Usually what happens though is the wife rings and they
quote her one price and then when the husband rings anonymously he gets
quoted another price. Then the wife rings back to book and they try to
charge the price they quoted her initially rather than the cheaper
price they quoted the husband.

CL wrote:
> I have had very competitive pricing, good service, and always get
> upgraded when buying from JTB's web site.  Their prices are as good as
> No. 1 for most major destinations and I've found they're better when you
> have a multiple destination schedule that includes several smaller
> regional airports -- both in the US and Europe.  I'd been ignoring
> Japanese sources for a long time, thinking Travelocity was cheaper (it
> was, for the first 6~8 months) but, the established Japanese tour
> companies have gotten extremely aggressive recently.  And no price
> silliness.
>
> They very often offer additional discounts if you ring the 0120 number
> they list at the bottom of the ticket estimate -- which is *not* the
> number for the order desk that is shown on the web site.
>
> CL

On flights home to Ireland I always use an Irish company and get my
tickets for about 30,000 cheaper than what I can find here. JTB are
useless for Ireland unfortunately (I couldn't be arsed trying to
organise my own connecting flights as they don't seem to fly to
Dublin), but they look good for the rest of Europe.