Booking Business class with Qatar or third party adverts

[bernie1953]

I'm seeing a lot of popup ad and other ad on facebook & instagram for companies advertising far cheaper business class fares than one would expect , anyway I tried a couple of them out,

I received a call from an agent in the USA saying yes we can do this for you, result was the fare was almost the same as that offered by the airline direct!

Next I tried , I received a call from an Australian number ( I'm currently on holiday in Mexico and using a mexican number) so we went through my proposed itinerary , the guy didn't have an aussie accent and I asked where he was from , he replied "I'm in Uzbekistan!"

He promised me he had access to low fare etc, so when receiving the itinerary again it didnt match up with what I requested although its coming in about $600 cheaper than Qatar airways my airline of choice

I am somewhat dubious of these companies and cant help but feel there's something dodgy? would be interested in hearing of anyone else's experiences in booking business class fares

I'm a silver privilege club member with Qatar and recently received a 10% discount off my next flight so could anyone tell me if Qatar would honour the 10% if I book business? (I'm usually an economy flyer with them )

Am I better off booking direct or perhaps using trip dot com webjet etc?

 

[Scr77]

I’d book direct. You could look at itineraries starting in Asia, and get a seperate positioning flight.

 

[RooFlyer]

Welcome to AFF @bernie1953 . Personally, I wouldn’t touch those possible deals with a long pole. You’ll probably get it ticketed but if there’s any issue along the way , getting it rectified might prove very very difficult and you could absolutely get stuck somewhere.

I doubt if you’d get your 10% discount if you booked with one of those agents, but you would if you booked it yourself.

Webjet etc possibilities but again you have to explore carefully how the cheaper prices come about and what’s the exact conditions of the ticket.

As @Scr77 said, a common practice used by many of us is to get a cheap i.e. economy or an award flight from Australia to an Asian port such as Jakarta or Bangkok and get the paid fare from there. You avoid the ‘Australia tax’ and with Qatar I recently got Jakarta to Europe and back for about $4200 in J and I’ve heard of people doing it cheaper (can depend on which business fare bucket is used, and current state of fuel prices). The cheaper bucket which does not include lounge access can get you a lie-flat very cheaply to Europe.