Anyone know the cheapest place to buy airfares online? I want to fly my parents here from New Zealand and pay for the tickets from Taiwan by credit card.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
When I checked for tickets online Travelocity was usually cheapest. Leave the mark in “my dates are flexible” and do a search.
When I came I bought them through a travel agent and it was cheaper then anything I found online (but I flew china air 
). I’ll pm the number if your interested.
make sure to use an agent in NZ, what I found is if you buy a ticket of NZ-TPE-NZ in taiwan it will be more expensive then buying in NZ, since you are paying using CC it should not be a problem to pay in NZ.
He’s right. As a former travel agent, I would recommend calling a company in New Zealand, and booking through them. You’ll get cheaper tickets that way. Then pay for them over the phone with a credit card. You can either have your parents do the shopping for you, or find a travel agent you like, and work via email if you don’t want to pay for the phone calls! You might want to try STA Travel, even though they aren’t students! (www.statravel.com)
not sure if you’ll be able to use sites like travelocity or expedia. most of the us sites require you to book a ticket FROM the us to somewhere else.
If Airlines sold paint…
Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?
Clerk: Well, sir, that all depends on quite a lot of things.
Customer: Can you give me a guess? Is there an average price?
Clerk: Our lowest price is $12 a gallon, and we have 60 different
prices up to $200 a gallon.
Customer: What’s the difference in the paint?
Clerk: Oh, there isn’t any difference; it’s all the same paint.
Customer: Well, then I’d like some of that $12 paint.
Clerk: When do you intend to use the paint?
Customer: I want to paint tomorrow. It’s my day off.
Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is the $200 paint.
Customer: When would I have to paint to get the $12 paint?
Clerk: You would have to start very late at night in about 3 weeks.
But you will have to agree to start painting before Friday of that week
and continue painting until at least Sunday.
Customer: You’ve got to be fucking kidding!
Clerk: I’ll check and see if we have any paint available.
Customer: You have shelves FULL of paint! I can see it!
Clerk: But it doesn’t mean that we have paint available. We sell only
a certain number of gallons on any given weekend. Oh, and by the way,
the price per gallon just went to $16. We don’t have any more $12
paint.
Customer: The price went up as we were talking?
Clerk: Yes, sir. We change the prices and rules hundreds of times a
day, and since you haven’t actually walked out of the store with your
paint yet, we just decided to change. I suggest you purchase your paint
as soon as possible. How many gallons do you want?
Customer: Well, maybe five gallons. Make that six, so I’ll have
enough.
Clerk: Oh no, sir, you can’t do that. If you buy paint and don’t use
it, there are penalties and possible confiscation of the paint you
already have.
Customer: WHAT?
Clerk: We can sell enough paint to do your kitchen, bathroom, hall and
north bedroom, but if you stop painting before you do the bedroom, you
will lose your remaining gallons of paint.
Customer: What does it matter whether I use all the paint? I already
paid you for it!
Clerk: We make plans based upon the idea that all our paint is used,
every drop. If you don’t, it causes us all sorts of problems.
Customer: This is crazy!! I suppose something terrible happens if I
don’t keep painting until after Saturday night!
Clerk: Oh yes! Every gallon you bought automatically becomes the $200
paint.
Customer: But what are all these, “Paint on sale from $10 a liter”
signs?
Clerk: Well that’s for our budget paint. It only comes in
half-gallons. One $5 half-gallon will do half a room. The second
half-gallon to complete the room is $20. None of the cans have labels,
some are empty and there are no refunds, even on the empty cans.
Customer: To hell with this! I’ll buy what I need somewhere else!
Clerk: I don’t think so, sir. You may be able to buy paint for your
bathroom and bedrooms, and your kitchen and dining room from someone
else, but you won’t be able to paint your connecting hall and stairway
from anyone but us. And I should point out, sir, that if you paint in
only one direction, it will be $300 a gallon.
Customer: I thought your most expensive paint was $200!
Clerk: That’s if you paint around the room to the point at which you
started. A hallway is different.
Customer: And if I buy $200 paint for the hall, but only paint in one
direction, you’ll confiscate the remaining paint.
Clerk: No, we’ll charge you an extra use fee plus the difference on
your next gallon of paint. But I believe you’re getting it now, sir.
Customer: You’re insane!
Clerk: Thanks for painting with United
I like Ponchis post 
Somebody told me that you weren’t allowed to use tickets bought anywhere but in Taiwan to leave Taiwan for a roundtrip and that airline personnel at the airport actually checked this.
While I lived in Shanghai, we used to buy tickets in Germany and have them sent to Shanghai, nobody ever said anything. Would that work here? Has anybody ever done it? What does booking on the internet actually count as?
Just wondering …
Iris
Hey, Iris.
I have never heard of that, and I have FedEx’d many a ticket to many a traveller who was already overseas. Taiwan does have some odd quirks, but I wouldn’t worry about that one too much. It’s completely illogical. What if you bought a ticket in Germany to go to Taiwan (round trip) and knew that in the middle of your trip to Taiwan, you wanted to take a mini-vacation (aka visa run) to Bangkok so you bought that ticket too? That would be a round trip ticket from Taiwan purchased outside of Taiwan.
There is a code on every ticket that says if it was sold and/or ticketed inside or outside of the country of departure, but I’ve never heard of anyone saying that your ticket had to be sold/ticketed inside the place of departure. That would be weird. Though, I will say that it is usually cheaper to buy your ticket in the country of departure, because that’s where most of the “deals” can be found.
But, I could be wrong!
Karen
… and I LOVED Ponchi’s post!
Yes Karen, this is the way it is normally but you won’t get the best prices from the national or local carrier. For example, when you fly TPE-HKG-TPE, CA and EVA will be the most expensive followed by CP. Thai and BA will be a lot cheaper.
Booking online with the carrier directly will be more expensive than buying with a travel agent.
If travelling anywhere in Asia or Europe I usually find it cheaper to buy a one-way ticket to Bangkok and book my final holiday destination tickets (India, Laos, Europe) from a consolidator there.
Then I buy the cheapest ticket back to Taiwan (surprisingly not China Airlines it’s usually KLM).
Even with the 2 one-way tickets and a little extra time on the email to the agent in Bangkok it still works out much cheaper than buying tickets here.
Please take note of Ponchi’s advice. Although this rule may not always be enforced it is true. The only exception is if you buy a full-fare ticket which should be valid no matter where it is issued. If it is a discount ticket then you should make sure it is issued by a travel agent in the country of departure. i.e. For a ticket from NZ-Taiwan return, make sure the ticket is issued in NZ.
Hi wix99
Do you mean my post about tickets not being accepted because they were issued somewhere else than your point of leaving?
So, what about tickets that you buy on the internet? Could an airline deny to take you when you bought your ticket on the internet and had it FedExed from wherever it was issued? I’d guess so.
And what if I buy a cheaper ticket from a travel agent but the ticket states the full fare (I think I’ve had that before)? Would that count as the full fare?
Has anybody here ever been denied to take a plane because he had a ticket that had been issued anywhere else?
TIA
Iris
The way it normally works in England is that a travel agent simply won’t sell you a ticket departing outside the UK, except at the full published rate. Now that didn’t matter for me flying HKG-SHA because the tickets aren’t discounted anyway. On the other hand, if the travel agent sells you a ticket ex-UK to somewhere, the agent can sell you a discounted sector ticket from the destination to somewhere else. For example I once bought in London a discounted ticket LHR-KUL, and another discounted ticket from KUL-HKG. However, I couldn’t buy a discounted ticket from BKK to HKG (which is what I wanted, travelling from KL to Bangkok by train) because the agent wouldn’t sell me one. I imagine if he had, I would have had no problem using it on arrival at Bangkok. The agent said he could only sell me a ticket from BKK-KUL at the full published fare, some GBP700 one way.
I have however bought tickets in the UK to fly from China to Ireland, and from Paris to Ireland, at discounted prices and there was no problem. A ticket I recently bought in the UK SHA-DUB was picked up by my wife in Shanghai, and there was no problem with it. Although I bought it directly from Air France. I dunno, it’s all too confusing…
It is confusing :? I’ve never had problems up to now. However, these rules seem to be there and I guess you have to be aware that thay might be enforced. I just wonder if that has happened to anybody here.
:?
Iris