buying

Don't Use the Bank of America Travel Center

I (and several travelers I know) have the Bank of America Travel Rewards credit card, because it has no foreign transaction fees which makes it useful for international travel.  The credit card is associated with the Bank of America Travel Center, which is advertised as providing double reward points on flights purchased through the Travel Center.  I decided to buy my tickets to my art residency this summer at La Maison Verte through the Travel Center to take advantage of the reward points, but when a problem cropped up with part of the flight, Bank of America wouldn't help.  Bank of America acts as a third party between you and the airline (much like reserving a car or hotel through a third-party site like Expedia) and everyone pointed fingers at everyone else when the problem arose that cost me a rather high surcharge to fix.  I've actually had this third party shenaniganery happen before with a site like Expedia (and learned to book car and hotel rentals directly as well), but in that case I was still able to do a credit card chargeback to fix that problem.  In this case, though, because Bank of America is both the vendor and the creditor, they found against my chargeback request as well as my refund request.

The credit card itself is still good for foreign travel, but I won't be using the Bank of America Travel Center to buy plane tickets again.  My recommendation is to buy directly from the airlines.