ADoesn’t matter if it even McLaren:)
Unspoken gentleman rule of the club is not to negotiate deals on here dealership style “where you want to be”.
Remind of what we here are all trying to avoid at all costs.
Put up sample deal and see where is goes.
On the other no one is prohibiting you from trying to haggle here deanship style. Just won’t work.
AA has been experimenting with “Web Specials” in lieu of Saver awards, so there were no Saver options presented. Obviously there was nothing “special” about that redemption (CMH-DCA)!
I’ve seen those web specials. Dates never align when I need them to. Least you had the pts when you needed them. My AA bucket is running dry with options to replenish the stock dwindling.
You must have a business and/or very high spend. My stockpile came from card SUBs and with recent changes from AA, not sure what it will look like going forward.
Plug for thepointsguy.com and flyertalk.com forums for folks that love deals (why are you on this site otherwise) but haven’t started deal hunt education for travel yet…
My limited experience living in Columbus for 3 years (after Northern VA and before SoCal) was fewer flights/routes made it a bit harder to get awards on United, never Southwest. When I lived 20 mins from Dulles, a large airport and United hub, I had no trouble booking awards. Same when Alaska stranded me a month ago at Newark (another United hub), I went on UA’s app and booked a first class direct home on points for deep-discount coach, that departed an hour later (bumping some poor jerk who wanted that upgrade).
Not saying UA > AA (frankly dislike the former a tiny bit less than later), but awards are based on inventory which is less at smaller airports like CMH.
Your point to OP is spot on, don’t even have to ship the car, just go get it. As I’ve said before, last lease was in Vegas: 3 emails, I booked a Southwest award ticket for the next night, Marriott points to stay at the Cosmopolitan for Secret Pizza, drove it home the next morning.