Questions and Answers

I’m wondering how Lucky would have dealt with the story below, sorry it’s pretty long and complicated but I really can’t think of anything I could have done differently…

I booked a First class award on AA from NRT to LAX back in March before the award chart devaluation at a cost of 62,500-10% because I had the AAdvantage citi card for a total cost of 56,250. Sometime around September AA pulled an equipment swap from the old 777-200 with F to their new 777-200 with only business. I tried for weeks to get them to rebook me onto the JAL flight that flies the same route and has F but there was no award availability, but they told me to keep checking and if there was an award seat they would rebook me no problem. The night before I was scheduled to leave the US for Japan an award seat opened up on the JAL flight, but then because of the award chart increase the JAL F award cost 80,000 now and the CSR told me they couldn’t rebook and my only option was to file a complaint with the AAdvantage online email system and they would call me back. Of course they didn’t call until after I left the country and didn’t have access to my phone number.

I ended up having to fly on the AA flight in business with the understanding that they would refund me the difference. However what they did was redeposit my original award [I]and[/I] take back the 10% refund from the citi card, and then book a new ticket at the current business class rate of 60,000 miles with no 10% refund since I no longer had the citi card. The end result is that because of an involuntary change made by AA I went from paying 56,250 for an F award to paying 60,000 for a business award, whereas if I had just booked business class at the original time it would have only cost me 45,000 (50,000 – 10%).

How would you go about trying to get those 15,000 miles back?

hi Matt that sounds like a frustrating experience all around. I think you probably need to start escalating the situation. I think Elliott consumer advocacy site has a list of contact information for senior execs at all the airlines that you can use to move your request higher. I don’t think it is unreasonable. Good luck.

Grr. I went/am going through a similar issue. I booked SFO to Haneda last February for an upcoming flight, with a separate award to Sydney connecting in Tokyo. With the time switch, American put me on their metal LAX-Narita, business class, and also told me to keep my eyes open for first JAL and I could switch. In my case two tix showed up two weeks ago for my upcoming flight. Spoke to 4 agents, thought it was finally switched, and the next am when I checked m ticketing it still had not gone through, and the two tix were taken by someone else. Part of the “HUCA” involved not respecting my pre devaluation ticket and wanting to take an additional 18,500 more of my miles! They finally agreed yesterday “as a courtesy” to honor pre devaluation points and the downgrade to business giving hubby and I back each our 12,500 miles. I doubt at this point that I will be able to find 2 first class tickets again so late 🙁 Anyway, I would call aa like I did and push to get back my points.

The last 4 AA flights I’ve had they’ve swapped out, 3 787’s to A321 and a 767 to 737. Granted these were domestic flights but it’s annoying. Read this article today on AA. Maybe its just me but it seems everyday there is something negative going on with them. Plus they have 0 saver space rewards on anything other than old US330s internationally.

[URL]http://www.forbes.com/sites/kbrauer/2017/01/09/american-airlines-7-6-billion-compnay-12-compensation-plan/#6fd071077c7f[/URL]