nautikal

100% agree. However, there are severe issues when itineraries involve non-AA flights, such as US Airways.

First, the majority of agents are not trained that the policy is 24-hour cancellation after ticketing for these itineraries (for itineraries booked 7 or more days in advance), since hold is not an option.

Second, ideally the traveler can just call AA to have such itineraries placed on hold, which is what phone agents recommend (somehow they have the ability to do this, yet travelers are unable to do so on the website ). However, if the traveler gets to the payment screen, then they are temporarily holding inventory in that fare class, which in many cases results in price adjustments for the given flights. This means AA agents will not be able to place the itinerary on hold as the inventory at the given price is unavailable to them (they have to create a new booking when you call). United gets around this issue by allowing travelers on the website booking engine to create a record locator without paying, in order to complete a reservation with a phone agent; AA has no such capability, and this is severely limiting.




I encountered several issues with this a few weeks back when I tried to place a few separate bookings involving US Airways on hold. As I described above, when I called AA to have the itinerary placed on hold, the agents were unable to get the same prices as I temporarily had the inventory, and I wasn't going to risk releasing the inventory in the hope that the price would go back to normal. So, the agent actually recommended I submit payment to generate a record locator, and then they would quickly remove the payment information before it ticketed. Talk about a hack job!

This worked all fine and dandy for the first two itineraries I placed on hold, but the third agent did not do it correctly and it ended up ticketing. It took me an hour and a half of repeatedly calling before I finally got someone who understood how DOT's policy applies to tickets that cannot be placed on hold. I cannot begin to explain how frustrating it was trying to argue this policy with the other phone agents; they had never even heard of itineraries not being able to be placed on hold ("you should have just called!" and "we allow all itineraries to be placed on hold - you did something wrong!").



Tl;dr
1. AA phone agents are not trained properly in this policy
2. AA needs to follow United in allowing the creation of a record locator before submitting payment, in order to allow web reservations to be completed by an AA agent

thegingninj

Yea, I had no idea there was a hold option, or obviously I would have done that instead of buying the ticket out right. I really wish this policy was explicitly stated. $200 is a lot of money.

jordyn

If you book online it's fairly conspicuously listed as one of the payment options.

Although I think we let airlines give really bad service in a lot of respects, I don't think this is one of them. AA's policies are explicitly stated. Maybe you're saying they don't somehow call out the difference between their policy and other airlines'? I'm not sure that this wouldn't just add confusion to the purchase problem. I think the buyer has some responsibility to be familiar with the policies of each relevant airline in this case.

danville 1K

I have the same issue with some US tickets booked on 001 stock. EXP line transferred me to the refunds desk who transferred me to another desk. The third desk put me on hold, then came back stating they were non-refundable tickets. My number was taken and they were supposed to call me back, but no call yet 24 hours later. Will have to try again today.

JonNYC

I'm trying to compile some info on this. This was the original thread and the original post that said there now would be a 24 hour refund period for non-holdable tickets:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22593760-post66.html

Are people finding that they, in fact, generally cannot avail themselves of the reported refund feature that was said to have been added at that time?

danville 1K

That is definitely my experience, at least thus far.

JonNYC

I'll definitely look into it

JonNYC

I don't know what existed before this, but this policy was amended just yesterday, as it turns out:

http://www.travelingbetter.com/showt...2574#post42574

bedelman

Jon very kindly links to a document that says it is (and quite plausibly is) AA's current hold policy.

Jon's title calls this policy "DOT compliant." Of that I am less sure.

Suppose a customer is booking a ticket >7 days before departure on aa.com for an itinerary that 1) includes other carriers (not codeshares) and/or 2) applies a discount code. In my experience, aa.com does not offer the hold button although neither of these conditions exempts AA from the DOT's requirements. The DOT's rule and associated guidance requires that information about the hold right be "easily accessible." Does AA in fact disclose, in an "easily accessible" way, that customers have the right to put such an itinerary on hold?

The absence of the hold button, which is otherwise ordinarily present, is also potentially quite misleading as to a passenger's rights. Seeing no hold button, where one ordinarily appears, most regular folks to conclude "I guess I can't put this res on hold" when the true state of affairs is "It is indeed my right to put this res on hold, but aa.com cannot do so, so I'll have to call in." Incidentally if AA later attempted to charge extra fees (e.g. a phone ticketing fee) associated with a customer exercising the right to put the res on hold, I don't think that would be permitted either. The DOT rules make no allowance for a carrier charging for a passenger to avail himself of the right to hold.

jordyn

Well, the policy says that a hold should be available on all reservations on aa.com (made more than 7 days in advance). In practice this is not the case. For example, I just verified it's not possible to put an itinerary on hold that includes Cathay segments. The policy would have us believe that "This policy applies to reservations booked and ticketed through ... aa.com, without regard to the carrier(s) that may be included on the ticket."

As far as I can tell, the policy is an exercise in wishful thinking, not a reflection of AA's actual practices.

Often1

There is no DOT requirement that the "hold" (or for carriers which elect the "cancel" method) online. It is entirely adequate that AA honor the request if one calls in. Note that there is no obligation for other carriers to honor holds and it may be that all you get is a cancellation for those.

jordyn

Right, but the policy linked to by JonNYC explicitly says that you get a hold on all fares on aa.com regardless of carrier, and that therefore no cancellation option will be offered. Maybe you're suggesting that there's secretly a way to put even Internet-only fares on hold via the phone that's just not advertised. I think that's extraordinarily unlikely since there's plenty of fares that phone agents can't book at all, but I'd be interested to hear if others have contrary experiences (including, e.g., bedelmen's example of trying to use a promo code).

Edited to add: I'm not sure your original assertion that AA doesn't have to offer the hold online is true. The DoT requires that either the hold or the 24 hour cancellation be provided for "all reservations"; if AA is relying on the hold as its mechanism, it can't argue that it's available for all reservations when it's only available through certain channels. With cancellations, they can require the cancellation request be made over the phone regardless of original booking channel, but that's fine because it still applies to all reservations regardless of where they were booked.

bedelman

DOT guidance says:
When AA includes a prominent "hold" button for some reservations, the button's absence strikes me as likely to mislead consumers into concluding, incorrectly, that it is not their right to put a reservation on hold (or, failing that, to have a 24-hour cancellation right) for reservations without such button.

Also, does the AA site include the disclosure called for by the second paragraph of the quote above?

The obligation to offer hold or cancellation within 24 hours applies to "all reservations." See guidance, second sentence. I don't see any exception for interline itineraries or other multi-carrier itineraries.

economyplusfan

I just had a related experience where I booked on AA.com 7 days in advance. The booking included a US segment and during final purchase there was no "hold" button at the bottom of the purchase page. In fact, I was advised explicitly by text at the top of the screen that the reservation could not be held because of the US segment. When I called to cancel within 24 hours I was told that a refund was not possible because the reservation could have been held. After 20 minutes of arguing about this the reservation agent advised that AA would refund my purchase out of good will, only obliquely admitting that some reservations that included segments on other carriers could not be held for 24 hours. My advice - if you purchase and no hold button shows up be sure to check for and print out any text that says explicitly that the reservation cannot be held.

JonNYC

Seems like excellent advice.