Originally Posted by
Land-of-Miles
Your compensation claim from Amex should not be just for the original cost of you ticket. You had a contract with Aero (with Amex as a joint party, if this is a credit card, or covered by Amex's credit card like indemnity for charge cards). Aero folded you lost your original booking, Amex should put you back into the same position with an F ticket for the price you originally paid (i.e. make good the loss). So any additional amount should be reclaimable from Amex as should the cost of an F ticket (full F if that is all that is available now for your original travel plans).
Not exactly. Indeed, not at all. Amex is not a "joint party" to the contract, whatever that's supposed to mean. Amex is merely the payment intermediary. There are three contracts here (not counting the ones between the TA and the airline, and the airline and the consumer). First, the cardmember agreement between Amex and the member. Second, the merchant agreement between Amex and the merchant. Third, the sale contract between the consumer and the TA. Amex does not act as a guarantor of the merchant's performance of the sale contract. Rather, under certain circumstances, if the merchant fails to deliver, Amex will not collect the charge from the member and then will do a chargeback to the merchant. Sometimes, though, you can't do it if the customer has already paid Amex for the charge.
Unless you've got some sort of titanium-plated purchase-protection insurance plan (which I don't know is even offered), there is no way on this green earth that Amex would cover the fare difference between what a member paid a TA and what the member paid to purchase a new ticket from another source.