I've been pretty successful in getting them to waive the fee, but haven't made a booking in a while. However, I listened recently as one of my work colleagues tried to book a flight to Florida that I helped her find (the flight she wanted was US through CLT that wasn't on the website).

It took about an hour of transfers between AE and Websupport and various supervisors each refusing to waive the fee. Finally the flights she wanted mysteriously showed up on the AE site and she booked it online.

In my experience the search engine has a built in bias to AC flights and will rarely show an all *G routing if there are any routings with AC segments. UA only routings show up sometimes, but you'll rarely find an all US routing. Including an AC segment is good to AC fuel surcharge collection, but if AE doesn't watch out this is prime fodder for another class action suit.