Last Tuesday I buy my 7-day advance refundable one-way ticket ORD-BDL at aa.com. Get the thank you email, and that's the end of that. Today, I go to see why my upgrade hadn't cleared... and find out that my reservation had been cancelled.

Somehow, the web site lost track of the fact that I had bought the ticket, and cancelled my reservation after 24 hours. Now the price jumps up from $168 to $775, and to get a $168 fare I would have to fly Southwest out of MDW instead, four hours later than my original flight. Plus, I'm so close to EXP that every 800 miles makes a big difference.

So, needless to say, I'm steamed. I manage to maintain my composure and call the AA.com tech support site. I explain my situation, that I'm going to have to fly Southwest tonight, and I'm that I'm not very happy because this is the fourth time in four months that the aa.com process did not work smoothly.

The tech support person looks up my records and tells me that I've bought 19 tickets from the web site this year and have over 300 sessions at the site in 2000. She then said that she doesn't know what happened but that it would be her pleasure to make things right.

Within 5 minutes, I had the ticket reinstated. I waited ten minutes, then called the PLT number and tried to upgrade the flight. The computer found my record, so it looks like I'm all set.

A very nice job by AA tech support on this one, it's not their fault that the site that they support is mediocre at best.