Originally Posted by
Dave Noble
That the OP paid in CHF does suggest to me that the ticketing was performed though the Swiss office.
I may find what happened to Op.
Recently I talked with a foreign language AA reservation agent in US about payments using non-US CC for AA.
Foreign language AA reservation agents are AA US employees in US and they are familiar with these issues more than EXP agents in general as their customer are all non -US.
According to the agent, AA now accepts non-US issued Credit cards for payments thru AA US reservation desk but only from AA "elites".
Here AA elites including AA GLD according to the agent.
(I believe the rule requires OW emerald, so YMMV.)
Also AA only accepts Non-US CC for reservations not required urgent ticketing.
The agent told me AA has 2 different systems for credit card payments, one of which was recently introduced and accepts non-US credit card/Foreign billing address.
But there is an issue that sometimes this newly introduced system can not complete the payment.
This is the reason AA doesn't accept non-US credit cards for urgent tickets.
If this happens, AA US asks AA foreign branch to proceed the payments for the non-US credit card.
I guess this is what happened to the OP, i.e. OP actually called to AA PLT desk in US but the payment was failed, then AA US transfered Op's payment to AA Swiss branch, thus Op was charged the fee applied to the AA Swiss desk.