Requesting Assistance - Reservation canceled
Fellow AA FFers,
I'm in a bit of a predicament here and could use some assistance from the collective wisdom that FT possesses.
Last week I booked a flight home for thanksgiving from DC. DCA - JAX ; GNV - DCA. On Monday of last week I put a hold on a reservation that sorta worked for me. On Tuesday a better time opened up for the same price so I canceled that hold and put a hold on the better time flight. On Wednesday the ideal reservation came down to the same price as the Tuesday hold reservation so I went to book it in cash.
Halfway through booking the cash ticket on Wednesday an error popped up saying there was a duplicate booking (referencing the Tuesday hold presumably) and I could not proceed. So not to lose my current booking I opened up another tab on my browser and went to aa.com to cancel the hold reservation. Navigating through my account I get to my trips and click the cancel button on the Tuesday hold. I went back to the other tab with my incomplete cash reservation and proceeded to book it.
Reservation booked, no problem, received the confirmation email about 30 minutes later showing record locator/confirmation of price/time etc. In between the time of booking and receiving the confirmation email I begin to close some superfluous tabs on my browser. I click on the the AA tab that was used to cancel the hold ticket and I notice that it had taken me to another screen to confirm my cancellation. Meaning I had not completely cancelled the reservation, one of those screens that asks you "are you sure you want to cancel" or something like that. Without thinking I just hit cancel because that was what I wanted in the first place and go on with my day.
This week I go onto my account and notice that there are no upcoming flights in my account. I click on "my trips" and see that the Wednesday cash ticket is cancelled. I call into AA to see what's going on and the agent confirms that the trip is cancelled. We go 10 rounds on how I didn't cancel it but there's nothing she can do because the reservation on her screen says "cancelled on the website" which is proof positive in there eyes that I cancelled it. All she could offer was waiving the change fee and rebooking me into the same flight at the higher price (originally paid $580 now it's $950).
The agent stressed that there's nothing she can do since it says cancelled on the website which became fruitless to say that I didn't cancel it. She then explained that there are no more seats in the booking class that I booked into and I would have to pay the higher price. I ended up booking a much worse time and on a different day causing me to miss a half day of work getting back for an extra $150.
Sorry for the lengthiness but I tried to give all of the relevant facts. So the question is whether there is anything I can do at this point. Am I truly SoL because of some quirk in the AA's booking mechanism? Not really sure what to do at this point. You'd think being an Exec Plat would be useful in this situation but I guess not. Any and all help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Random datapoints: the my trips section only shows the Monday hold cancelled and the Wednesday cash ticket cancelled. It does not show any record of the Tuesday hold that was cancelled. However if you manually search the Tuesday hold ticket using its PNR it will take you to the booking showing it to be cancelled.
Go Gators