Originally Posted by
stimpy
As a counter-point, I had a rather different experience as a "new" AA flyer. I say new, because I hadn't taken a domestic AA flight in well over a decade. I have OWE status though. I booked DCA-BOS and as I arrived at the airport I saw my flight had been cancelled. I made my way to customer service, but they were rather clueless and gave me a variety of poor answers as to my rebooking on a later flight.
So I went up to the Admirals Club and there were a trio of excellent and experienced ladies working there. One took my info and said that as an OWE I should be automatically placed on the next flight. But since there were a lot of AA flights that were cancelled or delayed that day (no clue why as the weather was beautiful all up and down the eastern seaboard), she could not find me a seat. But as we were chatting she kept poking at her screen and after a few minutes bang! She not only found a seat, it was in first class!
The great service in the Admirals Club is what will lead me to book more AA domestic flights in 2016.
Again, the agents at the SFO AC are top notch - maybe some of the best system-wide, I'd say. They've been there for quite awhile...
However, the check-in staff plain suck. You probably don't have to deal with them unless you have to check in a bag, manually and deal with an agent. Maybe it's the hours I'm trying to check-in at (evening), but as I indicated in an earlier post, and as others have reported:
1) they don't seem to know/care about elite status
2) they can't manage the elite queue properly, and sometimes the main cabin line moves faster than the priority queue (also a problem at LAX, but at least they have competent agents)
3) the agents will try to charge you bag fees
4) the agents cannot read a TIMATIC page and don't know their geography
5) the supervisors are equally clueless (and more dangerous, as they have power)
6) according to OP, they will try to downgrade your W op-up to Y. (I believe this happens based on my experience with them!)