Baybreezes

I think AA's "Conditions of Carriage" isn't really a Contract of Carriage. I had occasion to download United's CoC in PDF form and it was 65 pages of legalese. AA's "Conditions" is just a bunch of linked web pages. A search for "Contract of Carriage" on aa.com did not yield anything so labeled.

A search for "valet" yields but two links, but neither page so linked had the word "valet" and the search result page asked if I meant "valid."

I fly out of a small airport on regional jets. Nearly all bags are gate-checked, with passengers collecting them for their connecting flights. I never heard of valet checking.

AA has bad ticketing technology. We had a trip going to Santiago and returning from Buenos Aires several years ago (paid business class). We made the mistake of booking on Priceline. It might have been during online check-in that I had a problem, so I called Priceline, which deferred to AA. There were two different locator numbers for our two segments to Santiago. The AA agent purportedly resolved the issue. However, when we arrived at DFW from Corpus Christi, the rest of our flight had been wiped out. AA's app and the agent we consulted found no tickets for the rest of the way. (I think we flew on a locator number that had just the one segment, and when the system saw that this segment on the other locator number was not flown, the rest of the trip was canceled.) Fortunately, an experienced gate agent (not the designated rebooking agent) was able to sort something out for us. I say the ticketing technology was bad because neither the phone agent nor the rebooking agent could fix it, and it took about an hour for the other agent to fix. And why were two locators produced in the first place? The OP mentioned a locator number issue from Travelocity, and that's why I bring this up.

Another thing I want to mention. I have seen this sort of back-and-forth in a number of forums, in which those-in-the-know take virtual ownership of the faulted entity's behavior and defend it mightily. Most of the time the defenses are at least enlightening, but some really do blame the victim, when there's no real reason to. I think there's kind of a knowledge-is-power message that says, Too bad you didn't know what I know, and too bad you didn't anticipate every single hurdle that you ultimately faced.

Although OP takes a rollerboard rather than an under-seat bag, that's a choice a flyer is allowed to make. Yes, he could have done things in a way that might not have resulted in problems, but he didn't do anything that was out of bounds or against the rules. It's worth pointing out that carrying an array of underseat bags is perhaps an undue burden on two adults carrying an infant and minding two other children. With that scenario, this would have been a family group to steer clear of in the airport, watching out for straggling children towing tiny rollers. Instead, I picture the OP with one arm towing rolling bag and the other towing a child, while the OP's spouse carries an infant and tows the other child. As a family group -- rather tidy.

As for comparing "likes," we don't know what the non-FT members reading this thread think, or the members who didn't sign in (having to do so because they don't just live here.)