metallo

When I read these threads, I do wonder why, at times, AA doesn't make more of an effort to curtail the behavior earlier on... it would surely prevent misunderstandings after the fact. The Hayes case comes to mind as an example of that... I don't remember all the details, but I believe he basically had a ton of "virtual record locators" that had automatically held seats after he made dummy bookings and selected seats but never completed the reservations. AA must have simply thought his behavior was clearly fraudulent after seeing the sheer number of bookings he made, because he must have realized by then what he was doing.

I don't know enough about the fly now/pay later plan to know how obvious it would/should have been to the OP in this thread the potential harm he was causing AA here, but I suspect, as above, that it's related to the number of times the behavior occurred (which is undoubtedly how it landed on their radar in the first place).

However, had AA noticed the issue after a few reservations and informed OP, he would have been on notice from that point forward that they felt the behavior was not considered kosher. If the behavior were then subsequently repeated, the fair disposition would be obvious... terminate the account.

On the other hand, the rationale provided for AA's behavior here in the past is that, by the time it gets to the account locking stage, they're already 99% certain that there has been intentional wrongdoing. In other words, there are probably many instances where AA isn't sure whether something is intentional, and they sit on those accounts and investigate further before making what may otherwise look like a rash decision. I suppose my question would be... instead of "sitting" on the accounts when they have the initial information, why let the behavior continue and then take the seemingly nuclear option of locking someone's account?