Originally Posted by aisleorwindow

I knew I was going to get some responses like this.

The answer is, because they inconvenienced me greatly. I should've added that they would NOT put me on the Alaska flight. I paid for it, and it was considerably more expensive than my original ticket. Had I not done so, I would have had to spend the night in Chicago (I was booked on the last flight out) and missed my meeting the next day.
Secondly, giving me EQMs (not RDMs) costs AA exactly NOTHING. In fact, it cost AA more to say no (by wasting the agent's time to personally call and deny my request), rather than just adding the miles to my account and being done with it.

Like I said, have done this many times in the past. I thought it was standard procedure if requested. Was checking to see if something had changed.
Pretty incredible to me that folks can't see how this is customer unfriendly.