Originally Posted by jghassell

This. All of the BS blame about arriving late at the airport and "what AA's systems allow" becomes irrelevant when OP says, "fine, I'll buy a brand new seat." At that point, when customer has credit card in hand ready to buy fresh available product irrespective of previous transactions, agents should have been able to handle this with a few keystrokes, cancelling the standby reservation and booking the new reservation and arunking his return reservation so it didn't get cancelled out if applicable. This isn't hard.