I am a Skyteam Elite Plus frequent flyer (Delta Platinum Medallion) who booked a Clase Premier ticket in November 2020 to travel roundtrip from Seattle to Bogota. On 12/19/2020, I received an email notification that my return flight from BOG to MEX has been changed from 25FEB to 24FEB. My original itinerary from BOG to SEA included a 4 hours layover at MEX. With the aforementioned schedule change, my layover at MEX has been extended to an overnight layover of 20 hours.



I called the Reservation hotline on the very same night (12/19/2020) and got the displeasure of speaking to the most unprofessional and rude airline staff I've ever encountered. He sounded disinterested in what I had to say and was being very short with me, basically giving me one worded answers to all my requests (can't, no, impossible). He keeps on interrupting me in the middle of my sentences (at least three times). When I asked him to consider using some discretion due to my DL PM/ Skyteam Elite Plus status he admonished me in a boisterous manner that he does not care what kind of status I hold and that my status means nothing to him nor his company. He went on to ask how dare I think that I am more entitled than others just because I'm flying Business Class (or something to that effect), He was literally yelling at me at this stage so I only understood about 50% of what he said. Apparently according to him, an elite level frequent flyer who pays a premium to fly on your Business Class gets the exact same equal treatment as any other passengers. He proceeded to tell me to refund and hung up on me.



I emailed Customer Support on the evening of 12/19/2020 and did not receive a reply until 17 days later giving me the exact same dissatisfying answer and unacceptable options as offered by Reservation. There have been numerous email exchanges with Mr. Peñuelas López from the Customer Support team who appears to be lacking the will and/or ability to assist and basically just copy and pasting his response to all of my email responses.



All I wanted is a reasonable accommodation for the 20 hours overnight layover that is a result of an involuntary schedule change. If I willfully choose Aeromexico knowing there would be a 20 hours overnight layover involved, then that would be totally on me. However, I was lured into purchasing this ticket with Aeromexico believing the layover would only be 4 hours. Aeromexico refused to provide any hotel accommodation and when asked what I should do for 20 hours, they told me I can sit at the airport terminal (Aeromexico lounge does not operate 24 hours and frankly, I wouldn't recommend spending more than 4 hours in that mediocre lounge that charges you extra for hot food).

When I asked to be protected onto their partner carrier (Delta), the reservation agent first claimed that Delta doesn't fly to BOG (which is a lie, as DL flies to BOG from JFK and ATL). When confronted with this information, the agent tried to deceive me by saying they are not actual Delta flights and are codeshare flights operated by Avianca. I gave him the DL flight numbers and eventually he acknowledge those are actually Delta operated flights. But regardless it's Delta or not, he insisted that it is now Aeromexico's policy to only rebook passengers back onto another Aeromexico flight. Unfortunately, AM does not operate to BOG on my day of departure, so they unilaterally changed it to a day before without my consent.



So after 3 weeks of back and forth in telephone conversations and email exchanges. They cited "AeroMexico is conscious about the possibility of changes in schedule which is why we explain in our contract of carriage that itineraries are not been guaranteed and are subject to change without prior notice." I looked at the contract of carriage and have found that part 5.3 is more related to my case which clearly states this should be handled in accordance with Article 52 of the Civil Aviation Act. In which the carrier is bound to provide alternative transport in addition to a 25% compensation. https://mexico.justia.com/federales/...a/#articulo-52.

After I brought up this point, they just basically told me to refund the ticket (to be credited in 12 months) and stop bothering them.



Is this acceptable behavior of a national flag carrier to bully its passenger into accepting an inconvenience solely caused by them and not offer any solution?