Originally Posted by
ttuna3
How/when did you find out about it? Also did you get any other notification (usually an e-mail) from them?
If you went to the airport and got the word there then if they don't have a very serious proof (eg an email) then it's an IDB and they're now on the hook for your expenses (reasonable) including lodging and food, etc... Also there's a rather large payment due to you as well.
Did you escalate to a Supervisor and then a Manager to see what they could do? A lot of agents just do the absolute minimum and/or don't have the authority to reinstate things after a change is made, especially if there's no seats in your cabin. You'll need someone with greater authority to make anything happen.
If there was an AA FUBAR then you should get in touch with them and work something out. CS is very slow to respond, Chat and Twitter agents are usually a lot better and will almost always get the right level of people involved.
They messed up one of my reservations a while ago during a schedule change and it took a chat with a Manager to get things fixed after about a 45 minute call and being passed around from Agent to Supervisor to a Manager before they finally got it right.
If there's a connection or two involved it might just be that the system messed up with something (usually for me MCT) during the schedule change process. I've had a bunch of them where I get rebooked in the middle of the whole process when all of the changes haven't been completed in the system and the rebooking system jumps in way to early and makes an absolute mess of things and required human intervention.
So, I didn’t find out until I got to the airport. I had an in-app message from 24 hours before departure telling me to check in. Since a covid test is mandatory for departure, you can’t check in online. I ignored it (for good reason) until I got to the airport.
I escalated to everyone I could, but in the end everyone told me to just contact customer relations (email only). At points I was on the phone with multiple agents at the same time.
I used both twitter and phone to contact them. They did not want to help me on any platform.
It was a multi-leg itinerary and more complicated than a common roundtrip, but even one of the phone agents confirmed that they don’t normally make a change unless the customer confirms it multiple times. I was informed that they do place the temporary reservation to check the price, otherwise the other team won’t check the price.
Originally Posted by
Finkface
If you read the Twitter feed the OP linked, it gives some detail. The OP called in to inquire about changing the flights on Oct 2. AA told the OP there was no fee to change the flights and the OP said “okay” but didn’t mean “ok, make the change”. Something else transpired and they asked him what seats he wanted and at that point, his phone disconnected. He assumed no change had actually been made so didn’t check further. But AA claims “We've done an extensive review of your booking. The change of date from Oct 04 to Oct 07 was done upon your call-in request made on Oct 02”. At least that is what I garnered from the Twitter exchange he posted. It seems a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
So nothing else transpired, I said okay expecting it to be the end and stopped holding my phone like an idiot to try to maintain service. I heard the seat question right before disconnecting. I do understand that it may be some miscommunication, but the system on my end didn’t update. I work in tech, and if the change had persisted early enough I wouldn’t have gotten the app notification. If they are hard coding those notifications without checking for itinerary changes first, that’s poor programming on the company’s end and is there fault.
Originally Posted by
ttuna3
FF and OP,
My Twitter isn't behaving where I'm at right now, what you said makes sense to a certain extent. I'll double check when I get to a faster connection.
I'm a little surprised that AA didn't send a confirmation email or tweet. I get both every time I change flights or dates, and a tweet when I change from my AAdvantage number to my BA number. Chat always asks me to confirm that I've at least got the email and usually has me do a quick check to see if things are all right.
Given the current state of airline IT(especially DL, AA, and TP) , I check everything any time after I deal with an agent.
I got no confirmations ever, but they do assert that they sent the emails. I have no record of receipt through gmail, no matter how hard I look.
Originally Posted by
sbrower
Actually, at the point they asked "what seats do you want" I think that it was 100% on the OP.
I disagree with this as I had no reason to expect a question like that when my request was so specific.
Originally Posted by
kbooks66
There was clearly a miscommunication here, but I don't think it was on either party. The bigger issue is why did the OP have to wait 4 hours to talk to a Customer Service Agent. The Pandemic is not new now, we have been like this since February/march of last year (longer for some places) why haven't airlines been able to get their call centers properly staffed. I have been in OPs shoes, disconnected after waiting several hours to speak to a CSR. You at that point have to determine is it worth another 4 hours of time to wait to start completely over on the booking.
Any wait longer than 30 minutes at this point is unacceptable.
I also don’t understand why they can’t just call me back, they have all my information pulled up. My phone number is 100% in their records. In the morning around 7am EST, the system said a 15-ish minute wait so I stayed on hold. I was on hold for over an hour…
Originally Posted by
sbrower
I think that any wait longer than 5 minutes is unacceptable. If I want to change, cancel, buy or otherwise deal with it, they need to deal with me ASAP or else it is unreasonable to ask me to change/cancel/buy by a certain deadline. (Yes, I might defend their legal right to offer terrible customer service, but I also reserve the right to say it should be reasonable.)
The bigger problem is that I couldn’t change my itinerary online at all. If I clicked the button, it told me to call. The problem is when the ticket originates in a foreign country and is sold in that country, they are bound to that country’s laws. Luckily for me, Korea has heavy consumer protections for this, which is why they’re legally obligated to have this damage collection form.
Airline required legal damage relief claim form
Originally Posted by
ttuna3
Finally got Twitter to behave and read OP's original thread.
I'm kind of surprised that the Twitter team even touched this one.
I do agree that OP had a major issue with CS changing the ticket on just a single OK. I was dealing with them on the phone (Skype) from Ascension Island and they were very careful to make sure that I really wanted to change things. It helped on that that I'd already checked the flights I wanted. My choices ended up with a net credit and as I noted up thread the AAgent made sure that both the change and credit emails made it to my inbox. I also did it from the ship a couple of times with the Chat team and lost the signal a couple of times and they went "All Stop" when we lost the connection (one was aa.com logging me out for inactivity) and resumed at the last spot we both had good contact and finished up from there, even if it took a couple of tries to get everything finished at least once (reservation not chat). Generally they've been very careful to make sure that that's what you really want to do before they commit anything.
I also agree with sbrower about the waits to do almost anything done with CS without a call and a long wait. I'm going to put a lot of the blame on both the actual CS bosses, the IT folks for making it necessary to call (chat, DM, whatever else) CS for what should be a routine transaction, and especially Mahogany Row (I'm looking at you Dougie and Robbie) for letting this mess continue.
I felt bad because I knew my anger wasn’t necessarily at the many agents I talked to on the phone. A couple of them definitely refused to attempt to help and felt my rage though. I spent 5-6 hours on the phone and in the end had to buy another ticket via star alliance carriers, transfer to another airport, and am still sitting at LAX waiting to finally depart to Korea. Why I couldn’t edit my flight online? I will never know.
Originally Posted by
StevenSeagalFan
Any Insight at to whether this was booked directly on aa.com ?
I priced the flight via google flights, and then booked directly, but instead of sending me to the regular AA site I booked through some AA amadeus site. I was never able to make itinerary changes online, and it always took like 30+ minutes to get a price check for a change. I actually changed a few legs and inquired previously, since my schedule was changing a lot. That’s why I don’t understand why this happened for this leg only. If a mistake was going to happen, what about the other 3 price change inquiries I made for shorter domestic legs?