Originally Posted by
Kacee
They are absolutely full of crap. The agents (and supervisors) are incompetent and work off a script. If you get one who's willing to try and help, you can often walk them through the process and get to the right result, but it seems in this case that (a) OP has not reached that agent (and also may not have the knowledge/confidence level to parse through their bs), and (b) the ticket status is now so royally screwed-up that no one there knows how to fix it. So they just make up a bunch of bs and try to get you off the phone as fast as they can. Just kick the can down the road and make it someone else's problem.
You need to get out of the AmexTravel/Expedia loop of insanity by escalating to Amex's Executive Office.
I agree, I hope the OP already emailed Amex's Executive Office yesterday, but in the meantime I would try for JAL to take over the ticket as a last ditch hail mary before the Amex escalation kicks in.
To the OP: in the event that by the time Amex's escalation team gets to you and the "I" married segment availability I posted upthread is gone, make sure you push them aggressively that you are to be booked in the next available business class of service, be it C class or J class, and Amex will eat the fare difference if they can't get JAL to agree to a no-cost change. You can reference a screenshot of what I posted to show them that during your multiple phone calls, 4 seats of I class existed on both of the flights you wanted, and only due to their incompetence and refusal to help, has that inventory been sold out, therefore any fare difference is now on them.