hogcard

Booked a vacation to Cancun several months ago. Booked 3 exit row seat as a Platinum member. Wife was checking the schedule today and not only did the schedule change with no notification, we also lost our exit row seats. They kept us in the same seats but on the new plane it is not exit row anymore. Now all the exit row seats are taken.

Called American with no luck. Sent a email complaint and so far no help.

This is BS and not sure I want to keep my status with American if it is how they treat you. I make 2-3 overseas trips per year and can quickly gain status with a different airline. Just have always flown American.

Horrible customer service.

JDiver

Well, schedule and aircraft changes happen, and every airline I know of does not guarantee a seat.

Let's see what AA's Conditions of Carriage (the actual contract between you and AA) state:

Oops! Not much love there...

So, it appears you kept your seats, but AA (Dispatch, most likely,) changed the specific aircraft and your retained seats are no longer exit row seats. You contacted them and I guess they declined to kick others out of the exit row for you (those people would then probably complain of horrible customer service.)

You can now wait and see if those seated in the exit row have status and are upgraded with requests, and jump in to reserve those seats if / when they become vacant, or reserve seats that are better for you (if you hold status, even Preferred or Preferred Plus seats as an alternative.

I doubt you will find any major difference in how these issues are treated on any other airline, and that would even affect people with top status like Executive Platinum on AA.

Safe travels.

Dave Noble

To be fair, if this was on an airline which allows booking for extra legroom seats for a fee, I do think that the issue would be treated differently where the fee had been paid. There are a decent number of airlines who do this (including Qantas internationally); even on a low cost carrier such as jetstar, if a system issue displaced someone from an exit row , they will in my experience, kick someone out of the exit row if the displaced passenger has paid for it

hogcard

You know what? Regardless of what it says, this is horrible customer service. And the fact I have been on hold now for 30 minutes at a time with Customer Relations does not help my opinion of customer service. 3 times. Cut off each time.

In fact, I have no issue of getting bumped if the following had happened:
1. We were notified of the airplane change immediately so that we could go in to see if there were exit rows available. AA never notified us.
2. If you can tell me all the new exit row seats are now held by Exec Plt members, and everyone else got bumped, I am still ok.

Yet, what I assume happened is that there was an aircraft change, we kept our same seat assignments and now exit row seats opened up. For those that booked the flight after the change, they noticed the exit row seats available and took them.

It this is the case, then I will stand by complaint that it is wrong.

Now to top it off, I can't get anyone in Customer Relations to even discuss the issue with me.

JDiver

I agree wholeheartedly. Of course what occurred to the OP is not that at all.

I suspect if the OP used the e-mail form online to contact Customer Relations he might receive some small compensation, but his exit row seats will not be granted back unless they become vacant.

Unfortunately AA does not often contact passengers to let them know there has been an equipment change, nor often with a schedule change. Their antiquated IT system barely seems to keep up with the basics; we always advise folks to "ride herd" on their bookings and check periodically, not because it is right in CS terms, but because it works.

Dave Noble

Indeed, what AA did is perfectly correct and consistent; the passenger had an economy seat and still has an economy seat; all are valued the same

What I was pointing out is that AA's approach regarding exit seats is not the same as all airlines as mooted and on some airlines, they would address the issue since a premium had been paid for them

sica4

I don't see the point in citing the COC? The OP never claimed they were violating the rules, just that it was poor customer service. Quite frankly, he is right. If AA is going to change aircraft they should try and preserve seats, especially for premium/exit seats that a person either paid for or earned via status. Although, OP consider yourself lucky. AA cancelled my brother's flight to Budapest and simply didn't notify him at all. He happened to notice several weeks later when he went to AA.com to view the arrival time to schedule an airport pickup and he notice the JFK-BUD flight was no longer in the reservation.

Experiences like these really piss customers off. AA needs to understand that IT isn't something that only subtracts from the bottom line. People understand with flying there are delays, cancellations, and rerouting however proactively keeping people informed rather than nasty last minute surprises can go a long way.

What is incredible to me is I used the Pageonce app to be notified of any changes in itinerary (any change in date/time/seat) would send me an alert. However AA, in its infinite wisdom, decided recently to block the app from accessing your reservations. I submitted a complaint but only every got a generic response back. Here someone comes along and builds a system that really helps and AA's response is to block it? Just makes no sense to me.

Dave Noble

If they deal with the issue within the CoC then that is not poor customer service, that is poor customer expectations

Poor customer service to me is if the CS fails to fix something that is actually wrong or where the person is , say, rude; it is not poor to tell someone that there's nothing to be done about it if there is nothing to be done

The OP had booked an economy flight, he still has seats in economy and all the members of the group are still together

sica4

The COC doesn't state that employees won't be rude, why do you consider it poor customer service if an employee is rude? As long you are in the same cabin and going to the same destination, they have perfect customer service.

If they are outside of the COC, it is not poor customer service, it is a breach of contract. The COC allows them to switch planes, dates, and cancel your flight. Customer service is how well they manage the impact of these events on their customers.

JDiver

I hear your pain, but until Jetstream comes online, we are shouting into a high wind. In the meantime, keep checking those bookings - because AA has a very poor way of managing these impacts on passengers.

Dave Noble

It doesn't state that they will not be rude, but as far as service goes, it is poor service to be rude

It is not poor customer service to tell someone that they are not entitled to anything when they are not entitled to anything

hogcard

Update:

You are right, I never said rules were not rules. I said it is poor customer service how it has been handled and as you have said in previous posts, it probably will not ever change with this airline.

My first call this morning was with the Platinum agent. She basically would not help me. Fine. I emailed customer relations. They responded quickly and basically said "call us". This is where the frustrations began to pile on. They do not give you a direct line to Customer Relations when you call back. You back through a reservation agent again. When they try to transfer you to CR, they do not answer. Plain and Simple. On one occassion they did answer, they cut me off.

On my 5th call, I was able to get to a agent supervisor who aplogized and contrary to how many of you think I should feel, agreed the process is not the best in the world. He also told me that Customer Relations will rarely if ever answer the phone.

I was finally able to get him to change me to a later flight that had exit row seats available without charging me a $150 change fee, which 2 agents had told would never happen. If you are persistent enough and have enough hair, you can eventually get somewhat appeased. I am now separated from the couple traveling with us (they are Exec Plt) but at least have a comfortable flight home.

mvtm

This happened to me and you know what i did?
I was lucky enough to check the day after my schedule equipment was changed. I always periodically check my schedules because i know AA is too basic and doesn't notify their customers about the changes. They have to improve this, and i agree with you.

Anyhow. What i did was to immediately call the day after for them to reissue my tickets , monitored the emergency row seats and picked them that same day.

So far AA has changed my schedule about 4 times (and every time they changed i grabbed my exit row seats). All my 3 separate PNRs have every kind of possible annotation ever since i issued my award ticket in Jun '11. Connections,equipment, time all have changed since my original schedule. They never contacted me, you just have to try to stay on top of the game and react fast. Of course, i only have this flight booked for this year.. so its easier to keep a record every now and then if you have fewer flights.

JDiver

Many of us did not say it was right, we said AA has a poor process for handling these issues.

By the way, there are no "Platinum agents". It's been said to death, but bears repeating. There are Gold and Platinum numbers, and they get your call prioritized in the normal phone queue; I say this because you did not get some kind of specialized, particularly knowledgeable or elite agent, and you should know that. Our mantra here is to hang up and call again when we encounter difficulties, even if it is an Executive Platinum agent (if they are busy, we get booted over to the normal phone system, too).

Many airlines have problems with these issues - last time I had troubles on UA, I wound up speaking to an agent in India who had difficulty understanding what my difficulty was.

For this issue, you seem to have persisted in some good self-advocacy and had your flight changed with access to exit row seats once again. (Keep an eye - equipment changes can occur at any time, and there are two configurations of Boeing 737s, three of 757s, iirc.)

Your Executive Platinum friends can apply for courtesy upgrades to First, so hopefully they will be well served too.

magic111

It really is FT 101. It has happened to me. After that I thought I had learned my lesson. Than it happened to me in January. Appears the lesson had been forgotten as there had not been any equipment changes for so long it just seem a superfluous task.

To make matters worse it was that one flight where my upgrade did not clear. Back to square one.