Morty1944

I recently passed 3 million miles and expected to receive 4 SWU. (I am a lifetime platinum.) Upon checking my upgrade balance, I found that 4 had been deposited but 2 had been recorded as "Used"! I called the AA Platinum number and requested clarification. The PSR speculated that I had been advanced SWUs and that these were now being repaid.

Question: Has anyone else had SWUs advanced and to be repaid at a later date?

The PSR said that I would be contacted by email and that follows:

Dear

We're so glad you contacted us. It's always our pleasure to assist our valued AAdvantage elite members.


Our records confirm that you were accommodated in the upgraded cabin on your flight 1137 from Toronto to Las Vegas on February 18, 2007 and of flight 2026 from St. Louis to Toronto on February 25, 2007. In general, it is not our policy to offer complimentary systemwide upgrades.

However, as a one-time exception we are willing to give you the option to exchange a 15,000 mile award in lieu of each systemwide upgrade used for your flights.

. . . if you wish to exercise the option to utilize miles instead of your systemwide upgrade we await your reply. Otherwise, we hope that in time you will come to agree with our assessment. We value you as our customer and are sorry for your disappointment.


Regards,

Jennifer ...
AAdvantage Customer Service
American Airlines

Questions: How would you verify that the explanation is accurate. I would not have used any available SWUs for such short trips unless they were about to expire. Which may have been the case, as I passed 2 million miles in 2007. In another post, it was suggested that account records could be requested from AA. Has anyone actually requested and received an accounting for travel five years previously.

Based on collective experience, should I challenge the accounting (based on common sense that I would never use SWU for such short trips) or should I simply forfeit the 15K miles and take the two SWUs and run.

The SWUs are quite valuable as I want to travel to business Shanghai in early 2014.

Thanks for your assistance.

vasantn

Yes, there have been numerous such reports here.

Not that I recall reading about.

The latter IMO.

sullim4

Wow...

"in time we hope that you will come to agree with our assessment"? Who came up with that gem? That's kind of a mean spirited thing to say to a customer with 3M miles...

You can try fighting but AA's revenue protection unit is notoriously difficult to convince. Unless you can prove to them that you didn't get an upgrade (boarding pass, etc), I think you're probably stuck.

Flyer_70

I have been a "victim" of future forecasted VIPs and hope you get yours back. In my case I was gifted a VIP as a plat and had never been exp. When I turned exp, they deducted it. Complete crap and after a fight I got it back. Good luck and don't give up the fight.

RogerD408

I had this exact thing happen to me as well. While a Plat I was gifted an SWU and they did not process it properly. There was no indication that anything was wrong at the time. Once I made EXP it was deducted from my account WITHOUT NOTICE! I called to find out what was happening and they had the same story. Fortunately the EXP that made the gift supported my facts but the person that was handling my case would not listen. I escalated via the EXP desk and they returned my SWU only to be taken back a week later. Another call to the EXP desk and they gifted me another SWU and let the deduction stand.

AA should notify anyone that has gone negative to get it worked out while records still exist and memories are fresher. AA.com should let everyone view their account balances and not block it unless you have been issued SWUs (as a Plat I never saw SWU balances and I was on that page often looking at 500-mile upgrades).

Do fight it. If they can't bring themselves to notify us earlier, they shouldn't be allowed to yank them years later!

JPL9869

Is an international op-up going to cost me a future evip?

Do op-ups book into C or J/A?

nrr

Is there a statue of limitations on such stuff? [5 years seems like a long time.]

nrr

OP: Who is your email provider? If it is GMAIL, they encourage users to keep all their messages, so you may be able to track activity in 2007 (GMAIL began in 2006),

Mark_T

This is not unheard of and typically occurs for one of a couple of reasons.

1. You used a couple of SWU but they were not deducted from your total in error. Close to the end of their life you see they are still there and decide to use them anyway even though they should have been deducted. Some years later AA find the original error and that now takes you negative.

2. Someone else offers to upgrade you using a SWU from their account. The processing goes wrong and the SWU is deducted from your account taking it negative, or at some subsequent point the fact that no SWU was deducted is noticed and it is treated as one to be deducted from your account.

If the problem was caused by 1. then you have no complaint, you shouldn't have used the SWU twice. If you did actually let any expire in that year though you should point that out as they will not usually have taken that into consideration.

If 2. then you need to point out where the SWU should have been taken from.

sukn

It's not a statute of limitations thing. Basically these folks were running a negative balance since the day the eVIP was incorrectly deducted.

The ability to run a negative balance also has an upside because in some cases an EXP will be allowed to go negative when they don't have enough eVIPs to cover an upcoming trip.

Cannonball Run

NO the Op Up will not cost a current or future EVIP

As for C or J/A - mistakes are made here on a wide range - usually starts at the desk where the op-up is granted, how they input it.

OP UPs are good

brp

Disagree here. And you are certainly overstating what Mark_T said to try and add teeth to an otherwise impotent insult. If someone uses the instrument twice, then I can see AA's point here. If you withdraw money and and it doesn't get deducted and you spend it again...guess who's liable for the overage?

I do agree that AA need to do a substantially better job in notifying people and this is a serious lack on their part.

But it's not that hard to know if one has been upgraded and how.

Cheers.

sukn

Pulling of eVIPs requires a ticket to be reissued so this mistake does not really happen on the GA level when an OP Up is in play. Much easier for a GA to Op Up into existing inventory buckets rather than going thru the hassle of reissuing a ticket.

The incorrect pulling of eVIPs happens because when elites call in, the agents screen is pre-populated with that elite's information. If the screen isn't properly cleared when the next call comes in, even though the agent will be dealing with a different member and their itinerary, in the background, it is being done with the previous callers account info pre-populated.

You can see how this mistake comes into play when an elite calls to apply an eVIP to someone else, and years later we find out the elite never had the eVIP pulled and the colleague has gone negative since then.

Science Goy

I'm fairly certain AA pulled one of my eVIPs for an op-up a couple years ago (didn't request upgrade, check-in agent asked "Are you *sure* you don't want to use an eVIP?", said no, then found a J boarding pass was waiting for me at the gate). But when I called to complain they gave it back without argument.

Mark_T

That is my experience too, mistakes do happen but as long as you stay on top of things you can get them resolved.

I just wish there are a better online history for SWU usage as right now you have no way to tell which were used for which flights, just a total and no history.

The EXP desk can get the details though, they just need some help sometimes to get the right instrument deducted from the right account