boss315

+1: something missing in the story.

Eujeanie

http://www.aa.com/i18n/utility/milli...e=millionmiler

I still think part of his plan was obtaining LT Gold status. You could still get the credited miles during 2012 with cc spend (the exact timeframe of his buying/refunding/closing accounts).

exwannabe

Spend a day reading over the MS threads on FT (under credit cards), and you will realize virtually nothing is missing in this story.

Either the OP was overly greedy in playing that game, or he did a superb job of imitating the same.

AndyAA

FT is making me a much more cynical (or less gullible) person every day. I really do want to believe everyone's tale of woe, whether its an account getting shut down, or a horrid treatment leading to a double downgrade. Though, more often than not, there is much, much more than the initial report.

Austinrunner

What about the reports of amazing treatment by AA? Believable or not?

Antarius

Don't think he spent THAT much

garkster

AA does not want OP as a future customer -- would any of you in your line of business activity, based on what has been shared? Therefore, they don't have a strong motivation to reconcile.

AA has lots of legal resources -- given that the AA rep cited T&C relating to fraud, it would appear they feel that they have a solid case. Certainly it took a while for them to take action, but I'd think we can appreciate that this is not some off-the-cuff judgment.

AA could be wrong, OP could be wrong, heck, we all could be wrong...even on FT. Then, of course, there's the gray area of misunderstanding, but the transactions are certainly indisputable facts.

At the end of the day, if OP would have had any recourse, not responding to AA in a manner suggesting he wanted to reach an accomodation did him no service, language notwithstanding (and I wholly agree with those suggesting that presentation can be a critical factor in this sort of thing).

The soap opera, however, has been quite entertaining, at least the first 15 pages or so.

1353513636

I'm really curious why, if the spending was just trying to hit minimum spend (there are a lot of cards that give roughly half the bonus for first purchase and the rest at some astronomically high number -- although not so high for a family with kids in college) why they did not make the purchases with UA, or heck, SQ? If they did not expect the miles to be retained, then the 2x miles from AA purchases would've made no difference to OP, and there would be no question of inventory spoilage even being an issue in this case, and then AA would have less of a case. I'm wondering as to whether OP didn't think of this or they had some other motivation for holding AA tickets. Because for a oneworld elite it would provide absolutely no benefit to hold premium space on a Star Alliance carrier if you weren't planning to fly it.

mikeef

They would have been a heck of a lot easier to lug around, that's for darn sure.

+1 across the board.

Added bonus: If you change your settings from 20 posts per page to 40 posts per page, it only takes you half the time to read the entire thread!

Mike

JonNYC

In fairness though, these stories have a pretty unique component to them in that the people who come to tell their story here will-- you're certainly right-- very rarely give the real/full picture at first for very obvious reasons. Other bad/negative experiences with AA that are misreported here (the ones that are-- not to say all are) I'd say are misreported for different reasons.

Since in a good % of these cases I end up corresponding with the busted member in question (this case being no exception) -after- they've sort of "come clean" publicly, I'd say in almost 100% of the cases the person turns out to be a lot more sympathetic and, in some instances, pathetic, than their on-line bluster and defensiveness.

But, regardless, I wouldn't draw too many parallels between people in this situation and the normal bellyaching about not getting what one wants that goes on here sometimes.

sethb

I think AA would have little difficulty in showing their expected losses.

However, there is no way they'd ever do so: they'd need to reveal a lot of extremely Trade Secret data and calculations in order to demonstrate it.

Not at all the same: purchasing Savings Bonds required paying out the money and holding it for 5+ months. Buying coins required no cash outlay, they could be deposited and used to pay the credit card bill (in fact, they could be churned several times per cycle).

I never did that, though; I spent all the coins I got (I basically used no other forms of cash for several years).

Often1

If AA alleges and proves that OP bought a ticket costing $20K and then cancelled and sought a refund, never having intended to fly the ticket and AA can also prove that a seat on that flight and in that class went out unsold (or was sold for less than $20K), AA will have made its underlying fraud case and damages would be $20K (or the difference between $20K and what the seat sold for).

OP could certainly seek to mitigate damages through his case, whatever that might be. But, I do not see AA being forced to reveal any significant trade secrets and I would be shocked if a company of AA's level of sophistication has not designed systems which can generate what it needs without having to rely on data which AA knows it would have to disclose in litigation.

This one is not one of the penny ante scams which pervade FT in which someone has figured out how to get an extra bag of pretzels somewhere by wearing a fake disguise. Once the losses get to the levels here, it's a different world.

Upgraded!

But it's not that simple. Let's say that the cabin goes out half-full, and at no time was it more than half full between when OP booked and when the flight departed. I'd argue that there is no damage to AA; while they didn't get $20k they thought they were getting from the OP they didn't lose any money either because nobody else was prevented from booking. About all they could reasonably sue for are the costs of processing the OP's transaction and refund.

Or, maybe one seat did go out unsold. But in between the time the OP cancelled and the time the flight departed there were numerous other purchases and cancellations. Nobody was prevented from booking anything, indeed AA did manage to sell the OP's seat, but that doesn't stop someone canceling for another (legitimate) reason.

Or perhaps some time after the OP cancels AA introduces a fare sale, with business class tickets for $3k, a lot of people book and the cabin goes out full but with lots of discount fares. How do we know that the cabin wouldn't have gone out largely empty but for the sale?

On the contrary, let's say the flight goes out with four empty seats. In theory, OP not liable for anything. Now let's say AA could prove that the day before the OP cancelled, a family of four attempted to buy seats on the flight, found that only three were available, so bought $20k tickets on UA instead. Is OP now liable for $80k in lost revenue?

I think you see where I'm going with this; it's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be so demonstrating actual damages resulting from the OP's actions is difficult because of all the moving parts and all the levers pulled to move them.

You can send a demand letter and make up any amount you want to bill (like the case of the $75k bill discussed earlier) and if anyone is dumb enough to just pay up that's their problem. But once the courts get involved (which again, they'd have to if AA wants to compel OP to pay) then the burden of proof raises significantly.

Eujeanie

If you're a no-show at a hotel, even if the hotel was empty that night, you still get charged the night's stay.

ninroot

Except OP wasn't a no show. OP cancelled according to the fully refundable fare rules.