shaqintyre

Hello, I purchased and ticketed a non-refundable ticket on AA today over the phone w/ a $100 change fee. Since it has been less than 24 hours, I know there is frequent mention of a 24 hour cancellation policy w/o any penalty on some airlines. Does this apply to non-refundable purchased tickets on AA over the phone & would this be subject to the $100 change fee?
Thank you for your help

iluv2fly

United has this policy. Unfortunately, AA does not. I clicked to buy a ticket and when I saw the confirmation 30 seconds later, I realized I chose the a.m. flight instead of the p.m. flight. A call to AA not even a minute later to CHANGE the flight to the p.m. one (same price). AA charged me the $100 fee. No waivers, no favors, no sympathy. And no crying in baseball.

sowalsky

I've purchased a flight on aa.com before, and for some reason it was not ticketed immediately. When I found another flight with better times at the same price, I called up. (This was before I had elite status on AA.)

The agent I spoke with offered to put a "stop" on the ticketing and then changed my flights for free.

Go figure.

ajacpril

I had purchased a LGB-JFK r/t last year and then realized (3 hours later) that I did not need the return segment.

The AAgent I spoke to cancelled the return leg and issued a voucher for the return which I got in the mail a few days later.

Guy Betsy

If it sounds like a reasonable explanation to AA, they *might* waive the fee. It also depends on your status with AA.

Each airline is different in offering such requests and would rather treat each booking as a case by case scenario instead of etching it out in stone.

SAT Lawyer

Status certainly doesn't hurt. But what's really critical when it comes to avoiding a penalty for changin/cancelling a "non-refunable" ticket on AA is whether the ticketing process -- not to be confused with the reservation process -- is complete. Sometimes if you act fast (and get a sympathetic agent), you can avert the fee.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Each airline is different in offering such requests and would rather treat each booking as a case by case scenario instead of etching it out in stone.

Well UA is different: they explicitly allow a 24 hour period of buyer's remorse. Good for them. One area where they are decidedly ahead of AA.

mitchell

NW and UA both have a 24-hr cancellation period.

CO does it case by case within 24-hrs.

srizvi1

Sorry to bring an old thread back from the dead, but I was hoping to help save someone else w/ all of this (this thread comes up first in search for "AA cancel 24 hours"). I've just dealt with a big headache in my travel plans because I assumed that AA (all airlines for that matter, had a 24 hour cancellation policy).

Yesterday, My wife had held tickets for both me and her to Miami on AA. I am flying out two days before her so my held tickets expired yesterday at midnight, while hers expired today at midnight. We didn't know that so when we realized my held ticket expired, I scrambled today to figure out how I could join her on her flight back, but unfortunately, it just wasn't cheap on AA. So I found good seats for me going back and forth on southwest (to Ft.Lauderdale) and good seats for her going on Airtran and coming back on the same southwest flight.

So after she booked her flight on Air Tran and Southwest, she canceled her AA ticket.. that's when we found out that AA didn't have a 24 hour cancellation policy which we thought all airlines did (We assumed by law). So she couldn't even get it reinstated for the same price (it was going to be $400 more), but fortunately, I was able to call in and get it reinstated. The supervisor suggested that I e-mail customer relations to try and get out the ticket, but I would need to know now if it was possible or not.

So I called AirTran next (she was going to deal w/ southwest) and since it was w/in 4 hours, we were able to get the credit w/out any penalties. We'll be using that credit to buy my ticket to Ft. Lauderdale (I can fly both Southwest or Airtran there for the same price). She just has to set up an A+ account so that she can use the credit saved on the record locater for this canceled flight to by my ticket (after I use the saved $90 credit, there should be a $20 credit left - which will prob go down the drain because we rarely fly Airtran).

and then finally, she got the credit for southwest and we'll just sit on that because southwest credit is easy to use (we fly to chicago a lot out of baltimore).

I just bought my one way return ticket for her AA flight for $180 - she had paid $175 for her round trip flight.

What an annoying day - thanks AA, Airtran, and Southwest for not giving refunds w/in a few hours. I hope United still does this.

gemac

Hi, svrizv1. Welcome to Flyertalk a year ago, and congratulations on your first post.

AA has never, to my knowledge, had a 24-hour cancellation policy. They do allow you to hold tickets if you are not sure if you want to purchase them. Most other airlines don't let you hold tickets. I know of no airline that allows you to hold tickets for 24 hours + and then allows you to cancel purchased tickets without penalty for another 24 hours on "non-refundable" tickets. Some people prefer to purchase the tickets, then refund them if they decide against it, others prefer to hold the tickets, then purchase them when they are sure.

I had a boss once who had a saying about the word "assume", but I won't go into that. Better to say that information is almost always better than assumptions. You have come to the right place for information. There was a nice thread here on this very topic about a month ago, so if you had been here then, you would not have had this bad experience. Please stay around and absorb as much information as you can, it will certainly make your flying experience better.

srizvi1

Yeah, I know it's my fault that I shouldn't have assumed that there was a 24-hour policy, but I really thought it was something that was sort of mandatory by law. I'm disappointed there isn't because this is pretty crappy - what if someone books the wrong flight? I've done that before. In this particular case, I was trying to take advantage of a pricing benefit, so I am not terribly upset with what happened.

I think it's an unethical business practice (if UA can do it, why can't AA) and while I won't swear off traveling on AA, I will consider other options before going with them.

One more gripe - when I spoke w/ AA, they suggested I e-mail customer retentions with the situation, but I was annoyed because I couldn't call them. It would have been difficult to wait for a response.

FlyAO2

AA's argument would be there is no REASON for them to do it. The reason UA & DL allow you to cancel within 24 hours is because they don't let you HOLD a reservation.

If you find a reservation you like on DL you have to buy it; you then have 24 hours (actually till midnight the next day) to decide if you want to cancel it for free. On AA you could just press HOLD.

Basically the same net result

onobond

The HOLD function is very useful. The difference with DL is that you actually bought a ticket, do nothing and there you are. With AA hold - do nothing within the stipulated time frame - midnight next day or even some days later, and it's reserved til that minute, when it's gone

flipside

Weird.. I messed up one of my JFK-GIG bookings last week (picked the morning JFK-MIA instead of the evening one) and the lady on the phone said, "oh no problem, 24-hour rule" and changed the flight, after it was ticketed.

Looks like an extreme YMMV and "call back until you get the answer you want" situation.

aaupgrade

Not weird or YMMV, just a totally different situation. It is pretty much SOP to allow changes on same routing within 24 hours of ticketing. There needs to be the same inventory on the changed flights in order not to incur additional charges. This 24 hour policy does NOT apply to refunds/cancellations.

Oops I booked the wrong date... Oops I booked the wrong time... no problem correcting within 24 hours of ticketing.

brp

Then just change the flight within 24 hours, as noted by aaupgrade

It's not even "pretty much SOP." It's a hard-and-fast rule that the agents have (sukn has done a fair bit to confirm this). What is odd is that this doesn't seem to be published anywhere in the public view. It's like they will undeniably do it, but they don't really want people to use it, so they don't tell us.

Cheers.