macabus

Sorry to hear the madness continues Troy.

After 40+ posts of people offering suggestions, I'm not sure there's anything left to recommend.

troyb

Departure to OW origination city tomorrow, OW award supposed to start in 2 days, still no ticket.

I've been told that it has to be reviewed by the OW liaison office, who of course is not in on the weekends. Great. They want me to call once I land in the origination city, which will be less than 12 hours before my scheduled departure on the OW ticket. They won't even talk about "what-ifs" in case the OW liaison office won't ticket my reservation.

Thanks AA, great customer service. I'll make sure to fly you any time I can - and by that I mean even if you actually follow through and issue my ticket, I'll never step foot on another AA operated plane or use an AA issued ticket ever again.

Ajohn

Troy we are so sorry to hear of your continued distress. Let us know if AA does you right eventually. Oh, and I probably wouldn't use the above argument verbatim to them on the phone

Deltahater

Do you promise???


There have been screw-ups on both ends. Be grateful for what you have and enjoy your trip. Or just worry about it the entire time.

BTW, how did you pay for your ticket/fees? In the worst case you can always buy another segment if there is an issue mid trip and have your CC battle for you. My Amex card has been worth its weight in Gold, hhhmmm Platinum 100 times over.

Seriously dude, stop complaining and whining. Air travel is hard enough without self made issues.

troyb

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8310/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Read my posts again man, I don't have a ticket so I currently have no trip to enjoy. I also disagree that there were mistakes on my end.

In any case, I've been more than reasonable in my dealings with AA over the past week, even dropping BOTH of my open jaws even though I had non refundable plans based around them.

As far as purchasing a ticket and trying to get reimbursed from AMEX, I'm just not comfortable doing that. If anything, I feel like I should purchase the entire itinerary - however I'm just not ready to chance having to drop the $8,000+ per ticket, or whatever it would cost, if that all didn't work out.

troyb

Hi,

I'm having a slew of problems with a OW award ticket and start my travels tomorrow afternoon/evening. I won't go into the problems in detail here, some of them are detailed in the following thread:

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=852527

I plan on giving a call first thing tomorrow morning when the department who supposedly needs to weigh in on my ticket opens, however depending on the promptness of their response, I was considering going to the AA Travel Center in NYC. It's a quick taxi for me, so I thought it might be a way to deal with someone face to face. I'm at wits end with this entire thing and quite frankly don't think it will get sorted out in time, at least based on the way things have gone over the past week or so.

I'm sure some here have dealt with these offices before. I've been to the DL one in NYC and they were extremely helpful - even able to do some things that the phone agents were simply unable or unwilling to do, like issue a ticket with my corporate discount. Does anyone have experiences at a TC with award tickets or OW award tickets in particular?

Thanks for any help you can provide, it is greatly appreciated.

warreng24

That's the Catch-22.

FT may have alluded that what you were trying to do was non-valid.

On the phone, some AA agent somewhere may have told you that it was valid.

However, a verbal agreement with an AA agent isn't a verifiable source.

(Unless the OP requested that a comment be entered into the PNR, would that work?)

The best thing would be some written correspondence from AA ahead of time saying that what you're planning on doing is valid.

The good question, is how would one go about getting that written "okay" ahead of time?

I sincerely hope that the OP's situation resolves itself in a manner which is favorable to both the OP and AA. Might I advise though, that more simple travel arrangements may be less stessful and allow you to more effectively enjoy your trip!

cxfan1960

It is too bad that you started the trip already. Otherwise you can add the originating trip to an OW150C instead.

Another consideration is to add SEA-DFW-LAX to your current itinerary (if allowed). It will be an OW150C, but I suppose you can get off SEA and do not complete the rest of the itinerary. That may save you a ticket to SEA and the anxiety of not knowing whether you can get on your trip.

c_stanley

I bet they'll get this worked out. They did promise it to you a few times, it's probably within their power.

If I was in this situation, however, and not totally broke, I'd go to AA.com and buy the miles for cash, and reissue the ticket at a higher mileage level. Then I'd try to get resolution after the fact.

Yes that's fraught with problems, the chances are you will not get that cash back, at best you'll get more miles comped to ease the cost per mile, etc.

But if I was two days away from a trip with plans made and losing it was going to be a catastrophe that's what I'd do. Get it out of the hands of random CS people and back in your control. Get your ticket. Go on your trip, have a great time, and when you get back try to get them to make up for an abysmal customer service effort by comping you miles, status, or anything else the CR department is capable of doling out.

Possibly not the "cheapest" solution. But if I had a trip coming up I'd do it just to push this off and get on with the actual traveling.

JDiver

The two threads have been merged, as they are about the same issue. The thread headline has been modified to add the Travel Center question, for now. This is done for member convenience, and for easier searching.

If there are questions pr recommendations about how threads or posts are handled, please use the Report Bad or Missing Post radio button.

Thanks for your input to this member's challenge.

/Moderator

Plato90s

There's nothing they can do for you in this situation. All oneWorld awards are centrally handled/cleared by the group you've already been dealing with. The ticketing centers can help with some things like reissuing tickets, but visiting them won't get you any new information or resolve the problem more quickly. You'll just be routed to the same people.

Doubly true since it's been made clear that AA can't unilaterally change the rules around oneWorld awards. Partner airlines expect to be compensated for tickets that use their metal. You don't want to pay the extra miles, but AA can't exactly force its partners to accept less.

And the fact that AA got it wrong by issuing you an illegal award before they corrected it doesn't create an exception or an obligation on AA. They're doing their best, but sometimes it's just an untenable situation.

HNL

There is a lot to be said for standing in front of a real live person to getting something resolved - even if they are only acting as the middleman. But one should not get their hopes up too high.

troyb

That's my view as well.

Anyway, thanks for the additional suggestions here. For those who suggested doing a 150C award, that's what they've supposedly been working on. I have the additional miles, but would argue to the grave that I should be liable for them. In any case, they actually refunded the 130k miles per ticket and issued 150k awards - of course, as with every step over the past couple of weeks, it appears that they messed up with giving me the 20k mile credit per ticket that they agreed to (supposedly credited 20k miles to my account as well as my companions when they all should have gone to my account - however neither of us or an agent even see these in our accounts!).

I feel like the original issue has been exasperated by the main "supervisor" with whom I have been working. The problem started out as 2 open jaws, but now involves issuing a higher level award, incorrect crediting of miles, and supposedly - get this, its a new one - a change in award rules regarding stopover/connection time (not the one effective 9/1/08). I mean, late last week I was even told twice, by 2 separate agents, that my ticket was good to go/reissued. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this after explaining the existence of multiple airports in Osaka and Tokyo as well as having to literally read through the OW rules describing the whole connection vs. stopover mileage calculation. Part of the idea of going to the Travel Center was to get someone else involved who might be somewhat more knowledgeable and efficient than who I've been dealing with.

Hopefully this works out. Thanks to those who offered encouragement and suggestions.

HNL

You really should check that expectation at the door... These folks will be the ones to directy call various agents - not break the rules.

troyb

How does getting someone more knowledgeable and efficient equate to breaking the rules?

What I was hoping for is to get this resolved as soon as possible. I would expect that someone calling from a Travel Center would be able to get in touch with the right people quicker than myself dealing with a phone tree and level after level of AA agents - who apparently cannot help resolve anything.