Interesting that call center leaders cannot ensure consistency between reps/centers. Not sure how many centers or reps AA has, but the lack of consistency does not reflect well on leadership.

Nope
 

I emailed AA's customer service department, and after a delay of several days, the answer to my question is a big fat no: no possibility of a paid upgrade for my fare without paying the change fees.

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Maybe try tweeting AA with a link to the image/policy I posted above.

I included your photo of their policy in my follow-up and got this response:

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Having trouble with your links

Policy is current, was expanded slightly last month, actually:

Ur "new fare" would be what u can see on .com.

No, not the "current difference." The fare difference is between the current price of the class you want to fly, and the fare you have already paid AA. There are no savings or arbitrage happening here.

What was the AA customer service response? Can you just copy/paste, because your image isn't working.

What's the expansion? I can see that the policy now applies to BA, IB, JL, AY flights. Also looks like routing between same origin and destination can be changed. Anything I've missed?

Those are the 2 things I noticed

is the free upfaring only from economy to business or first or also in economy from one fare class to another for instance from Q class to V class ( asking because I want to use a business extra bxp3 to upgrade LAX-LHR and trying to figure out the cost)

Only the former, doesn't apply to changes in fare class within same cabin.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with doing up-fares on the following situation:

Employer can only purchase coach seat. Employer's policies require they purchase the ticket (vs. I purchase my ticket and am reimbursed later). If I want to then pay the difference up to a Business/First fare, it would be more convenient for me to let the employer buy the initial coach ticket and then I upfare it directly with AA, rather than dealing with the employer's travel department.

It seems like this shouldn't be a problem, but I'm wondering if anyone on this thread has experience with this type of situation? Has anyone run into issues with their travel departments doing something like this?

thanks,
-BP

What did your travel department say? That's what it's going to come down to. I don't know if it's all that common that airfare gets charged to a central account anyway, unless you have AAirpass or something, so feedback might be limited. At least I've never seen it in the financial industry; have always had a corporate credit card in my name.

That said, I know Delta typically charges $50 to "take over" a travel agent-issued ticket, which they need to do in order to upfare and re-issue it. I'm not explicitly aware of a similar fee on AA, although I believe AA does charge for seat assignment changes over the telephone on agency bookings (which is really just a money grab). Either way, the downside is that your corporate travel agency loses access to the ticket, so you'd have to deal with any changes directly with the airline.

My employer uses Concur and has similar policies. Never had a problem calling AA to upfare. No fee to take over a ticket and no fee to upfare (although I have had a couple of agents need some time to verify the no-fee with their peers). One potential issue - only my employer's travel agency can cancel the ticket, and if I cancel I think the entire ticket value goes to my employer, not me.

One other quirk, and it happens with AS but not AA. If I upfare on AS, the travel agency sends out an updated itinerary - on which my manager is cc'd - showing the new F seats (I think AS creates a new ticket number). So far he hasn't made any comments.