Global321

Most of the time the police take a very 'nice' tone with a suspect... put them at ease.

I would think AA Security could follow a similar tact... be nice, gather the information to help... and go from there. Get people to lower their guard. Innocent people would be even more willing to provide information... Violators might be lulled into slipping up.

danielonn

Here is an idea. Why can't airlines have us Record a Few Seconds of us reading text both online and for the phone. When our account populates the agent listens to our voice puts us on hold and listens to our 20 second clip. If the agent has any doubts they would automatically send the call to the Security Department who would further ask questions before proceeding.

Online you would enter a Pin plus have it recognize your speech. If it has any doubts it would lock your account until you can verify.

Now if there is an emergency such as a relative has to cancel your reservation AA could have a special protocol where they would ask the person to Fax in a Copy of their ID plus ask questions and if they are doubtful ask for a Notarized Letter to be sent in before anything can be done.

Also shouldn't the OP have gotten an e-mail from AA that miles were used or an address was changed. I think AA should be sending an e-mail to the last used e-mail address as well just in case it was a hacker changing the e-mail. Why are the agents so dumb and not pry by asking a few questions such as please fax a PGE Bill and ID to change your address?

So what your saying I could call into AA and book a trip using my neighbor's information. Not that I would do it. But its too easy to look up another person's AAdvantage number . You can get their date of birth easily online at Familytreenow.com and voila you can hack the account. Or one could just purchase a Background Check and get more info.

But OTOH doesn't AA ask for things like when was your last flight? Your Mother's Maiden Name? And even still the account got hacked and miles redeemed.

danielonn

I would begin the letter by stating that on said date of fraudulent ticket I was at home(or wherever you were along with supporting details such as receipts phone records etc). I have no plans to travel to XXXX -XXXX as I have work obligations at CompanyXXX. Should you need to contact my employer to confirm that I am at my home worksite please feel free to do so.

Signed Respectfully

XXXX

arollins

Fax a notarized letter? Really, like you can not copy and paste and fake this. That is lame. I laugh when I have to do this.

kmersh

Not to get off-topic, but I wish that the Police Officer I had to deal took a nice tone with me. He barked at me a few times once telling me that he has been waiting for an 1 hour and half and he had to get back out on Patrol and I should see his arrestee immediately.

Regardless, I guess in cases of fraud where the victim had miles stolen I think AA should send a letter saying something like we are investigating a potential misuse of your miles and we would like to gather some info so that we can re-instate your miles ASAP.

Global321

It would be simple way to approach it. And I would be more willing to provide everything I can, versus you may have violated the program and we want info.

JonNYC

In this case, though, the letter from Corp Security was the standard form they send out to any member suspected of selling miles, they were not approaching it as "victim had miles stolen" and they didn't believe that was the case.

As to the WHY'S of them not knowing/believing from the get-go that Gardyloo was an innocent victim, well... that gets into some deeper woods... But, the questionnaire they sent was the standard "we've caught you" letter, no deviation therefrom.

The fact that we know (and love) Gardyloo, and had-- importantly-- heard his side of the story first, changes how we look(ed) at it-- not how they did. Not to make apologies/excuses, etc., the awards that were redeemed are far, far more often associated with brokered tix rather than stolen miles tix-- not his fault, but explains a bit of the suspicion/ bad presumption.

freeflyin

I might be inclined to agree-except that the OP was the one who alerted AA to the theft and appears to have done as much as he could to help AA investigate,given that it was a weekend. Security is one department that should operate 24/7

JonNYC

The people he was in contact with were not Corp Security and conducted no investigation.

kmersh

That makes sense and I can understand that, but miles stolen at least to me a lay person seems rather cut and dry.

anabolism

I read some of the posts here as suggesting that AA Corp Security try a friendlier, more neutral approach in their first contact letter, regardless of the circumstances. If I understand those posts, the thinking is that doing so would be much nicer for anyone who turns out to be innocent, and possibly disarming to someone guilty, making it more likely they might reveal more.

The fact that Gardyloo had alerted AA to the problem before Corp Security came into the picture should have been taken into account. I realize Gardyloo spoke with RES (since ACS was closed), but AA should have some way for RES to take some action in cases such as this (flagging the account, alerting Corp Security, etc.)

richarddd

Companies tend to consider the costs and benefits of fine tuning their policies in order to deal with highly unusual cases. They often decide it's better to clean up those cases when they happen then to revamp policy to eliminate those cases. Even seemingly insignificant small changes in policy have costs, in training personnel if nothing else.

Credit card issuers are an example. For a long time they decided the costs of more security (both in dollars and customer inconvenience) outweighed the benefits of avoiding the occasional large scale breach.

kmersh

That was my thinking, I can understand being harsh when AA Corporate Security has discovered an anomaly that needed to be investigated, but when the victim reports a theft of miles, etc. it would seem to me that Corporate Security should have a different letter in those cases.

My reading and I might be completely wrong here, but it seems that Corporate Security didn't get the right message and had on their we have caught a bad apple hat instead of the we have a victim that needs to have his/her miles back hat.

Just my two (probably wrong) cents.

JonNYC

No doubt that would have been a more suited to this circumstance, but this was really a very unusual case-- part of the unusualness, yes, for sure, came from the fact that we know the person and hear their side before they got the letter-- but compared to the dozens and dozens of acct problems I've been exposed to through FT on this front, this really was very, very unusual.

anabolism

Fair enough. I'd note that, from reports and personal experience, this sort of thing is likely to happen more often, so if AA had some way to handle such, it might be helpful. (My BA account was hacked and miles stolen/redeemed; I reported it to BA EC, which sent it to their corp security, which locked the account with zero communication to me, and kept that up for several months, then suddenly one day the account was unlocked and the miles restored.)