swag

Like most of the experienced AA folks here, I much prefer holds. But if the rumored change does happen, for me, it'll mostly mean the increased hassle of canceling and then tracking the refund.

But one factor could take this from nuisance to disaster, and that's whether AA allows the cancel and refund online. If a phone call is required, I dread the day I'm trying to refund a purchase, with the clock ticking, while enduring hour-plus hold times due to some drizzle in Chicago.

sukn

Really confusing communication on this one all over the place.

Hold is going away on April 1st, but now it may initially be limited to phone reservations until they can apply a fix to aa.com. And on aa.com we may get the hold feature and the refund policy in the interim.

AA has nine more days to change their mind again so who knows.

nrr

It is noted, up-thread, that DL, B6 "etc.", make refunds (after cancelling within 24 hours) fast. I don't think DOT specifies a time limit. Should we expect AA to (also) be fast? [There are threads here (on FT) noting (re AA): (1)"old" computer system, (2)pax waiting months for refunds.]
Should AA drag their feet, they might have to create a department just to deal with these issues.

MrAndy1369

I'm not sure what your definition of "fast" is, but on DL, a refund took about two weeks to finally post back to my credit card. Felt too long to me.

arlflyer

My assumption was just that they'd put a hold on the credit card (not to be confused with a hold on the ticket) at the time of "purchase" and then not run it for 24 hours. So the "refund" wouldn't really be a full-on refund, it'd just be a release of a CC hold - like you see when checking out of a hotel. Of course I could be wildly off base here.

RogerD408

Other than feeding the credit back into their system the timing of a refund is up to your card issuer and not the merchant. Some banks choose to process charges very quickly but delay the credit, guess why? They want to keep your money as long as they can. Of the POSs (choose your own definition here) I've worked with, all transactions submitted immediately and our account was settled the next business day. Typically the charge would show as pending on the customer's account very quickly, some credits took days before showing up. There was nothing we could do to make it quicker short of giving a cash refund, which was against the rules.

Moving to a 24-hour refund may be consistent with what other airlines are doing, it will also raise the cost to AA since they pay a fee to process the credit, just like they do a charge. Guess who will be paying for that fee? Personally, I think keeping the 24-hour hold is a better solution and I'd hate to see them add a CC Refund Fee.

Bonehead

This is what UA does and it has worked great for me. It's what AA will do if they know what they're doing.

This is absolutely key. It drives me CRAZY that I have to involve phone agents (and the US mail, for God's sake) at times when making changes/applying things like Certs with AA. If this can't be done entirely online it's a major fail.

arlflyer

Yeah, hopefully they do it that way. Can still end up with some credit being tied up for a bit of time, but much less painful than pushing through the transaction and having to do a real refund.


I'll make AA a deal...they can do away with the reservation hold IF and ONLY IF they do away with paper vouchers and go to only e-vouchers.

My offer's on the table. Your move, Parker. (I am sure he is watching closely )

ashill

I'm pretty sure that a credit card refund fee for 24 hour refunds would not be allowed; the DOT requires a full refund, not a refund minus a refund fee.

3Cforme

Was that a 'risk-free guarantee', cancel before midnight the next day refund processed online/app/by phone, or some other refund (partially flown itinerary?)

brp

Where this would impact me negatively is in a common ticket-buying strategy of mine. If I see a fare I like for a trip I'm going to take, I'll put it on Hold. The next day, if the price is the same, I'll do it again. If the price goes down, I'll put that on Hold, If it bumps up too much, I'll buy.

This will be much more inconvenient with the purchase/refund mechanics.

Cheers.

wrp96

Over the last week I had the best example of why I prefer a hold over 24 hour refund.

A group of us coming from various places are planning a trip to South America. I placed an itinerary on hold, emailed everyone else, everyone else looked and checked what it would be from their area, would those dates work etc. When that itinerary didn't work, we'd change the dates, flights etc. Being able to hold meant we could do this multiple times until it worked - knowing that the price wasn't going to change while we took some time to discuss. If we'd had to purchase to hold the price while we discussed, it would've been harder. I don't know about you but while I have decent credit, I don't have enough credit to buy multiple intercontinental business class trips at the same time, even if I know a refund is eventually going to come on most of them. In fact, most of the others probably would've just given in and booked other airlines instead of going through AA.

JDiver

Added to the wikipost after title changed:


Link to full article from Gary Leff, View From the Wing

ssafro1

I think the better question is 'what is the advantage to AA for switching'. As outlined by other posters, I see a lot of temporary barriers to change (revenue reporting changes, communication, etc.) but I don't see how this benefits AA and thus why they would even consider changing it. The only thing I can think of is perhaps people are less likely to buy a fare (w/ a 24hr refund policy) than put fares on hold for 24hrs - thus taking up seats they could otherwise sell? I don't get it.

ashill

I think there are two obvious reasons to switch:

1) clarity, since every other airline does 24 hour refunds instead of holds. There are fairly frequent complaints in this forum, social media, and traditional media from customers ignorant of AA's policies who get bitten by expecting AA to allow 24 hour refunds like other airlines do. Yes, it's the customers' fault for not checking the AA rules, but the frequency of the complaints is both bad press (unfair or not) for AA and indicative that the situation is confusing to a reasonable number of customers.

2) They presumably now have the data from US Airways to compare directly the 24 hour refund rule to the AA hold rule. They may well have found that the 24 hour refund rule leads to more revenue, presumably since it requires action to not purchase rather than action to purchase. That could well outweigh the initial reservations lost from customers who like the hold. I don't know, but I bet AA does.