84fiero

Are you on the Reddit private sub? Your data point and inputs on surveys would be invaluable. If not, then contact the Doctor of Credit blogger, who is looking into situations such as yours and compiling data - it may help yourself and others too:

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ameri...rewards-abuse/

I hope Degerminator ends up OK, but at least one person has been completely shut down, who also did not "abuse mailers" or anything else improper. And they had no warning from AA...no chance to explain, ask questions, or plead their case. A termination email just showed up in their inbox.

robertablake

I don't agree. But what I do agree with is AA is taking these actions against people abusing their AAvantage program.

Dave Noble

Nope - we cannot
A personal bias is not an axiom
I don't know anyone personally , who has had any adveerse action taken against them or had AA mislead them - then again, none has been attempting dubious activities such as multiple credit card applications, selling miles, using invalid credit cards to hold bookings etc

If nothing has been done that is wrong, perhaps take it up with the card company - it might be able to assist

yulsee

So you're saying AA is an honest ethical corporation? What's up with the corporate boot licking ?

Dave Noble

Oh the irony of such a query in such a thread

tom911

I'll take the bait: YES. I've been an AA flyer for 19 years now and have found them to be honest and ethical in my dealings with them. However, I am not opening multiple AA accounts to generate credit card application codes to use for myself or sell, nor am I applying for an AA credit card every 33 days, or using a targeted offer directed at someone else to apply for a credit card for myself. Would you consider folks that bend the rules in this manner honest and ethical?

Good luck on your class action lawsuit. Please keep us updated.

Antarius

I'd chalk their leadership up to incompetent, but I fail to see how locking accounts for program violations is somehow not honest or ethical.

There are tons of us who arent having issues here. Yes, we ..... and moan about program devaluations (yes they suck), but love the cheap airfare. So win some, lose some, but it is purely a function of economics, not some evil ethics.

orbitmic

I can sympathise with some people who thought they were just ‘playing the game’ (and any critical stance of this should mention that Flyertalk sometimes takes pride in helping people ‘game the system’ in ways which do not always make it easy for people to understand what the limit is - fuel dumping threads, I’m thinking of you...) and now wonder how badly this will affect them. It’s easy to say ‘you should have known’, the truth is that people genuinely often don’t and something they feel was ‘borderline ok’ at the time suddenly appears as a crazy ‘how could I be so stupid?’ soon after.

that said, some of the arguments here really remind me of dare mistake threads and people seemingly trying to convince themselves (rather than others) that surely they have a case! The arguments are always the same: I couldn’t « really » know this was not legit (sort of), if they « really » wanted for this not to happen, they could/would have done x, y, and z (so because the neighbours lock their doors, if you don’t, it means that a burglar is entitled to come in your house?), x and y happened in the past and it was fine, etc.

bottom line is, I’m afraid people caught in this even if they didn’t realise the pickle this would create essentially because they thought ‘everyone does it’ and ‘it’s gone on for years’ dont Have a leg to stand on.

hbtr

No more so than most other companies.

Based on your assertion (I don’t agree that it’s an axiom) what do you plan to do about it? That will be more useful, or at least more interesting, than calling them names.

GUWonder

Given how AA devalues the miles in customer accounts, I would say they are no more ethical than UA or DL. But these US airlines are not an example of very high ethical standards when it comes to loyalty program customers, and thus they deserve no boot-licking.

However, this is FT, where defending a favorite travel service provider or going after critics of a favorite travel service provider is no less par for the course than criticism of the same. And all of this in a playground where there is even institutional bias favorable toward the travel service providers. So boot-licking of sorts is to be expected.

LondonElite

Is this another thread to advocate a crowdfunded class-action lawsuit?

Degerminator

No, she only has 1 AA card. I also fly for work a lot, so I have about 250K miles.

joe_miami

Ouch. Most of the people caught up in this had very few, if any, revenue flights.

84fiero

Especially as it's entirely possible to get 3 signup bonuses in a year just through normal, public credit card offers. If AA now doesn't want anyone to ever acquire more than 1 or 2 AAdvantage affinity credit card(s), then perhaps they shouldn't have contracted with two different credit card issuers to offer a number of personal and business card products.

joe_miami

Just to clarify, in your original message, you said you obtained three AA cards “this calendar year.” How many AA cards have you had, total?