Help with Getting a Refund
 

AA screwed me over on a complex trip I had planned from Boise, Idaho, to Geneva, CH, departing on the 13th of Dec. and returning just after Christmas. I set this trip up to get maximum BA "Tier Points," but it was a real trip where I was going to meet up with friends in Europe and also spend a number of days in Burgundy visiting favorite restaurants. Every segment was in 1st Class, including RT Transcon A321 T flights between LAX and JFK, plus 777-300 ERs between JFK and LHR, also in 1st. BA canceled my LHR-GVA segment on the outbound, so I called into AA expecting to have them change me over to one of the remaining flights on that route. Instead, the agent told me that he couldn't do that, he would have to rebook my entire outbound. First he offered me a BA nonstop flight between LAX and LHR a day later than I was originally scheduled for, and told me that it was in 1st. Later, it turned out that the flight was actually in business, not 1st. I had plans for my first day in Europe which I didn't want to cancel, so he looked for other options and came back with an itinerary from San Diego to LHR, which he also said was in First Class. I asked him what would happen if I just showed up at the airport with my original ticket and he told me that my original outbound had already been canceled "on their side."

So he sends me what I thought would be an itinerary to look at but instead it was an actual rebooking, and the long haul flight on BA turned out to be in Business Class; my original ticket was in 1st. I told him that was unacceptable and then he tried to convince me that my original ticket was in Business, which it most definitely was NOT, and I told him that I would NOT accept what he had sent me, the business class itinerary. He then said that I had no choice other than to accept that or to get a refund. I told him I'd take the refund. So he cancels this replacement itinerary which I never accepted (all of this happened within the space of a single phone call, the new itinerary, my rejection of this, and the cancellation notice, which was a cancelation of the new itinerary not of the original one.)

I filed online for a refund 5 days ago. Everything I can pull up on the website gives me the impression that they are "considering" giving me a refund and they will get back to me. After 5 days of this nonsense, I have filed for a chargeback on my credit card. There is no one to call, only an indication that I can send them a letter by USPS or a Fax (who on earth has a fax machine in Dec. 2021?)

Is there anything else I can do with these people? I have no experience with AA, and given this experience it will be a long time, probably forever, before I try to fly them again. AA ruined my trip, cost me hundreds of dollars in hotel and other cancelation fees, and now they won't refund my ~$4K in ticket fees when they canceled my itinerary for a 1.5 hour flight at the end of a long itinerary?

I'd hate to have to take them to small claims court, but I will do so if they don't refund my ticket and if my Visa card bank doesn't honor the chargeback.

Any suggestions?

You'll get your money back.

Just takes 7-10 business days after filing for a refund for a manual review and credit back to card.
If in fact you cancelled the trip and filed the online refund form correctly- and your refund was due to a major schedule change - your're good.
No further need for action - by late next week you'll see your credit.
This problem is not specific to AA - it's just a super slow process getting your money back from an airline.

Patience is a virtue

It states on the refunds webpages

"Allow 7 business days for your refund if you paid by credit card"

You didn't even wait for that to end before you were onto your credit card. Credt Card companies expect you to have exhaused your remedies with the supplier before contating them.

And you were offerd alternative flights whilst whilst not what you wanted you were still offered and would have meant that your trip - except one day - could still have gone ahead.

Any lost costs because of your decision to cancel the whole trip are down to you not the airline (where you could have made a case for the 1st nights hotel if you had gone ahead with the trip)

The problem is that the telephone agent reissued the ticket with a different ticket number, claiming that the long haul flight was in First but while talking to him I said that as far as I knew there was no first class seating on flights from SAN-LHR with the equipment they are now using for the flights. He insisted that the seat was in first, but then when he sent me the email confirmation (which I didn't even ask him to do because I was waiting for him to establish to me that the seat would be in 1st, which is what I paid for) it was obviously in Business. At that he started trying to convince me that my fare paid was actually a business class fare. This was not true; my LAX -JFK was in F, and my JFK-LHR was in A.

At that point he basically said it was take it or leave it, and I said I was not accepting a re-booking with that itinerary in Business, when I paid for first, especially without any compensation. So he canceled the new itinerary.

I immediately filed for a refund for both ticket numbers. I get confusing information and from what I can see it looks like they are talking about a refund of about $125 on a $3800 ticket.

Do you think I am over reacting in this situation? There is no one that I can call, it's almost two months since the ticket was written and paid for, and the time limit for doing a credit card chargeback is under 3 monhts.

Reacting like you're not going to get a refund when it's been all of five days? Yes, I think you're overreacting in this situation. This a clear-cut situation regarding the refund (a schedule change out of your control and they were unable to find an itinerary to your liking), so I wouldn't worry at all about it being approved and processed. It's COVID times; flight schedules change frequently, so there's not a lot you can do to precisely plan an itinerary. (And really, flying to the inner mountain west in winter, weather can very easily knock the best-laid plans off by multiple days anyway.) It is frustrating that the reservations agent had trouble with the distinction between first and business, but other than that confusion, the agent has no power to create a flight with an F cabin when it isn't in the schedule. It's also frustrating that they couldn't change just the one flight on your itinerary.

Thanks for your response. When I check on my original ticket number request with the link given in the email acknowledging it having been made, I get an error message indicating that they have no record of the request.

When I check on the re-issued ticket number I get a long list of the flights with either $124 as the amount of a refund requested, or of the amount of the supposed ticket less all the fees and other charges so that the amount is about 1/2 of what the ticket cost. I would very much like to think that the AA accounting department knows more than they are showing me. My interaction with the agent on the phone did not inspire confidence in that regard. I have a lot of experience with AS and BA, both of which have treated me well in every circumstance. I have no experience with AA and this one experience instills zero confidence and even less interest in ever booking a trip with them again.

Again, thanks for your reassurance and happy holidays.

Your choice to cancel, and cause the extra costs involved. You were booked to lly during the busy holiday season.
Not all routes have first class, and those that do could have been sold out. As one of the flights was canceled you were free to canceled the ticket and rebook it in any way you saw fit. I would have simplly called BA and asked them if they could replace the segment. I did this in the summer when they canceled my ticket from Genoa, and they were able to switch it to a departure from Pisa the next night. They did this even though the booking at been done with AA. It is a bit odd to be fiing a dispute with your cc company even before actually knowing what your refund actually is.

I disagree with the premise, because the only flight that was canceled was the short BA hop between LHR and GVA, which could have easily been changed had AA been willing to do so; all the other 7 flights in the reservation were operating as scheduled.

As to calling BA, I already did that on this ticket (actually with reference to changing the only other BA flight on the reservation, the return from GVA to LHR on the return journey, which I wanted to change to an earlier flight on the same day). The BA Silver line agent told me that BA couldn't touch the ticket being how it had been written by AA, and that any change THEY made would cause a repricing costing thousands of dollars. So I didn't regard that as an option in this case.

My big error was in not (politely) hanging up on the AA agent and calling back to find someone else with hopefully a higher level of competency and willingness to accommodate a customer who had a PAID first class reservation and at least some level of OW status.

FWIW, the difference between First and Business isn't that great these days. Was it really worth cancelling the whole trip just because of that? As others have said, some routes don't have First.

Regardless, you need to wait longer for a refund. Five days is not enough time, and filing a chargeback may only delay matters more. I've had other vendors who owed me a refund say explicitly not to file a chargeback while they process the refund. Once filed, they put refunds on hold while the chargeback is investigated to avoid refunding and getting a chargeback at the same time.

To confirm, you were booked LAX-JFK-LHR-GVA, with no intermediate stops other than routine, legal connections in JFK and LHR? And, BA cancelled the one LHR-GVA you were on but had other flights on the same day? If so, something doesn't make sense here. This was most definitely a HUCA situation.

I have flown BA in long haul First at least 15 times, and BA long haul Business at least 20 times. I can tell you that there is an ENORMOUS difference between those two products. I also had a 10 hour layover at Heathrow, and with a Business ticket I would not be allowed into the Concorde Room, which is a terrific 1st class lounge (or at least as good as you get in N. America or Europe, with perhaps 1 exception (La Premiere AF lounge at CDG). The BA club class lounges are pretty lousy, especially when busy.

I understand that AA has for at least the covid period had essentially the same service (if not the same hard product) in long haul business and 1st; that is not the case with BA.

BA has been in the process of reducing their 1st class long haul seating and at the same time been slowly rolling out a long haul business class product "Club Suite," which attempts to improve at least the hard product; their existing and dominant long haul business product really and genuinely sucks unless you are fortunate enough to get one of the 2-4 window seats at the end of a row where you don't have to step over someone to get to the aisle. By the time this change was made there was zero chance that I would have gotten even a good seat on that business flight, I would have been stuck in a middle seat, and there is no way in hell that I would pay a 1st class fare and get stuck in one of those old club world seats on a full airplane, just not doing it, maybe for a relative or close friend's funeral, but that's about it.

Yes, that is what happened.

And the agent re-issued a new ticket telling me that I was in long haul First out of SAN on BA, which I questioned him about the first second it rolled out of his mouth, because I know that BA is not currently offering 1st out of SAN. The reason that I would know this is that my elderly parents live in San Diego and I have frequently either begun or ended BA itineraries in that city so as to be able to squeeze in an extra visit with my parents being as I live in Idaho and I can only go to San Diego so often during the course of a year.

To reiterate, the agent told me I was in First, I questioned him because I said I didn't think that product existed, he reissued my ticket anyway, and the first moment I saw what he had done, the ticket had already been reissued and he told me I had no other options other than to cancel.

But enough to cancel an entire trip? I too have flown both and wouldn't have cancelled an entire trip based solely on this.

I guess I'm confused why any of that was changed when only the LHR-GVA leg cancelled and there were apparently other options LHR-GVA.

It's premature to inquire about refund status after 5 days when regulations provides for 7 business days for a refund to be credited back to a credit card.