js1993

Not normally, but apparently AA is required by law to respond nonetheless. If nothing else, the complaints end up in front of people other than frontline CSRs reading off a memo or who otherwise aren't empowered to help.

From the DOT's perspective, 10-hour wait times for anything should be unacceptable after AA received billions for the express purpose of maintaining proper staffing levels.

Kacee

I suspect the callback time does not reflect status priority, whereas hold time does.

Or it's just totally random.

I really doubt that I'm getting any kind of special treatment. My spend has exceeded the thresholds but it's nowhere near CK levels (and very low this year).
I agree it should be, but when I complained about same with DL earlier this year DOT told me they couldn't do anything.

VegasGambler

I don't think that they are going to care about long wait times on their own, but if the long wait times are causing the customer to lose something that they are entitled to, that might be a different story.

For example, earlier this year I had a ticket booked with JetBlue, operated by AA. I decided l wanted to cancel within 24hr. I was not able to cancel online (it turned out that the JetBlue website could not handle reservations where they were not the operating carrier; I'm not sure if that's still the case). So I attempted to contact by phone and chat (simultaneously). The wait was hours long.

It turns out that I got through on chat and was able to cancel within 24hr. But if the 24hr deadline has passed while I was waiting, and they had refused to refund, I absolutely would have filled a DOT complaint. Their refund obligation does not go away because there is no way to cancel.

This is a little less cut and dry, but yes, the DOT does take an interest on frequent flyer programs. They don't have specific regulations for them but they have regulations for the airline that extend to all of their business. There is a pretty broad "unfair and deceptive business practices" clause which is defined very favorably. In particular, they specifically point out that the harm to the consumer need not be intentional for the practice to be considered unfair. You don't need to claim that they are intentionally refusing to answer people's calls or telling their agents to lie to you so that their SWUs would expire (please don't claim that -- some people have implied it and it's ridiculous) It's enough if their unreasonable wait times and/or poorly trained agents caused you to lose a benefit that was promised to you in exchange for meeting certain criteria (which you met).

LowValueCustomer

If reaching out to DOT, consider including a valuation of the SWU to underscore the significance of what was denied. Because it is an identical instrument to the miles+cash copay upgrades they sell, one defensible valuation might be based on the price AA believes is reasonable for customers to pay for miles (3.76 cpp). So, $0.0376 x 25,000 miles = $940 + $350 (cash copay component) = $1290 per SWU.

LowValueCustomer

lol finally broke through the Blog Wall of Silence

https://thepointsguy.com/news/dont-w...-certificates/

js1993

More victim-blaming. Are there any travel bloggers who aren’t bought-off trash? These people make the Hollywood press corps look like a bunch of hard-hitters.

enviroian

More importantly I'd like to ask those travelers in that pic why in the world they chose AA over QR.

Antarius

This article also conflates three very distinct issues

1. People forgot that their upgrades were expiring
2. People couldn't find upgrade space
3. People who got ....ed by AA's wait times.

.#1 is not a cause for sympathy. It's clearly published and including it in this article is just word vomit. Upgrades have always had expiration dates.

#2 is definitely frustrating. It's been an issue for many of us - I took a flight a few months ago on a 77W where there were 6 of us in the J cabin. This flight only opened up C inventory 5 days before departure. Absolutely ridiculous revenue management planning, as there's no chance in hell that a Wednesday departure was suddenly going to sell out and in the last 2 weeks they'd go from 6 to 52 seats.
That said, this is how AA behaves. So, it's frustrating and has affected most of us, but also something we know is how it is going to be.

#3 no excuse. It's not my job as a consumer to worry about an airlines staffing levels. If I try pulling this sort of .... with my clients, I'd be fired every single time.

LowValueCustomer

Likewise. And that's true if I merely failed to anticipate this sort of clusterf**** -- if I specifically anticipated it and then not only took no action to mitigate it, but instead drafted a memo specifically telling the affected clients to pound sand, I'm pretty sure I'd be basically vaporized where I stood.

Wander19

Yeah, that has happened to me repeatedly since 2021 which is the reason I still had SWUs to try and use. EF showed availability. AA.com showed availability but when you call - no inventory. Hmm ...

VegasGambler

That, and keep it short and simple:

SWUs are estimated to be worth XXX (give calculation above). SWUs are a published benefit given in exchange for meeting certain conditions, which I met. AA does not offer any way to redeem these upgrades except by calling in. I called in X hours before the published exporation time, but AA did not take my call until after the SWUs expired. AA then refused to extend the expiration by a few hours.

The SWUs expired due to AA not answering my call in a timely manner. This cost me an estimated $XXX in damages. Refusing to extend their validity is therefore an unfair business practice.

Wander19

That might make sense as the Eagle Score is supposed to also include customer interaction (i.e. have you complained before) and in my case, I have complained or responded negatively a few times in the last 15 months or so. I provided a low score for our flight back from Greece bc the flight agents were god awful and then we waited 90 minutes for bags in Miami (July 2021). And flying back from Turkey this year, I sent an email complained bc they switched our selected seats after we checked in separating my husband and I and then his new seat ended up having broken TV screen which was ridiculous for a flight that long.

Wander19

I doubt their IT is sophisticated enough to do what it says it does. My CSR was working from home - I could hear the dog barking in background. I guess this explains the constant - let me check on that, please hold - while they call the supervisor. Long gone are the rooms full of CSRs who could just raise their hand with a question.

lightbulbs

Here’s my thesis on what causes the variation in response times (I have no inside insight just thinking it through)

1) on people who hold and sometimes get a faster response: there is a real queue that is respected. When you agree to a call back the system just calls you in your line in the queue. This does not take into helix or other scores just one universal EXP queue (of course CK likely gets first in line treatment). The reason why holding sometimes yields a faster response is because the automated system does callouts and not 100% of people pick up so it is roughly calling about the right number of people so that when you get through an agent becomes available at that time. But there is variability in the pick up rate. When you get a higher than statistically average string of non-pickups, there is not always a perfect balance of callback customers who are ready to talk and the number of available agents. There also might be a number of calls that run faster than normal. When there is an excess of available agents but not enough callback customers ready to talk, the system goes to the next customer who is actually on hold. If there aren’t a lot of people willing to wait (probably very common when the queues are 5 hours) then by waiting you can sneak in line when there happens to be someone available. But this probably doesn’t work as well when the wait is 15 mins and more people just wait. So the benefit is greatest when the queues are longest.

2) on the accuracy of callback time. It’s based on an average call handle time assumption. For Sunday the average was probably off because there was an abnormally large number of calls that took longer than normal because agents were looking for C availability that was hard to find. So people who were quoted 5 hour call backs actually got called back in 8 hours because each call on average was taking 60% longer than normal to handle. They try to account for that normally by giving you a range but sundays average call handle times must have deviated significantly from the norm.

3) on twitter response. When the queues get long they probably have some
heuristics to prioritize certain accounts/posts (eg posts getting a lot of retweets, tweets by people with a lot of followers, public tweets vs private DMs, etc). So the people who got quicker responses exhibited some factors that caused more attention to being responded to faster.

iherebyresign

Anybody get a favorable outcome on this matter?