The long story short was that i arrived at JFK from GRU at 7 AM, my connection was to depart at 3 PM, which, after a series of delays, was scheduled got departure 9 AM next day after the crew timed out at 10 PM!!

The gate agents walked the passengers to the CS service area and started processing passengers accordingly. If you wanted a hotel, you had to pick a hotel from roomstorm.com as that was the partner lodging card they were handing out. That was the only requirement as they repeated it multiple times aloud. I picked the closest one and off I went. It's not my fault that the RoomStorm.com receipt has the price breakdown as:

Hotel Nightly Rate
Tax Recovery Charges and Service Fee
Property Fee
Taxes
Total

My receipt has amounts on the first to lines only and the total. AA has decided to not pay the "Tax Recovery..." which I feel they need to reconsider. I'm not about to hound AA for the money. But I want them to explain why it was decided not to fully provide the reimbursement. I did my part and I expect them to fulfill their end of the agreement.

Thanks for the detail.

The fact that roomstorm.com came FROM AA, should put an end to this speculation that

• AA owes nothing
• roomstorm.com is sketchy
• AA should not pay the fees

You should absolutely push back.

Now I would be interested to know how many other people have had this experience (being given a RoomStorm lodging card).

My gut instinct would be AA would give preference to Booking.com or Hyatt for a program like this.

My lack of experience with RoomStorm personally and having never heard of this specific overnight delay hotel program is now bringing back memories of the rumor that an AA manager at O’Hare was sending delayed-due-to-MX fliers to the Hilton for a kick back.

There’s a good article here about the company, albeit from 2016. It seems that disrupted travelers is their core niche. They are a YCombinator company, which has a decent record with travel startups (AirBNB, Hipmunk, GetGoing).

I am just very surprised this is the first thread on them here in the AA sub-forum and only the third thread about them here on FT period. Either they’re very under the radar or (and I’m less confident on this given OP’s issues) they’re very good at what they do.

This

So, the OP is lying? This questioning, absent proof, is tiring. Either state your claim outright or walk it back and concede.

Just because there isn't a pattern of issues with this site, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There's a long, storied history of AA making stuff up.

No I'm not saying the OP is lying but I completely understand why AA might push back against paying extra fees added on to or incurred by on top of the room rate if somebody did book through what appears to be a completely shady no benefit over other booking site provider.

I tried a dummy booking with them and they offer zero benefit over any other established booking engine. So yeah if their business model is to charge an extra dollar or two per per booking than what another booking engine might charge, I wouldn't pay it either and no employees of mine would be handing out cards for them.

AA just needs to have a pre-arranged distressed traveller rate with a couple of the hotels nearby the airport and be done with it .there's no reason to have a service like roomstorm.com

The OP clarified that AA gave them that site to use. Either AA needs to pay up or the OP is lying about the above. Theres no other option.

Whether roomstorm.com is good or bad is irrelevant to the discussion. If AA requires it for reimbursement, then you use it.

Just to be clear, I’m in full agreement with you on this. There’s zero reason for AA to not have covered the full cost.

I just am very interested in hearing from other customers who have used RoomStorm through AA to find out how long AA has been using them, at what airports, what the user experience has been, etc. In fact if this is the new norm for AA, it would be great to have a FAQ on this topic if we’re going to get more posts about this vendor and possible related issues.

I've never heard of them. I'm honestly surprised that they don't have everyone use BAAH instead to at least let them get a few miles/LPs for their trouble. I'm on the side that this was a shady employee giving these out and not AA officially, but AA should still be on the hook for all the charges given that.

If you scroll through their Twitter feed, there are messages from other individuals indicating that they were referred to the service by AA.

Speaking of Twitter, I would suggest that OP take up this issue with AA via Twitter. As I recently observed on a different thread, the AA Twitter team tends to actually read your incoming messages.

Not very happy individuals, might I add. It seems like this is a rare but not unheard of occurrence.

I also vouch for using Twitter to hear back from AA.

Thanks for the shout-out to use Twitter. I just wish there was a case# I could refer to other than expecting/hoping that this entire chain of events is logged with my AA#.

And just to clear up one point I see in posts after my last one. It's not like some rogue AA agent was handing out this card as part of some fraud scheme. After my A321T deplaned and the GA's were scrambling to find out what was going on, this CS sup spoke to the group and said "Follow me!" We stopped by a gate along the way and added them to the group and we were delivered to a CS station where 4 agents were processing people and handing out the card to those that opted to take the offer to expense the lodging and get reimbursed by AA.

There were a series of delays out West and the ripple effects came as they did. Maybe it was time for AA to hand out tier 2, 3, or 4 lodging vouchers. If that's the case, RoomStorm.com may be the crook with their own "Ponzi scheme".

I don't think you have to worry about all of the details. Just repeat more or less what you said in post #16 above (adding in the amounts charged/amount reimbursed), and give them your AA number if it was attached to your reservation. They should be able to take it from there. Note that there is not (at least far as I can tell) a way to attach a document to a Twitter message, but you can attach photos, so if they need further documentation you'll need to use screenshots. Good luck!

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

What's odd about this is whenever I've been accommodated by AA, they give me a voucher (printed on boarding pass stock or sent by the CS agent to my email with a QR code) that I give to the front desk as payment in full. I've never had them give me a "card" and then had to make my own payment in full and then seek reimbursement. (I know you can voluntary book your own hotel and ask for reimbursement, but that doesn't sound like its the case here.)

So, the AA agent told you you must use RoomStorm, pay in full, and then seek reimbursement from AA Customer Service? (Not doubting you, but hoping this isn't a more widespread new process.)