AA Using Automation for Complaints
 

Quite the damning report from One Mile at a Time that AA is now using “Gemma Flint,” (internally called Fast Eve) which is in fact a bot that only has two preprogrammed responses, to handle email complaints submitted to them whenever they reach a certain volume. If you make an operational complaint it will throw a trivial number of miles your way, and you will have to reply again to get a real person to see your message. Otherwise, you get a (poorly worded) form letter, without any regard to your actual complaint.
I would say I’m surprised, but…

For better or worse, I would expect more companies to adopt this going forward, eventually also for more complicated complaints requiring more sophisticated responses.

Not particularly different from what's been happening for the last decade. Half the time, the responses have nothing to do with the actual issue at hand.

Based on the report I am surprised only by the lack of sophistication of the responses and that a new bot name is not generated for each response.

This has been going on for a while (and I feel like has been alluded to on this forum in the past). Surprised it's only now being called out on the blogs.

How is this news? AA has been sending an automated canned response for quite some years already.

Perhaps the news is that they are using a new system/bot
If the response is going to be pretty much "DENIED" by default, why waste money on a more intelligent bot?

Is this actually surprising coming from one of these blogs?

can try

Mark Ewing
Director, Customer Relations
1 Skyview Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76155
[email protected]
(817) 963-1234

I wouldn't say it is a surprise, but I find the details interesting -- thanks for posting.

If you really want a meaningful response, do what I once did around 15 years ago: print out an old-fashioned paper letter and mail it to a bunch of senior AA managers. In my case, it was replete with photos of all the broken equipment that had negatively impacted my very expensive first class flights (plural). I addressed it to one specific executive and "Cc'd" all the others. I sent the letter via FedEx to the main recipient rather than USPS. The rest went out via certified mail. Not only did I get more miles in compensation than I ever have before or since, I got an apology phone call from one of the VPs.

I honestly do not make a habit of complaining to AA (nearly all of my grievances go on this forum only), and only do so when I feel it's really warranted. But if anything that egregious ever happened again, I'd consider doing the same thing.

So what needs to be said to get the trivial number of miles?

Heh. Turns out I’ve already run across Gemma, and the response I received was nonsensical.

Call me old-fashioned, but I really don’t think that emulating shady insurance companies (auto deny claims and see who appeals) is the right thing to aspire to if you’re a customer relations team at a service-based company.

Doesn’t that just get you an automated reply from AA that it is an unmonitored inbox?

write a postal letter and mail it.

I thought my last answers sounded a bit mechanical. On a 16 hour delay that went form 4pm to 8am I was given car service vouchers for a single company. The company couldn't honor either trip as they were too busy. So I Uber'd back and forth and asked AA for a refund of the Uber charges. The answer I got was a 'bot sounding "Computer says No" with a mention of using delay coverage on my credit card. My reply was that the AA branded credit card I have doesn't have delay coverage!