Mile Reward Christmas (almost) horror

Old Dec 24, 2019, 10:30 am
  #1  
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Mile Reward Christmas (almost) horror

My daughter, husband, and 15 month old daughter are visiting for Christmas. They live in Boston and we live in Santa Barbara area. No non stops are available. In September, I booked the best flight with three seats together using MR. 300,000 + . I have over 2M. We booked with American Express Travel with agent. I am Amex Biz Plat.

We go to check the reservation last week, American Airlines had cancelled the entire booking. Amex claimed that they sent me emails and called my phone. I have no records of that. I then try to rebook. Best flight gone, no seats together, and an extra 600$. I called travel and no joy. My fault, I guess. Amex had transferred the miles to the travel and reimbursed me in dollars. After the cancellation they credited me for the tickets in cash $3,000+ but did not reimburse my MR.

After several calls, they agreed to give me back the MR for the trip. They would not reimburse extra expenses. they did put in a claim and said it would be 20 to 21 days.
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Old Dec 24, 2019, 6:39 pm
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I guess as a reader of this thread I'd like to find out more detail.
- Why did AA cancel the itinerary? Was in a 737 Max issue? A problem with the acceptance of payment by AMEX? In my experience when AA cancels a flight they ask the passengers to call in and they will reaccommodate. Rarely do they do all the legwork for you to get a refund of your booking. We've all seen the threads about the need to manually cancel then head to the Refunds webpage to enter all the info to even start the refund process.
- Reaccommodate. AA is also pretty good at making room on any of their flights without any further exchange of money if there is a schedule or equipment change. This goes back to the first question, why was the itinerary cancelled? If an agent requested $600 more to put you on a different flight because of their own schedule problem then you probably just got a bad agent. They have a lot of latitude when it comes to rebookings due to their own issues when they contact revenue management.

My advice - find out why the booking was cancelled.
- if AA did it then depending on the reason, you should ask AA for compensation if they refused to reaccomodate you in a 1:1 exchange - and should not have asked for more money. If they gave you options and you refused them for whatever reason then that is different. They tried and you declined.
- Again it's not clear why a whole itinerary can be arbitrarily cancelled and AMEX Travel who supposedly is your travel agent didn't contact you. If you truly believe that there was a change in your itinerary that you were not notified then escalate the issue to AMEX Corporate for them to investigate after you've checked your junkmail folders to make sure you didn't miss anything.
- Only after that investigation is complete - if they can't prove that they sent you any notice - should you go after AMEX for their mess up.

But to be honest there is not enough information to fully explain what went on here and even if it is someone's fault - who to lay the primary blame.
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Old Dec 24, 2019, 9:05 pm
  #3  
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AA cancelled. According Amex payment was refused. AA tried to get money from Amex and they denied the points. Since the cancellation was in late September, and I discovered this in December, I felt that my only recourse was Amex. They used my card yo make the reservation, they had the miles, they refused the transaction. It was late December and family was more than anxious with infant.

I cancelled my old platinum in August, and made the reservation in September with new card. My theory is that some back room computer system tried my old number. Also it was AA to SBA and jet blue from LAX to BOS non stop. Since I made the reservation on the new card and charges went through my new card, I think it should have worked.

They should have records of the emails and phone calls. This is not my first flight. I make the reservation and use tripit to manage. I forward reservation to daughter and save. This time I did not save to tripir because it was not my trip, perhaps that would have saved me.

Yes, they have flexibility but during Christmas you sometimes get there from here.
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Old Dec 24, 2019, 9:19 pm
  #4  
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I'm confused in many ways. To me, $3,000 for (three?) domestic tickets purchased very early seems like a high price. If AA refunded the $3,000, why should you also be promised by AmEx that they will return the 300,000 MR points? This sounds like you're already being refunded twice for the tickets and you want more than that.
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Old Dec 24, 2019, 10:04 pm
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Wait, so you got the cash, now you want 300k MR too? I don't follow the reasoning behind that.
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Old Dec 25, 2019, 6:47 pm
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Originally Posted by sjordan93436
American Airlines had cancelled the entire booking... Also it was AA to SBA and jet blue from LAX to BOS non stop..
Is the B6 flight still intact or did it get canceled too?
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Old Dec 25, 2019, 7:08 pm
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The details are terribly confused. It would be most helpful if OP would walk through the timeline in a clear way.
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Old Dec 25, 2019, 7:34 pm
  #8  
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Originally Posted by sjordan93436
My daughter, husband, and 15 month old daughter are visiting for Christmas. They live in Boston and we live in Santa Barbara area. No non stops are available. In September, I booked the best flight with three seats together using MR. 300,000 + . I have over 2M. We booked with American Express Travel with agent. I am Amex Biz Plat.

We go to check the reservation last week, American Airlines had cancelled the entire booking. Amex claimed that they sent me emails and called my phone. I have no records of that. I then try to rebook. Best flight gone, no seats together, and an extra 600$. I called travel and no joy. My fault, I guess. Amex had transferred the miles to the travel and reimbursed me in dollars. After the cancellation they credited me for the tickets in cash $3,000+ but did not reimburse my MR.

After several calls, they agreed to give me back the MR for the trip. They would not reimburse extra expenses. they did put in a claim and said it would be 20 to 21 days.
Originally Posted by Often1
The details are terribly confused. It would be most helpful if OP would walk through the timeline in a clear way.
More details needed. Including how the MR points were obtained ", I booked the best flight with three seats together using MR. 300,000 + . I have over 2M."
Booking cancelled but the flight was/is still operating?

May or may not be related:--> AA potentially closing accounts due to credit card churning/churn
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 12:03 am
  #9  
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Originally Posted by sjordan93436
AA cancelled. According Amex payment was refused. AA tried to get money from Amex and they denied the points.
When you purchase a ticket with points through American Express Travel the full cost of the tickets is charged to your American Express card. Then, points are redeemed to offset the charge. The airline has no knowledge of the points redemption. Were the tickets charged to your card?
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 4:25 pm
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It sounds confusing because it is.

1.We made reservation for an open jaw trip- three economy seats bos-sba. Lax-bos. The weekend before Xmas to the weekend after New Years. Yes, high prices but I paid points, Boston and Santa Barbara are not cheap.

2. they took out 300,000 + points. Yes, more than 1,000 per seat.

3. two days later they credited me with 3,000 plus dollars. (And30,00 points MR) That must have been since they cancelled reservations because AA said my credit card was refused. I do have 2,000,000+ MR. They do have my correct CC or else they could not have made reservation and transferred MR.

4. They said that they tried to contact me by email and phone. I assume “they” were Amex travel since I never contacted AA or JB and I was talking to Amex travel at the time.

5. Dec 15 or so. We discovered that our tickets were cancelled.

6. We made new reservations at more than 4,000 for three tickets (ouch, ugly price, I know).

7. I complained and they gave me back the mr. They are looking into the entire transaction

So it is true that they gave me back MR and money. That was a mistake on their part, I assume they will correct it. In that case I will be out 4,800 for three tickets. I do not think it fair to Amex for me to profit on some blunder.

confusing yes. Makes any sense- no. What if we tried to check in 24 hours before? Then the big gouge.
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 7:04 pm
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Was there an issue with the Amex CC?
Expiry date?
Used OK on other transactions?
Did you used the same cc on the $4000 purchased flights?

Booking cancelled but the flight was/is still operating? Or was there a change?
What is the timeline? Many days/weeks/months between when reservation made and date of flights?
Did you get an e-ticket? (Not a PNR reservation)
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 8:23 pm
  #12  
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Originally Posted by sjordan93436
It sounds confusing because it is.

1.We made reservation for an open jaw trip- three economy seats bos-sba. Lax-bos. The weekend before Xmas to the weekend after New Years. Yes, high prices but I paid points, Boston and Santa Barbara are not cheap.

2. they took out 300,000 + points. Yes, more than 1,000 per seat.

3. two days later they credited me with 3,000 plus dollars. (And30,00 points MR) That must have been since they cancelled reservations
well, it’s confusing because the way it’s written. Many of the details are irrelevant. Open jaw, route, baby... just the facts, please

Use $ to indicate currency. And check the numbers, what are the “30,00” I bolded? Should it be 300,000 MR points? If so, did you not wonder why you got 300,000 MR points back?
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 8:50 pm
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Originally Posted by Mwenenzi
Was there an issue with the Amex CC?
Expiry date?
Used OK on other transactions?
Did you used the same cc on the $4000 purchased flights?

Booking cancelled but the flight was/is still operating? Or was there a change?
What is the timeline? Many days/weeks/months between when reservation made and date of flights?
Did you get an e-ticket? (Not a PNR reservation)
No problem with the card. It was one month old. I had cancelled another plat card a month earlier, but this transaction was on new card. i use it often. I used it to purchase new tickets.

flight still operated, but by the time I rebooked it was full..

by the way they reused the 6 letter identifier. I questioned them about that, as it will cause confusion.
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 9:00 pm
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Originally Posted by notquiteaff
well, its confusing because the way its written. Many of the details are irrelevant. Open jaw, route, baby... just the facts, please

Use $ to indicate currency. And check the numbers, what are the 30,00 I bolded? Should it be 300,000 MR points? If so, did you not wonder why you got 300,000 MR points back?
open jaw- reason, I think it was part of high price.

30,000 mr not 30,00. That is a weird detail. Not relevant to the larger story, just a sign that the computer was having a bad day. They took away 300,000 points and gave me back 10 percent (30,000). Why I dont know. I am supposed to get back mr points because it is Amex plat business, but more than 10 %.

until I complained they took away 300,000 and gave me 30,000. It is still 270,000 from my account. How could they take 270,000 mr points from my account and say that the transaction was refused?

They said the answers will come in 3 weeks.
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Old Dec 26, 2019, 10:55 pm
  #15  
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Two days after you booked, they credited you $3,000+ on your card account? And that unexpected deposit went unnoticed for 3 months?
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