AA accounts restricted (Nov/Dec 2019)
 

So shimps1 has had his/her account shut down:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...se-appeal.html

As far as I can tell, he/she has done nothing that others here are not doing. But AA may have decided that opening AAdvantage accounts for ---let's just say "others"---is against the TOS, even if those accounts are not used to accrue or use miles. That's the only thing I can think of. AA gave no reason and the poster has said he/she has not done anything [else] that would be a problem. It should be clear that I am just speculating; does anyone have other ideas?
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One single isolated report of a shutdown, right? Until more people start to report shutdowns probably not worth putting too much thought into.... could have been the MS that the poster alludes to or could have been something completely different that they aren't mentioning (eg. selling miles, etc).

Poster now claims account was reinstated (on a Saturday?), but does not share any details. Well, nevermind.

I posted here only because the poster acknowledged using mailers, so I was wondering if opening multiple accounts might have been considered a violation of the terms. But anyway, nothing to see here.

From the original poster:


https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/31789305-post1.html

I disagree with the last part. It's two events, so potentially twice as much to see now. ;) Too bad the poster is not sharing the details, which is where they could really help the community.

In a different thread, the poster said that "during all 3 calls (to AA, to book a flight), they asked 'How do you typically earn your miles?' ".

He later had all his AA miles forfeited, but now says that they have been reinstated, but gave little detail as to what exactly happened.

My question is: Is anyone concerned that there may be (it's unclear) a risk of losing all one's miles if continuing to get Citi AA cards via emailers?

The whole story is BS. I am sorry I brought it up. Maybe there is a risk, but this episode brings nothing to bear on it.

AA has asked me this question for a couple years now. It seems like their standard fraud prevention questions when calling in, nothing to be concerned about.

Curious what answer you give to that question. :confused:

We haven't bought a ticket from AA in eleventy-seven years. Yet we have eleventy-seven miles in each of our accounts, and fly TATL FC every summer on Anytime awards. To accomplish that solely thru credit card spend, we'd have to have a spending history of Kim Kardashian or Marc Cuban, and a CSR could quickly see that we don't. So I have no idea of what to say if they were to ask me that. :eek:

Then again, our history of applying over and over @ every 35 days is an open secret to anyone who looks at our accounts, which they did for a while. Every time you called in to get an app approved, they took some time, in our cases like about 10 minutes, looking over our accounts, then still approved them. Clearly Citi could easily prevent that by making their apps truly "non-transferable". and they haven't done that. So obviously part of their marketing strategy is getting x number of new accounts on a regular basis, no matter what they have to do to accomplish that. Nevertheless, the concerns of the fraud department are probably quite different from those of the marketing department.

I agree with you on this.

One note, however, is that that poster said it was the fraud department of AA itself, not Citi, that was questioning him, and it was AA who reportedly took away all his miles for some sort of breach of the terms.

Curious as to why anyone would call AA to make an award reservation. I have made many award reservations over the years, from simple domestic RT, to open jaw international flights and have always been able to do so via their website. I've had to call a few times to make changes and they have always been very accommodating. No unusual questions asked.

Interesting. Most partner awards were not available through aa.com until very recently, and some are not available (or have been temporarily withdrawn) even today. AA has always been behind the times, and far behind UA for example.

Some of us need to not just call AA's US toll-free number, but call AA in Fiji or Trinidad, to book awards.

You must not have booked much partner awards.

For years many partners awards could only be booked via calling.

For years people complained about AA still charged phone booking fees on partner awards that could not be booked online.

It was not until 2 years? ago, that the phone booking fee was dropped when booking partner awards not bookable online but AA system still defaulted to charging - the agents had to remember manually remove the charge.

QR finally became bookable online but now it is taken off together with EY due to ticketing issues.

Even calling AA one still have difficulties booking EY award, and often has to call Australia to get the booking completed.

JL became bookable online only a year or so ago?

CX remains only bookable via phone.

On top of that, you would get better availability on partners when the AA site often errors out but the availability is shown on BA site. Calling would let you access those availability that AA site would not show. Typical examples are on AY and QF flights.

Not true as of 9/2019.

So I missed it because we were on a long trip from Mid Sept to Late Oct. Currently have no need to book any CX so not aware of such development.

How does it go? People predicted JL bookable online would affect the availability but I haven't seen such effect. With current situation at HKG, I doubt many would plan a trip there. Things have gotten A Lot Worse just from late Oct when we were there.

QR and EY are what we need to work on IF we finally would tag on an Egypt trip post a TATL cruise next Spring.
Logistics nightmare due to the embargo between Qatar and Arabs.