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[PREM FARE GONE] AA: GIG/GRU- multiple locations (HKG/LAX/MIA/SFO ETC) ~$200 Y ~$360

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Old Aug 31, 2015, 9:17 am
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: footastic
Sequence of events:

American Airlines (AA) Brazil website misprices revenue tickets in initial calculation on purchase page. Repricing the same reservation by changing billing country resulted in the correct price, even when reverting to Brazil.

Vast majority of tickets appear to have gone unticketed for ~1 week. It appears that tickets were issued manually, not automatically.

AA states repeatedly and to several outlets that they will unconditionally honor all fares.

AA begins cancelling tickets. Subsequently, they send out cancellation emails implying that the "country of residence" was misrepresented. Of course, this is not the case, as AA never actually asks for the "country of residence" but the billing address which includes the country of the billing address.

Since AA repeatedly and publicly stated that they would unconditionally honor the tickets, even when specifically asked about it, many purchasers relied upon AA's representations and made non-refundable plans. DoT regulations require airlines to reimburse purchasers who relied upon mistake fares to make non-refundable plans. It may be worth writing into the US Department of Transportation (DoT) to complain about AA's handling of the situation and ask for compensation even without having non-refundable reservations, because AA went to great lengths to assure purchasers that tickets would be unconditionally honored.

DoT air travel complaint form: http://airconsumer.dot.gov/escomplaint/ConsumerForm.cfm

DoT air travel complaint mailing address:
Aviation Consumer Protection Division, C-75
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Ave, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20590

DoT air travel complain phone line information:
You may call the ACPD 24 hours a day at 202-366-2220 (TTY 202-366-0511) to record your complaint. Calls are returned Monday through Friday, generally between 7:30 am and 5:00 pm Eastern time.

As mentioned by classyflyer and posted by pb9997, if your flight had some kind of legal nexus within Brazil, their consumer protections should apply to your ticket. Here is the contact information for the relevant consumer protection agencies within Brazil. Please be clear in your communication and REMEMBER TO SUBMIT YOUR COMMUNICATIONS IN PORTUGESE.

To translate your communications before submitting them:
http://translate.google.com

www.reclameaqui.com.br
Quote from pb9997: "This site is known to be the most popular, most viewed upon by companies who care about reputation; Though not official, it has proven to be the most respected by consumers and corporations, who may delay answers on their own channels but do take care to have teams focused on answering for this public site. Information written, from both parties, is public."

www.consumidor.gov.br
Quote again from pb9997: "This is the official PROCON site where consumers and companies present their complaints and arguments. It is official, additional care ought to be taken.

I would highly suggest following the order presented; With the first site the company has room to assess impact, prepare an amiable answer and protect their public reputation.

On the second site... well, it's official and what is written by both parties is the basis to act afterwards in a court of law. Ideally the complaint presented should have the Law that explains why a consumer has been impacted and the expected remedy, according [sic] to the Law."

As of 9/8/15 - Individuals who had tickets cancelled in the first round (8/28) have yet to see refunds post to credit cards.

Feel free to update this Wiki with more complete information.
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[PREM FARE GONE] AA: GIG/GRU- multiple locations (HKG/LAX/MIA/SFO ETC) ~$200 Y ~$360

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Old Aug 29, 2015, 5:21 pm
  #886  
 
Join Date: Nov 2012
Posts: 371
Travel Fast

I feel like with these "mistake" fares you need to travel ASAP, second time in as many months with oneworld, if you travel fast enough before they can react, you've made it. Cathay Pacific(ZRH-BKK) one person traveled within 72 hours and it went fine. Same here, all the peeps that traveled early enough, before they(Airlines) can react seemed to make it.
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Old Aug 29, 2015, 5:24 pm
  #887  
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: NYC
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Posts: 318
Originally Posted by DLDFW
I feel like with these "mistake" fares you need to travel ASAP, second time in as many months with oneworld, if you travel fast enough before they can react, you've made it. Cathay Pacific(ZRH-BKK) one person traveled within 72 hours and it went fine. Same here, all the peeps that traveled early enough, before they(Airlines) can react seemed to make it.
One person on this board was turned away at the airport because his reservation hadn't ticketed yet. While I agree that your statement is generally true, nothing here is bulletproof.
15cats is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 5:27 pm
  #888  
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: San Jose
Programs: Aadvantage Plat
Posts: 19
Originally Posted by DLDFW
I feel like with these "mistake" fares you need to travel ASAP, second time in as many months with oneworld, if you travel fast enough before they can react, you've made it. Cathay Pacific(ZRH-BKK) one person traveled within 72 hours and it went fine. Same here, all the peeps that traveled early enough, before they(Airlines) can react seemed to make it.
lets hope AA doesn't take away the miles posted for the guys who made it and were on a MR, that'd suck
gurbina93 is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 5:52 pm
  #889  
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Programs: Hilton Diamond
Posts: 177
I was told same thing they are canceling tickets and will send an email along with refund in 7-10 business days.

Still love AA but it wasn't cool to manually approve the tickets, publicly state they would honor and then cancel it after people had made plans based on these tickets.
singal3 is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:10 pm
  #890  
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Programs: AA Exp
Posts: 836
Originally Posted by singal3
I was told same thing they are canceling tickets and will send an email along with refund in 7-10 business days.

Still love AA but it wasn't cool to manually approve the tickets, publicly state they would honor and then cancel it after people had made plans based on these tickets.
You love AA? Why? Their behavior is terrible. They confirm that they will honour bookings and manually ticket bookings. After that they still cancel. Even LX and BA behave more reasonable...

Quickly canceling sale/mistake fares is one thing, but this...
gnargel is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:18 pm
  #891  
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Programs: AS MVPG
Posts: 2,209
Originally Posted by gnargel
Quickly canceling sale/mistake fares is one thing, but this...
Seems like they aren't even going to bother with prompt notification that tickets will be cancelled. Reminds me of how we got some of the DOT rules in the first place. KE's vindictive late cancellations of a fare they thought people were talking advantage of (Palau fares) and wanted to punish the customers by waiting months to cancel them.
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Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:22 pm
  #892  
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Programs: Delta Diamond/ Hyatt top tier(lifetime)
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Exactly. Confirming to people publicly that these would be honored and making statements to online news agency's and then adding a caveat and cancelling tickets is really bad. I for one have positioning flights and a hotel that I will eat. I would not have booked any additional travel without the confirmation from several sources.
footastic is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:41 pm
  #893  
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Programs: Hilton Diamond
Posts: 177
Originally Posted by gnargel
You love AA? Why? Their behavior is terrible. They confirm that they will honour bookings and manually ticket bookings. After that they still cancel. Even LX and BA behave more reasonable...

Quickly canceling sale/mistake fares is one thing, but this...
I have two children with disabilties and AA has always gone above and beyond for them.

I agree with the spirit of your post though.
singal3 is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:52 pm
  #894  
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Programs: AA Exp
Posts: 836
Originally Posted by singal3
I have two children with disabilties and AA has always gone above and beyond for them.

I agree with the spirit of your post though.
Hmmm, I feel a bit silly.

I was so caught up in my I-want-to-fly-business-class bubble, that I temporarily forgot that there is more to an airline than the way they deal with special/mistakes fares...

Thank you for reminding me! ^
gnargel is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 7:57 pm
  #895  
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 82
Just called AA BR office and lady said there is nothing she can do other than asking me to send email to aa customer relationship and they will explain to me why my ticket get cancelled ...
delusion is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 8:09 pm
  #896  
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: BOS
Programs: AA EXP/2mm, SPG Gold
Posts: 424
I'm wondering if there is a DOT case against the canceling of the reinstated tickets. The reinstated tickets went through several levels of approvals, including the rate desk. They manually reviewed everything about the reservation and still decided to reissue the ticket even when they were aware that the PNR was annotated with Mistake Currency Fare or something similar.
emcat is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 8:21 pm
  #897  
 
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 13
Originally Posted by emcat
I'm wondering if there is a DOT case against the canceling of the reinstated tickets. The reinstated tickets went through several levels of approvals, including the rate desk. They manually reviewed everything about the reservation and still decided to reissue the ticket even when they were aware that the PNR was annotated with Mistake Currency Fare or something similar.
agreed. especially for those who literally called brazil, provided AA with a credit card live over the phone, and then received the eticket..
statys is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 8:27 pm
  #898  
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: DUS
Programs: BA EC, A3 MB
Posts: 5
AFAIK they will cancel everyone who booked via the brazilian website (origin Brazil) and provided a non-brazilian adress and/or CC. A little bit disappointing regarding the annoncements to honor all tickets...

Next time, probably thursday?
phil_strom is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 8:29 pm
  #899  
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: BOS
Programs: AA EXP/2mm, SPG Gold
Posts: 424
Also, for those that still have "ticket pending", I think the best advice at this point is to not trigger anything that would cause ticketing. Looks like they are only canceling reservations that were already ticketed. Perhaps if you get over the wave of cancellations and then ticket, you could be safe.
emcat is offline  
Old Aug 29, 2015, 8:37 pm
  #900  
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OK - so can we get some data points from those who have been canceled? It's probably inevitable that we'll all get hit here, but let's see what we've got:

-CC - Brazilian or not?
-Metal - all AA or partners?
-Brazilian airports - Does any of your itinerary touch Brazil?

Anything else relevant?
josephstern is offline  


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