When I booked a flight on American Airlines to travel to San Francisco for my wife and myself for vacation in a couple of weeks, I had no idea the hassle I was signing up for.
I made the booking about 3 weeks ago directly on AA.com, and at the time I was certain that I had signed up for the 9:45am flight. Well, today as I was booking travel back and forth to D.C. for the next few weeks I decided to take a look at that old reservation because I’ll be traveling back from DC the night before we are scheduled to leave the next morning.
So, I opened the reservation to take a look only to discover that there is an error. The flight was supposed to be in the morning, but instead it’s listed in the evening!
Initially I was trying to figure out how this happened? I know there were multiple flights presented to me at the time and I was talking to my wife, and my brother and his fiance (who were on a Skype Video chat session) about what I was seeing and I’m certain I chose the morning flight so we could all meet in San Francisco at the same time. So what happened? As you can see from the attached image AA.com presents multiple groupings and you have to scroll up and down the page repeatedly to choose the ones you want.
- It’s possible I clicked the wrong one with all the discussion that was taking place.
- It’s possible that I clicked the right one, but some other interaction between the Web browser, Skype, the tab key, the space bar, and God only knows what else caused the selection
- Of note, I had just taken the exact same flight I was trying to book 4 days before! So there is evidence that I have a propensity to want that very flight.
- But ultimately it doesn’t really matter what caused it since there is plenty of time to correct what boils down to an honest mistake.
So I decided to give AA a call to let them know what was going on and to get the issue rectified. I initially spoke with a guy who informed me politely that there was nothing he could do to help me other than to charge me a $100 change fee on each ticket, plus $175 more for the current price differential between what I paid for the existing flight and what the going rate is, which he claimed is $470 – on each ticket. This adds up to around $500 in “change fees”.
This shocked me and I told him I was going to have to think about it and then call back later.
After giving it some thought, and before calling back I took the liberty of checking the pricing online to better understand what was going on, as well as checking the current availability on each of the flights. It turns out that the pricing online for the tickets the agent claimed was $470 was only $420 online. In addition, there are at least 10 free seats available on the flight I need to be on.
I then called back in and asked the woman who answered to let me speak to a supervisor. She asked me to briefly describe the issue, which I did, and then informed me that no one there could take care of this problem and that I should talk to the AA.com technical support desk. She then hurriedly transferred me and upon arrival I was greeted with a recording stating that they were closed.
So I called back a third time, this time reaching an agent by the name of Gabe Martinez. I again immediately requested to speak to a manager, but he also made me relate the story once again. Gabe however took a very adversarial approach with me that only proved to make me angry. I felt his tone was rude, demeaning and accusatory and he made a point of stating that this was all my fault.
Finally after he got me quite angry I demanded a manager and he then came back with one. As he had me on hold I was wishing that I had recorded my conversation with him, so I pulled out my recorder and captured the discussion with the supervisor, Dee Mason in Tuscon.
If you choose not to listen to all 16 minutes of it I don’t blame you. Here are a few highlights:
Dee Mason:“First of all, the inventory you booked on the 28th of April is no longer available…”
John P.: “…your talking to me about inventory. And I’m a customer, and when I get on your airplane I only see two kinds of seats. I see the first class seats, and I see the other seats. So every seat on the plane looks identical to me.”John P.: “Can you see how someone might book online with the wrong AM/PM time frame accidentally?”
Dee Mason: “Well sure.”Dee Mason: “We really at this point see it … as a voluntary change, not as a mistake.”
Dee Mason: “When a passenger takes it upon them-self to become their own travel agent and uses AA.com or any booking source, then you’re responsible for the changes after that point. And just as a courtesy to passengers who use AA.com we instilled the 24 hour rule where you can give us a call back within 24 hours if you make an error it doesn’t matter, if you decide to make a change it’s OK, but as long as you call us within 24 hours to do so. But beyond that point it’s considered a voluntary change.”
Major issues I have with what happened:
- The agents are not only trying to collect change fees, but they are trying to collect much higher rates than you get online. The $100 differential between what I was seeing and what they are quoting is AA’s way of clearly driving customers to self-service on the Web.
- When I was talking to Gabe Martinez and I informed him of the differential in pricing he actually encouraged me to put some tickets on hold on the Web in a name other than my own and then to call back in and get them to use those for exchange purposes. So the phone agents are driving people to use the web.
- AA charges $10 per ticket if you call in and use their agents to book a flight instead of booking online, and that is in addition to bypassing the “Web only” rates. Here is proof directly from an AA rep.
- So AA does everything it can to drive customers to do it themselves, and then when a mistake occurs they turn it around on you and say it’s all your fault in order to hit you with even more change fees! As Dee Mason said, “When a passenger takes it upon them-self to become their own travel agent…”
The bottom line is:
- AA knows I am a good customer that has spent and continues to spend a lot of money with them.
- They want me to book online because it is more profitable.
- Yet when an error occurs they are unwilling to help address it unless it is caught immediately! Probably because it is so damned profitable to screw you.
I can’t wait till the Wright Amendment is fully abolished in Dallas and Southwest can start kicking AA’s ass. Maybe then they’ll remember what it means to actually care about their customer’s needs.
John,
I made a reservation through AA’s on-line service and decided to reserve it for 24 hours because I wasn’t sure about it. The webpage stated that it would hold the seat and pricing. Yet, when I went back, within the alloted time, the price had gone from $495 to $534! I sent an email complaining, and got back an automatic reply stating that someone would review my complaint, and never heard from them again. This was about a week and a half ago. I am also very annoyed. And they wonder why people want to use Southwest.
Peggy,
That suck! On top of all of these issues AA is doing everything they can to erode the way we view their service. They don’t even hand out a bag of peanuts now, but they’ll sell you a bag of chips for $3!
They are overselling more flights than ever now, and a lot of flights seem to be delayed and 100% packed – and they won’t add more routes!
Add to all of that the fact that they’ve got a stranglehold on DFW and charge us more than similar flights from other cities and it makes for a distaste that runs deep. They are going to be very badly impacted when Wright is completely lifted, and in fact after all this crap occurred last night I booked a flight on Southwest to D.C even though I have to actually change planes in STL.
John
John,
AA’s customer service is terrible. This is the same reason why I would never go with AA. If Southwest is in Dallas, AA would certainly be out of the picture. KP and I have had to call into Southwest for issues like these before, changing flights, etc., their people have always been very helpful. This is another perk for living in Houston :)
So, after all this, I hope you’re still going to San Fran.
Jenny
You sounds like an intelligence person, you do recording of calls.. i am scared from you now :)
But i am really sorry to hear about all this trouble..
Any updates about your flight?
Jenny – Don’t worry… we’re still on for San Fran! :-)
ROR Guy – You know, when you call American Airlines they tell you right up front that they are recording the calls, so I figured… if you’re going to record them, so will I! ;-)
I haven’t had time to actually decide how to handle the flight issue yet. I’m still pissed off about it since I discovered it just yesterday. But I’ll share an update whenever I make a decision about how to handle this…
John
What happened in the end? Did you pay extra charge fees or what?
That was an interesting conversation. Hats off for recording it!
I’m going to venture being stoned here, but I sympathize with the airline. They have a policy on flight changes after a given amount of time and (apparently) advertise this policy on their site.
However, considering that you’re a regular customer  I agree with you  that’s bad service. It’s really saddening when companies gets too “large” to care about the welfare of their individual customers.
Believe me, I understand the fact that they have a “policy” regarding this type of situation, but it is the policy that I take issue with.
The problem is that none of the other airlines would treat you this way, so comparatively this sucks.
John
My sister-in-law booked on AA for a 6:00 am flight from Minneapolis to Houston in order to take a cruise. At 2:00 am, she got a call at home from AA: the RECORDING announced the flight was cancelled for insufficient passengers. (Nice of them to wait until 2 am to tell her), and she was being rebooked on a 5 PM flight. I.e., miss the cruise. She tried to call AA, but of course, no one answered. I checked their website and found nothing about their policy re cancellations. Worse on the “customer relations” page THERE IS NO PHONE NUMBER FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONS!! They encourage folks to email, or fax their comments.
She was forced to buy an $800 ticket to get a flight out at 7 am that would get her to Houston in time for the cruise departure. My wife shouldn’t have had to bookbe online finding a flight for someone – that is American’s job.
Boo AA. Booooo.
I think that if you don’t check your email confirmation within 24 hrs to make sure you booked correctly, AA has every right to charge you the change fee. Sorry, but seats are a time-sensitive product so changes do affect the airline’s bottom line. Why can’t EVERYONE just call up and say whoops, I booked wrong. Please fix it. Yeah, Southwest has no penalties for changing flights, but you also have to be herded like cattle with no assigned seats… a real trade off.
Also, for the person who wrote that the price changed after holding the seats, “D’uh”, it states this very clearly… you’ve got the seats, but the price could and sometimes does go up. American Airlines is actually one of the better airlines at keeping customer informed.
Larry