American Airlines Trip Change Fee…
Dear American Airlines:
I object to being charged $100.00 (plus $5.00 in tax) for a frequent flier award travel change fee.
First, headlines during the past two months have touted American Airlines elimination of $100 change fees for mileage travelers. It isn’t until you actually try to change a flight that one discovers the unjust fee is still charged for changes in origin or destination airports. I find the method of the release and presentation of this “fee elimination” deceptive and unfair.
Second, and worse, is that the reason I was charged the fee in the first place was your own fault.
Back in February 2004, I exchanged 100,000 frequent flier miles for four tickets from San Jose to [somewhere]. The return flight was through Los Angeles. Unfortunately, your unfair ticketing policy for frequent fliers decreed that (while there were many open seats) one of the four mileage tickets could not have a seat on the return flight from Los Angeles to San Jose. My only option was to purchase a one-way ticket from Los Angeles back to San Jose. Since staying on the flight that the rest of my family was on would have cost me an additional $600+ for that one leg, I forked over $168 for a seat on an earlier flight, with American Airlines financially forcing me to be separated from my family.
Recently I sat down to review my family’s itinerary and realized that I could not locate my own flight information. I contacted AA customer service and soon discovered that American Airlines had changed all of our flight numbers and departure times! Now my lonesome flight back to San Jose was scheduled to depart before the new arrival time of the previous flight leg, once again stranding me in Los Angeles!
The ticketing agent had a great idea; she could refund the $168 paid for the return ticket, and put me on the same flight as the rest of my family, using my frequent flier ticket for the entire trip - which is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place! The downside was that she charged me $105 to let all four of us travel together.
Why should you charge me to get four frequent flier mileage tickets on the same flights when it was your own policies and restrictions that forced me to have the ridiculous arrangements we had before? Please refund my $105 immediately to the credit card charged.
Oh, and by the way, I have not yet received the $168 refund for my original flight with record locator JMVWVR. It’s amazing how fast the $105 fee showed up on my credit card bill, yet still I anxiously await my refund…
