American Airlines Incorrectly Charged Me $400 and Won't Refund It
My SIL was scheduled to fly in first class from STL -> ORD on 7/27/26. There was bad weather in Chicago and her flight was cancelled on our way to the airport. She spoke to a ticketing agent who rebooked her on a flight later that evening. After she checked in and dropped off her two checked bags, that flight was also cancelled. We spoke to the agent again and were able to get her rebooked to fly from a nearby airport to Chicago the following day. The agent specifically assured us she wouldn't be charged for checking her bags or anything related to the change. Then we picked up her bags from the baggage claim and went home.
The following day, when we dropped her off at the airport, she was again delayed due to the system outage. Once that was resolved, she was charged $400 to check the same two bags that she didn't have to pay for previously that we'd been assured we wouldn't have to pay for. She only had cash on her, so I paid for the bags on her behalf. The agent at the check-in wasn't able to help with the charge at all and recommended I submit a refund request. I immediately contacted American Airlines when I got home and submitted the request.
After hearing nothing for over a week, I submitted a complaint through the Better Business Bureau. I was told that they couldn't offer any help until they got permission from my SIL (who was outside the US at this point), even though I was the one who paid for the bags. Shortly thereafter, the original refund request was denied. My SIL reached out to American Airlines via a complaint form on their website to give them permission to work with me, and since then I haven't heard anything. There's a lot to say about using their website to "reach out to them" but suffice it to say that many of the forms didn't seem to work due to incorrectly hitting a 2000 character limit and there were no good options to resolve this particular issue. Now it's been over a week since I've heard from them and almost a month since they took my money, and I'm wondering if I'm ever going to get anything back.
A couple things to note:
- The system seems to think she had 4 bags checked, possibly because she picked them up in St. Louis after the flight was cancelled?
- The flight was originally booked through Qatar
- My SIL remained booked in first class throughout all of this. American Airlines policy states that passengers in first class have two checked bags included in the ticket
At this point, I'm livid. I get that delays due to weather are outside our control, but their customer service is basically useless and they seem to enjoy making me jump through hoops only to make no progress. Do I have any options here? Are there any reasons I shouldn't abandon this airline entirely going forward?