u/exerption

tl/dr: I followed an AA agent’s instructions. He was wrong. Each new agent’s attempt to fix the previous one’s mistake made matters worse, until deadlines were missed, and an inconvenience became a crisis. And even though AA knows it made this mess, they say it’s something they can no longer fix.

I stopped chasing status when Platinum with Delta because I thought it had become worthless. But I know it would have kept me from this current disaster with AA.

I lost my wallet Friday in NYC. Maybe pickpocketed, I dunno. But I immediately canceled every card. The one that was not in the wallet is with my dad in NC, in case he has an emergency. Now it was me with the emergency, and I needed that card back until replacements arrive.

So I booked an awards ticket to NC to pick it up (and have some time with dad). I made it from LGA to DCA, but missed my connecting flight by just seconds, literally watching as the boarding door slowly closed. I didn’t panic, no big deal, this happens all the time I’m sure. I went up to the gate agent and asked about my options and she said ‘oh we don’t do the rebooking, they’re really pushing people to use the app.’ She handed me a little cardstock made for these situation titles “Let’s get you back on track..” with a QR code to scan to review options. I scanned the code, and it gave me a number to call. I got an agent on the line and explained the situation and he said he wasn’t sure about awards tickets and he put me on hold to talk to people. A few minutes later, he says he found a flight to get me to my final destination that cost the same number of miles. But unfortunately, he said, the system doesn’t allow him to rebook awards tickets and I would have to rebook it myself. Because both the old and new itineraries were 10k miles, I needed to just cancel the current reservation and then use the 10k miles to book the new one in the app. So I pressed cancel. Then waited for the miles to go back into my account. And waited.

I didn’t wait more than 10 minutes before I knew I never should have listened to that guy. I went right back up to an available gate agent and explained what happened. As I already suspected, the miles aren’t returned instantly when canceled. And because I already flew one leg, I wasn’t even eligible to receive a full refund. But, the gate agent told me what her colleague said earlier… I needed to call them to have it resolved. This time my hold was much longer, while she looked up the procedure for something like this. Eventually she returns to tell me I have to call the Aadvantage desk because there’s nothing she can do. So I call, and im told it’s more than an hour wait. But they’ll keep my place in line and call me when it’s my turn, etc etc. More than 90 minutes later I get the call. The agent becomes the 3rd to confirm that I should not have followed the first agent’s instructions to cancel the flight. But she goes further, and says the gate agents were wrong to tell me to call her. She says the gate agents are the only ones with the power to get me rebooked. And even they can only rebook you within a two hour window of missing the flight. My time waiting on hold and waiting for a call-back had now exceeded 3 hours. She “understands that this situation may seem frustrating,” and she acknowledged that I am only in this situation due to American Airlines employees giving me bad information. But there’s simply nothing she can do.

I stayed polite but the edges began to fray as I explained to her the implications, which were dawning on me in real-time. I am stranded at DCA. No money. No car. No miles for an award ticket. No way to get where I’m going. Not even a way to get back where I came from. This is very, very bad.

She urged me to fill out a complaint form and insisted it would be taken seriously. Maybe I’d hear back in a few days, she was confident they could make it right etc..

None of that matters AT ALL.
I don’t want miles, I don’t want money. I NEED a flight to either my final destination, or at least back to nyc. Because although I’m usually great at getting out of jams, this time I’m just cooked.

Is there something I’m not thinking of here to solve this?