American Airlines 13 May 2019 Dear Sir or Madam: I am writing you in order to receive a refund for the mess American Airlines put my wife and I through on the 8th and 9th of May 2019. We were scheduled to meet with an EVA airlines ticket to Taiwan and Vietnam at 0125 AM early on the 9th of May 2019. To be assured that we would not miss this flight, I chose to buy two round trip tickets on American Airlines Flight # 2807 which left Tampa where we live at 2:12 PM. We showed up at the gate in Tampa on time (more than two hours early) thinking that we would surely have enough time to transfer in Miami for a second flight to JFK on flight #AA1199 which was supposed to leave Miami 325PM. It was my impression that the American Airlines staff was ill prepared for our late arrival from Tampa. We arrived a bit after 339PM and we raced to the next flight, which was supposed to leave at 0400PM. We did arrive at the gate for flight 1199, but we got to the gate with only 5 minutes to spare before the plane left the gate. The lady at the gate simply gave us a blasé look and told us that they would not open the door for us to board and told us basically, "tough luck" and sent us off into the airport. We had no place to go, no place to stay and nothing else useful to do anything with. We contacted a customer service rep for American Airlines in Miami and she told us that she would save the day by putting us on a later flight from Miami to JFK and while the schedule was tight, we should be able to make it to our scheduled EVA airlines flight. She absolutely told us that our two checked bags would go on the first flight to JFK that we missed and that the bags would be stored in a room with American Airlines written on the door in JFK. From this room we needed to go to terminal 9 at JFK and we could then get boarding passes, recheck our bags, and board the EVA flight to Vietnam. Throughout she kept saying that American Airlines was not responsible for anything. Due to the shortness of time, I chose to keep my mouth closed even though I didn't believe anything she had to say. Keep in mind that our EVA flight left at 0125 AM on 9 May 2019 and it was located in a completely different terminal at JFK. We took these new boarding passes and trusted everything this customer service lady told us. We boarded the second American Airlines plane at 829 PM in Miami and we were on our way. This second plane was supposed to arrive at JFK at around Midnight on the 9th of May. Well this second plane did not arrive on time in JFK and we finally got off the plane at around 0030 on the 9th of May. We called ahead and had a skycap meet us with transportation to the EVA terminal. Prior to this we went to the baggage claim in Miami to pick up our bags. We did go into the American Airlines baggage room that we were directed to go to, but our bags were not there. Not knowing what to do, we waited for our bags on the baggage carousel for the second flight from Tampa that we had ridden in on. Keep in mind that our bags were not waiting for us in the legendary baggage room and that they were actually on the second flight we had rode on to Miami. After waiting over 30 minutes, our bags arrived in the baggage claim carousel (with the second plane we rode in on contrary to what we were told) and we with the Skycap raced down the terminal to the train for EVA. There was no terminal 9 in JFK and when we arrived at the EVA departure desk, no one was there. It was about 0100 in the morning of the 9th of May and all EVA personnel had gone home. and security would not allow us to pass on to departures without boarding passes. The plane to Taiwan and then Vietnam left flawlessly except we were not on that plane. At that point, I didn't trust ANYTHING that American Airlines had to say to us due to errors and their stretching of the truth. My wife and I chose to rent a car from Budget Car Rental and we drove it home to Tampa during the following two days. We also had to rent hotel rooms as well as pay for gasoline and restaurants that were not any part of our plans prior to the trip. We also lost thousands of dollars for our vacation in Vietnam and Taiwan that we missed. The customer service representative was either a liar or stupid and I will allow you to decide. She sure screwed us over and I am very angry about it. I think that any reasonable person would determine that American Airlines should refund us all our money spent on the Flights from Tampa to Miami and then New York as a minimum including the return flight to Tampa, as well as the money I had to spend on a car rental from Budget Car rental from New York to Tampa. I also think that we should be refunded our hotel rental in Petersburg Virginia for $89. Gasoline for the car added up to something like $100 for the trip. I do not think that my request for money from American Airlines is unreasonable as a minimum read more

I've experienced poor customer service in my life, but never as terrible as the way I was treated last night by several AA employees. We were flying our 17 yo daughter home from college for the weekend from Ithaca to PHL to New Haven. The New Haven flight was canceled (as every New Haven flight I've ever tried to use has been - you'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now) so they offered a flight into Hartford. Not convenient, but fine. She was then told there was too much traffic at PHL for her plane to land so they sent her to Scranton to sit around for a while and then back off to PHL where they had no more flights back to CT. While she was in the air, I called customer service to figure out how to get her home and was told by the rep that she had no information. She said she was looking into it and proceeded to hang up on me. So I call back and wait and explain the situation again. The rep tells me all flights out of PHL will be gone by the time she gets there and she can be booked on a flight the next day. I ask him what a 17yo girl is supposed to do with that when she gets off the plane in a huge airport. He basically said that's your problem. It's not our fault there was weather. I asked how he would feel if it was his child who had nowhere to go upon landing and he rudely said, "I would never send my child on a plane alone." I asked for the supervisor. After waiting on hold, I explained the situation again. He said there was nothing he could do but book her on a flight the next day. To be fair, he at least took the time to find a flight coming into New Haven, which was more of an effort than anyone else had made. I then asked what happens now? She's a 17yo girl alone in an airport overnight? He said she wasn't technically an unaccompanied minor because we didn't fill out some sort of paperwork (read: pay them more money) so she was on her own. I again expressed my frustration and concern over this situation. He put me on hold and came back a while later to say he had spoke to the people at the airport and she could stay in the unaccompanied minor room overnight, she just had to speak to the people at the desk. While not ideal, I at least felt she would be somewhere safe overnight. A little while later, she calls me after landing and I told her what to tell the people at the gate. The woman at the gate proceeded to tell her that she doesn't have paperwork and there's nothing she could do. She could go find the airport cots. She called me back to tell me and I had her go to the gate again where she again waited in line and I talked to to the attendant. I explained I had spent the last two hours on the phone and what the customer service supervisor had said. The rep said she knew nothing about it. I asked for her supervisor and she said she doesn't know anything either without checking. I began to get frustrated asking what she's supposed to do now and she said I'm not dealing with this and said next and went to the next person in line. Because I can't imagine anyone, nevermind a 17yo girl, would feel comfortable sleeping overnight on a cot in a busy airport, she managed to lie about her age and book herself a hotel room. So now on top of the money for the flight that was completely messed up before it even took off, we get to pay for a hotel room, again a small price to pay for us to be able to sleep at night knowing that she is safely locked in a room and able to sleep herself. The lack of respect and compassion AA displays is disgusting. The fact that they think it's acceptable to send people off on their own with no offering of advice besides go find the cots is absolutely despicable. I know that I will never book a flight through them again. I completely understand that weather cannot be controlled but the attitudes of their customer service and gate staff certainly can be. read more

On 9/23/19 My wife and I had a flight to Mobile al.departing at 8pm. It was cancelled with no reason given. I was sent an email and text at 6:29pm that we were being rerouted to Mobile thru Dallas Tx on a flight that left at 5:58 thirty minutes before we received the Text. We were given a hotel voucher for the night and (1) one $12 meal voucher each for (3) Three meals Dinner on 9/23 and Breakfast and Lunch on 9/24 as our new flight was at 1250 on 9/24. We could not eat off of Mc'donalds dollar menu for that. Dinner on 9/23 was 49.78 plus tip. Our Breakfast was 18.56 plus tip Lunch. Our lunch at the airport was 34.98 plus tip. No alcohol was consumed as we are not consumers of alcohol. I also have to pay an additional parking day at Mobile $10. We had 3 tickets to a Paw Patrol concert in Mobile to take our grandson $ 67 each. It took place at 10am the time we were still in Charlotte waiting for our 12:50 pm rescheduled flight. The real issue is trying to explain to a 3-year-old he did not get to see Paw Patrol a show he had been anxiously awaiting because a company has to pay their CEO 12 million dollar a year and some bean counter figured out a way to save a few dollars at the inconvenience a few passengers. My wife is handicapped and had to go thru TSA check again. The extra time standing is very hard on her as she has had back and knee surgery. She also suffers from mental health issue anxiety related and her medicine was on our checked bags as she only had enough on her carry on for the day. There were 2 earlier flights that we were not given an opportunity to book that because I had booked this flight with points which obviously affected the rebooking options. It should be noted that the points used were from being a loyal American Airline customer in the past. I must emphasize from the past as I will only fly American as a last resort in the future. When we arrived at Mobile a day late our luggage was not on the plane. The counter clerk in Mobile was a poorly trained employee that could not determine where our bags were. She provided a 1 800 # and we reported our bags delayed/lost. After I call the number provide it was determined our bags were in the Mobile airport. We were told they would be delivered after 6:30 pm as that was the last delivery run of the day. The next Day Wednesday 9/25 I again called about our bags. I was told they were in Mobile airport and they would call when the lost baggage office opened. There is not a lost baggage office for AA in the airport only Delta has an office to address lost baggage on site. The personal at the ticket counter handle lost bag status as there are employees there at 5:30 am to handle the 4 flights that leave before 10am. I guess multitasking is not a skill required of your employees. Again, I was told my bags would be delivered that day. At 5:30 pm I called again praying my bags would make the 6:30 run but they did not. My bags were finally delivered at 11am CST after calling again Thursday morning. I first tried to file a complaint thru your website. The first attempt I was timed out as I was composing the complaint. I logged on again and this time there was a character limit on your complaint. I am very disappointed that we were used to increase your corporate profits as plane was probably cancelled due to not enough ticket sold to maximize your profit. Just glad everything goes good for your 12 million Dollar CEO. Total additional cost to us a senior citizen living on a fixed income is $290.32. Have a blessed day. Best Regards John Lilley read more

If there can be zero or negative star I will give it without any hesitation! I called American's reservation tonight on behalf of my sister in law because she tried to made a booking (with a $200 penalty) with her unused ticket, was told by the agent that she will get email confirmation and will charge her credit card for the fare difference. Nothing happened, so she called again, spoke to another agent and that agent told her the first person did not do it so he redo it again. Both times they told her the original record locator did not change. She still not receiving any email nor credit card being charged so she log into her aa account and it says ticket pending. So tonight I called American reservation, explaining the story and ask for the status, The agent told me that her original ticket has been refunded. When I say when and how much was refunded, the agent said she did not have access. I asked so who should I call for the information, she transferred me to another person: Michael Ohaber. She said she is the supervisor. I repeated the story again, then she said we now have 2 identical booking (who knows why) and that's why their system do not know what to do blah blah blah and that the ticket is being refunded (we did not ask for it) and she start accusing my sister asking someone to call for her making the changes (she mistaken the two agents who messed up the records as our friends who called in for my sister before.) When I asked Michael to give me the names of those 2 person whom she claim "are the person calling in at the beginning" she refused because this is security/priviacy! When anyone call and speak to an agent don't they always greet the callers with their names anyway? so what kind of security breach that we are talking about here?! When I tried to correct her she just stop me and said,"so you are not listening what I said, I just told you that your sister need to call in herself". and hung up. I don't see why I cannot represent my sister in law to correct a booking at all. She already did it twice and not getting anywhere and that's why she wants me to come in to help. It is the American's agents who wrongfully made he booking twice. They are the one who created the duplicate record. We were only told that the record locator stays the same. So they are blaming us for their incompetence. I called AA's customer service for help, not to ask for ridiculous lesson and wrong accusation from them, not to mention their rudeness and poor attitude. After being hung up by Michael Ohaber I called back AA again, hold for 20 minutes, finally get to speak to another agent, asked the agent if I can talk to the customer service manager, "no I can't give that to you" "why" "because I can't" "why" "because security" "so I cannot talk to anyone if I want to complaint?" "No, I can't direct you to a specific supervisor" "so who should I contact for complain" " Customer Relations - no names" !!!!! Worst Airlines! read more

Happy Valentine's Day to us Amish and I were supposed to be on a cruise this week through South America and onto Antarctica. American Airlines delayed our first flight for so long that we missed our connection. Even though our connecting flight was delayed by 35 minutes, they said they had given our seats to standby passengers and we couldn't get them back. They refused to help with getting us onto the second flight even though we explained the situation, they said standby was the only option, so when that flight checked in full, we were left with the only option to miss our first destination completely. We compromised and had them re-route us to Montevideo the second port, so we could still salvage our trip. When we checked in about our bags, we discovered that they had placed them on our standby flight to Buenos Aires. When we asked the baggage folks what the probability of them making it from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, they said it can't happen because AA doesn't fly between the places. They stated they could send the bags to the following port, but we would have been left for 4-5 days on our vacation with no bags, no clothes or toiletries. We would have only had the clothes on our backs. We were left with no option but to cancel the trip. We called Norwegian Cruise Line to explain our situation and they stated that we would not be receiving a refund our only option was to fly to the following port. This nightmare started on Saturday and it is now Tuesday and we still haven't seen our bags. We can't salvage our time off from work and plan anything else because we are sitting ducks waiting for our bags. We are out thousands of dollars for the cruise and everyone has an opinion on how we could have done something different. Missed ports, shopped for new clothes and toiletries while we were supposed to be on excursions. We pleaded with American Airlines to help us, but were yelled at, told they had other customers and Norwegian told us that there is nothing we can do and they are keeping our money. The amount of money is concerning, but neither have any compassion that they ruined our vacation or the fact that we are now spending our vacation fighting with them to get refunds. I expected more from them. My only advice would be if something like this happens to you make the biggest scene in the airport that you possibly can, ask for managers and continue to escalate until you they put you on a flight. We were trying to work with them and be reasonable, but nice guys get ignored and mistreated. #aa #ncl #miamiairport #terriblecustomerservice #missedcruise #americanairlines #nclrefund #aarefunds #disaster #ruinedvacation #staycation #norwegiancruiseline read more

Nightmare experience. We flew AA for a trip to the Bahamas. Upon arrival, we waited in baggage check for nearly an hour, only to find that our luggage was not there. We used the "track my bag" feature, which showed it was on our flight (although it clearly wasn't). We then waited another hour and a half to wait in line and deal with an agent in the baggage claims department. He told us that the baggage never left our original destination, but that it would arrive on the first flight tomorrow and be delivered to our hotel. This huge delay and waste of time caused us to miss our shuttle to our hotel, which led to an additional headache and cost. Fast forward to day 2 of our vacation. We couldn't really do anything that we had planned because of lack of clothes and personal items. So we spent the majority of the day shopping, trying to get the minimum things we needed to at least function for the day. HOLY MOLY is stuff expensive in the Bahamas. As in $495 for a little sundress for my wife. Or $245 for a bathing suit. So much for shopping. We just went back to our hotel room and wasted the day waiting for the suitcase to arrive. By early evening we still hadn't received our luggage, so I went online to AA.com and opened a chat with a customer service rep. She had no info, other than to tell me that it had indeed arrived at our airport today, but had not been scheduled for delivery and might not arrive til tomorrow. Of course, no one from AA had the courtesy to update me or inform me of status...I had to call and check. So I then called AA customer service. I spoke to a representative who reiterated the same...that the bag had arrived at the airport hours ago but had not been scheduled for delivery and now the airport was closed! WHAT?????!!!!! So I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. Both representatives I spoke to, including the supervisor, were nice and were trying to be helpful...but could offer me no info as to why there was a breakdown in setting up the delivery, or why no one contacted me or updated me. Finally, after speaking to the supervisor and letting him know that I wasn't ok with waiting yet ANOTHER day on the suitcase, he put me on hold and made some calls. He then got back to me and let me know that he'd contacted the delivery company and they would have the luggage to me within 1 hour (which will be nearly midnight!!!). WOW. Just....WOW! So much for a nice, relaxing vacation. Try "stressful" vacation instead...that's always fun! read more

My second trip on one of the new American Airlines planes--a 737 from Chicago to SFO. I've been in coach both times. What's tough is the improvement American tried to bring to these planes has made the seating even worse. There's a TV screen in every seat, but that causes each seat back to lose 1-2 inches of room---laptop screens need room--we don't all want to watch TV. I'd rather have the room in front of me. It's even worse if the person in front leans back. Then to support that TV, there's about a four inch wide metal box where your feet go. actually prevents one of your feet from stretching out. I don't know what's in there--a cable box? A power transformer? if you try to stretch out that foot, the box actually hurts your calf/shin after a minute or two---I'd easily take full foot room and a few more inches of seat back room over this dumb tv. the media i use is on my laptop anyway--which I'm on all the time. Finally--I hate to say it, but these new seats are bad. It's hard to believe American could contract for such uncomfortable seats. Don't they sit in them before they purchase? They're an ergonomic disaster. they push out at your mid back---not at your lumbar back--so your lumbar back collapses and your mid back is pushed forward. very uncomfortable. I'm a normal height and weight too--nothing strange. and the headrest is too far back to make using it comfortable. if you let your head go back---you compress your neck and it's awkward. the seat cushion too is just too hard. it's just not a comfortable seat-which is kind of mind-blowing given that they're upgrading their planes/fleet. and it's so easy to get good data on what a chair needs to be comfy. I bought a cheese and fruit plate too--and it had 10 grapes. Count em folks. 10. 2 stars--cause well--they get you from city to city--so the journey gets accomplished, but be ready to be uncomfortable, squeezed literally and financially---and unimpressed. I bet if American made their staff and execs sit in their own plane chairs at work--they'd understand. I wish they'd scrapped all this tech expense and spent the money on comfy seats. read more

American Airlines...Not considerate if someone dies in your family. The worst Customer Service 1-800-433-7300. We purchased tickets and had to cancel due to death in family. I called 12/26. Flight date was 1/3. I was told to send a copy of the death certificate and letter with the ticket number explaining...I mailed it and faxed the information.. Two months later...no response. There is no person you can talk to on phone. Emals are not responded to. Two months later, I decided to go through the 800 number, very rude service. The pe rson on the phone said she cannot help me. I told her I tried everything I can, according to the rules, I have not heard back nor is there a number I can talk to which was why I was calling her..Just to find out the status, if the paperwork I sent was received or valid for what they needed or if they needed any additional document. Aside from long wait ,the customer service lady said there was nothing she can do. She mentioned to me "are you having a hard time understanding me?" She wasn't even willing to listen to my story of the simple thing I was asking her for. What is a customer to do when they need help...they call customer service who is suppose to direct them and not just say there is nothing they can do. Then she immediately started with her closing line of "thanking for calling American Ailines" in the middle of my sentence. It sounds like AA is good at taking money, but no sympathy or legitimate feedback when it comes to a death. Even if in such a turmoil state of mind, the customer logically followed everything that is required by AA to do. So IS American Airlines policy to NOT provide any refunds whatsoever for a death in the family....things that happen unexpectedly. Is there no code of honor that is followed when a customer is just trying to get answers for tickets that remained unused and what the status of it is? read more