Back in March a good friend had 60k points yanked from his AAdvantage account for supposed “seat blocking.” In case
you missed it, here is the summary. He is Platinum on American, flies 2-3 times per month, and had a big international vacation planned for March. He got on the upgrade list for both ways, and his return trip cleared immediately. In the months leading up to his trip, he checked AA.com repeatedly to see how many biz class seats were available. The day before departure his AA accounts were locked. After repeated, frantic phone calls he finally got an email stating that he was being penalized for “seat blocking,” and that they were taking 60k miles and kicking him off of the upgrade list for the outbound flight.
He tried for weeks to call and write to American to explain what happened—that while he was overeager, he was certainly not malicious. Eventually he decided the only way to resolve the situation was to file a formal complaint with the Department of Transportation (which can be found here). The gist of the complaint is that the AA.com system is flawed, as someone can inadvertently make a reservation without ever clicking “Hold” or “Reserve”. Therefore my friend’s actions were not intentional, and the 60k punishment too severe. He is requesting that the DOT investigate these unfair practices, and that American must turn over all notes surrounding their investigation of him and train their corporate security staff about their website design flaws.
Soon after, American contacted him and offered to give him his 60k miles back if he would drop the complaint and sign a non-disclosure agreement. He refused—for him, this is not about the miles, but that his integrity has been challenged. American’s response on file, one month later, spent many pages calling him a “computer expert” deliberately blocking seats to increase his chance of getting an upgrade, and about three sentences stating that their system is totally fine.
At this point, the DOT has not ruled on the complaint. However, it recently started receiving some notice on some big sites—FlyerTalk (page 116 of the thread, post number 1733) and Traveling Better both have threads talking about the complaint, and Gary Leff recently wrote about it on View From The Wing. Evidently there are also some closed Facebook groups discussing it, although I don’t have access to those.
If you think my friend was treated unfairly, I urge you to go the DOT site where the complaint was filed and write a comment. I have been assured that the DOT takes comments very seriously, and if others share that either they were unaware of the “View Available Seats” link on AA.com or that they think American’s system is flawed, it may have an impact.
There have been some good discussions around this issue when I’ve posted about it previously. Click here to read the original post, the second update, the third update, and the fourth and most recent update. As always, I will keep you posted with new information as it unfolds!
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Am I the only one that’s tired of hearing about this guy?
No you are not paincorp
Ha! He’s only trying to milk AA. If it’s paincorp, then I hope AA kicks him out!
I’m sorry but 28 reservations in less than 2 days … I’m siding with AA. Your friend was clearly trying to trick the system and got what he deserves.
So after (accidentally or not) using a questionable method of checking seats, your friend accepts that he might have done something against AA’s Terms and Conditions in writing, then when he complains loud enough about how he’s treated following his own admitted violation (with your help) AA offers to back down and he is now unwilling to take their settlement…. based on his supposed integrity? Pretty sure the definition of integrity includes consistently adhering to something, not flip flopping all over the place.
What puts me over the top on this is if this is someone who flies 2-3 a month they know the deal. It’s not like the person who flies once a year and doesn’t know any better.
@Sam, 28 reservations where the guy never clicked a single button that said “hold, “save” or “confirm”…And @DaninSTL, I fly twice weekly and had no idea that this was against the rules.
Im tired of hearing about this story simply because AA is too stupid to own up to its mistake and make changes to help educate their customers and help themselves. This childish reaction is overstepping and has created a story I can’t imagine anyone at AA being proud of.
Its the worst AArogance and AAnti-customer approach of pmUS and pmAA and I really with the new leadership team would use this as an example to show why the “New American” would be different.
I could handle an update when it’s all resolved, but an entire post to try to get us to advocate on your friend’s behalf is too much. Particularly given that the blog has been a little thin on actual content lately.
What the guy did was wrong. What AA did was wrong.
You can check a seatmap without putting in a name or anything. You do that on the page where it shows you the prices and schedules.
What AA did was wrong too. Get a better IT system.
I like the updates. I hope AA loses this in the end. They have a stupid system that needs exposed for its flaws, and fixed.
I may be missing something but if I request a fare, and one is quoted to me, I assume seats are available at that fare. The only way that can be done is if AA “held” those seats for a fare request. I bet the DOT would get a heck of a lot more complaints if once a fare was quoted, the seats were not actually available (because someone else clicked Hold first.) I don’t think AA’s system is flawed.