American Airlines to travel agents and passengers: pay attention — or pay up!

It’s no secret that airlines are doing everything possible to improve their bottom lines. But some of those tactics are more up-front than others. As some of our clients and our agency have discovered, American Airlines has two that have proved especially dangerous.

The trap, as one of my clients puts, is the expiring mileage game. Which is not unique to American Airlines. Don’t accrue or redeem miles in 18 months or so, and they all go away. But American also does not send mileage statements when there is no activity, and they don’t send warnings.

So, while all that is necessary to keep miles active is buying some small thing from a merchant on the AA.com site, or buying a few miles, or renting a car, or one of a number of simple things, if you aren’t alert, you lose.

And yes, it is a consumer’s responsibility to keep track of these things, but even cash-strapped libraries send warning notices when your books are overdue. Ditto, most membership groups advise you of expiring memberships. And credit card companies will warn you if you are risking default.

But I have had clients lose over 100,000, and in one case, over 200,000 miles. Only then did they get sent an email or letter asking if they wanted to take advantage of a limited time offer to reinstate miles for 1 cent per mile plus 7.5 percent tax and a $30 processing fee.

Anyone want to conjecture why a similar email was not sent saying, for example, “Send $30 worth of flowers in the next 30 days and save ALL your miles.?” Especially for a client who had accumulated almost a quarter of a million miles. And how much would it really cost them to waive the policy? Apparently more than the cost of losing this client for life, since I just heard about the story when I suggested American Airlines for a recent business class itinerary.

The response? “Never again!” (Somewhat cleaned up for a family blog.)

From a travel agent perspective, I wrote a post recently about American trying to charge us $100 per ticket for not noting an the exchanged e-ticket that the original ticket had been nonrefundable. Although the clients in question had flown without change or incident on an expensive last minute business class fare.

This is the latest exact response:

We cannot waive or reduce this valid memo. The policy was effective as of May 21, 2008. It is the responsibility of the travel agency owner to ensure that their agents are familiar with the fare rules, carrier requirements and procedures before processing a transaction. This policy may be reviewed on www.aa.com/agency under “Non-Refundable E-Tickets to Refundable E-Tickets Exchanges”.

When exchanging a non-refundable ticket for a fully refundable ticket, if both NONREF and the original Non-Refundable amount are not in the endorsement box, it is a violation of the Fare Rules “even if the ticket is used”.

In our case, I will grant that they changed the rule and even posted in on their site. Although like more than a few agencies, our office doesn’t read the fine print on airline Web sites on a regular basis. Did American send out a warning memo? No. Does their site stipulate a penalty? No, again. Instead, it is an arbitrary $100 per violation penalty for something that cost the airline nothing.

As noted, in this case and with our clients, it’s almost as if American decided it was less about information, and more about revenue. And while the travelers have not be charged directly, losing hundreds of thousands of miles could save American a lot more than $100 at a time.

I suppose it’s easier than actually making money flying their planes.

Tagged as: AAdvantage program, American Airlines, debit memos, Frequent Flier Miles