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Irate customer to American Airlines: I may give up traveling altogether

by Jeffrey White (RSS feed) on Apr 19th 2008 at 8:00AM

Antonia Bell from San Antonio wrote me recently, upset that she could not send a letter of complaint directly to American Airlines through its Web site -- something wasn't working.

Bell is one of the thousands who were left high and dry during the airline's massive round of flight cancellations a few weeks ago. Bell was responding to a post I wrote reporting that a group of AA pilots have just launched a Web site of their own and are looking for irate customers to post their AA horror stories for the world to read. AA recently launched its own blog that I can only imagine might work in part to offset criticism it receives in other forums.

Anyway, Bell was kind enough to send me the letter that she has faxed to American. Nothing earth-shattering here, but I wanted to share it with you:

April 9 2008

American Airlines Customer Relations
Mail Drop 2400
P.O. Box 619612
Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport, TX 75261-9612

I couldn't even get this complaint to go through from your website----why am I not surprised? I know I'm probably just one of the thousands of complaints you're receiving as a result of your flight cancellations, but if there's anybody who cares up there, this is why I'm done with American, after 30 years of being a customer:

Your e-mail notification system didn't work...I only found out about the cancellation because of news stories.
Miraculously, I got thru on your 800-number yesterday about 5:30-6PM CDT. The young lady I dealt with said she was reticketing me on CO 1505/1629 and putting notes to that effect on my record (Record Locator: PCHGPR). When I got to the airport this morning, she had done neither, and the CO flights had sold out several hours earlier (middle of the night, I'm guessing).
Your Automated Response telephone system consistently misrepresents how long the wait is, and in some cases is contradicted by a later recording. At 4AM this morning, it said the wait was 58 minutes.....1.5 hours later, I was still on hold.

Your systems are broken, and nobody seems to care. I cancelled my trip, since there was no point in going at a later time. When I rebook, it will be with another carrier----or I may give up traveling altogether.
For business, travel isn't really necessary with the technology that's available. That will probably be the death of the airline industry.

Antonia Bell
San Antonio, TX

Filed under: Airlines, Consumer Activism