American Airlines AADVANTAGE program a SCAM.

ATTENTION ALL AADVANTAGE MEMBERS AND ANYONE PLANNING TO FLY WITH
AMERICAN AIRLINES! American Airlines deleted 72,951 miles from my
AAdvantage account! American Airlines' AAdvantage program is a scam.
The American Airline Slogan "WE CARE" is a joke. Read the fine print
on the present AAdvantage program website--it gives American Airlines
the liberty of changing its promotions whenever it pleases and scam
its customers. When you contact Customer Support for assistance--your
comments will be ignored. There is no advantage to flying on American
Airlines and the company certainly doesn't care about its customers.

I am a senior citizen. I managed to collect 72,951 miles of frequent
flyer mile credit in my AAdvantage account. To do this, there were
many times that I chose to fly with American Airlines when their price
wasn't the lowest one available and their flight times weren't the
most convenient. I thought these "sacrifices" were worth it to fly
with an airline company that cared about it customers and I watched my
AAdvantage account grow with great anticipation of the vacation that I
would be able to take one day as my reward for being a dedicated
customer. My health prevented me from doing any traveling for a few
years and I stopped logging into the American Airlines website but my
wife continued to collect AAdvantage miles and we would talk about
where we would go once she "caught up" with my AAdvantage miles. This
October, we decided to finally take our dream vacation together. I
checked out all the American Airline vacation packages and we picked
out our favorite. To my surprise, when I logged into my AAdvantage
account, all my miles were gone! All 72,951 miles had been deleted!

Certainly, I thought, there must be some mistake. Couple years ago,
the AAdvantage web site was modified and it clearly stated that the
miles credit would not expire. Now I find out that AAdvantage deleted
all my mileage credit without giving me any notice or warnings. When I
emailed Customer Support for assistance, they sent me a form response
letter stating that the terms and conditions of the Advantage program
had changed and my account had fallen victim to a newer policy where
miles expire after a certain period of inactivity. No one wanted to
hear why there was inactivity. No one cared about my story. The
policy was clear, Customer Support said, and my miles would not be
reinstated. According to Customer Support, American Airlines reserved
the right to change their program's terms and conditions at any time
without notice or warning to its members. Customer Support suggested
that I start collecting miles all over again in their "new and
improved" program.

I am so disappointed and frustrated. I am posting my experience to
warn everyone else who is collecting AAdvantage miles or is
considering collecting AAdvantage miles. The miles are illusionary.
They can be deleted by American Airlines at any moment without any
prior notice. Under the guise of protecting users' personal
information, American Airlines reserves the right to change its
AAdvantage terms and conditions AT ANY TIME. You could have 72,951
miles in your account one day and ZERO miles the next. I am convinced
that the AAdvantage program is a scam.

Here is the language from the American Airlines website:

"Thank you for visiting the American Airlines web site titled "aa.com"
(the "Site"). In return for gaining access to the Site and using it,
you agree to be bound by the following Agreement without limitation or
qualification, so please carefully review this Agreement before
proceeding. If you do not intend to be legally bound by these terms
and conditions, do not access and use the Site. American Airlines
reserves the right to change this Agreement and to make changes to any
of the products or programs described in the Site at any time without
notice or liability. Any such revisions are prospectively binding on
you and therefore you should periodically visit this page when you use
the Site to review the then current Agreement that binds you. American
Airlines also reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion
to deny you access to the Site at any time."

So you never logged on it the last 3 years and saw the expiration date?

Grant wrote:

ATTENTION ALL AADVANTAGE MEMBERS AND ANYONE PLANNING TO FLY WITH
AMERICAN AIRLINES! American Airlines deleted 72,951 miles from my
AAdvantage account! American Airlines' AAdvantage program is a scam.

"Grant" wrote in message
om...


Certainly, I thought, there must be some mistake. Couple years ago,
the AAdvantage web site was modified and it clearly stated that the
miles credit would not expire. Now I find out that AAdvantage deleted
all my mileage credit without giving me any notice or warnings.

Sorry to hear about you losing your miles. When the policy changed about 8
or 10 years ago, I received multiple notices of the "3 year rule" with my
AAdvantage statements and as a separate mailing. Most mileage plans changed
to a similar policy at the same time, and it got a lot of media attention.
So it's not like the rules got changed suddenly and secretly in the dead of
night.

Also, any miles accumulated prior to the change still do not expire. So if
you lost *all* of your miles, this means they were earned after the new
rules were already in effect, so in your case nothing changed.

Under the guise of protecting users' personal
information, American Airlines reserves the right to change its
AAdvantage terms and conditions AT ANY TIME.

Well, your "fine print" is different than mine. My fine print says with 6
month's notice.

Here is the language from the American Airlines website:

"Thank you for visiting the American Airlines web site titled "aa.com"
(the "Site"). In return for gaining access to the Site and using it,
you agree to be bound by the following Agreement without limitation or
qualification, so please carefully review this Agreement before
proceeding.

What you quote is the terms of use for the aa.com website. This has nothing
to do with the rules of the AAdvantage program.

Again, sorry about your experience, but the rules are clearly stated,
expiring miles are shown on your statement, the airlines usually send a
"reminder" that some of your miles are about to expire, and based on your
narrative, there was NO change to the rules. So how, exactly, is this a
"scam"?

Ken Ishiguro

You misunderstood.
The rules clearly state that if you don't have any activity in 3 years,
the miles will expire. As long as you have some kind of mileage activity
(plus or minus), you can keep all of the miles.

In article ,
(Grant) wrote:

ATTENTION ALL AADVANTAGE MEMBERS AND ANYONE PLANNING TO FLY WITH
AMERICAN AIRLINES! American Airlines deleted 72,951 miles from my
AAdvantage account! American Airlines' AAdvantage program is a scam.
The American Airline Slogan "WE CARE" is a joke. Read the fine print
on the present AAdvantage program website--it gives American Airlines
the liberty of changing its promotions whenever it pleases and scam
its customers. When you contact Customer Support for assistance--your
comments will be ignored. There is no advantage to flying on American
Airlines and the company certainly doesn't care about its customers.

This sucks. It seems to me there might be a basis for a class action
law suit here.

Me wrote:
In article ,
(Grant) wrote:


ATTENTION ALL AADVANTAGE MEMBERS AND ANYONE PLANNING TO FLY WITH
AMERICAN AIRLINES! American Airlines deleted 72,951 miles from my
AAdvantage account! American Airlines' AAdvantage program is a scam.
The American Airline Slogan "WE CARE" is a joke. Read the fine print
on the present AAdvantage program website--it gives American Airlines
the liberty of changing its promotions whenever it pleases and scam
its customers. When you contact Customer Support for assistance--your
comments will be ignored. There is no advantage to flying on American
Airlines and the company certainly doesn't care about its customers.


This sucks. It seems to me there might be a basis for a class action
law suit here.

Why does it suck. Originally, miles expired. For the past few years, it
hass been widely publicized they expire if there is no activity in and
out of the account for 3 years. EVERY statement gives you the expiration
date of your miles. Additionally, you can see this when you view your
miles online. He might try calling customer service and explaining his
health problems. The rules are VERY clear.

In article ,
mrraveltay wrote:


Why does it suck. Originally, miles expired. For the past few years, it
hass been widely publicized they expire if there is no activity in and
out of the account for 3 years. EVERY statement gives you the expiration
date of your miles. Additionally, you can see this when you view your
miles online. He might try calling customer service and explaining his
health problems. The rules are VERY clear.

Although I understand that notice was provided about the expiration,
it seems pretty lousy that miles expire in the first place. People
should be able to accumulate as many miles as they want. Not use
with American's program, but with other airlines' frequent flyer
programs too. Until that happens, I will never participate in a
frequent flyer program from any airline. There are just too many
hoops and conditions to deal with to get the miles. I think it is
more frugal to go with the lowest priced fare when booking airline
tickets.

GET OVER IT ASSHOLE....GET A LIFE

I am the original poster and I would like to reply to Mr. Ken
Ishiguro's comments.

I have no incentive to tell anything other than the truth--I am an
innocent customer who was harmed by American Airlines business tactics
and I want to warn other customers. Mr. Ishiguro, as well as some of
the other posters, on the other hand, are probably either American
Airlines employees or work for a public relations company hired by
American Airlines.

In response to Mr. Ishiguro's comments…

1) Mr. Ishiguro said that multiple announcements were made when the
program policy changed 8-10 years ago. Perhaps that is the case, but
I was not an AAdvantage member at that time and did not receive or
hear about such announcements. I became a member about 7 years ago
and started collecting miles thereafter. In September 2001, after the
9-11 tragedy, I specifically went to the AAdvantage terms and
conditions webpage to see if the miles expired after a certain time,
and I read, at that time, that AAdvanatage was instituting a policy
that the miles would not expire. The policy that Mr. Ishiguro is
referring to, that miles expire after three years of inactivity, was
instituted sometime between September 2001 (when I last read the terms
and conditions before my mileage was deleted) and now. As the
AAdvantage terms and conditions state, American Airlines has reserved
the right to change the AAdvantage program's terms and conditions AT
ANY TIME without notice to their members. My experience is an example
of how American Airlines can use this right to scam their customers.
What the rules are TODAY may not be the rules TOMORROW, let alone next
week or next month or when you want to use your miles. For example,
AT ANY TIME American Airlines can institute a new rule that states
that if you don't have any activity after 3 months, the miles will
expire. Other customers will be scammed like I was.

2) Mr. Ishiguro said that the fine print states that American Airlines
can change its AAdvantage terms and conditions with 6 month's
notice--not at any time as I quoted. Please take a closer look at
that fine print, which is on
http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage...nditions.jhtml.
Under AAdvantage Award Conditions, it states American Airlines
reserves the right to "END the AAdvantage program" with six months
notice--but the first line of this section states that American
Airlines "MAY CHANGE the AAdvantage program rules, regulations … AT
ANY TIME." This is what I think customers are not aware of.

3) Mr. Ishiguro said that airlines generally send a reminder that
miles will expire. I did not receive any such reminder and I am sure
of that. The e-mail account statements that I was receiving from
AAdvantage did not indicate any expiration date for the mileage. I
did not find out that AAdvantage had instituted a new three-year rule
until I contacted American Airlines to find out why all my miles had
been deleted. I do see that new online AAdvantage account webpages do
allow users to, after multiple click-throughs, eventually find such
information--perhaps this change was made because customers, like
myself, complained.

I am the original poster. In response to mrraveltay's comments, sir,
I did not misunderstand. My point is that American Airlines keeps
CHANGING its policies. Yes, now the rules state that if you don't
have activity in three years, the miles expire. But, in September
2001, after the 9-11 tragedy, I specifically went to the AAdvantage
terms and conditions webpage to see if the miles expired after a
certain time, and I read, at that time, that AAdvanatage was
instituting a policy that the miles would not expire. The policy that
mrraveltay is referring to, that miles expire after three years of
inactivity, was instituted sometime between September 2001 (when I
last read the terms and conditions before my mileage was deleted) and
now. As the AAdvantage terms and conditions state, American Airlines
has reserved the right to change the AAdvantage program's terms and
conditions AT ANY TIME without notice to their members. My experience
is an example of how American Airlines can use this right to scam
their customers. What the rules are TODAY may not be the rules
TOMORROW, let alone next week or next month or when you want to use
your miles. For example, AT ANY TIME American Airlines can institute
a new rule that states that if you don't have any activity after 3
months, the miles will expire. Other customers will be scammed like I
was.