AA's Hotel Voucher Denied in Beijing -- now what?
 

Earlier this month, I traveled to China with my family. Several of the hotels we stayed at were booked and paid for using my American Airlines frequent flier miles. In Beijing, the hotel we chose was the Legendale. As soon as I checked in, I knew something odd was going on. They said they did not have my reservation, they did not take vouchers, and they could get me a room but needed my credit card. I studied my voucher and called American Airlines. The rep told me I was at the right hotel, that they had confirmation, and that they will get the problem fixed during business hours in Dallas.

Well that was three weeks ago and the problem is still not fixed. I ended up with a $1,100 charge on my credit card for two nights at the hotel and about $100 in AT&T charges on my iphone. It really got to be comical. AA would say “ok we talked to the hotel sales department, faxed them the voucher, and everything is good now”. I would go down to the lobby and talk to the manager and he would say “we do not take vouchers so I do not know what you are talking about”.

When I got back to the States, I started working the problem again and the run around continued. First AA said they would refund the amount that the hotel charged me. Now they are saying they will only refund my miles. Better yet, they are telling me to wait three weeks because they now think the hotel is going to refund my money.

What should I do now? If I would have known that the voucher was never going to be valid and AA would have told me that when I was checking in, I would have not stayed there. It was way over priced and the service was bad. I do not think I should have to pay $1,100 because of AA’s screw up and I do not think simply refunding my miles is the right answer in this case. I am lucky that the hotel did not max out my credit card in the middle of the trip and leave me stranded. It was a real concern at the time.

Contact Chris Elliott the travel guy he is great at getting this kind of stuff resolved. http://www.elliott.org/

Dispute the credit card charge immediately, and in writing. You need to do that to preserve your rights.

Credit card company says that there is nothing they can do since I signed the receipt. Their advice was to leave out the back door of the hotel and risk spending time in a Chinese prison (rather than signing the receipt, which they say tied their hands).

insuremytrip.com always wise might cover this if you had any

sometimes it can be built into your CC or homeowners.

If you signed the CC form you are pretty much toast

might contact cntraveler.com ombudsman they embarass lots of

hotels and AA.com into honoring their FF mile agreement.

The liability is ultimately with the AA FF mile travel agent

for breach on contract... they have insurance for this.

Threaten to take them to small claims court

worked for Ralph Nader recently got all his money back...

I hope you were also e-mailing American so you have a paper trail.

AA clearly is at fault here. IMO, you should get what you paid back from AA.

But, you should have done one thing: confirm your reservation DIRECTLY with the hotel PRIOR to your trip departure. I was in a similar situation, but I avoided your nightmare by this simple follow-up. Any time you are dealing with a third party, always confirm everything DIRECTLY with you & the other party. GOOD LUCK!

One other thing: Try contacting the Conde Nast Traveler Ombudsman. They love to help w/stories like yours.