mikepapas

We made our reservation with AA last Spring while my wife was undergoing "very aggressive" treatment for Cancer. She wanted to visit her parents (she, myself and our 2 children would go )and we thought she would be well enough to do so.
When the time came for our trip she was still bed ridden and unable to travel. We had to cancel our trip. I wrote to AA's customer service and AA said that it did not matter one bit if we submitted letters from her doctors they would still charge us $100 each to reschedule our trip. Today I tried to redeem our credits for a new trip on AA and was told that my wife and I cannot use the credits from our children's tickets. Not only did we have to pay a penalty but we were not allowed to use our entire credit !

mikepapas

ps. do not patronize American Airlines.

rkkwan

Sorry about your wife's cancer, but have you considered getting travel insurance when buying that ticket? Or were you denied?

As for the kids, travel credits are never transferable. You buy tickets for the kids to travel, and they are the one who need to use them.

mikepapas

Certainly in retrospect, we should have. I've never done that before and I didn't think about it.

alanRow

You wouldn't have been covered by insurance.

I wonder why you booked the flight when you knew your wife was seriously ill

Momliz

I thought many insurance policies cover pre existing conditions if bought within a certain time frame, which seems to depend on the policy. Although, it's a moot point for the OP.

rkkwan

It's one thing to praise a business because they're extraordinarily compassionate, but to ask us to boycott one because it's not compassionate in this case? Isn't that a bit much?

AAFrequentFlyer

I have one or two answers for you - fully refundable tickets, or wait until you know you can go and only then buy tickets.

Wishing the best for your wife!

A_Traveller

Sorry to hear of your wife's illness but that really has nothing to do with the airline's policy. As other have already pointed out you purchased a non-refundable stricted fare ticket. One of the restrictions, which are concessions you make in order to get a reduced fare (as opposed to buying a full fare fully refundable ticket), is that there is a $100 per person "re-ticketing fee" if you wish to make a change in your itineray. You agreed to these terms when you purchased the ticket. Unfortunately, neither American Airlines, nor any other airline, offers a restricted fare ticket that is refundable or does not have a re-booking fee for if you have to cancel or change your departure date for INSERT YOUR SPECIFIC REASON (which by the way is probably not unique and has been heard by the airline hundreds of time on any given day). What I'm trying to say is you were treated no differently than the hundreds of people who change or cancel their non-refundable tickets everyday. You must pay the $100 rebooking fee and you can only use the credit voucher issued in one person's name for a ticket for that person - the vouchers are not transferrable.

Again this is standard airline policy and is not directed specifically at you or your ailing wife.

ms_go

I'm sorry about your wife's condition and wish you the best.

When you cancel a reservation, you are cancelling just that--the reservation, not the ticket. What you have in return is not a credit, but a ticket with the residual value (minus the change fee) to apply to another reservation within a specified period of time. When you use it to rebook a new reservation, the ticket number will remain the same as the original. Tickets are not transferrable. (At least, this is the way it works on the airline I fly most often, and I'd be very surprised if it's much different on American)

Patty

On AA, can you do something like reticket the children using the cheapest fare (to anywhere) you can find and use the residual for the OP? I know this workaround is possible on DL but don't know about other airlines. At least this way you don't loose the entire value of the ticket just the new lower fare + change fee (assuming your original fare is higher than this).

janisj

I know you were stressed - and are angry about this. But the same thing (or even worse) would have happened on just about any airline. Except maybe Southwest. Unfortunately, you really do not have a legitimate gripe w/ AA.

Hopefully your wife is doing better, and in the scheme of things these tickets are not all that important.

gail

Good luck with your wife's health. While most reasonable people would consider cancer "good enough" when airlines say non-refundable they all mean it - the chance we take for getting a cheaper ticket.

Imagine the chaos if they said nonrefundable except for good reasons. Imagine all the excuses - real, imagined, faked, falsely-documented, and legitimate they would have to sort thru. Imagine the cost to everyone. I don't want my airline playing detective - I just want them to fly. Even MD letters are fairly easy to fake - I see at least one a month in my work.

So I hope your wife was able to get to see her parents.

owlwoman

I was on a business trip when I got news of a death in my family and had to fly home a day early, US Air still charged me $100 to change the flight, even though the ticket agent was fairly compassionate about my situation.

HKP

Unlike most Fodorites, airlines have pretty much stepped back from any idea of compassionate policy or practice. Even the "bereavement" fares are usually 1/2 the maximum walk-up fully refundable fare, which is often pretty steep.

They figure they're doing you a favor even letting you use the ticket later at all and the $100 shouldn't bother you if you've got a pressing problem.

I really hope things work out for you and your wife, and I understand completely why you wanted to go ahead and book a trip -- you have to have optimism!

FainaAgain

Of course I am very sympathetic to all cancer sufferers after losing my mom to this horrible disease.

But in this case... something doesn't add up. The tickets were bought while the woman was undergoing treatment, she still can't fly, and now it's the airline's fault? WHY?

I understand, you were too stressed out to think about insurance. Sorry you had to learn an expensive lesson.

cfc

I don't think even the most liberal insurance carriers would cover this, but maybe.

But that still doesn't negate the reason they booked the trip in the first place. Don't think some of you are reading between the lines here, or maybe I'm reading too much in. But if she needed "very aggressive" treatment, chances are the cancer was "very aggressive" too. She wanted to see her parents (subtext: while she still can), she wanted a trip with family, she wanted to be positive about her situation, embrace life, and they all had to have the hope and faith that it would happen.

Until you've faced down something this dire yourself, maybe you shouldn't judge whether they made a stupid decision or were just doing the best they could with the hand they were dealt. Chasing down details of insurance just in case what you don't want to happen, happens? How many of us with 2 kids and chemo/radiation/bone transplant or whatever would be able to do that?

Carrybean

I don't think anyone was "judging" or saying they made a stupid decision. You're reading things that just aren't there.

cfc

You have no doubt about that, I assume. Anyone asked mikepapas? I notice he hasn't come back -- I wouldn't either, frankly.

AAFrequentFlyer

There is a difference between getting a correct answer, an honest reply, an advice on how to avoid the same situation in the future and giving some kind of useless support that's not going to get the OP anywhere anyway and possibly even more frustrated as s/he listens to the few incorrect suggestions.

He had few options avalable to him that would have prevented this scenario.

Knowing his wife's situation he could have:

1. buy a fully refundable tickets

2. wait until the situation is clear enough and only then buy tickets

3. buy tickets for her parents to visit them.

instead he chose the least desireable option - a no-refundable tickets.

How can he blame a company for following it's terms of a contract?

Companies are in business to make money. 100's of thousands employees depend on that fact and count on their check being there for them at the end of the week. The companies also deal with millions of customers on a daily basis. If the rules are not followed then what would the point of fully refundable tickets (expensive) r non-refundable tickets (inexpensive)?

I believe that in many cases, and I'm not saying it is the case here, that the real reason some posters don't come back is because they didn't get the answers they wanted to hear.

Wishing the best to his wife and the family! I also wish things could be different but they are not. The reality of non-refundable ticket is spelled out before one buys it.