[B.E. Bonnheim]

In January 2015 I ponied up the immense money to fly 1st Class from DFW to Seattle. Early morning flight with breakfast. Yet they had no breakfast for me. I did not complain, though I was hungry. Upon deplaning, the Flt. Attendant pulled me out of line and into the front galley to confront me! "You acted as if it was MY fault," she angrily opined. I told her no, having no food wasn't her fault, but having zero empathy or apology WAS. On my return flt from Seattle, the gate agent at the jetway door demanded I check in my CPAP machine. I showed her the AA webpage that states CPAP's are NOT COUNTED as carry-on. She did not care. Had I not acquiesced and let her check my $900 dollar medical device, I would have not been allowed on the flight! This argument was in front of the entire line of boarding passengers ALSO being held up!

In May 2015 my wife and I tried AA 1st Class one more time. (slow learner) Amazingly, as I was about to walk to the jet stairs to board, ANOTHER ill-informed gate agent insisted I check my CPAP!! We argued, and she ultimately let me pass, but only after berating me loudly and nastily! On layover in Miami from Barbados, our supposed "PRIORITY" bags were the very last to arrive in baggage (before we had to go through Customs and get to our connecting flt)...literally 50 minutes after arriving, and literally after every single passenger...coach or otherwise...had left with their bags! We got no meal on the Barbados to Miami flight, and due to this failure to deliver our bags in a timely way (let alone prioritize them), we had to forgo eating anything, and run to the gate.

My wife wrote to AA Customer Service, and we got the usual meaningless, empty reply, i.e., "Thank you for helping us improve our service. Fly AA again and HOPEFULLY you will get the service you deserve!"
Say what?

So my wife sent a letter to AA Customer Service in Phoenix. She explained that A, we DID give AA 1st Class another try (after Seattle's odd experiences), and B, we STILL didn't get...not what we "deserved"...but what we PAID for. Prioritized baggage handling isn't a favor! We paid a massive price that promises that aspect of service and we didn't get it. I paid for a meal on the Seattle flt and didn't receive it. And NO gate agent of AA should fail to understand AA's own carry-on policy, let alone get nasty about it while holding up an entire line of boarding passengers ON 2 out of 4 flights! My wife nicely explained that if one goes to a restaurant and orders W,X,Y, & Z but only gets W,X, & Y, they don't pay for Z too! That NO orderly, paying passenger (1st Class or otherwise) should be yanked out of the deplaning passengers and yelled at by a Flt. Attendant. She explained that a restaurant under the above mentioned circumstances would adjust the check. AA refuses to do so because they insist upon payment in full up front. Otherwise, they too would have to adjust their price based on the products they failed to deliver.

One would think a business authentically interested in its performance and delivery of its product would not like hearing these tales of whoa! Instead, the response to THAT letter was from a different individual who began with, "I am disappointed to hear you are still unhappy with AA!!!" Um, why wouldn't we be? What has AA done (aside from take our money and not deliver each of the perks we paid to receive, then tell us to fly them yet again) to engage us, or make us want to ever fly AA again? Well, nothing at all. Not one thing. This second letter also referred to the initial letter and reply exchanged between AA and us as if SHE had been the original responder, when she had not! Made us believe neither of these Customer Service people actually exist at all, and the responses one gets from AA (via website complaint OR hard copy letter) are for the most part prepackaged, empty rhetoric designed to help not at all, but merely give an impression of helping. My wife had specifically asked for some reasonable gesture that either refunded some modest percentage of the insane 1st Class fees we paid for the services never delivered, or if AA preferred, some discount on a future 1st Class ticket. NOTE: had AA been savvy or cared enough about any of what they do and do not deliver, that last idea my wife tossed out would have guaranteed AA ANOTHER set of 1st Class tickets, albeit slightly discounted. Instead, as their gesture of "good faith," they agreed to put 2000 miles on my wife's AAdvantage card!! Now, while that is something, it is less than 10% of the miles needed to fly domestically, and zero value compared to the THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS paid in 1st Class tickets for services not rendered, etc. (Utilizing AAdvantage miles, a 1st Class ticket requires around 100,000 miles!!! So what value is 2,000? Clearly none. Zero sacrifice and zero pain for AA, even when they repeatedly failed to perform to stated standards, yet made the conscious decision to KEEP every dime of our money.)

It is plain. AA does NOT care a whit about people like us (or you, I submit). They are too big to care. They don't need you or me. Thus, one can see the massive number of complaints on this site. And one can understand the latest poll in Fortune Magazine that shows AA is the most loathed airline in the world, based on social media posts!

There is but one, single way to get AA to perform (that is, to actually PROVIDE EACH OF THE SERVICES SOLD for the price of a ticket. Yes, getting one "there and back" in one piece is primary. But one can pay Coach for that, and need not pay many, many times the price of Coach for it.): one has to be willing to do almost ANYTHING to avoid flying AA, then might AA begin to genuinely care about what it fails to deliver to its paying and even returning passengers. As service sector business owners ourselves, we actually DO care about our clients and DO make meaningful adjustments on those rare occasions when we or one of our assigns makes a mistake. We each have owned separate businesses for over 20 years, suggesting we know something about service sector business and brand loyalty. American Airlines verbiage is swell. But when mistakes happen to paying customers, when very specific services promised are not delivered due NOT to weather, terrorism or mechanical failures, American Airlines Customer Service responses tell the true story.