Two years ago American Airlines reduced the value of their small business program by about two-thirds, launching ‘AAdvantage Business” as the replacement for Business ExtrAA.
And American is celebrating this anniversary with a double miles offer. They sent out an email to program members that they can register to earn double credit on flights booked today onward (doesn’t apply to existing bookings) for travel through November 20.
In other words, they want to goose business travel leading up to the holidays. And they want to make sure they don’t reward any business they would’ve gotten anyway (because it’s already been booked).
However American never quite got the tech right for AAdvantage Business. And initially they didn’t even allow agents to help when things didn’t work. So it doesn’t surprise me what registering for this offer is actually like.
- You can’t just click the link from the email to register.
- You have to go log into your AAdvantage Business account. Then you need to go to the settings tab to enter a promo code.
- Settings has 3 sections: “General” “Email domains” “Integrations” where do you think promotions is?
- Find “Promotional codes” at the bottom of general. The email contained a 5 alphanuermic character code. Enter that.
- It generates an error!
“Each promo code must have 6 alphanumeric characters. Items not valid: PSN2Y”
And here I was just happy with myself for not accidentally hitting the red button “Delete business account.”
Well, large corporations (and the super rich) rarely care about the ‘little guy,’ so I guess it’s not much of a surprise that American Airlines doesn’t care about small businesses much either. Boohoo.
This is why American Airlines will never earn a revenue premium or be considered a premium airline. They can never make anything easy for the customer. This is a small business promotion which often means a business owner who is time strapped. So instead of clicking a button to register like most normal businesses offer, no, they need to have about 15 steps and then it doesn’t even work because the code they have given is too short. This sums up American Airlines attitude towards their customer, they just don’t care.
They waste customers time day in and day out with unrealistic flight departures, make everything so complicated. Time is money and small business owners and people in management value their time. Until American Airlines figures this out, they will likely never earn a revenue premium. This is why I switched my business from American to Alaska, Delta, and United and have given up my over a decade of executive platinum status with them. Almost every other airline values my time by providing realistic flight delays so I can complete work in the lounge rather then standing at a gate for 3 hours waiting in 15 minute increments for departure time to change with no inbound aircraft in sight. Waiting 30-50 minutes for bags with American when almost every other airlines delivers my bags in under 20 minutes and often 10. Plus, American Airlines’ employees just don’t care or if they care aren’t given the tools to do their jobs. They truly need to hire a team focused on lean 6 sigma to redo all of their policies and procedures.
@JC1 — Tell us how you really feel.
Listen, all these airlines have their issues, but American is not all that different from their competitors, and they all do just fine. Sure, devaluations or changes in a program are upsetting (worthless PlusPoints and SkyPesos would like a word, as would Mosaic passengers who have no lounges).
The correct code is PSN2YA. A quick search found it online.
The correct code is PSN2YA. A quick search found it online on an AA web page. Of course, my search is many hours later that the original post.
@jns — Sounds like ‘pissin to ya’ (wait, were you doing a bit?)
At least it’s totally on brand…
@1990: American has objectively worse IT than United, and it’s not even close. That difference permeates their websites and apps. Delta seems to fall somewhere in between.