An American Airlines customer bought a $1,000 ticket and later refunded it. American returned $100,000 instead.
The ticket had been purchased outside the United States and American made a currency conversion error, returning funds to the American Express card that had been used.
Windfall, right? Not so fast. The customer knew the money wasn’t theirs. They tried to get American to see their error. They were told everything was correct. They escalated things up to American’s Revenue Protection group, and even emailed top executives. They filed a ‘dispute’ about the refund with American Express.
- The refund gave them a negative Membership Rewards balance of 500,000 points when Amex deducted the $100,000 charge at 5x on airfare for the refund.
- They worried about having to send a check to American, and getting stuck losing half a million Amex points because of American’s mistake. On the other hand, if they were hit with a new charge to reverse the refund, they would be excused to a huge currency conversion risk.
If exchange rates moved against him, he’d lose thousands of dollars based on the difference between when the $100,000 refund was processed and changed value of the currency when the funds were taken back. (He could also gain from the foreign currency spread, but he shouldn’t be stuck with foreign currency risk because of American’s mistake.)
- And the customer was concerned about having his account closed, or being subject to a financial review because of the massive credit balance.
On the one hand, withdrawing the $100,000 (asking American Express for a check for the balance) and sticking the money into a high yield savings account would at least earn them interest during the time it takes for this to be resolved. On the other hand, it’s not his money and he feared taking the money out would look suspicious.
Initially, American was dismissive saying that the refund was processed correctly. Then they understood that the refund should have been $1,000 – blissfully unaware that $100,000 had been processed. The customer was proactively honest, trying to return the money against a wall of frustrating incompetence.
At what point do you give up? And if you simply say “I’ve done my best” you still have to worry about American coming back on this months or even years later.
Eventually, the customer reported succeeding in getting this escalated. They’ve received acknowledgment of the error, though it’s not clear how long it will take to get this fixed.
Ultimately proactive honesty was the best strategy, but the time, effort, and stress that went into this seems unlikely to be compensated. It was a lot of work for the customer to make American Airlines whole with little reward other than removing the cloud of stress from the airline’s mistake.
All things equal, this mistake seems pretty small compared to what American’s banking partner Citi did, crediting a customer with $81 trillion instead of $280. Given the amount, at least Citi caught it 90 minutes later. That would have generated a nice return in a high yield savings account.
What an incredible story! I would have made exactly ONE contact with American Airlines. Had this happened to me, it would have involved my Chase Sapphire Reserve. I would have thrown this whole mess at Chase for help and a resolution. You can’t expect AmEx to help, their Customer Service people are as clueless as American Airlines. Chase would have given me access to a Specialist after one call to Customer Service. I was a loyal AmEx person for 30 years until yet another frustrating issue with AmEx customer service where the agent couldn’t even understand my very simple problem. I jumped on the Sapphire card the minute it was available and have never looked back.
Good for the customers for proactively trying to resolve this, yet often ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ and ‘good intentions’ often do not mean much, sadly. The negative 500K MR hold during the ‘dispute’ is not ‘fun’ though.
@ jsn55
Plus 1
Took the words right out of my mouth
However I’ll add Chitibank is just as bad with their overseas agents
Once upon a time though when the Prestige card launched they were stellar
That was some years ago!
US labor has devolved to the point that even common sense is challenged. Workers are uneducated, lack critical thinking capability and just don’t give a crap about the customer (or their employer). This is the new dumbed down America- now they can go back to playing on their phones.
Ha!
My college friends and I used to stop by our mailboxes in the residence common area on our way to the dining hall. One friend, reading his mail over dinner, suddenly exclaimed “holy __!” with his eyes really wide. There was a deposit error on his bank statement, lots of digits or at least enough that it was big money to all of us. Of course, the correction was the next line item.
@paul — I disagree. You attack ‘labor’ with the typical tropes (lazy, stupid, etc.) which is just plain wrong—in many cases they are simply exploited by their greedy employers and the ownership class. The best thing these workers can do is to get organized, to unite, to join and support unions, and to demand better for themselves and their communities. In the aggregate this improves conditions for everyone, including the consumers, who in turn bring more business benefiting the owners, too. So, c’mon man, unless you’re one of those anarcho-capitalists, in which case, you, sir, are a lost cause.
Citi doesn’t have enough assets on its balance sheet to cover $80 trillion. American Airlines, however, can easily cover a $100,000 discrepancy.
There should be a law on the books in the USA:
If a larger than X% refund is issued, and the recipient/customer spends Y amount of time to correct it to no avail, then by default the money is theirs after a waiting period of Z days.
Problem solved.
No, no, no. Let them keep the $100,000 and the next time that is due to someone just refund $1000. Then the books will balance
@Drrichard — Cook the books! Mmm.