Last July my family traveled to California via American Airlines from Dayton to LAX with my infant son (3.5 mo) and toddler daughter (2.5). You may have read this post and if not, I urge you to check it out here. If you don’t have time to read that post, the long story short is that American Airlines failed at family-friendly traveling forcing us to check our stroller with luggage on our return trip instead of at the gate as we did during our travel to California. We had to navigate through LAX and Chicago airports with our two little babes. It was scary, traumatic, stressful and flat out exhausting! As if that wasn’t bad enough, once we arrived in Dayton and took our stroller off the luggage belt, we noticed that it was broke in multiple places (I have pictures in our other post). After talking with multiple supervisors and employees, we were told that our stroller was not their responsibility and it was never replaced or fixed but American Airlines gave us two vouchers (we paid for three tickets originally) for our troubles that were mailed to me.

Fast forward to present day and I would like to use said vouchers towards a trip – going on a cruise actually to celebrate 10 years of marriage. I honestly didn’t want to use the vouchers and really just wanted our stroller replaced but after a stressful start to 2015 (found out my dad has cancer) I felt like I should go ahead and take advantage and get away with just the hubby.

After reading the voucher several times, which I thought was confusing, I called to talk to a ticketing agent in March to ask how the voucher works. She assured me it was easy and when I brought up the verbiage on the voucher that reads, “VOID IF TOTAL VALUE EXCEEDS USD 1000.00” she NEVER mentioned to me that I really need to worry about the OTHER number on the voucher which says “TOTAL USD 300.00” under where it says the following: “RELATED TO FLIGHT 3702 FROM LAX TO DAY ON 29JUL14” which I thought was just a value from my previously terrible experience in which they were issuing a voucher to help amend. After the confirmation with the ticket agent I went ahead and booked my cruise and hotel online feeling assured that I would have no problem getting FREE/VOUCHED flights.

On Wednesday, April 22, I called American Airlines back to actually book my flight to New Orleans with a ticketing agent as you cannot do it online. After talking with the first ticketing agent and beginning the process of my reservations, she asked me the value of my voucher, I stated that it says “VOID IF TOTAL VALUE EXCEEDS USD 1000.00” which she said was not the value. At this point I am feeling totally mislead to believe that I could book any flight so long as the value did not exceed 1,000.00 but NEVER understood that my voucher VALUE was actually only worth $300 and since you have to book through a ticketing agent either in person or over the phone the prices were astronomical with a price tag of $994 PER ticket making the price for our tickets almost $700 a piece after using a voucher!! How is this an acceptable “apology” for breaking our stroller? Sorry we broke your stroller – please pay another $1400 to our company…..I mean, really?

The ticket agent quickly routed me to a supervisor as she didn’t know how to help a sobbing customer (me) and the supervisor, Cody, that I talked with was extremely rude and mean and literally put me into more tears and heartache. He said, that it was not his problem that I misunderstood the voucher – could he be any more rude? Like I read airline vouchers everyday!  I am a customer who is giving American Airlines a second chance, after being a loyal Southwest Airlines customer for many years, and having a TERRIBLE first experience in which they had to give me vouchers for in the first place. Now, he is going to kick me while I’m down? What am I supposed to do about the booked cruise and hotel? What a missed opportunity for American Airlines!!!

At this point, I have tweeted American Airlines, posted on their Facebook page and sent in a request via their website 3 times and just continue to receive canned responses. I just can’t believe this experience with American Airlines is happening again. I just think it was awful how they treated me the first time and yet again! As I do more research I have also found that many more consumers are mis-treated by American Airlines just by searching #americanairlines on Facebook and Twitter. At this point I just want to share my story and let others know that it is NOT RIGHT to treat other human beings with such disrespect, have some compassion!!

Again, I am asking my dedicated readers to please help! Please retweet my posts on www.Twitter.com/JesyHerron and please share my story. I don’t think it’s fair that I was originally forced to check our stroller and then it was broke by American Airlines, I really just want it replaced. Forget the vouchers at this point but focus on the fact that this giant company shouldn’t get away with mistreating a family during what is supposed to be a happy experience, traveling! This is a $500 stroller and it needs to be replaced!!! We would love your help!! Love you all!!