Comments on: Reader mail: Is American Airlines’ fare club worth it?

By: Gene

Gene — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:10:56 +0000

The program looks good but has a lot of loop holes. If you’re a “fine print” scanner, beware of American’s play on words. Instead of using the commonly know “blackout dates” term, they use “embargo dates” for the dates the travel vouchers can not be used. Dates that include the two months surround Thansgiving and Christmas! But they do give you 30 days to cancel the membership if you haven’t used any of the perks. I receieved a little attitude when I called to cancel mine! But they did cancel it. Now for the WORST part of the program..they must sell your email address because within hours of joining (you have to give AA your email address to join) I had almost a 600% increase in junk email! Even after I cancelled I’m still receiving junk email. Today alone I received 90! Yesterday it was 65! And these are the ones that are getting passed my spam filters. My trash is growing by leaps and bounds. Just for the hassle alone I encourage everyone to avoid this “perk” because it’s just given me one headache after another!

By: Leisa

Leisa — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:31:18 +0000

I have the AA advantage program with american airlines. I am trying to go to france and if I use my “saved” miles I will have to pay $400 for a ticket plus taxes. But I am just short on miles and I’ll have to buy 10k miles with will cost me an extra $250.00 and I will have to travel for 24 hours from US to paris stopping in England. If I buy straight .I will pay 800 and I will be in Paris in 6 hours. can you believe this c r a p?

By: Michael Gold For Life-Platinum for now

Michael Gold For Life-Platinum for now — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:25:27 +0000

I’m a Million Miler on AA(Gold for life); I’ve been Platinum since 2000 and member since 1992 (didn’t fly AA for years between 1993-1999) for all but a handful of months. AA tried to sell this to me once, but I declined.

Every single coupon/discount/companion code I’ve ever had from American has proved useless.

This one sounded like no exception and I basically told the Platinum agent that and not to waste my time.

By: CL Flyer

CL Flyer — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:57:31 +0000

If you are thinking of joining Traavel Perks, read the fine print carefully. As noted above, the restrictions are such that it isn’t worth it.

In our first six months, we weren’t able to use the companion certificate because the only flights they allowed (with restrictions) left at impossible hours, or were multi-connection flights rather than direct flights.

In the second six months, we used the certificate to book “2 for 1″ on a very small jet (3 people per aisle). Because of ticket class restrictions, the ticket cost over $500, while at the same time you could buy a single ticket on the AA web site for $300. If the program worked as advertised, you should get two tickets for $300. But Traavel Perks claims the tickets are $500 because of the ticket class. In reality, on one of these small jets, each seat is virtually the same (there is no first class, etc.).

So for one year, we paid $130 and “saved” $100.

To make matters worse, the customer service people at Traavel Perks say they aren’t authorized to do anything, because they say they are under American’s supervision. But when I called American they said they weren’t aware of this.