Wow, $1,700 for what costs? Explain please. emails, certified letters, phone calls, small claims court paperwork………..Wouldnt the $100 voucher cover those expenses?

What should you learn from reading this? Use a local travel agency. The cost of their fee to issue a ticket would have been of great value to you instead of wasting your assistants time. What did you save doing it yourself?????

YMMV. Your Mileage May Vary.

Some people like me prefer to do things ourselves despite the possible hardships. Others prefer to pay others to do stuff for them, but risk those others falling short of their expectations depending on the situation.

Sorry to read what happened to you, Peter. And you did the right thing documenting all you could to make your case easier to demonstrate, helped all the more by AA’s sending you the needed details.

Given the poor customer service from the legacy airlines, the reduction of staff, the additional job stresses on airline employees and etc; 1) I won’t have boarded the plane until I ‘saw’ the gate agent cancelled the reservation and received a verbal or printed confirmation; 2) I would have gotten the name of the gate agent; 3) I would have taken a picture of the gate agent with my cell phone; 4) I would have call them to confirm that the reservation was cancelled.

NW gate agents and flight attendants (whom I nicely asked for help) didn’t do anything to put us together. In fact, they stuck my husband in the last row in front of the lav where the seat couldn’t recline. I took that seat and eventually another passenger switched with my husband (who had to decide between sitting near strangers mid-row while ill, or sitting next to me in an upright position for 4 hours, the worst possible with extreme nausea).

Once home I complained via e-mail to customer service and every exec who’s e-mail I could find. NW blew me off. I sent the CEO a letter informing him he was losing at least $30K in revenue that year – my husband and I needed to fly between the 2 cities 1-2 xs a month for a year, almost always booking last minute (full fare) since flights were dependent on complicated medical scenarios.

Any questions why I switched to US Airways, AirTran and SW for the remainder of our flights? Any other questions about why airlines that piss off $30K/year passengers are going bankrupt? Kudos Peter for sticking to your guns despite the time and expense involved.

By the way, Northwest brags about its Northwest Cares program which supposedly flies patients to and fro for treatment – that program NEVER helped us, even after it was made aware of our situation.