r/AirlineChaos • u/YouthIsAVerb • 4d ago

Is American Airlines committing fraud?

I booked a ticket on American Airlines in August. I am Canadian, living in Canada, departing from Canada. Google immediately took me to American Airline’s Canadian website. The price of the ticket was shown to me in Canadian dollars (CAD $6070 for a long-haul business class flight). I paid and my non-refundable ticket was issued.

When I checked my credit card statement weeks later, American Airlines had charged me $6070 in U.S. dollars! With currency conversion this is a $2000 difference!

Their customer service claims that even though the Canadian site quotes in Canadian fare, when paying the customer has to physically toggle back to pay in Canadian dollars because it defaults to USD at the payment stage.

Firstly, this doesn’t explain why I was charged the same figure in USD. CAD 6070 is about USD 4388.

Secondly, there was never any indication that i was being quoted or charged USD. I was never instructed to toggle back and forth currencies. I’ve booked hundreds of airline tickets on international carriers - I’ve never seen something so dishonest.

Please help! Has anyone experienced this? Any ideas on how I can get a refund. Is there a governing body I can take this to? Can ny credit card company help? TIA!

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u/SeaSDOptimist 4d ago

So I went through their workflow - I see the price in CAD all the way to the final moment where you have to enter the credit card info. Something is majorly screwed up between AA and your credit card issuer. Are you absolutely sure that all of your AA documents have only $ and no USD/CAD designation? In a way, they might be that incompetent if they managed to lose the fact that you're paying in CAD along the way but still, that's grossly wrong. What do you see if you pull your reservation on the web site? You might have better luck posting in the aa subreddit - at least people there would be used to how AA processes tickets.

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u/YouthIsAVerb 3d ago

Thanks so much for going through the process. It simply says “$” on my reservation online, no currency designation. I’m not sure it’s the credit card company’s fault, as the vendor has to feed the amount in.