if AA is too slow to deal with you and credit you what they owe you, and it is their fault, call your credit card company hotline to ask for a refund, be ready to back it up with evidence, and in my experience credit card companies are lightning quick to give a refund, it costs them nothing, they'll do a clawback from the merchant and AA will comply, with a small penalty for AA, credit card companies have them by the balls with their solid T&C's, and you might even do AA a favor by not exhausting their capacities to deal with pax
your situation sounds horrible...all that being said, I've personally seen some horror stories...like stranded passengers waiting for their connecting flight in a foreign country after a flag carrier went bankrupt, including many first class passengers (real first class, not what US airlines refer to as first) with a 10'000 USD fully flexible old fashioned IATA ticket that supposedly could easily get rebooked even with other carriers, asking "partner" airlines in the same "alliance" if they would honor it...uhm no sorry. So for those who are blaming cheap fares, in the worst case, having thrown money at an airline won't help. Compassionate former employees who had just lost their job, and others too, at least tried their best to bring blankets and water bottles for the most needy who slept over at the airport, in the general confusion of task saturation.
and sometimes, you can get treated like royalty. One time my incoming intercontinental flight was late, and I had mentally already given up arriving on time at my final destination, but cabin crew asked me to get ready to be the first at the door, where I was greeted by a friendly female driver who led me down to the apron, drove me in a nice BMW to a VIP passport control (the real deal, not gold/platinum/premium/funny frequent flyer line thing, the passport control with no line at all), and after that directly to my connecting flight, that had been waiting. I was a bit puzzled, and in my confusion about all this goodness I asked the cabin crew who welcomed me, "with this 10 minute transfer, for sure my luggage will be delayed". "Wait a moment, I'll ask the pilots, they know". "rest assured, it's on board". whoa, they had sent another car. I figure I was lucky they had the capacity to do all that, it seemed like they bent over backwards. It's not something you can expect, but it can happen, just like an unfortunate situation can happen. And as bubbers said, employees want to do a good job.
Last edited by deptrai; 1st May 2015 at 22:22.