Description

I was traveling from Madison to Austin and had a connecting flight in Dallas. The first leg of the flight was delayed and ultimately, I missed my connection in Dallas. The line at the American Airlines DFW counter was long that I figured calling someone from their customer service team might be quicker. I googled "AA Customer Service" and was given the number 800-433-7800. My call was answered immediately (fishy) and I spent 40 minutes on the phone with someone who I was told was a customer service representative. This person had a very thick foreign accent but told me that his name was Ace Cooper (fishy again). He said he was trying to rebook me on another flight but in order to do this, I first had to pay $75 to technically "cancel" my flight that I missed and then I'd get a full refund for the entire flight. I was so frazzled that I ended up giving my credit card number to pay the $75 cancellation fee. We hung up, and shortly after I received a call from (858) 496-7720 (the caller ID showed it as "TRAVEL SERVICES") and it was “Ace” on the line saying that he needed to verify my credit card information one more time before processing a refund. I never received any sort of email confirmation, so I was starting to feel anxious. I pulled up my credit card statement to find that there is a charge for American Airlines, San Diego. I called again the next day, and this time I was told that I needed to spend $99 to get my full refund. At this point, realizing I was fully scammed, I called my bank and cancelled my credit card immediately. Looking back on my searches, I realized that I googled "AA Customer Service" and was given the number 800-433-7800 instead of the correct number which is 800-433-7300. When I finally spoke with a REAL customer service rep at AA, she assured me that she would never need my credit card to cancel a flight and would ultimately end up giving me a refund. I consider myself somewhat savvy and tend to pick up on these things, so clearly if it can happen to me, it likely has and will happen to many others.