Person gets $1,000 plane ticket refunded, receives $100,000 instead. Airline insisted it was 'correct'

A customer received $100,000 from American Airlines after getting a ticket they bought for $1,000 refunded. The mistake led to the person going through a strenuous ordeal as they tried to get the error fixed. However, no one at the airline listened, and the saga stretched for a long time before the entire thing was finally fixed, according to a report by View from the Wing.

The person had bought the ticket outside the United States. The airline made a mistake in calculating the currency conversion during the refund, which led to the hefty amount being returned to the American Express card used for the purchase.

The honest customer did not want to keep the money since it wasn't theirs. So the person dialled customer care at American Airlines and told them about the mistake. However, every agent insisted that the refund was perfectly correct. When that didn't work, the person wrote emails to the airline's Revenue Protection group and even put the matter on social media. But nothing worked.

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The person didn't know what else to do but was afraid of being asked for a higher amount of Americal Airlines realised its mistake weeks or months later and returned to them for the money. Depending on the exchange rate, the person would have to pay a lot more money.

Customer reached out to American Express

So the customer then filed a "dispute" about the refund with American Express. 

The refund was received on Feb 21, and the airline acknowledged that a mistake had happened days later. However, it still couldn't be fixed. The airline processed an adjustment on Feb 27, and to the shock of the passenger, charged them $28 million.

This spiralled into a whole other issue since American Express suspended their account due to “high credit exposure" on March 1. The person tried to get in touch with people at Amex but could not reach a person of authority outside of normal business hours. Others who were available at those hours did not have the authority to correct a $30 million error. 

Finally, Amex acknowledged the multiple errors on March 3 and removed the $28 million charge the next day. Things didn't end there as the process of fixing the problem had led to $300,000 being refunded, besides currency conversion costs and losses of $75,000.

American Airlines and American Express have apologised for the error and offered an undisclosed amount as compensation to the passenger.