The TrAAvelperks Ripoff

Last summer American Airlines started a new program called TrAAvelperks which for an annual fee of $129 gave the user discounts on various travel services, 2,500 bonus miles and the real enticement two 2 for 1 coupons for travel on Anerican Airlines.

Unfortunately for me when I tried to use the first coupon I couldn't meet the expiration deadline. My fault not AA's. Now I have a second coupon to use and I discovered something interesting. When you try and book a flight using the coupon the price of the flight is higher than it is without the coupon. In my case I need to tickets to California. On the AA web site the tickets are $293 each with taxes and fees. However when I use the coupon the price jumps to $426 each. Subtract the discount and the total price is now $466 versus $586 without the coupon. So I still save $120 but a reasonable expectation would have been a total price of $333 or $133 less than I am being asked to pay.

I won't be using any of the other services or benefits of TrAAvelperks so it looks like I spent $129 to save in this case $120 and got a few miles to boot. At best this was a wash, but I am disappointed that AA marks up the flights to give the traveler the appearance that their savings is actually greater than it is.