“Flabbergasted” airline passenger asked to pay $15 receipt fee

receiptWhen it comes to airline fees, nothing is off-limits. Just ask Jason Fogelson.

He needed a receipt for his latest American Airlines flight, but when he asked for one, the airline said it would cost him. “I was flabbergasted,” he says.

So was I.

Here’s what happened to Fogelson:

I recently booked business travel through American’s Web site. When it came time to fill out my expense report, I realized that I had inadvertently deleted the email receipt that had my purchase dollar amount. I went back to the site and couldn’t find a link that seemed appropriate. So, I called the customer service line directly.

Customer service politely informed me that I had to contact them via email — there is no way to get a duplicate receipt via phone. Fine.

So, I emailed customer service, and received a “no-reply” email back with a form that had to be filled out and faxed, not emailed, back to them in order to get a receipt. Fine.

I filled out the form, and faxed it in. The next day, I received an email response.

What did American say in response to Fogelson’s request?

Thank you for sending us the requested information to obtain ticket purchase information. While our accounting office can provide an actual copy of your ticket receipt, I hope the following information will suffice for your purposes.

Our records indicate that American Airlines ticket 001 2308370738 was issued on August 3 for travel commencing from Los Angeles to Knoxville on August 30, in the name of Jason Fogelson. The total price, including fare, taxes, and fees, was $420.40, and was paid by credit card.

Should you still need a copy of your receipt, please write directly to personnel in our Refund Customer Service department. The address is:

American Airlines Inc.
Passenger Refund Services
P.O. Box 200025
El Paso, TX 88520-9905

Please include a $15 check or money order as well as the ticket number or flight and date information and the signature of the customer or purchaser. Additionally, they require information as to the date and place of purchase and the form of payment.

We thank you for your business and look forward to serving you again on American.

Fogelson is outraged.

$15 for a receipt? Are they kidding?

I have written a letter of complaint, but I thought I would let you know about this situation too, since you have railed against unreasonable fees in the past.

I’ve been an American Airlines AAdvantage member for 15 or 20 years. I travel by air two to four times a month on business, and I will do everything I can to avoid traveling on American Airlines until this situation is resolved to my satisfaction.

American isn’t the only airline to charge for receipts. Continental’s cost $20.

Is this yet another unreasonable airline surcharge?

The information American supplied Fogelson should be enough to fill out his expense form. If the airline’s fee covers the cost of generating a receipt and mailing it to him, then it borders on being legitimate. Continental’s $20 fee buys you a receipt generated by “web, e-mail, fax and postal mail.”

Had American refused to reveal any information about his flight when he inquired about it by email, I might have been a little more outraged.

Should airlines send duplicate receipts to their customers at no charge? If they don’t incur any additional expenses — for example, if it’s an e-mail receipt — then I think so. What’s more, the passengers likeliest to ask for a receipt are their best customers: business travelers.

Airlines probably should think twice before doing that to their platinum elites, don’t you think?

(Photo: scribbletaylor/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • http://www.airships.net/ Dan @ Airships.net

    They DID email him, at no charge, the information he needed. (Well, no charge other than the value of his time in complying with their absurd procedures; why couldn’t he have just filled out a form on their website?)

    For once, I am tempted to side with the airline. Their procedures may not be customer-friendly, but they did give him the information he needed without any fee.

  • travelgal

    Airlines should provide a FREE link to your electronic receipt via their website. If they want to charge to actually print one and send it to me, that’s fine. But I think it’s outrageous for them to charge if they don’t provide a way to get the receipt yourself.

  • jmj

    Mr. Elliott, I appreciate your efforts trying to fix wrongs and being an advocate for the consumer.

    However, I must disagree with the flavor of today’s post, namely telling the airlines what they can and cannot charge. When we start telling companies, airlines or whatever, what fees they can and cannot charge for what we think is appropriate/inappropriate, we are crossing the line into over regulation.

    As a free and open economy, we should only regulate those things that cause undue burdens or those things that reduce competition.

    The best way to tell airlines what they can and cannot do is to not use their services, use a competitor. I personally fly jetblue and southwest more b/c of the luggage fees. Take your business elsewhere.

  • S.E. Davenport

    Why didn’t he go to his deleted mail folder and retrieve the email? I print 2 copies of email confirmation and I am just a holiday traveler.

  • Lianne

    Amen to that travelgal. I have to assume this man has a FF account, is it really so difficult to allow someone to look up their past iteneraries if they book online? Apprently not because AirTran does it! When I open up my account I can pull up every past flight I’ve ever attached my A+ Rewards account to!

  • Will

    A good resource for receipts is http://www.refunds.aa.com. Even though you aren’t requesting a refund, it will show you the itinerary, fare basis, price paid and method of payment. You can search for a ticket by record locator, ticket number or credit card number used to buy the ticket. This has more than satisfied my accounting department on a few occasions.

  • Travelfly

    To get a copy of your receipt, check the credit card bill that you charged it on, contact the credit card company and ask them for the receipt. It will take some time by they will verify your purchase and not charge you.

  • Bela Fleck

    When I am submitting my expense reports, I am REQUIRED to submit all receipts, not just amounts and dates. So, no, an email from the airline saying “I hope this works for you…” would not suffice. I have to have a receipt, or rather a copy of my itinerary/e-ticket. I think it’s reasonable that if we create an online account with the airline for the purpose of booking tickets, it would be reasonable to make things like receipts, etc., available. But it might deprive our fee-loving airlines of another source of fee revenue.

  • Aaron Gold

    How can anyone possibly side with the airlines on this???

    An email with his payment information isn’t worth beans if the accounting department wants an official receipt. He knows what he paid, but his company wants proof.

    Last month I bought a netbook from Newegg.com for $425. I can go online right now and print up an invoice, complete with Newegg.com header, instantly and for free. I can print copies ’till the cows come home or ’till my printer runs out of toner. For free! The fact that American charges $15 for the same thing is ridiculous. Come on, guys — $15 for a second receipt makes $35 for a second bag look almost reasonable.

    I can guess what’s going to happen here — they’ll get their $15 for the receipt, and it’ll cost then $20,000 in lost business for the next few years. Nice going, AA.

  • Kathyj

    They did provide a way for him to have the receipt for free. And he deleted it. Then they provided the information again, for free.

    Maintaining a link to all electronic receipts into the future with attendant secure retrieval protocols sounds like a huge effort & expense. That’s why they email the receipt right away. You just have to keep it.

  • http://everything-everywhere.com Gary Arndt

    We are approaching the singularity where airlines will charge a fee for charging a fee.

  • Carver Farrow

    I’m going to have to side with the airlines on this one. AA sends a regular email/fax receipt whenever you purchase a ticket. Then they’ll send the e-mail that the OP received, which should be sufficient for most expense reports. Remember, none of this would have been necessary had the OP not erred in deleting his e-mail receipt.

    Apparently, he needs a photocopy of the original receipt. If that’s correct, then someone must physically do that work and be paid accordingly.

    Consider, if you need a second copy of a cancelled check, your bank will charge you if they have to generate it themselves.

    Also, even though I am a fan of loyalty programs, I find the DYKWIA to be tiresome. Just because you’ve been an elite member doesn’t mean that you don’t pay fees like everyone else, unless that is a perk of the program.

  • Jeff W

    You may have also been able to receive the information you needed from your credit card statement, online of course. I can go online and see all of my charges and airline charges seem to have more detail than other charges.

  • Ames

    They did send him a receipt but he mistakenly deleted the email. I look at this like the bank fees to get a copy of the checks that they microfilm instead of returning to me. I get a free microfilm mini copy in my statement, or can manipulate the one on the electronic statement via screen shots or pay a hefty fee to have them send me a copy. The fee is to replace an item the passenger lost. Not a way to win buisness, that’s for sure, but it is an extra service. Was the info in the free email sufficient to satisfy the expense report requirements? BTW I make email folders for each trip and sort the emails from the airline, the hotel, the car and whatever just so I don’t have to search through a bunch of papers on my desk or accidentlally delete an email, but I am over retentive. All is in one place when I confirm my seat and make a printed copy when packing the night before I leave.

  • Daniel Wilson

    It should be free…. someone stated, “Apparently, he needs a photocopy of the original receipt. If that’s correct, then someone must physically do that work and be paid accordingly” … this should be factored in as the cost of doing business.

    You should never have to pay for a receipt for something you purchased (I don’t care if they need a receipt 15 times), it shouldn’t cost extra to get transaction information on something you purchased.

  • Carver Farrow

    @Daniel

    I understand your position, but consider, if the airline factors this into the cost of doing business, that’s just one more reason why airfares will increase. Why should I pay a higher rate because the OP was careless. Let him bear the burden of his carelessness, not the rest of the flying public.

    The OP got the original receipt. This is a result of his careless and his alone.

  • Adam Watson

    @ jmj

    While I appreciate your belief in extremely limited regulation and a generally free market, I think regulation in this case is reasonable and absolutely called for. Ideological opposition to government control of the market often makes sense — when the market is free and fair.

    Here, we’ve got a virtual monopoly backed by armies of lawyers and government support. The major airlines, at least one of which you’ll probably need to get to many places in this country and around the world, seem to be in a race to get, well, over-the-top. As a traveler, you can’t renegotiate your contract of carriage or even possibly know the myriad hidden travel fees you could face.

    Let’s be honest: when no human being could possibly learn or forsee a certain fee or restriction, when any business would be expected to provide the service for free, and when the fee is a blatant means of profit-padding, regulation to stop it is fair. What American is doing is petty extortion, and they know it.

    I like a free market, but when the sellers have an effective monopoly (technically, an oligopoly) on the largely powerless buyers, sympathy for the airlines just doesn’t gnaw at my heart, and I don’t think I’m putting capitalism at risk. Capitalism only works when information and competition are public and knowable.

  • Lianne

    @ Carver Farrow
    I could be wrong, but it seems doubtful that the airline receives enough requests for receipts that it would impact their bottom line severely. My guess is that the fee was initially put in place to change consumer habits and have them use e-mail as the preferred form of delivery, the same way airlines charge fees for paper tickets that can be e-ticketed. Now that email is the norm for delivery, it does feel as though its a “nickle & dime” The amount of ire (and apprently bad press) generated from this practice doesn’t seem to balance out with any sort of predictable or meaningful revanue stream.

    Of course I still maintain that the easiest, and most customer friendly, solution is to simply allow passengers to pull up past iteneraries/receipts/invoice on the airline’s website after the customer has flown. It doesn’t even have to be indefinete, a 3-6 month window would be more than adequate.

    And for the record, I do think the email provided to Mr Fogelson should suffice from an expense standpoint, I know it would for my company. And I do give customer service agent from AA credit for attempting to give him a “free” receipt via that email in lieu of demanding the $15 for any form of confirmation.

  • Josh

    Does AA not have something online similar to United’s “My Itineraries”? I just looked, and I see all the details of a few trips as far back as January ’09, with a “view receipt” link that leads to a printable version that looks like it has all of the relevant info.

    If AA doesn’t provide that online for free, I’d side with the customer here, but if they do and the company chooses to require something more (a hard-copy directly from the airline?), then I’ll have to side with AA and say $15 is a reasonable charge

    Josh

  • jmj

    @Adam Watson,

    Don’t get me wrong, I think this fee is retarded, and if I was charged it, I would fight it tooth and nail.

    I just object to enacting any sort of legislation to prevent such nickel & dime fees.

    I would hope as Lianne points out above that the public reaction would be enough to repeal such a fee.

    The power should be in our hands, as consumers. Especially today, in the era of blogs, consumer advocates such as Elliott, Consumerist and others.

  • Carrie Charney

    I have my “deleted file” folder set for a manual delete. So, if my uncontrollable trigger finger inadvertently deletes something, I can still retrieve it. Yeah, the file gets big, but it gives me peace of mind and it’s free to access!

  • http://www.roamingtales.com Caitlin

    @jmj “When we start telling companies, airlines or whatever, what fees they can and cannot charge for what we think is appropriate/inappropriate, we are crossing the line into over regulation.”

    Nothing wrong with regulation when it’s warranted. We have been shown time and time again that a completely free market doesn’t work.

    All the same, a consumer advocate like Chris telling airlines what he personally considers to be a reasonable fee, is in no way equivalent to a free market. I don’t believe the post was actually advocating regulation in this respect.

    I too believe that fees should reflect costs. I don’t think it costs $15-20 to generate a receipt – 90% of that is profiteering. The profit margin should be on the cost of the item itself.

    Gary Arndt has it right when he says we seem to be approaching a situation where airlines will charge a fee to pay a fee.

  • Phil

    This beefing is ludicrous

    If the company want to insist on the receipt and will not accept anything less then the OP should simply pay it and claim it back. Why is he bothered? It is not his business whether the fee is fair.
    I find that people who try to dictate what works for their companies and turn this sort of thing into a big drama a bit of a pain
    I insist on many things in my business which the uninformed might interpret as a waste of money.

    Phil

  • Justin

    jmj,

    No Offense sir, but don’t give us that whole free market speech. Free market is a sham. Companies want NO REGULATIONS when things are going great. Yet in times of fail, look who they turn to for help. Et al. 700 Billion Tax payer Bail Out (Bush) and 1.5 billion (Obama). A TRULY free market would be left to it’s own vices. You made bad decisions, you fail. No one bails you out. So apparently your whole free market speech falls on deaf ears. Airlines have received bailouts, banks now received theirs, whose next. I say any of these companies that have TAKEN from tax payers in past or present can cut their whole leave us alone speech. You gave away that right the MINUTE you asked for outside help and received it (unjustly).

    Justin

  • MidMom8949

    We require receipts for reimbursement where I work. Period. We cannot reimburse the fee to obtain a new receipt.

    Use a travel agency. They always can provide a receipt.

  • David Z

    Let’s put it this way.

    The OP is definitely free to complain about the fee. And AA is also free to impose such depending on their business model.

    Both will deal with the results of their choices.

  • Jerry Mandel

    If the accounting people won’t accept the information given free in the response email, an employee should take it up higher in his firm. Someone in AA spent time to look up the information and to send it to him.

  • http://www.info@cadillactravel.com Michael D. McCarthy, CTC

    RE: MidMom8949 – “Use a travel agency. They always can provide a receipt”

  • Angela Valenzuela

    He realized that after traveling he did not have a receipt for his expenses, very normal for business travelers. He did exactly as he should have, contacted Customer Service directly. Only Customer Service IF they were truly “customer service oriented” they would have helped him out with one simple step. Go to http://www.refunds.aa.com put in your Tkt Nbr and Last Name, done. Walked him through it, if necessary. (for goodness sakes he’s your customer, take care of him, it’s not that hard, really!)

    Once you put in the Tkt Nbr and Last Name, you will have a copy of your receipt to give to your Acct Dept!! How hard was that?!

    But Customer Service did not do that, they gave him the run around, with email, fax, form, etc…plain and simple they just gave him the run around.

  • Ernest

    A receipt should be free, and it was. Fogleson admitted that he deleted his receipt and wanted a replacement. He is responsible for his actions and if the airlines charges for research and providing documentation, he should have to pay it. The issue is not providing a receipt, the issue is providing a second one after the fact. I say “Pay Up”

    Nowhere is it required of any business to second receipt after you have lost or destroyed the first.

    I am not a fan of the overpricing of fees by the airlines but they are not responsible for his mistakes.

  • AA EXP

    I’ve been doing years of expenses to assist in an audit. I fly American Airlines a lot and have been known to misplace receipts received at airports.

    As posted above, http://www.refunds.aa.com is fantastic for getting something that our auditors will accept. I usually get the ticket ID from my online American Express account and then get the receipt from the first site.

    Using Google Desktop, I can often find reservations with those details from my many gigabytes of emails.

    I wish Continental or Southwest had the same type of site, and that car rental sites would store receipts longer than six months for IRS audits.

    AA isn’t in the wrong here.

  • Agent One

    I could only imagine how many customers they have a year that request a copy of their E tickets, invoices, etc. I am a Travel Agent and I get customers calling all the time because
    they never printed off their information. I strongly believe passengers should be responsible for their own receipts. But, if a passenger is an Advantage member with status then I would think they would give them the info and inform them of future charges if this happens again.
    Or maybe they info they gave him with out a charge was because of his status.
    It takes people to go through the information and send it out, therefore putting extra cost on other passengers who travel.

  • http://mandel.jerry1@gmail.com Jerry Mandel

    Why didn’t Fogelson merely look in his Deleted/Trash file for the original receipt?

  • Michael S

    An update – My secretary honestly missplaced a Lufthansa receipt – now -weeks have passed -phone calls to no avail – they would not simply issue one – they referred me to a website to send an email – I sent the email (which is an extremely complex and time consuming process) – the response asked me to go back to the website to download a form and send that back (plus a $20 fee) – but the instructions don’t work (I will post them below – perhaps one of you is smarter than me) – I am not allowed to respond to the email with these false instructions – have to start the process over again – still far from my receipt and almost a month has passed. Here are the incorrect instructions emailed by Lufthansa… German (in)efficiency?

    “Please complete the Travel Verification form, which can be found at http://www.Lufthansa-usa.com. Just type travel verification into the search box.”

    But these directions do NOT work!

    My poor secretary is in tears over this mess. Multiple phone calls, emails – nothing….It is all far beyond absurd. The Lufthansa customer comes seems to be beneath contempt. We can’t submit thousands of dollars of expenses – we are at a dead standstill awaiting our chance to pay $20 for a duplicate receipt. Believe me (and I am hours into this) we would gladly pay $100 (blackmail) just to get that piece of paper from Lufthansa!

    I am a million mile + traveller. Yes, you can’t take the very same flight over again – that would take an act of God. Seems the same is true about getting a receipt from Lufthansa if you mess up (shame on you!) and (horror of horrors) misplace the original receipt after the flight is done……

  • Reagan

    Sheesh, much ado about zilch.

    OK, AA probably failed in not telling him how to get a receipt online, but it was probably just the ignorance of the person he was talking to. As posted several times previously, you can quite easily print a past receipt from the AA web site. How did I find the right page? Same way as always, Google search on “american airlines getting a receipt”. Second result. That was available to the complaintant as it’s been available for several years now.

  • Helio

    I lost my flying ticket and asked a copy to Lufthansa in order to collect the mileage (my mileage program is in a Star Alliance partner company). They asked US$100.00 for it – a thousand miles leg!!!

  • lilrascal263

    try going to the mall and ask them for a receipt for something you purchased a few weeks ago! It Is NOT going to happen! Not their fault you lost it and If I were them, I would not take 2 hrs. out of my time to try and dig up a paper from a few weeks back.