American Airlines, won't honour business class ticket.

Has anyone ever experienced this before with an Airline?

I made a booking on the American Airlines Australian website for a flight from Cabo Mexico to Atlanta USA, both flights were booked and conformed as Business Class flights.

After I booked and paid I went to choose my seats, when doing this it would not let me choose a business class seat on the first leg Cancun to DFW. (For the record the AU site does Not allow seat selection prior to payment) I called the AU resvation number and spoke with a lady who said she needed to speak to her manager, when she returned I was advised my ticket was Not business but for a fee she could change it. I said No and was then put through to a manager by the name Emmanuel where I explained again my booking is a Business class fare and my ticket clearly shows this, and there are 3 seats available in Business shown? I also pointed out I am Platinum FF with Qantas and I don't appreciate people trying to charge me extra fees when I have a confirmation clearly stating my seats are Business Class, he said my ticket is heavily discounted, (it’s not), and in the ticket sales conditions they are allowed to do this, and he will only fix this if I agreed to pay a fee.. I said No way will I be paying him anymore money and told him I will be making a complaint, He than just hung up on me. I than went to my reservation only to find my reservation has been cancelled. Credit card has been charged, let's see what happens with my refund.

I truly don’t understand in today’s world with social media and so many airlines fighting for your travel bucks this still goes on. It’s very sad such a large company would allow this to go on, obviously the senior management have very little regard for the customer?

Maybe for these types of reasons is why Qantas dumped them. 

If you're still wanting the ticket then I'd get on social media and get it sorted sooner than later otherwise I'd just go ahead and book another flight.

I have found other limitations with the AU site for AA and have made bookings on the US site with no problems.  Suggest you first try calling AA again and see if you get talk to someone that is competent.

It sounds like what has happened is that you have booked a Business class ticket at a rate which does NOT include free advance seat selection. So if you want to select a seat in advance, there is a fee payable. Quite a number of airlines do this, including BA and QF (for certain seats).

I think what you purchased might be a fare known as "instant upgrade". It's a very strange fare with US airlines. The ticket might still be coded as economy (Y, X, E....etc) rather than true business class. It's very confusing as it doesn't say when you book it. It's simply under business (or first class if domestic) when you purchase. 

I've booked plenty of YUP/KUP flights before and been able to select seats in the front cabins immediately.

I fully acknowledge that airlines are run by smarter people than me, but why would a large airline take the risk of annoying long standing customers by deceitful and penny pinching practices like this? I would have thought that the backlash they would receive would far outweigh the $ return. But hey, that's just me.

As noted I am platinum FF, this means I travel ofter and do know how to book a flight. I have attached the booking to show the Business Class? No it was not an instant upgrade. And no you cannot choose your seat on the AA website prior to booking and paying for your flight. 

If you google, Qantas dumps American Airlines, you will see this is what happens, regardless I am making the point AA are very unethical and not good to deal with, and I do spend 3 months a year in the USA so I do know what North American airlines are like, pretty bad on a good day but, I have never experienced this sort of dishonestly. 

People please before you come after me defending this airline, check their website & have check to see if this does happen, it obviously does. I put my point on here to expose the very unethical habits by this company and to see how many others it has happened to, there are thousands of complaints on social media about AA, so they obviously don't care, too big and maybe we are all just a number to them!

You have obviously not done this on the Australian AA website, you cannot do it! You can very easily check this by putting in a dummy booking?

If you search that itinerary now as an AU customer a similar deal is offered.  If you choose US, then Business is shown as unavailable for that pair of flights.  Something dodgy there!

I have never had any problems booking with AA and selecting seats prior to payment (although I use their US website as strangely sometimes it's cheaper!).

Looking at your screenshot, there is something a bit strange in that it shows "business", however domestic routes in the US are "first" - there is no business. On my previous bookings it shows the mix of business/first for international/domestic flights.

Also, if you had input your FF status, you should have been able to select your seats via "my trip" without any fee.

If you book through the US website you can enter your QFF number during the booking and you do get benefits from your status.  I found I could book MCE for free but if I just stayed on the default AU page this wasn't available.