American Air Times

Yesterday I booked a flight to New York to visit with family and friends. I'm thinking,
"I'm going to get through this process online 123." I know how to do it; it won't take me 3 hours like it takes my sister; I've become a pro at this." Except this time I'm trying to use my rapid rewards with American. I decide on the date and times and go to put in my Aadvantage number and find out that I'm too late. Those dates with the times I want are filled on the rapid rewards program. So I say to myself, "yipee...I've got enough miles saved up...I'll fly Business Class." Not so fast, lady." American wants to charge me 100,000 miles worth of reward mileage to go Business. (It should only be 50,000 earned credits.) That puts me 48,000 miles in the hole. My choices after 30 minutes of this: I can go back to the beginning, see how I can maneuver all these miles that I have even if I have to leave my house at 4:30 a.m. to get a seat on the day that I want, or...I can CALL AA and let them figure it out for me. Well after the agent got me the exact times that I wanted on the days that I wanted using up more miles than I cared to but not 48,000 extra miles, my choice came down to: I can let her book it for me for $20.00 plus $5.00 in taxes, or I can hang up, go back to the computer and see if I can be as creative as the agent and put in all my info for no cost at all. I took the road less traveled these days and let the agent do it. LIFE'S TOO SHORT.