Despite widespread charges of manipulation, a black passenger did receive a charge from American Airlines on her bank statement labeled an “African American” service fee.
Capital One Assumes Responsibly For “African American” Service Fee On American Airlines
When Live and Let’s Fly reported this on Monday, American Airlines insisted the card was properly submitted to Mastercard and it had no role in the odd charge on Kyetra Bryan’s bank statement.
Mastercard also promised an investigation.
Now the mystery has been solved, per View from the Wing. Capital One, Bryan’s bank, has stepped forward and issued a public statement on the matter:
We are aware that a customer has come forward expressing concern with how a recent transaction was recorded on their banking statement. We immediately began investigating the issue and have attempted to make contact with the customer to apologize for any confusion and provide insight into the situation.
Our investigation has shown that this technical issue is the result of a miscoding of a merchant’s name. It is entirely unrelated to any specific customer information.
At Capital One, we created a proprietary system that offers our customers greater details on all of their transactions. We do this in part by using technology that relies on an external database of business information.
We are actively investigating precisely where the technology misinterpreted the merchant data and we are correcting the issue.
In short, Capital Ones tries to clarify what are often confusing lines on statements by using software to use spell out common abbreviations. So the “AA” service charge appeared as “African American” instead of “American Airlines.”
What a difference a word makes…
New Statements From American Airlines + Mastercard
American Airlines added:
The customer alerted American to the offensively labeled baggage fee on her bank statement in mid-December. We were incredibly disturbed by what we saw and immediately launched an investigation to understand what occurred. After consulting with Mastercard, we were able to verify that the issue did not originate with American.
Mastercard also weighed in again:
We are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation, however it is our understanding that American Airlines is not responsible for this error. American Airlines submitted the transaction correctly for a checked baggage purchase — including the proper merchant name. Our bank issuing and payment processing partners are working to understand how the error occurred so this does not happen again.
CONCLUSION
I must admit as comment after comment began to pile up in my initial coverage of this matter, I began to suspect Ms. Bryan just made this up. I’m so glad she did not and I commend Capital One for stepping up and taking responsibility for what must have been a very hurtful coding error.
> Read More: American Airlines Charges Black Couple An “African American” Service Fee
So, will the passenger now apologize to AA and fly AA again?
I wonder what Samuel L Jackson has to say…. I bet he called Capital On MFers
Did you read the article? What does the passenger have to apologize for? Whether or not the statement read “African American Fee” was never in question, that fact is in print.
No apologies needed, she should have conducted an investigation and has a right to know the answer regarding the error. Are you asking her to apologize because she’s African American?
Apologize for what? Accidentally labeling something wrong, is still labeling something wrong. Regardless of context, it was offensive and the bank/airline/credit card company that was responsible for the error apologized. Whether she accepts the apology or doesnt she can choose to spend her dollars with American Airlines or any other airline as she sees fit.
Sound reasonable?
Why in the world would she apologize to them? Are you dumb
Props to Capital One for resolving this so quickly and for the public mea culpa.
But I wonder how long this coding error went undiscovered? And I also wonder if this was either incompetence or maliciousness on behalf of some programmer behind the scenes. Seems like Capital One will get to the bottom of it eventually.
Why would you the author of this story think she was a liar? What reason would she have for making up such a story? You should be a shamed as some type of reporter of a story.
I assumed it was some sort of error on the bank’s part, but surely you are aware that people make things up all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawana_Brawley_rape_allegations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_assault_of_Jussie_Smollett
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-russiagate-steele-dossier/
I’m considering all ties with Capital One. This shouldn’t have ever happened.
I’m glad you brought this up. I was definitely offended by the comment that she was making it up. You should definitely rethink your wording on your articles in the future
I was about to ask the same question! That was more offensive than this whole situation. Let me look up the author
Thats exactly what I was thinking. She had proof and he still thought she was lying.
“So the “AA” service charge appeared as “African American” instead of “American Airlines.”
Sorry, given everything else going on these days, I find it hard to believe this was some sort of clerical error. It had to be done deliberately.
Let me ask a few questions. There must be a lot (many thousands) of baggage charges every day on American. Did they all show up as “African American”? That would be the case if it was a coding error. Or was it only this couple? Or only African Americans?
Could be. I’ll keep monitoring the situation.
@Bob Hinden & @Matthew, the VFTW post said that only Capital One debit cards (and not credit cards) were affected. Perhaps that’s why? Also, where/when did they release a statement? Not seeing much in the news… You’d think that AA/MC would actively push it to clear their names.
You will monitor the situation and believe them unless they are African American right!!!!
Carla, this appears to be an understandably unfortunate, but believable mistake. The problem with text and acronyms leaves misinterpretation wide open. I believe C1 did the right thing by accepting responsibility, don’t you think?
I am even more offended that you, Matthew Kline, would assume this woman had a reason to lie. You are part of the problem. Another example of systematic race biases. Instead of questioning either business of their truth, you admittedly wanted to blame the victim. Although, I am glad you reported the truth. You are still a representation of the media who is guilty of black racial stereotypes and victim blaming.
@Bob Hinden: yes, because the Capital One person sitting at their basement right now and inputing wrong codes on people’s charges knew this person was African American. Like when you fly AA or any other airline you have to enter your race or color of your skin. Like when you apply for a credit card the credit card company knows your color and takes that into consideration to approve or not. What a BS!!!
Capital One has different rates for African Americas. They charge higher interest rates for them all the time. There was a big write up about Capital One and how they handle African American customers. Believe me, this was no mistake
and believe me the only reason why they stepped up was because an investigation would name them the culprit. . AAmericans
Thanks. I was beginning to think the whole country had turned into a cesspool of racism that is the forte of white Republican males, you know, the traitors and terrorists that stormed the capitol.
Glad the cesspool is still in the Republican party.
*still only in the
Interesting that you would suspect the Black passenger possibly’made it up’. In all the communications, where did you developed that theory?
The reason I thought that is because of all the comments on Twitter and in my original story showing how to rename charges on your bank statement. Furthermore, the passenger took down her initial post on Facebook, which I viewed as suspicious. But I am so glad I was wrong and am happy to admit that I was.
She probably took it down because of comments like your saying she was lying. Shameful!!!
Actually, my first article included no commentary. This was the first point at which I’ve added commentary…and confessed I was wrong. So not sure where your outrage is unless you are the thought police…
How don’t you understand the outrage. You accused a victim of possibly lying with no proof except your assumption. As a journalist, investigative reporting is necessary and the way you comment should not show your personal bias. Smh!!! #partoftheproblem
Apparently you are also in a cesspool. Get over yourself!
Agreed
As a programmer, I am 99% sure this is code error. Code has no political agenda. It is a simple key-value lookup mishap. It will take a lot more effort to do something like this deliberately.
publicstaticvoidmain: Does that mean there is a legitimate code for “African American” service fee? That is, the error was to enter the code for this instead of the code for “American Airline”.
Seems to me that for “African American” service fee to show up on the customers statement, it had to be a defined code, or the mapping of the code for American Airline” was changed.
Programmer here too, and I’ve actually written a somewhat similar program before. This definitely sounds like just a software error. My guess is that Cap1 wrote a program which uses some corpus of text to try to learn how to decode abbreviations like this, and probably manually spot-checked the output but didn’t check every single one (likely 100k+ of them).
Dear Mr Klint
I sincerely hope you do not get paid for a single word you write on these websites. Unfortunately many people get the impression that you might be a credible journalist because they see this story on the web. As a veteran journalist with 14 years in broadcasting 7 years behind the scenes and 7 years as a reporter and meteorologist. I never made assumptions and conjecture about the facts of a story. I’m not sure i didnt see a tag line stating that your story was an opinion piece. Why would you make judgments about person you didnt interview personly. Leave your opinion and assumptions out of your stories if you want to be a credible journalist. It’s stories like this is why Americans sometimes don’t believe what’s written on the web. Stick to the facts .
So, why not get rid of the “African American” nomenclature all together. No reason for it AT ALL. Africa is a continent, not a race!!!
Very well said, thank you!!!
Thank you!!!
Why would you think she made the story up? Because two huge companies denied involvement to cover up some stupidity on their part? That never happens, no. Instead, you jump straight to. ‘She made it up.’ Additionally, maybe she took down her post because she was getting nasty comments….or she was afraid of the blowback she’d get. Or maybe because the story was embarrassing. Or just because.
But for you to jump straight to “she made it up,” is shameful. Let’s hope you never have to write a story about sexual assault from the victim’s point of view. You may jump to “she made it up” when the perpetrator denies his involvement.
Systemic racism is very real! Every person of color does not have to make up a story to get attention or exaggerate the truth just to be heard. The truth of systemic racism slaps us in the face daily. We are simply ignored. This author appears to share the same “ it does not affect me” mentality so he can’t fathom the hurt and disrespect that this American Citizen must have felt when reading her bank statement only to see that she had been charged for being black. America needs to show more sensitivity and empathy for anyone who experiences this type of hurt and reckless “coding errors”
Will the passenger now issue an apology to American? Very much doubt it.
F.. you AA , CAP 1, Master Card , ohh typ0 apologizes i meant to write FORGET YOU.
How interesting Person of color was getting AA interpreted as African American, never heard system making this error with white customer? How the F ppl jumping to defend oh it’s nothing more then a freaking software glitch or other shit ?
You all first discriminate a person of color and then say oh we didn’t mean that , whereas deep inside a big Mf racist scumbag working overtime to become the biggest shit piece.
Matthew Kunt you are also part of the scumbags i mentioned above as without research you simply made it a fake story or made up story because a person of color said it ? Shame on you , oh sorry typo Matthew Klint
And no effing way Cap. 1 or anyone getting credit for covering up the shit and trying to play it down, this is intentional and they are all trying to make it sound nothing abnormal.
She has no reason to apologize and comments like this are disgusting!! Apologize for what? Asking for answers. Ridiculous!!
Several points:
I didn’t see the earlier story, so I don’t know about Ms. Bryant’s original next steps (not flying American Airlines, for example). But as a consumer she does have a choice – and how she makes that choice is up to her.
Capital One gets points in my book for for owning up. They get extra credit for using one of the magic words for this kind of situation: apologize. If they used that word directly to Ms. Bryant, they get an A+.
Please accept my caution about imputing how the SNAFU occurred. Do not assume malicious intent when carelessness and sloppy thinking can provide the same outcome. In this case, keep in mind the bank likely has other areas where demographic data must be kept. Demographics can show discrimination, but can also show fair practice. If the demographic codes were not well documented, it would be easy to assign AA twice. (Sloppy and lazy, but still easy.)
Given the renewed, belated recognition of the disruptive effects of so many kinds of hating, it’s good to see the small shred of hope. America isn’t about being perfect, it’s about getting better. My two cents
This comment is to the Writer Mr. Klint. Assuming the passenger was lying about this incident is very insulting, as if she has nothing better to do to concoct a
fictitious story. Then you say Your glad she didn’t make it up and you will look into it more. This goes to show that a black person is always assumed to be lying and their truth can’t be taken on face value.
Would you assume the passenger is lying if she were white? Probably not.
In addition to numerous comments demonstrating that bank statements could be easily manipulated (I had no idea), this is why I thought she was lying:
https://liveandletsfly.com/american-airlines-exposes-wheelchair-fraud/
You may still call it an implicit bias, but it was not racially-motivated.
As a journalist, if that’s what you consider yourself, you should have NEVER let your own personal bias be known in your writing. You should remove your last line from the story because it makes you look very bad as a writer and as a person.
You don’t get paid to think. You get paid to report facts not your opinion. That’s where you went wrong.
This is a blog and I write about whatever I want to write about.