Booked award travel on American Airlines' website today and had to cancel the reservation within an hour of booking it. They will not place my miles (50,000) back into my account unless I pay a $225 fee. I am not sure if I missed this in the fine print but I am told they will leave my tickets unused and available to use at a later time, however, I can see this causing issues since the tickets I had reserved today were one-way tickets; I usually always travel round trip.
I have spent several hours trying to resolve this today, was disconnected once, transferred to the wrong department, and placed on hold for far too long trying to reach a manager.
Just seems like a deceptive practice the way they handle the award travel cancellations and a very bad experience with their phone representatives.