American Airlines AA.com Double charged for international baggage Dallas TX

I booked an international ticket from Spain to Hawaii. I decided to check 4 pieces of luggage since I'm relocating. At check in, I paid the baggage fee and was told it would cover the cost to my final destination; however, I would have to collect the bags at Dallas due to a layover exceeding 12 hours, then recheck them the next day for my domestic connection, free of charge.

Upon arriving at DFW, I was instead hit with almost $500 in baggage fees, backed by a fine print policy which is not included in any bagged policy page, but instead is buried inside an incredibly long list of general rules of passage. This states that if your layover exceeds 16.5 hours, you will be assessed baggage fees a second time.

Moreover, there are no warnings during the booking process of any such policy, nor does Iberia (with whom my itinerary started in Spain) appear to have any such rule. In fact, I was told the opposite when checking in in Spain, but I don't blame the Iberia agents for not knowing about a policy which appears to be specific to American.

Even worse is that they insisted upon charging me the higher international baggage fees, rather than the domestic rates, despite my 2nd day's itinerary being purely domestic. When I contacted customer service, they said this is in fact correct, because despite flying only domestically on day 2, these legs form part of an international ticket and therefore international rates apply.

I perused the web in search of other airlines who do this, but so far have come up empty handed. United and Delta have no such policy, and I cannot imagine any logic behind it, given that the customer is forced to collect the baggage and no special handling is required on the part of the airline.

My complaints have been met with zero sympathy, so I have decided not to fly with American again unless I can redeem miles and watch their profit margin suffer. I have never encountered such a substantial hidden fee. Even Ryanair has better transparency and at least their add-on fees are offset by cheap fares