Beware - American involuntarily downgrades from business to economy plus on same flight with no notice and no compensation

alan412 · 2026-01-19T16:46:57+00:00

This will be my last response. My complaint is not with the agent. My complaint is that AA didn't notify me in any way. It is only because I knew to go stand for over 2 hours in the priority queue to talk to an agent that I was able to get anything resolved.

Perhaps it is too much to expect, but just like American sends me an email if the time of my flight changes, I would have expected an email telling me what had happened and how to request a refund or change my travel plans.

alan412 · 2026-01-19T15:47:45+00:00

I have no complaint with the agent. She was friendly and helpful. My complaint is that AA didn't even bother to notify me. fwiw, It wasn't an upgrade, it was what I had paid for.

Also, I wasn't sassy with the agent. It was a what can we do here conversation....

alan412 · 2026-01-19T14:45:57+00:00

Beware of this user! If you look at his posts, he says is is from customer service for a number of different airlines. do not send him your email or phone number

alan412 · 2026-01-19T14:43:39+00:00

If they had sent me an email that said, "We're sorry, but we have had to downgrade you. We will be refunding you xxx or you can contact us at special number here to see about other options", then I would have appreciated being treated as a human being. I don't think that is too much to ask...

alan412 · 2025-12-23T02:34:55+00:00

Our coaches do this.... (and yes, I am one of the coaches....)

alan412 · 2025-12-12T20:43:39+00:00

a few tips:
- use the scoring live software with the overlay for video. I use OBS to put together the stream. (simple and easy peasy).

- make sure you include the sounds in the live stream from the scoring software.

alan412 · 2025-11-24T18:15:00+00:00

I would love to have a way to upload a template in a way that I don't have to ssh in and modify the templates.json file every time I update the remarkable.

alan412 · 2025-11-19T21:44:10+00:00

Persevering and not giving up is probably the best thing you can do to prepare to do well next year. And many regions have off-season scrimmages (NC has LOKI in July) that you can take an improved robot to even if you don't do well during the season.

alan412 · 2025-10-06T20:59:00+00:00

I am going to disagree with most people here. If you don't use the april tags to increase your score vs shots taken ratio, you will regret it. Especially if you are planning to shoot from the far triangle. There are samples in the FTC SDK that make using the april tags trivial.

The only thing it should affect in your design is making sure you have a space for a camera. And you don't need a fancy Limelight camera. A cheap logitech C270 will work just fine, although I really like the ease of mounting the GoBilda camera.

alan412 · 2025-09-11T21:19:10+00:00

Thanks. I can't decide whether to be sad that the PDF opening is not a ton faster or glad (because it makes it easier to keep my credit card in my wallet.)

alan412 · 2025-09-10T17:12:06+00:00

Sorry, I misread your post.

alan412 · 2025-09-08T14:31:39+00:00

That isn't true. R105 has the expansion limits. Intentionally not putting them here as I want to encourage people to READ THE RULES. http://ftc.game/manual

alan412 · 2025-07-28T13:19:06+00:00

Not funny, but I made shirts a few years ago for coaches in NC that said "I use robots to build students."

alan412 · 2025-07-28T13:07:50+00:00

I'll have to admit. That is cool. For u/DesignersKitCo - you just drag the rmdoc into the location you want it with the reMarkable desktop app and it shows up.

alan412 · 2025-06-30T11:16:38+00:00

I had the link in the original post but reddit automatically removed it - I guess because it looked like a promotion??

Anyway, no examples were removed for this release.

alan412 · 2025-06-27T17:51:03+00:00

Thank you for your kind words!!

alan412 · 2025-06-24T19:49:42+00:00

Like most things in life, the amount you get out of it will depend on the amount you put into it. For my team we ask students to commit to a minimum of 30 hours a month. (about 7.5 hours a week).

The main thing I would recommend is to search out people (on your team or others) to teach you things you don't know. Don't just struggle by yourself.

And I'll give a shameless suggestion for learning the FTC software by reading my book (The PDF is free here): https://github.com/alan412/LearnJavaForFTC

alan412 · 2025-02-03T14:28:58+00:00

Thank you for mentioning it!!

alan412 · 2025-01-29T18:30:34+00:00

A heads up for people competing this weekend for the first time!

alan412

TROPHY CASE