We booked travel to Costa Rica from Portland, Oregon in August of ****. It was booked t...

We booked travel to Costa Rica from Portland, Oregon in August of ****. It was booked through Travel Leaders by Corey Montgomery, travel agent. She was able to obtain tickets leaving PDX on April **, **** on AA Flight *****, at *** AM, arriving in Dallas at **** PM. This gave us about an hour layover in Dallas. We were booked on AA Flight *** Leaving Dallas at *** PM, arriving in San Jose, Costa Rica at *** PM.*The return flight was booked leaving San Jose AA Flight * **** leaving at *T** AM, arriving in Dallas at *T** PM. We were then to have a layover in Dallas until AA Flight ***** left at *** PM, arriving in PDX at *** PM.*We were very excited for this trip. As we live about *** miles from PDX, we arranged to have a shuttle pick us up at **** AM to arrive at PDX in time to catch our *AM flight. (The shuttle takes about * hours to get to the airport and it makes a few stops ). The confirmation on this flight information is: AA-SCWDJF.*I decided to call American the day before the flight to confirm. The person I spoke with said that our flight had changed and that we were now on a different flight leaving at *** AM from PDX !! I asked why no one had called, and she said they probably sent an email to the travel agent. At this point, I saw that ALL our flights had changed. I called Corey at the travel agency and she said that they did NOT get an email, and that American had my phone number and my email address! I asked the AA person when I called if they just arbitrarily change flights and she said, “yeah we do that” . There was NO apology and NO concern for the hoops I had to jump through to change everything on my end for travel to and from PDX.*This change in schedules resulted in having to take a shuttle at *** PM to PDX on the day BEFORE the flight...which got us to the airport at **** AM. Nothing was open, the ticket counter was closed, and they were cleaning the carpets where we were trying to sleep. We took the flight that left at *** AM and got to Dallas at***** AM.*The next flight left Dallas at *** PM to San Jose, CR. By the time we got to Costa Rica, we had been up for ** hours due to failure of anyone at AA to try to reach us to notify us of this change. We are in our ***s and it was very difficult. We were so tired by the time we got to our hotel, that we saw nothing of San Jose.*On the return on April **, our flight left at *** AM (instead of ***). Our hotel could only take us to the airport at ****, so we took a taxi and our own expense. We then proceeded to fly out of San Jose at ****, and arrived in Dallas at ****. There was a layover of approximately * hours in Dallas, and we had been up since ****. Again, due to American Airlines lack of communication, we were up for ** hours by the time we reached our home. The flight was supposed to leave at * PM, but left at least an hour late due to some mechanical problem that the captain said they had to call Tulsa about. During this time there was no attempt to communicate with the passengers, offer water, or anything. The flight attendants were in the back with their curtains pulled.*The plane finally took off over an hour later.*I worked for American Airlines as a flight attendant many years ago. I had always thought it was a great airline, but I have since changed my mind. I have told several friends about this unnecessary hassle and inconvenience, and to a person, no one was surprised. They had all had bad experiences on AA.*I was generally annoyed at my old “Alma Mater”, for the reasons mentioned above, and a general lack of ANYONE offering an apology or even a caring attitude. I can sure you that when I was flying, things were not that way. We always went out of our way if someone had been inconvenienced.*I would like someone to get back to me regarding this as soon as possible. We had a wonderful time in Costa Rica after we slept for a while, but it was in NO PART due to American Airlines. I am extremely disappointed to see the tremendous change in this airline, and was almost embarrassed by the absurd video that comes on for safety instructions looking like a sleek Madison Avenue advertisement. UGH!!!!*I am writing to you as I feel we were poorly treated by AA. When we checked in at PDX I asked about some compensation, or an upgrade or anything, and the ticket agent said they don*t do that, and that “You should always confirm the flight the day before.....which I did, but he didn*t really want to hear about it.*All of this could have been avoided by a simple phone call or email, and if I hadn*t called the day before, we would have missed our flight to Costa Rica!*My partner and I feel that we should be in some way compensated. Please get back to me at your earliest convenience.