This reminds me of the time Southwest Airlines oversold our flight and put 2 of my kids on standby. Then they asked for volunteers to give up their spots for $2500 each, so we accepted their offer.
After the flight left without us, they claimed that they never should have made us the $2500 offer because they actually needed 2 *other* people to accept it so our family could get on our flight. They handed me much smaller vouchers to sign and I was like lol no.
So they tried to argue the definition of voluntary vs involuntary with me. I was like cool story give me your badge number to attach to this DOT complaint Iโm about to file about your attempt to renege on our contract, violating DOT regulations.
This lead to multiple levels of escalation and to each person I said please give me your badge number to attach to this DOT complaint. While they were radioing the next guy up the chain I said okay Iโm going to go sit over there and Iโll wait for you to page me when you have resolved this situation in a satisfactory fashion.
The entire time, I was extremely calm and used my Dangerous Professional voice. (h/t @patio11)
Ended up with multiples of the original promised amount + inconvenience compensation + customer service reached out with more vouchers.