A Warning for Frequent Flyers!

[Guest fountainhall]

Returning to Bangkok last night, I read in the Asian edition of Business Traveller magazine about a frequent flyer who had had over 3 million miles deducted from his account by an airline! Apparently he flew regularly on a European airline between Spain or Turkey and the US west coast. Often he would not complete the trip by stopping over in Europe and then not using the last sector or two of the ticket. The flyer had asked an expert if such a deduction was legal.

 

The answer is ‘yes’! The airlines can more or less do what they like with your miles and there is no legal redress. Governments are not going to help because they all want to tax frequent flyer miles but so far cannot find a way of doing so. This flyer’s airline assumed (probably correctly) that he was breaking the rules of airline ticketing whereby multi-sector flights must be used in the order in which they are ticketed and all the sectors must be flown. Even failure to complete trips eventually raises red flags, especially when the computers start to notice a pattern. So be warned!

 

And today there is an article on the Wall Street Journal Market Watch site about how hackers are now accessing the miles in your frequent flyer accounts.

 

“When people have hundreds of thousands of miles, that’s like having money in the bank,” said George Hobica, founder of AirFareWatchdog.com, a travel site. “Consumers need to treat these accounts like they would their bank accounts or any other important account,” he said.

 

Many times consumers don’t even know they’ve been bilked out of their miles until they try to redeem them. This spring a Chicago couple discovered that the 175,000 miles they thought they had in their United Airlines account had been stripped down to 12,000. The airlines told them that the miles had been used for a trip to Singapore — which the couple had not taken.

 

Most of the scams seem to involve an offer of free tickets or miles on what looks to be like official airline correspondence. The catch is you have to call and provide some details. So, as with the African bank officials offering you millions of bucks, don’t give away your frequent flyer details.

 

http://www.marketwat...k=home_carousel

[Guest snapshot]

Hmmm... interesting.I confess to being utterly lazy about using my points. Booking flights is already such a chore, it's just easier to chuck a credit card in than to fiddle around with points or combo. What I do instead, is transfer all the points to my parents for them to use. That way I get to substitute the guilt of not using my points with the kudos of my delighted parents... who have all the time in the world to book their flights.

 

Did you ever read this article on American's Unlimited Travel on First Class program, FH?

 

http://www.smh.com.a...0510-1yese.html

 

Whoever structured that offer should be shot for putting out such an open-ended offer without considering possible consequences.

[Guest fountainhall]

Jeez! Unlimited first-class travel for life - and frequent flyer points into the bargain! Unbelievable! No wonder American Airlines went into bankruptcy!

 

I can't imagine what clocking up 40 million miles is like! I've reached almost 6 and won't be doing too many more. But what about that guy who flew to London "16 times in a 25-day span"? I reckon these guys must be like addicts. Mind you, when I needed some extra points for a mileage ticket to South America a couple of years ago, I did some crazy things on a round-the-world ticket to build miles - like going via San Francisco and Miami just to get from London to New York! I was exhausted when I got there - but I got the miles

[pong]

FYI; tipically, in the US acquired miles never expire-they invented that system there and are more or less struck with the rules of the time-and vehement protests if they change it. For about anyone else miles expire after 2-3 years-so you need to grow enough miles to be able to have enough for some award in that time.

Here in continent Eur govmts are not very much after taxing those miles-much more the companies/or govmt. institutions that see the miles on their bisnis-trips go to the individuals-for some holidaytrips- and not to them are more sour after that.

I have about given up on going after them-I pay myself, scout for lowest fares on acceptable airlines and these fareclasses nowadays hardly give any or 0 miles. But it was a nice time when I had gold on THAI-I made my sums and at that time it paid off, also as TG was about garanteeing you could use your miles at the time and routing you wanted it. Nice reminder-I am still about to donate the leftopvers on M&M/LH to some good cause.

[Guest fountainhall]

they invented that system there and are more or less struck with the rules of the time

 

What I find most surprising is that in the US you can still accumulate a ton of miles just by signing up for credit cards. Typically, you get 40,000 - 50,000 miles for signing up and then a bonus if you spend something like US$1,000 in the first 3 months. Many get the miles credited, transfer them to the airline and then cancel the card! I really cannot understand this business logic at all.

 

I have about given up on going after them

 

Totally agree. In Asia, airlines make it extremely difficult to get any seat on a popular route. Try BA from London to Bangkok and vv. Many months, they have no business class seats at all on offer. Airlines have also consistently reduced the fare codes available for upgrades. 4 years ago, a $1,000 return economy ticket BKK/JFK on CX could be upgraded to business for 80K miles. Now that minimum upgradable ticket costs almost US$3,000 + the 80K miles! It's just not worth it.

 

I no longer see the point of qualifying for elite status on the non-stop airlines. To Europe, it's a lot cheaper on the Middle East carriers or other one-stop airlines like Finnair and KLM. Besides, Qatar, Emirates and Etihad offer superior on board quality and service.