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Mileage Plus Sucks
Arghhh. Why is it that my frequent flyer account reminds me of my stock portfolio when the dot.coms busted? Last Thursday I received an email from United Airlines "Announcing new benefits and changes to your Mileage Plus program."
Well, the benefits were merely lipstick for a very ugly pig: United is increasing the amount of miles necessary for award travel. Starting in October, trips will cost an average of 20% more miles; this means that the value of my Mileage Plus portfolio, and yours, has just decreased by the same amount.
I have a decent amount of miles in my account that will offset this increase, but the irony is that the only reason I still have these miles is because I can rarely cash them in. I've only been able to get frequent flyer seats once in the last five years; all the other times I've tried, there were no seats available. In fact, just last night I tried booking tickets to Europe. Naturally there weren't any frequent flier seats available so I was forced to purchase a British Air flight instead. If this keeps up, my miles will be like Yugoslav dinars in the 1990s where you had to knock off the last six zeros to figure out the true value of a note.
Columnist Joe Brancatelli is equally irate with United and has penned an informative rant on USAToday.com. He walks us through some of the math and explains how United is screwing its most loyal customers with these changes.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RJ Apr 28th 2006 5:51AM
Simple solution, get a cash back card instead and go buy the ticket.
David Rodecker Jun 5th 2006 5:48PM
Blocked on registering miles.
I'm not much into marketing tracking such as frequent flyer programs, but after flying around the world in the past year with Star Alliance airliners I decided to take advantage of those miles. Per their instruction, I sent in all my boarding pass stubs; which included: Thai, SAS, United, and TED.
After a few months, the United customer services returned all my boarding passes and responded with a complete rejection for two reasons. One, the 12 month grace period had just passed, for some of the initial flight; of course their two-months of processing ensured that. The post-date on my request was nearly 6 weeks prior to the cut-off. Secondly, they apparently also required the eTicket, date of issue, dates of travel, class of service, proof of payment and ticket numbers.
Their processing is only paralelled to mail-in-rebates. This credit system is probably only offered to be complaint with regulations to purchase-based encentive programs. With 35,000 miles on the line for credit, they certainly put up the barriers to prevent granting anything.
I spent 45 minutes on this already and I don't have the patience to dig up the rest of what they are asking for. Does anyone actually take the time to run through their obsticle course?
David Rodecker Jun 5th 2006 5:49PM
Blocked on registering miles.
I'm not much into marketing tracking such as frequent flyer programs, but after flying around the world in the past year with Star Alliance airliners I decided to take advantage of those miles. Per their instruction, I sent in all my boarding pass stubs; which included: Thai, SAS, United, and TED.
After a few months, the United customer services returned all my boarding passes and responded with a complete rejection for two reasons. One, the 12 month grace period had just passed, for some of the initial flight; of course their two-months of processing ensured that. The post-date on my request was nearly 6 weeks prior to the cut-off. Secondly, they apparently also required the eTicket, date of issue, dates of travel, class of service, proof of payment and ticket numbers.
Their processing is only paralleled to mail-in-rebates. This credit system is probably only offered to be complaint with regulations to purchase-based incentive programs. With 35,000 miles on the line for credit, they certainly put up the barriers to prevent granting anything.
I spent 45 minutes on this already and I don't have the patience to dig up the rest of what they are asking for. Does anyone actually take the time to run through their obstacle course?
nancy cee Jul 19th 2006 11:24PM
Hate to bring bad news but Mileage Plus has outsourced most of the jobs to Manilla for their program. One of the US sites closed in April and a second will close in August. You will now be dealing with a language barrier. Why would United take a program that ranked #1 for twelve consective years by Business Magazine and turn it over to a foreign country. Good luck trying to get credits or use the miles now if they understand what your saying.