Ouch this one really hurts.
I have been accumulating miles in my Mileage Plus account for 10+ years and had over 200,000.
Recently, Mileage Plus adopted new rules that allowed expiration with greater than 18 months of non-activity. I was unaware of this new policy.
Last month, I received an email from Mileage Plus to inform me that my 214,006 miles had expired and were removed from my account.
When I called customer service they were completely unhelpful. I explained to them that I receive at least 3 emails from Mileage Plus EVERY MONTH, including my monthly statement, but I received no warning from them that my miles were in danger of expiring. They just robotically chanted that Mileage Plus had no responsibility to notify me of the imminent expiration.
There are two options that Mileage Plus offers to restore these miles:
1) I can buy them back for 1.25 cents per mile…..this would cost approximately $2675.
2) I can pay $199 to enroll in a program that will restore the miles after I purchase and fly a new roundtrip fare with United before June 08……..this is the only palatable option that I will be forced to accept.
So, the bottom line is that Mileage Plus took 214,000 miles (worth more than $2500) from me without reasonable notification and will only return them after extorting $199 from me and forcing me to buy yet another roundtrip ticket from them.
Can anyone there help me to get these miles back without the humiliation of paying for what is already rightfully mine?
GBTadewaldt
Yreka, California
We have no idea what United is going to say, but we’d suggest trying an EECB (executive email carpet bomb) on them. Anyone familiar with United’s flexibility on this issue? Can they waive the fee?
For more information about how to learn to launch a EECB, click here.
(Photo:balmes)
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That sucks even too much to bitch about the customer being aware of the plan…
FYI You don’t have to FLY to keep your miles account active. It sucks that we have to be so vigilant open it – but with UAL (my plan) I can shop at Safeway, shop online, go to certain restaurants, all which accumulate miles and keep your account active. And my month UAL credit card.
Every in a plan with that many miles should be doing this – or better yet USING them…
As soon as my other half and I reach 80k each we’re off so Australia. Screw saving them up…
This is definitely a problem with miles and points programs. I have lost some (not NEAR 200K) due to the same expiration–18 months of no activity. That was a hotel chain. On the other hand, I did receive a letter from Hilton Hhonors that told me I was about to lose 275K points I had accumulated. It was for the same reason–no activity over a certain period of time. They gave me the deadline in the letter, so I called them to find out what I could do. I had to buy a few points to reset my “activity.” So, I bought 1000 points for like $12.50 and saved my points.
Sorry I don’t have any advice other than BE CAREFUL because your points/miles will expire.
Christ, United sounds like the mob.
“For a fee, me and my associates will restore what is rightfully yours. Or we can light them on fire right in front of you.”
Wish I could help. Good luck.
I had the same thing happen. I won’t fly them any more.
Isn’t the mileage expiration date listed in the online account summary? I know it definitely is for American AAdvantage. If so, I think you’re out $200 for option 2. Best way of keeping your miles safe: get a branded credit card, b/c whenever miles are deposited into your account (monthly), your expiration date changes.
Ouch.
I’m no expert, but don’t you sign an agreement when you start the program? Did the agreement include ‘terms subject to change without notice’? Make them prove that you agreed to this change somewhere in writing.
Of course, at this point, they may not care; it may take a lawyer to get them to sit up and take notice.
I don’t understand this trend in companies (airline, hotel, telecom, etc.) to punish their longest most loyal customers by fucking them in the ass.
How is this a cost saving strategy?
Ya know what? we need some John Goodman from Big Lebowski brand of customer service ombudsman action to straighten these companies up.
@bluebuilder:
They don’t use lube.
This is why I DON’T have a miles card; instead I use my Amazon card and get gift certs for Amazon.
@bluebuilder:
Airlines make the majority of their revenue on the premium seats (F and J classes). The OP in this story has been saving 200,000 miles over 10 years. He may be a long term customer, but in the grand scheme of things, his business is relatively unimportant.
I’m not playing ‘blame the victim’, but I got plenty of notification from United about the 18-month policy change. Also, when you check your statement, it tells you the date that the miles will expire.
@NightSteel: You just made baby jesus cry.
@bluebuilder: this person is obviously not their most loyal customer. why else would they have not accumulated any miles in the past 18 months? flying a competitor maybe??
expiration date of miles/points etc is annoying but part of the system. stay vigiliant or better yet, USE YOUR MILES OR LOSE THEM!
American expired 26000 of my miles, I was able to donate 500 miles to an in-house charity that flies troops home. That generated activity and restored 25500 miles to my account. Find out if United has a similar policy.
I’m curious why people sit on them so long… In the years it took to save them up you wouldn’t have wanted to GO SOMEWHERE?
Of course I wouldn’t cash mine in for a $150 RT to O’hare, but 200k miles is almost 4 people to Europe. What are you waiting for?
Not much sympathy from me. I got months worth of offers to get me to use some of my expiring delta miles.
This is a problem that is not going to be resolved through the normal channels, I still recommend contacting there customer service devision one more time and escalating to a supervisor, also it may be time to pull the original contract and get legal, The one good thing you have is time, I would fight this to the bitter end and then if no other recourse is available take the 200$ trip, Also some information on this would be good, there is no way they could do this without breaking a few contracts so they must have some sort of incentive that was released to compensate the people they screwed over, (1)Escalate as high as you can using the original channels, (2)EECB, (3) Check the contract and information provided at the time they issued this for incentives, alternatives etc, (4)Take the offer, Use the time that you have effectively and don’t go for the 200$ option unless a last resort, Best of luck and yet another company to “Black List”
When I joined the Navy in 1996, I used Alaska Airlines. My plane fare to and from Alaska was via Alaska Airlines. I was allowed to use my mileage plan to rack-up the miles. I went to use them on October 2007, and AA claims the miles no longer exist.
I keep all of the papers I receive from AA. Not one of them mention an expiration date. IMO, when AA advertises Air Miles, they are false advertising and need to be reported to the BBB for starters.
….no offense to the OP, but I received several mailings about some of my older UAL accumulated miles set to expire over the past year.
In fact (if I recall) one mailing about a year ago extended the deadline a bit to end of 2007, so I find it hard to feel a lot of sympathy.
Plead a healthy level of contrite innocence to an exec level at this point (and for god’s sake, remember the old adage of miles: Use ‘em or lose ‘em.)
Oh, please don’t EECB this. Save that for real problems.
FYI….Miles continue to devalue over time as rewards become more costly. Anyone with a FF account should use their miles at the first possible chance unless you are saving up for a special vacation. I encourage everyone to read about all the FF programs at flyertalk.com. It is a really great forum to learn how to get the most out of your miles. BTW…the best use of miles is international upgades.
Your best shot is to tell them if they waive the $195, you’ll schedule a roundtrip flight right then to restore the miles. There’s no way you should have to pay 200 bucks for the privilege of buying a ticket and restoring what you’ve earned. Give a little, they give a little. Just make sure you haggle with someone with the authority to help.
Sorry, no sympathy here — first, if you have an asset like 200,000 miles, you ought to pay attention to whether they are going to expire. Second, UA mentioned this in every statement for months after changing the policy. Third, it’s so easy to retain miles by dining out, or buying flowers, etc. Fourth, if you haven’t flown in 18 months, I don’t know why United should care — you are not a ‘frequent flyer’.
The 18 month expiration policy is now more or less SOP in the travel industry, from what I’ve read. Sucks, yeah, but it’s clearly posted on your online miles statement.
Guys, this was all over the news when it happened.
And lets face it, frequent flier miles really are worth about $.01/mile or so.
I certainly received multiple heads-ups about the expiration date from both United and American (and Delta too, I believe).
I doubt the OP’s going to get much relief on this one. UA would only have the incentive to do so if they felt he was a customer worth having for the future. Since the OP hasn’t flown them for over 1.5 years, I doubt they’ll feel that way.
Clearly, though, the OP should take the $199+flight option. Buy a $250 r/t somewhere, and you get 200k miles back for $450, which is well worth it.
The same thing happened to me back in 1995 before it was SOP. I had about 100K Delta miles I wanted to use, but since I hadn’t flown in 18 months (apparently my purchases didn’t count back then), they were deleted. I was in college and had moved twice, so Delta claimed it was my fault I didn’t get to memo. Funny, my rewards statement and Delta/Visa Rewards bill came every month without fail, but no notification of the change could make it thru, hmmm?
To this day, I refuse to fly Delta. They can suck a big fat egg.
@Shannara:
Check your online statement at aa.com. The expiration is DEFINITELY there. If you lose those miles, that’s on you.
That’s really unfortunate. What if the rules about how many months you can leave an account inactive weren’t written when the OP signed up? Then he should be grandfathered under that… Because he wasn’t aware when he signed up and he never received any information telling him otherwise. I would call customer service and demand to speak to a manager. And their manager. And their manager. Take it as high as you can, and tell them that you have been a loyal customer for years and you will not put up with this kind of disrespect. Tell them that you will call your local news station and expose them. Tell them that you wrote in to this website and are telling everyone you know about this injustice. If you have to, say that you are seriously considering legal action. Those things should scare them sufficiently. If not, get the BBB involved. Don’t hesitate to do so.
How much of a frequent flier can you really be if you don’t fly with them for 18 months?
Well, they did send out a notice last year. And it has been all over the news. You must have been in a cave. And I agree with Bilge. If they were that important you would have known.
@lovelygirl:
But he HASN’T been a loyal customer for years. He clearly was a pretty heavy customer at one time, but he hasn’t flown with them for at least a year and a half!
He’s welcome to threaten legal action, but I’m sure United has heard that a number of times already.
I got a letter in the mail from United about this expiration policy. It pissed me off but I did hear about it first.
Yup..I just lost 4,996 from them too.
I got similarly screwed by American a couple of years ago. They were equally unhelpful. So this former AAdvantage Gold flyer hasn’t been on one of AA’s planes in two years. Sucks to be them.
As far as United goes, my dad retired early from UA in 1981 after 38 years because he saw his much-beloved airline going down the tubes. In a way I’m glad he’s not around anymore to see how far they’ve fallen.
I’m reminded of the old saying “it takes a years to get a customer and a second to lose one.” Apparently they no longer teach that in the airline biz.
The best way to avoid this is to get one of the credit cards that earns United Points. Those count as “activity” and as long as you use that card once every 18 months (even if you have NOT flown ANYWHERE), you’re still OK.
United, AA, and Delta sent these notices a while ago. What’s really pathetic about this topic is this was news back in 2006 and repeated in early 2007.
[www.frequentflier.com]
[www.usatoday.com]
Good to see the usual make up excuses for the OP.
In fact, I’m calling bullshit on the OP and Meg considering Meg informed us of this on January 22, 2007. Almost a full year ago.
[consumerist.com]
I had a similar incident with United, albeit with only 14k miles. I got a thing in the mail in August saying “Buy magazines with your 14k miles because your miles expire on 9/1″ I said, what the hell, I never fly them anymore and 14k miles can’t get me shit. I went online to see if there were more things I could get with my miles, and logged on, and it said my miles expired on 7/1.
I called “customer service” (quotes intentional) and told them this story and they confirmed my miles did expire. I asked them why they were telling me they were expiring on September then? Then I got transferred to the guy in Bangalore, who, after a bit of berating, gave me 3k miles to get me to shut up.
Postscript: I got ANOTHER thing in the mail saying I should use my miles to get magazines because my miles were to expire on 1/1/08. I chose like 8 magazines (most of which I don’t care about – Conde Nast Business? Maxim? Ok, Maxim is purty) just to see what would happen. You know what. I’m getting the damn magazines!
If you shop at Vons/Dominick’s/Tom Thumb/Randalls/Genuardi’s/Pavilions/Carrs/Safeway, register your MileagePlus account with your club card. For every $250 in groceries you spend, they’ll dump 125 miles in your account. I’d think most people would spend $250 in groceries every 18 months. That’s all it takes to keep it active.
@tallladude:
yup – and right now they have a promotions where 10 items from “eating right” brand nets you 500.
it’s not that hard… if I’m buying something online I go to the UAL mileage plus mall. If they have the retailer I want I can get 1, 2, 3, 5 or sometimes 10 miles for every dollar spent.
I think an eecb is in order. At some point the op got 200k miles on the airline.
These are designed to be a reward to customers who steer their flying to a certain airline.
The point of the programs is to offer a small carrot to consumers so you don’t always need the lowest cut rate fare to get the customer. Stories like this will not make me less likely to fly AA, however it will not make me more likely to chose between them and another airline.
If someone who is loyal enough to accumulate 200k miles gets the shaft I have no reason to think I wouldn’t get the same or worse. This post would have been an above and beyond if they restored his miles.
Stories like this are exactly why the airlines put the policies in place to begin with — to clear inactive miles off their books. 200,000 miles in the account, and not a thing being done with them for about 2 years — is the person still alive, disappeared, or what? It is clear the OP used to be a frequent flier, but is no longer — still he/she could’ve been more vigilant about the account. It takes only the addition or subtraction *of a single mile* to keep the account alive, and the OP didn’t manage to do that even.
For all the people who say they’ll never fly so-and-so airline ever again, which other airline are you going to take your indignation to? Get over it, learn to succeed within their rules, and get on with life!
@Starfury: I too avoid mileage credit cards. I am someone who cannot accumulate over time but needs instant gratification so I too have an Amazon card and a BN card.
I also have an AmEx card but get my rewards once a year–I hate waiting for rewards.
@billbillbillbill: But these aren’t Delta miles, so who’s to say he got the same deal?
@nweaver: .01 x 200,000+ is 2,000 dollars though. Sure the miles themselves aren’t worth a lot individually, but this guy has stacked up a ton.
@smarty: Oh, so the assumption now is he either read Consumerist a year ago, or back read a year’s worth of articles? Just cuz it was posted here doesn’t mean he saw it.
@kepler11: Well, since there’s what, a dozen? Not flying one specific one anymore isn’t going to stop you from flying. Or don’t fly period, you could always take a train.
Legacy carrier FF miles are fools gold. When the carriers started these things,they arguably made some sense as a way of building loyalty.Now that all of the major legacy carriers have recapitalized in Chapter 11, they don’t really need the “halo” that these programs used to provide. They have created literally billions of miles that are an ongoing liability for them. Thats why they have no intention of letting anyone fly “free” if they can help it.The number of award sets is strictly limited on nearly all flights and the number of miles required has been creeping up also…It’s not hard to foresee a day when a major just scraps their program altogether and claims that custoers really wanted “more amenities” ,”increased service” or some such self serving PR bullshit.(This day could be even closer if Delta manages to shack up with any of the two or three other carriers mentioned as possible partners).The whole thing looks like a giant iron claw machine,where you can clearly see the prize that you want and THEORETICALLY you have a chance at it,but the owner has made sure that you will spend more to get it than it could ever conceiveably be worth…
While I agree the OP dropped the ball on this one, it goes to a bigger problem and that is a lack of passenger rights with respect to the airline industry. The airlines have been slowing eroding our right as consumers and since travel options are limited for many reasons this has got to stop. When is enough, enough
I’ve been a rather frequent business flyer and have considered United my “Preferred” airline for about the last eight-plus years including more than a handful of trips to Europe and the Pacific Rim, — but no more.
I have four major reasons:
1 – The new 18-month expiration policy.
2 – The continually increasing annual fee for the United/Chase VISA card, on which I charged over $50K per year. I cancelled it 2 weeks ago.
3 – The increases in the number of miles needed to get a ticket. It used to be 20K, now it is 25K or 40K.
4 – The increasingly difficulty in actually using accumulated miles on trips to where I want, when I want to go.
I’m exactly the kind of customer United cannot afford to lose; a business traveller who travels at least monthly and usually flies enough in a year to get at least Premier or Premier Executive status.
Penny-wise and pound-foolish, UAL….
No sympathy! My United.com frequent flier account clearly shows when my miles will expire. Suck it up and learn from your mistakes.