Limewood

its been reported AS have very recently (in the last few days or so) changed the ability for overseas members to purchase points with the bonus, it's now limited to US, Canadian and possibly Mexico credit card holders only. Can anyone confirm this?.

eponymous_coward

"It's been reported"... where, exactly?

Most of AS's customer base (on FT or elsewhere) isn't in Australia or overseas, so it might be a bit hard to get confirmation.

You Aussies do like your cheap AS/US miles, don't you?

Limewood

Was posted on a AFF forum. Seems many Aussies are having problems buying AS miles with credit cards of late.

We do like our miles (points) and compared to what we are offered up in OZ this is a real good deal to us, here there are never any buy points offers with a bonus.

I purchased some AS miles last Dec. no problems at all, since used them to book 2 x J to HKG return.

Update:
one poster on AFF received this reply:
I rang their customer support this morning about the issue, they have very recently (in the last few days or week) changed the ability to purchase points with the bonus. They now limit it to US, Canadian and he thought Mexico credit card holders (where the billing address for the cc is the same as address for the points purchase). Fraud problems were 'apparently' a reason for limiting the availability. I find this hard to believe.

and another commentated such:
While it's Alaska's right to impose terms and conditions on promotions to do so mid stream and in such an underhand way is very unethical in my opinion.

I've never known changes like this to happen mid stream as one would think it would be imposed on next offer. Also why is there no notification on the AS web site of these new conditions for those not living in countries specified?.

Will be a lot of overseas customers not happy if this is correct.

flytoeat

I would guess that many of those overseas "customers" have no intention of ever flying Alaska on a paid ticket. If that is the case, why should they benefit from cheap award flights purchased through a loyalty program?

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Sounds almost like the FI fiasco...

eponymous_coward

I'm assuming these are your quotes, right?

I don't find fraud hard to believe at all. You have to figure that if there are people out there who will buy miles for themselves to fly (and I do know it's hard to get out of Australia for cheap, which is why the AS/US/AV schemes are popular with you and your fellow citizens ), there are people out there who buy miles for others to fly, and then sell the tickets as "mileage brokers". Limiting sales to people who are based in places where Alaska Airlines flies is one way of limiting the risk of that sort of fraud.

Also, AS historically has avoided going crazy with the mileage promotion schemes, to the extent that US and AV have. (I've been able to get US miles at well under a penny a mile at the right times by stacking the right promotions, though those days are long behind us, and some did even better than I did.) So seeing them be conservative with their program doesn't surprise me, either.

Sorry this impacts you (I know I miss the days of very cheap US miles). Perhaps you'll get lucky with AA now that Doug Parker from US is in charge?

The thought did cross my mind. Or buying a lot of SEA-PDX refundable trips with 10K miles each time and then cancelling the trip...

pantanal

where did you hear this...if you have a non USA account why not just sign in and try. You will get the answer immediately. Then you can tell us all "confirmed" vs "reportedly"

CDKing

I'm all for limiting it to customers based in North America

Limewood

There were no restrictions on buying AS miles so we jumped in, now there are, nothing on AS site I can see to say only certain countries can purchase, so we go through it all to buy then find the next day we get knocked back.

Well its game set and match over for now after receiving this today.

Dear...
Your transaction could not be completed because your credit card information could not be confirmed. The purchase was canceled and your credit card has not been charged. Please try your transaction again or contact customer support.

Purchase Cancellation Summary etc.

If you have any questions regarding your transaction, please contact Mileage Plan Customer Care at 1-800-654-5669.

If you would like to try your transaction again, please click here.

Sincerely,
Alaska Airlines

I wonder why it says can try again?, same card used as last time.

jerry a. laska

Could be related to this:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...f-address.html

dgreen12

Have you tried calling Customer Care to ask?

Limewood

Just spoke to a friendly AS supervisor, advised had nothing to do with card verification, said only USA/Canada residents can purchase these bonus miles now and will pass on the suggestion about saying so on web site.

frankpark9

i'm having the same problem. im trying to purchase points using paypal at first( i dont have a credit card) and it failed. then i tried using a friends cc and and it failed again. we both live in the states

pantanal

thanks for confirming

whimike

It is unfortunate, but it makes sense that they would limit the ability to buy to those that would actually be in their route network. Luckily there are other programs that can provide similar functionality, i.e. AA for CX awards.

I think there will be a lot of grumbling in OZ if Avianca were to have a similar restriction.