Your options are either to make the purchase of the miles (as you noted), or go back and see if you had any activity that would have qualified for miles earning (such as a hotel stay or car rental) from before the expiration date that didn't credit anywhere. You might be able to get them to credit miles based on the activity date, thereby reactivating the miles.
While complaining and writing letters "can't hurt" as people note, it's not that likely to help. OTOH, anecdotal evidence from other FT posts suggest that the advice quoted above has worked for at least a few people. If you're going to put a lot of effort into this project I'd recommend taking nako's advice here as your first option as it seems like the most likely to pay off.
Just begging is likely to be seen less sympathetically then a semi-credible claim that you thought you did actually have qualifying activity, with some evidence to back it up.
Losing 175k miles is a sad story, no matter that it could have been prevented, it's still a drag I'm sure. Good luck.
Yeah. I realize that I was negligent. I want to use first the air miles on Aeroplan from Air Canada. I almost lost them too.
Back in my head I heard that they could close your account and archive it; but never loose the right to your air miles in reality. They are your property. Maybe I'm wrong.
Best advise from one tread, to write a nice letter to them, and explain the problems I went through with my hard disk, maybe they are nice and allow me to reopen my account again.
Thanks, I was wrong, it's $100 for 10.000 miles, looks better already. Very useful info.
Felling better. I was a little depressing at first and I didn’t tell my wife yet, afraid that treats me as a stupid.
Marti8
Programs: AA EXP, 1 MM, AC, HH Diamond, Marriott Silver, Hertz 5*
Posts: 1,764
I'm sure AA has heard "I didn't get my e-mail" many times before, and that's not their fault. And their policies on miles expiration are more generous than most.
Those are the rules. While it may not hurt to ask for a favor, I wouldn't count on getting those miles back without paying.
Programs: AA lifetime GOLD, thanks FT, AARP senior member
Posts: 13,857
Quote:
Originally Posted by JGR01
Jut be on the watch .. other airlines (DL?) are closing frequent flier accounts with 18 months of no activity.
Geeze .. 36 months is sure a lot better than 18 months .. and ANY activity (buying flowers, renting a car, staying in a hotel) would re-set the counter.
You can keep most airline accounts 'alive' by ordering a magazine subscription for a few hundred miles. I've done this with Delta and United. Yes, some airlines are shortening the life of accounts to 2 years or less.
Programs: AA, Delta, NWA, UA & thanks to FT for my HHonors Gold!
Posts: 3,330
Quote:
Originally Posted by marti8
Yeah. I realize that I was negligent....
Back in my head I heard that they could close your account and archive it; but never loose the right to your air miles in reality. They are your property. Maybe I'm wrong.
Welcome to FT!
I learned from our collected FT wisdom that it IS a wrong assumption. Even though you may think we "earn" our own FF miles, but, in reality, FF miles/programs belong to the airlines and they can modify, change or even terminate the whole program as they desire.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marti8
..Best advise from one tread, to write a nice letter to them, and explain the problems I went through with my hard disk, maybe they are nice and allow me to reopen my account again...
Correct me if I am wrong. I don't think AA close your AAdvantage account. They just reset your account balance to zero due to 3-yr inactivity. In your case, AA just reinforced their 36-month expiration policy. You lost your miles, not your account. There's no need to "reopen" it.
I am not trying to be harsh. If you want to reactivate your expired AA miles for less cost (it sounds like it), you better come up with a much stronger "defense." Even it wouldn't hurt to try, I strongly doubt your hard-drive-problem excuse would fly at all. AA hasn't changed their 36-month inactivity policy for years. With a damaged/reformatted hard drive or not, the policy has always been 36-month period. Your email account issue won't be a stronger case either since providing a valid and usable email account to AA is a very easy task. Admitting your own negligence probably will get you as far as sympathy land but nowhere near your lost 174K miles.
IMHO, you have to pay AA in order to get your expired miles back, if you don't have the proof that you ever generated any AA miles in those 36 months. There's no way to get around it. The best case scenario would be AA offering you a special discounted rate to reinactivate your miles IF you can build a very strong case. However, I don't recall reading success story from our fellow FTers on that account so far.
The following thread over Delta forum might help you build your case though. (I know, I know, AA is in a much better shape than Delta.) Delta Skymiles changed their expiration policy last summer and quite a few FTers suffered the loss of miles in the last couple months due to the change. Read through the posts. I am sure you will get some insight and good advice to avoid miles expired in general.
I remembered that a friend of mine ahd not travelled for almost 3 yrs so got into her account and yep miles expiring in 6 days so I joined her in points.com and selected aa miles they posted in a day!!!
she now has another 3 yrs
Programs: AA EXP; Marriott Platinum; Starwood Platinum; HH Silver
Posts: 1,854
Quote:
Originally Posted by tinkybelle
I remembered that a friend of mine ahd not travelled for almost 3 yrs so got into her account and yep miles expiring in 6 days so I joined her in points.com and selected aa miles they posted in a day!!!
she now has another 3 yrs
as a reasonable practice american air should have to send policy re: expiration via standard mail, not just email. this applies especially to those of us not signed up for email content or for closed accounts. the june 2007 change in policy was an unreasonably short amount of time esp for those that do not fly american.
there has to a threat of legal action that others have made to have exceptions made. any one know of such a case ?
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them / take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
as a reasonable practice american air should have to send policy re: expiration via standard mail, not just email. this applies especially to those of us not signed up for email content or for closed accounts. the june 2007 change in policy was an unreasonably short amount of time esp for those that do not fly american.
there has to a threat of legal action that others have made to have exceptions made. any one know of such a case ?
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them / take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
Alternatively, contact AAdvantage Customer Service, tell 'em you did not receive timely notice, and ask 'em to reinstate just your miles, at no charge, as a one-time exception.
This approach involves much less time and effort than a class-action suit or boycott, and probably carries a higher chance of success.
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them / take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
Welcome to FT.
If you do choose to go the legal route, I think this website may not be the best place to find confederates. Most of the folks here are frequent fliers who did not let miles expire and would not be likely to participate. I would imagine a google search would find other sites with disgruntled infrequent fliers who did lose miles and might be more amenable to joining you in legal action.
First, though, I'd try SquareDanceGuy's simpler suggestion. Good luck.
Programs: AA PLT, BD*G, CO Gold, HH Gold, PC PlatAmb
Posts: 644
I assume this post is a wind-up, but just in case...
Quote:
Originally Posted by knuesel
the june 2007 change in policy was an unreasonably short amount of time esp for those that do not fly american.
People who do not fly AA probably aren't at the top of AA's priority list. Unless they fill their AAdvantage accounts by other means, in which case their miles aren't going to expire.
Quote:
Originally Posted by knuesel
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them
You don't need to start a campaign, grassroots or otherwise, in order to contact AA. See aa.com for a bunch of options, including mail and telephone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by knuesel
take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
Hmmm, let me see if I've got this... AA frequent flyers (a category most of the people reading this forum fall into) should boycott AA to support the cause of infrequent flyers who forget about their miles? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I suspect there's a flaw there somewhere.
the june 2007 change in policy was an unreasonably short amount of time esp for those that do not fly american.
there has to a threat of legal action that others have made to have exceptions made. any one know of such a case ?
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them / take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
If you don't fly American then what's the problem?
I think the reply as to the frequent users having nothing to protest and no reason to boycott tells you that you are barking up the wrong tree here anyway.
I think there is a reactivation challenge you can do with AA to get your miles reactivated. Something about flying 5000 miles in a year and receiving emails from them for at least 3 months.
My miles had expired in 2004, and they offered me this challenge...
as a reasonable practice american air should have to send policy re: expiration via standard mail, not just email. this applies especially to those of us not signed up for email content or for closed accounts. the june 2007 change in policy was an unreasonably short amount of time esp for those that do not fly american.
there has to a threat of legal action that others have made to have exceptions made. any one know of such a case ?
alternatively, we should mount a grassroots campaign to contact them / take legal action and boycott the airline. any one in ?
Where you watching Andy Rooney? Or did you come up with the "boycott the airline " idea all by you self?
I think there is a reactivation challenge you can do with AA to get your miles reactivated. Something about flying 5000 miles in a year and receiving emails from them for at least 3 months.
My miles had expired in 2004, and they offered me this challenge...
That's a good compromise; I like challenges, in general.
