US Airways Dividend Miles - Miles Expiration Date for USAirways - How do you tell?

How do you tell what expiration date is for your miles for USAIR? I logged onto my account and have been searching and searching. I can't seem to find a date anywhere. Have they stooped so low as to hide the date so you don't know? I also get the regular email updates and it is not in that either.

My apologies if I am missing something.

They dont list it on the website (go figure) but it is the standard 18 months from last activity. I called just to confirm. If you are close to loosing your miles- you can sign up for Dividend Miles Dinning go to one restaurant spend literally a dollar and your miles are good for another 18 months- just remember it can take a few weeks for the miles to post to your account. Hope this helps.

According to www.mileagemanager.com/forbes.php

Most frequency programs do not report point/mileage expiration, although many will "expire" miles/points after a certain amount of time or after a period of inactivity. Because of this, MileageManager brought to you by ForbesTraveler.com may not be able to report precise expiration information. To prevent the untimely loss of your hard earned miles/points, please review this program's expiration policy:

Active membership status is based on having earned or redeemed miles within a consecutive 18 month period. Dividend Miles members have an opportunity to reinstate their accounts to active status for an additional 18 months for a $50 processing fee and reactivation fee of $.01 per mile. If members do not extend with this reactivation option, the Dividend Miles account will be closed and all miles forfeited. Keep miles alive by earning and burning mileage with a variety of airlines, non-travel and shopping partners.

On the summary page. Speaks volumes about an organization that needs to hide that info from customers.

...Speaks volumes about an organization that needs to hide that info from customers.

I have FF accounts with 2 other airlines (one in Skyteam and other in OneWorld) and know that the miles expiration date info is not easily found - it appears to be industry-wide.

Once a year (usually year's end), if there's no activity I'd buy a little something to keep the Miles going.

On the summary page. Speaks volumes about an organization that needs to hide that info from customers.

+1. AA puts the exact expiration date right next to the miles balance...

I have FF accounts with 2 other airlines (one in Skyteam and other in OneWorld) and know that the miles expiration date info is not easily found - it appears to be industry-wide.

Once a year (usually year's end), if there's no activity I'd buy a little something to keep the Miles going.

The date of expiration is clearly stated in one's accounts for United Mileage Plus and Delta SkyMiles. Northwest WorldPerks miles did not have an expiration until they merged with Delta, now the date of expiration is same as Delta's, if one merged accounts. Continental OnePass miles don't expire (yet), so there is no date.

Your last activity date is listed on your monthly mileage summary email. You can easily calculate your mileage expiration date.

Your last activity date is listed on your monthly mileage summary email. You can easily calculate your mileage expiration date.

Right - how much IT muscle would it take for US to do the calculation for their customers? :rolleyes:

Not much but I think it's a nice to have. At this point I'd rather they focus on bug fixes and making the site functional and working correctly.

Have to agree that this is a big minus... . I am building a spreadsheet tracking loyalty programs for myself and not-so-organized partner... DL, AA, UA all show it.... US - nope.

How about CO? There's no indication of expiration for OP miles.

Have to agree that this is a big minus... . I am building a spreadsheet tracking loyalty programs for myself and not-so-organized partner... DL, AA, UA all show it.... US - nope.

So far CO miles do not expire.

I just got an E Mail from DM. It tells me that I have not had activity in my account since June of 08. If there is no activity in my account, the miles will expire in Jan 10.

It also said I can retain my miles by shopping
"Shop with over 175 premium retailers for name-brand merchandise at the
Dividend Miles Shopping Mall, where you can reactivate your account for as little as one dollar."

I don't want to lose the 7500 miles. What can I buy for $1.00? I looked but haven't found it yet.

I have no plans to fly US Airways. If I did, I would take my miles on UA or CO.

I just got an E Mail from DM. It tells me that I have not had activity in my account since June of 08. If there is no activity in my account, the miles will expire in Jan 10.

It also said I can retain my miles by shopping
"Shop with over 175 premium retailers for name-brand merchandise at the
Dividend Miles Shopping Mall, where you can reactivate your account for as little as one dollar."

I don't want to lose the 7500 miles. What can I buy for $1.00? I looked but haven't found it yet.

I have no plans to fly US Airways. If I did, I would take my miles on UA or CO.

So you don't plan on earning anymore miles from flying on US. But you want to save the 7500 miles from expiring so I am guessing you plan on continuing to earn DMs until you can one day redeem an award with DMs. Am I right? So why not start building that 7500 miles up now? Instead of looking for something to buy for $1 that you might not even need, how about finding something you want or something that you can use for a holiday gift. Your 7500 miles are practically worthless (magazines?). They aren't going to gain value just sitting there so you need to bring the balance up - up by more than just the miles earned from a $1 purchase.

There are other ways (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/earnmiles/default.html) to extend your expiration - hotels (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/earnmiles/hotels.html), car rentals (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/earnmiles/cars.html), credit cards (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/creditcards/default.html) and even buying miles (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/programdetails/purchasemiles/default.html) outright from US.

You could register a credit card with Dividend Miles Dining (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/earnmiles/dining.html), have one meal at a participating dining location and, voila, the clock resets on your expiration. Sometimes a participating restaurant will have a bottled-drink case, deli counter or bakery display. You wouldn't even have to "dine in" if you don't want.

That might be easier than finding a $1 widget to buy at DM Shopping.

Edit: I forgot a truly EASY and CHEAP way of earning a couple of miles. Register a cc with Thanks Again (http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/earnmiles/other.html#Thanks%20Again). Go to the restaurant section and you will find a link for restaurant.com. Find a restaurant where you can purchase a $10 gift certificate (even if you don't plan on dining) for $2. Voila again. DMs will post to your account and reset the clock.

Edit again: The current %-off code for restaurant.com is HARVEST.

It is really a very poor customer service issue that they dont post the miles expiration date clearly on the web page. As pointed out above both AA and UA do this very clearly. I got an email a couple weeks ago that my miles were about to expire. To their credit, it was pretty far in advance. I had a shuttle flight coming up anyway. I usually credit those to UA but I didnt need it to qualify as 1K on UA this year so I credited it to my US account. I have about 165K miles so I need to figure out what to do with them. But US should really post this information clearly on the web site. They would have a much better PR case when the miles do expire if they started doing that.

It is really a very poor customer service issue that they dont post the miles expiration date clearly on the web page.

It is also really a very poor customer service issue that they cut over to a website that hey knew to be very buggy with some very basic functions not working well such as displaying all available flights during a shop. Although having a posted expiration date would be nice I'd rather the IT department focus on fixing the basic functionality issues with the "new and improved" USAirways.com first. Until then it's not a huge inconvenience to look up your last activity date and count forward 18 months.

From my understanding of the rules, they expire in 2 years, but continental has never enforced it but they can at any time they choose to do so.


So far CO miles do not expire.

It is also really a very poor customer service issue that they cut over to a website that hey knew to be very buggy with some very basic functions not working well such as displaying all available flights during a shop. Although having a posted expiration date would be nice I'd rather the IT department focus on fixing the basic functionality issues with the "new and improved" USAirways.com first. Until then it's not a huge inconvenience to look up your last activity date and count forward 18 months.

I suppose. But since I dont fly them any more the other issues arent as important to me. ;)

So far CO miles do not expire.

From my understanding of the rules, they expire in 2 years, but continental has never enforced it but they can at any time they choose to do so.

From CO.com (https://www.continental.com/web/en-HK/content/onepass.aspx):

OnePass at a Glance

Features of the OnePass program:

* Free membership
* 5,000 mile activation bonus after you take your first paid flight as a OnePass member
* More than 500 reward travel destinations worldwide
* Miles that never expire*
* An award-winning Elite program with three levels of benefits
* Travel rewards starting at just 10,000 miles for a one-way, one-class upgrade
* A global network of OnePass partners, including airlines, hotels, car hire companies, credit cards and more
* 50% bonus miles for travel on BusinessFirst fares**

* Miles currently have no expiration date; however Continental Airlines reserves the right to impose expiration limits or terminate the OnePass program, plus terminating your ability to claim rewards. If you do not have activity in your OnePass account for a period of 18 months, Continental Airlines may close your account.

Thus far I haven't heard of anyone who has had their account closed and/or miles deleted due to account inactivity.

I suppose. But since I dont fly them any more the other issues arent as important to me. ;)

Then please pray for US poor souls that still do! :D

to be clear, do redemptions still count as qualifying activity to keep miles alive?

my wife no longer flys much, and even less often on USAir, but she's near a free flight so I'd like to keep the account alive since the next x-country flight will get her a ticket.

We got a notice saying her miles would soon expire and to redeam miles for magazines in december, subscribed to the cheapest one to keep the account alive. However, yesterday I got a second notice saying her miles will expire and I need to use the miles for magazines.
Is this just a standard mailer that was already queued in the system or did the redemption in december not reset the clock on her account? The redemption from the account for the miles shows in her DM account page, so I'm not sure if further redemption is really needed.

The best way to keep miles from expiring is probably set an "anniversary" event and buy something inexpensive on that date every year (assuming that your wife hasn't flown or otherwise earned miles in the previous 6 months). That way you don't have to worry about delays in purchases posting to an account leading to headaches getting the miles reinstated.

In your specific case as long as the miles for your purchase eventually post with a date before the 18 months are up you should either keep the miles active or get them reinstated if necessary. If for some reason the date shown when they post is beyond the 18 months, I hope you kept some proof of when you made the purchase.

Jim

this was a milage redemption, not a purchase. The 400 miles for the magazine have already been removed from her account (so they posted), but since I got the second notice saying that the miles are still slated to expire, I'm not sure if the second notice was incorrect or if redemptions don't count.

To change the scenario a little bit. Let's say I have 100K miles originally slated to expire on 1/2/2010. I redeem 60K for a free flight on 1/1/2010. Do the remaining 40K expire on 1/2/2010 or has the clock reset and now expire around 7/1/2011?

Sorry, I misunderstood. When you said that your wife rarely fly's and is near having enough miles for a free trip I assumed she hadn't had activity in her account for nearly 18 months and received the notices for her account.

To be clear, are you saying your wife's miles are about to expire but she's had a redemption and purchase recently in her account recently?

Redemption does count as account activity but only for the account the miles are redeemed from. The same is true for miles earned - they only count as activity for the account number given when the miles are earned. The only way way to keep miles in an account "alive" is to redeem or earn miles in that account.

Jim

Remarkably, your mileage expiration date is STILL not listed on your DM account when you log in! This is truly crazy -- and can be a bit mean. It's not like they're really trying to hide it from you, because they send you a monthly statement with the date listed (I guess you could opt out of these emails) and they send you a separate notice a few months from your expiration.

In my family, we're CO (soon to be UA) elites and we credit our general Star Alliance mileage there. I did the free "toolbar" bonus sign up (you can find a thread in this forum) and the necessary credit did post about a month later. I went to check our new expiration dates, and it's just not there. I guess I'll wait for my next monthly statement to see that new date, and try to make a note of it.

Remarkably, your mileage expiration date is STILL not listed on your DM account when you log in! This is truly crazy -- and can be a bit mean. It's not like they're really trying to hide it from you, because they send you a monthly statement with the date listed (I guess you could opt out of these emails) and they send you a separate notice a few months from your expiration.

In my family, we're CO (soon to be UA) elites and we credit our general Star Alliance mileage there. I did the free "toolbar" bonus sign up (you can find a thread in this forum) and the necessary credit did post about a month later. I went to check our new expiration dates, and it's just not there. I guess I'll wait for my next monthly statement to see that new date, and try to make a note of it.

Sign up for AwardWallet at awardwallet.com and the Dividend Miles expiration date will show up in your AwardWallet account.

Have to agree that this is a big minus... . I am building a spreadsheet tracking loyalty programs for myself and not-so-organized partner... DL, AA, UA all show it.... US - nope.

Or you could use awardwallet, gomiles, miletracker, Yodles, or the myriad other tracking programs on the web. I know that AwardWallet does, and I suspect the others do also, display your expiration data, either from the website or calculated. (D'oh, looks like I'm not the first to suggest this...)

I am curious how this is "mean". I'd chalk it up to lazy/sloppy/not thinking.

Or you could use awardwallet, gomiles, miletracker, Yodles, or the myriad other tracking programs on the web. I know that AwardWallet does, and I suspect the others do also, display your expiration data, either from the website or calculated. (D'oh, looks like I'm not the first to suggest this...)

I am curious how this is "mean". I'd chalk it up to lazy/sloppy/not thinking.

Those are not programs that the average traveller -- or even an average frequent flyer -- is likely to sign-up for.

US should just put your mileage expiration date in your account info when you sign in. It's a no-brainer, and it's just wrong for them to omit it (even if they're just being sloppy or lazy).

Someone else was complaining about this the other day in another thread. US sends out the monthly email statements and it's clearly stated in the statement when the date of last travel occurred and when the miles expire. Yes, it would be nice if it was also on the web site, but it's not as if they are hiding it since it's included in every e-statement.

I have gone to the DM website and cannot find the DM expiration dates.
Any suggestions?

I suggest that they don't expire. ;)

I believe it is 18 months after last activity.

Read your monthly e-statement. The date of last travel and expiration date is included in the email.

You can go to the "Your Miles" link and set the start date for your statement to 3/1/2010. If you have no activity, your miles are about to expire.

(provided link to existing thread)

Thank you Alanh. Your method worked. I read my statement for 3/1/10 and found that I had activity in 11/10, so I added 18 months.
They sure dont make it easy.

looks like you need some activity every 18 months.

I'm also trying to keep miles alive with these guys, and can swear i saw on their website that you needed a flight every 18 months (no "oops" miles, car rentals, etc.)

http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/programdetails/memberguide.html

Not particularly clear, or prominent, under "Reactivation Policy" . . . .

Reactivation policy

Active membership status is based on having earned or redeemed miles within a defined period as stated below. To keep your account active, be sure to fly US Airways and designate your miles to credit to your Dividend Miles account, apply for a US Airways MasterCard or Visa credit card, or earn miles with one of our over 50 other partners.

Someone else was complaining about this the other day in another thread. US sends out the monthly email statements and it's clearly stated in the statement when the date of last travel occurred and when the miles expire. Yes, it would be nice if it was also on the web site, but it's not as if they are hiding it since it's included in every e-statement.

Do they send out monthly statements if there's no activity?

Do they send out monthly statements if there's no activity?


I just got a monthly statement. I have had no activity since last December.

Sign up with Award Wallet. You can enter all your accounts there and see when things expire. I think there is a free service level and one that costs a small amount but if you google you can find some free codes.

(I have no affiliation with them, just seems like an easy way to drool over your miles :p )

Sign up with Award Wallet. You can enter all your accounts there and see when things expire. I think there is a free service level and one that costs a small amount but if you google you can find some free codes.

(I have no affiliation with them, just seems like an easy way to drool over your miles :p )

That's exactly what I already stated in this thread in post #26.

If you are having problems with US AIRWAYS and their Dividend Miles Program.
Go to http://airlineforums.com/forum/37-us-airways/ and look for a poster by the NAME: SPARROWHAWK.. he is a US AIRWAYS = KNOW IT ALL. He claims he has connections with the UPPER MANAGEMENT of US AIRWAYS and will always make a call on your behalf. He used to go by the Name PINEY BOB but cancelled that name when he got caught posting in Brussels for a SM & MADAME

If you are having problems with US AIRWAYS and their Dividend Miles Program.
Go to http://airlineforums.com/forum/37-us-airways/ and look for a poster by the NAME: SPARROWHAWK.. he is a US AIRWAYS = KNOW IT ALL. He claims he has connections with the UPPER MANAGEMENT of US AIRWAYS and will always make a call on your behalf. He used to go by the Name PINEY BOB but cancelled that name when he got caught posting in Brussels for a SM & MADAME

so this is off the original topic, but seeing the above remark reminded me of one of my frustations with USAIR . . . a duplicate account that they refuse to acknowledge, or merge. Any suggestions for how to deal with this? Customer service wasn't fruitful. . . .

Quite some time ago, Americawest issued me a second card, and after regularly writing to them over the years requesting that they merge my accounts, they insist on telling me that the second account never existed, even when I include photos and statements for both cards.

Admittedly there wasn't a huge amount of miles on the second account, I'm mostly just irked that they insist on telling me that the card I have doesn't exist.
Any advice?

I just got a monthly statement. I have had no activity since last December.

After posting I went into my account and realized I had turned off (or they had turned off) monthly statements.

That's exactly what I already stated in this thread in post #26.

Unless it is a thread I started I'm sure not going to read all previous posts when I can post a useful suggestion. If it is redundant then just ignore it. I can see someone getting annoyed if I'm asking for help on something that was previous answer but posting the same solution twice shouldn't be an issue. Geez. :rolleyes:

Someone else was complaining about this the other day in another thread. US sends out the monthly email statements and it's clearly stated in the statement when the date of last travel occurred and when the miles expire. Yes, it would be nice if it was also on the web site, but it's not as if they are hiding it since it's included in every e-statement.

I had 500 miles transferred in Dec 2012. Is that good for activity? In Feb 2013, it will be 18 months from my last flight, so this was worrying for me to read.

I had 500 miles transferred in Dec 2012. Is that good for activity? ...

Yes, it is.

If you're interested in all of your options for retaining miles, it looks like they may be available beyond 18 months of inactivity by signing up for their credit card, though that does come with a $49 annual fee:


If you haven't used your Dividend Miles account in a while, no problem. Choose one of these easy and inexpensive ways to stay active:
...
Account activity within the last 18 - 20 months
Log in to your account and pay a fee*
Earn miles with our partners (Dividend Miles StoreFront, car rentals and more)
Buy a ticket, fly on US and earn Dividend Miles**
Sign up for and use the US Airways MasterCard® card***

Account activity within the last 21 - 36 months
Log in to your account and pay a reactivation fee*
Buy a ticket, fly in First Class or Envoy on US and earn Dividend Miles**
Sign up for and use the US Airways MasterCard® card***


from http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/promotions/stayactive.html

As a data point, my partner's account hasn't had activity since November 2011. Got an email a couple weeks ago, offering to keep the account active for $9. He has more than 100 K miles. I didn't realize they would offer this, was going to share miles or some other activity. But for $9, I went for it.

As a data point, my partner's account hasn't had activity since November 2011. Got an email a couple weeks ago, offering to keep the account active for $9. He has more than 100 K miles. I didn't realize they would offer this, was going to share miles or some other activity. But for $9, I went for it.
For how long? Does this count as 'activity' and thus keeps it active another 18 months? Or is it a period shorter than that? I'd say $9 is a decent deal to keep 100k miles active.

18 months. Showed up on your miles as activity.