MilesBuzz! - How often do you have "missing miles"?

Is any program/partner better or worse than others?

I recently had a problem with a GMAC insurance quote not posting to my HHonors account. After getting nowhere with GMAC, the HHonors rep comp'ed me the 1,000 points which was kind of her... but that's not how it's supposed to work.

I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences, good and bad.

sunchaser

With program miles earned within the program sponsor (such as flying UA for MP miles, staying at HH for HHonors points), its pretty rare. With regular partners, its somewhat rare. With providers that "buy miles", its all too common. I just emailed the local TV station's consumer help dept about one of them today (Park SFO) which won't even reply to emails and so on, for months.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Eastbay1K:
With program miles earned within the program sponsor (such as flying UA for MP miles, staying at HH for HHonors points), its pretty rare. With regular partners, its somewhat rare. With providers that "buy miles", its all too common. I just emailed the local TV station's consumer help dept about one of them today (Park SFO) which won't even reply to emails and so on, for months.</font>

Pretty rare, but just frequent enough with UA that I always make sure to check a few days after a flight that the miles have posted. (I won't even bother to say 'correctly'...I've long since lost track of all the various bonuses/deals that occur.)

I have to put in a missing mileage request probably about 3-6 times per year. Every time I can remember it's been a case of irregular ops or where I changed flights at the last second or some other weirdness which must have confused UA's computers.

-BP

[This message has been edited by BlatheringPenguin (edited 08-07-2002).]

Rare in my case, too. In the last 3 years, which is when I've traveled the most, CO, Marriott, Hilton and Delta have been fine. I think I may have missed one flight or one stay somewhere, but after one e-mail it got posted. AA missed one round trip. I sent an e-mail 3 times with no response other than the automated. Nothing. I know I could have pursued it, but I don't use AA that much, anyway.

Mileage Plus:
* UA flights 1 out of 20, but every second UA flight promotion bonus
* OS (NG) flights: 1 out of 5 (always if I change the frequentflier program at the Vienna Senator lounge, run by OS)
* other StarAlliance partner flights 1 out of 10
* Hilton (stays outside NorthAmerica): every second stay

miles&more:
* LH flights always posted automatically
* OS (NG) flights: 1 out of 5, but always if I change the frequentflier program at the last minute (from Mileage Plus to miles&more or back) at the Vienna Senator lounge, run by OS
* other StarAlliance partners

Qualiflyer:
* every InterContinental stay

Marriott:
* have to claim every stay in Bangkok, Thailand (the JW and the Royal Gardens, and I stayed there about 15 times in the last 5 years ...)
* every second Marriott stay in Germany (mostly Bremen)
* Renaissance worldwide always post

Sheraton/Starwoods
* 100% ok

Mileage Plus:
-StarAlliance partner flights 1 out of 2

Hilton HHonors:
-100% O.K., even bonus points

Starwood:
-100% O.K., bonus 60%

Goldpoints:
-lousy and late

I've given up having miles post to Alaska Airlines from Hilton stays; the miles simply never show up without my intervention. Never a problem when I choose a different airlines for HHonors Points & Miles

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Hello FTers,

I have had a problem with getting the Delta Skymiles from two MCI Long Distance signups (one in late 2000 and the other in early 2002). They owe me approx. 11K miles and Delta has sent me a reply email in response to my email. Delta said that they have "NOTHING" to do with the offers, although I signed up for both offers on the Delta web page.

I recently complained to the MCI 800 number several months ago and 20 miles (that's right, twenty) Delta miles were posted to my account.

Does anyone have any experience with getting miles from MCI or should I post on the MCI page on FT?

Thanks in advance,


Va.SquireFlyer

For NW miles posting to my CO account I usually miss 1 out of every 2 segements. I have written in 6 times for some 30+ segments. Its an epidemic.

Great question!

Two points:
1. Each of us has a learning curve with each program. In my experience the worst are the car rental companies. I used to get my miles about 50% of the time. Now I repeatedly ask if my FF number is in the system and my miles come closer to 80% before I have to call or write. Needless to say, some of the "problems" are in the fine print.
2. I think an "average" can be ascertained by looking at Flyertalkers habits during the AA 20/20 promotion last summer. People seemed to feel that they needed about 5 "spare" partners to be safe. My family-of-4's experience was 97 partners, of which 9 didn't post without further communication (some quite extensive), and 2 never posted.

I don't see much overall difference from one program to another (United/AA/Hilton/...) but some partners are definitely worse than others, like Budget rent-a-car, and Best Western Hotels. It is mostly affected (I think) by franchise owners who have a vested interest in not understanding and not following their own rules.

Hey, Va.SquireFlyer,

If you sign up for MCI web account access you can see all of the FF credits they have supposedly posted to your account on a single page. If Delta doesn't show up on the page or there are some missing, call MCI to fix this, not Delta. They'll fix the discrepancy.

Now it is much better. 4-5 years ago, partners almost never posted without followup it seemed. Now they tend to post quite regularly.

Recent problems:
Spanair to UA, Sol Melia to UA and AVIS to Qualiflyer.

Miles that never have been posted:
Accor Hotels to Air France.

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http://rucas0.tripod.com/miles/

[This message has been edited by rucas0 (edited 08-08-2002).]

AA has posted a perfect record since my enrollment more than a decade ago. CO missed an IB flight -- ouch, 7,000+ miles -- 10 years ago and never rectified the problem.

DL and SPG are near perfect, exception being partner promos. For some reason every time I stay at the LAX Hilton (almost every month) the points take forever to post and require f/u calls 2 - 3 times a year.

Strangely, Starwood never posts my stays or points from the Atlanta Sheraton Colony Square. (I stay there at least once per month). I have to call it in every time.

Hyatt, on the other hand, is excellent.

All of the airlines have improved enormously since the '80s. Delta seems to have everything very well organized. AA and US are generally good. UA, CO and NW are a bit worse. And the minors are hit or miss.

In my experience Delta is 100% Marriott is 90%.

Airlines
LH M&M: about 90% post automatically. Email with scanned bills works to get missing points.
SQ KF: about 95% post automatically. Unfortunately letter (to Singapore) necessary to claim miles.
KL FD: 100%

Hotels
MRT: about 90% post automatically. Email with scanned bills works to get missing points.
SPG: 100% post automatically: 95% of these with correct points. Unfortunately letter (to US) necessary to claim incorrect miles.
SRS: (Steigenberger) 100% post automatically.

I agree that (in my experience) DL has by far the best record in posting points. When flying DL the points post before you arrive at your destination. Sometimes DL's various bonus point promotions take a while to post but my experience there is 100% also. I don't even recall any problems getting partner airline points posted.

AA is pretty good also but they have more problems with partner airlines. I've sometimes had to wait several months for some to post(still waiting for some JL points from Feb).

With me I have the most problems with the hotels. I constantly have missing posts with Marriott and Starwood. Come to think of it I don't think a Starwood has ever posted without a phone call.

Used to have a lot of problems with Hilton, but in the past year they all post VERY quickly.

I find Southwest to be the most problem free. One time I had a problem, called them and they saw it on the computer and immediately credited it. It was two flights that were point to point and they must have thought it was a connection.

I signed up for a bunch of promotions from Northwest and they all have posted, also quickly.

I tend to have problems with United posting promotions, and it usually takes a phone call to get it posted.

American no real problems, also no problems with USAir, even though they had to change my account number "to better serve me" recently.

Lufthansa owe me 67055 miles.

ANA owe me 55973 miles.

Hilton owe me about 20000 HHonors points and 500 ANA Miles.

At $0.02 per mile: I'm currently owed $2470 [Excluding the Hilton Points].

Regards,
Alex

[This message has been edited by alexwuk (edited 08-11-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by alexwuk:
Lufthansa owe me 67055 miles.

ANA owe me 55973 miles.

</font>

For how long?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by sosafan:
For how long?</font>

LH have owed my household 31500 miles for over four months. The rest is six weeks (hopefully it will all be sorted come October).

Regards,
Alex

UAL: I've never had any problems. Even when flying partner airlines my miles post within a few days.

AA: I'm still chasing up four segments I flew with QANTAS last March. What is weird is the missing segments are either the outbound or the return of four separate trips. It's been over sixty days since I wrote them and no reply yet. Too bad if the miles were what I needed to obtain EXP status!

Wow. This was a shocker. I checked my HHonors account and 5 months later the 1,000 points GMAC owed me actually showed up.

Since that's what caused me to start this thread in the first place, I thought I'd give them credit for finally posting it after all this time. I'm guessing 5 months isn't a record, but it must be close.

One time I was flying AA EWR to TUS with a stop in DFW. They couldn't get me in the same seat all the way through so I was issued separate boarding passes for each of the two segments. In DFW I didn't get off the plane; I simply went to my new seat. I figured something was amiss when, shortly before departure, the gate agent came up to my seat and confirmed who I was. Anyways, the mileage for the EWR-DFW segment posted a few days later. It took about a month or two to get the remaining mileage posted.

I waited 7 months and several phone calls for Hilton Sorrento (Italy) to post. Hilton Milan was slow too. Have not gotten UA bonuses, and have had several problems with Starwood, esp. receiving points for restaurant dining without a hotel stay.

rarely.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by rucas0:
Recent problems:
Spanair to UA, Sol Melia to UA and AVIS to Qualiflyer.

Miles that never have been posted:
Accor Hotels to Air France.

</font>

500 miles from a stay at a Sol Melia Hotel just posted to United account. (three months delay).

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http://rucas0.tripod.com/miles/

UA miles on M&M is very difficult for me. Less than half post, and update requires hard copy boarding passes, and takes 6-8 weeks.

I use the California M&M processer.

On DL, I've only had one trip not post correctly on it's own. Last October 6th and 7th B747-437 and I took a miracle $88 (including taxes!) run that consisted of TPA-MCO-CVG-SLC-ABQ-DFW-ATL-TPA. It involved a voluntary bump, an upgrade to F (on a U fare no less!), and several early standby legs. When we got home only some of the segments had posted. I got all mine posted the next day afetr faxing in my ticket stubs. This was during the double base mile promotion last year. Oh those were the days.

does posting of ones miles have anything to do with karma? If so, it is almost a full-time job for me tracking and re-tracking all mileage. Flight segments flown are generally not a problem although anything & everything relating to mileage earning is, ie., hotel useage, Hiton updating, rental car agencies, telephone co., bonus miles & additional offers. At this point, I have accepted it as a fact of life, followup diligently and await the outcome, then correct additional errors. Ay thoughts?

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Will Fly For Photos-there's something about Mary
MCMattei@aol.Com

United at least are very good at posting correct miles for me.

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~ Glen ~ Calling all United 1K flyers - please join www.1Kflyers.com (http://www.1Kflyers.com[b)

Continental: Missed 2 of 27 segments this year.

1) Due to my voluntarily bumping to later flight

2) On a normal flight, my outgoing flight was fine, return never appeared. Perhaps related to new website (CSRs said new website was causing lots of problems).