Air New Zealand Air Points - NZ*G not recognized

My *G can't be recognized when traveling on some *A carriers like OZ, FM, and CA. But recently I discovered possible reason. I came across a CA check-in agent in PVG last week who knew the trick. Just ask them never to enter the beginning zero on the Airpoints card and NZ*G will be instantly printed on boarding passes. I am not sure what purpose the zero serves anyway. I have had some horrible experiences almost getting denied priority boarding and lounge access. It made me look like a total idiot for getting responses like "your card must be expired" or "our system can't recognize your status so we can't issue you with a lounge pass" or "please queue up like the rest of the passengers."

Possibly the same issue but an experience I've had in the past - and I can't recall where and why but certainly it's happened more than once - is a requirement for the NZ FF number to be exactly 7 digits. In my case - where the latest iteration of my membership number is 00 followed by 6 digits - that means a leading zero WAS required.

YMMV

I had a similar problem with UA which related to the leading zero. I can't recall whether they had to remove it or add it but it did fix the problem.