Stefan Daystrom

It's very important that you figure out exactly how close you are to 36 months since your last activity, since if it's within days the ONLY thing that might keep your miles alive is to buy 1000 miles online. If you only have a week and a half, the next safest thing would transferring from Diners Club (if you already have that) "expedited". If you have a few weeks, the next safest thing would be an immediate AA flight with the miles credited to BA. If you have a couple months, an immediate HHonors hotel stay or an Avis car rental would be the next safest. And if you have SEVERAL months, then Executive Club Dining (BA's version of iDine/Rewards Network) with a couple dines at different places (just to be on the safe side in case the first one has posting problems) soon after your sign up would be the cheapest.

Stefan Daystrom

I continue to be amazed by the people who don't do the math and then do "penny wise, pound foolish" by avoiding transfers just because of token "penalties" like a few dozen bucks to transfer enough points to get a business class transatlantic seat worth several thousands of dollars! If the only reason your friend didn't do a transfer in any subsequent year is because he didn't like this penalty, well, that in fact would have made the difference now between those miles being around and them being gone.

Pretty much ALL frequent flier programs have expirations (Northwest is the only one I can think of that might not), and 3 years is very common.

Raffles

BA is better than most, IMHO. If you are base level, Lufthansa miles expire three years after earning them, even if you have earnt other miles in the meantime. You never knew one day to the next how many miles you had.

AyanO

Thank you to everyone who responded to my post as for ways to earn miles and keep the existing ones alive. I never knew that when I'm flying say NYC-ORD on AA that I could give my BA number and get credit, every once in a while I might do that to top off my BA account.
So my 93,250 miles were set to expire on 8/7/04. I signed up for Executive dining, but as people warned those miles take a while to post..
Today after a long time on the phone trying to figure out how to get a real live person, I finally did. She gave me 3 options as to how to extend the miles right then and there.

1) Book a Flight
2) Buy miles online, they post in 2-3 business days, but since request was made today before 8/7 it would extend them
3) Donate to one of their charities.

I choose option 3. I knew knew this option existed, I felt like it was a good deed, and it was only 500 miles at the minimum. I would have bought the 1000 miles but that cost 50 bucks, not exactly a good use of cash for miles.

So I feel like a better person today, having donated 500 miles to UNICEF. Then I goto the UNICEF site, and realize gosh I'm a terrible person to only donate 500 miles, I dont have one particular charity that I support yearly, but I do think that UNICEF is going to become it, and i will donate cold hard cash in the future.

As a kid, I remember the few times we would trick or treat on halloween, we would have little buckets that we got from the United Nations. We would collect change from people and then turn them back into the U.N. So now as an adult I think next time I find that suprise $10 bucks in your pants pocket after doing laundry, i'll instead donate it to UNICEF.

My good deed for the day, now lets go out to happy hour at one of the many places that take E-C Dining and drink some beers to replenish the miles!!

Dakota

Which is the determinant factor for credit under the T&C's, I wonder. Surely it is the date of activity - as with flights for tier, etc. - which counts, not the date it's credited, isn't it? If the former, it should not matter how quickly the partner takes to credit. Anyone know?

AX9465

it would be interesting to understand whether he had any chances in court... T&Cs say "Mileage, and all rights of title to and property in such Mileage, remains with British Airways at all times and never passes to the Member" which basically mean that they can do anything with miles.

AX9465

it is posting date unfortunately as miles are cancelled after 36 months of "account inactivity"

Youponder

As far as I can recall I had zero activity in my EC account from May 2000 through January 2004 - 44 months worth, yet my 40k points never expired.

It would have remained that way except for the Royal Bank Avion Visa (Canada) 2 for 1 promotion which got me to wake that sleeping bear in January. I did log in every few months, am I just lucky?

jimcoddington

My mothers BA miles expired last year, but after calling BA and speaking very nicely with a rep. we were able to reinstate the miles after mom purchased some flowers and had the bonus miles applied to BA.

oontiveros

I know you didn't want to buy miles as its not worth it (and you did a good thing donating some miles) but miles purchase are now immediately credited to your account.

cosmax

I just realized that I had BA account with a hefty number of miles. My last use was more than three or four years ago, and everything seems to be gone. Is there any way to get them reinstated? Is there a penalty I can pay or something else along those lines?

Thanks.

dnw

No

Dave_C

You can call and ask, but I'm with dnw on this one, they're probably all gone.

kappa

I/we have a Family Account. Will activity in any individual account maintain the balance in all accounts?

Being aware of the expiration policy, I make sure I have activity by crediting an occasional hotel stay or car rental to my account. But my spouse (who has earned far more BA miles than have I) hasn't hasn't flown BA in about two years and doesn't book hotels or rent cars.

Should I be concerned?

mo_in_uk

Yes, if an individual account hasn't had any activity in the last 3 years, the miles will expire. It doesn't matter that it is part of a household account with other active accounts.