DELee

I was wondering why I wasn't earning at my VIP levels across _all_ of my iDine accounts (AA, Delta, HHonors, UA).

I have since found out why - each and every one of them were switched to "opt-out" so that I was "unsubscribed" from e-mail updates. This has meant that my AA earnings were down at 1 mile/$1, UA had gone down to 1 mile/$2 - lost probably over 1,000 miles on this card alone. As best as I can tell, this all occurred near the beginning of August.

I've gone and reset all of my accounts - so far I've made only two charges since I found this. On my MP UA account, even though I've reset to "opt-in", I was still credited only 1 mile/$2 spend. My complaint e-mail received a "our offices are closed due to a weather emergency" auto response - assume that their Hollywood, FL office was affected by Irma.

I'd encourage everyone to check to see if your "opt in's" were turned into "opt outs".

David

sdsearch

It sounds like you didn't notice when you stopped getting emails from them?

I don't see how I can be "opted out" if I"m still getting routing emails from all my programs (except I think HH, which I haven't used for years). I even got emails this week from IHG Dining, which I haven't used for years.

So since you apparently didn't notice you weren't getting emails, I'm wondering if there's more to this story.

DELee

No, I still received both admin e-mails on "You've earned bonus points", etc. as well as ad e-mails such as "Great food near your home" - on August 31st - well after my point totals actually dropped from when the "opt-out" was applied to all of my iDine accounts (AA, DL, HH and UA).

I can't emphasize enough that I did not initiate this manually - Again these "opt-outs" applied to _all_ 4 of my accounts.

Since I posted, I got a reply back to my re-sent e-mail - Their system decided I was not reachable even though I've received e-mails from them.

Here's the text of what they say their system does:

As I said, I continued to receive e-mails to my account throughout August and into September with no gaps of more than 15 days so I fail to understand when and where my e-mail service's rejections happened. For instance, I was sent an e-mail on 08/09/17 from MPDining titled "Dine out and earn 5 award miles per $1" - which has been my VIP earning rate. I received additional e-mails on 08/10, 08/16, 08/18 as well as 08/19 - this is when one of my dines transacted and was then credited at the 1 mile/$2. And I received additional e-mails after that. I've added a screen shot that shows e-mails continuing to be received throughout August and into September.

So something went wrong not only with my MPDining but all others. I don't block their mail and I can search and find e-mail from all of the accounts.

I've responded back giving them "permission" so that they can "officially" send e-mails to my e-mail address. We'll see if this fixes the problem.

As I stated in my original post, I'd encourage people to check to confirm that they haven't been "opted-out" - for whatever reason.

David

sdsearch

Well,I just looked, and all my accounts say VIP member and my email address under them (on the Reward Summary page). And I went to Email Preferences for one them, and I don't see anything called opt-in or opt-out.

Do/did you see VIP member and your email address at the top right (of the same page that has your Rewards Summary) for each of your programs (before you reset them)?

It sounds like their system had a problem communicating with your email, for whatever reason. I suspect if anything it may have been limited to your email domain (the Whoever.com part) and/or who runs that. FYI, my email domain is one the many subsidiaries of aol.com (ie, it's not @aol.com) but it's run by AOL.com and my email login page says aol.com). If my (administered-by-AOL) email domain is having communication issues at a given moment, it typically is affecting all of AOL.com too.

And, furthermore, if it's not tied to a particular email domain (that someone else shares with you), then it wouldn't likely happen to anyone else at the same time. So everyone else just checking once, that may not achieve anything. You should always check every time you log in whether it still says "VIP member" and shows your email address at the upper right of the Rewards Summary page.

See, without finding anything that says "opt-in" or "opt-out", I see no evidence that RN just changed their system, I just see evidence that they had a temporary (even if unexplained) problem communicating with your email (which could have been either at your end or at the end or in the interface between the two), and the main issue is that they don't try long enough before booting you out of VIP status due to (their perception of) lost email contact. The policy on failed communications could have been in effect for a long time now, but if you hadn't run into a failed communications problem you presumably wouldn't have looked it up.