profpeabody

In yet another example of how unprepared United was for the merger, United is effectively thumbing their noses at their existing perks plus customers. We had quite a few flights in February for which we have never gotten credit. Several attempts to have an audit have gone without response. Called today and was told that the person who conducts the audits is gone and there is no one who will fill that position. This stinks as I have points expiring at the end of June and needed these new points to redeem for club membership and silver status. According to customer service rep, the new combined Continental/United version of Perks Plus is to take effect on June 15th at which time the points required for a club membership more than doubles (from 20,000 to 55,000) and those required for silver go from 50,000 to 60,000.
What irritates me is that I steer this business to United, fulfill my end of the bargain and then get shafted by their lack of follow through on their end of the bargain. Not a great way to build customer loyalty. Asked customer service rep what I could do and she said, "Unfortunately, not a thing." Grrrr....

chinatraderjmr

My sales rep at United had the nerve to ask me "why I did not re-fill my PP account last year

jhayes_1780

IME, I have had YEARS of trouble with Perks+ audits (no credit/denied credit/claims that tickets were awards rather then paid/ignored requests/etc.). So this is not anything too new.

FWIW, I just totally gave up on Perks+ in 2009/10.

Are you thinking of Pass Plus?

Beerman92

Haven't you heard? You aren't "entitled" to any perks at United

To make it official United should just come clean and rename Perks Plus -->Perks Minus and Pass Plus -->Pass to Nowhere

chinatraderjmr

yes, sorry....my bad

lexdevil

The new version of PerksPlus for small businesses no longer requires ticket purchasers to include their PerkPlus account number in their profile prior to booking. Instead, whoever manages the account (me, in this case) is supposed to add the employee's MP number to the PerksPlus account. The theory is that the business will receive credit whenever the registered MP member flies on United.

Folks were, of course, frustrated with the transition. There appeared to be a gap between when the old program ended and when the new program began, during which time no credit was earned. Additionally, getting everyone's MP numbers is a PITA, especially since so many of them have change due to the system integration.

I guess United is getting the message, because I've received a couple of seemingly helpful emails over the past few days. The first email announced:

Pretty good news, though there is no explanation of what to do about flyers I register with new MP numbers NOW who did not have those numbers when they flew April-June. I'm going to have to find out if the new numbers can be retroactively attached to the old tickets. If not, I can't see how retroactive credit will work.

The second email was an attempt to deal with the PITA created by having to register all of our flyers' MP numbers:

Such a good idea! Such a terrible execution! After downloading and uploading the spreadsheet, I found that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THE MP NUMBERS WAS CORRECT. Yes, I have now registered 23 flyers with the wrong MP numbers! Even my own number was incorrect. My correct number is XXXX4559, but the PerksPlus spreadsheet lists it as XXXX2256. And there's no simple "edit" the profile option. I need to re-add each flyer with the correct MP number and delete the erroneous profile. So much for saving me time.

Of course, I'm lucky. I noticed the problem. What about the other folks who upload the spreadsheet and rely on it? When will they notice that they are not receiving credit for their flyers? When will they (and United) figure out why they are not?

I do plan to contact them during business hours. It's not my job to do so, but I don't want others to be screwed by this.

lexdevil

Shannon (UA Insider) had the woman who runs PerksPlus contact me to straighten this out. I was very impressed with the prompt response.

Apparently, not all of the spreadsheets that were sent out are incorrect, but some are. If you manage your PerksPlus account and you have received a spreadsheet, check a few MP numbers that you know (like your own) and see if the spreadsheet information is correct. If it is, you're good to go. Just upload the spreadsheet to your new PerksPlus account.

If your MP number is not correct in the spreadsheet, don't upload it. In the next few days you should receive a new, correct spreadsheet. Once you have it, go ahead with the upload.

It is important to note that the spreadsheet you receive will only include MP numbers on flyers who have used your PerksPlus account in the past year AND have MP numbers. Flyers who have used your PerksPlus account without an MP number (possibly because they credit their Star Alliance flights to another airline) will not be included in the spreadsheet.

If you want your PerksPlus account to receive credit for these flyers, you will need to get their MP numbers and enter them manually in your PerksPlus account. If they fly United using another, non-MP, frequent flyer program, your PerksPlus account will not receive credit.

While it is a bummer to lose credit for these tickets, there is one upside to the new system (which is based on the Continental program). With the old United PerksPlus program we only received credit for tickets purchased on united.com. Now our PerksPlus accounts will earn credit for any tickets with our registered MP numbers, regardless of where they are purchased.

Based on what the PerksPlus rep told me, this may change in the future. They are still working out the best way to run the new program. We should expect changes and watch our email for announcements.

As for retroactive credit for April-June, this will be arriving in our accounts later this summer. We'll also have the remaining credit from our old accounts transferred to our new accounts any day now. If you or your fellow employees purchased tickets for people who do not have MP numbers, you should 1)sign them up for MP now, and 2)keep a record of their ticket and reservation numbers. You may need to send this information in in order to receive credit for flyers who were not MP members at the time of their flights.

I hope this information is useful to you. Please share it with the account manager for your company's PerksPlus account.

lexdevil

Received the corrected spreadsheet today and it is CORRECT. Woo hoo!

BOISJC744

I think that there may be a bug that's preventing credit. Every time that you add a new traveller to your account, it updates your table and shows the date that they were added, presumably to control what flight activity you get credit for (so you can't have anything retroactively). Problem is that when you come back to your account next time, your whole list of travelers now shows add dates of the latest date that you added someone to the account. So now, people I added in the beginning of April are saying that they were added today (when I just added a single traveler to the account today).

Anyone else seeing this behavior?

Has anyone received credit on the new system for any flights? I don't know when that's starting, when the retroactive credit for Q1 & Q2 flights is supposed to post as we were told in email updates, etc.

Just trying to figure out what I have to do in order to troubleshoot this stupid broken system, and try and someday get the credit that United is trying to screw me out of either willfully or due to systems incompetence.

lexdevil

I too am seeing this, and our PerksPlus account has not yet received credit for April-June travel. As a result of your concerns, I contacted the manager for the PerksPlus program (I have her contact information because she and Shannon [USInsider] were very responsive to my earlier concerns when PerksPlus sent out spreadsheets with incorrect MileagePlus numbers). She says:

There should, therefore, be no reason to worry that your account has not yet received credits for April-June travel. I expect that credit will come soon, but so much of the merger stuff in taking longer than anticipated that I would not spend to much time checking and re-checking your account. If I do hear back when the credits start posting, I will post at that time. Then, if you're still missing credit, let me know and I will try to get the PerksPlus manager to assist you.

bdraco

Has any received credit now?

lexdevil

Nope. Think I'll check in again.

DinoFlyer

I also have not received any credit and when I call 3 times, I get 4 different answers as to when I will see the credit. The last CSR told me to keep calling back every few weeks....really?, this is how they are managing this program?...call back every few weeks to check on the system? I am so busy calling United on retroactive mileage, upgrades, ticket changes, etc that I might as well stay on the phone all day. What a PIA.

BOISJC744

Thanks, look forward to hearing what you find out.

As of today, no credit for anything in my account, although it seems like the bug which was resetting the enrolled on date has been corrected, everyone reverted back to the date that I migrated to the new PerksPlus.

lexdevil