Hey guys, be nice to a frustrated newbie.
Originally Posted by
yepwho
Alaska Airline Mileage Plan is strictly a frequent flyer program, i.e., they purge the records of anybody who hasn't flown with them for 2 years. This isn't just a case that the miles expire. No, they eliminate the account and anything that shows that you had an account. I guess Alaska has no interest in infrequent flyers. I find this to be a bizarre anti-marketing, anti-customer attitude but then what do I know.
While I understand your frustration and would share it if the same thing happened to me, you must realize four things:
1) It is your responsibility to be aware of program rules, terms, and conditions, and two years is a long time to get up to speed if you're going to play the miles and points game.
2) What Alaska does is not terribly different from what pretty much every other program out there does. In fact, it is more generous than most, which expire your miles after only 18 months (or, even worse, Southwest, which expires credits after a year, regardless of ongoing activity, or Amtrak, which requires you to actually ride a train to keep your account active--not easy, given my locale). The fact that miles and points expire after inactivity is not only standard in the loyalty program industry, it is hardly a secret.
3) As all loyalty programs do, Mileage Plan exists to promote loyalty. Although any amount of business is valuable, incurring NO activity in a two-year span does not exactly display that you are pushing any measurable amount of business to Alaska.
4) It is trivially easy to keep your account active if you value the miles. Waiting two years before registering any activity indicates that you do not value the miles much. Eventually, Alaska has to assume you are no longer interested in the rewards your mileage balance can generate and must transfer that liability off its books. Two years seems a very fair waiting period, especially given how simple and low-cost it is to keep your balance alive.
All that said, I do understand the frustration you feel. I've felt it myself before (although not to quite the same extent) with some lost hotel points in various programs I rarely participate in. However, I've found Alaska's procedures surrounding point expiration to be fair and their rationale to be sound.
And welcome to FlyerTalk! Stick around, and I guarantee you'll learn a TON of tricks to the trade to not only keep your mileage balance active for literally pennies but also how to multiply that balance into unimagineable sums for relatively little expense.
