1. A3 joined the *A officially on June 30th
2. On July 2nd, I had a flight on A3 stock (full fare Y), the first segment (XXX-MUC) of which was operated by LH, the second leg (MUC-ATH) by A3.
3. Miles credited for the first leg XXX-MUC after a couple of days.
4. Took them more than 10 days to cedit the A3 segment, and I got only award miles for this...
5. Thinking about the famous LH IT daemon, I called in (+ 49-561-99 33 66) to ask about what is going on. I went ahead and explained the whole story about A3 joining *A, etc.
Answer: Sir, you are not supposed to receive status miles for this flight, as it is on A3, and status miles are awarded only on LH, OS, LX, LO, Adria, etc!!
Me: Excuse me, are you new with M&M?
Answer: No
Me: OK, in this case, I guess it will be painless to navigate my MM account to check out for yourself the banner just above my statement reading:
"On 13 May 2010, TAM Airlines of Brazil joined the Star Alliance group. And on 30 June 2010, Aegean Airlines of Greece will be the 28th member of the world's largest airline alliance. You can earn miles, which also count as status miles, with both airlines, and enjoy lots of other Star Alliance benefits, like optimal flight connections to almost any destination around the world"
Answer: ... Uh... Please, call this [...] number (again in Germany) to ask for a manual credit of your miles. Thank you for calling Lufthansa.
6. Called the manual credit number. A polite lady was puzzled about it and told me that it was A3's fault that has to figure a way to pay LH status miles... I said that I couldn't care less about whose fault this might be, I only care about
getting status miles as advertised on the M&L page! She asked me to forward the boarding stub and a claim via fax. I asked about the value of doing so, since they can verify that I indeed took the flight (award miles were there, it was only status miles that were missing). She insisted. Defying reason, I sent them a fax with the info they requested...
7. The following day, I called the CS cc and within 24 hours they had credited the miles without asking crazy questions.