Member number changes with status?
Sorry if this has been discussed before; I did a "Search" and couldn't find anything on this.
It appears my membership number doesn't stay the same from year to year. My first year I made Silver, then lost it. I then noticed my Silver number was not the same as the number now shown for me on the website.
Then recently I was given Platinum, and again the number changed. This is a bit confusing, although Lufthansa does something similar, and the old KLM Flying Dutchman program also had a different initial digit depending on your status.
Has anyone "broken the code"?
In my case, the seventh digit (and the last "check" digit) were all that changed. As a base member, my seventh digit was a "1" and as a Platinum it was changed to a "4". I went back and got out my old Silver card, and the seventh digit on that was a "2". Leads me to infer that the seventh digit is a "status" digit, probably as follows:
1 = base member;
2 = Silver status;
3 = Gold status; and
4 = Platinum status.
Since the last digit is a check digit, it is forced (compelled) by the rest of the member number, and probably has no significance (other than as a check digit).
This would seem to mean that my "real" membership number is the eighth through fifteenth digits.
Does anyone know if that's correct? And what, I wonder, is the purpose of the first six digits?