Celestar340, yes, I agree completely with all what you said...

When I relocated to Hong Kong a few months ago, I did think about joining AAdvantage instead of Asia Miles / The Club...and I wrote to AAdvantage to check if they can offer me Platinum (oneworld Sapphire) based on my Prem Exec status with United, and my expected future travel between USA & Asia, and within Asia, with them and their oneworld partners...but they replied and said no, not even offering Gold (oneworld Ruby) or talked about the Gold or Platinum challenge...just a plain new AAdvantage card...I think Hong Kong Flyer said he wrote them too, and he's a 1K with United, but he even didn't get a reply at all...

And, since I'm now based on HK, recently more than 80% of my travel are on CX, and the rest with BA, mostly because of CX's more frequent and more flexible schedule...although it's hard to get top status with CX, I think maybe it's a bit better to be an elite flyer with the program of the airline that you're flying really the most often...

But, I wasn't that happy with the long period of time it took them to process my Marco Polo application...I first wrote them in late January, asking if it's possible for me to get a complimentary Silver membership with The Club, based on my 10+ roundtrips since December last year...and I didn't hear back from them at all until early March, when they emailed me back and said it's ok, and asked me to send in my boarding passes and ticket copies as proof...I replied to them the next day...but, it wasn't until April 15 that they finally processed my application...I had been calling them since late March on almost every single Friday (when I'm back to HK during weekends), to check whether they have received all required materials and what the progress of my application is, but the agents answering the phone do not know at all, saying that what they have in their computer for me is just my name and account number, nothing else...they all said that they would ask the one responsible to give me a call back ASAP to let me know of the status of my application, but they never did...it's not until after April 15 that I finally received a call to let me know that my application was officially processed...

The worst part is, as Celestar340 noted, the "zero-ing" policy...since they processed my application on April 15, my qualifying Club sectors and miles start from 0 on that day again...although they give me Silver status based on my travel before January, my flights between February 1 and April 15 don't count towards the next level...I have exactly 20 sectors (including the class of service bonus) with CX and oneworld, already 50% on my way to Gold...but they just don't count those at all because my Silver membership starts on April 15...

I understand that maybe it's really their rule to not retroactively count any flights before membership starts...but, if it takes them almost 3 whole months to process such a request, I don't think it's fair at all not to bend the rule a little bit...

And, one interesting point to note, although I'm not 100% sure about this...I think CX does all these trackings based on the date on which the travel record is actually entered into the system, not your travel date...so, for example, if you need a flight on the last day of your membership year to re-qualify, you may be out of luck, because that won't be posted to your account until a few days later and this is the date that counts...although I'm not very sure about this policy...anyone can confirm ??