Oh trust me, if you had the now nearly 4 inch thick packet of stuff on all things Cartera and their shady tactics all documented, outlined and organized and ready to fire off to the AGs office and other legal parties if and when they fail to post miles by certain promised dates, you too would be BULL SH*T!

Below are just a few small-seeming lies I caught them in point blank yesterday alone:

I had a phone conversation with CS director again about some of my missing miles pains, primarily those from United...

ME [paraphrasing]: "Well sir, I found myself now shopping with US AIR mall only because to the best of my knowledge they are still with FreeCause, your competitor, and not with you. Cartera has a bad track record with posting my miles but that mall has not had any problems as I try to complete tasks on the US Air Grand Slam promo..."

His reply: "uh huh..."

To my astonishment (and maybe it's been true for a while now but I somehow doubt it):

I find this morning an email entitled, "Exclusive preview of the new Dividend Miles StoreFront" and guess who runs this thing:..."This program is managed and operated by Cartera Commerce, Inc." ...right there at the bottom!

As well, I was able, as I said, to confirm that CO's OnePass mall is now a part of Cartera, meaning that if you are missing miles that is probably the reason. THEY CANNOT HANDLE IT!


More importantly is the issue of retroactive changes...

Several people (hundreds, in fact) bought many many gift cards through retailers using the UA mall. I did this with SamsClub.com and the miles posted in my UA account but when people did such transactions after 9/9/11, nothing posted at all. Whereas such things would hit in a week or two, now they went nowhere. It is now November 10. that's 8 weeks even!

MileagePlus shopping (Cartera) released a new version of its mall in the middle of that giant UA MoM promo, and then they also released a new tool bar shopping assistant too. Neither were fully functional when released for use. A software nightmare to say the least, and with little or no tracking system for any orders, including old ones.

People bought more from retailers like SamsClub and when Cartera had a promo for providing 500 miles+ 1500 miles for new UA tool bar downloads and use by spending $125 or more, I bought more Sams GCs.

Why do I buy GCs, you may ask?
I can control how I use my spending, and when. the store still makes money. Everyone (should) win. Like any savvy shopper, I buy while trying to gain savings where I can. GCs help me do so. No rule was against it when I did so.

At the time--from August til November 4 in the evening, there had been NO restrictions whatsoever on the purchasing of GCs with respect to earning rewards. In fact Cartera's site stated that people need to look at store T&Cs and the store's T&Cs did NOT restrict these as being items that will in fact earn miles. Some stores say no GCs, Sams did not.

A store could also changes its rule any time--that's basically fine. but the thing Cartera was now doing was clear:

retroactive negation.

Anyone who bought GCs from stores like Sams was in a black hole, self included. We would now come to find that the company is actually attempting to instill the belief that this was always the rule and no miles will be honored for anything post 9/9! I had bought some GCs to make the spend for the new UA toolbar promo. I received them, activated them and used them in the store, and I shop at Sams and WM regularly.

Can this retroactive change even be done legally? I doubt it!
And if so, how, why, who what?!!!!
Makes ya wanna egg somebody's car in a way, eh?

My CS guy's comment, when asked if GCs will count up until the Nov 4 change: "I do not know."

huh?
I mean, hey, he is the guy--THE person in charge of all things Customer Service at the company! And he does not know?

I politely asked him to hold on, ran up to the bathroom and grabbed a couple Q tips. Cleaned whatever wax had to be in my ears and asked the question again.

"I do not know."

Well I can tell you what I do know:
based on just those experiences alone, my flowery letter was TOTALLY appropriate. You can also see Tanya wrote me back and so I replied again with what some here would have to consider to be a more standard level of communication.

once again, we must NOT forget that it matters not HOW we get these miles. It matters that we do.

I ask everyone here and in the other threads to get ready to join me on what could soon be called the "OCCUPY CARTERA" action, whereas we basically try to get all of FT and beyond to simply stop shopping with any mall they run. That is, until/unless they can strongly prove they can get it right--and they post all our missing miles now too! I am working with others to organize this as we speak but I am not out to GET anyone... I am just trying to see things get done right, and we all know that is not happening.

What else would you have me do?

If we do not fight this crap, we have no worth when it comes to filing a complaint.

MM