intuition

Moderator note: this thread has been created form the original M&B monster thread. This first post by arahlen appears further down the thread, but so succinctly summarises the experiences that I have moved it to the top of this thread for ease of access.

GoldCircle
A3 forum Mod
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I am just posting this to summarize my experience of the process and the time frame of achieving status and the physical card. This is in some parts repetitive from previous posts, but maybe of some interest anyway. I can also add some new knowledge to when batches are made.

1. A few days (in most cases 1 day) after your account have reached a qualifying level, there will be an account activity named "Card Upgrade" posted, and your new status will be shown.

2. A few days after your account shows your new status, it will be recognized in *A-system and will print on boarding passes. If you are in the middle of a trip, you may need to ask for re-registration of your FF# and/or boarding passes to be reissued to reflect status.

3. Cards seems to be manufactured in batches once a month. It is however not done on the last day of the month, more like last monday of month. If the "Card Upgrade" activity was posted in your account say 1 week before end of month, your new card should be manufactured in this month's batch. If not, it will be batched one month later.

4. Using the "Lost Card Reissue" function will not speed up the process, since reissued cards are also batched. In fact, the only thing you will accomplish is that you will probably loose your luggage tag, as the replacement card request will cancel the original card shipment (with luggage tag), if they are batched at the same time. Just be patient.

5. Cards are sent as regular mail, class B. Within Europe this means around 1 week of delivery time, worldwide this means several weeks of delivery time. Again, there is no way of speeding up this. So if you live outside of europe and just missed batch date, it can be close to three months before you receive your card.

6. Terms&conditions states that you need both the physical card and boarding pass with M&B status printed on it to enjoy benefits like lounge access. Several reports in this and other threads say that many lounges may let you enter even without the physical card as long as M&B *G is on the BP. Others report that a printed copy of your account page worked well in a discussion. YMMV, but please remember that it is actually not in the rules to let you enter without the physical card.