Originally Posted by
B747SP
OP here. As a flyertalker for years, I am the one educating my colleagues about miles and FFP, and helping them setting up and maintaining their accounts. No miles are taken from employees for company use at all. I do not take their miles either (sometimes even credit my own car rental miles to a colleagues account to maintain expiration). A few really do not care about their miles as they fly very infrequently, and have given away award tickets to colleagues and friends including me.
For simplicity I set up everyone's account with the company address and the same PIN. I guess United just did a search using the company address and closed all accounts with the address. The guy who received the warning email actually manages his own account using his personal email address and a different PIN. He became the collateral damage. United gave him two days to send in an ID and call to resolve the problem, to which he said "fxxx it - I will just avoid flying united." The other accounts were just closed without warning.
I was not aware of the "no delegation" rule (did not read the program rules) so it was my mistake in part. However closing all accounts without warning is too harsh a punishment in my opinion.
I know I'm opening a bigger can of worms, but IMO, United is not after the husband, wife, child relationship, on managing an account, but for the larger unrelated groups that are sharing miles.
So all the comments about, manager/admin, husband/wife, parent/child is not the target of the rule. But the 6 yr old child might have his account terminated and miles lost because I believe the minimum age is 18.
The OP was managing 12 people accounts and the activity described about is just what United is trying to prevent with the rule.
i.e., 1) preventing expiration of miles,
2) using expiring miles (not enough for a trip) to upgrade someone else PNR
So the OP was engage in the activities that United stated was against the MP rules. He just didn't know it was against the rules of the MP program.
Why is this against the rules?
1) United probably expect so many miles to expires because of infrequent travel
2) Travel takes a while to accumulate miles for upgrade or travel, but several can combine their miles to obtain rewards.
I believe the discussion should be on the original OP post, not on a husband managing his wife, or child, etc