Originally Posted by
LHR/MEL/Europe FF
It's an unfortunate series of events. Sounds like almost everything went according to plan, except the miles were incorrectly debited twice from your account.
While not excusing US airways, there are a couple of issues:
(a) you did not check your account to see the negative miles balance, nor did your friend confirm the miles had been debited from his account. This would have solved the problem instantly. Technically, the second ticket was cancelled due to non-payment. A little at fault by both of you.
(b) the itinerary was not legal
Reading this story reminds me of 2 incidents in wrongly debit miles from accounts by US agents - only that the other 2 incidents benefited the customers tremendously.
One friend has the US-Australia award booked from his and his wife's account as they did not have enough miles for both coming out from one account. A few days after ticketing, he saw 55K coming out from his account and 55K from wife's account. Of course that was only 1/2 of the total cost. This happened last year. They are about to travel on these tickets or already started their travel. The deficit NEVER is made up despite friend kept sufficient balance in both accounts just in case. They dont want their trip in jeopardy naturally. It has been over 10 months from booking. Our guess is, this "half price sale" would stay.
Another friend booked their trip last March using Star A partners to South Africa with a really convoluted itinerary before it went completely away, for travel in last December. Tickets booked from 3 accounts for 4 people's trip. His account has his ticket. Wife's account has hers and one kid's ticket. Daughter's account has her own ticket. A few months later he found 110k miles returned to his account and showed as Canceled ticket. However, the reservation showed fine on US site, so as the ticket showed valid using Saudi site. Nothing happened on the ticket. They have since completed their trip a week ago. The refunded 110K sit in his account for over 7 months now. We suspect nothing will ever happen to his account and he will get to keep his 110k windfall.
Strange things do happen. Some people got really lucky while some people got really screwed up. US system does not seem to have a period audit process else it cannot explain how the large deficits from 2 cases go undetected for almost a year and in one case, trip has finished, while "canceled ticket" refund stays.