Originally Posted by
RobertHanson
Well, that's one theory. Another possibility is that once you have a single billing period where you didn't make a charge, all those miles, and ones you get from that card afterwards, are set to expire 36 months after being earned. If you get another card, the use it every month policy will apply only to the miles earned on the new card.
I really don't think we have any where near enough data points on this to even speculate.
Why not call Miles and More and find out what they say the policy is. Which might still not be correct, but is more likely to be correct than our various theories here.
Or, you know, use those miles within 36 months of when you got the bonus. Otherwise you risk LH doing a devaluation, and from what I've seen award availability is steadily decreasing.
Earn em and burn em is the best policy.
I think it very cumbersome to guess what is the policy on expiring miles, so I want to add my experience on what happened to my expiring miles and the usage of the card:
Background: I signed up for the Barclays M&M card more than 3 years ago in the US. I started accumulating miles but never used them up until now. My balance this summer is around 180,000 miles. I was saving them for transatlantic first class travel. For some unforeseen circumstances, I wasn't able to travel last year and half of the year before that. Furthermore, I used other credit cards for other reasons and did NOT use this card on a monthly basis from around a year and a half ago up until May of this year.
I was aware of the expiring miles clause when the card is not used, so I thought what I would do is, once the first batch of miles would come close to expiration (say 2 or 3 months before), I would use the card and if the notice of expiration doesn't go away, I would redeem the miles to later change the flight. ( I can't travel right now).
2 months before the 3rd year anniversary, my miles and more account stated that around 28,000 or so miles would expire, which is what I thought was the initial bonus of miles plus expenditure on the first month on the card. I used the card on that month and made sure that the transactions posted before the end of the month.
After the end of the month and statement was issued, the notice on my miles and more account disappeared, that was almost 3 months ago. I have been using the card every month since then, and I have no notices that any of my miles will expire and I still have 180,000 miles.
I can deduce this: as far as I know, you can have miles up to 2 years 11 months without using the card and the miles won't expire. On the 12th month of the 3rd year, the transaction has to post as a purchase and if the statement includes it, your miles won't expire. There is no need to have a single transaction every month on the 36 month period.
Now, having said all of that, it really makes no sense to hang on to this card that long. Redeeming miles and traveling with them is NOT my priority in life, but if it was, I would redeem them as soon as I could. I went through one devaluation already, and the current card offers business lounge passes for the same annual fee and there is no way to upgrade my old card.
The way barclays has set this card up, is to get the bonus, and cancel it at least once when a new card comes around.