I had a recent round trip in C in Air China from EWR to MNL via PEK.
The miles for the two outbound segments appeared in my UA account after 15 days.
The miles for the two return segments never showed up. I sent the boarding pass stubs to UA and they requested a copy of the receipt, which I also provided. After a few days I received this from UA:
Dear Dr. X,
We’re always glad to hear from Premier 1K members like you. Thanks for writing.
Your flights from MNL-PEK-EWR on Oct 9-10 were credited to another Frequent Flyer program according to Air China. You would have to contact Air China to find out where they credited to.
We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.
Regards,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MileagePlus® Service Center
Upon contacting Air China they informed me:
Dear Mr./Ms. X
We are pleased to receive your email.
For the flight CA180/09OCT,CA819/10OCT.
We have checked our system,and have been informed that your flights has been accumulated to another NH account,the number is NH43927XXXXX, not our PhoenixMiles account, you could contact the carried airlines directly if you want to know the account detail information. Thanks for your cooperation.
We wish you a sweet day!
Yours sincerely
PhoenixMiles Service Centre
I replied that NH account NH43927XXXXX is not my account and that I don't even have an NH account so they should reverse that and credit to my UA account to which they replied:
Dear Mr./Ms. X
We are pleased to receive your reply. We are sorry about the inconvenience caused to you!
We have no authority to delete the miles from the NH account,and we have no authority to add the miles to your UA account. Only we can do for you is to confirm which account the mileage accumulated to. So we kindly suggest you contact the NH airlines directly. Your understanding upon this would be highly appreciated.
We wish you a sweet day!
Yours sincerely
PhoenixMiles Service Centre
So these morons credited my flight to someone elses's account and are now saying, now that we've made this mistake there is nothing we can do to fix it, sorry for the inconvenience.
You might want to avoid Air China in the future if you want Star Alliance credit.