I experienced a glitch where all third-party bookings (booked via Expedia) that included my middle name were sent to Alaska like so: FirstNameMiddleName LastName, rather than FirstName MiddleName LastName. I know that this happens with other airlines (including AS flights booked via BA), but the interesting thing was that this time, because the submitted name from the OTA was different than the name on my AS Mileage Plan account, my AS Mileage Plan number never got added to the reservation, and it wasn't possible to add my AS Mileage Plan number online on Alaska's website.

I called in to customer service and they were able to manually add it, but when I asked if this was something that AS could fix, the agent replied that all AS customers booking through an OTA *would have to call in* every single time that this happens to have their AS Mileage Plan number added to the reservation.

This seems super sketchy to me, as all my OTA bookings in the past on AS have credited properly.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this really normal, like the AS customer service agent said?

It seems so strange that all OTA bookings wouldn't earn any base miles/RDM on AS without having to call in. I've never heard of that happening with any airline.