To keep the data points flowing, the headaches continue as shouldn't surprise anyone.
On the positive side, at the moment at least (
), I can log in rather "smoothly" for LM standards and make it to the Travel selection and even execute award flight searches (Smart search / Carrier specific search). That is where the good ends.
As not uncommon, smart search is rather "dumb" and can not find any itineraries (a route within SE Asia, simple one), but going to carrier specific search yields some reasonable availability in the future. Not awesome, but workable and I verified the availability via the carriers own FFP and it matches at least. Selecting desired flights is possible and I can even enter emergency contact, select the passengers (both preregistered profiles) and then move to the payments page where I select all miles (also have a preregistered credit card that worked many times before) and voila, the dreaded error 2.1xxxxx strikes with consistency. No dice so far after probably 30-40 tries at various times.
Interestingly, the availability never reduces (e.g. one flight shows 4 seats and I'm trying for 2) meaning it must fail even before grabbing the seats and generating a PNR or such as the "inventory" never reduces. No PNR Reference is shown or anything, lovely. Maybe LM is not able to grab / confirm that availability as it is not accessible to them and for LM this is considered "phantom space" that is there but not for them to touch, no idea. Annoying for sure.
Also, I may have missed this, but when did "paying with points and cash" become so unattractive using the crap standard 3.3. US cents per mile for every combo from 1% to 60%? What happened to the ~1.5 US cents or so at 50% mark? Another joke, ahh LM never stops giving (grief)
.