Sorry for the rant, but:
Can they make this any more difficult?
The Mileage Plus Service Center; You can't E-mail them, they don't have a dirrect phone number. Just like back in the 70's, everything with this "service" center, or so they claim when it suits them, must be done by snail mail.
I've been flying a lot of US flights lately as I pay for my own flights and their price has been the best available. I credit the flights to United, as I'm targeting 1K. Automatic credit for these flights to the Mileage Plus program has been ~70% hit to 30% miss. Until recently a fax of boarding pass and Expedia itinerary with explanation was sufficient to trigger credit for those credits missed. Now, I consistently have MP credit denied with a stated need for original boarding passes and documentation. I always have spares of BP's
, but why should I have to mail anything in to get credit for whatever should be automatically credited anyway? What does snail mail do for these $*%(@!~ bureaucrats that the fax doesn't? And how does one get an original of an Expedia itinerary? Since inception, IIRC, Expedia did it all via the web, I suspect they'd choke if asked to mail an "original" of an itinerary/receipt.
The last denial I got stated that because the name on the ticket didn't match the name on my account, credit would be denied. The name mismatch is just the popular version of the formal name. Think Bob vice the M+ (M-?) Service Center required Robert. I told them to change the name on my Mileage Plus account to the popular version, and was told that legal notice of name change would be required to do that. Could one even change their legal name eg from "Robert" to "Bob"?
The competition:
DL: Credit seems to post so quick, you suspect it's done while you're in flight, although I haven't tested this with their partner airlines yet.
US: Even though their customer service is typically abysmal, you can click up an on-line web talk session to get this type of trivia resolved, when you finally do get through.
Does it get any better when you hit 1K? Obviously the 1K benefit for a Ted flight is limited to the momentary glory of the Red Carpet, and US codeshares gain NADA for all. But this type of "screw the customer approach has me concerned as well as
.
If this is how United deals with the easy stuff, what happens when the situation is not simple?
Anyone got workarounds? My multiple fax strategy worked once but now seems to have been negated recently, also!