irishguy28

They don't need access to StarNet or the PNR in order to sanity-check the itinerary as presented.

To threaten closure of the account, confiscation of miles and cancellation of all tickets is a VERY punitive reaction to something that should not have caused any suspicions. Before I would jump to such heavy-handed action, I would at least make an effort to look into whatever it was that I thought was suspicious - and this clearly was not done in this case, as any investigation should have shown the initial assumption was incorrect and mistaken.

While I accept that A3 probably doesn't see many claims for itineraries crossing the international date line, if the agent genuinely thought that the itinerary was impossible (they clearly didn't test that assumption) then why even give the passenger 5 days to "solve" the unsolvable problem ?

DELLAS

Let us also note that whilst I do not doubt the information coming from the OP we were not there or privy to the conversation(s) or what the agent could or could not see. If the OP wishes they can indeed make a formal complaint and see what A3 come back with. There may have been other things that flagged this up on this specific account that we do not know about so it is all a case of guessing.

scrappydog

I had a similar email this month...

This happened on a Sunday so I phoned them to find out what the concern is. And it is actually the unusual no of participants in my together account. I change it frequently because my friends or family never use their accounts and it remained idle. So I frequently change to other friends I recruit to my program.

Aegean wanted me to provide all identity cards of all the past, present members of together account. They were quite lenient with the time frame and manage to clear the issue within 2 days after submitting the ID's..

:D!

This seems a lot more reasonable than the OP's situation.

While Aegean is paid for all the mileage that is accrued in the infrequently used accounts, I wonder if their accounting assumes that some miles will never be used, thus they didn't like it when you managed to gather a lot of orphan miles together.

The only worrying thing is that I often don't check emails for over 5 days at a time. I guess most people will be OK if they only do straightforward things on *A flights.

nk15

The threat to permanently close the account and cancel all tickets within 5 days is beyond crazy.

Knobbgb

This is really worrying. I often add not-very-close friends to my together account for six month periods and then remove them. These are sometimes people I know only in passing. To have to go to them - some from a year ago - and get copies of their ID's to send to Aegean would be VERY awkward, difficult and even impossible in a couple of cases as I am no longer in touch with them. I know for a fact that two of them would flat out refuse to give me copies of their passports to send off to a third party like that and I think all of the other would be quite unhappy about it. I was just about to remove three friends from my account and add three more and it is really worrying that this might happen to me. What we do is totally within the rules of the program so we should not have this worry like this. Even if someone in my together account were a total stranger who I had met in an airport bar and had agreed to give me his/her miles and then I had never spoken to again - that would be within the rules. How can this request be reasonable?

scrappydog - do you mind if I ask how many members you've had in your together account to trigger this? Mine has been active for 14 months and I have had eight members so far and was about to add three more next week.

One thing in my favour I suppose - all my members have claimed mileage exclusively on Aegean - only small amounts of miles (less than 10k) and have at least flown into my local airport. Perhaps this makes Aegean believe they are "true friends". Are you receiving lots of mileage from different parts of the world and from different airlines which might perhaps lead them to believe you're just making internet contacts? Also, the ticket they have threatened to cancel - I assume that is an award ticket you recently booked and not just a revenue ticket? Surely they could not cancel a paid ticket because of this? Possibly it's the spending of the miles that has triggered the audit. Maybe you could PM me if you prefer.

scrappydog

15 members; 6 from my families whom no one ever travelled. 9 are my friends here and overseas - only 1 travelled and earned real miles.

I managed to get 10 out 15 national IDs and this satisfied them. I also gave them my passport and credit card info to verify the purchase of additional miles for my recent booking.

I have been a member since July 2014.

NWIFlyer

Whilst this is within the rules, and therefore perfectly legal, I can see why A3 might well investigate at some point because I doubt it's within the limits they anticipated when they introduced the scheme and they might regard that as abuse in itself. Not my place to cast moral judgment, particularly on FT where we pretty much all maximise to one extent or another, but if ever they came after you it would be interesting to know what rule they quoted given none have actually been broken. There again, if you've already had this many changes and not an eyelid has been battered, it might not be a big enough issue for them to worry about.

Knobbgb

So, do you mean you were just benefiting only from the 1000 bonus miles each one earned? Or by "never traveled" do you mean just with A3 and they had miles from other *A carriers?


Well, there's the general condition that says (and I'm paraphrasing here) "We may close your account and take away all your miles at any time we choose without giving a reason". I guess they'd invoke that even though no rule has actually been broken.

Just to verify - did the OP just book an award ticket? My guess is that it's the SPENDING of the miles that initiated the audit, not the collecting, which may explain why nobody has come after me yet. I'd imagine they can calculate the "hidden" cost of an award ticket by tracking where the miles came from and offsetting that against what the ticket cost them. This would be the only way they'd ever know if the whole scheme was an overall cost benefit or was losing them money.

Well the "six month" rule (where you can't remove someone until they've been a member that long) kind of implies they DID think about people having many members and they decided to limit it to five members every six months. I think it would be very unfair of them to then try to limit this further.

nk15

Given how arbitrary, unclear, and irrational they are behaving I would be concerned with doing any weird super cheap MRs or anything like a hidden city ticketing on A3 (not that I have done this ever anyway).

wyvern

"If we don’t get any reply or call from you within 5 days, we will permanently close the account and all tickets and mileage associated will be cancelled."

This is the bit I really don't like - it might be reasonable to suspend an account or limit new redemptions while the matter is being investigated, but to permanently close it and cancel the mileage is unreasonable.

nk15

Canceling the tickets is the worse, imaging having several booked.

FlyEurope

Canceling the tickets very likely illegal and subject to compensation under European law.

benberg2013

This is worriesome for me, as I havemany friends who fly to and from South Africa on Ethiopian, and other places, and are not interested in miles etc, so i made them accounts, joint them to mine, and after six months remove them and add others. I have no shortage of people to add to my account to get their miles. And I have done this whenever I could, every six months...

frenchft

Hilarious... )