livious

Most FFPs are riddled with inconsistencies, which lead to grey areas and scenarios that are not always anticipated by the airlines or passengers. Many of them can be frustrating and do not benefit flyers, but Flyertalk has taught me to take exploit them when they are in my favor. Regardless of whether the card expiration dates shows 2017 or 2018, I was able to get my daughter 2 years of A3 Gold within 2 months of flying. This gives me more flexibility with booking and crediting flights in the coming years. Hopefully you can exploit your situation to your advantage as well!

Irishguy has it right for a normal re-qualification, but the situation is different when it is a qualification.

irishguy28

This thread is solely about requalifcation/status extension (at least, according to the thread title).

However, the basic situation is the same when it comes to attaining Gold status for the first time [and the report related to a Gold card]. The only difference is that a Silver, on qualifying for Gold, has their membership year realigned - such that they immediately become Gold, and immediately start their next requalification year.

Even in this case, the Gold status is valid for one calendar year from the date the status was attained. So, even for a Silver reaching Gold for the first time, it is not yet possible to receive a Gold card with an expiry date of 2018.

Because, in all of our experience - mine included - when you "requalify" during the year, they don't immediately send out the new card.

Requalifiers have their new cards issued shortly before the end of their membership year. Why? Because there is no need to send it out immediately (as is the case when you go UP in status) - they already have a card which is perfectly valid for the rest of the remaining membership year.

irishguy28

Though based on the original post, it seems that the "early" requalification in this particular instance may have somehow got caught up in the batch processing of the "legacy golds" - i.e. instead of issuing cards only for those whose membership year end was approaching [that occurs in late November each year for us "legacy golds"], they pushed the button for "check for ALL golds that are requalified, issue new card if requalified"

livious

LTN Phobia did qualify and extend status within the scope of the thread, so it seems quite appropriate to have the question here, especially as cards and expiration date were being discussed. My daughter will re-qualify 11 days after 2016, so you can hold that against me

I think you understand the point I was trying to make. I agree that it is not a normal situation, but LTN Phobia's experience shows that is possible to get a card that expires in 2018. For a re-qualification (i.e. not moving to a higher tier), that should only be possible if Aegean were to send out the cards late. While the cards were sent out in good time this year, I seem to recall that this was not the case in past years.

Just to close off on my comments for this thread, you can sleep well knowing that my daughter's card arrived this evening with the 2017 expiration (000329-GU). Only LTN Phobia can claim to have the legendary card with the 2018 expriation The rest of us will have to live as the rest of the 99.9% of Aegean Golds

irishguy28

But again, this doesn't explain Phobia's experience.

"In good time" means by the end of the year. Aegean has never (previously) sent out a new card at the moment of requalification. (If you read back through this thread, all those whose year ended in November only started to receive the card a few weeks before - indeed, in good time - but in no way correlated to the date they requalified. The logic being - a Gold card that is valid for X months does not need to be immediately replaced - only those who go UP in status need a new card.)

Somehow - and I do think, as said in a previous post, that it is at least possible - the "sweep" to catch all the "legacy Golds" that must requalify by November 24, somehow caught up Phobia (and possibly a few others, that had recently re-qualified though having part of their year still left to run.

Or, I wonder if Phobia requested a replacement card from within the M+B account, which would then trigger the issue of a "new" card, rather than a replacement "old" card, if the system sees a requalification threshold has been already passed?


not quite true...we have one poster who can go one better....and which cannot be explained by any of the Phobic () theories...

LTN Phobia

I wasn't expecting my post to spark such a discussion - I thought it was just a datapoint I was posting, and neither was I expecting my situation to be particularly unusual given how the requalification requirements are! So this is a bit of a surprise.

Yes, absolutely sure of the date, and I am not puzzled.

I qualified for Gold early Oct 2016 initially (which means my membership year runs till Oct 2017), and by mid-October 2016 I requalified (i.e. I flew enough in my 2016-2017 membership year to requalify for the next membership year), so it makes sense to receive a card with the expiry of October 2018.

Does it seem bizarre?


Just to clarify, I received the card expiring in Oct 2017 as well. It turned up about 10 days before the 2018 card (10 days being about the period it took me to requalify so the makes sense, and it also makes me suspect the new card was triggered in the 'normal' way?).

No. I was thinking of it when the card expiring in 2017 for the initial qualification hadn't turned up 7 weeks or so after qualifying (as I had heck of a hassle trying to get an extra bag allowance from another carrier even though I had the app and my status was showing up on their system), just about when I was thinking of doing it, the initial card turned up.

I like a card with long expiry because I don't have to worry about getting a replacement for some time.

livious

The beauty of Flyertalk...discussing minute details ad naseum

I was referring to Aegean sending out the Gold cards late in 2015/2016. I seem to recall members getting their cards well into 2016, which would have given them time to re-qualify for the next year before the cards were printed and sent.

Either way, LTN Phobia just isn't as cool anymore as Benberg has a 2019 expiration. At some point we might just need to admit that most airlines IT is not up to snuff and the likely culprit.

LTN Phobia

Ha ha, indeed, meanwhile my BA card for the current membership year remains missing in action, and I seem to have somehow lost my BA lifetime Gold card (or I was dreaming about having received the physical card when I was dog tired and I hadn't received the physical lifetime card at all, maybe...) so you win some and lose some.
Thankfully I haven't had the need to show it to anyone lately, whereas I needed to show my A3 card.

irishguy28

It does, actually. It doesn't fit with the standard MO regarding sending out membership cards.

You are the first person to report receiving a new card immediately after requalification. Everyone else has had to wait until just before the expiry of the old card.

Whether this marks a change in A3's MO, or is just some fluke (for reasons I speculated on above) remains to be seen.

But you can probably understand yourself that there was no need to send a "2018" card when you had just received a "2017" card that was good for almost an entire year...

Indeed - but now you have two cards with "long expiry"!

LTN Phobia

One is longer than the other... I'd just consider myself lucky that I won't have to worry about receiving a new card from A3 for about 22 months and not think about "why" or "how" I ended up being sent a card immediately after requalification because it's taxing for my head.

Hopefully by then everyone gets used to the idea of the virtual card and there's no more need for the physical card.

FlyerTalker688786

Looks like Aegean had a system reset. Now my vouchers are shown only 4 with the rest gone for good. How about your account?

FlyerTalker688786

It does make sense to me! Looks like your membership was reset as soon as you requalified.

What about your online statement, does it mention expire date of 2018 too? supposedly Aegean should reset membership year in November but it seems there is some flexibility there, no?

irishguy28

The "online statement" will always show the correct expiry date. Which, for Phobia, is 2018.

The online account is always up-to-date, i.e. immediately updated - but the issued card isn't immediately updated (at least, prior to this report).

The anomaly here was the issuing of the physical card at the time of requalification, rather than waiting for the expiry of the card that was still valid, which is how all other documented cases (prior to this one) have been handled.

tancredi

Am I the only one who still has not received the card?
I called Aegean and they told me it has been sent about a month ago, but it still has not arrived...

T.

johnirvine

My theory is that Aegean are more clever than we think. They have seen that their recently recruited member is the British Airways Moderator and therefore likely to be highly influential. The wrongly dated card is merely an attempt to curry marketing favour.

On another point, I have only just received my new A3*G card despite early requalification in February. The number GRE314 suggests that these numbers are allocated in order of requalification.