marquees

For info:

Re-qualifying flight: 11 July 2016
Card/tag received today (UK): 25th October 2016
Exp date: 24/11/2017

:D!

Requalified in May and also received new card in London sometime in the past week (wasn't in)

benberg2013

I received my new card today, and along with it a replacement card, which i requested, thinking it would quicken the time for me to get my new card.

Strangely, on the new card which they sent me for retaining my gold tier, the expiry date is 24/11/2017, as expected, however, the replacement card's expiry date is 11/09/2019 . I guess i requested the replacement on the 11 of september this year, a few weeks ago, and they sent me a card with a 3 year later expiry date, as per the old rules (pre 24 NOV 14).

This should, according to Star alliance rules, as irishguy28 has brought up at least once on this A3 forum, allow me star alliance gold privileges for the next 3 years, (such as lounge access, as we discussed when people had not received their new cards last year.) even though it would not show on the system as gold, since the card does show it.

irishguy28

It makes no sense that you would receive 2 cards with different expiry dates.

Tokyoite

for those lounges with manual checks (visual/writing on paper), you are set. For most lounges with system checks (input into their systems that show your status as in starnet), your validity would be 11/2017....that is, unless A3 have a nice screwup in your favor!

benberg2013

Right! it makes no sense, but....




That looks like it.

I wonder if by the check-in, the agents will allow me an extra bag upon showing my gold card, if the system shows non-elite status, assuming it was a system mistake. I have had this with Turkish airlines, with their status match giving me gold, did not show in the check-in, but the agent manually allowed me the extra baggage.

headingwest

Lucky you!

Let's hope they send me a Gold card instead of a Silver one!!!

irishguy28

It should. But bear in mind, there is an array of ever-expanding *A fares that allow no free luggage - even to *G. Austrian and Brussels Airlines are two that come to mind.

Wonder if anyone else will report getting an extended validity period on their card?

Kataskopos

some norwegian guy said that if one has been gold for more than X amount of years one kept the status for 3 years.. and i laughed at him.. could it be he was right?

KLouis

No (otherwise you would have read it in the T&C). It's some sort of glitch. I've been gold for more than 10 years and my account shows "To maintain my tier I still need XXXX tier miles".

PS I will requalify on November 22, through a coupon-upgraded flight. I foresee a few phone calls...

irishguy28

Absolutely not.

In the "old" M+B, up to November 2014, once you achieved Gold, you had it for the duration of that iteration of the programme - there was no mechanism to "lose" Gold status in the old programme. Cards were issued with expiry periods of greater than a year as a result - probably the maximum period on each card was 3 years [at least until they decided that the programme was to be updated and Golds had to requalify]

That led to the widespread misinterpration of this being a "Gold for Life" status. But this was never the case.

When the decision was made to change the programme, they issued new Gold cards to some Gold members, with a shorter period of validity, and asked people to stop using the "old" cards with the longer period of validity.

Of course, none of this explains why a card was issued under the current programme with such a long period of validity....

YOWTraveller

To add my experience to this thread, I re-qualified for *G in July, and received the 2016/17 card in Canada this week. Undated postmark shows it was sent from the Czech Republic.

Xandrios

I cant really wrap my head around why they would be sending these international cards from so many locations. Some are sent from Netherlands, some from Czech...Aegean hardly has any presence in these countries.

The only thing I can imagine is that they use a 3rd party that prints and distributes the cards, which may have multiple printing facilities around Europe, and is running these print jobs in parallel in order to speed up the process. Still, I can't imagine aegean having to send out THAT many cards...

irishguy28

It's not unusual to send bulk mail from locations unrelated to the "source" of the matter sent. It can save lots of money to "shop around"; if the local postal service doesn't offer a competitive rate, it can still be cheaper to bulk ship to a distribution agent in a different country who then posts the individual items [or even arrange for the materials to be locally printed at that location] even if only for certain countries or global regions.

headingwest

A bit like us really, we're all trying to beat the system.