:p:D:p

Completely agree. There may be some here who may spend inordinate amounts of time and effort examining each word of the conditions of membership but there are obviously others who spend no time doing so yet blame someone else for the consequences of that inattention.

^^

Some folks here seem to have learned AC's service mantra, the oft quoted 'We're not happy till you're not happy". Welcoming as always:rolleyes:

While I agree with the sentiment that the information was there for those who looked I also agree that many if not most are too busy to pay that sort of attention to the program. I'm also speculating that while the OP may have flown more mile on *A partners than AC, he may have still bought his tickets through AC, so reasonably believed that he was being loyal to them. Certainly AC and their promotion of their relationship with *A could lead to that impression IMHO.

There's a difference between "Fly us as your home airline, and fly our partners when you can't" and "Fly our partners and we'll foot the bill for lounge access".

The former is what AC (rightfully) wants and expects.

100% upgrade generally means "of flights I tried to upgrade". There's no way someone only buying V fares would be able to upgrade every flight, but it's completely possible they'd be able to upgrade every flight they tried to.

I'm 100% this year so far, and I hope it remains that way. I also have no plans to buy any more Y fares this year, unless there's an EYW :p

:confused: Nothing discussed in this thread is related to Aeroplan at all.

No one is slowing down here, by nature of creating the thread, the FT collective was flagged down and asked to stop to help.

SF - very well said! ^ :D

How much sympathy can people be expected to give? The minimum AC metal requirements have now been in place for over 4 years. IIRC there was much sympathy for people in the first 2 years since the change, but should that be expected now? I fully expect that now that the minimum metal requirements have gone up dramatically we'll hear a lot of sob stories in 2016 - however this is one of the few areas where AC actually communicated the impending changes in advance of the upcoming status year so that people could credit their flights elsewhere for the year if they don't like the new requirements.

This was my exact thought when I read the OP. I'm sure that there was one airline that received the lion's share of the flights (let's call that airline "ZZ"). OP should contact that airline and tell the story, without any fluff. "I flew XXX miles with your airline last year of an overall YYY miles that were flown on Star Alliance airlines. I credited all of my miles to Air Canada's program not realizing there was a minimum AC mileage requirement for status. Had I credited all my *A miles to the ZZ airline program I would have achieved status..." and ask for a status match, challenge, etc. If you can use the Altitude website data to demonstrate that you've flown with airline ZZ going back several years too, there might be a shot of getting at least *S out of the deal, maybe even *G.

OP, if you do use this approach, be careful about which program you select. They all have their pluses and minuses. Determine which benefits are most important to you, how likely you are to receive them from your new program, and what are the requirements for re-qualification.

Its "Roll up the Rim" season, that means I buy all my coffee at Tim Hortons, I finally won a free coffee the other day and took it into Starbucks(I prefer Starbucks) to redeem, they told me to get lost??? They must be taking cues from Air Canada, the nerve :confused:

Strange how it seems to be ok to walk all over a fellow poster but not ok to put AC reps in their place...

There's a difference between "You didn't meet the well-published requirements, and are not actually a loyal AC customer." and "You're a useless idiot, why do you bother coming here? Just leave."

One is appropriate. The other is not.

not piling on. setting the record straight. I'm not going to give false hope to people or tell them "yeah its not your fault you didnt know the rules" or never bothered to check your balance.
you dont blame the bank for going into overdraft.

Well, I'm sympathetic to the poster. Who has the time to follow all the rules? It's way to complicated for the amount of money spent.

AAdvantage is a good bet for international travel, and most fares credit %100.

Best of luck!

I am reading that the debate here is about whether someone has time to read the rules or not. I agree, it can be rather time consuming. Here is the part that I don't understand; If I don't really understand the rules, my assumption would be that if I want to be rewarded for loyalty, an airline would probably want to reward me for flying with them. Why would someone's expectation be that any company would want to reward my loyalty to their competition? How could anyone expect that to be the default?

OP?
 

A couple of days have passed since sbjohnson55 shared his/her vent in their first post. Given the animated debate that followed, I wonder what they must be thinking.

It's called Star Alliance

Yes, we all get benefits from Star Alliance, but that does not mean you don't have to be loyal to AC. It is AC FF program and not Star's FF program.