Account audited asking for proof of address
 

If you are thinking of purchasing miles_ think about it-again.
I joined alaska air a few mths ago and purchased miles during the last buy up I then transferred 25k to the account so i could redeem a first class award.
I went to book it and the website said to call alaska. I called and got customer service and they said they want a proof of address with drivers licence.
I do not have a current DL
I offered a passport ( which obviously has a date of birth)
they refused
I feel very unsafe in continuing this account
I checked all the details they are all perfectly correct

they are now sending the pts and supposedly the money is being returned for the purchased miles.
so I will be paying the currency conversion fees twice ,as well they said they will not give me extra.
has anyone else had this problem/ if not do a test booking and make sure your accounts are not under audit.



Per your request, your account has been restricted to prevent certain online transactions and award redemptions. Please contact Customer Care at 1-800-654-5669,Monday-Friday, between 8:00 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. (PT) for assistance.
for a start this is incorrect I did not request.

Setting up an account and buying a ton of miles in a short span will set up red flags on many carriers. I'm not sure what the ID part is for.

I can certainly understand some proof of identity and address verification, but requiring a driver's license as the only form of proof is nonsense (and could have been a one-off by one particular agent and/or there could be more to the story).

My first thought about legitimate address verification is for, i.e., bogus Club 49 registration.

I don't know what club 49 is.
I didn't buy a ton I bought 40k with my own cc and ended up with 56k 2 mths ago and sent 1 lot of spg .
not really any reason to flag an account.
I offered bank statement and pp in my name
nup wouldn't accept that got to a supervisor who said nup.
I am at present writing a consumer complaint to the washington state AG.
may as well give them some grief.
its going to cost me plus i lost the first class ticket syd lax ny.
they had every right to query,if all didn't look right
but what was wrong about my account
they were not right to not hold the flights when the miles were clearly there
whilst they made enquiries the flight should have been kept on hold.
as far as I am concerned they have not kept to the contract.

if they want proof of address they should ask for that when joining someone not 3 mths later when they have miles in the account.

here is my 2 yrs of activity

Available Miles: 81,000
Sort by:Select Activity Type.Select Sort by date or activity type.Select Time Period to sort by.
Activity Date Activity Type Status Miles Bonus Total
11/29/2013 STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS
STARWOOD POINTS TRANSFER Credited
25,000 0 25,000
09/12/2013 POINTS.COM
POINTS.COM INSTANT POINTS Credited
56,000 0 56,000
Note: Depending on the partnership, activity will appear on your account 30-60 days after you have earned miles. If you do not see activity after 60 days, contact Mileage Plan.

It's to safeguard against credit card fraud. AS has experienced considerable fraud where people open a Mileage Plan account, then immediately use a fraudulent credit card with Points.com to buy miles and stock the account for quick ticket purchases on Partner airlines, usually 100,000 miles or more.

The fraudster usually has ads on Craigslist or other online services offering to sell international tickets on the cheap. They get the name of the buyer - who pays them cash - then convert the miles into an international Partner award on a carrier like BA for that person which gets ticketed for travel within the next day or so.

It's like an attempt at "mileage laundering." Side note - they're almost always traveling to Lagos, Nigeria (LOS).

Anyway, by the time the actual cardholder realizes fraud has occurred and reports it, the transaction gets flagged at the point of sale - Points.com - and they try to rescind the miles. By that time it's too late; the miles have been redeemed, turned into a ticket, and the ticket buyer has already flown.

While the credit card companies almost always make their cardholders whole in the event of fraud, AS is still on the hook to BA (or whatever partner carrier the miles were used on) for the cost of the transportation they provided in good faith.

Thank you for the logical explanation! :-:

The miles were purchased 3 mths ago so i didn't use them immediately and after 2 mths you cannot dispute a credit card.
then I moved my own pts from spg,
and as we know spg will not put pts into an account that is not the account holder.
I offered them the credit card statement with my address on it and the passport what more can they want from the purchaser of the pts?
and the ticket I was purchasing was for late october 2014
so the whole senario is not what you have pictured.
All reasons I am so shocked that this has happened,
causing me untold grief as all my travelling companions have booked their first class flts
and i have nothing as it was only one F seat and by the time I called them today and realised they and not secured the seat it had gone.

But it isn't a logical explanation for the utterly unreasonable refusal to accept alternative ID.

The OP made all reasonable efforts to address the underlying issue, and AS continually acted unreasonably.

Only thing OP might have done better is to try calling again the next day to find a CSA or sup who was willing to find a way to be reasonable.

I didn't say the end result for the OP may have been fair or just. I am referring to the rationale for the procedures in place.

I can see no rationale for auditing an account with 1 lot of buy miles and an spg transfer which we all know is almost impossible to send spg pts over to an american airline if a different name.
I have tried in the past and it sits in cyberspace and then you have to ask for it back . I am sure AS is quite aware of this.
had I even had any other type of mileage credit I can maybe understand but this is ridiculous.
anyway enough said just wanted anyone thinking of buying alaska air to be careful.
not everyone has a drivers licence and I think that can be faked a lot more than a passport. so I see no rationale in needing a DL.

The perfectly logical explanation, which may have worked some unfairness in the particular case of this one OP, isn't going to satisfy the OP, so no use in arguing any further.

Air carriers lose US$100's of Millions / year to various forms of FF fraud, so they are careful.

OP is free to complain to whomever she wants. This is the response she will get.

I feel sorry for the OP. It is quite a puzzle.

There may be lots of fraud around, but does not explain why the OP's account was targetted. I have not heard of needing to verify address with a driver licence, in relation to airline program. What is that supposed to do? If the credit card in question is the issue, why not get the credit card company to verify with cardholder?

(I have never flown with Alaska before. I did open an account, purchased miles, then redeemed an international business class ticket without any issues.)

not sure why people would go to the trouble for that for 2 free bags "when traveling from and to Alaska"

and 2 discounts on the highest coach fares available when traveling from Alaska. I believe you have to originate in Alaska for the discounts to work or at least that would make sense

They needed an address verification which is why they wanted a DL and not a passport.

+1 - At least US passports, don't have an address on them. Simply a place where you can write yours in so that you might get it back if you lose it. The fact that you have a passport doesn't have anything to do with an address.

Where do you live?

I guess soon airlines will start will have to do KYC like banks!!!

Looking at the VA platinum, only having a passport and no flights credited to AS makes me think not US based.

I sorry but solely buying points and never flying, needs to stop. I think AS needs to add not only an account age limitation for buy miles but a credit X number of flights in order to do so

Maybe, but why? As long as AS is making money on the deal (i.e. the flights being redeemed are costing AS less than they are selling the miles for), it seems like a win-win for AS and the customer.

I guess those of us who actually earned our miles the old-fashioned way (flying and CC spend) stand to lose if inventory is all taken up by those who buy-miles-and-fly, but honestly, the shift from programs as loyalty drivers to profit centers in their own rights is a ship that has long since sailed.

Exactly - these are huge profit centers and aren't going the way of the Blue Chip Stamp anytime soon.

Some of us would even say that CC spend isn't the old-fashioned way, if we are really old.

AS could clearly change their account terms to require this. Why take issue with their position?

Not everyone has DL, so limiting DL as the sole form of verification is simply out of touch with reality. Many companies accept a copy of a utility bill along with an official photo ID. CC statements are not generally good enough as anyone can simply change the address without having to reside in that address. Use electric, water, sewage or whatever utility bill that requires one to actually reside in that address or own said property in order to have such service.

Haha, our KYC group is just down the hall on my floor at my company - we work in the same group. I have to go through countless KYC/AML/Risk policy trainings every year. When I first started at my company the core training program (6 training courses) took a whole day. I'll state this for the record, what the KYC team goes through (background research, data gathering and information collection) makes the DHS's background check program look trivial. If one has qualms about the information the DHS asks on any of the trusted traveler applications then that person will never be able to open a trust fund or private banking account.

Too many miles out here makes them less valuable. As you can see from the major devaluations that have occured in the last year or 2. Another example is emirates, the easier it became to book their premium cabin awards, the availability droppeed dramatically.

I can understand the reluctance of allowing someone to book an expensive ticket on a partner airline when the user has never flown Alaska, has large transfers in, and claims a foreign address.

Foreign addresses is usually one trigger in a suite of triggers that leads to a fraud investigation.

However, it is not grounds or a legitimate reasoning to prevent someone from purchasing points and redeeming for F awards.

The program as it is currently designed allows for such behavior and it can easily be modified to limit this kind of customer behavior such as instituting an annual cap. However, AS has no right to "discriminate" a customer under the logic you presented.

ETA: With that said, we only have one side of the story, there might be more to it on AS's side.

I think the vast majority of those who go buy miles are ma and pa kettles that may be a few thousand short to take a vacation. Id imagine those that go buy just miles to go redeem an award is quite miniscule. Id even question the logic or cost effectiveness of such a silly thing

However, in a way I look at miles buying as a way for AS to subsidize our elite bonus 50% or 100% RDMs. A gold earns at a minimum of 3RT coach saver awards each year. A 75K gets enough for 8 awards provided they were Gold at the start of the year for all their flights.

What I dont like is AS hands out free miles like candy to anybody who has a minor inconvenience or emails or calls to complain. When I address a concern to AS....they give me 1000 or 2000 miles. When I am addressing an issue I dont want RDMs :rolleyes: I want the problem fixed going forward. When I do have an issue I always specifically write that I do NOT want miles and that I just hope the issue gets fixed and then I write my ideas for solutions. In return...I get miles :rolleyes:

Yes, that's why I mentioned two other issues.

Sure it does. Not all forms of discrimination are illegal under applicable law. Fraud protection is a legitimate business interest.

If they have a legitimate business reason to flag an account for potential fraudulent conduct, that is fine. Not because they are reluctant to pay $$$ for that customer - who has clearly not violated any terms of the MP program - to book an F award. That is how I read that post [reasoning for making redemption difficult rather than reasoning for audit]. Nonetheless, it seems both of us agree on the same thing and the poster meant the combination of those three things made it a legitimate case for audit.

Anyway back on topic, I think the gist of the OP's compliant was not the audit itself, but the fact AS refuses to accept a different form of ID and Address Verification other than a Driver's License.

The account would have been just as blocked for a one way SEA-GEG redemption. When an account is flagged, the system blocks all redemptions, not just big ones.

Based on the OP, a different form of address verification was not offered to AS. OP offered a passport and a credit card statement, which, as discussed above, isn't as effective as a utility bill in verifying an address. I'd recommend the OP consider providing that type of ID, and hopefully AS will accept it. I doubt they want only a driver's license and nothing else. Hang up, call again, be reasonable, and one will have more luck than by writing the Washington State Attorney General.

What could be wrong with a foreign address - do FFP abroad get any special benefit?