Steph58

I experienced the exact same thing as Paradocs. "Lisa" is supposed to calll me back; I'm not holding my breath. I then proceeded to call NY Times to cancel my subscription plus request a full refund since they didn't come through on the points ($15+ billed on my card). Had to request to speak with a supervisor on the refund. She offered to research the points problem and get back with me in 2 hours. I asked why 3 weeks ago when I called to inquire about the same problem, NYTimes vehemently denied they could do anything about eBay/AnythingPoints. It's been 6 hours and no return call. If it was less than 3,000 points/miles + $15, I'd let it go. Not my idea of a nice way to start off the day--arguing with people at 7 a.m.

bigeyes1

I have already spoken with Lisa from Points.com today. She clearly stated there was nothing they could do about this. She said this promotion is handled electronically and will officially end at 11:59 pm EST tonight.

She also said they can't extend this promotion because it's American Airlines promo.

She was NO help whatsoever.

So, I wish you good luck.

Marathon Man

keep bugging points.com.
ask for extension in lieu of errors that, though they CAN happen, were certanly not any oof OUR errors!

Remember that and adsk them what they would do if this happened to them in reverse!

As for premier health, if you happen to need any of the pages one could print out when signing up for this offer (you really should have kept those you knw) then I can gladly fax them to you or something. PM me your email address or fax number and I can try!

We could find a way to make it look like you have the paper work that supports you that you should have.

In terms of points.com not wanting to take responsibility, you can insist over and over again that if the in fact run the points gig, it must be somethng wrong on their end or one of their vendors' ends. BUT you are not the problem. One of them is. Why shoud you suffer because two parties to whom you subscribed and entrusted have screwed up?

why should you pay--in this case, you lose miles because of their errors, which is a cost, after all--because one of them made a mistake? Even if it is an honest mistake, the vey FACT that you have to fight so hard to figure that out and get someone to even think of helping you or admitting it, is worth something by the ay of compensation to you, right?

RIGHT!

keep t fighting! Call back. Email and again.
and again.
politely, but continuously. It took me about 10+ calls to FTD and about 30 emails to Ebay.
tat was just to get to the person who got me to the person who said she would call me back. Fortunately, and I guess FTD is good for ths part, she did.

Because of that, I will actually buy from FTD again an dI told her that and told her why. She understood and appreciated it. She noted it. I will knwo their system and all, but I now have a better feeling about them because they TRIED to help and admitted the problem!
that is key.

MM

LAX21

AA.com is temporarily experiencing slow response times. Please go to Contact AA if you need immediate assistance.

Been like that for a couple of hours now, I guess all of us here that keep logging in to see if the last batch of points posted or not really made an impact to the poor AA servers

griffinfan

Checking miles is quite fast, but the stupid wheel spinner game is probably what's slowing things down so much!

wanaflyforless

MM - although it may be partially true that points.com runs eBay Anything Points - points.com may be involved - I know for sure eBay has their own people running their program too.

How do I know?

After much work I finally got a direct contact for an eBay Anything Points manager - not a MetaRewards person, Ebay CS person, or something who can't do anything - but someone in charge. (It took my 6 weeks to get this contact!) I got this contact as a potential future Ebay Anything Points business partner.

I also eventually got a contact for a person in charge or points transfers at FTD.

Needless to say I spent significant time communicating with both parties (I was missing 54,000 FTD points!) for my benefit and the benefit of others here.

It appears my effort and others here paid off. I cannot know how much was me, how much was others, but thank you everyone who contributed to getting our FTD points posted on time!

Marathon Man

Indeed there is a liason at both parties, ebay anything points, and points.com.
But I too spoke with the FTD contact for at least one hour and on 3 occasions after my own hellish and continuous fight to get to the top.

Why would she lie to me, after telling me everything else correctly, after working to post my points, and also clearly understanding that their mistakes had frustrated me, a customer? She was the woman I mentioned named Kristina who is supposedly the person (or among the personnel) who runs points crap at FTD. Is that who you spoke with? Tell us please!

She told me that she knows points.com runs this stuff for ebay. She and I knew ebay would have a liason but most of the effort of doing anything involving Anything Points would have fallen on points.com. Why would kristina not tell me more--especially since it no longer really mattered to me as much once my points were in as promissed? So did she lie or just tell me enough to satisfy me? I came across sincerely enough to not warrant such treatment, I thought.

I know mine was for far less than your deal, but would she hold back on purpose? Is there some all mighty contact mastermind guru out there who fears us all hounding them? Why is that? (and WHO is that guru?)

Ebay told me there was a person too but could not ever reveal who it was. They suck. SO does any company which offers not even a drop of accountability in this area. It is a rare place to find one's self, which actually makes it even easier for them to assume it is YOU with the problem and not them, but it is frustrating and we mileage go-getters often find ourselves at this very spot! This AA deal is NOT the only one.

But Ebay was relentless in its efforts to keep me at bay. They did a pretty good job and yet I know I could have gone further eventually. i told them I would not give up though until I saw my points. It seemed to have worked but upon reading what you said, who really knows. The only person who I could ever get a half-decent response from on things was one Brandon in CS. OK, I did not do business with them on your level but I found it rather annoying to work with them and so now I dont really want to consider doing your level or any major level of business with ebay. Not after this crap. Seriously!

Ebay touts its ability to pretty much automate everything and even their help section is supposed ot handle it all. They totally failed on this one and would not really step up to the plate and both admit it or fix it. That in itself is bad business and very annoying. They offer this cheaply plastered together not fully thought out ebay anything points project but then they pretty much laugh off all those who have any level of problem with it. We are those people but other than these final moments of grasping to get our missing points, we did actualy get the last laugh in the end. I mean, the entire thread is about finding ways to beat the system when finding workable and sometimes legal loopholes in it! Are we like that because they do it to us or is it the other way around?

Well, like I said, one cannot even contact ebay directly to find ot more. No, they are the mighty ebay, who, like some arrogant white house personnel currently hanging around (I had to say that) love to think that nothing they do is EVER wrong, and who's gonna stop them anyway?

Hmmm, something to think about when deciding to do business with giant entities like that...

I would however like to know if YOU can reveal this apparantly all-mighty source. I think it would be nice if we all had this kind of info at our disposal just in case something like this ever happens again.And you KNOW it will! (Surely they fear that as well) Maybe if thousands of FTers and other upset mileage and points personnel were to have access to the very people who put forth such deals, the darn deals would be more solid and streamline to begin with! I would imagine that this makes for more efficient business plans, but what do I know? I mean, hey, maybe they are UNITED! Ha ha ha. Wh oneeds efficiency when you can hide behind bailouts and your customer base who you can use on a daily basis like a wet paper towel?

My goal, my friend, is to find out HOW these deals work, how ot best run them for myself and others, and to make it so deals and deal makers do it right and with thoroughness in mind. Otherwise, yes, I WILL find holes and grab and scam and twist the rules or the system in my favor as best as I possibly can! I n that sense, I could be like their best market survey and I do sometimes think I should get paid for it! They are shooting themselves in the foot, these hiding deal makers, and they dont even know it sometimes. WOw.

OK, so maybe these points managers STILL dont want to be bugged by lowly customers like me, but why is that? Do they do something that makes people bug them? Are we terrorists? Did THEY ever do anything--or NOT do anything that would PROMPT a terrorist to target them anyway? What made that terrorist get mad in the first place? Or is a terrorist someone to completely ignore until they do somthing really stupid and in the very wrong way? (you can almost see some similarities here with other things in life, eh?)

Seriously, why would these unknown points and ebay anything points managers do what seems to be their very best to totally avoid any personal contact with us and put CS spins on us til they estimate that we will just give up? I mean, gee, how much time and effort and staff who get paid has been put into making it hard to get answers? Isnt that a waste? Why do people want to create waste like that?

Surely your efforts, as well as maybe mine and many others in here have paid off because many points did finally show up for many of us. But the points people still screwed a lot of this up in my opinion. Others who are still wondering where their points are from say, April, are thinking this as well, and they are still either blaming the wrong people or hitting the wall with agrevating CS dummies too! It kills us all, you know. I mean, if these marketing managers want the deals they put forth to really work for their customers, then why do they hide behind such walls when the chips go down? Or is that part of their way of doing business? It doesnt sound legit to me, which is kinda why I often dont mind being a scammer in certain mileage gigs I see out here. They do it to us, ya know? I said that already but you can see what I mean, I hope.

Well this could change but I think it's up to the people who set up the deals that they hope people will participate in. They should be wayyyy more accessible and accountable, dont you think? If not, F--k em! We'll just keep finding holes and driving THEM nuts too. It'll never end.

So, Wannaflyforless, WHO is your contact?

Do tell. It is necessary.

****WHO ARE your contacts?**** (I will find them anyway so why not just tell us? It;s not your fault but if you know, please help the FT by sharing this info now)

In other news concerning my particular case of minority, I got my last 1078 Ebay anything points to post in AA and was able to get into AA last night and today. Last night I just saw the ones I sent over from 6/28 with their associated birthday bonus. Just now, early this AM, I am able to get into AA.com and see this:

06/29/04 POINTS 3RD BIRTHDAY BONUS 0 626 626
06/29/04 POINTS.COM MILEAGE TRANSFER 501 0 501

That's my final 1078 points which are the 1000 from FTD and the 78 I left over to make this transfer doable. i had received a conf. email from points.com in my inbox for the ones from 6/28 but even though the ones from 6/29 that showed up in full in AA are now there, I have not seen any conf. email in my inbox. There's some consistency fer ya!

I will not set out to purposely and solely bug marketing managers but if they screw up, I need more than just email and forums. I mean if it was something I did on my watch, I might lose my job. Why are they suddenly amune to this possibilty and who's watching THEM?...

Anyway, I am pretty much done with the promo, but MM does not just want to be done with promos, he wants to UNDERSTAND them and use all the valuable info for next time.

And as I said, there ALWAYS WILL be a next time!

MM

RichLond

great news and thank for the effort!!

sadly however, as far as i can tell it is just you and MM that have gotten your points? they clearly know there is a problem but neither company seems inclined to fix it quicky.

i do believe we will all get FTD points but i am not counting on it being anytime soon.

rich

Hoc

Yep. The rest of us just got ripped off.

Marathon Man

wannaflyforless had some serious business with these blokes and also had a lot in stake so they listened. The work put into it by wannaflyforless probably helped get them to see there was a problem, just as some of mine might have but yeah, obviously, it was a case by case basis, which I think is wrong.

I told Kristina that she should help others and my letters and calls to the places I wrote to mentioned that many others like FT are having this same problem. I had hoped they would help us all. I find it way too sad that these places chose to do nothing. UNLESS of course, you all still write to them endlessly and demand both your points AND the compensation for their having missed the deadline for you. In other words, you may get say 1000 FTD points in July, but they will only equal about 465 AA miles which isnt even enough to transfer (hopefully, like me, you planned on this possibility an dleft about 78 points in the account so you could have 1078, which turns into 501 AA miles. that works even when there is no birthday bonus. Burgerwars can be thanked for reminding me of this one!)

So if you get the 501 miles, you still would have goten, should have gotten and deserve the remaining 625 or so miles that the points SHOULD have translated into had FTD and points.com and ebayt not F'd up!

Get me?

Go after them some more. Go in bulk. You should all get together and write it and sign it and send it. And then send it again and again.

I would.

good luck!
MM

Oh, I still wanna know WHO wannaflyforless is dealing with. We should have this name so they can explain what happened to us, right?

vasantn

Here's my latest exchange with eBay, FWIW:

Hello vasantn,

Thanks for writing back with this information. I realize how
frustrating this has been for you, and I'll be happy to help you.

I have sent your email to one of our points specialists and they will
look into this matter for you. We hope to have this resolved for you
soon. Again, I will email you as soon as I hear anything further.

I am truly sorry for any inconvenience this situation has caused you.
Thanks again for your patience and thank you for using eBay.

Regards,

Brandon G. R.
eBay Customer Support

Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

Dear Brandon:

I have called FTD and they say there is nothing they can do. They have
posted the points to my EAP account number and claim that they have no
way of reversing that credit and applying the points to my eBay UserID.

This is not acceptable.

Since eBay has access to my EAP account information as well as my eBay UserID, it should be a simple matter for eBay to fix this internally, since FTD is unable or unwilling to do it. They claim that they have been charged for
the points already and cannot reverse them.

Bottom line: if I don't get these points into my account in the next two
days, I will have spent a lot of money for nothing. I made $500 of
purchases of items that I didn't need solely to get the 20,000 AnythingPoints, to take advantage of a mileage conversion promotion that expires June 30. So in effect, this will cost me a free round-trip ticket to Europe that I was counting on, unless you can resolve this immediately.

For the record, my EAP account number is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and my eBay UserID is XXXXXX. Also, my PayPal email address is [email protected].

I await a speedy and favorable resolution.

Regards,

vasantn

Of course, it is now July 1 and the points have not shown up. I am going to try to hold eBay responsible for the additional 25,000 AnythingPoints that they morally owe me to make up for the lost bonus opportunity on the AA miles conversion.

Marathon Man

that email you got from brandon was word for word exactly like one of the ones I got from him.

they are hardly listening. You need to call FTD again and spam them both. Then points.com.
dont give up even after the fact.

I gave my contacts (kristina at FTD in above long MM posts) and maybe wannaflyforless will give the contacts up as well.

We do need to have ourselves ready for the next time if and when there is one!

wanaflyforless

Wow - I am so sorry to hear many did not recieve their points. I falsely assumed they took care of the matter for everyone - not just people like me to kept on contacting them. Both FTD and eBay realized many people were involved in this points posting problem.

My most helpful contact at FTD:
[email protected]
Juan Anaya - Medford based Senior Customer Service Specialist
(She sent me an email yesterday after confirming my points had been posted.)

You may want to contact MM's IT person: Kristina Koziel (from MM: [email protected] 630-724-6553) as MM suggested. I talked with Juan and she worked with Kristina to make sure my points got posted. I spoke to her over the phone and emailed several times. She was understanding and responsive.

My not-so helpful contact at eBay Anything Points:
[email protected]
Scott Mencken - eBay Anything Points Marketing Director
(He is able to help, but I don't think he wants to).
I have informed Scott I will forming an airline partnership instead of an Anything Points partnership. I don't want my customers to be pissed off by their points not posting!

Please note: No one gave me his contact info - I don't think anyone is allowed to. Scott contacted me first - after Brandon had forwarded several of my emails (in every email I asked for a direct contact). I doubt Brandon is allowed to give out Scott's contact info.

I hope you can get all of your points! Be persistent - and good luck!

card1953

My transaction date was 6/8/04. Several posters above indicated they got their points with transaction dates of 6/8/04 or 6/15/04. I emailed Jude at metarewards several times but never got the points. I finally emailed Sharebuilder on 6/30, and got an immediate response that up to 20 days were required to credit the points. I emailed back that 20 days elapsed on 6/28(!), and got an immediate email back that they were sorry that I missed out on the promotion, but that 20 days means 20 BUSINESS days(!), and that there was nothing they could do. Obviously, they have decided that they don't need my business. I'm going to keep hounding them till I get my 5000 points, even though I probably won't get any AA bonus. Then, I'll transfer my shares to a real brokerage account.

Still, in the end, I got over 10k AA miles via the other Metarewards partners.

paradocs

Well, I am pretty mad about all the unanswered emails and phone calls. Jude and Jeannie would not get back. Lisa at points.com wouldn't call me and 2 other people there insisted there was nothing points.com would do. My anger at their unwillingness to communicate is going to make me keep pursuing an equivalent number of anything points to what the trade would have been on 6-30.

There are some interesting news releases that can be linked to on the www.points.com site. Here is an article that tells about the liason between points and ebay back in Nov. when it was formed:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q38C213B8


In this article it lists the following person as in charge of Buyer Loyalty:

Mr. Todd Kurie
Director, Buyer Loyalty
eBay Inc.
408-376-6131
[email protected]

Do you guys think we are getting to the top if we start emailing and calling him? I'd appreciate your thoughts. And I thank the ringleaders here who posted info and tried to problem solve. What a great team effort this has been!