Comped Status

I'd like to get people's thoughts on the following:
I received a card in the mail yesterday from Continental granting me silver elite status from Aug 1st to Nov. 15th. In that time, if I fly 3 R-T flights, I will get Silver through Feb 2004. If I fly 6 R-Ts, I get Gold through Feb. 2004.

I'm currently Gold on DL, and do most of my flying on DL. I usually back that up with UA. The last CO flight I took was in December of 1999.
To that end, what do people think? Is this worth it? Are there good "R-T" runs that I could do do make the cuts for Gold? How successful are Silver in getting upgrades? How does CO compare to DL vis-a-vis treatment of its elites?

I was a silver for a few years, and also a gold for a few. The upgrades are OK as a Silver provided you are able to get to the airport early, and don't fly on very business popular routes such as transcons. As a gold, my upgrade success is still just as bad as it was when I was a silver.

My benefit with being Elite is the airlines treatment of you is slightly better. "Elite checkin" lines and all of that is only slightly better since now checkin is by E-machine and the first class/elite line was usually just as long as the coach one.

Did you do anything to get this free trial period? Why would it not surprise me if Continental just randomly sent you an invitation. They must be looking at trips booked with Delta on your charge card... I heard they buy that information from the credit card company.

I did absolutely nothing to get the comp. It just arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

No offense, but these comps are a good reason to NOT allow mileage accrual on continental.com specials.

Is this legal? Isn't that an invasion of privacy? Maybe I should check the contract with my credit card company.

- Pat

i enjoy the different faces in the same post.

Remember all those little booklets you got last year from your bank and credit card companies? That was due to a change in the rules regarding the selling of your information. Somewhere in the small print was info telling you how to opt out. I didn't do it either...

Why?


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Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre c'est impossible sans Concorde!
~ConcordeBoy

I think Diners Club must do this more than any other credit card company. Fortunately, this results in the occassional good offer! I think the best special offer ever was a free roundtrip after completing your first two roundtrips, in addition to the Rapid Rewards credits earned.

CO/NW are far better at upgrading domestically than DL. I never fly the correct fare class to get up front on DL.

Also in my opinion DL does not have many promotions for miles. CO/NW does. You get status miles on both CO/NW (as well as other partners). During the comp promo you probably must fly CO (maybe codeshare) to qualify.

If you were going to get gold quickly on CO you wouldn't lose too many bonus miles during the transition. CO/NW silver get 50 percent (not like DL Silver 25 percent)

Personally I would make the switch unless you fly in markets primarily served by DL and not by CO/NW.


[This message has been edited by freqflyNW (edited 07-27-2002).]