At my suggestion, a friend of mine who would love to fly the Concorde some day signed up for a BA frequent flyer number (she did this at my house, and I wrote the number down)and a First USA BA Visa. She had the card for about two years, racking up thousands of miles. Or so she thought, since every month her visa bill would tell her how many miles had been transferred to her account.

During that time she didn't fly BA, and got no statements from them. Recently she canceled the VISA card (because of an argument over some charges that appeared on her bill for stuff she had not purchased). NOw it turns out that they have Never forwarded any miles to BA. They have no explanation for where the miles went, and have basically told her that at this point she's not a customer and there's nothing she can do about it. She does have copies of her old statements. Any suggestions?

Drop me an email and I will send you a name and phone number that may help, especially if your friend opens a new First USA BA card to which the miles can be added. I recommend opening the new account before asking for the credit, since that (a) is a gesture of good faith and (b) will make it much simpler for FirstUSA to help. As with any card, I believe that you have a month or so in which to return the cards without owing the annual fee, if you haven't used them.

And remember to be polite when you are asking FirstUSA or any other business for a favor. Think it through from their point of view before you ask.

Success will probably depend on whether or not FirstUSA can determine where the miles went. Are you sure that BA did not create a second account for your friend in which the miles were deposited? I have no idea which company (BA or FirstUSA) benefits if the account number is invalid and the miles don't post, but my guess is that it's BA, not FirstUSA. Check this with FirstUSA so that you are not asking them to pay BA twice.

That's a really sad story. To anyone else that may read this and be unfamiliar with how mileage programs work, every mileage program that I'm aware of will send you a statement in the mail for each statement period (usually monthly) where any activity occurs, even if it's not flight activity. Getting no statements at all from BA after a few months should have been a sure-fire sign that something was wrong in this case. I'm not saying that the victim of this most likely administrative error is at fault for not knowing this, but perhaps someone else will benefit from reading this message.

IMHO the greatest mistake of all made here was actually doing business with FirstUsa....

I have a FirstUSA BA (formerly CHASE BA-Visa) card since a couple of years. The miles are posted to BA before I even get the paper statement.
The statement shows how many miles earned in that period; the miles are always correct posted.
She should have gotten statements from BA - even when she was not flying!
As somebody already suggested, the miles may be sitting at BA in another "dead" account.
I would call BA again and let BA search for the account, and may be send BA the old statements. I believe the miles are not lost.
BTW, FirstUSA's agents/supervisors are not very friendly. I had a "discussion" with them about the amount of interest rates they where charging. They where sending out checks with 3.5%, and I deposited them to my 5.75% bank account. However, FirstUSA charged more, I still made a small profit.

Thanks, all. The truth is that for most of teh past couple of years, BA has rarely sent Me timely statements, despite regular infusions of First USA and Diners miles. (When we fly BA, we usually put the miles on AA, where we're elite.)During that time their website was awful, too (if you had a household account you had to log on and off for each member to get the total, and nothing was itemized) so I always got my totals by phone from Customer Service. So that alone would not be a red flag for me.

I feel terrible because this is a person I was introducing to the wonderful world of miles, points, upgrades, et al, and I was the one who convinced her to bag her free credit card and go with a miles-accumulating one.