Getting cheated out of flight points. What should I do?
 

I signed up for the PremierPass elite Citicard in October and I'm an expedia.com member. I immediately made one flight purchase on expedia.com. This was in October. They told me last month that it usually takes 1-2 billing cycles for flight points to show up, even though thankyou points appear right away. So I waited until my next cycle ended yesterday. I looked at my account and it still says 0 flight points.

I called citibank today and they said they have no evidence from whomever I purchased this ticket that the flight was complete (er, it's an expedia card and I bought it from expedia). They told me to fax them my itinerary from that flight, which I did. I then called back and was put on this insane runaround of the following explanations:

1. It takes 1-2 billing cycles from the time the flight was taken, not purchased (I bought the ticket the day before I took the flight - bad excuse)

2. It takes 1-2 billing cycles after the first billing cycle for the flight points to appear, so I should get them in January (...??)

3. It takes 1-2 billing cycles after I send in the faxed evidence (and it takes 24-48 hours for the fax to be received [...???], which according to their calculations would mean that it would be 1-2 billing cycles after the January billing cycle, so I should get my flight points for my October flight in MARCH)

4. They don't currently have a partnership with Expedia, so my credit card couldn't possibly have this "alleged flight point feature"

5. I'm completely confused and there's no such thing as flight points. Flight points are simply thankyou points, and look, I received thankyou points for October, so what am I complaining about?

6. I'm completely confused and there's no such thing as flight points. Flight points are simply what citibank refers to as frequent flier miles, which are earned directly by the airline.

7. (in a subtle variation of #6) Flight points do exist, but are generated by the airline, not by citibank. So it's not really citibank's issue. I would have to take it up with the airline.

8. Citibank does generate flight points, but we don't grant them without mailed evidence. So you would receive flight points 1-2 billing cycles after mailing a copy of your ticket to us. You didn't know that? Yes, you have to mail every ticket to us, otherwise how will we know you flew? Yes, I'm sure it says that in your agreement. I can give you the address if you need it. That's why it's so important to look at your terms and conditions.

9. (after some desperation at seeing #1-8 countered and READING her the terms and conditions) Look, sir, we're a credit card company. To deal with bonuses and rewards and all of that, you should call up expedia. That's not what we do here. And I can't help you. And yes, I'm the manager and I've never heard of all of this flight point stuff, so it's clearly a special deal you have with expedia or continental or something. No, you may not speak to another manager. But I'll put in a note on your account to have it looked at at some point. Or maybe to have someone call you. Or something.

So having gotten nowhere with them, I called up expedia and they pretty much said that flight points are a citibank thing and I have to talk to them about it.

I've purchased several thousand dollars in tickets since October to various parts of the world, and while I was patient enough to wait the 1-2 billing cycles for the flight points to appear, I'm not worried that I'm going to have to go through this sort of thing for the dozens of flights I've taken, faxing and mailing and staying on hold and arguing for months on end only to be dead-ended with a series of "It's not us, call X".

I want to know how to make sure I'm getting what I'm entitled to. Who do I talk to? And are other people having this same problem? How long does it take for you to get your flight points? It seems absurd that I would have an EXPEDIA card, purchase tickets through EXPEDIA and that there's no communication between EXPEDIA and the EXPEDIA card to say, "Yes, he flew, here are the number of miles". It shows the trip as complete on expedia, it shows it as complete on continental, hell, it shows it as complete on CITIBANK. But they need proof that I took the trip???

Please help!

Which card you used to purchase your tickets?
 

I called citibank today and they said they have no evidence from whomever I purchased this ticket that the flight was complete (er, it's an expedia card and I bought it from expedia).

I am confused - you said you bought your tickets using an Expedia card on Expedia.com at the beginning of your post.

I believe you only get flight points on flights purchased using the PPE or the PP card. Does Expedia has its own version of the PPE card?

Flight points dont show up until the following billing cycle (at the minimum) AFTER the flights are complete.

Flight points dont turn into ThankYou points until you have equal amount of purchase / spending points to match them.

The only glitches I see the PPE has so far, from our own experiences:

1) Citi system only has the ability to automatically track 4 segments - if the itinerary is longer than 4 segments, the remaining segments are all lost. You have to manually send them the supports for those missing segments.

2) Tickets bought outside US do not show up at all. Those definitely require manual processing.

Thanks for your response,

It does. The exact title of my card is the "Citi Expedia.com PremierPass Elite Level MasterCard" (whew!) The additional benefit of the expedia PPE card is that I get an additional TYP for all purchases made through expedia including flights without hotels.

The flight began 10/8 and it ended 10/10. So even with two billing cycles, I should have gotten credited when my second cycle closed yesterday. The October cycle closed on the 18th for me, then November 18th, and now December 18th. I definitely should have received the flight points.

Yes, but the statement is supposed to tell you that I earned flight points, with a separate section to say how many were transferred. Mine says 0 across the board, which isn't correct.

Have your purchases on Expedia EVER show up on your statement with the tickets details?

The billing cycle you purchased your tickets, the TICKET NUMBERS and the Itinerary, should have shown up on your statement. If the details dont show up, simply a purchase amount, then you would have a problem. You should have contacted Citi right then, to make sure the TICKET NUMBERS are attached to the purchase amount.

The flight points are tracked by ticket number, fwiw.

Have you talked to ThankYou Network, or you only talk to the credit card side?

It sounds to me Expedia has not transmitted the ticket information to Citi when they sent the billing. The only way to tell is, if the info is being sent correctly, your card statement would have shown the Continental ticket number as well as the itinerary, right on the statement body itself, underneath the purchase amount.

Yes, all of the tickets I purchased showed up correctly on the statement - it mentions the itinerary and the ticket number (assuming by ticket number, the ID that said something like Continental4858389393 is it). It even displayed the departure date. So that doesn't appear to be the problem. Here's what it looks like (numbers changed)

CONTINEN00123456789 ATLANTA GA
NAME: Doe/John
DEPART: 10/08/08
ORD TO IAH : CO: CLASS: H : STOP: O
IAH TO ORD : CO: CLASS: H : STOP:

I haven't talked to thankyou network yet. Just citi and expedia and they just point fingers at each other right now. So my biggest question is, with whom do people normally take up these problems, since it involves multiple parties - thankyou, citibank, expedia and the airline. And two of them refuse to help.

I have the Expedia card. I attempted to pull up my earliest statements, but they have them archived so they aren't online. Here's what I can tell you about my current statement:

It's divided into sections as follows:

Payments, Credits, Adjustments
Standard Purchases
Account Summary
Rate Summary

In the Rate Summary section, under PURCHASES and ADVANCES, is a list of Thank You points I earned for travel (ticket number, statement date, travel date, origin/dest, points earned). On my Dec. 12 statement, I have statement dates (purchase dates) ranging from Aug. 14 to Oct. 15, and travel dates ranging from Oct. 23 to Nov. 6.

So yes, your points should have posted if your travel was in Oct. I do seem to remember that it took longer than I expected for the flight points to post at first, but since I can't see those statements, I can't give you a first-hand report.

For those whom have had problems with flight points, who do you usually call to discuss the issues?

yes, it should have worked and it should have posted by now. all the explanations given our bogus.

Did they confirm receiving your fax?

In 4 years with this program I've had to fax in itineraries only twice, and both times a follow up phone call got the points credited quickly (can't remember the details because it has been a while).

I hate to be dense, but did you talk with a supervisor at the 800 number on the back of your PPE Expedia card after confirming they have your fax in hand? They should know the t&cs of the program, this is TYN 101, it's not rocket science.

Call Citi PremierPass customer service number on the back of your card and request for flight point credit. If they ask for a proof, refer to your statement showing the above information.

I've always called the number on the back of the card and the CSRs always knew what I was talking about. I've also used the e-mail system when logged into my citicards.com account and have had success there as well. However, I never had a problem with flight points posting if the correct airport codes and date of travel were posted to my statement. I only called them if the airline or travel agent did not post the airport codes, so it didn't show up on my statement. Then they would tell me to mail in copies of the boarding passes which I did. A couple of weeks later they would mail me a letter stating how many flight points would be credited to my account. When my next statement closed I would see that amount in the 'points adjusted' section under flight points earned. If there were enough purchase points to match those flight points then they would be transferred to my TYN account. Otherwise, they are held until enough purchase points post to match up to the flight points.

I had an issue with flights points from a flight in August. I called the CSR after two billing cycles (note this is the PremierPass people not the ThankYou Network people). I sent them a hard copy of my boarding pass and a letter to an address in Florida somewhere.

Next billing cycle and the miles were posted.


If anything, the PPE CSRs are some of the best credit card support people with whom I have ever spoken.

So I'm on the phone with citibank now. Here's what they're saying:

In order to receive flight points using the EXPEDIA premierpass card, flight points must be redeemed. In order to redeem flight points, a copy of the boarding pass must be mailed in. And within 7-10 business days after receiving them, they will post. They said that using the EXPEDIA premierpass card is different from using the regular premierpass card and that sending in the tickets is required to get the flight points.

Obviously this shows up nowhere in the T&C. When I pointed this out, they said it's because the T&C's are incorrect.

So before I escalate this, I want to throw this back to the board here. Who here is using the EXPEDIA PremierPass card? Have you received your flight points automatically? If so, how long after did you receive them?

I'm not using the Expedia card, but that's wacky. Isn't the Expedia PPE just a co-branded PPE with the same T&Cs? I guess it's an assumption on my part, but it's hard to imagine they would require such labor-intensive behavior on the part of their customers. IF that were the case, why wouldn't you just switch to the regular PPE?

What do they mean by "flight points must be redeemed?"

I would assume this was a one time screwup, mail them in, and see what happens with your next flight.

If the card requirees you to send in the boarding passes, that is a lot of work to keep track of. I would suggest you confirm one more time by calling and asking to speak to a supervisor and if they confirm that process, then just switch to a PPE Elite level which does not require you to send in the boarding passes.

I only send boarding passes when:

1) purchased out of country
2) longer than 4 segs.

Have yet had an issue with the posting of the points.

When you mailed in the BPs for the itinerary longer than 4 segs, did you mail all the BPs on the same ticket in, or just the BPs for the missing segs? Have you had any case that the ticket had been re-issued, thus bore a different ticket number and date of travel? I have a 13 segs trip coming up. Therefore I would like to know how you handle it.

I did not realised the 4 segs limitation, and threw away the BPs of the return leg. By the time I realized my flight pt balance was much smaller than I thought, it was too late. Luckily I did not have any purchase pts bal left to match the "threw aways".