Skymiles Account Suspended
 

Hello everyone,

I tried to access my Delta account and I kept getting an error message. I called customer service and it seems my account is under investigation as they stated that I was trying to match with fake airline accounts which is completely false. I fly primarily Delta for years, have an Amex Delta card, and have almost 200k flyer miles. The thought of matching has never crossed my mind.

The rep thinks someone was using my number or a similar skymiles number and submitted it numerous times triggering the flag. The rep submitted a fraud case form, so no telling how long that will take. I was never notified about this activity. Has anyone ever had this happen? Any guidance is appreciated.

Do you have a common name? If you're John Smith, some other John Smith could be trying to get a high tier status match or status challenge from another airline using your account details. I don't see how this would work with different names.

BTW, I wasn't aware that DL is notified when one tries to do a status match/challenge to another airline using one's DL status.

What's your current DL status level?

Have you noticed any security breaches (email hacks, suspicious credit card transactions, miles or points deducted from any account)? In fact, can you verify with a DL agent that no award tickets were issued from your account and that your email address on it has not been changed?

Somewhat common, my status is Gold. I told them I actually have accounts with other airlines, but Delta is my highest. Rep mentioned it was submitted to match with United, Alaska, and AA highest statuses. I didn’t even know what matching was until I googled it while she had me I hold. I haven’t noticed anything strange in my Amex Delta card alerts.

You may have an evil twin with the same name somewhere out there. IIRC in the recent past, there were people selling status that were essentially requesting status matches for their customers somehow, although there were some apparent hotel inside jobs involved as well as someone who was creating corporate email addresses with companies that were eligible to have their employees receive comped status or particularly good status matches/challenges.

BTW, you might want to remind DL that with your level of flying, it would be pointless to try to match/challenge for status on more than one alternative airline. You don't fly enough to maintain status on AA, UA and AS, and it wouldn't be very sensible to try.

Well it seems I’m on the receiving end of this issue. I travel pretty frequently for work and I always request Delta flights from my travel coordinator even with connections. Is there a number to the fraud department you know of? The rep had to put me on hold to reach out to the skymiles desk who had to reach out to someone else from there.

IIRC from previous discussions here, you can't call the fraud/audit department. Normally they contact you by email.

I'm confused by your "receiving end" comment. I had understood that someone was trying to use your account's status to get status with AA, UA, and AS. Do you mean that they were apparently requesting high status for your account? It could be a typo, but it could also be someone planning to sell an award ticket from your miles to someone who wants to fly with status.

When your DL account gets unlocked, you probably should change the password. You might want to consider changing other passwords too.

Receiving end meaning me paying the price for someone else’s activity. Apologies for the confusion. It’s the other way around, they were requesting high statuses for my account with fake accounts from those airlines or like you said sell award tickets. I am pretty selfish with my points, I’d rather use cash than my points, lol. So me selling selling them to someone wouldn’t even be worth it. Thanks for responding though, I guess the most I can do is keep calling and wait for the fraud department to email me with the status.

Your SM account was either hacked or you're using the account for other purposes. This flags your account.

Lots of things missing to the story if you have 200K miles but still gold. GL OP

I interpret 200K as the number of REDEEMABLE miles in the account, This isn't inconsistent with GM status.

If someone is trying to *increase* the status of someone else's account, I would guess that the person plans to somehow use that account unless it's just a typo in the account number.

Absolutely not using the account for other purposes. I don’t see lots missing to the story, my accumulated points from Amex, Lyft, flights etc are my miles. If you have questions ask them. I’m here looking for guidance. I’m not far off from hitting platinum with projected work travel for the remainder of the year. So doing something fraudulent on my end does not make sense to jeopardize that, especially when I travel for a living.

Hmmm....my read is that one of OP's other status accounts was hacked and the hackers didn't know about Delta status, so hacker was leveraging other status to get Delta status.

OP, can you clarify?

This happened to me and it was quite unpleasant, particularly because one day I just logged in and found my account locked and my miles inaccessible. Would have been nice to have some warning from delta, instead it was very stressful because I needed to book something for the following week.

In the end they cleared the whole thing up in a few days but it was not fun.

Not OP, but my understanding reading this.

OP had DL status. Someone went to all of UA, Alaska and AA applying for status matches and presented OP's DL status as their credential to participate in a status match with these other airlines. Somehow DL was alerted to this and therefore suspended OP's account while they investigate.

How DL became aware of this is unknown, some possibilities that come to mind:
1) Airlines have some type of system to verify the status level of match applicants with other non-alliance airlines,
2) The name of the person applying for the status match didn't match the OP's, this would raise a red flag. One (or multiple) airlines could have notified DL this was occurring given the airlines, as a whole, have an incentive, as a whole, to detect and prevent fraud. IMO this is the most likely scenario, as I suspect corporate security at each airline knows corporate security at the other airlines and would maintain some level of collegiality even though the airlines are competitors (i.e. if I work at UA but suspect someone is trying to present me fraudulent DL credentials, I would FYI DL, because I would want them to do the same for me if the roles were reversed).
3) Someone came into a copy of OP's credentials showing DL whether that be via acquiring access to their account, or some other unknown method, and attempted to sell that credentials online as proof to use towards a status match with another airline. All airlines aggressively monitor any attempts to sell/barter with their products.

No airline is going to verify flighr activity to another.

1)This would be counter productive from business stand point. (This type of information is worth big $$$)
2)There's legal issues sharing information even among related companies.

Agreed. Thanks to COVID, I haven't flown much at all over the past 2 years, yet I have over 200K miles in my account as well.