I would suggest complaining to Amex that on transfer of points, they triggered an account audit. EK clearly knows it harrasing it's customers and does not seem to care. Amex buys these points and at the end of the day if they put pressure then EK will change its behaviour and stop targeting people trying to use points transfers

Thanks Suley and good thinking. I will give them a few more days to respond and then will escalate with Amex.

I would also strongly recommend that no one transfers any Amex / Chase / other credit card points to Emirates until there is some reassurance that they are no longer playing games. As usual, their customer service / Skywards service on the ground pales in comparison to their service in the air.

Definitely helpful if people share their experiences and any resolutions (or lack thereof), but I don't think we'll ever get any "assurances" from EK, especially in a public way ...

I transfer a lot of points from Amex and Chase every year, including from family members into the family account, and have never had an issue to date.... but I have a very "seasoned" account at this point with a lot of history and lots of cash spend too. FWIW, I rarely use Skyward points for Awards but spend a lot on Upgrades for myself and others (including outside the family account).

As an update the process took about 6 to 8 weeks and I had to supply all kinds of proof including a signed statement, copies of my friends passport, a letter written by my friend, etc. Really obnoxious. At the end of it they finally released my account so I could use it again but I really felt this was insanity. I’ve had my account for more than a decade.

Same here, transferred a couple of times from AMEX for J to F upgrades and had no issue with my account. Hopefully, your get lifted sooner rather than later.

2.5 months later, just received an email this morning announcing the account was released from audit with a very long email restating their rules and right to audit
Just need to burn these miles and be done with Emirates

So are we allowed to upgrade friends/family not in our family account?
And side Q, my brother (not in my family account, I guess I could add him) booked cash Y, how do I go about upgrading him?

Yes.


Log into your account, go to manage booking and enter his booking details.

Thanks, he booked a saver Ticket so will try move that to a flex one. Can you access your family account points for this (upgrading with points) or only personal points?

I've no idea - don't have one.

I suspect whatever company they enlisted to do these audits used a really stupid variable to identify the clients they would do this to. I bet it was something like" If they booked more than 1 ticket for anyone OTHER than themselves using miles in the last 12 months". It just seems to be too random. Yes I am sure there was SOME Fraud out there, but I have to imagine this was just lazily done.

Based on what I read here and on various blogs, I can see where we were flagged, but it seemed ridiculous. I think there were two factors that triggered this audit:

1. Points were transferred into a relatively new account from two different Amex accounts, even though they were both under the same name and we actually had to call to get one unlinked and the other linked as it appears only one account can transfer into the EK account
2. Taxes/Surcharges were paid with an Amex card of one of the two passengers, but not the one owning the account

So, my spouse and I were on a single reservation, traveling together. Points from one person, credit card from the other person. However, single reservation, traveling together, same home address. Sure, if they want to trigger an audit or ask questions, verify data, etc. But for it to take 2.5 months? We felt uncomfortable with how it would turn out so we cancelled our award reservation and modified our trip to skip EK and Dubai.

Does anyone have any more recent news on this matter? I have a Skywards account that I’ve used primarily for redemptions as I used to earn for my paid J flights with EK into Alaska Mileage Plan. I have successfully redeemed a few times using points transferred from HSBC and AmEx Membership Rewards - approximately 9-12 months ago.

I would continue to do so if there’s some level of certainty that I won’t have a problem doing it, but points-wise the EK redemptions are already extremely expensive. The idea of transferring so many points only to have them seized under “audit” and unusable with other HSBC/AmEx partners is very unappealing.

I really hope this gets sorted. I don’t understand Emirates, really. They have so few partners already, and the few that they have they don’t seem to keep good relations with. Add to that their lousy Business Class on the majority of their fleet, and it just looks like an airline trying to fail.

A Friend of mine that is not really familiar with points is concerned because his emirates skyward is under audit and they are asking for his passport info to be sent over. A couple of years ago he transferred a million or so points to emirates from His amex account and then did not use them, so he gave the account to his son who ended up selling to a broker which caused his account to get locked. He is concerned about sending over his identification because he read online that emirates goes after people legally who sell points from their account. Is there any reassurance i can provide him that if he send over his passport to the auditing department nothing will happen and emirates only goes after people that are doing these type of selling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth not just a standard amex cardholder that decided to transfer his points had no use for them and had them sold to a broker? thank you in advance to whoever can respond much appreciated.

Selling points to a broker is against the Skywards rules, so I would expect his account will be closed and any remaining miles balance will be forefeited.