Dirty_Idea

I'm getting a bit frustrated with Emirates. Here's the situation. I have miles that will expire before my flight SYD LHR next Feb. I have Gold membership.

I browsed a bunch of flights and had some flexibility on options. So I called Emirates to check if there was upgrade availability. The agent told me there was but not on all flights, so to check which flights were preferred and call back. I called back 15 minutes later and got a different agent. They told me there is zero upgrade availability on any flights from what he could see, but if I bought the tickets with him as I was Gold he was pretty sure I would be able to upgrade once the tickets were issued. I went ahead and bought the Flex Y tickets. He then informed me that there was no availability but that he would waitlist me. And that was it, just "tough luck". That was 5 days back and they haven't yet come through (not overly surprised, but noted some people have them in 24 hours).

Today I noticed, hidden at the bottom of a very slow loading site (i.e. it didn't even load the whole page many times I browsed) a featured offer for me that says I can get cheaper miles upgrades if I book and upgrade immediately in the same session. This requires me to pay for the ticket and then upgrade from MMB. I called Emirates and they basically said "the waitlist might work out, might not" but that to avail offers I had to use the website. They couldn't explain whether there would be availability through the offer and if so why I was waitlisted. My miles run out 6 days before I fly out (and my return is a week later) so if the waitlist fails I lose the ability to upgrade at check-in etc and all miles. I asked how much it would cost to cancel my current booking if I now booked online and got the upgrade. $250...

So I'm stuck. Maybe the website offer will just dump me in the same position: show no upgrades available once I've bought the ticket, in which case I'll need to pay $250 to refund that booking for no benefit, or buy a more expensive flex plus that I don't need just to be able to refund at no cost.

One option would be to check if the upgrade is available with a flex plus, then cancel it and rebook with a flex to get the upgrade and then cancel my original booking, but there's the chance the offer might vaporise.

I'm kicking myself for believing the agent that basically said "buy from me and it will all work out, it's your best option" and then left me empty handed. But mostly I'm just annoyed that they keep playing bait and switch.

Has anyone used the miles upgrade offer from their account page and had it fail to offer availability? Does Emirates have a reliable 24 hour cancellation policy?

Thanks for your thoughts

EDIT: For clarity, the offer page I'm talking about says:

Miles upgrade offers

Spend fewer Miles to enjoy a new level of comfort. Once you’ve booked your flight, just go to Manage Your Booking and book an upgrade * immediately. It’s that easy.

m3red

upgrades to oz are quite tricky - you can pay and,extend your miles so they won�t expire and hope availability turns up.

If you want to upgrade to J and guarantee it, you need availability at the time of booking. No guarantees you will get a seat now.

Dirty_Idea

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, that's how it looks. I fiddled around and basically struggle to find any availability for saver rewards so wonder if there's ever upgrade availability when the flight goes on sale. It's not helped by the system bugging out the whole time and returning different results (no data errors on upgrade costs when booking Y, no availability one minute then re-searching gives classic rewards numbers, etc), it seems to be having a problem with rewards. The other frustrating aspect is I've done pretty well on op-ups previously. No complaints on that in itself, but these games seem to frequently not get them the outcome they want.

It's 120K miles going down the drain. We just haven't had the chance to use them because of covid. I was meant to be travelling this last week. Really sour. For extending I guess it would be 50K this year, 50K in new year, then 20K of expired. That's $2400.... a fare whack of money for miles that expired days before and on the off-chance I'll get an upgrade 6 days later. Add that to the cost of the economy flight, plus another 70K in unexpired miles used for upgrade, plus the cost of transport both ways for both journeys and you're getting close to the price of a business saver fare which would also help me retain gold.

Not sure what other options I have. Might be worth paying the change fee to rebook for a potential date I need to be in Europe next year that has upgrades (conferences already have dates set) and just buying business for this one. Any other ideas, perhaps?

EDIT: I've done reward flight searches out to the end of the booking calendar. I didn't cover every combo, so of course I may have missed some dates, but I could find not one flight offering Saver Reward booking availability, so basically there are no miles upgrades offered for an entire year. Is it any better for first class upgrades? This feels like a bit of a con, what's the point in advertising miles upgrades if they have zero availability for your country? It's not like I can swim to Jakarta.

JudeS

I think that any sort of miles upgrades out of SYD are few and far between at the moment and this situation will probably continue until there is another SYD/DXB flight added to the schedule. I am travelling in J(flex) from LGW to SYD in two weeks - booked back in June, and have been trying to upgrade to F using miles ever since and it looks highly unlikely that upgrade will happen as F is now pretty full on all legs, having been wide open at time of booking. I will keep trying and might get lucky at check-in but I have never had this problem before Covid, but then there were three daily flights instead of the two at the moment. I have called many times but not yet found an agent who can help.

Kenn Gerdes

In my experience, an award upgrade offer requires a Y flex plus booking to be able to use the offer of lower miles instead of standard rate.

I have a couple of times used this kind of offer and usually it works out with no problem. Once I had to call Emirates to rectify right after booking as the upgrade page didn�t reflect the offer, only the standard upgrade rate. The agent on the phone should be able to se the upgrade offer associated with your booking and fix it, just stand firm on the offered rate.

What I am trying to say, if you see an award upgrade offer at the time of booking you should be able to get that. No guarantees however, if someone is able to snap the award offer ten seconds faster than you or something. But in general terms I would go for the offer.

Dirty_Idea

Wow, that's frustrating. Thanks for letting me know. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that my Skywards miles don't have any value. Award flights are well over the 120K that's expiring and there's no saver reward, there's no miles upgrades. Guess I look at buying something from the store or using them for a hotel, but they don't seem very good value there either. Took me some time to save these up and now I can't use them. Oh well.

I noticed this too. I also noticed that when you can actually avail the offer the upgrade changes from "Eligible" to "Upgrade Available" on the price overview for the different types of Economy ticket. Only found out by searching other routes. Emirates need to be a bit clearer about this in the offer page. As it stands you are given the offer - with a bunch of caveats, but also with the impression that basically an upgrade is there for the taking. You go through the booking and get to the class choice page and it says "Eligible XXXXX miles". That sounds like you should book the flight and you can upgrade. It's only when you hover your mouse over the word "eligible" that it tells you there's actually no availability. If you've seen a flight WITH availability you know how it's meant to look, but for someone who hasn't it's highly misleading.

JudeS

I have never tried it but can you not use expiring miles as part payment for a ticket under the cash + miles option? Book a fully flex seat for some date in the future. Save wasting miles. I have 45k expiring at the end of November but I believe you can spend miles in Dubai Duty Free, so that is probably what I will do if no upgrade is forthcoming.

Kenn Gerdes

I agree. The Emirates Skywards rules in wording can be highly frustrating. In the game of optimizing value of miles, with Emirates you only learn it the hard way.

I can still remember the fruitless battle I had with Emirates a year ago. Wanted to upgrade with miles from My Family account as per Skywards rules for the My Family account. Only catch is, you can�t avail upgrade offer (lower miles than standard rate) from My Family account. The wording clearly states the family account can be used for award upgrade, no exclusion on upgrade offer.

Your own finding on eligible vs available is just another situation where the wording can be misleading. Only know the hard way.

Dirty_Idea

Colour me unimpressed. Cathay have business flights for 6.5K. it's not Emirates business by a long shot, but it's a strong product and I get points I have a chance of using. Think I'll scrub this Emirates flight and get a refund., I'll use the points for a hotel and swear myself off Emirates until I can actually redeem points on flight again.

Krz

BTW I would like to have option to concert Skywards miles into hotel points.

JudeS

You can book hotels using Skywards miles.

A4K

Booked J award for my wife out of my account. If we want to upgrade that from J to F would the miles need to come out of my account or her account? Or does it not matter?

modularmayhem

Doesn't matter. Can be from either account