Getting back expired miles
 

Hi all,

Long story short I got the 40k Barclay frontier card Jan 2015, apparently a month or so before they announced 6-month expiration. I just found out today they must have deleted them probably 10/2015 since last use of cars was 4/15. Needless to say I'm pissed, I didn't see an email from them, they never warned about impending expiry and the 40k is the entire reason I got the card. I only found out they were gone bc Barclay is renewing my card and I'm trying to decide whether to keep. Any thoughts on whether talking to either Frontier or Barclay might help? I MIGHT be willing to renew the card for reinstating the points but that is not ideal.

I'm so mad. Any help greatly appreciated!

Some people have been offered reinstatements by Frontier if they purchased additional miles. I don't know how much you'd have to purchase and if it is even an official policy but its a possibility. Call the Early Returns desk and find out.

I would be curious if anybody had luck getting their points back, and how.

I also lost my points.

Thanks
 

Thanks guys, I'll try to call both Frontier and Barclay today and report back.

Same here. Not only did my points vanish with no email notification (I was still aligning my earning based on the old 18 month rule until finding out last year's change just today on FT), but they closed my account outright as I can no longer log-in.

Here's the story so far: Called Frontier and got to a human. I was argumentative and he said I could use the barclay card, or book a flight, or use points.com to buy points, and that any of these would then reinstate the miles. I was dubious and asked for documentation (i.e., a website stating that this was their policy) but then he hung up on me. He provided an email address before he did so so feel free to try: [email protected].

I called again and was nice. The lady basically didn't answer my question but insisted that we update my account with current information. Doing so required that I be on hold for about 5 minutes. She then came back and said that I could either book a flight or buy Frontier points on points.com, and that if I did the latter I would need to wait a few hours after the new points post to the EarlyReturns account, then call in again and ask them to reinstate my old points and they would. She said you had to buy at least 1k points (that's the min anyway) and that it would cost $10. She also said that using my mastercard to generate activity would NOT revive the points (??).

So I created a points.com login and 1k points is about $26. So now I'm facing the prospect of paying $26 to MAYBE claw back 40k in points that are notoriously hard to spend. What do you all think, should I try? I of course can't find documentation about the points.com method online anywhere.

You need to read this thread: Frontier giving erroneous expiration dates for miles

I got my miles reinstated and my wife's also. Didn't have to pay them anything, (if they told me I had to, I would have refused). Read the whole thread. Be firm but civil with them.

Good luck.

Thanks. In my case though, I didn't have any activity for 6 months, and during that period I don't recall checking for an expy date on the login. So I'm not sure my argument was as good as yours.

In any case, I'll just follow the rep's advice and call in once the 1k miles are credited and see if they'll credit the rest. For all the complaining about this program, they have decent availability for the 20k roundtrips so it'd be nice to use them.

Resolution
 

So points.com is weird. First, after I made the login, I could find no way to purchase points of any kind—only exchange or redeem them. So I had to google points.com buy frontier points or similar to find a page where I could buy them.

Once I bought them, there was no immediate email confirmation as was promised—I recommend taking a screen shot of the confirmation page.

The 1k miles showed up in my Frontier account about 12 hours later, along with an email showing same. I waited about 3 hours, as instructed, and called in, giving my reason as "to reinstate my miles." He said it would take him several minutes on hold with his support team to do this, which I said was fine. He already knew what I was doing—using the 1k from points.com to get my old points back—but I'm not sure if he knew because of notes in my account or because this is a general policy.

After about 5-10 minutes on hold he came back and said all the points had been reinstated. I checked 5 minutes later and they're all there.

So the moral is that at least in my case, with no activity since April and with points that expired some time in December, I was able to get them reinstated for $26 (which also gave me an extra 1k miles). (Keep in mind that all of my deleted points were accrued shortly *before* the 3/7/15 change to 6-month expiration...no idea if that made a difference.) I would of course have preferred no cancelation in the first place, or a warning of cancelation, or a free reinstatement, but I didn't want to spend more time arguing. Overall I feel OK about the whole thing considering I had assumed I'd get nothing back.

I tried to redeem for magazine trying to extend the miles on Feb 5. Have not heard from them, checked back today the miles are still there and the magazine page shown unavailable.

Anyone knows what happens to the magazine with Frontier? Thanks!

I'm pretty sure that the only thing that works to "extend" the miles expiration date is accrual of miles - not the spending of miles (which I assume you're attempting with the magazine trick).

For some airlines, all it requires in some "activity" (any positive or negative change) in your account, so in that case, spending a few miles on things like magazine subscriptions works. For Frontier, I don't think that's going to work - must find a way to add miles to your account, not subtract them.

This is a scam. The letter you got warned of expiring mileage, and encouraged you to buy magazines with your miles. It implies, but does not explicitly say, that doing so will extend your miles. I got the same scam, and was duped. Buying magazines with miles does NOT extend your miles. You need to accrue mileage at Frontier to extend your miles.

Thank you for posting your experience. I was offered the same "solution" today and will give it a try.

I would point out that if you have Frontier Credit card and use it occasionally you will generate point which will keep you account alive.

Also I've found that ThankAgain is a pretty painless way to generate some points you can direct to most FF programs, especially if your airport (like ATL) has them for pretty much everything, including airport parking.

Thanks for the points.com information and tip. I now find myself in a similar situation, and will have to try this out.

-db