Note to LatinPass Million Milers
 

Saw this on GPs site this morning

Note to LatinPass Million Milers

The LatinPass Bonus Miles you earned during the LatinPass era may be used in GlobalPass’ new line of products and services as long as you earn GlobalMiles with purchases or transfer miles from participating Transfer Programs.

In its evolution from the LatinPass “airline frequent flyer program”, GlobalPass has changed its business model to reflect the current needs of its customers and become a unique travel solution in today’s market place. GlobalPass has replaced its participating airline and award travel function with an online Web Airline booking engine that gives its customers 24/7 access to over 500 airlines around the world using the new concept of “Miles as Money”. Customers may use their GlobalMiles as a currency to purchase airline tickets on the world’s airlines. No restrictions(*), no blackouts(*), travel whenever you desire.

The new GlobalPass model also provides its customers with the option of purchasing airline tickets with their credit cards and earn 4 GlobalMiles per dollar spent. In addition, the customer can earn points or miles from their credit card’s mileage program. And on top of all these benefits, the customer can earn miles in their airline’s frequent flyer program when he or she is the traveling passenger. Triple dipping!!!

You no longer need to fly to earn GlobalMiles. By shopping in the GlobalPass Mall you can earn up to 25 GlobalMiles per dollar spent with over 300 online merchants.

We want to remind you that your LatinPass Bonus Miles have value in the new GlobalPass program. For example, for every ONE MILE earned with or transferred to GlobalPass, we will release ONE BONUS MILE from your LatinPass Bonus Mile balance.

Once you have earned or transferred sufficient GlobalMiles you will be able to use Miles as Money with participating Service Providers. Miles as Money allow customers to purchase products and services using GlobalMiles as a form of payment.

As we continue to improve the GlobalPass model by adding new product and services, we will continue being diligent in protecting your ability to utilize your LatinPass Bonus Miles and trust that you will remain an active customer.

Sincerely,

GlobalPass Customer Care Center

(*) Restrictions and blackouts may apply depending on the specific airfare rules and conditions

Am i thick?

What does this mean:

The LatinPass Bonus Miles you earned during the LatinPass era may be used in GlobalPass’ new line of products and services as long as you earn GlobalMiles with purchases or transfer miles from participating Transfer Programs.

"as long as you earn GlobalMiles" well, does that mean I have to earn those miles to redeem my Latinpass miles?

That's the way I read it.

I actually tried to use this system yesterday (spent a long time on phone with LP/GP) What I was told: I have to earn new miles to use bonus miles.

Here is what I tried to do and the eventual outcome. I tried to purchase a ticket LAX-JFK in August using miles. Ticket was available on United Airlines site for 212.90 taxes included. Figured why buy the ticket with all the LP miles still available. Lowest ticket price to buy ticket with Global Pass booking engine identical flight on United Airlines was $350. A $350 ticket cost 48,000 miles in GP program, still I figured what the hell I am going to loose the miles anyway and tried to book with miles. I was told I had to earn 24,000 more miles before I could book using my bonus miles. I suggested since I was Diamond in Hilton and had probably one hundred or so stays in the program in the past couple of years and all the miles were credited to Global Pass that I had plenty of earned miles to use with my bonus miles. It was explained to me that when you redeem an award they use all your earned miles first and than they use any bonus miles in the account. Since I recently had two tickets to Costa Rica issued they had used all my earned miles and I had only bonus miles available.

In order to get a ticket using miles I would have to earn 24,000 more miles in the GP program, and they do not even have an airline that participates in the program anymore. I bought the ticket from United and changed my earning preference with Hilton out of the Global Pass Program.

Without any airlines participating in this program it can no longer be considered a frequent flyer program, and honestly this board should be discontinued at the end of this month when award tickets and mile earning opportunities are no longer available.

They are taking the p*ss. Given the difficulty of obtaining awards on KL, I still have a substantial amount of LP bonus miles to use.
The Miles for Money system constitutes in the first place a massive devaluation, as it costs far more in Miles for Money to get a ticket than it would under traditional awards. I can live with that.
I could also live with reasonable restrictions, such as a requirement that you cannot use more than 50% of your miles towards the purchase of a ticket and need pay the rest by ccard, as suggested in Schutzee's post in the other thread on this topic.
However, asking you to collect just as many miles through the GP process before being able to use your bonus miles is ludicrous. In the worst case scenario of somebody not having used any miles on the 1 Million bonus, this would mean having to spend 1/4 million dollar on air fares in order to be able to use the miles that you have already earnt.
The further twist of their debiting fresh miles before using the bonus is plainly nonsensical: if you do manage to spend and acquire miles, your bonus will still remain unused forever, because they will debit the newer miles first. It would mean that you would need to earn just half the amount of miles you need and no more in order to use bonus miles.
This is tantamount to making it virtually impossible to use the bonus.
This is not far from legalised theft, assuming it is legal.

Can we use more than 250K miles now?
 

Does anyone know if we can use up all the rest of our miles now, instead of the limit of only 250,000 per year?

Yes. This has been so for a while now, but given that TACA are the only one left, there is only so much that you can use to fly to South America in the next 12 months

Can we change regions once tickets are booked?
 

glad to know that we can use over 250k.. when did this change? I always thought that I could only use the 250k per year???

Next question, once a ticket is booked, what if I want to change the routing to go to a different region, is that possible? or do I have to change it to stay within the same region as for the points redeemed?

tom

I think I have this "New Era" worked out
 

Old era : 400,000 GlobalPass bonus miles = 6 return Business Class tickets on TACA between North America and South America right here, right now.

New era option 1: Spend $10000/year for the next 10 years through the GlobalPass travel booking engine to generate 400000 new GlobalMiles and free up those 400,000 bonus miles and use the 800,000 miles to get a Miles as Money credit of $5850 - that should allow one Business Class return LAX-EZE in 5 years time and another 5 years later (assuming GlobalPass don't just change their business model with no more than 4 weeks notice )

But hey there is always a better way to get scr*wed

New era option 2: Send GlobalPass a check for $6000 to buy 400,000 top up miles @$15 per 1000 Globalmiles. These will then free up your 400,000 bonus miles and for your 800,000 miles, Globalpass will allow you a credit in Miles as Money of $5850. Not a bad return on a $6000 + 400,000 mile investment.


Gee, I have to get them working on my business model!

Remember the Latin Pass million mile promotion ended on June 30, 2000. End of remaining airlines participation is June 30, 2005. Is it just a coincidence that LP/GP is ending its agreement with the remaining airlines on the five year anniversary of the million mile run promotion?

It is more likely the airlines have a way to drop out now without a penalty! I don’t pretend to know but I do wonder?

In reality Global Pass although not dead yet is surely dying, a frequent flyer program without any airlines is like a fish without water, just how long it can flounder around is the only question. I believe the new business plan is severely flawed and the future is very cloudy.

Global Pass new business plan is to sell items in the Global Mall and encourage sales by offering frequent flyer miles as a bonus to any purchase and to sell airline tickets and offer bonus miles when customers buy airline tickets from them.

Initially I must admit the plan appears sound but the problem comes in the delivery of the program. The mileage needed to attain a free ticket is enough to scare away most would be members. You need roughly two to three times as many miles in this program to get a free ticket as any other frequent flyer program.

The next problem is this program targets very sophisticated travelers’ as its customer base and GP has made the fundamental mistake taught in business 101: they do not understand the market they have targeted. Most business travelers do not buy airline tickets and have no say as to who the tickets are purchased from, nor do they usually care who supplies the tickets.

The leisure traveler who may be a secondary target will also be less willing to participate in this program because the price of tickets at GPs site is more than other travel sites and price is the primary consideration of most leisure travelers.

GPs’ position seems to be they are offering more value because they offer additional miles. I just made a ticket comparison between GP and its future former partner TACA for a round trip ticket on the same flights in July: LAX-SJO. The ticket is available on the TACA website for $492.15 and at the GP site for $518.91. GP would give you the added value of 2,076 miles in its program but you must remember TACA is offering a 2,000 mile bonus for booking at its web site. When you consider the fact that 35,000 miles in the TACA program will get you a round trip ticket worth as much as seven hundred dollars, and the same value ticket in the GP program is about 100,000 miles; obviously the TACA miles have far more value than GP miles and the TACA ticket costs less!

I must admit the Global Pass mall does offer some value as you may be able to use services you would normally use and receive miles for the experience. Unfortunately it is difficult to access and you must sign into your frequent flyer program to access and use this program. Although they advertise merchants offering bonuses of up to 25 miles for each dollar spent in truth most merchant offer about four miles for each dollar. At that rate if would take over $10,000 in spending to get one cheap domestic airline ticket.

For those of us with leftover miles the mall may offer some value as GP will now release some of our hostage bonus miles if we use it. The mall does contain many very reputable and reasonably price merchants. For those of you who have not looked into this program it is worth a look, but I do not know if it will be able to keep all those nice people at GP employed for very long.

How many of those with LP bonus miles left will sign up for the new GP program?? Especially since they are giving a whopping 20 day notice of not being able to use them.?? :rolleyes:

I have a feeling not many FTers will feel comfortable dealing with a company that is hard to deal with and then makes drastic changes (not good ones) with a 20 day notice. :mad:

My guess is by 30 June 06, GP will be just a memory.

Never mind the LP bonus. Let us just look at the travel agency offering on its own. I tried a few dummy bookings on various airlines and routings and, for an identical fare basis, GP adds a fee which seems to vary between 20 and 75 dollars (before any paper ticket additional fee) depending on airline/route/fare (I could not figure how exactly the fee is calculated). Now, you just calculate how many GP miles are needed to offset that fee. There is simply no way that you can generate any benefit whatsoever in using the GP travel agency. Who are those clowns kidding?

It's pretty clear what happened...Global Pass developed a scheme to remove virtually all of its overhanging obligation in FF miles.