mrpolla

Dear Forum,

This has probably been talked about here but I couldn't find it in the search. Miles & More has an AWFUL record of depositing miles which were supposed to be obtained with their partners. Just this year I haven't got:

- 30.000 miles from a new O2 contract
- 450 miles from a new smartphone I bought at Media Markt
- 120 miles from a hotel stay

I always read the often convoluted rules and check that I am doing everything correctly while buying with their partners.

And every time they "forget" to deposit the miles you have to look for the invoice or scan the receipt and send it to them through their weird website, which usually could take a good half an hour! So the burden is always on you, even though they could verify directly with their partner since every time the correct Miles & More ID was entered.

I am thinking they do this not out of incompetence but out of bad faith. Has this been discussed here already?

I think there could even be a class-action lawsuit for false advertising since I'm sure I'm not the only one that has problems with it.

airoli

No, they don't. Partners such as O2, Media Markt and hotels buy miles from Miles&More, at a price much higher than what it costs M&M to redeem them.
Therefore, M&M has every interest to make sure they credit you the miles you earned, since it is only at that time that they can bill the issuing company.

That company, on the other hand, may have an incentive to "deprioritize" making the mileage accrual process as smooth and accurate as possible. After all, they already got you to buy from them, and now all they face is cost for giving you M&M miles.

M&M relies on the issuing company to send them an "accrual file" stating which account to credit with how many miles. Some brands don't have this process down to a T, intentionally or not.

mrpolla

Thank you airoli!

But what a horrible business model!

cas_de

It seems to be lucrative, though. See what UA is doing, for example:

https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/u...user-data.html

oliver2002

The OPs examples are from the M&M shopping portal though... if you don't enable cookies and have adblocker and/or private modes activated then the tracking and subsequent credit doesn't work. Even though I take good care about 1-2 of 10 purchases via the shopping portal fail to be tracked.