Nice I'll have to shoot you a message next time I'm up your way MM...Not to far from you here in CT

Lets have no talk of car keying, even in jest. Give 'em the business nice and legal like.:p

Ha that's too funny! I was just at that hotel in August. Indeed I think I was there when the 83,000 miles AA thing broke and I bought some Verizon products while on Aloft's wifi. I had no idea Cartera is literally 1000 feet (0.2 miles) from the hotel.

How Cartera is still in business is a mystery.

After the 83K mile mistake, they are still doing it. Again, and again.


:)

My husband's AA accounts have still not received their 2500/2500 regarding Cartera's old blunder. Sent the email with proof twice now!:(

indeed you must! and hey if you are ANYWHERE near Vernon, CT, Pulease do stop by http://www.reinsdeli.com/ and grab me a bucket of those pickles they sell! OMG!

screw that. I'm going legal like but am certainly entitled to THINK about doing the rest hehehe. Plus, I happen to know guys named Vinny and Nunzio...

yup, the same! And I grew up not 5-6 miles from these same spots. I bet I know every restaurant these cats go out to eat at for lunch or business meetings. I should just go get a coffee nearby and listen into the chatter of those from local businesses. Maybe i'd pick up something like this: "Yeah, so we have this guy MM trying to get miles from us. Boy he has no idea how much we love to scam people! I had to take you out of the office, Bob, because I didnt want anyone to hear this..."

They are bigger scammers than they think we are! That's how.

And sadly, the airlines AND we were not watching when companies like this one started to grab up all the shopping entities.

I kinda think what we SHOULD do is appeal to each and every one of the retailers on all the mall sites.

Imagine the countless letters to all the businesses... You go through the list and just send the same letter to each one of them.

Yeah, as I type this, I think that's exactly what I shall do! To get them to see why they should pull out!

I will get going on this and post what I send.

Ok I grilled up some swordfish, ate me dinner, fed the kids, and jammed this one out... Please take a look and make suggestions. I think I will begin finding the HQs and key personnel to send it to for every single retailer on every Cartera mall starting now. If the letter needs editing, let us do that here. If you all agree it should go out with edits or as is, I think we should all print it out, sign it and fire it off to every effin one of em. Cant hurt, right?

May even make something change!

*****************

To STORE (ie, Staples...)
FROM YOU/ME
DATE
RE: A single customer concerned about your business relationship


To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you as one of many concerned consumers who shops online and has either bought from your company or considered doing so in order to earn frequent flier mile rewards through airline shopping portals.

As you are aware, many well-known retailers and brands are found on online airline website shopping portals and when customers plan to buy something at the stores they may already shop at, they can easily earn miles simply by clicking through these airline ‘mall’ portals to land at your store site. The plan, in theory, seems perfect.

However, in practice, many people, self included, have come to find it is often quite different.

Without boring you with too many gory and involved details at this time, let me begin by stating that there have been numerous occasions whereas my miles have failed to post for purchases I made through the portals in the proper and precise manner, and this has happened at least once with nearly every airline mall and with nearly every retailer I have purchased from.

I hardly fault you, the retailer. Instead, I have come to learn that the process is usually in the hands of a large, overwhelmed, out-of-control entity that runs most major airline malls called Cartera Commerce, Inc.

*** I am writing this letter to ask your company to cease doing business with them and to remove yourself as a retailer from their associated online malls. ***

I am also sending this letter around to every single retailer listed on every mall they service, and a copy of it has been given to three popular online travel boards with thousands of members on each where frustrated frequent flier customers are going to consider sending you this very same letter with their own signature on it.

But even if this is your only copy received thus far, I thought I would outline just a few infractions that you need to be concerned about as a business:

• Cartera has put forth web page offers into the public domain with non-proofread offers that they later call mistakes
• Cartera has hidden terms and conditions or even changed these in the middle of doing already existing business with companies and customers
• Cartera has put forth websites and toolbars for mile-earning use that are not yet out of Beta testing and often have non-functioning features.
• Cartera has changed promotions and blamed problems on hidden affiliates and even blamed you, the retailers for its own mistakes.
• Cartera has brought on so many airline malls, recently merging the Continental One Pass shopping mall into United MileagePlus, and acquiring the US Airways Mall from competitor, FreeCause, and yet it cannot even handle its own issues. They have become a virtual monopoly and there is often no recourse whenever there are customer complaints.
• Cartera’s customer service team has admitted to being overwhelmed with the many offers the company commits to in the name of sales, and they cannot properly fulfill many of their promises (many people have emails of these in writing)
• Cartera will often change or add a new rule about purchasing, and while this can be done, they will then retroactively apply this rule to negate any mileage offerings or earnings that people may have performed and thus hoped for.

There are many more infractions, and some are most likely highly illegal. But since I am no lawyer and just a customer who wants miles for things I buy when adhering to the terms stated on the web pages I buy from, I am hoping to approach this from all angles, this being a slightly more grass roots method. Perhaps appealing to you shall gain some results.

We all know the system goes as follows:

Customer clicks through to buy at your store. Purchase generates reward in the form of a commission. Part of this commission is given to the customer like a cash back reward or rebate, but in this case it's in the form of frequent flier miles for the airline through which the customer began online. Those miles are reflected on Cartera’s airline mall sites and so if the site says I get 2 miles per $1 spent to buy a $100 item (pre tax, shipping, etc) then I would expect to see 200 miles in my respective airline account. Within certain periods of time, the miles move from these sites to one's airline account.

The problem is that sometimes it takes a week to post and sometimes 8 weeks or 12 or 15... Many times, not at all. People like me have been known to chase these miles and do many follow up calls and emails to both the airline and the mall CSRs for weeks on end just to get these 200 miles. It’s hardly worth it, but of course there is the matter of principle at hand. I have found that if I get into much larger amounts, the fail rate seems to increase exponentially! It’s almost as if the more miles you expect to receive, the less likely you shall receive them. Sounds like a rebate scam to me, but how do I prove this and do I really want to?...

I can and will elaborate with copies of my own screenshots, printouts and notes on this mess and hopefully you can receive attachments so I can email it.

[In my case, I might say: I have this 5-inch-thick and growing packet of printed proof of all these instances from many airline malls if you wish, but I would have to either be given an account to bill the postage to, or provide you with PDFs and scans that can be sent to one person in an email that can handle sizable files, with a promise to read through everything I send.]

I have been informed that the way in which all this airline mall stuff works is such:

If a customer is missing miles and has in fact waited some 4-6-8-12 weeks as directed (whic, by the way, is so wrong to begin with!), he/she might write into the airline. The airline refers the customer to the mileage desk. The mileage desk may say they will look into it and will probably ask for date, purchase amount, card used to purchase and item/order number. Then, another email may come that tells me to wait 30-45-60-90 more days to get some answers.

Huh?

It goes further… If Cartera is learned about by said customer and is then somehow contacted and included in this email exchange, initial correspondences with them are often 1-3 lines of boilerplate text and the message is signed by a first-name only person with no email address, phone extension or other personalized contact information to give the customer a sense of ‘problem ownership’ and accountability. At this point, if not before, sadly, many give up. Many people believe this is Cartera’s ultimate plan anyway but even if it’s not, all of this HAS to be bad for PR. It also has to be bad for you, the retailers!

I have come to find that when I am asked to provide the order information on something after having waited so long already, it’s because Cartera cannot even see the item or the purchase in its systems, or so it claims. If this happens, they tell me some “aggregate” or “affiliate” is taking my information back to the retailer and if I give consent, they can then look into my account with that retailer or my history of purchases there and indeed find that I made the purchase. Now they can go back to the affiliate, tell them if I qualified or not (this, by the way, is where I have in fact wondered if the retailers are also trying to get away with non-payment of my side of the commission) and then once that information gets back to Cartera, they can post the miles or tell the airline to do so. If I am so lucky, this whole process can take weeks or months--well beyond what was initially expected.

In the meantime, if I was pushy and even more lucky, maybe the airline already gave me credit because I bugged them so much. Either way, there are too many unseen unknown parties involved. I can’t even talk to these people! The entire process of waiting so long for miles to post has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I find I never want to shop that way again.

I will tell you now that I am pretty much done shopping with online airline malls. I don’t even care to get the extra miles that may never post anymore. It’s just not worth it. I do want what's already out there for me, and I will fight tooth and nail to get them to post accordingly, but I am finished with the rebate scam thing. Maybe I’ll still buy at your stores but that incentive—your probable reason for even signing on to do this stuff with Cartera in the first place—is completely gone for me. Sorry, I guess you will have to find more ways to target me because I love the miles but I do not trust the way this all takes place.

Now on the positive front:

Recently I had outlined a suggestion to Cartera on how they might consider awarding miles. Simply put—and you can chat with their sales team and the CS director to hear more—they should always make available our miles from within say, one week of our purchase. They should do this for every retailer and in the same fashion each time. You work with Cartera like you'd work with a bank. The theory being that then, they go out and get the miles or commissions or whatever they call it from whatever sales process or affiliate process they may have in place, and they do the waiting game while we feel more confident in buying online for a reason and reward. All of the problems stay in the background and do not become part of our problem. We did our part by buying and we got the miles for doing so.

I suggested that this work a bit like how a bank makes your funds available after so many days based on your relationship with them, your value as a customer, and their willingness to take certain monetary risks without inconveniencing the customer, etc. I think there are even laws about that (which do not exist in mile-land). If funds fail to come through, a bank can deduct money from you and charge a fee or close an account. Cartera would be best to think hard about applying such methods to both retain customers and control their own service. Should a person make the purchase and follow through then there is no problem. Should the person return the item, miles would get deduced. Right now it’s an utter and complete mess and has no standardized methodology. I am out.

That’s why I urge you to show Cartera that they should:

(A) All retailers quit Cartera Commerce. Show them you care about us.

(B) Fire a bunch of people and revamp everything, because the ones who make all their mistakes and fail to deal with CS issues and IT issues need to go!
(C) Change their ways and consider my suggestion or something that we the customers can even provide input on without feeling duped into certain things.
(D) Go out of business and let someone else who can actually do this take over.


*******************

I am by no means the best person or only person in here for doing this stuff. But I have made it clear how passionate I am about getting this stuff dealt with and I am NOT going to ever give up.

thoughts welcome.

:)MM

Since it appears Cartera Commerce/Vesdia is reading FlyerTalk....

If you're reading this Cartera Commerce, I had sent you notice to both your Atlanta office and your Boston-area office regarding a formal small claims lawsuit if you didn't properly credit my AAdvantage account for a bonafide purchase which used a promo code which was posted on your website.

I have signature confirmation proving that you received my letters.

For my purchase that should have netted nearly 19,000 AAdvantage miles,
I never used a promo code that was not listed on your website, nor did I ever return the merchandise. In fact, I sent you pictures of the merchandise in my home, and a copy of the receipt from the merchant.

I told you the date to reinstate the miles was by November 1, 2011 as it was more than a month to do so, as I sent these 2 letters at the end of September 2011.

I have sent countless emails regarding this, along with the 2 postal letters.

I have not received any form of contact, regarding your decision--- not via postal mail, not via e-mail.

This is your official last chance to settle before I have a lawyer serve you papers. If you don't want to go to court, then I expect you to fulfill your obliagtion.

Please e-mail me or send me a PM with the expected date that the nearly 19,000 AAdvantage miles will post to my AAdvantage account.

As mentioned in both letters, and all emails, the nearly 19,000 AAdvantage miles were award by Cartera Commerce, and then taken back/away by Cartera Commerce. According to American Airlines, it is you, Cartera Commerce that is responsible for this mileage deduction/retraction, and not American Airlines/AAdvantage.

I will be sure to PM you to the location of this message on FlyerTalk.

One of my shopping purchase posted recently almost after 9 months -
I didn't even remember about it. Not sure if I am ever going to shop at a site powered by these guys.

Yup. That's why I suggest we all write to the retailers. One by one!
I will actually buy postage for all my letters if I must

Cartera has hired an in-house general counsel:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eth...sel-2011-10-25

Dear General Counsel,

Congratulations on your new appointment. May it bring you and Cartera good opportunities to strengthen a growing business with several areas for improvement. Welcome sincerely. You are now working for the sloppiest, most incompetent, most resented, most disorganized company in the field. Countless customers distrust Cartera with the same animosity shown us by your company, which routinely violates consumer law and is itself responsible for the online movement to boycott Cartera. Welcome aboard.

The real comedy here is the people that ordered an $8 cable that they otherwise didn't want, didn't need, and couldn't use, expecting to get $1500+ worth of AA miles because of what an obvious typo said, and now feel that they are the victims.

Here we go again. :D Time to close another thread that has nothing to do with earning miles!

Did you even read my post? My claim has nothing to do with the AA offer. At all. Cartera owes me a product refund and has for months, and agreed to it but hasn't coughed up, breaking promise after promise, agreement after agreement. Read before you write dismissively.

Posting about deceptive miles-offering services has a lot to do with protecting each other from bait-and-switch miles offers.