QL_714

More than you (or DH) will ever know!

Marathon Man

yes I saw that too. Surely if anyone did it they would claim you are gaming the system and that could disqualify your case against them. You could then argue, as I am already prepared to do with several similar incidents I have also already found: This company effectively dupes less savvy people by posting such erroneous things that have no intent to post miles or points for the chosen activity. Why is it on the site if it's a mistake? That is, unless they just dont care about nor check the work on their own site design?

And what is a mistake? If I take these jokers to small claims court and drop one of my files when standing at a podium arguing my side, and I swear out loud, was that a MISTAKE? Will the judge yell at me for using profanity or let me out of it this one time? What if I swear again just cuz that's how I talk everywhere else? Was that another mistake? Can I get out of that one too because it wasnt my intent?

We will need more stuff. Thanks for that one. Please help us with even more! You are obviously good at helping us with such things.

Marathon Man

dont you all see my real plan here? I am going to try and sink this company and then buy their stock

mikeef

Note: I have no skin in the game, either way. I didn't take advantage of the 83,000 mile offer.

As it pertains to MM and this offer, it seems to me that he actually took the time to contact the company and work things out, which is more than anyone else did (as far as I know, of course). My feeling is that we need more MMs, not fewer. I'm not sure how I feel about the Verizon error involved in this thread, but one thing is certain: companies make too many of them. An airline that misprices something is quick to cancel your ticket when they discover it two days later, but good luck getting the same courtesy if you make the same error.

I have no problem with holding their feet to the fire.

Mike

bj2757

The company is such a joke. I used the Priority Club Shopping program this past summer when they offered bonus points for various levels of spending (1000 bonus points for over $50 and 2,000 bonus points for $100 and over).

Of the 6 items I purchased only 4 have ever shown up. The points were supposed to post by the end of August. I finally received the "bonus" points for 2 of the items 2 weeks ago.

I am now on email 16 (as of this morning) and 3 phone calls. The email from them this morning asks me what other purchases I made - info that they have been given 6 different times before and info I know is in their system because it was read back to me on the phone months ago. I was asked to wait until the end of October - nothing. The email last week said please wait 4-6 more weeks.

It's amazing how bad they are. On my second phone call the person said I had been through enough for a measly 8,000 points and that she was going to just credit my account right then. Of course that never happened and since then no one has the authority to just "fix" it.

ma91pmh

I had stepped out of the previous debate on Verizon-gate but am now sadly experiencing the same issues with more simple genuine issues of posting miles.

In my cases I took "advantage" of the Sears 10x miles per dollar offered in September. I ordered $3k in gift cards - the language clearly did not exclude gift cards. So that should have been 30k there. Then I used the gift cards to buy a high end Nikon camera for $2850, so another 28.5k there. Neither have posted on my AA shopping account at all.

In contrast on the same day I ordered a ton of stuff from Nordstrom at 10x points. Nordies have a great return policy so I ordered a load of clothes knowing what I did not like I could just return. In Nordies case the original miles have posted to AA shopping, then confirmed to AAdvantage account, and the returns I made have posted as negatives and they too have cleared my AA account. So it does tell me that the merchant is at the very least a clear differentiator here and it looks like Sears is a bad guy and Nordies is a good guy

With that in mind, I am going to dispute the charge for $3k for the gift cards with Sears next week if I have had no resolution. It is clear they are no innocent third party here. I ordered $3k in gift cards and 30k in miles. They only delivered the $3k gift cards and have a responsibility to deliver notification of the purchase to Cartera so I can get the 30k miles. 30k miles would cost me $825 to acquire directly from AA (via the Buy Airline Miles link). I seriously believe a small claims court would be sympathetic to that

I have managed to open up a dialog at least with Cartera and I will reserve judgement on them until the process is complete and I have the miles.

One thing is clear though is there are good merchants and bad ones and a lot of this noise would dissipate if the bad ones can be called out and challenged. At the very least good for us to maintain a list of known problem makers. I will kick off with Sears and Boden. I plan to be aggressive in pursuing these guys and disputing credit card charges but much as I am against this kind of thing, I do truly believe a class action law suit is called for here. Forming a class would be possible I think in finding lots of people lured in by offers of miles by Cartera and Sears and failed to get them. I am not interested in doing this to give anyone a black-eye or because I am seething with anger. It is because between these two companies there is a clear and on-going abuse of offering, and here in the USA where this stuff is unregulated, class action suits are the best means a consumer has of rectifying the situation and permanently fixing it. History shows that when corporations lose these kind of suits they are far more careful in the future

Marathon Man

Thanks Mike.

And I guess my issue is: I am going to try and get resolution and get my miles that are due to me. The more Cartera resists, the further I must push and work at it. I find this is some game and I am going to win it. Again, I want to get my miles.

Why should I refrain from trying? Why should I refrain from posting my findings especially if they (A) help others and (B) give me information from others' experiences that may in turn help me?

All this makes me is someone who talks a lot about the subject on these threads.

And QL, this UA thread is NOT about the AA Verizon thing. Same Cartera, different gig. In my opinion though, now that you brought them together, the same marketers from Cartera work on both things. Inept personnel is why we have the messes in both things. Yes, to be honest, I am fighting against those types of people even having jobs!

Good luck, and I hope the persons you are speaking with at Cartera (probably the same ones I have spoken with) dont end their latest conversation about whether certain GC miles should post with, "I don't Know."

then you have a problem: If they don't know, who does?

This is why my next move is to take this company to small claims court or file with the AGs office. It will be about everything I am missing in all cartera mall-isms

ma91pmh

I understand your rationale, and will likely have to play around the same path, but I do believe a class action suit in this case is more appropriate. It is the best way to get a permament fix

It would need to form a class so would need to find a specific set of circumstances... as I suggest possibly picking on one or two merchants.

I got a flyer today about a suit against Netflix and Wal-mart over DVD sales. I am pretty sure the same law firm would be happy to take on such a case for a piece of the settlement. Most importantly it will force them to change their ways

IkeEsq

Email from Delta SkyMiles Shopping -

Title: SkyMiles Shopping: Jump Start the Holidays with Up to QUADRUPLE Miles from Macys.com, Overstock.com and Walmart.com

Text: Macy's 2 Miles 4 Miles per $1 (Note: Double miles)
Overstock 1 Miles 3 Miles per $1 (Note: Triple miles)
Walmart 1 Mile per $1 (Note: Normal)

So, by QUADRUPLE Miles they mean, what exactly?

Marathon Man

I agree with you here. And while you have seen that certain retailers do the postings and returns while others do not, I still believe the whole thing basically falls apart not nec with the retailer but with Cartera.

Cartera and its agregates/afilliates have these widely varied ever changing and all too loosely held relationships with these many retailers. From what I have come to learn, if you buy X at store Y and it fails to post, you can eventually give someone at the airline mileage team your information and it makes its way to Cartera (Now many of us just go directly to Cartera since we know now) and then if you provide your order info, date, Cc used and order number for each and every number, OR if you provide consent to let Cartera research on your behalf with the retailer on all your shopping there, they will take this info to a middleman (the agregate/afilliate person) and that person will deal with the retailer.

Then the retailer takes its sweet time (in the case of some it is longer and in the case of others it is shorter, so yeah, there's one place where the retailers can be good or bad to us) and this information will make its way back to the middleman, back to Cartera and then back to you.

See, there are MANY places for holes here, or statements like, "just wait 90 more days" with no other information. Or, "We think you didn't even go through the right clicks to shop at that store so see ya later" or, we dropped that retailer or they dropped us (but we wont tell it that way) so even though the relationship used to exist it no longer does and so we don't even have a way of helping you now anyway even though by all rights we should, and even though we should be able to just give you these miles say within a week up front and then go do the work to get them from our partners on our time not yours because that's what you get by using our service, we instead make you go crazy and have to chase this stuff, and once you begin this process there is no way out except to crawl through 500 yards of sh*t smelling foulness and come out clean on the other side. (that last bit is in part a quote from a great film I love)

For me? I'm going to make this work for me in the end... and try to nab them on every minute and great detail to confuse THEM into eventually posting every lost mile for me and everyone else I can think of. I can do small claims since they are located in MA and so am I. heck I bet the court that would be chosen is the one close to my mom's house. I'll go visit her later and bill Cartera for the gas in my car to get there!

For me... I like to think that the last thing that went through the Warden’s mind…other than the bullet…was to wonder how in the h3ll he had been tricked by Andy Dufrain (This is from the same movie)


It means: Screen shot it, send me a copy and let's do that class action to cite these jokers on this and many many instances!

I plan to consider SC court, AGs office and class action. why not?

thehawk75

The end result of requiring that math teachers take sensitivity training??

China Clipper

FWIW, many of us, MANY of us have fallen into the bottomless well that is Cartera Customer Service. Most of us simply haven't taken the time to document our experience online. Yet.

YMMV applies here. My experience with Nordstrom's has been a complete, utter nightmare (which I have partially documented in this forum) and as a result I have resolved never to shop there again, online or off. BTW, merchants and Cartera have shown no interest whatever in my screen shots, which I have been careful to save each step along the way.

The constant thread running through many (if not most) reports is that the promised miles fail to credit, Cartera says to wait a few more weeks/months, miles still fail to credit, then Cartera says to contact the merchant. Then (typically) the merchant will claim that it's Cartera at fault, or will claim that the proper procedures weren't followed (because we are idiots), etc etc.

The Nordstrom phone rep claimed that she didn't have email and deliberately garbled both her phone number and her extension (I say deliberately since she did this every time). It was quite a task getting back to her voicemail. I ended up using their Live Chat feature online--the LC rep promised to email my order records to the phone rep who 'didn't have email'. And so on and so on. No problem really, my time is free, right?

Rather than attacking MM, we should be glad someone is willing to take the time to pursue these matters and document them more thoroughly than most of us are able to.

Marathon Man

thanks.

and what I hope people can see is that I do this for many reasons that are by no means selfish. Yeah i want my miles, and yes to be honest, at this point I would kinda like some of these Carterians to burn in h3ll too but my real goal is plain and simple:

1) get the miles we set out to get--and do so NOW, not later anymore!
2) stop them from duping others into false shopping deals as stated in so many posts in here and in other threads
3) that we all educate others new and old on how to NOT get stuck - ie, just don't use Cartera malls. Period.

I would have liked to fix it for them. I could have. I would like to help everyone here get their miles. If I get mine, I can help get yours. And if I get yours, that will help me get mine.

My time is valuable. I have a family and I am part stay at home dad with some consulting work I do mostly from home. This means I may not be in some restrictive office all day and so I CAN and DO post in here a lot and try to work on this stuff as much as possible, but still, my time, like all of yours, is very valuable. I expect Cartera to compensate us all for this time wasted.

I am by no means perfect and so sometimes I am going to say things that may not necessarily fly in the business world. Who cares though. What these guys have shown is NOT any normal way of doing business! It's just one that they can currently scam people with. They will be stopped though. Mark my words.

We all need to post and save everything and help each other get these idiots to either get it or get lost! It's leaning toward the latter and guess whose fault that is?

AlohaDaveKennedy

Ike - they said up to Quadruple and 4 miles per dollar is quadruple. I'd give 'em this one on a legal technicality.

QL_714

Are we starting to use common sense?