Canarsie

Please click here for the article and poll results. <--The link to the poll results will be added here when it is available.
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Every year, earning frequent flier loyalty program miles seems to be increasingly difficult — and yet, the issues of redeeming them for that aspirational award ticket seem to persist more than ever: inaccurate award calendars. All sorts of assorted fees. Redemption rates which are significantly higher than you expected to pay. Fuel surcharges which seem to be more expensive than a revenue ticket. Dates not available for which you can redeem your hard-earned frequent flier loyalty program miles — and this is after you struggled with the poor search functionality trying to find that perfect award flight to the destination of your choice.

These are just some of the issues pertaining to trying to book an award ticket which is enough to drive — or, more accurately, fly — you insane.

FlyerTalk — the largest Internet travel community in the world with a rich base of travel knowledge — has once again collaborated with Frequent Business Traveler magazine on the latest in a series of polls pertaining to “pet peeves” of air travel, restaurants, hotels and technology. Frequent Business Traveler will provide the poll; FlyerTalk members — yes, you in particular — will provide the opinions.

This poll is the 2016 Frequent Flier Award Redemption Pet Peeves Poll, which will be active through March 18, 2016. Millions of frequent flier loyalty program miles are redeemed by FlyerTalk members every year — and not all are redeemed without issues, restrictions, impediments or other annoyances which stand in the way between you and that dream trip to which you were looking so forward.

The primary purpose of this particular discussion is for you to opine, elaborate on your thoughts and relate your experiences as a member of one or more frequent flier loyalty programs.

Results of this poll will be announced both on-line in the magazine and here on FlyerTalk. Here are the results of similar polls from years past for reference, with none in 2015:

• 2014
• 2013
• 2012

So — what are your “pet peeves”? Please vote today and let everyone know!

mahasamatman

Unfortunately, another severely flawed poll. Why would the lack of one-way awards be a pet peeve since no program I belong to has that limitation? Yet the poll forces me to consider it a pet peeve and give credence to someone else's opinions. This is not a valid survey, just another "justify our preconceived conclusions to prove our false assumptions".

GrayAnderson

I'm going to concur with mahasamatman. My biggest pet peeve of these "pet peeve" polls is the inability to mark down "have not encountered" or "not a pet peeve of mine" for the various options. Usually it's not bad, but in this case I can go down the list and note that about half of those are things I haven't run into (for example, I'm single...so in a pinch I'm willing to take a separate flight from someone else so we can both take a redemption).

Additionally, I find the lack of a "no redemption cost table/estimator available" option to be pretty darned galling considering that's the biggest issue hitting folks with Delta and Amtrak these days (Delta is the biggie here).

Really, these FBT "pet peeve" surveys are stupid and I rather wish FT would either talk to them about reformatting them (I recall another one where I was basically throwing darts at the wall to order the last 5-6 items which I'd never encountered) or stop participating in them.

mike2200

You could just ignore them and move on, thus voting on them by ignoring them.

GrayAnderson

At least last time, I think I got an error message when I tried to do that.

Edit: Tried it with this one (there are only about 8 items that apply to me, and of those two don't bug me very much). You have to rank all options...so I will not be voting.

To be clear, the non-issues for me are:
-Call center staff not knowledgeable: I've gotten the occasional dingbat, but usually the VX, VS, and Amtrak staff are pretty good (especially on the premium lines).
-Calendar inaccurate: This has always been "need to refresh browser and make sure I'm looking at what I think I'm looking at" for me.
-Change fees: My change fees are waived with VX, it's $50 for VS...Amtrak has issues but those are a bit more related to *ahem* disclosure issues than the fees themselves.
-Low-level award not available: VS and VX-with-partners are basically fixed-level awards. VX internally and Amtrak are (generally) tied to price-of-ticket-in-cash so this is a non-issue as well for me.
-Mixed segments price at highest class: Huh?
-Multiple seats on one flight not available: I'm single and if I'm traveling with friends we have no problem taking different routes/planes and rendezvousing at our destination. Actually have one trip where the only time I'm with my travel companions en route is for a few hours at LAX.
-No one-way booking: All four of the FF programs I participate in on some level (VX, VS, and SQ for airlines and Amtrak) allow one-way booking.
-Segment-based redemptions: As opposed to? VS and VX are pretty straightforwardly this and it doesn't bug me. Amtrak shifted to this and that doesn't bug me too deeply. I think there's a case to be made for zones and for segments as the basis of awards (both have pluses and minuses vis-a-vis one another) but I have yet to get actually "stung" by this. The closest was the collapse of super-long-haul awards on Amtrak with the AGR Derailment...and most of my furor there, again, has been at the BS involved.

And as I said, the inability to indicate that the biggest pet peeves (no award chart/calculator and programs carrying out devaluations) is actually a pet peeve of mine about IBT's surveys.

mahasamatman

To be fair, they do call it a poll and not a survey. I would be even more peeved if they called it a survey, because their methods are about as scientific as a member of the Flat Earth Society.

GrayAnderson

Point taken; I consider the two to be similar but I'll acknowledge some sense of a difference. While I don't consider an open-response format for something like this to be totally invalid (if nothing else, the relative cost and inherently low response rate(s) of other approaches would cause their own issues), I get what you're saying.

If they wanted to do this properly, they'd take the list of peeves and use an X-point scale (5-point, 7-point, 9-point, take your pick) plus a "does not apply" and take the average score (preferably adjusted for the share experiencing it).

hkhan92

as many of you guys know, the AAdvantageMAAsacre is set to happen on march 22. earning and burning miles just wont be the same anymore. I recently got into the game, my first flight towards my goal(which was status for life on american- ie 2m miles) was june 18,2015 and i can proudly say, I have 170k+ lifetime miles since that date.

i have been looking endlessly for a new program to join that is even half as good as the old AAdvantage program.

What are my fellow frequent flyer flyertalkers doing to still stay in the game? Everywhere I look I see either revenue based mileage accural or percentage based on fare based mileage accural.

I may be exaggerating a little when i say its gotten me into depression, but its true to an extent. Now that these rules have changed I dont know what Im going to do with my life. There was nothing more passionate I was into than earning and burning these miles, even though ive just been at it for a few months.

T8191

#1 Peeve = BA program is getting quite useless for my personal needs. Finding availability for a Partner Award [the 2-4-1 voucher] is almost impossible unless you are the keyboard at T-365 when the [2] seats are released.

I could add to that the changes to the upgrade costs using Avios [if you can even find availability]. Having already switched most of our l/h flying from BA to AA, there's now little point in paying the annual GBP150 for the BA Amex Premium Plus card that has a higher Avios-earning rate on spend. BA has completely emasculated their program as it used to work for us [YMMV], and it's a bit late in life to start trying to switch to AAdvantage.

Answer for us seem to be simply buying cash fares in sales, forget 'miles/programs' completely, and just do enough to retain BA Gold/OW Emerald status for the benefits that gives.

If there was ever a way of destroying customer loyalty, BA certainly found it

robertff

For the minimum miles required for an overseas flight, AA no longer gives direct flights as an option. Double the minimum will get you the direct flights. For example from DFW to LHR, the minimum required for business class is 50K miles each way. But the only options provided involve at least 1 stop even though there are 3 or 4 direct flights daily. Pony up 100K miles each way and you can get your choice of the direct flights. Second complaint is that AA quite often provides at 50K miles only partner BA flights, and BA charges outrageous fees on the DFW to LHR flights. AA should provide its customers with AA flight options if for no other reason than to avoid the BA fees.

Neal

I fly mostly on AA and my biggest pet peeve by far is the $150 fee to redeposit miles. It's free for Executive Platinum and I think it at least should be discounted for Platinum. AA was kind enough though to waive the fee when I had to cancel a trip due to the passing of my mother.

I understand the airlines need to impose all these fees on us due to airfares being relatively cheap. But still, $150 is excessive and is really the only fee I find to be totally unreasonable. It's as if AA is saying they want us to lose those miles but if we insist on using them later they're going to make us pay a steep price. It feel like a slap in the face!

kimikoftokyo

Mine are simple. The blackout dates and how many flights you have to take to even gain enough points.one round trip doesn't yield enough points and a lot depends on how far you are going. I thought going overseas would help but those airline programs are not any better than the American ones. oh and get ready for the AA fail. This is going to be fun.

wanderer35

Fees charged in addition to miles used.

With the coming devaluation of AA points I decided to quickly use some of them.
Booked a JFK-BUD RT flight, F outbound, economy coming back.
Carrier is BA.
Fees charged: $856.66
Ridiculous.

While off topic, I have a question.
On the outbound LHR-BUD segment there is no F, so I sit in Business class.
So I will have a BC boarding pass, even though I "paid" for F for the whole outbound trip.
Now the question: how would I be able to get into the F lounge at LHR?

T8191

Try here >>>> http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...uidelines.html

LHR Flounge access is oneworld status [OWE/BA Gold] or flying in BA First, it seems. And they don't do paid entry, before you ask

Shareholder

My peeve isn't listed but is also the contra of redemptions: when cancelling an award (aside from any change/cancellation fees) it may often take several calls and/or weeks to get the miles back into my account. (The fees generally do get processed and returned to my credit card promptly.)

A second, also not listed in the survey, is most programs do not provide partner airline reservation locators on the booking record (AFAIK only UA/MP does this).