Foolishrunner,

Thanks

In reference to the hotel and car rental credits-especially if you are getting them this close to the deadline. I would recommend sending an e-mail (to get a written confirmation) directly to the hotel website or car rental agency.
I was misinformed by Avis, that my rental outside the US would be eligible for LP credit ( I found this out after I returned, and called Avis directly to verify that they had sent the credit to LP.) I am sure that some international locations qualify, but mine did not. They said that their computers cannot generate credit, even if they have misinformed their customer. In my case, they sent me 2 vouchers to make up for the misundersanding-which was OK because I had plenty of time for another rental.
Be careful of internet specials. Radisson had an internet special for Guatemala City. Their website stated that they give points for all rates except locally negotiated (like convention?) rates. I e-mailed their moderator, who said the internet special would NOT qualify!!!

For post rental verification, I have found it much easier to call the partner hotels and car rental agencies to verify the rental qualified. Then take the specific information and e-mail it to them requesting a response.
I would urge others to verify the credit with the vendor before calling LP-
--you will know 'after the fact' that it really is eligible, before LP has time to post
--if there is a problem with the partner granting credit, you can deal with them directly
--LP has limited resources for taking phone calls and answering e-mail-it will help some on helping them to conserve time, and possibly be more productive for all of us.
I haven't seen much information about the hotel credits on the board. I have become aware that many hotel chains require membership in their club, prior to rental, for crediting LP. I became acutely aware of this, in the LA Airport Holiday Inn. I was informed by the check-in personell that I would not qualify because I was not a Priority Club member. After about 5 minutes of heated discussion, I requested, and received a written note about the situation. After another 5 minutes with the surley agent, he said "why don't you just fill out the application, it doesn't cost anything?" Da! Did he really think I would rather argue than fill out a simple application? 2 minutes. A done deal.
Don't give up when you think there is still some chance for electronic crediting. It is certainly not foolproof, but you are guaranteed more work later without it.
After rentals with Thrifty, Avis and TWA, I have learned to tell the agent to just put it in the field that they usually put it in, but put LP before it.
To the credit of LP personell: LP people told me if the partners couldn't figure it out, to have them call during the transaction, and LP personell would guide them through it--which they did several times. Good Luck

RLewis: I am rather alarmed by the statement that some Avis non-US locations do not qualify for LP accrual. The LP membership guide (January 2000 issue, p5) states:
"Avis Car Rental: Offers 50 miles per day for qualifying rentals at ANY of their 4,200 Avis worldwide locations" (emphasis added). The only qualification in the guide on this is that "Some promotional rates do not qualify for earning mileage".
As I have no plan of going to the US before end June and as I still have to get a car rental, I hope that the membership guide is right.

Concerning the new gold US dollars, I just tried to use them at the internet booth in Lima airport. The clerk refused to beleive that they were real American money ! I guess I will just use them as tips. After a pleasant Business first CO flight from EWR, I am now boarding for Cuzco. The adventure begins ....

Nickb,
What Avis actually states at its' website is "At worldwide corporate and participating licensee locations, members of LatinPass and their member airlines are eligible to earn 50 miles per day on qualifying rentals. LatinPass members may also enjoy discounts on Avis rentals by using their Avis Worldwide Discount (AWD) number, L162300."

You can contrast this with what Thrifty says at its’ website "LatinPass A frequent flyer program for a consortium of 10 Latin American airlines including: ACES, Avianca, Aeropostal, Aviateca, Copa, Lacsa, Nica, Saeta & Taca Airlines:
500 miles for full-size or larger car rentals.
250 miles for economy through intermediate car rentals.
Flight segment not required. Available at Thrifty locations worldwide.”

If you are uncertain about renting a car in a foreign destination it seems Thrifty might be a little less restrictive. I think RLEWIS makes a very good point and we should heed his advise. Thanks.

Thanks cy-gone. Thrifty have a rather low profile here in the UK and I did not think of checking them. Afer looking into it, not only are they present in the locations where I need to rent a car in the next couple of weeks but also have much lower rates (typically 40-50% cheaper) than Avis.

Just returned from a trip to FL, where as Texas Yankee mentioned I paid a visit to the Latin Pass office. It really is a small world, great to run into you again Dave! It seems on this particular day that the office was understaffed (I asked to work with someone who has always been very helpful to us there and was told that she was out sick and they were shortstaffed that day). It took close to an hour for the receptionist to take all of my boarding passes and receipts, look them over and finally rubber band them together and bring them to someone in the back. I got the impression that about all she could do was take the information and pass it on. She didn't make copies for me (I already had copied everything), but I did have her sign and stamp a note that I wrote while there stating that I had left everything with her. My Copa and Aeropostal flights from March still haven't posted, she said that Aerpostal is slow at posting most of the time. About half of my hotel stays have posted and none of the Thrifty car rentals. My LIM-CUZ V-fare flights did post, although I did have to make a call to Distancia stating that I was told prior to booking that this class would count for Latin Pass Credit and fax them my tickets/boarding passes. One little tidbit that the receptionist told me is that there isn't anything that Latin Pass can do to get postings credited until 6 weeks after the trip and then it may take about 3 weeks for the posting to appear on your statement.

Hello everyone from the Guatamala City Radisson internet site. What a day! Down here trying to get one Aviateca flight that I missed on my early May trip because of bad weather in Panama City. I bought Continental tickets from Detroit to San Salvador for this one lousy flight. Landed at noon today and was going to fly SAL-GUA roundtrip (TA-GU) this afternoon and stay overnight in SAL before catching the flight back to Detroit. I had business class tickets for the short roundtrip. One ticket coupon was Taca and the other read Aviateca. Understand my concern when both boarding passes read Taca. Turns out the AV flight was a Taca codeshare and there was no way they could get me a boarding pass with AV. I went to the Grupo Taca lounge and the very nice receptionist tried every way she could and even called the administrative offices; still no AV boarding pass. I then cancelled my hotel and flew on my original TA flight to GUA and got a room at the Radisson at guess what rate: the $85 LatinPass rate. I now have to catch the only AV flight on Monday at 6:55AM back to SAL to catch my CO flight with a couple of hours to spare. I did have a great dinner at the Hacienda Real steakhouse on the corner. One thing I have learned about this quest is that you must be very flexible and easy-going or you will go mindless with all the roadblocks that keep cropping up. What I have seen of Guatamala makes me want to come back and do a little exploring in the region. Sorry for the long post.

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No need to apologize, this is all great information, so keep adding to your posts. I'm taking my run from June 18/20 and trying to do it all in three days because i simply can't spare any other time. It's going to be interesting if any of my flights have troubles.....but this thread has been a great bunch of reading. When all this is over, I'm going back to all the threads, active and dead and add in interviews with all the executives at LatinPass and links to other news about this bonus and post a special section on WebFlyer called 'The LatinPass Chronicles." While I should be used to all this over the years, I find the help and advice and the passion passed along through this promotion to be unprecedented and wonderful reading.....might even make a great short/semi-short novel. Again, thanks to all and please keep posting.

Great idea Randy. Me? I plan to frame my boarding passes surrounding a 4x6" picture taken of me getting frisked by the military while transiting Bogota.

Evan
Bend, Oregon

Hi all,
What is the deal:this is what the LatinPass web Q&A says:4- Do the stays at the Partner Hotels and the Car Rentals need to be in conjunction with a qualifying flight?
The Partner Hotel stays and Car Rentals do not have to be in conjunction with a qualifying flight.
..This is what an e-mail from Avis customer Service says:
What I would need is the airline and flight number that you will be flying
into the airport on prior to your rental. You must be flying on one of the
partner airlines in order to receive points with LatinPass. It helps if your
flight information is on the car reservation so the process is automatic as
far as posting of the points to LatinPass.

I apologize for any confusion.????????Anybody any experiences with this. The way I understand the Latinpass promotion is: No need to take a flight in order to get miles with Avis, does anybody understand / knows any different interpretation of this?

My second question is regarding Hotel stays. I think I will go for the additional 500k. I have three nights in one Marriott in Europe, and one night in a Courtyard by Marriott in the US, the way I understand this promotions is, just ANY two other nights in ANY other of the hotel should meet the requirments for the promotion, Am I correct?. I will invest about $1400 to get the extra 500k, I want to make sure I got everything down 'cause after Jun 30 no way to make it up !!! I would appreciate any advise / help, thanks.

One more thing. To qualify for the Saeta flight one still have to take the Aces LIM-UIO ?. And Taca Peru LIM-CUZ ? Did anybody do the turn around on Taca Peru, is it doable?

re: Car rentals in conjunction with flights on Latinpass partners.

The Avis agent is wrong. The car rentals do NOT have to be made in conjunction with any Latinpass flights. I couldn't get the Avis online reservations to take my LP number, so I mailed proof in to LP snailmail, no problem.

cheers,
nsw

Thanks Natural....

NickB When I made my reservation for car rental that I thought would qualify, I only spoke with a reservationist. If I did it again, I would tell them that I need to speak with the department that administrates the point crediting. That is what I did AFTER the rental, and the people in the crediting department know the rules inside and out. To their credit, they were very pleasant, and CALLED ME BACK the next day, as promised. You should be safe with their advice--but doing a rental this late, I would still send an e-mail to get it in writing. Cheers

Re Avis qualifying rentals:
- I got a rental in Geneva/Switzerland posted

- according to Avis customer service: all rentals from Avis U.S. airport locations do qualify (among others). Check any non-airport locations which might not be corporate and in this case not always qualify.