ozstamps

Just a little warning folks . . . . .

Many here get on the soapbox in their favourite Airline or Hotel boards. Most of the time there is little or no expectation anyone senior from the airline or Hotels etc, are reading it or taking any notice.

A few boards, mainly airlines in my limited experience, do have staffers (anonymously) post as regulars in their own time, and that info is very valuable. The few staff regulars on the UA board, both res. line and FA staff really have REAL info and question answering ability, and their input is superb, IMHO.

I received an email today from a Starwood (Sheraton) Preferred Guest, Operations Supervisor. It was addressed to me by name, and gave a detailed answer to a matter that many are totally confused about - viz transferring AMEX points to Starwood and then into any of the other many airlines that Starwood are allied with. The thread had all kinds of contradictory advice about what should be a set-in-cement process.

The advice from the Operations Supervisor was good and I appreciated it .... it is reprinted below as many may learn and benefit from it. HOWEVER, the staffer emailed me by real name, and not by my Flyer Talk handle of "Ozstamps".

The matter I raised was all above board, and was not involving anything illegal or irregular. Thank Goodness! Many of the things I read on these boards would NOT be approved by the airlines/hotels. If the poster claiming getting away with not handing over upgrade certs, conning extra points for things that barely happened, fudging this or that etc, and if poster could be identified it may not be prudent if they can track him/her down. Just my 2¢!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From : Operations Supervisor, Starwood Preferred Guest,
8317 Cross Park Dr., Ste. 350
Austin, TX 78754

I assume he was responding to this current thread of mine on Starwood board, as he mentions contacting user "PG" personally as well:


http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/000710.html

He said:

"Mr. Stephens

I have read your posting on FlyerTalk concerning the movement of Starpoints to United. While FlyerTalk is a very useful forum for the exchange of information it can generate unintended confusion because much of the information posted is, as you say, "anecdotal."

One of my unofficial duties is to monitor the site and render assistance where I can. Usually this means I will contact a specific member via email and attempt to answer a question or resolve an issue. (In fact, I contacted PG directly in response to his posting on your thread.)

Every once and a while we will post something to a thread as Starwood Preferred Guest, although we are reluctant to do so because we don't want to prompt debate or risk starting an argument. Also, we want our member to feel confident calling our Service Centers when they have questions or concerns.

Because your most recent post suggests you still have unanswered questions I am guessing that you either have not contacted one of our Service Centers, or have done so and were not satisfied with the answer. In either case I would like to offer my services in the hope that you receive satisfactory answers. Allow me to address what I believe to be your 2 main questions:

1) Currently only Starwood Preferred Guest members in North America are able to transfer AMEX Membership Rewards points into Starpoints (and this is noted in our T&C and on our website)

2) Starpoints may be transferred to United Airlines at a 1:1 ratio - when you transfer 20,000 Starpoints we will actually send 25,000 to the airline.

I apologize for any confusion and hope that this clarified the matter for you. If you have any additional questions or concerns I invite you to contact me directly.

Best Regards .. etc"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For anyone who requires this helpful staffer's name and contact data, please email me direct, as it is not appropriate to include it here IMHO.

NEVER assume staff from Hotels/airlines do not read these boards!

I must confess I was rather surprised this Supervisor emailed me by NAME, and not "Ozstamps". My real name does not occur anywhere on the thread.

Yes, a bit of detective work would have supplied him my name, but all the same, the point of this thread is that we all should be mindful of what we post at times .... you never know WHO is reading it!




[This message has been edited by ozstamps (edited 08-08-2000).]

doc

Thanks Ozstamps/Glen:

Many FTer's, like myself, are well known to the airline/hotel/rental company folks and various media types and so forth who routinely scan the FT boards!

Thank goodness I have nothing to hide!

-Mark

CO FF

Would you mind writing back to the person from Starwood and asking them how they got your name?

I hope it was just detective work...

ozstamps

Yes I hope so too!

Check out the thread involved .. can YOU figger out my surname from reading it??!

I have not responded yet to that Supervisor, nor have I posted to that thread this info above.

JIMBOLIGUY

I hate to tell you, but it is very easy to get your first and last name from your post. All it took was one click of the mouse...


--Jim

belle3388

i agree with jimboliguy, just one click, oz, and your namesurname is there... too easy, you do not have to be sherlock holmes to find this out...

Freebird

Ozstamps - I agree with the warning expressed in your post but I guess most of us don't have our full name in our profile listing like you do (homepage: ...).

ozstamps

Got it .. thought you guys were all from the IRS or CIA for a while there! Forgot that website link was up on the "info" box.

Still shows the Starwood guy checked around a little, and the point of the thread more obviously was that many of these threads ARE read by boffins from the companies they relate to, and in this case, they responded to a matter directly off-line.

There was something I saw posted on a board yesterday from someone also easily identified by a web address, and if I were that airline I'd be dropping a brick on that person's FF account right now. The person I guess assumed the airline would never see the post.

The lesson is I suppose .. dont bet on THAT!

ozstamps

Those "info" boxes actually provide for many people a way for you to be readily identified.

For instance ... and I am not suggesting for one second that he has anything to hide, it is just an easy to follow example, like mine has shown to be, but JIMBOLIGUY box above shows that person's first and surname, even the company he works for, clearly his general profession and the exact location he lives.

Catman

First off: Glen, I don't think you and everyone else) should be be passing around the names of staffers of people who monitor this board because I feel they already have enough work to do without being bombarded with demands and requests. If you know a name of a contact with a certain program I would keep it confidential. WE DON"T WANT TO LOSE THE TRUST AND THE FAITH THEY PUT IN US BY GETTING OVERRUN WITH REQUESTS.

THAT'S JUST MY OPINION. YOU ALL DON'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME.
Starwoods people are smart and clever.

Someone went to your webpage, clicked on and saw your real name there was "Glen Stephens."

Plus, if you have a Preferred Guest account with them all they have to do is match the e-mail address to the name on profile.

No graduate thesis stuff here.

(Starwood though refers to me by my given name and, what makes me purr, my Flyertalk name.)



[This message has been edited by Catman (edited 08-09-2000).]

ozstamps

Catman .. I did not post the name of the helpful person for that reason, so yes, I agree with you. If someone asks me privately off board for it and has a legitimate reason, I will happily supply it though.

BTW I have never been asked from an e-mail address for Starwood so that would not match up .. been a Gold Sheraton member far too long I suspect, way before email got invented!

Funny we all have user handles that in very few cases reflect our actual names. RUDI is the only one I can think of off the top on my head, but there must be others.

I just went to change mine to Glen right now, as it is a lot faster to type than ozstamps! Seems like I can change all data in the INFO box, but not the user handle by going to "profile"?






[This message has been edited by ozstamps (edited 08-09-2000).]

Catman

You really didn't have to change your Handle.

Remember once you do, your post count drops to ZERO and you have to start all over again as a junior member.

I knew you were Glen based on the Website. And starwood gets e-mail via your profile (if E-mail is given!)

ozstamps

Thanks Catman - doesn't it strike you as odd that so few here use their real names???! Seems a lot faster to type, (mine is anyways!) and do not know why I did not do that from day #1!

You go to a lot of FT events .. must be hard talking to a "XXXX" user name you've seen a 1000 times, but mentally you are trying trying to recall their real name is of course "Fred" or "Bessie" or whatever!

Rudi

A quick look into my FlyerTalk- (Netscape) address-book (with more than 250 addresses/handles etc) show more than 35 handles that have the First- or Lastname included.

I am not aware, since the early days of Flyertalk, that anyone of them ever had any problem because of his easy to identify identity - so far. But I know that airline-/hotel-'lurkers' sometime already did a favour or two to members that were easily identified

I know (the most extreme 'thing' was discovered by Merry then) of some (in the early FlyerTalk days) 'cases', where 'misuse' and 'false identities' created (financial and other) damage (and a lot of mistrust) to other members.

ozstamps

Rudi. I can think of AnnaS and JeffreyT, NathanDetroit, Alexbs, Max M, NJDavid, LarryU, Scott The Flier, Randy Petersen etc, whose real first names appear obvious, and would I guess be on the list you have, but off the top of my head RUDI is the only singular real name I can recall right now. I know there must be others, but they are the rare exception, rather than the rule.

You hang out at a lot more boards than I, and have been round a lot longer, but with 4-5,000 or whatever registered users, it does seem curious that maybe only a few dozen have registered as Rudi, or Glen or Mark or Judy i.e. - simply their real first name!



[This message has been edited by ozstamps (edited 08-09-2000).]