My Points.com Saga
 

Needing 7000 more points to requalify as a platinum with Priority Club by yearend, I decided to trade 11000 orphan American Airlines miles for 8000 Priority Club points through points.com. Despite the atrocious exchange rate, it seemed to be the most cost-effective way to accomplish this simple goal. I even signed up for their PointsPlus membership at $29.95.

On 12/9 my AA miles were deducted from my account but after two weeks of daily phone communications with points.com and repeated promises that the points would
transfer overnight, my PC points have yet to post. Today, after demanding reinstatement of my AA miles and a full refund of the membership fee, they told me that they were having trouble with their automatic transfer system to Priority Club, but that they had now done it manually (after two weeks!), and that the points will post on Friday.

I suppose the points will transfer eventually, but what a total exercise in futility especially if it doesn't happen by yearend. And yes, I did read the negative posts about points.com on this board before embarking on this. Now I can add one of my own.

Happy Holidays, All!

Thank you for listening to my lament.

RockyP

You see Randy, there IS a reason to oust Points.com!
 

I dunno what made me look at this post--thought it had to do with MYPOINTS.com, not the notorious POINTS.com,

but read this site link below and be ready to wait...

and wait...
and wait...

www.theothersideoftraveling.com
(particularly, page 7 of the site, or: http://www.theothersideoftraveling.com/page7.html)

Points.com has automation and can be horrible at keeping its promisses or in facilitating ANYTHING manually or after the fact even if you are right!

You will find they have done this on a massive scale before. The site above shows you how but the issues was never fully resolved for everyone affected.

I am waiting to see if someone like yourself happens to have some legal position or clout enough to take this sort of complaint a step further...

With that, I can only wish you good luck!
:td: MM

& do let us know what happens...

I've bought a points.com membership in the past and had no problems converting some orphaned AS miles over to AC, yes despite the less than stellar exchange rate. Everything from the enrollment to the exchange went smoothly. But I'm guessing from some of the comments, I was lucky.

Sorry to hear of the OP misfortune. :(

I guess I have been lucky too.

I've been converting my stranded AmWest miles to AA (at a lousy ratio of 10 miles convert to 1). Incidentally I found that making smaller conversions yield more miles than if I converted my entire miles in one transaction. So I've been doing about 10 transactions a day, earning 2X entries into their sweepstakes, and if I am lucky I could win 100,000 AA miles.

The downside is that my AA account page does not show all the activity as they can only display a certain number of transactions (44 in my case).

I think the problem lies in getting someone in authority to do a manual override when there is a hiccup in their automated system (they blame Priority Club for making changes to their system). Why it takes weeks of nagging before they take steps to correct the problem is beyond me, considering the loss of goodwill. We'll see if the points post on Friday. If not, I'll do a chargeback of the membership fee on my credit card and earn the points the old-fashioned way -- by staying at a local Holiday Inn Express. :rolleyes:

RockyP

Well, whad'ya know! I just got an email from points.com that the points have posted. :) The manual override did it. The PC web site confirms it: You have maintained Platinum Status for the next year. Merry Christmas! ^

RockyP

congrats! now my advice would be to get out now and stay far away from points.com, but then again, yeah... some have had decent experiences with this company so the choice is not mine to make. I trash them too much anyway. See other threads.

Anyway, yeah, the problem many airlines and companies have with points and miles is what to do when automation fails, and what to do when customers call you asking for points. As we know all too well, each company is going to tell you it's the other guys' fault and so on...

Then, if someone does take ownership of the problem, it could take 6-8 MORE weeks for you to see your missing points! You got em, so none of this really applies, but you can see what I mean.

There are people in FT who claim this never happend to them and I tip my hat, but I think that everyone should understand this issue and try to get airlines, hotels and places like points.com to deal with it in a better way. Having a liaison or having a way to more easily mannually post things if the customer can show what happaned is really easy if they just allow it to take place. I guess I pick on Points.com because, well, they do not do that very well. If you get it to work, great, but with all partnerships and promotions of this nature, if it does not work, you may have trouble. I guess they should be more savvy to that sort of thing than not, but they must calculate in a few losses here and there. It only really stinks when one of those is you or I.

Sure, a couple of flies can be allowed to fall into the vats of juice at a processing plant, just not when the health inspector happens to walk through on a routine check up! Points.com has a lot of bugs in my opinion, and I'll say it again: it needs a competitor and a better method of tracking/solving issues. I cannot do this from the business standpoint, because I am not that guy.

Anyway, I am glad you got yours and happy holidays!
:)MM

I converted some GoldPoints into Frontier EarlyReturns via Points.com last week, INSTANTLY!

that's how it should be and I have had successes with such things. It's when it fails to go thru as planned that the system breaks down and you cannot recover.

I did not win any AA miles, but just received an email stating that I have won:
An Interval International Resort Accommodation Certificate,
which entitles the bearer to
One (1) full week of accommodations at an Interval International member resort.

The email however is not from points.com but is from dja.com (Don Jagoda Associates, Inc). Is this legit?