Let me stand up in defense of Latinpass/Globalpass. While they have not exactly given the most advance notice on major changes to their program (ex: cancelling xfers to Hilton and Marriott, the recent change to miles for money only) I think we should all keep a few things in mind when passing judgment:

1. There are few of us who actually do/did alot of traveling on the GP airlines who also post to GP. (I could be wrong, but don't think so.)

2. Many if not most of the miles we have been burning were earned in the Million Mile promotion, so they were bonus miles, not earned miles. (think revenue earned by GP here)

3. LP did not anticipate the dramatic numbers of us who would go on mileage runs just to get the miles.

4. The loss of many of their non-Taca partners was not their doing (TW and US Bankruptcies, KL's acquisition by AF, MX leaving to join *A.)

5. Many of us were originally worried that they would just welch on the whole deal as seems to be the case with other similar travel and points providers (see pricing mistakes for south seas hotels or click rewards' Bankruptcy as examples).

6. Most of us have had very pleasant experiences with all of the LP/GP staff who booked my tickets, gave me advice on how best to ask for KL awards or double checked for the last posting needed for my million miles originally.

7. All in all, I have had great results from a program that is not owned by an airline. By way of contrast, CO really controls capacity on OP and I have really noticed it after losing my status. I think getting awards on TACA was much easier for the exact dates I wanted than I have ever encountered on most domestics particularly DL.

8. Also, remember there is currently a run on the bank mentality among us GP members (I too have fallen prey to this and have 8 tkts to Belize coming) and based on their track record I have no reason to question that they will honor their commitments for these tickets. (I will be steamed if they don't come through, but it will be a first for me.)

9. If my reads of many of the posts are correct, almost all of us are ahead of the game in terms of redemptions vs. original cost. I am way ahead.

I guess I have always had a "expect little and let them suprise me" mentality regarding GP, and they always have.

Yes they have changed the rules on me a few times, but prior to this most recent one, I have always been able to find good values for my miles on GP. (KL always took some work, but the WPAA (RIP) always helped.)

My major regret is the changes will keep me from using the miles to visit Macchu Pichu after having turned around with the plane in CUZ on my MM run. Others may disagree, but I expected less and they always gave me more.

BSL

What customer service? They never hired a single rep
How could they respond?

Don't disagree with the majority of your post.In fact it seems to be very well stated and accurate
Accept for the above comment.
I certainly don't want to be a nit picker but Randy doesn't award any Freddie Awards except to those that win and are chosen by the traveling public from around the world.
And as far as I know the public has spoken loudly two or three years ago by simply no longer voting Continental Program of the year as it had in past.
As long as Continental chooses to hoard seats and be stingy I am sure many will heed the message and vote with their wallets and feet elsewhere .
As many I know have done for years.
I caught on to the scheme years ago while Gold was still the top tier.
I estimate the potential revenue over the years just from my own pullout to be over 100 K had I stayed with them.

Im miles alone when I pulled the plug I was at 750 K
Had I stayed with them that travel and partner revenue would have all been theirs.
I can just imagine what they lose from disatisfied customers.
To this day I wonder why others were so slow to smell the coffee?
I estimate easily 6 or 7 years of bad availability.
Perhaps like myself many collected them first in trust expecting reasonable success when they went to redeem............
Cheers

For the programs I have accumulated miles on, NonePass is the worst for redemption. Completely useless miles. They are the last of the legacy carriers, I'd choose to do my frequent flying on.

I guess that explains why my emails went unanswered. Why hire people to help out. After all, the internet makes real people unneccesary.

Exactly
I actually tracked their management team down a few years ago (which is out of the country FYI )for an explanation from the higher ups.
At the time they blamed it on a server problem and tens of thousands of emails bringing down their systems.
I can't imagine setting up a company without customer service

Yet that is exactly what American and AOL also did years ago when they launched their now ill fated partnership for online shopping.
They assume their sites and partnerships can run themselves
It was astonishing to see two giants assume that the sites and verbiage contained on them alone would handle customer service.

I think it was Flyertalker who asked the legendary question years ago here in the community and I quote
"What is the difference between Executives and laboratory rats"?
The answer:The rats learn from their mistakes

MyPoints really has gone in the toilet. I suppose I am just a free point whore b/c I keep doign it, but man it takes forever to get to redemption level now. There was a point where I was flipping Mypoints every month just on emails and free offers on their site.

The big problem with E-rewards is the lack of awards and their 90-day redemption policy. I just redeemed for 3k points for $50 this month, and I already have $73 in my account. In the ideal world you should be able to cash out when you to your money level. I usually get one of the Blockbuster rewards a year simple b/c the $ would diappear, but I agree with other posters that they are really restrictive in how you redeem them at Blockbuster.

I have usually had no problems redeeming my miles for awards. But this lately is with most airlines, it is getting harder and harder to redeem awards.

Lufthansa has to be one of the worst. Miles expire frequently, and we switched to UA because our miles wouldn't expire (well, sort of). Also, you are getting less and less miles depending on booking class. only like 250 for intra-Euro flights in eco!
We are now loyal to UA and CO (depending where we fly). Mainly we fly CO out of CRP, we only use UA to go to Germany (sometimes). I like CO because miles never expire, 500 mile minnimum, easy to collect miles!

You will need miles that don't expire on CO Very difficult to redeem to put it politely.
See the CO forum for further details

CO OnePass is the only one of the Big Six programs I would classify as probably fraudulent in a strict legal sense. It "advertises" awards that do not in practice exist (standard Y to Europe in summer, etc.) and, like Continental itself, treats non-elites as irritating cargo. OnePass is absolutely the worst FF program in the US.

Yes, people get standard awards from OP now and then. People hit the progressive jackpots at Caesar's, too, but I wouldn't make pursuing them the backbone of my investment plan.

Eurobonus stinks these days - pity, it uesd to be a good program. Now when you get better benefits with UMP even if you fly all SAS metal (as complimentary E+ seating and more miles) there is no reason but to leave.

Nonepass is known to be what it is. A super, award-winning (Randy can't stop awarding them Freddys it seems).

777, this was a satirical comment I made. Probably did not come through entirely. I know Randy doesn't personally award freddys...but several years ago, I suggested Randy should put in place criteria that examines the ratio of affinity points/miles issued versus award availability, with some sort of "minimal acceptability" threshold, that if an airline fell below, then it would not be eligible for freddys...after all, who cares how well an airline treats its top-tier elites if one is sitting on a quarter of a million miles and can't find darned base level seats (my case at the time w/ re: to Nonepass) ? In my book, the program is and has been for years fundamentally flawed and arguably fraudulent.

Pleas went unheeded and Nonepass was racking up freddys while this non-elite (yours truly) could not find darned seats like apparently a lot of other travelers, and literally could watch flights out of my local airport w/ empty continental partner commuter seats feeding into their HOU hub. My real experience w/ Nonepass was poor and I watched over and over ultimate greed and arrogance shown by an airline by Continental's opting, over and over, to let seats go unused versus allocate them to base level awards, even if last-minute. Watching this model for years is why I have been so vehement and vocal AGAINST AA's rolling out milesaaver in spring, 2004...because it encompasses the same goals and objectives as what I've watched nonepass evolve into for years...veiled capacity control aimed at forcing award travelers to have to burn double miles to get a seat on the plane. Nonepass just took it to the highest level and has been pretty well outed for their policies over the years, THANKS to this group of flyertalk posters, but *NO THANKS* to InsideFlyer for continuing to bestow freddys on a corrupt elite program.

If the airlines *don't want to honor 25K base leveal awards*, they should be professional and have integrity to just nix the award level. And the implied responsibility by and message to Inside Flyer (IMO) is that Inside Flyer should have the guts to require a given affinity program to have a MINIMUM LEVEL OF CREDIBILITY and GOOD FAITH AWARD AVAILABILITY, measured by some agreed-upon standard, that if, failing to achieve this standard, the airline or hotel would NOT be considered for freddy awards. Once I saw Continental winning freddys, and knew I myself could not get a base level award seat, after repeated tries, the value of the freddy award took a nosedive in my book. If Inside Flyer ever saw themselves as *official Ombudsman* and would-be watchdog of airline affinity programs on behalf of "Joe Consumer", and maybe I misunderstood their role and they did not, then I believe they have failed we consumers collectively in favor of staying in Continental's good graces.

So - my mention was merely satirical - not literal.

Continental would not even need a "good" attorney to defend themselves "in a strict legal sense" although misleading, if not false and possibly libelous comments such as you have made above might require your seeking "good" counsel. There have been numerous posts by people who have gotten standard awards to Europe this summer, including my wife leaving from Newark Wednesday and myself leaving from Houston Friday. Thursday I checked travel in July from IAH to AMS and there were numerous dates available for both coach and BF and not in the Elite screen. You have obviously not done the homework to make such blanket statements.

elgringito, ILUVCITIBANK is saying the same thing I am... and so have lots of others:

I have said before that the Freddies are a worthless yardstick of FF program quality because the voters are a self-selected sample. It's not a statistically valid way to conduct a survey. It's more like an election. If Nielsen conducted TV ratings like this, inviting fans of various shows to write in, some teen drivel on the WB would emerge as "more popular" than 60 Minutes.

Having said that, even the CO diehards seem to have caught on lately -- I don't think OnePass won much of anything this year.