You wanna hear something that really hurts?

After I married my wife, I helped find out where her miles were going, since she was a busy exec.

I became really angry when I found out that Lufthansa cancelled OVER 110,000 miles in her account after they expired over their time limit. She was a LH Senator, yet they would not budge in reinstating her miles 1 month after they expired! It was no surprise, however, that this was a typical GERMAN RESPONSE of STICTNESS exhibited in full form--if you know Germans, you know what I mean! Least to say, she NEVER flies with them again.

The same happed where she had 51,000 Swissair miles ready to expire. They would not accept ANY activity except a Swissair flight to keep her miles active. With the help of Diner's club, we were able to get enough miles in time (1 week before deadline) to cash it in for a flight to Europe this Summer!

[BY THE WAY, my conclusion is that the Euro airlines are waaaay behind when it comes to this kind of customer service]

Once, I remembered some SR. exec at AA saying something that they expect MOST people's miles to expire--that it's the minority that actually cash in their miles!

Well, in many of my cases that's true. I can count many times in college when I could care less what FF miles I had in my pocket (e.g. Tens of thousands of miles LOST!) ............OH, the nonchalance of MISSPENT youth!



[This message has been edited by Wolverine (edited 06-24-2001).]

Non-expiring miles are a relatively recent phenomenon. The original American Advantage program was pretty simple: 50,000 miles got you a free ticket; it was non-transferable; at the end of the year, everything got trashed and you started over again. Needless to say, it was a rather small group that received any benefit at all from the program. Today's many ways to accumulate miles and keep them indefinitely with relatively modest activity is a HUGE improvement; so much so that the term "frequent flyer" is probably a misnomer in the case of many account holders. Frankly, the rules for most programs are so simple and liberal that I can't fault the airlines for not doing any more than they do in those cases where miles actually expire. Why should the airline bend over backwards to give something away or care more about your account than you do yourself? Do you expect anyone else who sells things with rebates to contact you when you fail to make a claim? But I will note that Midwest Express -- an airline whose service is widely recognized as the very best in the business -- sent me a card with a reminder and dollars off certificate in plenty of time to keep the account active if I so desired.

One of my colleagues at work received a verbal warning from Aeroplan about the expiry of his miles when he was talking with them about using his 35,000 miles on something like the 34th month of inactivity.

He had no idea about this rule....and at least he gave credit to the agent for advising him of this.

[This message has been edited by Carioca Canuck (edited 06-24-2001).]

Well America West is still bad regarding expiring miles. I had a ton of miles on America West and they pulled out of our market.

No statements, no warnings, whatever, just no more miles.

Alfred--

Not surprising, since you could have used them for Ansett flights, if it was since UA and AN have been partners.

Still, I don't know what people are complaining about in most cases. If airlines such as LH say that their points run out after a certain time, and someone lets 110k points hit that barrier, well, who's fault is that? Like so many things, it just requires reading the conditions and reacting appropriately.

No doubt, just a reminder that you can do a swap with those expiring or orphan miles (just enough to worry about, but not enough to do anything with). Hilton Honors has a large portfolio of airline partners that do exchanges (although HHonor points to miles isn't prudent). It's easy doing one night in the Hilton family or just doing the quarterly profile update to keep your HHonors account active.

My wife's does not fly much without it being a free ticket from my accounts, but wen her AA miles were close to expiration, I signed her up for online statements and also the AOL/AAdvantage, getting 1000 and 500 miles respectively to keep the miles around longer.

I also have a HHonors card and when my account was inactive for almost a year, I got a warning that I needed to either have activity within a year or pay a fee to keep my account from closing. That is a pretty strict expiration policy by today's standards - requiring activity within 1 year to keep them.