Plato90s

Now, we have many members among us who know down to the fraction of a mile how many FF miles we should receive for a leg, a flight, a bonus, or a partner. Being mileage addicts, we seek out these things and harangue our respective FF programs mercilessly if miles fail to post.

So, if the airline makes a mistake in your favor, are you obliged to report it? Things like giving you first class mileage when you flew on an upgrade, or giving you miles on an award ticket or not deducting miles for upgrades.

Do we, as FF'ers, have a moral or legal obligation to report these things to the airlines?

Looking forward to the responses....

robb

Well, there's clearly no legal obligation. With the number of twists and turns in these programs and sudden, ephemeral bonus offers, we can't possibly be held responsible for auditing the airlines from a legal perspective.

Morally, it's obviously dubious. You cannot morally keep quiet about an unearned benefit. It's no different than accepting too much change at the grocery store (also legally permissible).

Having said that, I don't know how many of us can be rational about miles - a subject we're so fanatical about.

unixone

I called and complained when a web site went
belly up that owed me miles. MP posted the
miles to my account and were very nice about
it. Then about week later the real miles
posted. We are talking about 1000 miles here.

It took a few minutes but I called MP and pointed
out the mistake. They thanked me for being
honest and told me no problem you can keep
both. So I guess in this case it paid to
be honest.

Of course getting status miles for an award
flight - I may have had to think for more
than a few minutes. ( laughing)

Plato90s

I'm just remembering old posts here about gate agents who failed to retrieve upgrade certs like SWUs and VIP2s. That kind of puts the morals in question.

In my case, I had an award flight which ended up being massively delayed and I had to re-booked a flight leaving the next day. AA then credited me with flight miles [business class, no less] for that flight, even though it was award travel.

Now, AA has gone even further because their computer system apparently noted a discrepancy about why only 1 flight segment posted miles. Instead of deleting those miles, I wound up with even more miles.

So now, I have an extra 8k miles, which is also ~6.5k Q-points, in my account and it's a bit of a dilemma. I justified the first mileage mistake AA made as compensation for the 1 night delay. This 2nd one is harder to justify.

What do people think?

flipside

Wow,

Good question. I would wait a few days and see if the problem fixes itself.

I have a really guilty conscience, so I would probably say something and hope that they would let me keep them for being "honest".

Flip

bry99

Last fall, I flew NW and waited about a week and a half for the miles to post to my OnePass account. I eventually called OnePass and they posted the miles manually. My next statement came out, and the flights had posted three times, resulting in about 7,000 extra miles.

I had OnePass take the extra miles off my account. I figured (1) I wasn't entitled to the miles and (2) I could now point to my fair dealing with them as leverage next time something screwy happens.

Beckles

I think someone recently mentioned they're account was off by millions of miles, and they reported it I think ... if it were a *lot* of miles I would probably tell them, but otherwise I would tend to think it's more trouble than it's worth for both myself and the airline to fix it.

GregL

Ok... I have a confession to make in the realm.

Early in 2000, I took several trips to Los Angeles on American Airlines (bought for me, since TWA was my primary carrier). On one flight back to St. Louis, the computers were down at check-in meaning boarding passes were handwritten for the flight with only a name and a seat - no flight number, origin, destination, or date.

Needless to say, I did not receive credit for this flight and had to call to receive credit. After being asked for a copy of the boarding pass, I told the agent it really would not help much since it lacked any sort of identifiable information and was told I would be given credit for the trip due to the circumstances.

Several days later, I check my statement online and my balance appeared several thousand miles high. Instead of being credited for an LAX-ORD flight, I was credited for an LAC-ORD flight.

Where is LAC? It is Lae City, Papua New Guinea -- an airport, as far as I can tell, without air service from AA, OneWorld or any other airline! It is best known as the departure point of the flight Amelia Earhart disappeared on.

What did this get me? About 7,000 miles too many -- which allowed me to qualify for AA Gold last year. (I feel the eyes of shame being cast upon me already!)

I didn't contact AA, as I figured the process to lose the miles would be as much trouble (if not more) as getting credit in the first place.

Was it unethical? Perhaps. But, AA did win me over as a customer as a result. Even prior to the buyout of TWA this year, I had chosen them as my primary carrier for this year. I have since completed the Platinum Challenge for this year and flown approximately 35,000 miles on AA year to date.

Greg

lisamcgu

My friend, recently, was shopping with me in a grocery store, and said "Lisa look," just so I could see her take a big bite out of a strawberry, like those who would do such and not pay for it. I said, "no, stop" and literally had to cover my eyes. She knows how I am and did it as a joke. She thought it was hilarious. So, at least to my friends, I'm particularly moral.

With this, even I believe you have redeemed yourself and, if it means anything, I think you may take yourself off the hook.

benoit

I reported too many miles being credited to my account several times, each time they just said to keep it. In each case the mileage was small, 500-1000 miles.

PG

There are also cases where one should have received miles but never gets them. Many years ago when PanAm went bankrupt and the miles transferred to Delta, I had a 20K miles PanAm certificate which I mailed to Delta. Delta claimed to have never received it, and I had sent the certificate by ordinary mail. I could provide Delta with the certificate number as I still had the other partner ceretificates with me, but Delta refused to provide the miles without the actual certificate or proof of certified delivery. I lost 20K miles then.

So you win some and you lose some. It balances out.

2 Many Miles

Three times in recent memory I got class-of-service bonuses that I shouldn't have gotten. [ Three times, two airlines. ] All three times I called in to have it corrected.

One time the mileage was deducted. One time I was told to keep it, and the third time the airline sent me a Systemwide for my honesty -- and let me keep it.

pointman

Each of us knows, deep down inside where we converse only with ourselves and can't rationalize, what is right and what is wrong. Whether it's money on the street, extra change at the grocery store, bank errors, payroll errors, or airline errors, I think we all know what the real "right" thing to do is. I am happy to hear that there are so many honest people out there. I hope that I can emulate you when I'm in a similar situation.
PS: "legal" and "right" are often different.
-just my two cents..thanks

ebell

I guess I'm not particularly moral.

Recently I took a transatlantic trip on an award BizElite ticket. My initial flight got cancelled, and I got rerouted. Somehow when they reissued the ticket I got credit for it -- 7500 miles, of which 4000 were base miles.

Did I report it? Nope. I actually did think about it, but it seemed like more of a hassle than anything. There's been times where rental car bonus miles, or HHonors bonus miles, never showed up on my account either. I never called then, either, because it seemed like too much of a hassle. It's less a matter of morals and more a matter of laziness.

I also wonder at what point the administrative costs of removing the miles is greater than the value of the miles. They'd have to pay for the 800 line to make the call in, then pay for the time of the agent to listen to the story and remove the miles. Certainly it doesn't seem like it'd be worth it for 500 to 1000 miles.

ebell

Oh, a followup: on the other hand, I'm the type of person who will correct the cashier every single time if I notice I've been given too much change. In that case, it's really not a hassle at all for me to give them the money and say "you overpaid".

I'm not sure what that says about my morality, since I don't even feel guilty for not calling about the extra miles I got credited with.