How do we fight the new expiration rules?
 

This story has a summary of the new ff mileage expiration rules. It says DL is down to 12 months.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/b...s/15906097.htm

While the report claims some frequent flyers will welcome the new rules, I suspect they will be in the deep minority. Many of us have "primary" ff programs and "secondary" programs that we use only occasionally. These quick expirations mean we have to waste time paying attention to expiration dates, and make it less attractive to fly airlines that we use only occasionally.

I wonder if some sort of group protest by flyertalk members might get some of the program managers to reverse their decisions. The "three year rule" really seems quite fair, and it seems downright greedy to shorten that time period. I also think it can be harmful for the airlines themselves, as it will make it hard to cultivate new customers (like college students who fly only a couple of times a year).

Maybe I am misunderstanding this, but as far as I can see, the new rules don't say that miles expire in 12 months. They just say you have to have some activity in your account once every 12 months. If that is correct, it is a trivial matter to put some miles into your account by some method once a year - credit cards, dining, flowers, grocery store shopping, and many others that are posted on this board regularly.

Now, if they went to a system where the miles actually expired within 12 months after they were earned, I would definitely be disturbed.

That is correct -- but you have to REMEMBER to take such action (like OK, I'll take AA miles on this car rental). Also, in my case, I have ff accounts for my children. It is MUCH more difficult for kids to earn miles without flying and, as you might imagine, there are airlines that they don't fly every year. It will be a true burden making sure they don't lose their mileage balances if the airlines reduce the inactivity window to 12 months.

Unless something has changed in the last day or two, I believe Delta's new policy is TWO years, not one. USAir recently cut the expiration period to 18 months, but I think it's a rolling 18 months, which can be much more restrictive than merely "within a calendar 18-month period." I don't know all the policies of all the programs, but the tightest time period for points expiration I know about is either USAir's 18 months (if indeed it's a rolling period) or Starwood's requirement that the account be active every calendar year.

Interestingly, Starwood's 12 month policy has evidently been in place from the beginning, or at least for a long time, and it's very rarely the focus of complaints, whereas DL and USAir are under criticism because they've changed their policies to more restrictive ones.

Just another devaluation of miles by broke airlines.

As far a fighting back, I doubt there is anything effective to be done, beyond a class action lawsuit which I suspect is not going to happen.

As for me, I will continue and strengthen my policy of not flying Delta and US Air, and will continue to try hard to consolidate my mile earning activities to AA and UAL. It is becoming less and less worthwhile to use a variety of airlines--if you care about FF miles.

Yeah, with the various multi-airline alliances these days, that SHOULD be true. But the problem I've run into is that the airlines are VERY reluctant to make free seats available to their partner airlines. For instance, I concentrated my Star Alliance mileage credits on US. Repeatedly, though, when I needed a ff ticket on UA, UA's website showed award availability when US couldn't get me a UA seat. So now I also maintain a UA ff account (funded largely by the absurd generosity of the credit card sign-up offers).

Obviously, the airlines can legally adopt any expiration day they want (provided they give adequate notice). But these are LOYALTY programs, and I would think that a signal that the most frequent flyers (flyertalkers) are unhappy with the changes might curtail this unfortunate new trend.

One has to ask how much airlines want to (or should want to) cultivate this type of customer through frequent flyer programs. Loyalty, absent elite status which such a person is unlikely to have, is transitory in this business. Becoming the favorite airline of a college student won't mean much when the student becomes a more frequent traveler (probably based in a different city, surely with different travel patterns and financial cosiderations) several years later. Offering them benefits, if they fly enough in three years to earn an award, is probably not a cost-effective strategy. After all, a frequent flyer program means what its name says.

Well, you could take that approach. In a sense, perhaps the airlines are returning the program to its roots: a FREQUENT flyer program.

But for many years, the airlines have deemed it profitable to also allow semi-frequent travellers to participate. Given the low costs involved (heck, they sure make it hard from the "average joe" to redeem his miles), I would think it would STILL be profitable to cultivate "average" travellers. Otherwise, grandma and grandpa (and Joe College Student) have every incentive to have zero brand loyalty, and just book the lowest fare or more convenient schedule (which probably would be on a low-cost-carrier with a poor ff program).

Also, as noted, the new rules hurt frequent flyers who only occasionally fly an airline. I would think the currently-disfavored airline would want to "leave the door open" for more business from such frequent travellers currently using another supplier.

As real world anecdotal evidence, I always try to avoid WN in large part due to their rolling 2 year credit expiration. Most of my business would probably go to AA anyway, but I might otherwise take 2-3 WN trips a year. But even 3 RT's per year on WN, and I will never earn a single free flight.

How to fight
 

Until I am directly informed by DL of any change, I am operating based on 2-year expiration. Should the 1-year rule comes to past, I hope we can flood DL's email inbox until it shuts down - that is if we know what their email address is.

Just curious, would this thread be better served if it is moved to DL?

IMHO, using miles whether on partners or otherwise, for flights in the US is not a good use of the miles. Using them for International J or F is where they should be used to get good value. For example, I just book two seats LAX ORD for $240 each. Get around 3.5K miles and don't have to beg for seats.

As to the idea that the airlines can adopt any experiation date they want, that raises a lot of interesting legal points, but it is not as clear as glass. As to FTers opinions concerning the airlines, they are in a race to the bottom and, will be very surprized, when, in the not so distant future, miles programs lose their marketing power. Remember when all you could find in the markets were big, beautiful, tasteless Red Delicious apples. Now, we have varieties that actually taste good. And, the Red Delicious growers have mostly ripped out their over bred, mealy apple producing tress.

Delta and U.S. Air's changes make me nervous, but the big problem that I
have is figuring out and keeping track of expirations, even when they
don't change.


Starwood - I've totally failed to figure out what the Starwood policy really is.
I cashed out all points but one back in 2004, but my one point still sits there
every time I log in. Phone calls and even a guess by Starwood Lurker were unable to tell me what the policy really is.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=175753


U.S. Air - When they made the change, it wasn't clear if it was retroactive. This still isn't clear to me. Miles for another family member disappeared
under the old rules, but the account wasn't closed even though they said
it would be.

Delta - This thread refers to a reporter (who checked his/her sources?) thinking the miles expire in one year. The truth appears to be two years. But I have a family member who had "old" miles which weren't supposed to expire, but we received a Sep 05 letter that they would be converted to
Skymiles in Jan '07 and presumably be valid for 3 years. Now that is
probably 2 years, but a "Talkmail" advice sent out yesterday implies those
miles might expire promptly in January.

Hilton - They have a one year rule, but a majority of transactions on the
web site now post without dates.


:(


kudos to American for clearly posting the expiration date on the web site summary. Here's keeping my fingers crossed that United and American keep their 3 year policy.

I think it is 2 year even though my account is still showing 3 years.

I haven't fly DL for years since they implement change fee. Once a year, I fly CO and put mile in DL account to keep it alive.

So just set up reminders or a recurring payment so it will impact thoise accounts. For example, I have my monthly T-mobile hotspot fee mileage credit credited to American, so for 12 months I won't have to worry about some activity in the account.

I also have one of the rental car companies credit mileage to an account on an airline for which I've accrued a decent number of miles, but don;t fly that frequently any more. By having the car rental mileage credited to that account, I know that some activity will occur at least a couple of time a year in the account.

You could also set up a monthly or quarterly reminder in Outlook to remind you to make an online purchase using a program's mall.

All said and done -- mileage expiration is a LOT better than it used to be, when they really truly expired 3 years after being earned, whether you had subsequent account activity or not.

True, but that was a loser of a policy for the airlines, and if they had stuck by it, the programs would be much smaller than they are today. The non-flying revenue wouldn't have taken off, and LCCs would have been able to hurt them even more than they already have.

I think they're trying to fix something that wasn't broken here. U.S. Airways clearly wants to use its 18 months to prod people into doing its bidding to keep the miles going (I received an e-mail to that effect). I think what it'll actually do is to get the "slow accumulators" and infrequent travelers to give up on that idea and buy based solely on price.

If you use iDine/Rewards Network for each of these airlines (doesn't work for LCCs, but most majors have an affiliated dining program), you will have another reminder, which will take care of the lack of the airline's reminder:

You will need 12 dines in a calendar year (can be a cheap coffee or coke each!) to keep "elite"/"tier 1" status (the status that gives you 10 miles per $) with each dining program. In the fall, they send you an email telling you how many more dines you need to maintain that.

They'll also send you emails about dining bonuses, and at least once or twice a year with each airline there should be some "easy" bonus that'll entice you to use that dining program at least briefly.

I don't see how anyone who chases iDine bonuses would have a problem with miles expiring (at those airlines that are affiliated with iDine/RN), as long as they live in (or frequently visit) a populated enough area for there to be a reasonable choice of participating places to at least occasionally eat at. The act of remembering to check which airline has the best bonuses at iDine/RN every couple months, and the desire to check to see if those dining miles posted, takes the place of having to worry about whether your miles ever expire, since your dining activity in these partner programs is producing a slow but fairly steady trickle of miles into each of your programs.

This year I participated in the 25 miles/$ AA bonus, a 4 dines = 1k miles AA bonus, a 250 miles per dine AA bonus, a double miles NW bonus (right now), and am working on a 25k UA bonus miles promo, and I bet I've forgotten a few (and not mentioned the ones with Priority Club since that's a hotel chain where points never expire anyway). I don't collect CO, DL, or US, but that's the only reason I didn't try for any bonuses with those.

(That leaves only Southwest and Frontier, that I collect with, that I can't trickle miles into this way. But it's a lot easier worrying about expiration at two airlines than over half a dozen!)

ohhh this type of situation usually makes the Marathon Man burn in fury but instead I calmly digress. I manage the accounts of many family members and have even prompted several friends to join up here and there. I know the rules of a few of them are wild, like Singapore Airlines, which expires whole chunks of your miles on some sliding scale, regardless of activity. yup, if some lot of miles reaches a certain date, BOOM! It's gone! (You can write in to ask for a 6 month extention and they even have a fee for it, i think). Ok, so I told my brother, who would be flying them a lot for business this year to and from Asia, to join United instead. he did that but he told me that it's not really that easy to use UA miles to upgrade on Singapore and besides, he does not get the bonuses when he does fly in a different class. So now he's a member of both. The reason this is crucial goes with the words of other posters in here who, like me, tried to keep their memberships down to a minimum.

All of this mile expiration crap is WHY I have been constantly harping about keeping all records, planning to earn and then using before losing, and making it so your miles are available in useable chunks (like bringing up a balance of say 9,200 miles to 10k so if need be, it can be useful in more ways). It is also why I have reduced the number of mileage accounts I have and those with say, 200 miles left on them after redeeming my last award will no longer be a focus for me. Interestingly, US and DL are among those, although I still have miles on NWA and UAL, which are partners.

Delta even sent me a card TELLING me I still had 1200 or so miles left and that they wanted me to know about their magazine redemption offers. I have done those before and I did it again. (Note they send you a card hoping you will sign up for extended subscriptions for only $1 each mag but if you read the really fine print it's one of those new marketing scams where YOU have to call THEM to cancel or else they bill you some huge cost to auto-renew)

Point is? ALL of these miles and marketing gigs are legalized scams. The airlines dont WANT people to fly free--or sure, back in the day, it seemed a good idea, but now they are totally backed up against a wall and they MUST find as many ways as they can imagine to make the game more and more hard to work with for the regular human. All these schemes are this way and yet WE play within them because, money asside, we have a trait in us that MUST find a way and MUST win. It's like watching a rich person play blackjack with $10,000 bets. He doesn't really care about the money itself as much as the 'system' or the ability to psych out the dealer or beat the house.

Face it mates, we have that quality in us and we will thusly find a way. It totally sucks what they are doing but hey, it will get worse, so mark my words and act now. From what I gather, US and DL are both part of a magazine for mile gig. I believe a deduction equates "activity" as well as a mile addition. Grab a new subscriotion every 12 months and you are all set. Oh sure, ya gotta llike check that balance once and a while, but hey, it's your miles! How many times do you check your bank balance online in between office emails and sips of the morning coffee?

;)MM

some of the magazine, newspaper deals for miles are really good. Wall St. Journal comes to mind from United. Perhaps they gave us a longer than usual subscription for 1,200 UA miles, but it has run for 4 months so far.

Just spoke to Mr. Sheffield at marketing and he stated that they have not received very many emails or mail complaining about the change only a few phone calls. He also stated that they do not count the phone calls on the mail complaints. I am firing off a complaint, who's next?

I think the question is sort of a misnomer. You really shouldn't be travelling on that many airline programs. Stick to one alliance group and consolidate the miles you earn into one account. This gives you the benefit of better status, getting full bonuses on mileage, better award availability and it makes the question in point a non issue.

Use up the miles in the accounts that you don't use. For those 'secondary' airlines that you don't fly every year, does it really matter? You don't get any mileage bonus and it will probably take you the better part of a decade to get anything from it. Give the miles to charity and go with an alliance, like SkyTeam, that give you the ability to travel on multiple carriers and still keep your miles in one place.

Get used to expiration rules.
3 words: Sarbanes, Oxley, bankruptcy.
Translation: clean up unfunded liabilities on the balance sheet.
Look for other programs to follow suit, becausethe airline programs have been the pacesetters.

All that said, back OT: information is power, and how we fight it is to share information on what it takes to prevent expiration and the opportunities to do so. This could be a wiki.

FT kept my 49,547 orphaned Delta miles from going poof December 31 by showing me how to make them become 50,297 with a new expiration date of 12-31-2008.
for example

You are correct. Effective Dec. 31, 2006, the Delta policy is two years.

I wish they would expire every 6 months. It is too hard to find available seating and most hard core FTers will find a way to prevent their miles from expiring while everyone elses expire.

:rolleyes: LOL-- I figure YOU'RE not a family man...
;)MM

9 Month old, 4 year old and wife. Lots of miles and lots of family.

...or someone who may make more money than most people and thusly can travel more, or also happens to have done tons of business travel and possibly does not own his own small business or none at all??...

My wife and 4 month old cannot fly everywhere with our current limited income as I am temporarily the stay at home dad and we decided on that instead of day care.

I am doing only small projects in my field to keep busy until our next adjustment in life and work comes to fruition. Should I therefore sacrifice and LOSE my ability to BE a mileage guy just cuz these have been times of 'less income' for our family than not? While I am not working "full time" for some company that flies me on trips, etc, and we don't have all the monetary means we have had at other periods in our lives, time ticks on and we get closer to expiry dates. What if we get wealthier again but when the dust settles all our miles are gone anyway?

Now, in our cases we have credit cards and/or can do other valid FF activity to keep the accounts going, but surely people get my point. Your jest is such that only an elite set of people would be able to maintain miledum and that just is not a good idea. Perhaps there IS such a program out there but I don't think it's the one all these airlines who sell economy tickets have in mind. For first class maybe, but not for everyone else.

On the other hand, I know a little bit about how the actions masses can have a negative affect on the activities of serious users...
Here in Boston, we have 4 seasons and over the years I have heard increasing complaints about both traffic and weather. I think those people should all move to Florida and let me have more space on the highway in the winter, which I happen to enjoy in this area. So maybe we both joke about our own perfect world visions. :)

;)MM

AGREED !

Even if you have 2 or more "secondary" mileage accounts.

Use your kids or other family members FF accounts when doing the above that JerryFF suggests so that their accounts remain active.

Now if one can't remember to do the above, perhaps one should purchase a calendar (I bet there is a site that will earn miles for doing so) @:-)

I have about 15 FF accounts...all of them either have gotten to an award level or will...so it is worth it. I focus on certain ailrines accounts but many promos are airline specific and I use them all...

I also manage account for the family...about 5 accoutns/family member.

This policy does not make me happy...though I doubt I will loose many miles becuase of it.

I don't see the big deal with this one. Unused airline miles create a liability for the airline. If one can't figure out how to create "account activity" once every two years, one either doesn't care, or doesn't have enough miles to care about.

as usual
 

Your points are very well made. I try to keep up with our accounts and also am letting the accounts with tiny balances go by the wayside. Tried to keep Singapore going, but finally gave up on that.

The game isn't as much fun as it used to be.

hey mate, talk to us like that when they one day change the rule to 6 months. hehehe

I personally check and do activity to accounts I have/manage but that's cuz I both have some free time for all this and am addicted to the game. It's been worth the free tix for me too, however.

:)MM

How can I save my son's USAirways miles?
 

My son is a student who can't afford a credit card with an annual fee; can't even afford to eat out. He has too many USAirways miles to throw away, but with the new 18 month expiration rule, it looks as if he's going to lose them by the end of January.
What can I do to keep these miles from expiring (other than spending a lot of money to buy gift miles from USAirways)?
His address and email are not the same as mine. I'm thinking that if I try to use the dining or shopping programs, some of the information won't match and the miles won't be credited.
I'm open to all suggestions, please.

The dining program doesn't care. You can register one of your credit cards
to his name and frequent flyer number; then eat somewhere that gets miles.
Maybe he has to do the registration, but the name on the credit card
doesn't matter.

https://usairways.rewardsnetwork.com...p.jsp?refId=RN

Does he have any credit card? If so he can do idine. Another possibility is one of your hotel or car reservations.

I had a receipt from my parents from one of their stays at a choice hotel. My wife's Delta points were going to expire 12/31/06. I changed my choice hotel earning preference to Delta miles, changed the account number to my wife's Skymiles account, then called Choice to request stay credit. Miles posted within a week. Should work with most hotels/rental cars.

i stopped concentrating on US Air when i used all mine up and let it go. (I use united) but unless rules have changed I have 3 easy ways for you:

1) you CAN assign ANY debit or credit card owned by ANY person such that when it is used at a dining place on the list, it can give miles to ANY miles account. Example: I used to set one of my credit cards for a completely different airline to my wife's mom's DL account by making it so the card that gave her dining miles was simply MY 16 digit number and EXP date. It used to work and I would switch it if i needed to shore up an account. her mom had like 14,000 miles and when it hit 15k and then she did dash to the gate promo (or should i say, i did it for her) she had 25k. someone in the family used the award ticket.

2) US Air used to have and still may have a thing called bonus bar. Buy something online that is thru that bar and you get miles. Example, most airlines have a miles mall and if you buy ink or a new book from Amazon or something, youd get miles. Again it does not matter WHOs card is used to BUY, rather, it is important that you merely go thru the link to get to the store online you are buying from. An example of this is that my old company ordered everything for the office from Best Buy. I told the accounting girl to go thru NWA's worldperks mall and enter my FF number. This made her have to use one extra screen because once she entered the best buy store via the NWA link I had set up for her for that service, she was essentially making it so I would get like 3 miles per $1 every time the company bought its supplies. Even if some corporate credit card or account was used to pay for it all, I would get my miles too. It hurt no one and helped us both because I got her and her husband a few nice bottles of fine french wine after redeeming for a free trip there once.

3) Redeem some US miles for a magazine subscription. ANY activity, even a negative, will reset the 18 months. If you need none, give them as gifts. It is the holiday you know.

NOTE to print out EVERYTHING involving this stuff above as partner affiliates like malls and mags make mistakes and/or take long to post and deliver stuff sometimes.

Good luck!

:)MM

I also have a small amount of US Airways miles in my account which will expire at the end of January, and since I don't expect to fly US in the near future, I could just let them expire. But the possibilty of the US-DL merger and the possible combination (if it happens) of their FF plans made me rethink my options. Since most of the magazines for points aren't available outside the U.S. and I'm not going to direct any hotel or other spending to US Airways, the only option for me, which you may want to consider, is to donate some of the miles (1,000 mile minimum) to one of the four charitable organizations listed on the US Airways website. This would keep your son's account active, and help at least one of those organizations in a small way. Many airlines have charities that would be glad to get help with the mileage donations, and that would help keep accounts active for a while longer, while aiding those charities who need it.

Hope this helps.

bj-21.

redeem a (relative) handful of miles for a magazine subscription (if usair allows that).

Thanks everybody for the suggestions and the logistics advice. I went through the Dividend Miles shopping portal using my son's USAirways number and downloaded some songs from ipod. If the miles don't post shortly, I'll try the dining option, just for insurance.

as long as you printed everything relating to that purchase (and you ALWAYS should) then you could argue with the airline that their partner's slowness in posting to your account should not be your problem, and in the meantime, fax the printouts to mileage CS...


:)MM