that stinks and I feel bad for you guys. BUT to counter it--if this somehow makes you feel better because I know a small group of people who got back at the system and BA was the victim!

Some friends of friends all temporaily changed their addresses to merge into a family account with BA, as it only really matters that everyone appears on paper to reside under the same roof. In the states, mail can be more easily rerouted and it's no offense to put your name onto an address, and you can change it back later. (often times, a good thing for college students too) Anyway, it's reported they all GOT the BA miles by doing the Jaguar promo years ago. You got 10k for test driving a certain new car, but only one of them really ever did it. The salesman gave a cert that was signed but not filled in! Woo hoo! A visit to Kinko's copies and a little black ink and some tweaking here and there, plus some added info later on, made it all come together for these guys. Then, the merge enabled the gang to have enough for a couple of tickets. The award flyers gave something of value to those who contributed to their use of the award miles and all was well with the world. I am sure, however, just telling of this will get me some flack so I am not going to admit to anything except to say it's probably still possible and will prevent a loss of otherwise useless small sums of BA miles...

MM

at the end of it, they all changed their addresses back to normal and undid the names in the family account on paper with the airline thru the use of more of its own forms and procedures, seeing as how THAT is pretty much all that matters to airlines these days anyway--which is precisely why this stuff worked.

Hey it's not just the evil people that take your miles away.

It's also the evil people that devalue them.

I lost quite a bit of money when MBNA decided to devalue the elite rewards points from 1 cent to .66 cents. One day, a 33% devaluation. Multiply that times a couple hundred thousand, you see something.

The sad thing is that I'd probably give all my MBNA points back just to get MBNA back from BOFA.

OUCH, OUCH, OUCH

I'm one of those people who reads all the small print, and set up my kids' in my BA household account almost from the day they were born! We just flew Iberia for the first time, and I've been bugging BA for the one set of points that they didn't credit us.
But even I've lost HH points in the past - didn't remember that they were going to expire. It would be really nice if the programs sent out some sort of reminder, like BAA do with their WorldPoints account updates (they tell you about 6 months in advance how many points are going to expire, and when).

Yep, called them and begged for forgivness. They granted it - at the rate of 2 CPM. $1800 was not worth it to me. Oh well, they are letting my fly to NZ in (albeit not the best) business class for $1500! ^ I think I made out ok.

cool, well at least you got something... and hey, we both have MM as our nic, and I dunno if you talk as much as I do in here but I lilke the name!

MM

What? Are you saying those miles disappeared into Finnair?

I flew Frontier from MDW (the OLD Midway) to DEN on the very first day of the Early Returns program. I signed up in the airport about 30 minutes before my flight departed, and got a temporary paper card. For boarding, the gate agent announced that members of the frequent flier program could board first - I was the only person on the entire flight!!

I flew back DEN-MDW a few days later and never flew F9 again. The program was different back then. I believe I lost 250 miles or something.

Working on it. FT was blocked at my office for long time. Did not have much time at home, so I was not around much. The company relented and freed FT from the Denied List. I had a TON to catch up on, it was horrible .

My mom actually gave me the handle when I was 2 or 3. Apparently I had the annoying habit of not being able to keep my mouth shut.

Not sure UA was so pleased about the NZ trip, but they did not blanket cancel the lot of us. The power of FT is mighty!

Well I would say that you could FINISH worrying about that account!



Aye, indeed... and as for talking too much, maybe we need to join up together the next time there's one of those threads with people in it who hate reading long posts. hahahaha we'd have a field day with them just being ourselves!

I hit the 18 month time limit and my US Air miles were set to expire. Of course I realized this the day before they were set to expire ( I moved to HI from East coast and don't have many chances to fly US Air). I made a $3.00 purchase on itunes and called US Air. Surpisingly, while the miles initially disappeared, I was credited 3 miles within a few weeks and somehow the miles (about 30K) magically reappeared in my account.

good for you!!

and yea, you DID activity on their system on time so that's what they should do: keep your acct alive!

Now, in my case, I needed about 900 more miles to book an award and I needed to book it so far in advance with United. The partner activity I chose kept my account alive, as also planned at the time, but those miles took forever to post and even when I explained my problem, MP Mall CS could do nothing for me. Some airlines (like AA) will advance you a few miles if they hear you have some coming in. I was able to show I did activity on time (like you were) but I could not book my flight until those miles came in--which did get hung up due to the fact they came from a 3rd party. When they finally did, I had to book a different way anyway and that stunk. UA never seemed to understand my pains though, which is why I'll not use the MP mall again really. It saved my mile balance but that's about all. I could hardly use them for what I needed and when! (I knew that activity would take more than 8 weeks to post so I tried to use the MP mall about 15 weeks in advance... It ended up taking about 25 weeks to get my miles!) I wish 3rd party miles would just post as you do the activity and the airline takes the responsibility of getting them into their system without passing the buck to you and I.

Over the years I have lost some odds and ends miles (Turkish Airlines, Swiss Air, etc.), but the big hurt for me was when I lost close to 300,000 Delta miles. I had a trip planned that was to use most of them, but couldn't go. Had a ticket purchased, but never used it (didn't get the miles, so no activity) and didn't realize that they had lowered the period before expiration. When I went to use them, they were gone.

The worst part wasn't losing them, that I attributed to me messing up. It was when I called Delta about it, they treated me like a leper that should be grateful I got them in the first place. I can understand (maybe) that for the customer that has a couple trips and is trying to earn a trip over 10 years, but you have to do some flying to get as many as I had. The treatment (not the loss) was such that I will now avoid Delta with a passion. Too bad for Delta, as I was thinking about going back to them as my destinations now once again fit their destinations). I'll run up around 120,000 miles this year (actual flying) that will go to another airline.

While not miles, I lost 127,000 Starwood points.
This was partially due to some health issues that kept me from traveling for b6 months.
My fault, but was given no "mercy" from SPG. I switched vto HH since.
A number of times I lost out on Delta vouchers,usually for small amounts. Once, I lost over $400 by mistaking the dates I had to use them by.
Wow, this thread is really depressing.

I lost 10,000 potential HHonors points when I didn't follow up w/ registering 2 participants of the Race for the Cure event (anyone remember that great deal?). I also lost a few potential points by not following up w/ ensuring that Hilton credits several k points earned from a timeshare stay at Embassy Suites (they were supposed to still credit the room service, etc.)