Retention of boarding passes/travel documents
 

How long do you retain your boarding passes and other documents, hotel bills, etc? Until posted? Until posted + 3 months? .....

Thanks,

Gwen

Boarding passes usually end up in the trash on the plane. Hotel receipts go in my folder for submission with my expenses, or which I keep a copy, so I guess those I keep for a long time.

I don't think I've ever had credit not post and it's not worth the hassle, to me, to keep and track all of those.

The only one I've ever kept was my wife's Shanghai-SFO United BP that left Nov 1, crossed the date line, and landed early on Nov 1 again, the day US and UA started their FF cross-earning agreement. They had no clue in China on how to enter her DM number, so I kept the BP, knowing it would need to be submitted for 4K+ miles.

I keep them until miles post. "Partner" flights are notorious for not posting, especially when check-in is handled by a third party (internationally).

Boarding passes: forever
Miles statements: forever
Hotel receipts and everything else: until cc statement and miles post.

I have kept all my Boarding Passes, from day one of my flying as a kid.

Could practically wallpaper a house I have so many.

But I've noticed a problem recently. Whatever printing method most of the airlines are using these days (thermal?)...the ink on the darn things is starting to dissappear as time goes by! Fading away to nothing!

I do the same! As for the rest, I just keep them until the miles post.


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No thanks, I'm just lurking. Call me the Lurker!

Until they are posted.

Receipts & Boarding Passes for six years until the chance of IRS audit is gone. For years I used to file everything neatly, but about 15 years ago I quit that timewaster and now just put rubberbands around the ticket jackets and dump them in a plastic bag on their way to the dumpster six years later.
Statements are all cleaned out at the end of each year.

Three years. When what would be year four is over, I dump the oldest batch. Just use a rubber band (gumband in PIT) around jackets to keep each year's accumulation together.

'Til they post.

til they post or i find them in a stack of stuff later. i file by piles & moints.

Til they post. I've had quite a few partner trips over the years, that failed to get posted.

Certainly until the points post after that it is determined by how long and persistant the nagging is. If I can ignore it I do.

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"A day without Points/Miles is like a day without SUNSHINE"

Funny, my kids are always missing their points. I have had to track down missing miles at least three times.

Until the miles post, then discard. Hardly worth keeping...not quite the type of thing that would gain value with time. I rahter keep pictures for the memories.

I used to keep documents until the miles posted and not worry about it anymore.
Now I keep documents until the miles post and continue to worry about it.
The difference is that there were some points that one of the airlines posted by mistake and then removed. They removed them without telling me (until I asked about it). If they post miles by mistake, of course it is fine for them to remove them, but I think they should tell you.

PremEx:
How long exactly have you noticed you stubs lasting for? I've just recently started "collecting" my boarding passes and have also noticed a considerable fade in just a matter of a few months. Will it be even worth the effort to keep the stubs? Or will they just become empty boarding passes with the airline's logo on them?

Aloha

Why should airlines spend good money on long lasting ink?

What on earth for?

Don't really know...memories, sentiment...

They end up reasonably well filed in wooden wine crates in storage spaces in our house.

My wife thinks I'm a bit weird that way too.

haha - now THAT made me laugh!

But do you remember that 'song' that was a big hit some years back, it was based on some newspaper advice column and was called "wear sunscreen" or something like that.

"Do one thing every day that scares you" and "Read the directions, even if you don't follow them" were a couple of the lines that I'll always remember but there was also "keep your old love letters but throw away your old bank statements."

:-)

It was Kurt Vonnegut's commencement speech to MIT in 1997. Or Not. The song is based off of the "commencement speech" text.

As for the passes, I keep them. They go into a stack with all the other paperwork and maps I pick up on a trip for a later scrapbook. Most of by travel is leisure instead of business, so that makes more sense than a weekly business commute.

Oh, my gosh. I think we keep them for eternity too. Premex's] living room and my study will be featured in an upcoming edition of Martha Stewart Living..... on ticketing stubs as colour palettes and decorating themes for fine homes. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

lala

Oh, wow. Someone who actually knows KV and some of his works....Thanks for the memories, StSebastian! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif

Until I lose them....

At least until they post - usually longer like until I get fed up with the clutter and have a massive clear out.




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Travel well and arrive home safely,

Jon David
http://www.simplyjond.com

If the search function on this website was decent, I could post links to the several times this topic has already been discussed. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I save my boarding passes until the miles post, and then I give them to my kids to play with.

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"There's no sadder sight in this world than that of a football player trying to think." -- Daria

Same thing happened to me, till I read that storing these thermal receipts in plastic (in my case, a plastic portfolio), or exposing them to high temps, can accelerate the fading. So now they go into a manila envelope.



[This message has been edited by Diaphanous (edited 09-11-2003).]

I have all of mine from last year and this year and a few from before, I have a bunch on my wall at home and a few on my wall here at college.

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DC-10's Forever!
Congratulations to the Talkboard winners and thank you to those who voted for me.

I keep a boarding pass until I finish reading the book in which it was used as a bookmark. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif And it is amazing how often I borrow a book from someone, and find one of their old boarding passes.

In the days of BOL (before on line) that some of us remember, I saved things forever and got a yearly summary printout. Now I agree with Monitor.. but I don't know if the old ones are fading.. I almost never look at them
hnechets: Didn't NPR just do a 20th or so anniversary snippit on KV's SlaughterHouse Five?

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JerseyJoe

... since this thread has been bumped a couple of times, here's more reactions to saving boarding passes: http://www.flyertalk.com/pasttalk/ft...ML/005054.html