Slow Posting
 

What the longest you have had to wait for Idine to post? I think it just gotten crazy and thats why.

This used to be one of the best programs,

The transaction should show up @ Rewards Network within 4 - 6 days afterwards - for instance, a dine on the 1st of the month should appear between the 5th and 7th. If it hasn't shown up on your RN account at all as "pending" a full week later, it's time to phone them and ask. The longest I have seen a dine post "on its own" was about 2 weeks after the meal. I had snail-mailed the receipt about 10 days later, and it takes about a week after they get the receipt to actually get the miles posted manually. Back then, missing credits entered by reps based upon submitted receipts were clearly marked "manual ticket" in one's account, and this one showed up about the time my letter would have hit their office as a regular "automatic" (albeit a very late one), system-generated credit.
How long to post at your airline account itself? Anywhere from 2 - 4 weeks after the transaction.

I concur. I had one restaurant that would never post, so just faxed in the receipts after calling the help desk and 1 week later all is solved. Normally I see miles posted to RN account in about 4 business days. And usually 5-10 days later in my airline program of choice (whomever is going to give me bonus miles :) ).

I used to see all my dines post within 2-3 dines but now the majority dont post and Im required to fax in my receipt for credit. I have never received an explanation from the Cust Service Reps other than "sometimes this stuff happens....". Kind of frustrating but i guess its worth the extra steps to get the miles.

Right with you...
 

I'm kind of frustrated with the same problem. There's one restaurant in Washington, DC - Solar Cafe - that NEVER posts. I ALWAYS have to call and then fax the info to them. They say they're working on it with the restaurant, but I'll believe it when I see it. I've been told I'm not the only one with the same problem with this restaurant.

It could take 5 weeks or longer at some airlines. It's a multi-step process:

1. The dine has to post to RN first. Whatever amount of time that takes is independent of the rest of the process.

2. The miles have to be transferred. There not transferred electronically instantly the moment they post; they are aggregated with other diners' dines and sent "in bulk" to the airline, anywhere from a few times a week possibly with some airlines to as rarely as once a month definitely with some other airlines (like BA).

Adding the two together, it's quite easy, if you dined at the "wrong" time of the month (just miss a transfer "window"), for a dine to take over 5 weeks after the dine itself to post at BA. On other hand, it can take less than a week from the dine to post at ANY airline (including BA) if you "just sneak in" before the once-a-month transfer happens.

In other words, it's not a question of how fast it happens, it's a question of how often it happens.

I believe some places do this on purpose. This place in Chicago always does it to me, and I had a real problem with a really large dine. Someone explained in another thread that it might be due to a cash flow problem. Idine can take over 30% of the credit card transaction, so if a place is struggling, they try to avoid taking the hit so they have money to pay their suppliers etc.

I'd be curious how they get around it?

There was 1 restaurant in New London, CT (Gridlock Grill) that was in idine a couple of years ago. The only dine I had there did not post. (But I unfortunently never followed up! :( ) Then they dropped out of idine.

Recently, they came back to idine. My last (and only recent) dine did not post either! :mad: (You bet I'm going to follow up this time!)

You are not the only one with a problem with Solar. It's a nice opportunity to obtain elite status quickly, by purchasing, say, 12 cokes with rewards caps on them. So I bet iDine gets a whole lotta faxes of Solar receipts.

Back on topic: I am amazed that people report approximately 4 days as normal. In my experience, 6 days is quick, 8 is normal. Their FAQ says a dine should post "generally" in 3 to 5 days, but also says one should wait 10 days before following up. I never count on anything done within 8 days of a bonus deadline to post in time.

Simple. If we don't follow up, iDine has no way of knowing that the transaction happened. Even some of us who know the system don't always follow up. So it's worth a shot, especially for a place that already is getting soaked by the CC companies because their transactions tend to be small.

How do they put the charge through so as to bypass Rewards Network's "cut"? Whenever I've had to put through a missing visit request, the reps have told me that their office "investigates" the failure-to-credit.

You had better believe I send in puny receipts for under $5 that fail! One restaurant here takes 5 - 6 days to post; most transactions go through on the fourth day after the visit. On rare occasion, I've seen a post on the third day :)

I presume if they NEVER post it's because they changed the machine they run it through or changed their merchant number without notifying iDine (or iDine has that information wrong for some other reason).

If they often don't post but sometimes do, it could be because they have two machines or two merchant numbers and sometimes use one and sometimes another, but iDine is only aware of one of them.

I'd be fairly confident that iDine would be very concerned about a merchant obatining a second credit card set-up to bypass them after the first complaint of missing miles.

In a past thread, someone explained that restaurants had another credit card machine to run non Idine transactions. There are some legitimate reasons for doing this: 1) if you use a coupon, you're not supposed to get miles 2) if you negotiated some special group rate, you are not supposed to get miles. I always thought there was some way to flag the transactions as nonqualifying when they ran the card, but someone told me there was just a seperate machine. It makes sense that I keep missing my miles at Maza b/c the owner is there all the time and he runs the credit cards. In that some thread that I'm talking about, the person giving this info explained that the average person working wouldn't have a clue about Idine or this process so you often can get miles even when using a coupon b/c the waiter will just run the card as he normally does.

Time for a wiki page?
 

Anybody ever written the definitive story of *exactly* how the system works?

From the 'extra machine' chatter ~ it seems like members/diners are being used as 'secret shoppers' .. or if you prefer, snitches.
Credit doesn't go through? Rat 'em out!! :D

Hey, do ya suppose we could get RN to pay a bounty for catching a cheat ??
/.

Do we even know what is in the contract between RN and a restaurant? Do we even know what they agree upon at the start?

It's only cheating if RN asks them what ALL their merchant numbers and reporting machines are, and tells them that it's in violation of their contract to use another one without reporting it to RN.

Yes, it could be that all those restaurants are trying to cheat. But it could also sometimes be sloppiness on the part of the RN representative in not having clarified that "you need to also tell me the info about your backup machine" or whatever.

RN has a hard time, also, figuring out when restaurants shut down. (I can find no trace of activity at Le Petit Paris in Huntington Beach CA in Orange County for many months now -- they are closed even on Thursday and Friday nights, and their answering machine talks about signing up for a Valnetine's Day event -- but RN still lists them month after month after month.) This implies to me that RN does not do analysis of patterns of dining reports from restaurants to spot when such a pattern suddenly changes, or when a restaurant isn't reporting any dines for months and months and months. I don't see how such lack of attention on RN's part should be completely blamed on the restaurants. (They have other things to worry about, especially the ones on the edge of collapsing. But for RN figuring out when restaurants have suddenly stopped reporting dines would be a top priority, I would think?)

Heck, they've refused to remove one joint here that has been out-of-business for a long time, after I've reported it!

[QUOTE=sdsearch]
" sent "in bulk" to the airline, ...., to as rarely as once a month definitely with some other airlines (like BA)."


Anyone know the date the miles are transferred to BA?

Need some miles to post before June 28 to keep the account"active" .

I've noticed that BA seems to post by the 5th-9th of the month. So I would think you might have a tough time getting these posted in time. But if you rushed out right now and bought a coke at one of these places, it might post. Good luck. You might also look to buy miles from BA. Those should post right away.

Thanks for the info. Did go out yesterday - May 30 and had a $15.12 dine so hoping it will post in time and earn the 250 bonus miles.

Since the transfer should be done early enough in the month I will have enough time to know if it worked or not. If not, I can, as you suggest, buy miles.

To squeeze out the extra mile, use tipping to round out the net total bill to multiples of 20 cents for iDine "elites" (@ 5x + 5x/dollar); not-yet-elites (@ 3x) should round to .34/.67/.00 for that extra mile. For diners earning Priority Club hotel points: 8x base gets rounded to nearest $.25 on the net (post-tip) bill. As an exception, I do not add tips when ordering at a food court counter.

As a further reminder -- be somewhat leery of rounding the bill to an exact dollar amount for promos with a minimum transaction (or aggregate spending if you're cutting it that close). I have had a couple of even-dollar transactions put through 1¢ lower by the restaurant later [$5.00 signed for became $4.99 charged]. Only once, that I can recall, have they ever failed to include the tip at all.

At 10 miles per dollar, you're extra 20 cent tip is getting you 2 miles. It doesn't seem worth the bother. Just tip what you'd normally tip.

I think the point is that an extra 1 cent tip can get you two miles. Say the bill is $24.99 and you figure the service was worth approx 20% tip, so you add $5 making it $29.99. You get 298 miles. But add a penny and you get 300.
Have I got that right?
It literally is "squeezing out the last mile." But what the heck, over the course of a year it could add up to the equivalent of a modest bonus offer. Seems that the gentleman has earned the handle "Points Scrounger." :)

Just trying to be helpful.

I was thinking about this a few months ago, but I hate math so I never tried to figure it out. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it. ^

The dine itself may post in time, but the 250 bonus miles are not likely to. In the Every Meal Bonus Terms And Conditions at the bottom of the registration page, it says in part: "Please allow 6-8 weeks after the promotion has ended for any bonus BA Miles to post to your account."

Most dining bonuses of this sort post MONTHS after the original dine (because you first have to wait for the promotion to end and THEN many many weeks).

But since the main point of your dine was to keep miles alive, the dine itself (without the bonus posting at the same time) will be enough for that.

And, in fact, if you don't want to spend a single penny more, there'll be an advantage to this: You'll have your miles expiration extended AGAIN for a few EXTRA months when the bonus finally posts! :)

Thanks for the follow up info. That's great that I will get an expiration boost when the bonus post.

Great idea and thanks for working it out for all the different programs and levels.

I always add a tip to get to the next level (total adds up to $20.00 or $10.40).

The thing that hurts is when you go to a takeout place or sub shop (or the like) and the bill comes to something like $11.58 or $9.99 :mad: - you normally don't add a tip to the register bill to make it $11.60 or $10.00! At least I have not! (At a sit down place - yes - but not at a counter!)

I've never gone shopping at Safeway or Stop & Shop or Macy's and said to the cashier "Would you add $.07 to the total to make it an even amount?" - who has? You may increase your tip at a restaurant from $2.07 to $2.16 to make it even, but I doubt you would do that at Quiznos!

Thus, your bonus gets rounded down :mad: !

Traveler:

My last participating Quiznos purchase was $5.79 (OR has no sales tax) - you'd better believe I noticed! :(

I don't tip on counter service either.

Points

Update and another question
 

My miles from the dine on May 30 posted on the 6th of June (said paid on June 5 but did not show up till the 6th )so the dine at the end of May made it in time.

Interestingly on the details in my BA FF account the entry says:
Miscellaneous - EXECUTIVE CLUB DINING 50
Miscellaneous 250

so it looks like the bonus was paid at the same time. Also the date in the details was back dated to the day of the dine in May not the day that it was "paid" though the summary lists the date as June 6 and the miles as 300.
Any one else have that happen?