Anyone else having problems with MileTracker??
May 24, 2006, 4:03 pm
#92
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 568
After contacting Miletracker, here is the response I received relating to the current problems that I am experiencing:
Thank you for reporting the US Airways and Latest Travel News problems in MileTracker. Since the US Airways merger with America West took place, their servers have been extremely slow to respond. This is causing MileTracker to time out when trying to retrieve US Airways account balances.
Our programmers are working on updating the program and it should be working again soon. We will be releasing an upgraded version of MileTracker very soon, so please be sure to download it when prompted to. I apologize for the inconvenience. The Latest Travel News problem is due to USA Today's broken feed. We will report the problem to them. I am confident they will have it fixed soon. Thanks again for reporting these problems.
Courtney Reifeis
DeskPort Technologies, Inc.
11358 Talon Trace, Fishers, IN 46037 USA [email protected], 317-579-9489
Thank you for reporting the US Airways and Latest Travel News problems in MileTracker. Since the US Airways merger with America West took place, their servers have been extremely slow to respond. This is causing MileTracker to time out when trying to retrieve US Airways account balances.
Our programmers are working on updating the program and it should be working again soon. We will be releasing an upgraded version of MileTracker very soon, so please be sure to download it when prompted to. I apologize for the inconvenience. The Latest Travel News problem is due to USA Today's broken feed. We will report the problem to them. I am confident they will have it fixed soon. Thanks again for reporting these problems.
Courtney Reifeis
DeskPort Technologies, Inc.
11358 Talon Trace, Fishers, IN 46037 USA [email protected], 317-579-9489
Jul 6, 2006, 3:47 pm
#95
Original Member
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Boynton Beach, Florida, USA
Programs: All Airline & Hotel Programs (POINT JUNKIE!)
Posts: 806
AA does not update -
I have MileTracker on both m Desktop and Laptop ---Desktop works fine but I'm having trouble w/AA on the Laptop -
Service Rep e-mail said to 'update' - did that 2X - stilll AA will not update - says - number invalid? but Auto Navigate goes to the web with the same Passwod etc. ??
Probably will uninstall and install again - What A bother!!
Service Rep e-mail said to 'update' - did that 2X - stilll AA will not update - says - number invalid? but Auto Navigate goes to the web with the same Passwod etc. ??
Probably will uninstall and install again - What A bother!!
Jul 8, 2006, 8:33 am
#97
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: SAN
Programs: AA Lifetime Platinum, UA, AS, DL, SPG Gold, HH Diamond
Posts: 1,097
Originally Posted by Middle_Seat
At this moment MileTracker is able to update less than half of my accounts. But, it's a very useful tool for an unbeatable price, so I'm not complaining. ^
Jul 9, 2006, 2:47 pm
#98
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 429
That's a good point fet.
I originally developed MileTracker and still provide support for it and the most common issues I see for unretrievable balances are:
- Trying to access balances at odd hours. Many sites are taken down for maintenance late at night and on the weekends. MileTracker tries to guess when that is happening and provides you with an appropriate warning, but it's difficult to determine reliably.
- A new term, condition, or promotional offer needs to be viewed and accepted/declined. For instance, when Continental makes a change to their terms and conditions, they redirect you continually to a page detailing it until you read and accept it. MileTracker has the technology to go ahead and accept the changes for you, but I would never consider it acceptable to do that. As with "down for maintenance", MileTracker tries to determine when these pages are showing up, but it can't always get it right.
- Your profile needs to be updated or the site switched to a new way of handling logins. For instance, the US Air / America West merger required new profiles to be created. This will just require manual intervention by a user regardless of how intelligent the technology gets.
- You're not based in the US and/or your primary language isn't English. Or if you have a really special account because you've been a member for 50+ years, you are in a super elite circle, etc. We try to support accounts for as many nationalities, languages, and statuses as possible, but the focus is definitely for U.S. English users with the most common account types. Some sites like American Express have completely different layouts based on the country the card was issued in and we'll choose to support tens of thousands of U.S. Amex users before we support a Urdu-speaking Centurian cardholder in Togo. Of course we definitely don't mean any disrespect to such users.
Many of these problems can be resolved by using the links in the "Auto Navigate" column. I don't think that a lot of users take advantage of this cool feature. If you're having trouble with an account or you want a web browser opened up into your account, click the corresponding "Navigate" link and watch while it opens up your browsers, and then "ghost types" in your account info and "ghost clicks" on the necessary links.
One drawback to MileTracker is that we don't have access to your usernames and passwords for debugging your problems unless you explicitly type them into a support request or email them to us. I'm not sure how the web-based mileage managers work or what their privacy policy is like, but it's feasible that they could just say "We see that user johndoe's account isn't updating properly. Let's manually login and take a look at it to see how to fix it." I'm not saying that they do that because I really have no idea. But we for sure do not have that luxury. It makes it a real challenge to keep 100% of accounts up-to-date 100% of the time, but it provides users with major benefits in terms of both privacy and security.
We have a support staff to help users with their problems. If you are having trouble, check out the list above, but then please feel free to use the support form that is available inside of the application. You can access it under the Help menu with the "Contact Us, Report a Problem, Request a Feature" menu item.
Thanks for your continued interest in the product and for all of your feedback. And thanks to Randy too for not having a problem with this thread being hosted at FlyerTalk.
-Mike Hoeffner
I originally developed MileTracker and still provide support for it and the most common issues I see for unretrievable balances are:
- Trying to access balances at odd hours. Many sites are taken down for maintenance late at night and on the weekends. MileTracker tries to guess when that is happening and provides you with an appropriate warning, but it's difficult to determine reliably.
- A new term, condition, or promotional offer needs to be viewed and accepted/declined. For instance, when Continental makes a change to their terms and conditions, they redirect you continually to a page detailing it until you read and accept it. MileTracker has the technology to go ahead and accept the changes for you, but I would never consider it acceptable to do that. As with "down for maintenance", MileTracker tries to determine when these pages are showing up, but it can't always get it right.
- Your profile needs to be updated or the site switched to a new way of handling logins. For instance, the US Air / America West merger required new profiles to be created. This will just require manual intervention by a user regardless of how intelligent the technology gets.
- You're not based in the US and/or your primary language isn't English. Or if you have a really special account because you've been a member for 50+ years, you are in a super elite circle, etc. We try to support accounts for as many nationalities, languages, and statuses as possible, but the focus is definitely for U.S. English users with the most common account types. Some sites like American Express have completely different layouts based on the country the card was issued in and we'll choose to support tens of thousands of U.S. Amex users before we support a Urdu-speaking Centurian cardholder in Togo. Of course we definitely don't mean any disrespect to such users.
Many of these problems can be resolved by using the links in the "Auto Navigate" column. I don't think that a lot of users take advantage of this cool feature. If you're having trouble with an account or you want a web browser opened up into your account, click the corresponding "Navigate" link and watch while it opens up your browsers, and then "ghost types" in your account info and "ghost clicks" on the necessary links.
One drawback to MileTracker is that we don't have access to your usernames and passwords for debugging your problems unless you explicitly type them into a support request or email them to us. I'm not sure how the web-based mileage managers work or what their privacy policy is like, but it's feasible that they could just say "We see that user johndoe's account isn't updating properly. Let's manually login and take a look at it to see how to fix it." I'm not saying that they do that because I really have no idea. But we for sure do not have that luxury. It makes it a real challenge to keep 100% of accounts up-to-date 100% of the time, but it provides users with major benefits in terms of both privacy and security.
We have a support staff to help users with their problems. If you are having trouble, check out the list above, but then please feel free to use the support form that is available inside of the application. You can access it under the Help menu with the "Contact Us, Report a Problem, Request a Feature" menu item.
Thanks for your continued interest in the product and for all of your feedback. And thanks to Randy too for not having a problem with this thread being hosted at FlyerTalk.
-Mike Hoeffner
Last edited by jimbob; Jul 9, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Jul 10, 2006, 12:33 am
#100
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: SAN
Programs: AA Lifetime Platinum, UA, AS, DL, SPG Gold, HH Diamond
Posts: 1,097
Originally Posted by SanDiego1K
Mike, I LOVE Mileage Tracker! It's an awesome way to quickly track my accounts on a daily basis. Thank you for developing it.
Jul 15, 2006, 5:07 pm
#102
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: PDX
Programs: HHonors Gold since '02, Hertz President's Circle since '07
Posts: 3,226
USAir will not retrieve
For a while now (about a month?) I've been unable to retrieve my USAir accounts. I can navigate, but I can't retrieve, so account and pw are correct (and I have adjusted my profile as required and noted by Mike above). It happens 100% of the time, any time of day or night.
I reported the error to Courtney, and she said she forwarded it to the programmers. Have you guys been able to reproduce this error? Is there an update forthcoming?
Does anyone else have this problem?
I reported the error to Courtney, and she said she forwarded it to the programmers. Have you guys been able to reproduce this error? Is there an update forthcoming?
Does anyone else have this problem?
Jul 15, 2006, 5:42 pm
#104
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 11,377
Same problem with US Airways
I'm having the same problem with US. I'm using the milesandpoints.de German version.
My US points balance is minimal (leftover from pre-Star Alliance days), so it doesn't matter to me that much.
My US points balance is minimal (leftover from pre-Star Alliance days), so it doesn't matter to me that much.
Jul 15, 2006, 5:46 pm
#105
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: IAH/HOU
Programs: Priceline Blood Diamond Elite. Peon on DL, AA, UA, US, and WN.
Posts: 7,236
I do not have any problems w/ Miletracker related to US Airways mileage retrieval. It has my current mileage up-to-date. Though, I just used it and got the message, "Cannot determine. Please try again later or use Navigate on the right." But, this is the first time I used MT in about a week. Though, it does show my correct mileage.