weetanuki

I made the perhaps poor decision to do a status match in early March. I was thinking it would be fine... but not so sure anymore. I don’t expect them to extend my 4-month status but it sure would make it easier to take a TK flight to further extend the status! So far it hasn’t been extended at all.

gr8pirate

could be. In my case I requalified for E+ in the first year and was approaching the end of my ‘dead’ second year where the status miles don’t matter.

AvidFlyer1990

Not sure I quite understand: are you talking about status miles or bonus miles / redeemable miles?

From what I understand is most of us got our status extended by 6 months and the status miles that we had achieved to protect / achieve status have been zeroed out or severely depleted. For me atleast, the expiration of bonus miles / redeemable miles are still the same which is quite a worry for me as a significant chunk of it is expiring at the end of this year.

TPJ

My E+ status was extended to 31 March 2022 (extra 6 months granted - already re-qualified in the first year).

Knowing how inflexible TK sometimes is, definitely not expected but appreciated...

IAN-UK

While I, too, appreciate the intentions, I wish TK could recognise its limitations and stick to simple schemes.

craigthemif

A blanket 6-month extension seems pretty simple to me. What else would be easier?

ISTFlyer

I also think that the TK system is a bit complicated but it's customer-friendly. Especially, the nice points are that it's the 2nd easiest *G status to obtain within all carriers and you could simply choose the 365-year window to qualify for your status and you could maintain your status with several flights in 2 years for a lower amount than the original qualification amount.

Definitely, it's better than Jan to Dec calendar collection years and 1-year status like most US carriers and some others have.

IAN-UK

A blanket six-month extension is great.

Sadly there was a concomitant failure to understand, or test for, the impact the "simple" change in dates could have on the existing status mile balance.

Pretty much par for the course in the world of M&S.

Lost upgrade vouchers and special approaches required to employ them; promotions that fail to yield the promised bonus; the occasional chunk of miles going missing. All these can get put right, but unless you have a helpful office close at hand, or hit on the right type of agent by phone, it can be a frusrating affair to get things done.



So maybe it would have been easier, simpler, more straight-forward, less prone to cock-up, to credit all accounts with 5K/10K/20K status miles. Status miles carry no cost to the airline, and the existing system could cope with the impact of extra miles without further tinkering. Sure, the awkward rolling membership year means there'd be winner and non-winners. I'd be a non-winner, but to be honest a 6-month extension means nothing to me anyway: though there'd be nothing to stop the airline adding value by throwing some bonus miles into the gesture as a sop to those who lose out.


As it is my clear run to July 2023 (by requalifying in the first year of my 2019-21 membership) has morfed into expiry in February 2022, while my status account has been zeroed. I've no doubt things will be righted, but past experience suggests a series of miscommunications by phone and text before that happy day.

IAN-UK

I'm happy with the programme structure, and i recognise its a cheap programme to join, and indeed to maintain. I love the idea of the upgrade vouchers - though even lovers have to recognise the occasional failing in their relationship

Sadly the functionality is not so great. And that's being kind. Customer service doesn't always meet expectations. And that's being even kinder.


Oddly, i keep up my Lufthansa account (2 calendar year membership), and can't see a single advantage of the rolling year membership. Indeed, with my M&S requalification month drifting over the years, I see an advantage in brutally transparent Lufthansa (and BA) way of handling membership years.

ISTFlyer

I completely agree on this, I barely remember an occasion with TK Miles&Smiles, that I didn't need to spend more than an hour. It's either long phone calls, going to the sales offices, or filling multiple feedback forms until your request has been fulfilled.

To be honest, there were some exceptions, I was successful, refunding a *A award on the phone on my first attempt but the call took at least 20 minutes.

The biggest advantage of a rolling year membership is that most of us here ( assuming that ) does not fly TK or *A, 80k miles every single year.

The system of BA is similar to M&S, however, it's a 1-year cycle with no requalification discount, rather than a 2-year cycle with requalification discount.

However, in terms of customer service, the LH M&M service team is at top, and BA has a far high standard customer service than TK.

craigthemif

Although many of us FTers are like junkies, caring more about the next fix than the current one... there are lots of people who actually want to enjoy their elite status and/or aren't helped by a reduced target. So making it easier to re-qualify might make sense for some frequent travellers, but can come across as pointless to a whole lot of other people... So pretending that the next 6 months don't exist is fairer across the board...

SFOTraveler1984

As I said before, I really appreciate the decision to extend everyone's membership by 6 months - but I am amazed how badly this was implemented.
I work in IT and in every good organization, you would have a Production and a Test (sometimes even more) system.
To me it looks like TK just does "stuff" (e.g. extended membership years) in their Production system - without proper testing before. Otherwise it is hard to understand why so many people now have issues with their status miles.
As a result, they then need to employ a back office team (with admin rights) to fix the issues manually...
Just doesnt sound very efficient

khkchan

I was in my 2nd year of Elite expiring Jan 2021 - already collected 25k+ miles during my first year. App was showing "Elite status protected is enabled"

With the extension, now my elite expires Jul 2021 and this pushes me back to my first year. App is showing the status miles I collected from Jul 2019 to now (at about 22k miles) and I still haven't re-qualified for my elite extension.

I hope TK will be able to calculate correctly later on..

IAN-UK

Sorry, i think I muddied things by using the wrong term.

The advantage I don't recognise is a collection cycle with variable start/finish dates. Seems to me that fixed dates, usually year end, should be easier to administer and have the virtue of memorable key dates for flyers.

I do like two year terms. A particularly joy for someone in two such programmes is the ability to synchronise the fallow with active years

IAN-UK

Again, i have no argument, and no bias, in terms of how the airline makes good its FFP members.


EXCEPT I'd like them to opt for a mechanism they can handle without cock-up. TK could have handled a hand-out of miles: sadly they opted to extend the membership term, a strategy evidently beyond their technical capacity.