lexdevil

Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to revamp the United mall in the middle of a major promotion? There was more than enough chaos without the website changes. If the promotion was designed to get folks to try using the mall, why would they do that at a time when the website was most likely to experience problems? Is this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Marathon Man

well, as I sit here just kicking myself for even getting involved with this crazy promo (like I somehow let myself do with all others) and waiting to hear back from 13018084214 people about my missing millions of transactions, I can only consider this:

Yes, just remember this song by Boz Scaggs:

Miles... look have you done to me...
Never thought I'd fall again so easily
Oh, United, you wouldn't lie to me
Leading me to feel this way.....

Vaitrucci

My theory is that they've somehow lost a boatload of transactions and nothing is posting because United is still crafting a notice to say that they're sorry for the inconvenience, but those transactions can't be recovered. However, they'll award all registered Months of Miles users 100 miles as a courtesy gesture for the hassle.

I think I'm kidding.

jasonvr

You know why....It's All About the Benjamins....errr....Miles

Marathon Man

I think you are spot on!

And what's sick is that (A) many here will take it and (B) we will do the next promo too

Everybody look to the seats to their left (yeah)
Everybody look to the seats to their right (ha)
Can you feel that (yeah-take off)
We’re paying with AMEX tonight
It’s not about the miles, miles, miles
We don’t need your upgrades, promos, drink chits
We just wanna make the world fly,
Forget about the Price Tag
Ain’t about the (uh) Cha-Chang Cha-Chang.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Blang Ba-Blang
Wanna make the world fly,
Forget about the Price Tag.

jasonvr

Fun fact of the night:

If I need to fight for all the miles that have not posted, the PDFs of all the order confirmations for my missing orders are 2,119 pages long combined

Best Buy - 2 pages
Home Depot - 368 pages
KMart - 1,350 pages
Newegg - 24 pages
Sears - 375 pages

Marathon Man

while I have yet to actually open up and print to pdf all my emails I can say mine would probably be like that too. Most in HD and Sams.

My last email from HD that came to me on 9/15, shows the order shipped on 9/14 but was in fact purchased by my Amex on 9/9 in the late afternoon. They had time stamped each one in the HD order email. So showing the string of emails throughout about 35 pages of my Yahoo account with a printout of the last one MAY also work, but something tells me they would want to see more. I could sit here and make that PDF too but if I am going to do that I may as well print it all out as well.

So, what I might actually do if it comes to that is take a few reams of paper and print all of it out. Then drive the 26 miles to Cartera and drop it there in a big box and hand someone there one of those billing plastic window envelopes and a printed invoice I could make up to actually have them pay me back for a new ink cartridge and the paper. This last bit may not work but you get the idea

Vaitrucci

I understand the absurdity of even asking at this point, but I'm going to anyway because I can't recall it being mentioned here previously: Do car rental and hotel partner stays count toward this? You know, in theory. I've had a few car rentals in the last few weeks that have earned United miles, along with some double-dip Hilton stays.

Since these miles have actually posted to my MP account, I thought they might actually count for this wonderful promotion.

rustyr

If they are a legitimate partner, I don't see why not. I'm doing the 1K/UA booking bonus w/National right now in conjunction w/their 1-2 free promo. So if I don't get my 4x for 500 miles MOM bonus, I should get the 1K bonus and free car certs. That's how I looked at this promo- if you were going to buy/rent/stay anyways, then credit it to UA and hopefully, you will get credit. Incredible how low my expectations have become since this Migraines of Miles has evolved. I might add I rented from Hertz before Sept 30 when they were doing the 1K booking bonus and the transaction has shown up in my MOM statement.

pitcarin

I have been trying to get a Sam's GC activated since late August. I ultimately had problems with 3% of the Sam's gc's I ordered (trying to get activation codes). I am frustrated that while they are nice enough when you call, they have to turn everything over to a supervisor or someone else who never gets back with you. I have had to call 5-6 times which in my opinion, is ridiculous customer service. Spending 6 weeks of my time trying to get a gift card activated is ridiculous. I am assuming they hope it just goes away since they can't seem to solve the problem. It sounds like from your post, things have gotton worse.

Marathon Man

Well I sure hope Aloha Dave gets his Sams gig sorted out. Otherwise he's going to come git me, as I'm the bloke what convinced him to do this dumb promo.

Seriously, though, what a pain!

Anyway, I have had only 2 $25 GCs out of my ~$4,600+ worth have problems and corporate is apparently 'working' on the problem with them. I told them it is as if activation codes never came for those two cards. Well, I have had them in hand for just shy of one month now and so my $50 is in cyberspace.

I think the system did break down after many here ordered a lot of Sams GCs in Sept, and now, my fear is they too will try to make a simple fix by no longer allowing GCs to even be ordered by this or than method again in the future. You watch and see. I hope I am wrong.

I will tell you all that I did order ONE GC from Sams just recently to see if--like a fool--this new UA toolbar will actually award me 500 miles for installing and using it once. I got that GC, activated it and saved screenshots, but I have yet to use the GC at a Sams or WM store. I think it will be ok though. So maybe they can still handle very small GC orders, just not the massive ones.

What a pain.

Oh, in other news... I was in HD yesterday where cashiers claim they cannot merge GCs into one bigger one. Well, I had to do a special order for some stone veneer and the manager said she could merge them so that if I happened to want to call the store to place my stone order, I could easily pay with any CC or HD GC and having one big one would of course make life easier for everyone.

pitcarin

Your question is right on! I agree. Who in their right mind would have tried to do a re-design in the middle of an already completely screwed up promotion??? Who would have let this promotion unravel to the point that it has? It just amazes me that day after day after day, something new pops up. We get some communication, then it stops. I almost get the feelling that there are people sitting in meeting rooms reading these posts laughing at all of us for whoreing ourselves out on a promotion they came up with. What do you think they are really thinking about all us now?

Marathon Man

In other other news, I got an email (my second one like this) which shows the background artwork of the UA mall with my recent pending postings in it. There were about 6 from REI on the 9th of Sept. That was IT. Then I tried to log in but the system was having problems so try back later.

Also I had to go to Lowes for some things and happened to ask if they could take HD GCs. They cannot. They will only take their coupons and certs.

I did learn by complete mistake that if you happen to use an AMEX GC to buy something but later have to come back to return it, they could give you CASH! Not sure if all would, but hey, it could be worthy! Whilst we were there, I had bought this totally cool Halloween lawn pirate ship huge blow up thing that my son and I loved when in there in the AM yesterday, but my wife nixed it upon seeing it and so I took it back in the afternoon and my store handed me $116 in cash just like that. Oh well. Sometimes listening to one's SO gives you new CB methods you may need in future circumstances!

Remember in like the early 1990s there was this massive FBI cable sting or something that went on? They somehow lured in a bunch of people who watched TV and thought that if they all showed up at this stadium to get some deal, they would get a huge discount on cable. Once there, the law stepped in and nailed them all - something like, if you actually saw the deal on TV it meant your cable was actually one of the illegal set ups and so you were busted the moment you walked in. I do not recall all the exact details on this so forgive me if I am wrong on how it went down, but I am sure others here know what I am referring to.

Well, this could be similar. They are probably sitting there at UA or Cartera slowly weeding through lists of screen names and IP addys or trying to somehow fatten the mileage wallets of people who run this forum to get more data on us or something, and they are trying to match up who is who and who to un-target, etc. And who to watch out for in future promos. They think WE are a bunch of scammers and so they are trying to isolate our kind from the general pop.

Either that or they are just totally inept and have no concept of reality beyond listening to their sales driven pig-headed bosses that could care less about anything other than the quick, the now and the easy.

OK I need another coffee

pitcarin

We shouldn't have to be patient while retailers work out their systems to activate GC that we purchased a month ago. They should have had the infrastructure to work it out on the front end. To have 3% of my GC's have problems is unacceptable. To still be "working" on the problem a month later is unacceptable. 100% accuracy on GC's on the front end is the only acceptable standard.

Marathon Man

100% agreed.

I have suggested to many at UA and Cartera that they post miles when promised and research on their end. If there's a problem they can deduct later. If we provide evidence of our claims, which we have, they should not make us wait so long to get what others who were simply lucky got without effort.

They do not have this infrastructure you speak of because they do not want to spend MONEY or effort to make it happen!

It all comes down to what should be done vs the money-based sales mentality of quick, now and easy. Sad but true.