Poor MileagePlus Reply on Lifetime Balance
 

Greetings,

I'm pretty upset at the OnePass folks for the reply today that I received for an inquiry.

== My Original Inquiry ==
I've noticed that my million miler mileage balance has not changed in many months and I know that I've flown many thousands of miles since I started to notice this, can you tell me why it is not updating?

== OnePass Reply ==

(Canned Pleasantry)

Your Lifetime miles of 1,8xx,xxx is correct.

== My Reply to their Reply ==
Many thanks for providing absolutely no information. I’ve watched the balance be the same for months, yet you just indicate that it is correct, no details as to when it will update or what the last flight was credited or any other shred of information that might just provide a nugget of information to assure the balance is correct. I’m supposed to take your word that it is correct when I’ve been watching it for months now?

I’m going to ignore your response which you masquerade around as an answer and take my question and concerns an alternative route that might actually just give me actual answers.


== Question to the Flyertalk Community ==

• Is the Mileage Balance batch processing periodically?
• How long have you had to wait to see things appear in your balance?
• Any success of getting a listing of what flights are actually credited?

What infuriates me the most about this is the question was never actually answered. Being involved in ERPs and large databases, I can tell you that I for a fact know that they have incremental data that makes up the Lifetime accumulator. Perhaps the agent doesn't have access to this, but they could certainly reply that they don't have access and point the inquiry to the right direction.

Seems me like they get credit for each inquiry that they reply to (without any regards to substance).

This seems easy to test now that United has asserted that your balance of 1,8xx,xxx is correct. Take a United-operated flight, wait for the miles to accrue to your account online. Check whether your balance is still 1,8xx,xxx or is something higher.

If your balance is still 1,8xx,xxx after you take another flight, write back again and ask whether they were wrong before or are wrong now.

In my experience the lifetime mile counter shown online increments at the same time that the miles post to my account (I don't see them growing separately).

What types of flights are you taking? Million miler only increases for UA operated flights

And only the actual miles flown (BIS) count.

OnePass? That is so 2010! ;)

But yes, miles to MM balance should post at same time as award and PQM.
This page gives complete overview:
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/app...tActivity.aspx

Well, based on your use of the term OnePass I am going to assume you came from CO. There is no OnePass anymore. UA MileagePlus determines lifetime miles differently than OnePass did. OnePass counted lots of different kinds of miles as lifetime. MileagePlus only counts actual rear in seat on UA and UX metal (except for the one time adjustment when the 2 programs merged) and when it was part of UA, COPA metal miles. So, all these flights that aren't incrementing your lifetime miles, what metal are they on? If *A non-UA/UX then your mileage won't increment. If is indeed UA/UX metal and it is not incrementing then there may be a problem. Are you getting credit for the flights as in PQM's/PQS's/PQD's and RDM's? If the answer to all this is yes, call back and speak to another agent.

The key question here is what flight activity are you referring to?

Was the flight UA or UX operated -- codeshares or partner flights do not count.

Were the flights paid flights? Award flights do not accumulate MM credit.

On the UA site and in a FT thread's wiki, the key elements are pointed out.
If you have question about a particular flight(s), list the flight(s) and we can help provide some insight.

As mentioned ealier, OnePass hasn't existed for a while - over 4 years now. So no sense being upset at the 'OnePass folks' (and it infuriates me when I still here OnePass on flights every so often).

That aside, your reply to their answer was sarcastic, and I would never expect a serious reply to something like this. I understand you're upset and want an answer, but It would have been easier to respond with a sentence or two that was short, to the point and completely non-facetious - something like - "thanks for your reply, however, it didn't answer my concern. I'm trying to determine why my lifetime balance hasn't increased despite my activity in the last several months. Can you please explain?"

Except for flights under 500 miles for elites

Resolution
 

Greetings,

Yes, old CO here, amazing how folks jump on a slight nomenclature issue (Onepass versus MileagePlus). Being captive at IAH, all flights were domestic UA/UX metal

For those who may be interested in learning what happened, a different but helpful agent actually replied to what some considered a sarcastic reply, I consider it calling a spade a spade. She was able to send me a screen shot that showed the mileage earned year by year. It was also indicated that the process runs in a batch mode at some unknown interval which does catch the lifetime totals up eventually.

After seeing my balance for this year from their screenshot and comparing it to my spreadsheet I noted that I was quite a bit behind and lo and behold today, the lifetime balance was updated and caught up to where it should be.

Interesting outcome. How much was the delta in days between the YTD miles earned and the lifetime balance update? I have never found a difference of more than a few days, if not identically updated.

Likewise, I have never seen a discernible lag in these posting.