TomBascom

And another thing -- where in the DM rules has there ever been a prohibition against sharing? "Valid for addressee only" (on the subset of promotions where it appears) isn't the same as "you can't tell anyone about this" and given the numerous reports of DM simply adding people to the target list upon inquiry "no sharing" seems a very indefensible position.

Beckles

Ummm, my message early in the thread, as I stated, comes from an identified source within US Airways, Mike Isom. Yes, it's from a third party, but the original source of the information certainly is not "unidentified".

mileshound

US should have said nothing and just made the system changes. By saying they may take back miles or drop people's tiers just get the troops riled up. They just saw what happens when we get excited in the no tier mile for cheap ticket issue.

I agree with them for not posting a message here. If it was their first post we have all wondered if it was for real. We would have found a reason to blast them why they didn't post for other issues, have official representation, etc.

One thing we learned is that they are making and will continue to make system changes to the bonus system. If you are thinking of purchsing a ticket with the sole purpose of mega-miles, you should think twice.

If this ends as it is today, I think we both can live with it. We got our benefits and US now has cleaned up some of their systems. A bonus will truely be a bonus and not an expectation.

PremEx

TomBascom writes: Exactly. They can't demand that you keep information confidential!!! They need an explicit non-disclosure agreement to float that boat.

And the recepient of said information is often not even privy to whatever terms were placed on the original addressee!

These things have to be controlled at the registration point.

When that phone said "Thank You, you have now been registered for this promotion"...as far they were concerned, they were registered for that promotion!!

And tickets were purchased as a direct result of that successful registration!

Whether or not this fire drill was communicted to us correctly or not, it did come from US Airways. And even the fact that this is the way they elected to communicate this (asking WebFlyer to act as a third party), is almost as bad and unprofessional as the act itself, IMHO.

The problem is they must have known about this for weeks, and knowingly let folks register, purchase and fly on tickets that they must have known they were not intending to honor the bonus on.

And even if they didn't know, they certainly should have looked at the situation and said, "Shoot. Let's fix this thing. But you know we can't go back and tell these folks that purchased under the assumption they were registered, that we made a mistake in allowing them to register, and take the miles from them. We're going to have to honor it."

But noooooooo.

Fraud or no fraud, if this is indicitive of an adversarial relationship that this airline views it has with it's customers, and/or if this is indicitive of the professionalism of management in handling these types of situations...well...


[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 10-19-2002).]

idealflyer

Thank you for flying US Airways, a proud partner of GoldPoints?!?

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Going back to the bAAsics

avek00

I will go so far as to say that from a legal and practical standpoint, US is certainly well within its right to take away the miles and even punish untargeted members who signed up for the bonuses. However, my argument is that from a FINANCIAL standpoint, it makes little sense for US to compromise potential future revenue generation by attacking some of its highest-yield clients.

FWIW, I'm not even referring to myself; rather, I'm talking about the Chairman's Preferred members who flew the 100K or 100 segments on full Y fares. It makes no sense for US to go after those folks, who likely paid in excess of $1 for each mile flown with the company.

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Thank you for choosing Continental Airlines, a proud member of the SkyTeam Alliance.

TomBascom

Neither of those two individuals is aware of the bonus code thread...

avek00

LOL! That's a good one, Tom.


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Thank you for choosing Continental Airlines, a proud member of the SkyTeam Alliance.

[This message has been edited by avek00 (edited 10-19-2002).]

irabk

Beckles, not to split hairs, but I, as it appears most of us here as well, still have not heard from US Air. You have received confirmation from Mike Isom that they passed along info to FlyerTalk to pass along info to us, BUT as a paying customer and Dividend Miles member of US Air, I feel any communication regarding changes to the program need to be between US Air and myself.

Sorry, but that is how a 4th grade club communicates, not a major corporation, even one in bankrupcy. I went back and reviewed your message, and quite frankly, that 4th grade club plays telephone better than US Air. The message was garbled on one pass, and a clarification was passed along in your message. "We will ask them to change the verbiage" your message says, and the verbage has not been changed.

I don't recall delivering payment or booking my ticket via FlyerTalk. US Air should not be communicating with me through them. Any OFFICIAL communication should be directly from the company to the customer.

If they want to pass along a heads up, great. This is a fantastic medium for an unofficial, off the record, here's whats coming.

Beckles, please accept my apology for my error of ommision, but looking at the big picture, I still feel as I have yet to hear from US Air officially.

kv99

Not true. I think PineyBob is well aware of the bonus code thread

PineyBob

Actually I am NOT as aware as i should be! That's why I joined this board. After 60 or so days as a member I have become more militant than ever! Prior to the tier miles debacle I thought US was relatively customer friendly. W-R-O-N-G! ! ! !

Now I work backwards from the assumption that they are LIARS, CHEATS & THIEVES! The advantage to this is I am NEVER disapointed, I can only be presently surprised! Now that my new employer REQUIRES me to buy refundable tickets I fully intend to hammer them at every opportunity over any slight or minute detail that displeases me! I already fax my non US itineraries to Consumer Affairs explaining why I didn't select US Air! I told the the one guy who actually called me that I was going to do worse than not fly US Air. Instead I was going to make sure I got every perk I was entitled to, Respond to Consumer Affairs ANYTHING that was not to my liking.

In short, I am on them like stink on manure! And you all should be too! Keep them hopping! Make them think twice before taking action against us!

DivMiler

Or about (1) Announcing that if anybody flies from (for example) BWI to ABE you get bonus miles or (2) not announcing the bonus miles offer at all and let it be a surprise to the recipient?

I think the latter really wouldn't do so much for US Airways bottom line, but the former would still get people on the planes and provide US with needed money.

I don't get the whole "you must register" to get the premium stuff. What does this prove? That we can open our mail? jkzahn's idea of telling the lucky DMers that they can get double miles for going from CLT to SEA instead of telling them they have to register makes a lot of sense.

trvlr64

I'm curious about the amount of promotions that USAirways was offering all year. Didn't it seem excessive?? Even though I fly USAirways 99% of the time, I check out the UA and AA websites and flyertalk for bonus mile promotions and I never see such a large amount of bonuses as I have on USAirways. If this airline is worried that we abused the bonus programs, then why did they offer so many this past year?

The Fast Track to Chairman's Preferred bonus, IMO, is a slap in the face to those of us who fly daily/weekly on USAirways. If they are going to stop rewarding bonus miles to those of us who keep flying them, then USAirways should stop all Fast Track promotions and generally limit all promotions in the future.

Guess they are getting in line with United now. Just seems to me that USAirways is scrambling to inherit new customers through it's Fast Track and other bonus offers, and not keeping us "loyal" returning in the future. Guess we all fly too **** much and it doesn't matter if we continue to fly with them.

jetsetter

Other than being a coward, why would US management not either:
1. Send out an email to all DM members, or a subset about this issue. I.e. those DM#'s that are signed up for 10 or more offers in a time period; or
2. Register and post on Flyertalk their own message. Is there something I don't know about in the software that prevents Mike or Ben from registerring on this board?

Finally as I said earlier, I'm disappointed in Randy's operation for doing the dirty work of the airlines, and in the way they endorsed the post. Usually journalists don't endorse something. I.e. they might say "a source tells me this will happen." They usually leave the consumer to make his or her own decisions based on what the source tells the reporter. Why should Randy care if I get two million or two billion miles if he's not paying for them. I think the answer may be that house of miles does some consulting work with the carriers, and accepts adds from the industry, so they have to take a pro industry stance. Given that, I would not mind paying for the FT service is this meant it was not so pro-industry, and if it could be more independent and take actions that help the consumer more than these huge corporations stuck in their old ways of thinking. I.e. stuck in thinking about the gravy of Y fares that no sane person would buy given todays market. Still I don't see how the house of miles is impacted no matter what I do or how I get my miles. Do they think US will sue them for hosting this forum? Does US even have the resources to do this? A similar thing happened a while back with NW where a flyer was circulated that one could get Platinum status. Then NW contacted house of miles, and I think an actual person posted that NW would not honor people's faxes in of this flyer. Still, I don't think NW perosnally got back to all the members who faxed in the flyer with a letter, email, or phone call.

TomBascom

I think that's just so they can track the effectiveness of the promo. My guess is that it went disasterously wrong (from their POV) with GOM -- someone had the bright idea of segmenting the promo half a dozen ways without realizing that the systems would happily permit multiple registrations.

I think they really ought to seriously consider explicit "mileage run" bonuses. Offer triple miles for dirt cheap fares on flights that need the traffic -- sort of e-savers on steriods. Of course they'd have to be upgradeable...