avek00

Oh yeah, this thread is going over 200 posts, easy...

In the event that this is for real, and members' accounts get wiped out, I'd like to invite all USers to come on over to CO, and share in the delicious pizza.


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

avek00

IMHO, it's very easy for US to track down the "offending" accounts. US simply has to do a search on accounts with a certain number of promo codes (e.g., 10), and go from there.

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

jcrb

There is no fraud involved,

1) US makes a targeted offer to someone

2) you become aware of it and you make a counter offer to US that you would like to accept their offer as well.

3) you register, they do not tell you they do not accept your registration.

4) you buy tickets and fly they give you bonus miles indicating that they have accepted your counter offer.

This is pure counter offer and acceptence contract law.... Since it is known that people within US mgt were aware of the bonus code thread and have said NOTHING publicly to indicate they objected to it's use there is no arguement that US was not aware to what they were allowing.

Up to this point there is nothing wrong,

5) you continue to give US lots of extra money only because they have allowed you to accept their bonus offer. US takes your money and then takes back all the milles.

Now there might be an arguement that a fraud had occured, but it would be on US's part.

gnaget

There's about 20 promotions on the US website. Also if I sit and enter URLs with 4 digit numbers then I could find many of these "hidden" promotions.

pitsheel

out of curiosity, is anyone calling DM?

avek00

Yes, but few people would take the time to do that.

In any event, I'm not overly concerned. If US takes my miles away, I will use a SOLVENT carrier as a backup for CO/NW.

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

avek00

The only time I plan to call DM is when I book a trip on United, PROVIDED that the alliance actually progresses to that phase (and I have my doubts).


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

IndyDavid

I don't plan to call. But I don't plan to sign up for any more bonus codes for a while either.

David

ClueByFour

I'm not going to rehash what has already been said, particularly the implicit contract law stuffs and why it would not be a particuarly good idea to go after your most loyal customers.

That said, I think somebody over at US probably has a bit of a problem on their hand. That somebody would be the process manager for things like this, since US has not (in the past) been really keen about verification and validation of who is targetted for what. That's their fault, not the DM member.

As has been pointed out, anybody with a little bit of time can find all these things on their website. And the contract law analogy applies from there.

As for the loyal customer: this airline needs revenue a whole lot worse than FT members who can spend thousands of $$ with another "airline of their choice" need to Get Out More.

Edited to add:
As soon as they define "improper use of promo codes" in the T&Cs, they might have a leg to stand on.

That, and the more I think about this, here is what I think happened: somebody at US finally realized that flyertalk exists and/or "found" the bonus code thread.

Since Randy does have a good working relationship with the airlines, you might expect that he'd post something like this. If US really saw widespread "fraud," they would have sent an email directly to their membership list, as opposed to communicating the "threat" thru the House of Miles.

Personally, if I lose one solitary mile, I pull all further bookings from US, and make the standing order in my group against booking US (due to standby changes) a permanent one. Is one cockroach worth $50-$70k/year?
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Saving the world, one clue at a time.


[This message has been edited by ClueByFour (edited 10-15-2002).]

rtpflyer

I certainly think Dividend Miles has every right to remove incorrectly awarded miles from a person's account, but to claim that a member was engaged in fraudulent activity just because he/she signed up for a "targeted" offer that was posted on FlyerTalk is beyond the pale. I've always simply assumed that such offers to me were "lost in the mail" or thrown out with the other junk mail, and that if I signed up for them based on FlyerTalk postings and the miles were credited to my account, then I must have been in the targeted group.

Skylink USA

Most bonus require that the passenger do something, e.g. fly a certain route, use e-check in, give personal information to another company, save the airline postage by declining mailed statements, etc.

US needs to think of more efficient ways of using their time instead of punishing passengers.

syzygy8

I think you are absolutely right.

syzygy8

I think you are absolutely right, too.

avek00

They're eliminating the cockroaches once and for all...

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

Dub

Calling in the exterminator before selling the house. Or at least before shacking up with United.