BoeingBoy

Actually, it's earn or redeem miles - either will keep your miles active. The best advice I've seen here on this is to pick a date - birthday, anniversary, holiday, change to/from DST, etc - and do something to keep your miles active on that date every year. Then you don't have to worry about your miles expiring.

Jim

batboy

My wife has had around 52,000 miles in her DM account and has had no activity for some time (she doesn't travel much, even less so on USAir, and her US DM Mastercard is tied to my account). I tried to use her miles as part of the 140,000 we needed for the two of us to get first class award seats, but US wouldn't allow me to use some of my miles and some of hers, and I wasn't willing to pay the rediculous fees for buying the difference for her, so I ended up using solely my miles for the tickets.

Literally the day after we both flew on the award tickets, US sent my wife an email saying that the miles in her account were forfeited and could only be reclaimed if she bought a ticket, signed up for her own credit card or paid $250 -- none of which we are going to do. I understand that she flew in an award (free) seat, which doesn't qualify for earning miles, but some credit has to be given for the fact that she flew US, we paid the fees associated with buying the award tickets and her DM# was on her ticket. I guess my position is that US had a dividend miles customer sitting in one of their seats, and they shouldn't ignore that fact by taking her miles.

I know that 52,000 miles isn't a lot to many of you, but that's a rountrip ticket and I don't want to lose it without a fight. Am I out of line to think that US should have not taken those miles given the fact that she flew them? I am interested in your thoughts on this as I waiver between anger that they would do this to a "customer" that recently used their product versus an understanding that she is not much of a customer and her account is dormant 99% of the time. I sent a very polite email to US customer service but I am interested in FT community thoughts. Of course I'll let you know when US responds.

doctor15

No offense, but there are very clear rules on what activity counts to keep miles from expiring and you did not perform any of those required activities (which are not at all hard to do, IMO).

They gave you a generous offer to reinstate the miles if you fly with them, so I would take them up on that. Why not find a cheap ticket and do a quick getaway somewhere?

Mykle

It's a frequent flyer program. It's meant for people who fly and buy tickets. They're giving you options to redeem the miles, including buying a ticket, which is certainly better than no options at all.

If all you have to do is buy a ticket, buy a fully refundable one, reactivate the account and then cancel the ticket afterwards. But that being said, you need to do something to keep the account active. The fastest and easiest is to do a transfer of miles from your account to hers (or vice-versa). It gets transferred almost immediately. 1000 miles will cost $10 to transfer and there's the activity for the next 18 months. I'd do the transfer before canceling the ticket, just in case.

Anyway, make this easy on yourself. The option I suggested costs only $10 and a very small amount of time. Well worth it for 50k in miles.

DTNF130L

If you got the email advising that miles had been expired, then presumably you also got the advance email warning you that they were about to expire?
I know my estatement, every month, advises me "to keep your account active, earn miles before MM/DD/YYYY"
Hopefully US Airways will look kindly on your request...it does make some kind of sense in many consumers' eyes since you were on a flight...but it's incredibly easy to keep accounts alive these days with shopping malls and free magazines

tassojunior

Getting the US Air credit card is pretty easy, free, with a lot of bonuses including 40K miles and reinstating forfeited miles. I sure go that route.

louie-m

+ a $30 fee + taxes, total $40.75. But worth it nevertheless.

lkar

Well, personally, I do think 52,000 miles is a lot of miles. I mean, not when compared to what people on these boards have banked, but certainly a valuable amount of miles.

My view is that it is a bit "out of line" for you to be angry at US for taking the miles. I think "out of line" is a bit more harsh than I would say it, but I guess my basic view is that much of flyertalk is devoted to attempting to figure out the rules to our advantage. There is an entire subforum dedicated to the grand slam promotion where many of us have gone to great lengths to take advantage of as much as we can to get miles. In one circumstance, I paid $2.99 for a bag of lifesavers and 6 miles, to become eligible for a tier of 5,000 bonus miles. If US tried to deny me those miles, I'd be livid, and would complain that I played by the rules and that I deserve those miles. I wouldn't take kindly to an argument that 6 miles is de minimis and so shouldn't qualify because it's not within the spirit of the promo.

With that as the background, I think sauce for the goose is good for the gander. USAirways has pretty clear rules on miles forfeiture. Is it strange that she could have redeemed 400 miles for a magazine and kept her miles but flying on an award ticket isn't good enough? I don't know. Maybe. But it doesn't matter. The rules are the rules. I really think you're trying to put on USAirways your own failure to follow the rules.

Now, I hope they make an exception for you. If they don't, they often will give you challenges to get the miles back -- like doing three activities with partners or getting the credit card. I'd try asking if they would do any of that. If they still say no, you should give some thought to paying to have the miles reinstated. I know that it is hard to take when they already were your miles. But you can't look at it that way. Look at it like a poker player would -- once the chips are bet, they are in the pot. They aren't yours any more. You can't make the decision based on the fact that they used to be your chips. If all else doesn't work, and you have an opportunity to buy 52,000 miles for $250, you should. Virtually every one of us on this board would take that deal. Hold your nose, and do it, and chalk it up to a lesson, is my humble view.

CPRich

There's an entire thread on how to keep accounts active. I'm about to purchase another pair of $5 Home Depot gift certificates using my two kids' accounts - it'll be 18 months in January. Since they emailed you about the expiration, can I assume they emailed you warning you of the expiration (as I also just received 2 months early)?

IMHO, yes. You did nothing that met the rules that are pretty clearly defined.

being flown somewhere by USAir, at their cost, for no ticket revenue. Not much of an argument, IMHO.

It would be nice to do it as a customer service gesture, but the "no waiver, no favors" policy went in place long ago for those who fly 52K miles every few months. Frankly, it would be unfair to them if they waived this (though I'm in favor of being reasonable in all cases - probably won't happen in a still distressed industry).

BoeingBoy

If I understand this part of the OP's post accurately - "but US wouldn't allow me to use some of my miles and some of hers, and I wasn't willing to pay the rediculous fees for buying the difference for her, so I ended up using solely my miles for the tickets" - the OP ended up using miles from his account for both his and his wife's award ticket. That means that there was no activity in her account to keep her miles alive, so they were forfeited.

As everyone else has said, the rules are clear - no activity in an account for 18 months and the miles in that account go away. Since having activity is so easy and inexpensive, there's really no excuse for allowing miles to expire.

Jim

CPMaverick

Get her a credit card, re-instate the miles and end up with 77,000 or whatever... problem solved! US is giving you a chance here, take it.

HmmDonuts

+1 on the credit card.
You don't necessarily need to use the card much. And you could always decide to close it when the fee comes due a year from now.

wheresmybagba

Yes, completely!

chicagorich

My miles are due to expire in a couple of months. I received an email from US this week offering to extend my expiration date for $9.

Was thinking about buying something cheap through the DM shopping site to extend the expiration date, but not sure I can get anything for much less than $9.

vysean

Not trying to be slow here, but are you sure the miles aren't already expired? Your quote repeatedly references the term "reactivate" which would imply that the miles are no longer active (available) to you.

If this is the case, the $9 is a great deal and your purchase from the shopping site wouldn't automatically reactivate them.