They gave me my points back. I put a note in my agenda to follow up in just under 3 years.

In the meantime, they changed it to 18 months.

Why don’t they just make it 6 months and see if other airlines follows and if they do, change it to 3 days…..

If I leave my money in the bank, they should not be allowed to take it if I do not go to the bank. Or do they?

Your response was definitely more temperate than your original post where phrases like clown were bandied about. But substantively, my issue is that there are different levels of frequent fliers. Some are road warriors who know ever dependent sub-clause of every paragraph of the loyalty program and others who are just frequent fliers who don’t spend every waking minute thinking about maximizing their miles.

@mrBadExample

How can you be a frequent flier without activity for 18 months? Easily. Be teacher. My dad is a school principal. He does the bulk of his travel during the summer, over 50k worth of travel. He’s done this ever year for the past 15 years. Some years he exceeds 100k miles during the summer. But he may or may not travel the rest of the year. This year he didn’t do the summer travel. He will almost certainly do another 50K miles next summer. Is he no longer a frequent traveler?

Similarly, I have other teacher friends who travel all ovee creation ever summer without exception. But should they miss one summer, their activitty will be zero for 23 months. But they are still frequent travelers by any reasonable metric.

I’m not a clown and I have been flying on business (frequently) for over 25 years. I won’t insult or make unwarranted assumptions about you, and perhaps you might learn to treat others similarly in the future. Perhaps this can be a “teachable moment” to quote our President.

I never claimed to be that frequent a flyer on AA, but that should make me someone they would want to attract. I have memberships in more than 8 airlines, 6 hotel chains, and 3 rental programs, and have achieved lifetime status on Delta and United. I am also the managing partner of a consulting firm and influence the travel choices of some dozen professionals. I don’t travel twice a year on deeply discounted tickets (sorry to contradict your theory).

A few other points.

- NOT all airlines have gone to the 18 month expiration rule (which is done for their convenience, not yours). AA made the change and did little to publicize it. Other airlines obviously feel that having more generous programs is a valid form of competition.
- I did NOT receive their emails (I took an offer to accept email from them for 3 months to reinstate the miles. I discovered the mile expiration on month 19. My change in travel resulted from having flown a lot to Asia but then shifting to US travel on not using AA because they were less convenient for me.
- I did NOT pay to reinstate miles and then complain about it afterwards. Read the article, don’t make incorrect assumptions.
- My complaint was that AA changed their program without a lot of notice, then takes miles away (which is obviously the intention of the change, to reduce their annual financial liability), and offers to charge you market rates to get back what you had earned. That feels like a scam to me. If you like it, then by all means, pay for the same miles twice.
- I completely agree with the poster who asked why we need to work so hard to keep the airlines from stiffing us in so many ways. This is a LOYALTY program for goodness sake. And I influence the spending of a lot of travel dollars each year; far more than might be apparent to you.

It strikes me as very sad that so many people are now willing to accept worse and worse treatment with each passing year. It’s hard enough to keep a business going and travelling all over the world, along with family and other responsibilities, and then being expected to constantly track every plan to avoid being screwed by the clever fine print. Giving something with the right hand and taking it away with the left is NOT a customer retention program. I also remember when you could actually USE your miles (for more than flowers and magazines), and have wonderful trips that created enjoyment and LOYALTY (I flew to Paris on the Concorde with Delta miles, a trip I will never forget, thank you very much).

If we want to rant about AA, then more important is their total downgrade of their frequent flyer program and their service. I fly to Europe 3 times a year. As a Gold member on AA, I could buy the cheapest seat, and then use miles to upgrade. Then they added a $200, co-pay along with the miles, and now the co-pay is $350.00. And that’s each way! So, to upgrade to Europe R/T costs the ticket fare, plus $700.00, plus 50,000 miles! Wait….it gets worse!!! AA recently ruled that I now have to buy a higher priced ticket to be able to upgrade. But wait, it gets worse!!! If there are no available seats when booking (and they’re never are!), flyers have to pay the higher price to even be put on the upgrade waitlist, and if no upgrade becomes available, they’re stuck in a coach seat that they could have paid $200 – $300. less for!
This is how they thank their loyal Frequent Flyers!
So, sorry but paying a price for reclaimed miles that someone didn’t pay attention to doesn’t make me nearly as annoyed as AA making flying their planes both more expensive and unpleasant.

No, not at all. But as a frequent flyer myself, I know that I have to take responsibility for certain things myself and not blame others for everything that goes wrong. If my miles expired and the airline provided sufficient warning ahead of time (which I’m sure it did it this case and I wouldn’t really believe if this guy said that they didn’t), then its my fault for letting them expire. If the airline makes an offer to reactivate the miles at a certain rate and I willingly pay that rate, then I don’t complain after the fact about being ripped off. (And by the way, as I posted before, I don’t think that 1 cent per mile is too bad of a deal. Granted, it’s not THE best, but if one is wise about how he uses his miles, he a can easily use the miles at a rate of at least 2 or 3 cents per mile.)

Especially wen you consider tat all you had to do was buy your wife a dozen roses on Valentines Day through a partner that awards FF miles. The Terms and Conditions are quite clear regarding cancellation of your account.

This is not an AA issue but an issue with most of the carriers with few exceptions.

Our family, which has traveled frequently in the pas,t is so tired of feeling taken advantage that we have decided to travel only out of necessity. At that point we throw all our business to SW if we can.

My points were removed from my account at the end of the year. When I called HHonors I was told, in effect, “too bad”, I had been given incorrect information by their agent. However, if I stayed at a Hilton Hotel by the end of that month they would restore the points. I was unable to do so and lost a substantial number of points.

I have not stayed at a Hilton Hotel since!!!

Pretty vitriolic post. Visiting from Flyertalk?