Question: My airline has gone under, taking my award miles with it. I need your help getting them back.
My husband and I planned a trip to Maui to join our daughter and grandchildren for a summer vacation together. We contacted our credit card company, Capital One, and used 71,000 “no hassle” reward miles to book a roundtrip airfare from Los Angeles to Maui.
Then ATA declared bankruptcy and stopped flying.
I called Capital One and Carlson Travel, the agency that had booked our flights, and asked to be put on another flight. The answer was “no” — and further, they said we had lost our 71,000 miles.
I have been on the phone with Capital One every day for the last week. Some supervisors have simply blown me off, while others can’t help or are unwilling to let me proceed up the corporate ladder.
I feel very strongly that since we have spent thousands of dollars with Capital One over the years, and cleared our bill each month, that we should at least have the right to have our case heard. Don’t you? — Jan Venegas, Marana, Ariz.
Answer: Those “no hassle” miles are not exactly living up to their name, are they? Capital One should have promptly credited your account with your miles and rebooked your flights, of course. That’s no way to treat a valued customer.
Capital One’s No Hassle Miles Rewards card allows you to earn points quickly — 1.25 miles for each dollar spent (http://www.capitalone.com/creditcards/products/10318/2/index.php). But these aren’t real frequent flier miles, in the sense that they’re issued by an airline. Instead, they are points given to you by the bank that can be redeemed for an airline ticket.
For example, 35,000 miles buys you a ticket that costs between $150 and $350. So the Capital One is, in effect, buying a real ticket in exchange for your “no hassle” points.
In reviewing Capital One’s disclosures, I found no mention of a policy when an airline goes under and leaves you holding a worthless ticket.
Interestingly — and perhaps ironically — your first step when you’re holding a real ticket would be to call the credit card company to dispute the charges. Obviously you can’t do that now.
Here’s my take: You’re doing business with Capital One, not the airline in question, so you would need to sort this out with your credit card.
I wouldn’t have limited your interactions with Capital One to the phone. In fact, a far better way of reaching the company would be by e-mail (http://www.capitalone.com/contactus/). If the company refuses to escalate your complaint, you’re better off appealing your case to an executive (http://www.capitalone.com/about/corpinfo/). Emailing someone higher up is easy — the naming convention at Capital One is firstname.lastname(AT)capitalone.com.
In other words, don’t let them tell you when you can and can’t have your case heard. You’re in control.
I contacted Capital One on your behalf. The company said your refund troubles were just a series of misunderstandings. “Capital One will be refunding impacted customers in accordance with Visa and MasterCard guidelines,” a spokeswoman told me. “Customers just need to contact us for reimbursement.”
Your “no hassle” miles have been credited back to your account.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You know, I am sick and tired of hearing people complaining about having to contact airlines and hotels and credit card companies over and over and over again! Why do we, the customers, have to continue to go through this stuff for days and weeks and months? Why can’t these companies just do the right thing and admit when they’re wrong and issue refunds, vouchers, miles, etc. back to their customers? Are they really losing that much money to do this? They are wasting so much of their own employee’s time to give the customer the run around which clogs up the phone lines, drives up overhead, and causes consumers to lose confidence in these so-called friendly companies.So much for customer loyalty!
I appreciate the work you do Chris to help your readers, but why does it have to come down to a well-known person who has websites and columns about these problems to finally get these companies to do the right thing and provide customer service? So now our last resort is to contact Chris to get these problems resolved and this poor guy has to spend his time contacting these inexusable companies. They always seem to say, oh there was this missing piece of information, or just this one time we will give this courtesy voucher to the customer, or like above, there was misunderstandings. This is BS! If these companies would take care of the problems in the first place then maybe there would be some customer loyalty and employee loyalty, for that matter. And we could actually talk to someone that understands our language!
Reading these articles and different columns about these issues, and from having a brawl with Spirit, among other minor issues (delays, missed planes because of late connections, cancellations, etc) with other ailrines has caused me to totally check out of traveling. The only traveling I do is for work and when I do travel personally, I have choose to just drive for the past 5 years. Maybe this is an extreme measure and maybe I am being too pessimistic, and being one 1 person out of the millions that travel, I am quietly boycotting and quitting these companies that give me the run around. Hey, at least I feel better about not having to spend countless hours chasing after people from foreign companies that barely speak English to solve problems here in the US.
Olay, time to get off my soapbox!
It does seem these companies could save themselves time and embarrassment by just doing the right thing to begin with. You’re right, Kelly. There’s no reason travelers should have to beg, plead, whine and threaten corporations to get them to do what they are supposed to do in the first place. Give people the blooming refunds! What they “lose” in immediate revenues, they more than get back in goodwill and repeate business.
Capital One is notorious for this type of behavior. This was no misunderstanding, this was IMO corporate policy. Google Capitalone and read the litany of Consumer comlaints.
Yes, Capital One is notorious for poor customer service. In addition, they have depreciated the value of their points over the last several years much more rapidly than most other programs. Bottom line – many of their customers would be better off with standard “cash back” credit cards. For example, 35,000 Capital One points buys you a ticket worth between $150 and $350. You can get “cash back” cards that give 1 point/dollar on all purchases (2 points/dollar for grocery and some other types of purchases), and give $300 cash back for 30,000 points. That makes it easy to get $300 or more in real cash from a cash back card, which you can use to buy airline tickets or anything else you wish.
Bottom line – Capital One’s value proposition is poor. The true “no hassle” card is a cash back card.
All of the points & FFB schemes are just that – schemes. They are NO different from the rebate schemes. Great on that printer, $250 now only $100, but you need to fill out 18 pages of paper work, cut off 6 different box labels and then paste them in a specific order or else your ‘offer’ is rejected. On the off chance that you can follow our directions, we’ll get your form in 3 days but take 3 months to send you your money. If you fail to dot the third ‘t’ in every sentence, then your offer is reduced to $25 instead of $100. Gimme a break, take $50 off the price instead of $100 rebate and just make it easier on everybody.
You want something for nothing? Then you have no control over it as a customer.
If you google on “airlink mile inflation” you will find that many airlines are restricting the seats and flights available via miles, and increasing the number of miles you need to have to get a free ticket.
One solution is to sell your miles for cash. This involves a mileage transfer fee, http://points.com/ has something set up to help you do that. If you can buy a stranger a ticket and then get paid directly, that is even better; I think http://flyhub.com/ allows that method of transfer, but I haven’t used it yet myself.