miles & miles, gone & gone
Saturday, April 18th, 2009so i have a little beef with my friendly travel agents at AirTreks. see, we had a deal in the beginning of my trip where they’d plug in my mileage program numbers so i wouldn’t have to think about such trivialities while tramping around the globe. as the flights were many and the miles accrued in the thousands, i figured great! these programs offer pretty good incentives for racking up miles. shortly before returning i learned my miles had not been accruing over the course of the year because my usually on the ball agent neglected to provide OnePass with my mileage program numbers and when i got back, i found that the only miles on account with OnePass were the ones i’d accrued prior to departing on my around-the-world trip. a measly 7,000 miles (the balance should have been in the neighborhood of 60,000 miles). after conducting a bit of research, i found that the 67,000+ miles would’ve provided some benefit equal to at minimum a round-trip domestic ticket at no additional cost. adding insult to injury, the miles expire 6 months after taking the flight and so miles from every flight on a OnePass partner carrier that i flew on prior to july 2008 had already expired. and since i was not monitoring my miles throughout the trip, i assumed they continued to accrue until the end. i was wrong and was only able to recoup a few miles from submitting a couple of boarding pass receipts i luckily didn’t throw away after returning!
AirTreks was good enough to apologize to me for the error, although they did not offer to make up the loss in benefits associated with those miles except to credit me $100 lousy bucks to my account held with them towards a future flight. i hardly think this is equitable…i hope others have better luck with their agents in the future than i did. or, take time out of your adventures and experiences to spend hours in the ‘net cafe monitoring this crap so you don’t get hosed the way i did!
end of tirade.
happy travels, everyone!
karen_shelver