United Airlines stealing your frequent flier miles

Do you know what the rules of your frequent flight program are? If you belief so, think again! United is in the forefront of airline effort trying to deny frequent flier members the program benefits previously earned.

I had over 65,000 frequent flier miles in United Mileage Plus program. As most programs, they have many rules one needs to navigate in order to benefit from the program. One rule is that if there is no activity in the program within the past 3 years, you lose your accrued miles/benefits. That was the condition I understood when I earned my miles. I had planned to use those miles this year. I checked my UAL account a few days and found that my miles where cancelled last month and no one bothered to notify me.

When I called the UAL mileage plus service department, their explanation was simple. “We changed the rules – you lose your miles after 18 months of inactivity”. It is the first I heard of this new rule – after they stole my benefits. When I asked why I was not notified of the new condition, their reply is that they no longer send notifications to the program members of changes in the program. What remedy did they offer? I could buy back my cancelled mile!!!! At a price of $850!!!! Imagine having your car stolen. When you catch the thief, he tells that you can get your car back if you pay him the value of that car. This is United Airlines new policy.

Do you want to fly this airline? Think again! You are not their valued customer, you are someone they can screw! If their policy is to screw you here, you can be sure they will try to do so somewhere else. American airlines in following in United foot steps and also cancelling acrued miles after 18 months of inactivity.

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I had the same.

United stole my 250,000 miles as I was unable to travel for 2 years.

I discussed without any result.

Since, I eliminated United from my airline list.

I flew more than 200,000 miles on other airlines, but on United, Never again.

If anybody starts a class action, let me know.

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I tried to book something today (7/16/09) and found that I had no miles. They had been flushed on 4/1/09. I got no notifications of the policy or a notification that my miles were going to be flushed. I'm wondering how many people have gotten their miles flushed. Mine alone was over 35,000 miles, so worth about $750. If there several thousand people out there, that's several million dollars. Perhaps we can file some class action lawsuit? American airlines notified me several times by email that my miles were expiring. United's no notification is a way to steal the miles.