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| ON BOARD WITH RANDY PETERSEN |
ORIGINAL PROGRAM MILES
April 2004
by Randy Petersen
Question:
I just had a couple hundred thousand original program miles deducted from my United Mileage Plus account due to expiration. I was under the impression that "original program miles" did not expire. What gives?
Answer:
You are not unlike tens of thousands of United Mileage Plus members who are just now finding out their "original program miles" have expired.
Here's the background on that: United Mileage Plus never actually said their Mileage Plus miles would not expire; rather, they simply didn't promote the fact that in their fine print they had this:
"21. Mileage earned prior to July 1, 1989, if not previously redeemed or used, will be maintained in the member's account until December 15, 2000. Miles may be transferred by the member into the new Program. All such mileage thus transferred shall be treated as if earned on the date of transfer, shall be subject to expiration three (3) years after the date of transfer as if credited to the account after February 1, 1995 (see #22 below), and may be used to redeem awards in effect at the time of redemption until such time as they expire."
"22. Post-July 1, 1989 miles held in a member's account on February 1, 1995 (which shall be treated
for these purposes as if earned on February 1, 1995), or credited to the member's account on or after February 1, 1995, shall be maintained in the account until they are redeemed for an award or until
they expire, whichever occurs first. All such miles maintained in a member's account will expire on December 31 of the third year after they are earned or, in the case of pre-July 1, 1989 miles transferred into the new Program, on December 31 of the third year after the transfer."
Essentially speaking, on December 16, 2000, all original program miles were rolled into "new" miles, subject to the same expiration period that regular miles have—three years, if there is no activity in your Mileage Plus account. It would seem you did not have any activity in your account, and on December 31, 2003, these miles formally expired. There's really no way at this point to reverse that event, and unfortunately you've learned a hard lesson. If you had subscribed to an online mileage-managing program, such as MileageManager, MilePro, or TotalMiles, you would likely have been reminded several times about the pending expiration of your miles.
Managing your miles is truly worth a few minutes to seek out information resources so that events like this won't be repeated. A few years back I estimated that in one year, United expired over 800 million miles. While many of those were small amounts, there were other accounts where the losses were huge. I'm sorry that you became one of these members.
As they say, there is no use crying over spilled milk. So let's look ahead and figure out how to replace those miles. Keep reading this column and I'll help.
Sorry to have to break the news.
You can contact Randy Petersen at randy@insideflyer.com.
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