Dude, Give Me Back My 200 Million Frequent Flyer Miles!

[futaris]

Dude, Give Me Back My 200 Million Frequent Flyer Miles! | FrequentFlier.com

200 million frequent flyer miles. Legitimately earned. Illegitimately withheld. Stolen!That at any rate is the crux of an October lawsuit filed by 26 frequent flyers against four companies: Hawaiian Airlines and US Airways, which operate online shopping malls that awarded miles in their respective loyalty programs; FreeCause, a company that provides the back-end shopping mall software for Hawaiian, MyPoints, AirMiles, and other companies; and EasyCGI, a web hosting company that promoted its services in the online malls of Hawaiian and US Airways.
The allegation is that EasyCGI offered bonus miles to new customers through the online shopping malls of Hawaiian and US Airways, but refused to award the miles when shoppers took advantage of the promotion’s unlimited earning potential to rack up millions of miles at very little cost. How little? Played right, a canny consumer could have racked up 1 million miles for less than $1,000.

I wonder how this lawsuit will go...

 

[burmans]

Dude, Give Me Back My 200 Million Frequent Flyer Miles! | FrequentFlier.com

I wonder how this lawsuit will go...

Indeed, interesting to see the discussion on FT on this. As if the election did not make this obvious the commentary on this one did show yet again that the US is one deeply divided nation. Everyone there seems very black or white on this, it's either a) they are are a bunch SOB's for expecting the points or b) they are a greedy bunch of SOB's for withholding.

Personally I think life is much more vary-coloured than that, yes I do think the applicants are greedy but equally the attitudes of the companies involved appal me, there seems to be a strong blame the victim mentality evident in many of the stories on FT across so many threads. Various companies mistakenly or negligently (dependant on your side) make an offer thats too good to be true, they then relaise their negligence and close down the loophole, frequently without notice or advice unilaterally change the T&C's and in some cases close the accounts of the customers and accuse them of fraud or illegal acts.

I don't regard this company behaviour as acceptable and think the companies should be told so. My preferred solution, the companies get a small fine and some small benefit to the consumer but with a warning that continue this and the fines will grow exponentially. Probably won't happen but that to me is a reasonable and just outcome.

 

[anat0l]

Yeah this story has been doing the rounds on Boarding Area.

One of the plaintiffs on the suit is MilePoint founder Randy Peterson. Needless to say, some people are rather appalled that RP put his name to the suit, but it goes without saying that those people are the ones primarily not big on the 200 million FF miles being honoured.

The thing with all these "mistakes" that have seemed to have cropped up of recent (UA 4-mile to HKG, three ex-RGN F bungles, a couple of mileage promos out of UA and this) is you get some distinct threads from people out of it. The ones that seem to disturb me the most is those people who take advantage of these mistakes because they harbour a malice against the airline or company they are trying to get points from, i.e. they want to "hurt" those companies as much as possible (it doesn't matter whether they get the mistake honoured or not). Of course, the fact that there is a 'fight' required only fuels their rage, but it quickly turns from trying to take advantage of a mistake, to 'punishing' or 'hurting' someone or some entity, usually in combination / as a "payback" for some past indiscretion.

Perhaps the world needs more natural justice because the law is inadequate, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

 

[futaris]

I do recall people wanting to do similar, when Amex had their 10,000 points per 10 transactions promo.

 

[samh004]

If the T&C's allow what they did, that is, they didn't explicitly say what happened was against the rules, then they should be entitled to them. It's a very greedy country... but more often than not these days it appears if an individual makes a mistake, in a contract or life, he's taken to task, but if a corporation does so, they can change the rules and get away with it. That's the real injustice.

All a big company needs to do is hire some of these guys to read over the rules, because the guys writing them now clearly make too many mistakes.

 

[anat0l]

All a big company needs to do is hire some of these guys to read over the rules, because the guys writing them now clearly make too many mistakes.

In a sense, this lawsuit is not accusing a mistake as such.

It's akin to a restaurant advertising "All You Can Eat for $30", and then some person comes in and the only reason why the person stops eating is because he's forced out of the restaurant at closing time. Then, he sues later saying that he was entitled to eat as much as he wanted to; closing the restaurant was no excuse.

(Thanks to The Simpsons for that example )

To be fair, given the obvious mileage culture in the US (even if it is small, it should be quite obvious to those in the game, viz. including airlines and loyalty programs), I'm surprised they didn't impose limits on earning. Quite dumb.

 

[mannej]

Similar to this?
(Sorry for going OT)

 

[eastwest101]

I am going to lean a little towards the devils advocate argument here in that (as the article says):

Bad business decisions have consequences. That’s a basic premise of the free-market system. Smart companies are rewarded and flourish; dumb companies are punished and flounder.

Of course the difficulty is whether the promotional company or the airline (or what proportion of them) have to wear the cost of a promo scheme that is badly designed or more generous than intended....

I think it should be the promotional company - not necessarily the airline - after all if you set up a business selling 1000 genuine iPads online for 1c each - then you would have no recourse going back to Apple Inc crying that your business model lost you money.

 

[futaris]

It's akin to a restaurant advertising "All You Can Eat for $30", and then some person comes in and the only reason why the person stops eating is because he's forced out of the restaurant at closing time. Then, he sues later saying that he was entitled to eat as much as he wanted to; closing the restaurant was no excuse.

(Thanks to The Simpsons for that example )

I think the Dilbert example is better. Dilbert's dad has been one of these restaurants since 1979 (in the TV show) in one of these restaurants.

Dilbert Cartoon 02X01 - The Gift - part 1/3 - YouTube

 

[eastwest101]

It's akin to a restaurant advertising "All You Can Eat for $30", and then some person comes in and the only reason why the person stops eating is because he's forced out of the restaurant at closing time. Then, he sues later saying that he was entitled to eat as much as he wanted to; closing the restaurant was no excuse.

(Thanks to The Simpsons for that example )

To be fair, given the obvious mileage culture in the US (even if it is small, it should be quite obvious to those in the game, viz. including airlines and loyalty programs), I'm surprised they didn't impose limits on earning. Quite dumb.

As much as I love an argument supported by The Simpsons - the restaraunt example is kind of hard to make work - as obviously the an "all you can eat" restaraunt has publicly known opening hours ie: it would be considered unreasonable for the all you can eat offer to extend beyond the opening hours of the business.

It may come out in court but I doubt that the promoter advertised the bonus points as "limited to X transactions or X points only" or "we will not honor any points earned beyond X, and/or reserve the right to suspend your membership of the FF scheme". That was their mistake and that would be why its going to court.

 

[NM]

It may come out in court but I doubt that the promoter advertised the bonus points as "limited to X transactions or X points only" or "we will not honor any points earned beyond X, and/or reserve the right to suspend your membership of the FF scheme". That was their mistake and that would be why its going to court.

From what I read, they actually promoted the fact that there was no limit and miles could be earned as many times as you like.

The article linked in the initial post states:

As the suit documentation makes clear, the EasyCGI promotion was unequivocal in stating that the offer was not subject to any restrictions: “You can earn as many miles as you like. There is no cap.”

 

[anat0l]

As much as I love an argument supported by The Simpsons - the restaraunt example is kind of hard to make work - as obviously the an "all you can eat" restaraunt has publicly known opening hours ie: it would be considered unreasonable for the all you can eat offer to extend beyond the opening hours of the business.

Whilst the business hours are advertised, it is probably still arguable that you didn't get what you wanted: ate all you could for the price.

Someone might even argue that there was no specification that the eating of all you could had to take place in one sitting, e.g. if you left the restaurant and came back, you shouldn't be charged again because you didn't eat all you could the first time (but you still paid for the "right" to do so).

This is getting a bit out of hand, but oddly enough that is not such a big deal and you don't need a page of fine print at the restaurant to be aware of what you can or cannot do (legally, socially or whatever) when you purchase an "all you can eat" meal.


The FF points game is quite different to the restaurant thing and people will (and have) acted like the "glut" above - if you don't plug the hole that says you can't do that, and it doesn't appear to infringe on anything else, you will do that. In fact, a FF points runner will insist on the second point I made, and doesn't really care if the restaurant starts to run out of food - I'm still eating all I can, you must bring out more food. (We can continue this analogy forever ).

Having said that, the promoters (web shops) did put that odd clause in their T&Cs implying they would award as many points as the customer could rack up, so that does put them in a very bad disposition right now.

 

[JohnK]

When are companies going to learn to double check and triple check their promotions before releasing details?

 

[burmans]

When are companies going to learn to double check and triple check their promotions before releasing details?

Probably when a judge rules against them.

 

[oz_mark]

Whilst the business hours are advertised, it is probably still arguable that you didn't get what you wanted: ate all you could for the price.

Someone might even argue that there was no specification that the eating of all you could had to take place in one sitting, e.g. if you left the restaurant and came back, you shouldn't be charged again because you didn't eat all you could the first time (but you still paid for the "right" to do so).

This is getting a bit out of hand, but oddly enough that is not such a big deal and you don't need a page of fine print at the restaurant to be aware of what you can or cannot do (legally, socially or whatever) when you purchase an "all you can eat" meal.

You can argue all you like, but what counts is what will stand up in court. I dare say that Randy et.al. have quite a belief that they will succeed in this case if they are taking it on. Never heard of a case about an 'All You Can Eat' restaurant.

 

[anat0l]

You can argue all you like, but what counts is what will stand up in court.

For sure. And our US brethren are very good at pushing this vehicle of validation, viz. litigation.

Never heard of a case about an 'All You Can Eat' restaurant.

I never heard of one either. That said, I don't think many people ever heard of someone filing a case over frequent flyer points before (let alone Million Miler programs).

 

[markis10]

I never heard of one either. That said, I don't think many people ever heard of someone filing a case over frequent flyer points before (let alone Million Miler programs).

Plenty of contractual breach torts though, which is essentially what we are talking about. When a company changes a goal post after a deal is done, it's never going to be a happy ending, when its trying to fix an obvious oversight, more so.

 

[burmans]

Plenty of contractual breach torts though, which is essentially what we are talking about. When a company changes a goal post after a deal is done, it's never going to be a happy ending, when its trying to fix an obvious oversight, more so.

The number of defendants complicates it too. From my reading I don't think EasyCGI for example are saying this is an oversight, which is not surprising when the wording does imply they have deliberately considered multiple purchases: “You can earn as many miles as you like. There is no cap.”

My reading is that they are saying it's up to the merchants to make this happen and that it was the merchant who cancelled. Quite a different argument in my opinion. I don't believe we have heard the merchants opinion(s) on the matter as yet.

 

[davistev]

I wish them luck. I was awarded one million miles by LatinPass during their famous Latin Run promotion back in 2000. Unfortunately, LatinPass made it very difficult to redeem the miles. I only ended up redeeming 350,000 miles.

The rest were wasted away.


Oh well

Now we have Qantas - not much difference really!