Avianca LifeMiles seems to have a longstanding subject with incoming factors transfers from bank card corporations akin to American Specific and Citibank that has been occurring for a number of months now.
Readers report that their transfers don’t get credited to the account and in lots of circumstances revert again to the unique factors account of the monetary establishment.
That is one more subject that may be added to the lengthy listing of LifeMiles points that seemingly by no means desires to finish, making the member’s life an ongoing distress.
Over the course of the previous few weeks, I acquired some messages from readers about this subject and I made a decision to look a bit deeper into the difficulty.
John already wrote about this again in January when these issues began:
Avianca LifeMiles Can’t Credit score Transferred & Bought Miles (Immediately Expires Them)?
The case was resolved about two weeks later after the specter of initiating a chargeback:
The issues with transfers to LifeMiles accounts initiated by members who even have balances with their bank card firm (American Specific Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Factors) have apparently been occurring since January of this 12 months.
Once I redeemed my very personal LifeMiles award and wanted a fast (small) topup in mid-December, the hyperlink between Amex and Lifemiles labored fantastic and factors posted immediately. Apparently that stopped someday in January.
For instance, there’s this Flyertalk thread the place individuals additionally complain about points with transfers. Some feedback by customers there:
fbcooper
My factors bought refunded again to Amex. By no means had that occur earlier than. Amex says Avianca rejected the switch with no purpose acknowledged.
A refund again to the financial institution is certainly extraordinarily unusual!
mloradites
I transferred miles in on the sixteenth and so they nonetheless aren’t accessible. Simply known as in and so they needed to create an escalated case to their inner crew. Very annoying.
LifeMiles appear to have a really lengthy “pending” interval now even IF the miles finally hit the account.
IamHungry
Been 3 days since I transferred factors from Citi. Emailed and known as nonetheless can’t make a reserving.
The identical downside was reported by this consumer, extraordinarily inconvenient!
Whenever you test the web sites of the switch companions, they appear to be conscious that there are points and members are notified that transfers can take a big time till they’re being credited to the account as a steadiness that can be utilized for redemptions.
Right here is an instance from Amex:
With all the opposite points surrounding availability on the Lifemiles web site, it’s in all probability not the perfect concept to switch bank card factors to this extremely unreliable program proper now.
One other perspective is that Amex and Citi factors are way more invaluable than Lifemiles, that may just about all the time be bought at extremely discounted charges by their ongoing gross sales.
Conclusion
For the higher a part of 4 months now, Lifemiles has had issues with the power to make incoming mileage transfers out there to be used. This consists of factors transferred from bank card applications, resort applications, and even factors bought by LifeMiles instantly.
It’s actually mind-boggling how an airline or a program will be in such disarray and always create points for members. I feel, at this level, most have silently moved on from LifeMiles in direction of different applications just because it turned so unreliable.
Lifemiles was good a decade or so in the past when awards had been profitable however since then they devalued the award chart a number of occasions with out prior discover and the platform has grow to be more and more unstable.