Continental Airlines/OnePass

Where Did My United Mileage Plus Credit Card Go?

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I love to learn new things, although some of the things I learn may not be all that interesting to some. Over this past weekend I randomly logged into my Chase account for some reason. I can not even recall why I was at their site, but I was surprised to see only one account when I logged in. I was used to seeing at least two Chase accounts on my personal line. My business account is through a different login, and the accounts are not attached at least when viewing them online. So I started to scratch my head and think.

When we opened up our Continental OnePass accounts last year, I knew at some point we were going to have to shut them down to maximize our chances of being able to open new United Explorer cards in the future. So the fact that my United Mileage Plus account was missing when I logged in through me off. So I figured when I get to the bottom of where my Mileage Plus account was, I would also work on closing our Continental OnePass accounts.

Long story short, after going through several rounds of representatives, no one at Chase could locate my Mileage Plus accounts, like I was completely erased from the system. Only after getting to upper level management did they finally locate my account, but could not exactly tell me why the account was closed, possibly due to inactivity. I knew inactivity definitely would not have been the case as it had only been 10 months since I used the card.

After not being able to tell me why my United account was closed, I proceeded to close my Continental account. Besides my business line, I am completely free of Chase cards at the moment. One one hand I am nervous not having any of the Chase credit lines on my files, but I will be monitoring my scores to see if there is any impact. On the other hand I am hoping the lack of Chase credit will help me when applying for future products, like the United Explorer cards.

Later that day, I called in to cancel my wife’s Continental account, assuming her United Mileage Plus account was closed also, only to find out hers was still active. I was baffled. So instead we moved my wife’s OnePass credit limit over to her Mileage Plus account, and closed the Continental card since there was no point in having dual United cards once it would convert to the United Explorer card. 🙂 Not a problem, done, and my wife now has a hefty credit line with United Mileage Plus that we can leverage in the future to get new cards.

While I had to representative on the phone, I proceeded to try and dig further on my accounts. Long story short, they still could not locate my Mileage Plus account, but offered to reopen my Continental account if I desired. I opted out, but then I start to wonder if maybe I was asked to close the United Mileage Plus account when we applied for the Continental accounts. As the agent was reviewing stuff in my account, I happen to go back to my original post when we opened up the Continental accounts to see if I had any notes about closing my Mileage Plus account. Sure enough, I had made a note stating “Long story short, Chase made me close down my United Mileage Plus card to be approved for the personal credit line.”

The blog had come to my rescue and help explain something to me that Chase somehow could not. They apparently have no notes on file about me closing one account in order to open another. Here I thought they would maintain a database to help them analyze future credit requests, but apparently not. So I learned that my memory is not the best (my wife could have told you all that), but that it really pays for everyone to have a blog documenting their credit history. 🙂 Without my notes and article, I would still be racking my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong to lose my Mileage Plus account.

What I ultimately think that I learned that can help out others though is that the terms of the United Explorer cards state “United MileagePlus Explorer cardmembers will only receive one 25,000 bonus miles award if they apply for both the United Explorer Card and the Continental OnePass Plus Card after 7/19/2011.” Therefore, according to the terms, since we applied for the Continental cards after 7/19/11, we should be ineligable for the United Explorer card in the future. However, Chase could not even locate my original United Mileage Plus account with an annual fee from two years ago, and had an extremely hard time even finding the United Mileage Plus card with no annual fee that I downgraded to last year. Based on this experience, I have a good feeling that we should have no problems obtaining the United Explorer cards in the future.

Save Money, Travel More.

$5 Earned Us Another Trip to Hawaii

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Update 2/22/12: I finally have an explanation for the random miles. Late last week I received a phone call from Continental about the tickets for my in-laws that was discussed below. They were attempting to re-ticket and were not seeing any miles in the account. What happened was when I called and had the tickets switched back to their original flights, Continental refunded me the original 40,000 miles for each ticket. When the agent re-booked the flights, she changed the class of service and now the ticketing system was looking for 60,000 miles each for the same tickets. Fortunately, I moved all the miles over to United, and they did not take the additional miles.

For some reason, the whole re-ticketing process takes over a week to complete, where I thought it was all immediate. The agent that originally re-booked the flights basically really messed up the order, and in the end, I transferred 40,000 miles back into each of our Continental accounts, which was used to re-book the same tickets we had prior. We were also issued a refund for the $5 in taxes we were accessed.

The whole time the tickets showed up fine in our accounts as a future reservation, so there was nothing to be alarmed about other than some random extra miles sitting in our accounts.

So the lesson to be learned here is that when redeeming miles, and making changes to your account, airlines might have screwy policies about refunding the miles and re-booking taking the miles again. What customers need to be aware of is to not “use” the additional miles that show back up in your account, as it could jeopardize tickets one already has booked. There are lots of “what ifs” related to how our transaction transpired, that I do not want to evaluate all the scenarios. I am fortunate I did not have any miles in the accounts and was able to talk the agent through the process over the phone rather than seeing even more miles taken from our accounts and than having to argue to get them back.

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What a screwy day last week that started with surprise, anxiousness to see what would happened, followed by frustration and then surprise. It all started after I received an email from Continental that my in-law’s flights for Hawaii had been revised. At first glance, I did not think anything of the change as it is typical for times to get moved around prior to departure. But what happened over the proceeding hours was what really surprises me.

My in-laws were supposed to leave Hawaii, have a quick refuel and 45 minutes later be on their way to Cleveland. The change from Continental caused them to have an overnight in LAX, and not leaving for Cleveland until the following morning. They ultimately arrived in Cleveland 8 hours later than originally planned. So I called up the Continental ticketing center see what I could get accomplished. At a minimum, I was hoping to get my in-laws a night in the hotel so they would not be sleeping at the airport. An even better scenario would have been if they would have compensated us something for the major change. So I rolled the dice, and called up Continental.

After finally getting through to an agent, I mentioned to the woman that my in-law’s flights had been revised. Without even saying anything, she put me on hold and said she could get them back onto their original flights, but now there was a plane change. So I went along with the plan of switching them back to their original itinerary, and was unsure why the “computer” switched them in the first place.

Then the agent told me I owed another $2.50/ticket in taxes. So even though I did not switch the flights, and they are back on the same exact flights, I need to now pay more in taxes? I questioned the agent, and she said there was nothing she could do about taxes. I agree but I did not make the change. So I asked for miles or something to compensate me for my time and extra taxes I had to pay. Unfortunately, that was shot down too.

So as I went on with my day, I pondered in the back of my mind how wrong the scenario played out. Continental switched around their flights, and to put them back onto the same flights cost us more in taxes. At the same time though, I was only talking about $5 total in taxes on flights that cost us nothing. The point though is Continental’s change cost me more out of pocket. That is wrong in my opinion.

I considered sending a short note to Continental to discuss the situation; however, after logging into both my wife and my accounts, I noticed 40,000+ miles sitting in each of our accounts. What was this? I knew we had almost no miles in each of our Continental accounts because I had already moved them all over to United previously. So I began going back through previous transactions to see what was up with our accounts.

111213 Continental Reward Redeposit

For some reason back in December 2011, Continental re-deposited 40,000 miles back into each of our accounts. I have no idea why there are these elusive miles in our accounts, as it does not correlate with any account activity. The only thing I could possibly think of is maybe it was a day I called up Continental to play around with dates with our flights for Hawaii, and somehow in the process, the agent credited us back all these miles even though we never made a flight change at that time. However, even this scenario does not match up because we have 3 seats reserved (or 120,000 miles) and were only credited with 80,000 miles.

Regardless, I have no idea what happened, and in the end, a $5 tax dispute was not worth my time and effort when we each had an extra 40,000 miles sitting in each of our accounts (or more seats back to Hawaii at a later date!). Maybe the good karma of sending my in-laws to Hawaii is paying us back in its own little way. 🙂

February 2012 Continental Credit Card Mailer: Free Lounge Passes

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I am beginning to enjoy opening up our Continental Personal and Business cards more and more everyday. As a quick rehash for any new readers, back in October my wife and I each applied for Continental personal and business credit cards. I was approved for each, and my wife the personal card (I also learned some lessons to hopefully help her get approved in the future). We earned a bounty of miles off of opening up a couple of simple credit cards.

Besides the first purchases to earn bonus miles, I did not plan on necessarily using the cards a ton. However, Chase has been doing a great job at driving my spending towards the Continental cards.

I have had the cards for several months now, and still have not used them a lot, but have added spend to the cards so it does not look like I just opened them up to get the miles. The Business card I have been using only for the use of expenses with maintaining and operating InACents and other domain names we own. Our Financial Adviser recommended keeping only business spending on the Business card to keep accounting easier.

Feb 2012 Chase Continental Business Club Passes Mailer Cover

So I was surprised last week when I received a mailer from Continental offering us two complimentary United Club passes (up to a $100 value) just because we have been using the card. Then a week later, my wife and I each received another two passes. So in total, we received six lounge passes between our three Continental cards. Normally, I would not expect these passes until after the first year is up on the card, and the new annual fee is paid. A lot of times the credit card/airline companies give them to you as a means to help justify paying the annual fee after the first year. So to get them after only a couple of months was a grand surprise.

The passes are valid in all of 2012, so they will definitely come in handy during our Hawaiian vacation this summer. Plus, we have never been inside an airline lounge before, so it should be a great newbie experience.

There is some question whether little kids will be required to have a pass for access to the lounge, but now we have enough passes should they request them for the kids.