US Airways Dividend Miles Program: You Fly for "Free" But At A Price
Written: Apr 09 '03 (Updated Mar 12 '04)
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Pros: the ability to travel for "free"
Cons: treated like a second class citizen, major problems with credit card program
The Bottom Line: If you're going to fly US Airways, sign up for the program but I've found American Airlines AAdvantage program to be better suited to my needs.
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| jdhauer's Full Review: US Airways Dividend Miles |
Way back when before I met my husband, I used to fly US Airways a lot. They had the most choices of flights at the lowest prices and were one of the few carriers to service the city where I attended college. I've had a frequent flier account with them since 1986 according to my original membership card.
How the miles program used to work is that you'd receive miles for each flight that you took. Period. After accumulating enough miles, you could earn a free ticket or an upgrade.
Today, you can earn miles not only by flying but by using a special Bank of America card, staying in certain hotels, renting cars, using MCI for long distance telephone calls, buying flowers, and using certain services which are advertised along with your mileage statement and on the website.
Credit Card Program
I'd like to discuss the credit card program very briefly because we had a major problem with it which was completely Bank of America's fault. After our wedding, my husband and I opened a joint US Airways Bank of America Visa account. We charged as many of our monthly expenses as possible on the card in order to rack up the miles. If you don't carry a balance, this works well but if you do carry a balance, get a different card with a lower interest rate! We were originally enrolled in the platinum program which gave us 2 miles for every dollar spent but the program was changed so that you'd have to pay a much higher annual fee for less benefits.
One month our balance was about $1700.00. A check was mailed out well before the due date for the full amount. When checking our account status, I noticed that Bank of America had deposited our check as if it was written for $7,700.00. They insisted that this coding mistake was our fault and that we needed to mail out a series of certified letters and we should just enjoy having a $6,000.00 credit (with no interest paid to us) on our account so we wouldn't have to pay our bill for a couple of months. After talking to my bank manager, Bank of America then credited our account for an additional $6,000 making an even bigger mistake. This took three months to straighten out so we could close the account. Thankfully we had enough money in our account to cover their original mistake but many people ordinarily do not have an extra $6,000 to lend to Bank of America.
The credit card hassles were not US Airways fault but I thought they should be mentioned in case you are interested in using the card to acquire miles on US Airways.
Redeeming Miles
For our fifth anniversary, my husband and I decided we wanted to redeem our frequent flier miles to go to Europe. I called the redemption center approximately 10 months before our intended travel dates (in mid-June) and worked our way backward, with no fixed city in mind as we were very flexible. We would have been happy with London, Rome, Oslo, anywhere. The first available flights we could book were on April 1st to Paris. I grabbed the flights and we were charged approximately $50 a person for taxes on the tickets.
Our original flights were from Dulles International Airport to Philadelphia International Airport where we would connect to Charles de Gaulle International Airport. We were really happy with those flights since we live approximately 15 minutes from Dulles and my husband would be able to work almost a full day before we had to leave for the airport.
Once we were able to fly to Hawaii by combining miles with our American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier accounts. We had no problems working with the combined programs and I'll assume that the new partnership between USAirways and United will work in a similar fashion.
I've never had any problems in the past in redeeming miles for flights within the continental United States. For this trip, I had intended to bring my mother from Florida to Washington using my miles but there were no flights available on the days she needed to travel that didn't involve at least three airports and two changes of planes. I ended up purchasing a ticket for her on my least favorite airline, jetBlue.
What Happened After Redeeming the Miles
In the middle of February, I received a call from US Airways informing me that there had been a change to our flights. We were now scheduled to depart from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to PHL to CDG. I said that wasn't acceptable. We don't fly out of BWI unless absolutely necessary, especially when the flight schedule would require traveling through rush hour traffic to get there. After talking with the agent (Karen who was the same person who originally booked our tickets), I found out that this wasn't our first schedule change. US Airways had already changed our flights before and supposedly had mailed us a new itinerary. I said that we hadn't received anything from them and the answer was "You should have." I again responded that I didn't. We went back and forth on this for about ten minutes with the agent blaming me because I didn't receive something they mailed to me.
Our flights were rescheduled so that we would fly from Dulles to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to CDG and then from CDG to Philadelphia to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. There was no possible way that they could get us back to Dulles. When I asked about using another carrier (such as United with whom they have a partnership), I was told that if I had purchased my ticket they would do that but I was flying for "free" so I had to take what they gave me.
We were also scheduled with just over an hour between the time our return flight to Philadelphia landed and the flight to National departed. During that time we would have to clear customs and transfer terminals. I asked about a later flight to Washington and was told that the next flight wasn't available for frequent flier miles and if we missed the early flight, there might be room on the last flight of the night but we shouldn't plan on it. We traveled with an Amtrak voucher in our luggage just in case and packed very lightly so that we wouldn't have to check any luggage. (We did manage to make our connecting flight despite an hour's delay in leaving Charles de Gaulle, but just barely. We had to sprint from A terminal to D terminal in Philadelphia and made it after the door to the jetway had been shut but the plane hadn't left.)
As you know, the United States is currently at war in Iraq and went to war about 2 weeks before we planned to leave for Europe. We had no intentions of canceling our travel plans but my parents were completely against us traveling out of the country. Out of curiosity, I called concerning the "Peace of Mind Policy" posted on US Airways web site. It reads in part:
"As a reminder, the "Peace of Mind" policy applies to tickets purchased, and Dividend Miles awards tickets issued, on or before April 2, 2003, and allows you to reschedule itineraries for travel that was scheduled to originate March 19 through June 17, 2003, without incurring the standard fees. This means you may make the following changes to applicable, wholly unused tickets:
- Your destination city may be changed. (Your origin city cannot be changed.)
- You may reschedule the itinerary for earlier or later dates.
- You may redeposit a Dividend Miles award without incurring a redeposit fee.
All rules and restrictions of the rescheduled itinerary or Dividend Miles award will apply, and you will be responsible for any difference in the fare or award mileage value.
- Travel must be canceled by the ticketed travel date or prior to April 19, 2003, whichever comes first.
- Travel within the U.S. or between the U.S. and Canada must be rescheduled to originate on or before June 17, 2003.
- Travel to or from Europe, the Caribbean (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Central America or Mexico must be rescheduled to originate on or before December 15, 2003.
- Tickets issued by US Airways for travel on airlines other than US Airways, the US Airways Shuttle or the US Airways Express carriers will be subject to the rules of the airline operating the flight(s).
I was told that the policy did not apply to us since we were using Dividend Miles tickets (even though the policy states otherwise). I was also told that we could only reschedule during an off peak time (even though I had enough miles to go during peak season) and then it was on a space available basis. Surprise, no flights were available. I was also told that I could not redeposit the miles and that they had to be used by the end of the year. This is all contrary to the posted policy.
At that point, I decided that I would like to make a change to my itinerary and changed our outbound flight from Pittsburgh-Philadelphia-CDG to National-Philadelphia-CDG. I asked about getting a copy of the itinerary and I was told that US Airways never mails out itineraries (despite having one in my hand that had been mailed to me) and that I had to go online to get a copy. I don't mind doing that but there's a lot of "one hand doesn't know what the other is doing" within the organization.
Summation
Because of the screw up with the credit card, we transfered our basic allegiance to American Airlines. They have more legroom in coach (a big big big plus for my 6'5 husband) and they have flights serving Tucson. Before the United partnership, the closest we could get was Phoenix which meant we'd have to rent a car to visit relatives in Tucson (where we had free use of a car). We'll probably still fly US Airways to Florida (when we don't drive) but US Airways just doesn't go where we need to go when we need to go.
While I've never had a bad flight experience with US Airways, redeeming miles with the US Airways Dividend Miles program isn't always the easiest process. I really felt that when I was using Dividend Miles tickets, that I was considered to be a lower class of passenger and therefore, unimportant. If you treat the people using Dividend Miles well, aren't they then going to want to give more of their business to your airline instead of another carrier?
I recommend the Dividend Miles program because there's no charge to join and the miles don't expire unless there's no activity in your account (not necessarily flying) within three years. It may take a while, but anyone can earn a free upgrade or ticket. Happy flying!
UPDATE
I recently had to redeem some Dividend Miles on an emergency basis. My husband's grandmother was in the hospital and the news didn't sound encouraging. I remembered my frequent flier miles and gave USAir a call. In five minutes, I had a direct flight booked from Dulles International to Tucson that would depart in three hours. Since USAir doesn't service Tucson, it cost me an additional 5,000 miles to book the flight on United. The other associated fee was $75 since I was making a reservation over the phone, less than three days before the flight. I didn't mind this since the walk up fares for this flight were close to $3,000.
Unfortunately, my husband didn't arrive in time and his grandmother had passed away about two hours before his flight landed. I had originally arranged for him to return two days later. Since the funeral was that day, I needed to change his return flight which was taken care of in a pleasant manner and with no additional charges.
I still recommend US Airways Dividend Miles program and I tend to think the problems I faced with our Paris trip were directly related to the International division as redeeming awards domestically has never been a problem.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jdhauer
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Location: Virginia
Reviews written: 712
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