You spent 10’s of thousands of $$’s on Expedia and got Elite Status. Got Platinum Status on Continental. Whats it worth – Bupkis. Diddly sqat. Or less.
For example – upgrades to business class coming from Israel. A friend of mine (unnamed, but you will see him suffering in economy tonight all the way to the West Coast) has piles of miles and the highest VIP status that Continental offers. He called up the airline, asking for an upgrade. Sorry, no complimentary upgrades trans-atlantic. He was now ready to spend his miles on an upgrade. Sorry, none available. As soon as he started talking about buying a business class ticket, there was lots of space.
So, tonight, the plane leaves with loads of business class seats wide open and our friend and VIP Continental Flyer with miles to burn in the back like a sardine.
As far as Expedia elite – I get a special 800 number with no wait time, but they usually can’t do what you want when you get through.
Whats the point? We all know the miles are difficult to use. They know that we know that. So, they try to market their programs by giving us VIP status. With the exception of ElAl, it is not worth much.
This may be the only way to really get VIP service:
The OTA’s (online travel agents) are featured in some other posts. Here we review the value of an OTA vs a supplier (Delta) or meta-search (Kayak), and Seatguru is a great tool for selecting seats – owned by Expedia.
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Filed under: Flights, Frequent Flyer Miles, Great Deals, Perks and Tips | Tagged: Supershuttle, airfare bargains, aadvantage, longest flight, non-stop flights, luggage charge, AA Airlines, LY, Airline Corporate, TAP Portugal, airline lounge, budget car, webflyer, best flyers, oneworld alliance, Sky team
Boy, that poor bastard. My suggestion, take a sleeping pill to forget about the misery of a 24 hour trip in economy… Thanks for posting.
As a long standing Platinum member of CO, the benfits of VIP status have dwindled to nothing..shame
[...] of Albert Einstein (or at least David Mirchin). Navigating between the online travel agents (like Expedia and Priceline), the suppliers (like Jet Blue, Turkish, Continental) and the meta search (Kayak) and [...]