ANA Mileage Club has emailed their members with an offer concerning an extension campaign which results in a Sky Coins and Mileage expiration waiver September 30, 2021.
Members have to register their account in order to be eligible for this extension otherwise their points will expire if they have expiration dates within the next year.
For whatever reason instead of just extending everyone’s miles ANA has once again made this entire issue into a campaign that people have to actively register for, making it more complicated than necessary in typical Japanese fashion.
You can access ANA’s mileage extension campaign here.
Thank you very much for your continued patronage of the ANA Group as an ANA Mileage Club member.
Here at ANA, we have canceled or decreased the frequency of many of our flights due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In order to provide our valued customers with some reassurance, we will implement the special handling described below.
Registration must be completed during the applicable period.
We have already extended the expiration dates of miles and ANA SKY COINS due to expire between March 31, 2020 and February 28, 2021 up to March 31, 2021.
As an extension of this handling, we will now extend the expiration dates of miles and ANA SKY COINS due to expire between March 31 and August 31, 2021 up to September 30, 2021.
- This extension handling is also available for miles and ANA SKY COINS that have already had their expiration dates extended once up to March 31, 2021.
- If you redeem miles for a reward (e.g., flight awards, ANA Value Vouchers, other kinds of vouchers/coupons) and then request a refund due to reasons beyond ANA’s control or for personal reasons, this handling will not be available for any miles that have expired at the time of the refund request.
- If you use ANA SKY COINS to purchase a flight ticket and then request a refund due to reasons beyond ANA’s control or for personal reasons, this handling will not be available for any ANA SKY COINS that have expired at the time of the refund request.
Miles and ANA SKY COINS that are due to expire will do so temporarily. However, the same amount of miles and ANA SKY COINS with a new expiration date of September 30, 2021 will be re-accrued during the period below.
Miles and ANA SKY COINS that are due to have expired before registration will be re-accrued toward the end of the month following registration.
Miles and ANA SKY COINS that are due to expire after registration will be re-accrued toward the end of the month following expiration.
ANA miles are expiring by quarter and the management of ANA Mileage Club has decided to continue their drizzle approach when it comes to extending these miles instead of applying a generous blanket policy for all members.
ANA SKY COINS originally due to expire between March 31 and August 31, 2021 are now being extended (as long as the member registers for this campaign) up to September 30, 2021.
Is that really a lot of relief? In the worst case it gives you just an extra month. Meanwhile Japan has still imposed a strict entry restriction on tourists (pretty much impossible for most foreigners). Air travel throughout the world is rather difficult due to limited options either.
Conclusion
I feel like ANA Mileage Club – as much as I love their awards and ANA itself – is rather complicated when it comes to a customer-centric approach in any case. I rarely ever saw practical proposals and policies from them over the years, most of the time even simple matter such as these are packaged into some complicated blankets such as a campaign, requiring registrations.
This could have been handled very simple by announcing an extension an just doing it for everybody. Well as I learned over many years, nothing is ever simple in Japan. There is always some form to fill in and an extra step for someone to look over. Hopefully not too many people will end up with their ANA Miles expiring after all this is said and done.
