United Airlines Mileage Plus had the Pick Your Path promotion that allows MileagePlus Premier members to choose one of the three offers to accelerate their elite qualifying process or earn more miles for select transactions.
The registration for this offer ended on May 13, 2021, supposedly at midnight but several members have complained that the registration was not accessible anymore as early as mid day.
Members had until 11:59pm Central Time on May 13th to register for this promotion according to the terms listed on the promotional website.
Sounds very self explanatory right? Well some members who left it to the last minute found themselves on the short end of the stick as the registration stopped working well in advance of the official deadline.
We’ve received a couple of complaints to that regard and even though I wasn’t planning on signing up for this simply because it gives me no benefit I decided to put it to the test and indeed the registration no longer worked.
No chance through both the desktop or mobile device. I decided to contact United through Twitter as well as an email to Mileage Plus customer care.
Here is the reply I received from them:
Thanks for taking the time to write to us. We’re glad to hear from you.
I have forwarded your information to our Marketing team for review. We will email you with the outcome as soon as we get a response.
We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this matter.
As a Premier Gold member, we value your business. Thank you for choosing United and MileagePlus.
Regards,
Nadine G. , MileagePlus® LeadRepresentative
Original Message Follows:
————————
To: mileageplus@united.com
Subject: other
Date: May 13, 2021 5:34:47 PM PDT
Submitted: 5/13/2021 7:34:47 PM
User Agent: Firefox
Signed In: Yes
I submitted the matter with screenshots attached so they have a proper timestamp when I tried to sign up. I told them to just manually select the flat 700 PQP for my account.
So far nothing has been done and no points have been added to my account. Not that it matters much as I’m not planning to collect any significant miles this year that would make a difference to my status.
However several readers contacted us and tweeted to United about this issue. It looks like someone set the expiration date for the promotion registration incorrectly and this created problems for customers on May 13th, the last day this promotion supposedly to be open for registration.
Conclusion
Strange that United didn’t set this properly as it’s a rather standard thing, an everyday promotion so why wouldn’t it work until the time designated?
I recommended the readers who contacted us to contact United and make sure there is time stamped record for when this contact was established. Thankfully an email to Mileage Plus through the webform comes with a detailed stamp that shows when the request was submitted. Let’s see when they reply and what their answer will be.
The issue is rather clear and well documented so they should simply add the 700 PQP or whatever the customer asks them to add from the choices available.
Mistakes happen. Probably someone selected the wrong time when they set it up, and missed it on review.
I set up events in Eventbrite all the time, and occasionally mess up. I once accidentally set the ticket sale to end the day before it should have, and another time, set it up for am instead of pm. On occasion, we will draft with an end sale date in mind, and then need to change it before it goes live, but somehow, it doesn’t get changed. One can also change it, but forget to hit the ‘save’ button, so it doesn’t get updated.
I’m going to guess one of these things happened. I have no idea what tools they use, but suspect it should have been an easy fix as soon as the right person becomes aware. Should also be trivial for someone to manually update accounts in a situation where they know what the customer wants. Also easy for them to extend the deadline a few days for those who have not made a selection, and send a note out – something like ‘ooops – we made an error – you have [X] extra days to make your selection.