It’s common to see airline and hotel loyalty programs offer status match opportunities, whereby elite members with one program can have their status matched with a competing program.
Continue reading: Status Match Fraud: What Do Airlines & Hotels Verify?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Assuming this happens, any competent customer loyalty executive or manager at an airline or a hotel company who is contacted by a rival about the status of a good customer would instantly try and keep that customer loyal. So, I’m calling BS. Sure, I think it’s possible that airlines within the same alliance have tools to verify statuses. There may even be tools sold by American Express or Chase. But I don’t actually think Marriott and Hilton or Hyatt and IHG — let alone American and Delta or Virgin Atlantic and British Airways — have a hotline to each other to verify statuses. Air France takes three months to respond to customer complaints!
Good. Had a friend have a 5-year ban from statusmatch.com (or whatever the site is) for changing their loyalty level.
I have many thoughts.
1. Pixel peeping of design elements (e.g. fonts, spacing) is fruitless. Web browsers have built-in tools that allow anyone to create a pixel perfect doctored screenshot.
2. If I were an EU legislator, I would be very concerned about the privacy angle.
3a. There is one US airline that invests disproportionate human resources into consumer fraud. That airline happens to be the one with the worst financial performance and worst customer service level. I'm of course talking about American Airlines.
3b. Fraud is obviously bad, but there is a point at which a company is spending too many resources to combat it. Verification of status on another airline crosses the line IMHO.
It's not BS. I was a summer intern at an airline. The FTE in the cubicle behind me worked on fraud, and part of her job focused on status matches.
You think it's good that your friend was banned? Some terrible friend you are. I would support my friends in any fraud they might commit. Otherwise I would not call them a friend.
A different department responds to customers. The fraud team only communicated internally. The only overlap might be a note placed by the fraud team on the customer's account, which was then visible to all customer service agents.
They have devalued a lot under points and off course it’s a mess to get your status worth of services in North America but that is clearly not the case in rest of the world. It is basically the opposite
I very specifically stated that I don't believe that most airlines or most hotels have hotlines to each other for these circumstances. I don't doubt that they have asset protection or fraud prevention offices, but those offices likely use computer technology or third-party tools (perhaps provided by American Express or Chase). If Delta communicates with rivals to verify or confirm statuses then the airline should do everything in its power to retain customers after learning a customer is attempting to go to another airline. Nobody has ever produced evidence that they seek to retain such customers.
Airlines that are natively hosted in the same reservation system have access to tier information of other FFPs even if not in the same alliance.
In Amadeus there is an entry that will pull up any FF number for airlines that have their PSS hosted in Amadeus (for example BA or QF can query status of AF or LH account this way). DL and UA do not have this ability as they use proprietary PSS that no one else uses, but AA could theoretically see anything hosted in Sabre, such as status on Virgin Australia. Similarly AC could see anything hosted in Amadeus including BA and AF.
Re violating privacy laws.....
I would imagine that when you tick that box on a status match request saying that you 'accept the terms and conditions' that one of those T&C's would be you authorizing the airline to contact third parties to verify your status.
If you tick and agree, there is no violation.
It was even more funny in the past. Just did a black and white scan of my basic status and then it somehow looked like the black top tier status
So you think your friends should be able to commit fraud? Do you think they should be able to commit murder too?
If someone voluntarily makes a representation or claim to a third party (i.e. voluntarily divulging personal information) and the third party decides to verify that information with the second party I don't see the privacy implications. Unless the second party can somehow verify that the first party initiated the request they shouldn't respond to the third party as they would be on the hook for divulging private information in the case that the request wasn't valid.
You don't need to phone the airline to check the status level. With some airlines you can make a trial booking, enter your membership number and the status is recognized. For example exit row seats might become free of charge depending on the status. All this is without making an actual reservation or paying anything. A trial booking with finnair will test any One World card number in this way.
I think it depends on the terms and conditions or what the customer is told in advance that they agree to by submitting the information. I hope that they are agreeing to have the airline or hotel check or verify their status. This is important to dealing with the violation. If the terms clearly said this could be done to verify and he agreed then he has no case.
