Capital One mileage transfers are finally available once again, after being down for roughly two weeks.
In this post:
Capital One mileage transfers were “down for maintenance”
One of the great things about Capital One miles (whether issued as Spark miles or Venture miles) is that they can be transfered to airline and hotel partners, typically at a 1:1 ratio. This is the best way to get outsized value with your miles, and it’s also why I value Capital One miles at 1.7 cents each.
Between September 23 and October 7, 2022, Capital One mileage transfers were unavailable. When you went to Capital One’s page for converting rewards into partner currencies, each partner had a note next to it saying “Down for Maintenance,” telling people to “please check back later.”
While this feature was unavailable for 14 days, fortunately it has finally been resolved, so it’s once again possible to make mileage transfers. If you’ve been wanting to make a mileage transfer, you can resume doing so now.
Why were Capital One mileage transfers down?
Capital One claimed that the mileage transfer feature was down so that some system improvements could be made:
We are currently making system improvements to some of our rewards platforms, and because of that they are temporarily offline. We will let you know when they are available.
In the past we’ve certainly seen situations where transferable points currencies weren’t transferable for some amount of time to a particular partner. This can happen for a variety of reasons. However, suffice it to say that this Capital One situation was a bit different — we’ve never seen a transferable points currency essentially just shut down for a period of around two weeks.
The good news is that things are back to normal, and it doesn’t sound like there was anything nefarious going on here, in the sense that Capital One isn’t ending its mileage transfer program without notice. Nonetheless, I share peoples’ frustration about mileage transfers being down for so long:
- If this was actually for planned system improvements, some advance notice should have been given, so that members could make any transfers in advance
- There should have been a note on Capital One’s website providing more details to cardmembers about what was going on and when transfers were expected to become available again
After all, this is a major points currency, and two weeks is a not-insignificant amount of time for this functionality to be down. This leads me to believe that these “system improvements” may not have been planned, and rather that something happened that caused this to be required immediately.
Bottom line
Capital One mileage transfers are once again available, after being down for a period of two weeks. This was apparently due to some upgrades being made to the rewards platform.
I’m happy to see this functionality back, and hope we don’t see another unannounced program outage again. This was indeed frustrating, and I think Capital One should have communicated this better.
Were you impacted by Capital One mileage transfers being down?
Rewards not working Jan 02 @9a.m CST. Tried W-7, 10 and 11. Called and told everything is working. Very poor service.
Your web page says the Transfer Miles web page is working since Oct 7, 2022. Its December 17, 2022 and the CapitalOne Transfer Miles web page is still not working!
I want to transfer mileage points to Virgin Red, but none of the other 17 partners' Transfer Miles pages are working either! Many people have lost their by points flight reservations Come on CapitalOne, fix it.
I still can't transfer points to Virgin. It says I have to verify my membership account. I don't. It's correct. I have spent hours on the phone as I have one day left to book my tickets and then I lose them. Cap One has transferred me (ironically) between every department temtn and no one seems to know anything. I am going to lose our bucket list trip. Does anyone have any suggestions?
The Capital One transfer to Virgin Red does not work. I have been trying since September 19 to transfer points to Virgin Red with no success (after multiple conference calls with Capital One and Virgin Red). It simply does not work. This is nothing more than a bait and switch from Capital One. I got a call back from them today and they admitted there was nothing they can do. Penelope at Capital One suggested...
The Capital One transfer to Virgin Red does not work. I have been trying since September 19 to transfer points to Virgin Red with no success (after multiple conference calls with Capital One and Virgin Red). It simply does not work. This is nothing more than a bait and switch from Capital One. I got a call back from them today and they admitted there was nothing they can do. Penelope at Capital One suggested I simply try using my Capital One points another way. Very disappointing.
I spent 4 hours on the phone with Capital One trying to transfer points for a flight that I have a hold on. Although the site looks like it should work finally when you enter your frequent flyer number the system will not take any number. The customer service agent tried her best but could not find a solution. What good are the miles if we can’t use them. Has anyone found a way around this problem ?
The Capital One transfer to Virgin Red does not work. I have been trying since September 19 to transfer points to Virgin Red with no success (after multiple conference calls with Capital One and Virgin Red). It simply does not work. This is nothing more than a bait and switch from Capital One. I got a call back from them today and they admitted there was nothing they can do. Penelope at Capital One suggested...
The Capital One transfer to Virgin Red does not work. I have been trying since September 19 to transfer points to Virgin Red with no success (after multiple conference calls with Capital One and Virgin Red). It simply does not work. This is nothing more than a bait and switch from Capital One. I got a call back from them today and they admitted there was nothing they can do. Penelope at Capital One suggested I simply try using my Capital One points another way. Very disappointing.
Capital One sucks, but I need a Visa card in my wallet.
CSP?
File a complaint with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and maybe you'll get some of your annual fee back
During my daily check to see if this is back working, I now see that there is no access at all to Capital One rewards. On both the website and the mobile app, I'm unable to see any information any points information!
I joined because of all the nice things TPG said about the reward program. My first shot at buying tickets was for a trip with multiple cites only to find the travel portal can't do it. I almost always book multiple cites because I get better prices than RT and better flights like non-stop to at least one city.
Now I find I can't really transfer points.
Should I just collect the $300 and...
I joined because of all the nice things TPG said about the reward program. My first shot at buying tickets was for a trip with multiple cites only to find the travel portal can't do it. I almost always book multiple cites because I get better prices than RT and better flights like non-stop to at least one city.
Now I find I can't really transfer points.
Should I just collect the $300 and 75,000 miles and switch to Chase Reserve? I just now started to travel quite a bit and I want to be using the best card for it.
Capital one should have year 2022 and 2023 budget to hire some better developer and system maintenance support from now on
This is truly frustrating and unprofessional. CapitalOne definitely fails the customer loyalty test with their lack of transparency and inability to address the issue. They owe a clear explanation to all of their cardholders.
What's in your wallet? Uh . . . Amex . . . why do you ask?
LOL, You're talking about the Super Bowl ad?
What I don't understand is why these travel sites are being told 1 more week, while when I call, I get a response that they have no idea how long. And no apologies are being made. Unbelievable how poor the customer service is on these cards. I think these travel blogs that recommend the card need to put in some more information about poor customer service you should expect to receive. Had I known, we would have gone with Chase.
100% agreed!
“Down for Maintenance” lasting TWO WEEKS is an absolute nonsense BS excuse. In 40+ years of I.T. Work, I’ve never seen an outage like that. NEVER. Seriously, Capital 1 has demonstrated that it absolutely can not be trusted not to do astoundingly stupid things. If you’re going to pay premium-level Annual Fees for a card, this is totally unacceptable service. Pick an alternate (Amex, Chase Sapphire Reserve, etc.) instead.
I agree with Melanie’s description that they have Broken a contract. We relied on getting access to this service with in a reasonable time. That time period has been exceeded.
I got the Capitol One Venture so I could aggressively collect points. 75,000 bonus AND I auto-pay all of my bills on that card. I have been trying to book my annual one Month trip to Ireland to visit my family since last night.
The Customer service woman that I spoke to in the Miles/Points transfer dept told me that they did not know when the "down for maintenance situation would be resolved. I was...
I got the Capitol One Venture so I could aggressively collect points. 75,000 bonus AND I auto-pay all of my bills on that card. I have been trying to book my annual one Month trip to Ireland to visit my family since last night.
The Customer service woman that I spoke to in the Miles/Points transfer dept told me that they did not know when the "down for maintenance situation would be resolved. I was of course upset and incredulous.
The CS rep. had the nerve to tell me that being able to transfer miles/points was a privilege and not the norm and that I did not have a reason to be upset. Seriously? Lesson learned. I sincerely appreciate reading other people's stories and the updates here. It makes me feel less bummed out.
As soon as the maintenance issue is resolved I will be transferring all points to Air Iberia, British Airways, or Aer Lingus since I travel exclusively every year to Cork, Ireland to see family for one month. I will also continue to use the Venture Card but be very vigilant in transferring my miles accrued to one of the three airlines listed.
IF someone has a suggestion for a Credit Card that offers 2 miles for every dollar spent I may switch from Cap One. Many thanks to each and everyone of you.
The blue business plus from Amex is good no annual fee and earns MR points
Extremely frustrated. I would have booked tickets through normally channels had I known the program was to be down for this long. Now that I waited over a week for the point transfer to be back up, the ticket price went up $500. Utterly disappointed!!
I agree with others who have suggested that this outage may be related to a data breach. System upgrades (as they have suggested) for an improved customer experience are generally supported with flashy marketing promotions. This was working one day and still down for an extended time frame tells me that there is a much bigger issue. And their CS Reps are not empowered to provide customers with the truth of the situation. I’m glad...
I agree with others who have suggested that this outage may be related to a data breach. System upgrades (as they have suggested) for an improved customer experience are generally supported with flashy marketing promotions. This was working one day and still down for an extended time frame tells me that there is a much bigger issue. And their CS Reps are not empowered to provide customers with the truth of the situation. I’m glad that to some extent I diversified my points portfolio with the Amex plat, Chase SR even though I was looking to shed a couple of them. I now need to rethink my strategy.
There is almost no reason they have to withheld information about data breach. The sooner they admit the easier on them.
Like I said, it's very likely a glitch. One that may cause them to not disclose or that would be admitting fault. Or it's a stupid programming that they couldn't fix it. Remember how long it took to fix Y2K?
Any word on when it will be back online?
This is definitely more than an "inconvenience" for some of us. This inability to access my Rewards points (for over a week now) is going to cost me over $3000. I have 220,000 points and have been trying to book 3 nonstop round trip flights on Virgin Atlantic to London next March since last week. All I needed was $1300 + 90,000 rewards points for all three flights. Booking through Capital One (or with the...
This is definitely more than an "inconvenience" for some of us. This inability to access my Rewards points (for over a week now) is going to cost me over $3000. I have 220,000 points and have been trying to book 3 nonstop round trip flights on Virgin Atlantic to London next March since last week. All I needed was $1300 + 90,000 rewards points for all three flights. Booking through Capital One (or with the airline without the points) would cost me over $1400 per ticket (totaling around $4300). I have been unable to book for the last 7 days because I cannot access the 90,000 points and get them transferred to Virgin Red. As of this morning the $1300 + 90,000 point fare is not longer available and I will end up paying over $4000 for these flights. I call Capital One every day, and I’ve asked for some manual workaround to an electronic reward transfer (which must exist) but no one can help or knows anything
I was trying to book non-stop flights to Heathrow Airport, Business Class with British Airways. I have not seen my family since Covid and certainly share in your frustration. I guess misery loves company but you have provided me some solace.
It's more likely they have been hacked. Companies do not take systems down for this long without notifying customers unless something is seriously wrong. If it was some IT issue upgrading the systems they should just roll back the changes so it is more likely they have been hacked and do not want to admit it.
it is educational guess of being hacked, however, it is still absolutely abnormal if it has been taken 7 days, literally 7 days to fix this issue. Most likely it is more ransomware, however, it is still awkward that no one representative to stand up and explain what is going wrong and what is the interim and long term solution too.
Beginning, it is not their fault by being hacked, but now it is...
it is educational guess of being hacked, however, it is still absolutely abnormal if it has been taken 7 days, literally 7 days to fix this issue. Most likely it is more ransomware, however, it is still awkward that no one representative to stand up and explain what is going wrong and what is the interim and long term solution too.
Beginning, it is not their fault by being hacked, but now it is undeniable their responsibility to explain to their customers about what is going on.
I'm going to hold short on assuming they've been hacked.
Every state (surprisingly not federal) have laws that require companies to disclose any data breach. There are probably some loopholes to delay the disclosure, but doing so are not giving them any benefit. They eventually have to disclose, the longer it takes to admit just makes them look even worse.
I'm betting on some IT glitch, some that are just too difficult to patch...
I'm going to hold short on assuming they've been hacked.
Every state (surprisingly not federal) have laws that require companies to disclose any data breach. There are probably some loopholes to delay the disclosure, but doing so are not giving them any benefit. They eventually have to disclose, the longer it takes to admit just makes them look even worse.
I'm betting on some IT glitch, some that are just too difficult to patch and recently discovered. Hence rollback isn't an option and they might have to rebuild the whole thing again.
And because of this glitch, corporate lawyers might say an announcement can be viewed as admission of guilt and open up to lawsuits or compensations.
Their customer service is very poor and their travel portal and the people handling it are not reliable. They are stationed in Costa Rica and they are often rude. After having a horrible experience with their booking, I’ have stopped using their services.
Maybe their ONE IT guy quit. :-D
I spent hours on the phone with Capital One trying to sort out this problem, as I need to transfer miles in order to book a flight for swiftly upcoming travel. The agent I spoke with agreed that this 'scheduled maintenance' was poorly communicated to C1 customers and tried his best to find a back door transfer method. There was nothing and no information. Capital One have seriously dropped the ball here and I'm on the verge of closing my accounts with them.
Sorry, take back City - wrote w/out thinking. Amex & Chase remain!
why not citi?
I would say it’s the bond and capital markets issue creating a liquidity squeeze. It’s like saying here is a credit for money we don’t need to spend till later, but that later becomes now as the euro/Pound gets weaker. And now the banks need money to catch up on their bond squeeze
Stay away from CapOne, as they're low-level bankers, not to be trusted. Go to Amex, City or Chase!
If you have a Capital One checking account, just try to send funds to someone. A family member. A friend. Just try. The account terms and conditions say that you can only wire money to yourself at another bank or a pre-authorized title company. Otherwise, you have to go into a branch. In the branches, there are no relationship people to speak to. What an incredibly disappointing experience. If someone needs anything more than a...
If you have a Capital One checking account, just try to send funds to someone. A family member. A friend. Just try. The account terms and conditions say that you can only wire money to yourself at another bank or a pre-authorized title company. Otherwise, you have to go into a branch. In the branches, there are no relationship people to speak to. What an incredibly disappointing experience. If someone needs anything more than a stripped-down, bare bones checking, look elsewhere.
I've been trying to get answers about this issue for five days!
I spent over four hours on the phone with Capital One customer service. My call was transferred more than EIGHT TIMES and completely dropped twice...by the same person (Kaitlin in Technical Support)! If you didn't have an answer for me, Kaitlin, you should have just told me!
Here's my sitch...
I signed up for the Venture X card ONLY because their partner...
I've been trying to get answers about this issue for five days!
I spent over four hours on the phone with Capital One customer service. My call was transferred more than EIGHT TIMES and completely dropped twice...by the same person (Kaitlin in Technical Support)! If you didn't have an answer for me, Kaitlin, you should have just told me!
Here's my sitch...
I signed up for the Venture X card ONLY because their partner points transfer program had been touted heavily by The Points Guy. I've been saving my miles agressively and watching and waiting for any airline to reduce the miles I needed to take my grandson on his long-dreamt-of (since before covid) trip to Japan.
Well, Japan finally opened up and I found a partner airline running a special reduced-mileage rate on reward flights...within the date-range we needed! Hallelujah, right?!??! WRONG!
I tried to transfer my points and got the "Down for Maintenance" message. i tried every hour on the hour for two days (except when sleeping). I called Capital One and got the run around (see above...thanks a lot Kaitlin), I waited and checked for the next two days, I called Capital One again and when they were unable to help me, I lodged a formal complaint.
Now... the reward seats we needed are no longer available... my grandson is heartbroken... and I am angry. I feel like a contract has been broken. I'm frustrated and sad and have no idea what to do at this point.
I'm relieved to see the issue is being addressed by sites such as this. I'm grateful for the opportunity to comment, if only as a way to release the anxiety and frustration I've been experiencing for the past few days.
Bottom line...I'm finding another travel credit card. Any suggestions on a more reliable program?
Thanks for providing this forum!
Same experience here. I've been checking since Friday and checking all day, pretty much every hour. I've called Cap1 like 6 times, hoping a different rep will give me a different answer, or even a simple timeline. Nothing. Cap1 Customer Service sucks. This whole experience has made me appreciate Amex so much more; unfortunately for me, they don't have a partnership with Turkish Airlines and am stuck waiting for Cap1 to figure their shit out.
Another reason to be diversified when it comes to a accumulating points.
Now do United mileage plus blocking 100% of Lufthansa award space. Return of starnet
Applicable:
Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
-Wikipedia
Only problem is nothing was explained, even by stupidity yet.
These are not Elon Musk or Donald Trump tweets.
Thanks for bringing some attention to this serious issue. I'm less confidant that this will be fixed soon since it has already been almost a week.
Capital One is a huge card issuer. Theory: the fact that not much attention on this issue goes to show that a small segment of their customer base is actually utilizing transfer partners. There are threads on FT and reddit but even then its a relatively small number...
Thanks for bringing some attention to this serious issue. I'm less confidant that this will be fixed soon since it has already been almost a week.
Capital One is a huge card issuer. Theory: the fact that not much attention on this issue goes to show that a small segment of their customer base is actually utilizing transfer partners. There are threads on FT and reddit but even then its a relatively small number of people complaining (I'm in that small segment unfortunately).
We're all hopeful this gets resolved ASAP, good luck to everyone chasing those award redemptions and that those trips can be salvaged!!
Of course it’s a relatively small number of people!
I wouldn’t be surprised if only 1% of the people with transferable points cards ever transfer points!
Compared to other card issuers, Capital One is relatively new to the transferrable points game. Fewer Cap 1 customers have accumulated enough points for high value redemptions to generate angst.
A) Any programmer can tell you, when a bug comes you, the time needed to fix a bug can be as short as 1 minute to as long as forever. A bug in the Linux kernel had been affecting AMD processors since 2002, and a fix had only recently been found.
B) As far as I can tell, Capital One's reward backend is tremendously more modern than other banks (Citi, Amex). I actually think that some portions of Amex point calcination require human intervention periodically.
@Toys Samurai
B) Someone has to bring coffee for the Amex AI and give them the mandatory rest. Otherwise it will be violating machine civil rights and the robot unions will strike.
Last month I transferred 540k miles to Aeroplan - most of which came from my Capital One account. As a DP, the AmEx transfer was almost instantaneous while the CapOne transfer took a little over 36 hours. Curious how you concluded that CapOne's backend was tremendously more modern than AmEx's?
Because Capital One:
1. Does a lot of promotion of their work in AWS (yunno, which is managed poorly and then leads to data breaches) or
2. They spent some money on the UI and made the page load times better than other banks (don't get me started on the atrocity that is Citi)
Likely this is an issue with the API that they use to connect with the transfer partners. Sometimes for all the testing you do, something screws up in deployment.
Poor communication probably stems from the fact that the people who do the communicating don't actually understand the problem and the people who are fixing the problem probably don't have an expected resolution if it's been 5 days. Comms people don't like to send out notices...
Likely this is an issue with the API that they use to connect with the transfer partners. Sometimes for all the testing you do, something screws up in deployment.
Poor communication probably stems from the fact that the people who do the communicating don't actually understand the problem and the people who are fixing the problem probably don't have an expected resolution if it's been 5 days. Comms people don't like to send out notices that say "Something F'd up. We don't know how or why or when it will be fixed. Sorry!"
I'm super upset about the Capital 1 portal. I have been saving my $300 credit to use on a specific flight, a specific trip. I need to go BKK-NRT and while I WOULD LOVE to book NH biz class on the route at a certain time, they can't see the flight despite it being avail on Google/NH/UA/etc. etc. WTF is the point? Not really sure I value a Priority Pass membership and some trendy lounges at airports I don't fly to enough to keep this guy in my wallet...
You don't even fly $300 a year?
Yeah, this card isn't for someone who doesn't even spend $300 on travels per year.
How you made it to BKK without spending $300 baffles me.
That's not the only flight missing.
I just got my Venture X card and went to the travel portal to book some United flights for later this year. Figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone by getting the 5x rewards and meeting the minimum spend requirement to get my sign-up bonus.
No United business class flights show up on the travel portal. The economy seats are there, but business class seats are missing,...
That's not the only flight missing.
I just got my Venture X card and went to the travel portal to book some United flights for later this year. Figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone by getting the 5x rewards and meeting the minimum spend requirement to get my sign-up bonus.
No United business class flights show up on the travel portal. The economy seats are there, but business class seats are missing, even though they show up on United's own website, plus kayak and other third party booking sites. I checked for several days (I have several trips I need to book) on multiple flights, and none of them show.
I ended up booking on United's own website for the business class bookings, and capone's site for the economy flights. Needless to say, it was a major loss of points to go from 5x to 2x for what are pretty expensive tickets. Has anyone else had this issue?
If this is really a problem and not just a temporary glitch, it will significantly diminish the value of the travel portal for me, as most of my flying is on United.
For what it's worth, capital one entertainment is also still down for "maintenance," it may be a company wide IT problem
Very poorly communicated by Capital One, to say the least.
I am a relatively new Venture X Cardholder, and I also lost out on reward tickets to Europe I had my eye on last Saturday and now they are gone for my needed dates. On 9/20, I booked a small boutique hotel in the Virgin Islands through the C1 Travel Portal to take advantage of the $300 annual travel credit and the charge posted immediately to my card, but my "credit" hasn't shown up. A...
I am a relatively new Venture X Cardholder, and I also lost out on reward tickets to Europe I had my eye on last Saturday and now they are gone for my needed dates. On 9/20, I booked a small boutique hotel in the Virgin Islands through the C1 Travel Portal to take advantage of the $300 annual travel credit and the charge posted immediately to my card, but my "credit" hasn't shown up. A call to CS at Capital One today was not helpful. I was told it could take 1-2 billing cycles for the credit to show up and that I should just pay the charge and wait for a "credit" to appear or I would be charged finance charges on the balance if I didn't pay it on time. I was actually a bit stunned that the CS agent stated this without any hesitation or acknowledgment that it was not a great policy. When I've received the annual travel credit on other cards, I see the credit in one or two days. I fear that my travel portal charge was part of the IT issues C1 is experiencing and I may have to continue to pursue getting my credit. Has anyone else been told it could take 1-2 billing cycles for the annual $300 credit to post?
CapitalOne's customer service has been increasingmy disappointing. I am somewhat relieved to hear that some think this is a technical problem. I am not so sure. It is not usual for CapitalOne to try to change the rules of the game after they have convinced people they have a good product. They did it with CapitalOne 360 accounts after they took over from ING Bank, which had offered more services and better services. I fear...
CapitalOne's customer service has been increasingmy disappointing. I am somewhat relieved to hear that some think this is a technical problem. I am not so sure. It is not usual for CapitalOne to try to change the rules of the game after they have convinced people they have a good product. They did it with CapitalOne 360 accounts after they took over from ING Bank, which had offered more services and better services. I fear this could well be an intentional act by CapitalOne to end the transfer programme as they only intended the 1:1 transfer of points to airline miles to draw customers and now that it has drawn the maximum number in relation to profitability, they are ending the program. I hope I am wrong, but history often predicts the future.