I have had miles on United since 1983 and was under the understanding that the original miles could not expire. I just went to cash them in and found that on 1-1-04 they expired. It seems that in 2000, United put them into another account balance and they then changed the rules so they would expire because of lack of activity over 36 months. I was under the impression that United was bound by the terms of the original agreement dating back to the early 80 and could not chage the rules. I vaguely remember that there where laws governing the original miles. Is anyone familiar with this and what recourse I might have?

You aren't going to get them to change their position with a "vaguely familiar." You are going to need written proof of the original terms and then make sure that the rules weren't changed subsequently.

BTW, I believe the airlines do have a right to change program terms, provided they provide sufficient notice of the change. From dealing with a few bankruptcies of airlines, I believe FF programs are generally thought to be customer accomodations and not binding contractual obligations.

I guess it's a good thing I used mine up a year or two ago because I wasn't aware of that. I agree with Ryan, I think they can do whatever they want, it's just a customer perk thing. I can't imagine any law governs them, and I don't think it involves any legal agreement.

Look at flyertalk.com. If anyone will know a way to help, they will.

United did state all of this when it changed the rules back in 2000 or so. They don't have a fleet of lawyers for nothing! Whether or not they adequately informed us is up for debate, but I do remember getting info in the mail.

Did you receive regular mileage statements from them? Somewhere on your statements I would think they would tell you how many miles were in your balance and how many of those miles had an expiration date. American does that. Good luck

Thanks for the tip on flyertalk. BTW I have not received a statement since 1999 and did not receive notification of a rule change. I do understand that all airlines can now change the rules to programs however I remember reading something years ago that the original programs did not allow for rule changes. I believe that the airline had to start all new programs that allowed rule changes.

I beliive that the "original rules" state that UAL can change the rules.

This is true for all frequent flyer agreements. As an example, the number of mile needed for a free flight has changed over the years.

Sorry

Make sure you check flyertalk about this before you give up. I sort of remember a post on flyertalk a year or two ago where someone posted some information that basically said some of the airlines had "grandfather" type exclusions, where actual mileage flown before a certain date did not expire. I have no idea which airline it was. Flyertalk is a great resource

Here's a link that might help......
http://frequentflier.com/ff121499.htm

Don't let your miles expire! All you have to do is rent a car once every 3 years, or join their "dining program" and eat out once every three years, or join their "supermarket program" to get miles. 1 mile every three years in your account is all that it takes to keep your account "active".

Beachboi, Thanks for the link. joesorce you are 100% correct. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way.

I was able to pay a fee to get my expired UA miles reinstated. I don't know if it's worth it for you, but I had to use the miles for a last minute flight to Chicago and couldn't find anything less than $1200 at the time.

What I finally found out was,if you have an activity with a United partner, hotel such as Marriott, car rental such as Alamo you could have your miles reinstated. I had told the United representative that I did not have a Mileage plus credit card any more, ( I assumed that you had to have a United Mileage Plus Visa.) After many calls, I finally got a representative of United to tell me that you did not need a Mileage Plus Visa card, all you had to do was charge a hotel or car rental to a United partner such as Marriott or Alamo. So I had Marriott send United a Folio of a charge that I had had on 8-8-03. All this go round, because the representative or supervisors never detail how ot get things done.