Last week I wrote about one of our readers who had buyers (or in this case FLYERS) remorse after transferring a larger sum of points from Marriott Bonvoy to Alaska Airlines MIleage Plan short before the program devalued the coveted Japan Airlines awards.
She asked if there was any way she could get the points back and while these programs usually say that transfers are irreversible I tried to do a test run and request Alaska Mileage Plan to return my own 25,000 / 60,000 Marriott points back to Marriott Bonvoy based on the awards now being significantly more expensive.
I didn’t expect much to come of it and that Alaska would just fluff me off but they indeed acted upon my request as I stated that the award I intended to redeem (HND-BKK in Business Class) is now priced at 50,000 miles and therefore doubled in price.
Early March, I transferred 60,000 Bonvoy points, translating to 25,000 Alaska Airlines for this purpose. I’m not willing to transfer another 60k Marriott nor buy additional points just for that award.
To my surprise, it took just a few business days until a transaction showed up on my Marriott account that displayed 60,000 points being deposited as a “Mileage Exception”:
The points weren’t immediately redeemed from my Alaska account and there wasn’t an email from Mileage Plan to respond to my query either but I knew that would just be a matter of time.
Indeed, today I received an email from them that reads as follows:
The miles were then withdrawn, basically voiding the transfer. It’s nice to see that Alaska Airlines (and that means any airline really) has the ability to refuse or reverse a mileage transfer either by command or by contacting their liaison at the respective transfer partner.
Here is once again the Reader Question where one of our readers had the same issue:
I contacted the reader again and suggested she will file her query with Alaska Airlines as well. There is nothing guaranteed though as the email said it’s a one time exception. I’m not a status member and neither is my Alaska account (or either of my programs) tied to any identifier that would reveal I’m writing for LoyaltyLobby. To them I lodged this request as a common customer and they were fair enough to reverse the points as I requested.
These programs don’t do themselves any favor by implementing such changes without prior notice. I don’t see what difference it would have made if Alaska Mileage Plan had given four weeks advance notice considering the availability for JAL awards is so miserable that you can’t find tickets either way. At least it would be fair to members, and the argument that Alaska engages in foul play would have been moot.
I also likened the practice to sell miles constantly and then cull certain lucrative awards overnight without notice as a scam, and I still think that very least airlines who engage in such dishonest actions should do is to provide a refund when requested.
Mind you, the responsible party to contact here is Alaska Airlines and not Marriott. They can’t pull the points back, it has to be initiated by Alaska Mileage Plan.
Conclusion
A reader contacted us and asked if it’s possible to reverse a points transfer from Marriott to Alaska Airlines. Unfortunately, I had to answer that this is technically not possible and that, based on the current T&C, either program would most likely refuse such a refund.
It got me curious as I myself transferred 60k Marriott points to 25k Alaska Miles a month ago and was so far unable to use it. I decided to send an email to the program requesting my points to be refunded and Alaska Airlines responded positively to my request, sending the points back to Marriott within a few days.
You might want to try this as well if you have purchased or transferred miles RECENTLY and were negatively impacted by the recent redemption rate changes.