Misleading e-mail notification
 

American Airlines and its AAdvantage program used to be the gold standard for customer experience; but things have changed.

I documented the problem here:
http://faseidl.com/public/item/234415

I lost some "orphaned" AA miles a few months ago as well. My flying patterns changed with a new job and I didn't accrue miles on them. It was just a few thousand but since I have over 3 million accumulated in Alaska, Continental and Delta/Northwest alone it wasn't a major blow. My advice is if you want to keep those miles active be diligent and proactively do something to extend the expiration date. I recently received an e-mail from US Airways saying that my miles would expire in early September. Nice that they gave me 3 months notice. I promptly registered for a bonus promotion and transferred points from my Hilton HHonors account. Not only will I get a 50% bonus, top off my account to actually have enough miles for a substantial award, but I also get to keep those miles active for another 18 months.