[michael.oleary]

Hi Folks,

I've have been an Etihad customer over over 3-4 years now and I'm consistently at a loss as how to retro claim partner code share routes. My family is in Ireland / America but I'm located in Sydney, Australia. So I use Etihad heavily when flying to Ireland / States and use Virgin Australia internally for any flights which Etihad don't serve directly.

I have submitted retro-claims to Etihad on several occasions for Virgin Australia code share flights that I have taken and I currently have one (I've had many others too) that I am consistently receiving the standard automated feedback for.

Thank you for your e-mail to the Etihad Guest Service Centre.

This is an automated message to acknowledge receipt of your e-mail requesting missing Etihad Guest Miles be credited to your account and we will respond within 5 days.

For your future reference and to ensure your Etihad Guest Miles are credited automatically next time you fly with us please note that the name on your reservation and ticket must match your Etihad Guest account. At the same time please provide your Etihad Guest membership number to your travel booker and at check-in. In the event that miles are missing from a future flight taken with Etihad Airways you can automatically claim your miles by visiting “Claim Missing Miles”

Yours sincerely,

The Etihad Guest Service Team

This is generally followed by the usual response when I try to follow up.

Thank you for taking the time to contact the Etihad Guest Service Centre with your request for missing Etihad Guest Miles to be credited to your account.

While it wasn’t our intention to delay processing your claim, we accept that in this instance it has taken longer than expected.

Please be informed that the retroclaim for the below partner flights is still under process.

<FLIGHT INFORMATION REMOVED>

<FLIGHT INFORMATION REMOVED>

The eligibility of partner claims are verified by the partner airline themselves and hence the process could take a little longer than usual as already mentioned in our terms and conditions.

Should you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to welcoming you again as our guest in the future.

Yours sincerely,

<CUSTOMER AGENT REMOVED>

Etihad Guest Services Team

I have tried ringing the call centre which is appalling at the best of time (the Manchester call centre seems to be by far the best). However this usually end in a lot of frustration on my part and a lack of fairly earned miles.

I have several family members who are having the same issues and it's very frustrating trying to the get these retro claims through. I'm currently a gold member with Etihad and I have just taken job as a Sales Engineer for the ANZ region which means I'm going to be flying up to 32 round trip flights a year. It will be pointless flying with Etihad / Virgin if I can't retro claim a few flights a year that I'm doing now, how am I going to retro claim 32 flights round trip a year??? This leaves me wondering if

A) anyone of the users on this forum knows any other routes or ideas to retro claims miles from partner airlines that are more successful? - I'm not very confident about this option but I might be pleasantly surprised..

B) Failing that I'm heavily entertaining the idea of joining the Emirate / Quantas FF program, should I switch to a different carrier? what are people's experiences with Qantas and Emirates?

Given the amount of frequently flying I will be doing it will be easy to gain status, also I occasion take the odd long distance business class trip so that will help in the short term too.