Holiday Inn, Sheraton Buyer Beware on Mileage Credits Iowa Internet

In this day and age of computers and data sharing, you would think the hotels and airlines could easily automatically transmit information on your hotel stay to provide airline mileage credit. My recent encounter shows the hotels and airliens are still back in the stone age.

My United mileage expired. To reinstate I need to have a partner (hotel, car rental etc.) provide a retro credit to United. Upon calling both Holiday Inn and Starwood Hotels (on behalf of Sheraton) I found out the process is virtually impossible.

Both explained to me that I needed to be a member of their prefrred programs to get any retro credit. I explained to them that because of that I'll make sure in the future I stay away from any Hilton or Starwood properties.

How ironic is all of this:

The marketing programs they devise to gain customers (reward clubs) actually causes them to loose them
United can't easily dialoque electronically with any of their "partners" to see I indeed stayed at a property, and automatically credit the account

I spent a good part of three hours on the phone today with this mess - to no resolution. All three have lost me as a customer. If you have faced something similar sound up!

David
OB Terrace, Illinois
U.S.A.