I usually use up miles accrued on airlines I rarely fly on to buy magazine subscriptions. I used to use US Airways miles, but they've merged with American. Supposedly my miles transferred. Used them this year for Time magazine, as have for many years. Or thought I had. the online subscription went through OK. No warning flags. When the magazine stopped coming, I called the supposed help center at Mags-for-Miles, & was told I had "used an invalid # on Aug 25". No, I had used a valid # on July 25. Whatever.
I should clarify here that you have 2 choices of ways to get on the Mags-for-Miles site; the # they gave you or the # the airline gave you. Obviously, the # Mags gave me wasn't working; it got me onto the Mags site alright, but wasn't honored when I tried to spend the miles. So I had to go the airline # route.
It involved much agony to even get American Airlines to let me into the check-your-miles part of their website. Agents were happy to verbally let me know my miles balance (verifying Mags-for-Miles hadn't cashed any in) but I wanted to make sure I had a # to use that MFM would accept. And that I could check to see they'd actually cashed in without having to go through American agents, whose time is better spent helping people with flights. (I had been calling the # for "probs with cashing in your miles", but always gotten directed to real flight agents.)
American gave me what they said was my #, but to get onto American's site I also needed a pin #. I went through various pins I've used in various places, but none worked. To reset my pin I had to answer questions I cannot recall having answered, ever. American agents assured me I had, at US Air no less. They really did prompt me, which they're not supposed to do but they were being helpful as they should be, & a hacker would not have finally come up with the right answers, even with prompts, as they were the wacky things I make up, or used to, when I encountered these questions.
(You figure a hacker could always look up your various relatives' names, etc, right? So make stuff up. Yeah, right.)
So I was able to order my mags (Time & Wired, as Wired was once again available for miles).
Time finally came again last week, after a month without.
Time sent me an e-mail this morning saying I could read it online, as well. Despite Mags-for-Miles saying I was buying paper mag only. Fine with me. After all I went through, especially.
So I go to Time's site & find that I cannot read Time online after all. Unless I buy another year's subscription at their price.
Sorry. I prefer to get it for my long-ago US Air/American miles. So why tell me "you are entitled to read Time online" if I'm not. Just say "we're trying to sell you this" instead of "we want to give it to you". Not so hard.