Reader Charles reached out today to give us a heads up that LifeMiles has ended manual bookings and other support by email.
To be honest, I’d forgotten that manual LifeMiles bookings existed. I now remember reading Nick’s post earlier this year about his experience doing a manual booking which must’ve made me instantly decide I didn’t want to retain that information because having to wait several days in the hope that LifeMiles (notorious for poor customer service) would call me a week later before award availability dried up which, if I missed their call (highly likely as I tend to leave my phone on silent), would mean I’d miss the opportunity to book the flight sounded unappealing.
However, as Nick showed in that post, if you did have the time, patience and risk tolerance for the process, it could pay off nicely, especially if you were doing an award booking for multiple people and could therefore save a substantial amount of miles.
That’s all come to an end though. The support@lifemiles.com email address apparently no longer works; based on this FlyerTalk thread, that appears to have happened back in June, if not earlier. This therefore means that you’ll either need to book awards online or give them a call to do that which can also be an exercise in patience. I guess waiting 7.5 hours on the phone for an agent and then an additional 3.5 hours for them to complete your request will still mean it gets processed faster than a manual booking though.
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[…] No more manual bookings from Lifemiles over email […]
What’s wrong with doing it online? I am considering a booking but I’m scared that the availability is not real.
I wish they would fix the website then. I am not looking to book any wild itineraries… just normal one way with 2 partners and 4 hour layover. Why is that so difficult for them?
I believe this article needs to be updated, although they stop receiving emails at the support@lifemiles.com there is a new method in place that allows you to open a ticket through their website https://helpcenter.lifemiles.com/hc/en-us/requests/new Now we need more data point if this method also allows for manual booking. I opened some tickets and I see that emails come from ayuda@lifemiles.com
It’s a bad sign that the email address has been taken offline and they are down to just automated bookings. Seems like they are even less interested in customer service than they already were and may be extra desperate to reduce labor costs (if not already having problems paying them).
Was still working in middle of July
I called LM about 2 weeks ago to cancel a booking (due to incorrect name) and rebook the same flight without any issues. When did this go into effect because imo my data point is very recent.
The post is saying calling still works and email is the issue. That is a different dp altogether.
Man I totally misread the title lmao my bad
I confess that I have absolutely no idea what “manual booking” is.
It refers to being able to do this via email – I’ve just added that to the post for a bit more clarity.
Thanks, Stephen. I found the term ambiguous, because my hands and fingers necessarily come into play when making any booking. ;-D
hahahaha
guess waiting 7.5 hours on the phone for an agent and then an additional 3.5 hours for them to complete your request will still mean it gets processed faster than a manual booking though.
The screenshot method of manual bookings was the single best part of lifemiles. You could string together some wild itineraries that cost no where near as many miles as they should have. The end of the support email address is the end of lifemiles as far as I’m concerned
Any fun examples?
LAX-WAW-BRU-NRT-SIN on Lot Polish and ANA for 78K miles
Wow.
ARN-FRA-LHR-EWR economy with 23 hour layover in London for 20k
So fully agree with this comment
Really?