Etihad Guest Offers a Poor Use of Miles for My Birthday!

This morning I received a happy birthday email from the Etihad Guest program.

The Etihad Guest team would like to wish you a very Happy Birthday!

We are thrilled to offer you an exclusive birthday discount on specially selected rewards so you can treat yourself on this special day.

Happy Birthday and Happy Shopping!

As anyone that’s my friend on Facebook will know, they got the timing of this a little bit off. And they do have my correct birthday on file (oops). But they’re actually close, and that’s not what prompted this note.

It’s just what those ‘exclusive birthday discount[s] on specially selected rewards so [I] can treat’ myself are that’s what prompted this note.

Oops, guess they should have gotten the birthday even more wrong and sent this my way a few weeks ago! But what could I have redeemed for?

Only four choices, a ladies watch (to treat myself?), a necklace, really only the ‘army knife’ seems sufficiently manly to make me feel good about aging. And yet I’m torn, because the special offer is still for less than 1 cent per mile in ‘value’ based on their stated prices.

Etihad Guest, you won’t be receiving an e-vite to my birthday celebrations.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. For all the hoopla they created with the status match offer, they are lousy in the IT department. a Oman air flight credit is due for ages, and they have not managed to do it so far. eventually, I will get it, yes. but all their acts point to lousy IT. explains the wrong mailer to you 😉

  2. No Freddies for their marketing department
    Its hilarious if it wasn’t so pitiful
    Happy Birthday though! 🙂

  3. When your miles are about to expire, then perhaps it is best to take what ever you get and that is exactly what I had to do for my 28k miles. I guess I had no choice

  4. Hello! We’d like to investigate the reason why you didn’t receive your email on your actual Birthday. Can you please provide your email address, where you have received your email and the date you have received it.
    Many thanks!

Comments are closed.