LifeMiles is my favorite Star Alliance award booking program and I have transferred millions of miles from Amex, Capital One & Citi credit cards to complete flight bookings. I have also been a member of the LifeMiles subscription program for several years (review) and recently wrote about their 10% Star Alliance booking discount (review). LifeMiles customer service is fantastic and they pick up the phone quickly 9 out of 10 times (compared to the dreadful Aeroplan customer service).
LifeMiles Drawbacks
- Awful calendar search (each cursor click takes a few seconds to advance to the next set of months) function.
- Webpage booking errors (several award bookings may generate an error code and you must call customer service to complete the booking).
My Experience with LifeMiles Chat Service
I was trying to book an international flight and encountered a booking error soon after choosing the passenger. I was preparing to call the customer service number, but was surprised to see the chat message that popped up (see image below).
I did not expect to be connected to an agent over Christmas Eve, but she was very helpful and asked me to verify the itinerary, passport information etc., I received an email with a link for credit card payment and was informed that I will receive the ticket within 24 hours. You can choose to enable or disable the message alert sound by clicking on the three horizontal dots on the top right corner (see image below).
I finally received the ticket confirmation email after 5 hours and was able to choose my seats and meal service.
Conclusion
LifeMiles is a wonderful program for booking Star Alliance flights and their subscription plan allows you to purchase miles and receive a 10% discount on flight bookings along with free changes and cancellations. I am glad that they have introduced a useful Chat service to complete award bookings with errors.