For months, some Diners Club cardholders have been wondering why their Qantas frequent flyer points weren’t being credited to their accounts.

The problem began in April, when Qantas required all their cardholders to switch to a different category of credit card, one that accrued points within the account directly. It seems to have escalated for a number of cardholders in June, when Diners Club initiated changes in their accounts technology platform. Since that time, cardholders affected by the glitch claim not to have received credit for their Qantas points.

The technology migration at Diners Club had several issues at startup, some of which prevented merchants and cardholders from reconciling their accounts or even viewing detailed account summaries. Company representatives claim these difficulties have been resolved, including the one involving Qantas points, which seems to have arisen from mismatching customer profiles between the two companies involved.

However, affected cardholders continue to complain, with some claiming as many as 44,000 Qantas points have not yet been credited to their individual accounts. Further complaints have arisen from Diners Club customer service, as some cardholders state repeated letters have gone unanswered, and that they were unable to reconcile problems with the India-based call centre despite multiple attempts since April.

Qantas company representatives say their call centre has not been affected by the ongoing issue, stating they process transaction points for such accounts almost daily. They advise cardholders contact their card providers first, the Qantas call centre second.

Diners Club Australia is a franchise of Diners Club International, based in the United States, and owned by Citigroup. During the global credit crisis, Citigroup suffered writedowns and toxic loan losses of AU$108 billion (US$90 billion), requiring billions of dollars in capital and loan guarantees from the U.S. Federal government in exchange for roughly 34% of Citigroup’s stock.

Source: Brisbane Times : Diners Club members complain of missing Qantas points