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YMMV Your Mileage May Vary

Your Mileage May Vary.
One important term you will see regularly in articles about travel hacking is “YMMV Your Mileage May Vary”.

What this means is that for a variety of reasons, one person’s experience of a deal, promotion or process may differ greatly from another person’s.

Why YMMV Your Mileage May Vary

The reasons for YMMV Your Mileage May Vary are many:-

sometimes travel hacks get ‘rumbled’ – e.g. mistake fares for flights – and companies or management refuse to honour the offer.
luck sadly plays a part in travel hacking. You could telephone an airline desk to book an award flight, and speak with a knowledgeable, helpful and professional member of staff – or you may get the exact opposite. In this situation, the best option is to hang up, call back , and try again.
Sometimes people ‘kick the ass out of things’ and hotels, airlines or otherwise simply decide not to implement any further.
Sometimes loopholes that were being exploited get closed, especially once a travel hack gets well publicised.

Generally, the best recourse to prevent YMMV is to be fully aware of the terms and conditions on offer, and if you cannot get resolution at the time, then take the matter up with your loyalty program or provider (e.g. credit card company) directly.

YMMV Your Mileage May Vary – Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) in Dubai

A good – although very frustrating – example is Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) in Dubai.

Normally an exceptional hotel loyalty program, with an extensive amount of properties to redeem and earn in Dubai, for some reason the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program is often erratically applied (or even not at all).

Being Platinum, Starwood normally offer a fantastic after-service response to rectify any shortfalls, however it’s preferable to not have to face such challenges in the first place.

As mentioned, the best recourse is always to be aware of the rules (and to be correct of course), politely agree to disagree, escalate to management at the time and if still unresolved, take up with SPG retrospectively and request a Service Recovery for the inconvenience.