World Championship in Customer Experience: Miles & More - Deutsche Bank 3:0
July 2026
In early 2025 I told the story about a (in my humble opinion) a major credit card provider’s less than state-of-the-art approach to validate customer data of partner credit cards. Thankfully, the provider improved its approach significantly within a few months. About one year later, it seems that I’ve developed a certain affinity for problems with partner credit cards. What has happened?
The History
Throughout my professional career, I’ve spent long hours on a painfully high number of flights earning plenty of Miles & More airline miles. As a result, Lufthansa and Miles & More eventually named me a Lifetime Senator (kind of a lifetime Star Alliance Gold status). Thank you very much, Lufthansa and Miles & More. In addition to other privileges, this airline status comes with a Miles & More main credit card and a discounted partner credit card. Both cards worked absolutely flawlessly as long as DKB Bank issued them.
The Transfer
In 2025, Miles & More decided to have Deutsche Bank issue the Miles & More credit cards. Both our credit cards were transferred to Deutsche Bank almost without a hitch. While there were quite a few stories about failed credit card transfers to Deutsche Bank, we thought we were a notable exception. Oh, how wrong we were: The whole process went completely wrong. In our case, it seems someone had planted some kind of time bomb: The partner card worked without any problems from around November 2025 to April 2026.
The Challenge
Two things happened with the partner credit card in April 2026:
- The Miles & More app did not provide access to the partner credit card account anymore. Instead, it offered to apply for a new credit card.
- Most of the airline miles associated with the partner card were set to expire at the end of June, even though the Miles & More Partner Card was supposed to prevent this expiration.
What followed was a flood of messages via websites, emails, and letters to—as well as phone calls with—Miles & More and Deutsche Bank, which continued until the end of June. Of course, that took an enormous amount of time. I’ll provide only a very brief and simplified overview of the communication here, but I hope to accurately present the gist. Let's now take a look at the different phases of this Customer Experience World Cup match.
Miles & More Kicked Off the Game
Miles & More looked into the matter and quickly determined that the partner credit card was linked to the airmiles account of a third party. We also learned that Miles & More cannot properly adjust this link: Thus, we should call Deutsche Bank (phone number provided). Goal for Miles & More.
Deutsche Bank Let Us Run in Circles
We started with calling Deutsche Bank. After a few (not truly helpful) calls Deutsche Bank asked us to send an email with screenshots to Deutsche.Bank@Db.com. The response? An email explaining that this email address could only assist with general inquiries. Thus, we submitted the same message through the Deutsche Bank portal. At this time, we felt that the various teams at Deutsche Bank just wanted to quickly pass the hot potato along.
The only concrete—albeit not very helpful—suggestion was that we should clear our cache and cookies. By design, this “solution” couldn’t solve a data issue (a partner credit card wrongly linked to a third-party airmiles account). Nevertheless, we carried out the clearances. Surprise: The mobile app still wouldn’t show the partner credit card account, but continued to show a button to apply for a new card.
Deutsche Bank Management Wasn’t Too Helpful
May 31—four weeks left until our airline miles would expire. During the “Partner Card Challenge 2025,” the CEO of American Express Germany had referred us to an Amex team with above-average expertise. We therefore sent a letter to the head of Deutsche Bank’s retail banking division, outlining the problem and pointing out that data access by third parties could constitute a violation of data protection laws. Now, the complaints team got involved. Are they the banks’ experts?
A letter promised the team would get back to us within three weeks, but they called us a few days later. They explained there wouldn’t be any data protection issue. Their advice regarding our problem: Delete the mobile app and reinstall. We did so, after which the two-factor authentication (necessary for online access) could not be restored: Now both mobile and online access to the partner credit card account was gone. Deutsche Bank sent us a letter that the problem had been resolved. Strangely enough, we did not share this sentiment.
Miles & More Hadn’t Stopped Working
A few days later, the Miles & More team provided an update: The partner credit card account was linked to the main credit card account. The solution: We should cancel the card and apply for a new one “using the correct airmiles account.” Unfortunately, no one told us how to identify the correct account. But - goal for Miles & More.
Deutsche Bank Identified the Root Cause: Us
Yet another call with the complaints team confirmed that we should cancel the partner credit card. Further, they told us that it was our fault: When we had filled out the application for the partner credit card, we had entered the main card number in the “Main card number” field. In hindsight, we realized that this approach was clearly too obvious: of course, we should have entered the number of the partner card in the “main card number” field. Who wouldn’t do it that way?
After nearly two months of back-and-forth, it had finally dawned on us that it was clearly our mistake. Thus, another letter of the complaints team—explaining that the problem had been resolved—did not surprise us at all. In reality, the problem was just as far from being resolved as it had been about six weeks earlier. So, we again asked for help, but this time we sent a letter to the managing director of Miles & More.
We Applied for A New Credit Card
We had no other options left, and we wanted to secure the airmiles that were set to expire in about two weeks. So, we applied for a new Miles & More credit card (this time as a main card, not a partner card) and provided the card number of the existing partner card. However, we hadn’t considered that this number was also linked to the main card: no progress.
We applied for another credit card. Deutsche Bank sent us a rejection letter that did not provide any specific reasons and asked us to contact their call center. Not only was the call center unable to help us, but it also suggested that we write a letter to a department at Deutsche Bank called “Auskunftsverfahren” (roughly "information request procedure"). At the time, that name struck me as the epitome of banking bureaucracy. On June 24, we wrote a letter describing the situation. Needless to say, we have not received a response to our letter to this day (July 13, 2026).
Miles & More Helped Out at the Last Minute
On June 26, four days before airmiles expiration, a Miles & More representative called us. He was aware of the situation, and I assume this wasn’t the first time he’d stepped in to help in such a situation. After we discussed a few details, he said he would get back to us soon. A few hours (!) later, he called again: We would receive a new, working partner card within the next few days - which is exactly what happened. Thank you very much to both the managing director of Miles & More and this particular representative. Goal for Miles & More.
Extra Time
It goes without saying that we had to keep working on this: No one at Deutsche Bank felt compelled to help clean up the mess. For example, we had to work on re-enabling online and mobile access to the new partner card. The process for reactivating two-factor authentication is partly paper-based and takes days. Wouldn't it have been more customer-friendly to send the necessary information in parallel with the new card, rather than only after digital requests? Interestingly, these access issues also affected the main card to some extent. But what else could we expect? After all, Deutsche Bank had told us twice that the problem had been resolved.
The final score of this customer experience championship between Miles & More vs. Deutsche Bank is 3–0, with the bank may have received at least one yellow card in between.
