This is the case, and in many cases it has taken longer. Also, availability for Air Miles flights on Star Alliance partners is limited. Its not a case of just being able to use the miles and thats it. There are a limited number of 'air miles' flights for each flight and even holding a Star Alliance Gold card wont get you onto a flight if they are all taken.

Does anyone know how you get your points? I got a letter saying they would be credited within 20 days but I didn't have a diamond account so how would they know where to give the points to? I've just set an account out and there is no place to link to a credit card.

bmi will write to you to congratulate you on the opening of your account, sending you your Diamond Club bluecard and baggage tags with it.

So this happens automatically once you've signed up for the credit card and make a purchase?

Yep, bmi handle that side rather than MBNA

I've just re checked my mail and i got a very insignificant letter back in april telling me my diamond account number. It didn't mention the 20,000 points so I ignored it. Glad I didn't throw it away. I'm going to Russia!!!!! Cheers!

In case anybody is interested, my Diamond Club account was credited with 20,000 miles today!

Does this card also offer 9 months 0% on balance transfers?

I opened my account with them in 2003 when I needed it to buy flights on a regular basis but never got the balance transfer offer. I might call them up and ask for it now.

9 months from opening the account...

Cool, I'm definitely going to ring up and ask for it then

I called up today and got told it would be 60 days from the first transaction on my card when I would get my bonus 20,000 miles. Do you think there is any way I could hurry them to get them sooner? I spent on my card within a week of usng it and have had my first statement and have had a few miles credited for my spending.

This doesn't seem fair, if some people have recieved their miles much more quickly. I know I shouldn't moan and will be happy when I get my miles - I'm just impatient

I've just recieved my MBNA bmi credit card & phoned to activate it & asked about my diamond club account being set up. The girl gave me a number but when I tried to log in on the website it did not recognise the number or my email address. Like Katgodess I could not find anywhere on profile page to link to credit card so I did not continue. Do I wait to recieve something else in the mail? Am I just too impatient?

I have had nothing but problems with this. I got "conned" into taking a card out with the promise of the equivalent of two free flights and diamond club membership at the airport in November 2010 on the way to Israel. At the time I thought it would be great just to use the card to get the airmiles which would pay for Manchester to Heathrow should we be able to go again in the future. At the very least I could use them to go to London anyway.

Countless times my email/membership/password have never been recognised, and I have had to ring up to try and get it sorted. The first time was because I had set up the account manually, then found out like another poster has said, you get one set up for you with a welcome letter. They never told me this would happen. Eventually they merged the two accounts but even now I can't login again and am in the process of having a 'password reminder' sent again.

The one time I did manage to login in was for a return flight to Edinburgh but could I get one - not for 3 months! Unlike the normal Airmiles or Avios as it is now, there doesn't seem to be anywhere near the amount of decent availability unless you wait for weeks and weeks. At the time of writing this I am trying again to login to see if there is anything for Edinburgh but I don't hold out much hope at this short notice. I can see eventually I will have to plan to use them for maybe something I don't really want to use, just so they don't go to waste. The worry of that is if I am unable to go at the time as I have frequent health problems.