Back in May I flagged the beta test of StatusMatch.com, a company that consults with airlines on their status match programs, run by the former head of the Malaysia Airlines frequent flyer scheme. They’re now out of beta and ready to facilitate customers receiving elite status from one program based in status they already hold with another..

This new site is a status match concierge service for customers. So far it’s just airlines but in the next few weeks they’ll add hotel programs and eventually cruise lines, casinos, and car rentals (the need here is to get agreements into place).

A lot of airlines would do status matches if they had a formal process for it. Instead customers make unprompted asks to programs and get ignored or rejected. What Mark Ross-Smith and his team are doing, as he put it to me, is “represent you to the airline by verifying your status, showing the airline you’ve not matched into any other program we work with – and that you’re worthy of status matching.”

They’ve got an algorithm to show you which programs you can request matches for based on your current elite status (e.g. you might have status only with American AAdvantage, and some programs won’t match elites in other oneworld frequent flyer programs – or they have specific policies that include not matching against American AAdvantage).

In some cases StatusMatch.com has contracts to facilitate matching, in other cases just “informal relationships.” In a worst case they’re just managing a process that you could manage yourself especially if you do some research at Status Matcher and mentally filter out people who post bogus experiences there.

Their promise is to do a better job getting you a status match than would be able to get for yourself. Anyone can sign up. And then when you apply for a match they charge,

• $1
  
• And then $59 more if you’re approved

StatusMatch.com will only going to make money if they’re delivering approved status matches.