Laszlo Buhasz

I am a Canadian journalist (Travel Writer for The Globe and Mail)looking for Canadian travellers (Americans, too) who have accumulated huge numbers of miles and are having increasing difficulty using them to book flights. Are there flyers out there who have given up trying to use all their miles and have opted to spend those 50,000 miles for a coffee maker?
Please reply soonest if you don't mind being quoted.Thanks. Laszlo Buhasz

doc

Give up?

Not me, NEVER!

BTW- I love good coffee but we've already got too many coffee makers!

And the points they usually ask for these things!!! You'd have to be in severe caffeine withdrawal to fo fir it!

[This message has been edited by doc (edited 10-06-2000).]

Bean

Ditto for me Doc.. Both on the miles and the coffee makers (wife and I have 3)!

Laszlo, you do bring up an interesting and current topic. In fact, there was a story about this very subject on the NBC Nightly News a week or so ago.

I'd be willing to bet my beachhouse (well, it's close to the beach), that Doc posted a link somewhere.

(He's always first to know about these things .. How do you do it Doc? )

[This message has been edited by Bean (edited 10-06-2000).]

outoftown

I currently have balances over 500,000 miles with USAIRWAYS, 100,000 with Delta and 80,000 in American. I have used over 700,000 miles in American's AAdvantage program and also have used over 700,000 miles in USAIRWAYS Dividend miles program over the past 7 years. I have always used miles for travel. Although I have had difficulty lately using American and USAIRWAYS miles, I have only used airline residual miles for magazine subscriptions in other airline programs that I seldom fly. If I value the merchandise at 2 cents/mile or even 1.5 cents per mile, the catalog merchandise usually offered for miles is highly overpriced. A friend got a CD changer for 35,000 miles. He realized later the same model sold for $150 in stores, but he exchanged $700 worth of miles for it.

ozstamps

Laszlo .. the way the Ozzie dollar is being murdered this week, you can probably buy AUSTRALIA for about 50,000 points!

My current American Express (oz) catalogues has in it has a vacuumm cleaner for 50,000 points, a Ronson bereadmaker for 26,000 points, a dozen ordinary looking wines for 23,000 and a very dull looking leather handbag for 46,000 points etc.

All Amex points = 1 Qantas flyer point. My neighbour flies 5 days a week for his job, mostly It'l to SE Asia. He uses 80% of his points he says for stuff outta these catalogues as flying for leisure is the LAST thing on his mind.

YVR Cockroach

I've been redeeming miles from my CPlus account over the past 5 years.

100k or so business class YVR-SYD in 1995. Started looking for seats on outbound flights from mid-Dec. '94 and didn't get availability until late January '95.

Cashed in 65k for business class LHR-YVR and was able to get seating over the x'mas hols in 1998.

Cashed in 80k for business class YVR-NRT and was able to get pretty much what i wanted in Nov.-Dec. 1999

Cashed in 150k for a oneworld award that included QF and CX flights. Planned end of Dec. '99 for flights in late Jan. 2000-mid Feb.

Cashed in 150k for a BA F award YVR-LHR-BKK-SYD. Some (lot) of problems with availability on BA end.

Also cashed in 100k in late 1998 for YVR-SYD but returned it. Some problem with availability (joint service CP-QF codeshared flights)