808Pants
Nov 4, 09, 2:55 pm
About 12 years ago, I was charging everything in my life to an MBNA "plus miles" card, thinking I would evolve into some kind of frequent-flier type at some point, I suppose. The miles built up to something over 60K, and several times during that process I looked into what the travel options might be for me to use those miles. HUGE disappointment - each time I looked into using the miles, I would end up complaining to their rewards-program people that there were no great fares available to me - since I live in Hawaii already, the touted "free ticket to Hawaii" has little appeal. All deals were geared almost exclusively for travel from the continental USA. So I would set this aside each time, thinking that perhaps someday when I had already traveled to the continental USA, I might use the miles for some side-trip, but that's not really likely.
Now I just checked back into this dormant account again, thinking there was something about a way to use the miles as credit towards an international fare or something, so that I can just close the account. Here's what I found, to my disgust:
1) The 60-something thousand miles I had have now shrunk to 30-something miles, because there's fine print saying something about them expiring after five years. In my naivetee (?) when signing up for the card to begin with, it was pretty fresh in my mind that regulations on rewards programs had been tightened, in part to prevent exactly this. (Does money in my savings-account expire at some point if I don't use it?)
2) MBNA (now B of A) charges me $35 or $40 a year for the privilege of being a part of this boondoggle - so I am actually PAYING them to take away my dubious 'savings.'
3) B of A says I have to take this up with the outside agency that runs this program, and I don't see that going anywhere good.
Any suggestions for negotiating this into something useful, or is it time for me to select a toaster-oven and move on?
Now I just checked back into this dormant account again, thinking there was something about a way to use the miles as credit towards an international fare or something, so that I can just close the account. Here's what I found, to my disgust:
1) The 60-something thousand miles I had have now shrunk to 30-something miles, because there's fine print saying something about them expiring after five years. In my naivetee (?) when signing up for the card to begin with, it was pretty fresh in my mind that regulations on rewards programs had been tightened, in part to prevent exactly this. (Does money in my savings-account expire at some point if I don't use it?)
2) MBNA (now B of A) charges me $35 or $40 a year for the privilege of being a part of this boondoggle - so I am actually PAYING them to take away my dubious 'savings.'
3) B of A says I have to take this up with the outside agency that runs this program, and I don't see that going anywhere good.
Any suggestions for negotiating this into something useful, or is it time for me to select a toaster-oven and move on?