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Mileage/Award Ticket Brokers: Are they legit? [consolidated]
I have hundreds of thousands of unused AA and UA miles, and came across a mileage broker website. Are they legit or should I avoid them? I'm aware the airlines have all sorts of rules on selling miles. I don't want to be ripped off by them or lose my miles because an airline said I broke the rules.
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Originally Posted by burgerwars
(Post 20485000)
I have hundreds of thousands of unused AA and UA miles, and came across a mileage broker website. Are they legit or should I avoid them? I'm aware the airlines have all sorts of rules on selling miles. I don't want to be ripped off by them or lose my miles because an airline said I broke the rules.
http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/pr...Conditions.jsp At no time may AAdvantage mileage credit or award tickets be purchased, sold or bartered (including but not limited to transferring, gifting, or promising mileage credit or award tickets in exchange for support of a certain business, product, or charity and/or participation in an auction, sweepstakes, raffle, or contest). Any such mileage or tickets are void if transferred for cash or other consideration. Violators (including any passenger who uses a purchased or bartered award ticket) may be liable for damages and litigation costs, including American Airlines attorneys fees incurred in enforcing this rule. Use of award tickets that have been acquired by purchase or for any other consideration may result in the tickets being confiscated or the passenger being denied boarding. If a trip has been started, any continued travel will be at the passenger's expense on a full-fare basis. The passenger and member may also be liable to American Airlines for the cost of a full fare ticket for any segments flown on a sold or bartered ticket. Fraud, misrepresentation, abuse or violation of applicable rules (including, but not limited to, American or American Eagle conditions of carriage, tariffs and AAdvantage program rules) is subject to appropriate administrative and/or legal action by appropriate governmental authorities and American Airlines. Such action may include, without limitation, the forfeiture of all award tickets, and any accrued mileage in a member's account, as well as cancellation of the account and the member's future participation in the AAdvantage program. In addition, American Airlines reserves the right to take appropriate legal action to recover damages, including its attorney fees incurred in prosecuting any lawsuit. The sale or barter or attempted sale or barter of any such mileage, certificates, awards or benefits other than as authorized and/or sponsored by United is expressly prohibited. Any mileage, certificates, awards or benefits transferred, assigned or sold in violation of the Program Rules, in addition to exposing the member to the penalties otherwise associated with violations, may be confiscated or canceled. The use of award tickets that have been acquired by purchase, barter or other conduct in violation of Program Rules may result in termination of membership, cancellation of accrued mileage, certificates, awards or benefits, confiscation of the tickets, denial of boarding with respect to the ticket holder, and, at United's discretion, completion of the travel only upon payment of an applicable fare. So... if you don't want to risk losing your miles because an airline said you broke the rules, you should avoid them. If you really think your miles are useless for your future travel (assuming you travel enough now that you can't really use them, and don't ever foresee a time in the future where you could use them), and want to cash them out now for something else... http://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/mark....aspx#shopping http://www.aa.com/i18n/urls/auction....&title=auction https://www.points.com/pdccontent/pa...ept/AA_redeem/ |
If you use "Search this Forum" with the keywords: mileage broker you will find several previous discussions of this topic.
Mileage Brokers cannot buy your miles, instead they will instruct you to redeem an award from your frequent flyer account in the name of the buyer. This creates a clear audit trail from the buyer to you. The buyer is at risk of being denied boarding. You are at risk of losing your mileage account balance. |
Originally Posted by burgerwars
(Post 20485000)
Are they legit?
No. /thread |
The airlines don't like this, so they've made it against the terms and conditions of their programs. Penalties include invalidating the ticket you got for the other person and closing your account with loss of all the miles still in it. The real problem is that this is not an empty threat. They know this dodge is easy to try, so they employ groups of people whose sole purpose in life is to detect it and zap it. Those people are good at what they do. They don't catch everyone, there's a good chance you'll get away with it once, but they do catch repeat players - and to use up your "hundreds of thousands of unused AA and UA miles," you'd have to be one. IMHO, not worth it.
(One way they catch people who try this, not the only one, is to ask ticket holders questions whose answers they'd know if they're really the close personal friends of the ticket "donors" that they claim to be. You can defeat this by giving the ticket holder lots of personal information about yourself - address, names of spouse and children, approximate age, occupation, type of car, recent travel history and more. I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing all that with a total stranger.) |
Originally Posted by Efrem
(Post 20504671)
(One way they catch people who try this, not the only one, is to ask ticket holders questions whose answers they'd know if they're really the close personal friends of the ticket "donors" that they claim to be. You can defeat this by giving the ticket holder lots of personal information about yourself - address, names of spouse and children, approximate age, occupation, type of car, recent travel history and more. I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing all that with a total stranger.) I don't mind answering these questions for immigration/CBP officers but would cut short airline employees' attempts to get this info disclosed. |
1) Is it against the T&C? Yes, beaten to death in this thread.
2) Will you actually get your money? Most likely. I've used them on three occasions over a year or so spread and have gotten money both as a check as well as paypal deposit. All of my transactions were transferring my AMEX points to their FF accounts. Not sure if this link will get blocked but there is an 11+ page discussion about this on slick-deals-finance that has people's experiences with this. |
The problem is you almost have too many, chances are in an account that has been dormant forever and one you care about. Yes there's risks, but these services are generally best for disposing of 100-150k miles. Enough to be valuable as a round trip intl biz is bookable, but not enough that you are booki g multiple tickets rapidly and have a chance of loosing them or getting screwed.
Just IMHO anyways. I've never sold miles and probably never will; I'd simply use them myself. |
Whether the business is legit or not, I can't say, but I have read in some forums that trades happened successfully. However, selling/bartering is clearly against T&C of all frequent flier programs.
IMHO, it's too risky to do as your accounts can be audited/invalidated/and you could end up blacklisted. I also save my miles/points so I can use them for aspirational trips for my family and myself, and they get used up much faster than I can earn them. So, I personally have no interest in selling my miles for cash and don't believe in taking unnecessary risk which clearly violates the T&C. Could be much more trouble than it's worth, IMHO. Just my 2 cents. |
I didn't realize that this was against their terms and transfered 50,000 points to a mileage broker from my wife's account. Now she has two messages from the membership rewards fraud department. Would it be best to just be honest and state we didn't know this was not permitted? I don't want her to be blacklisted.
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Yes. I've used them before. It's a one man show but he is definitely legit.
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I havent ever sold any of my Miles or Pts and have no plans to do so.
However if I was to, I would only do it if the broker purchased ALL of the miles in my acct, that way if the acct is Closed or Frozen they lose and not me. A check must be paid up front for all my miles or pts and I would Never do it with any acct where I still planned to fly or earn status. So if I had say 100k in UA and dont have any status with UA and dont plan to fly them then I would sell the Miles. If Im a Plat and plan to continue flying UA then Id Never sell the miles least I be shut down, for sure if I had 450k I wouldnt sell only 100k least it hit the fan and I lose the other 350k |
Originally Posted by mensday
(Post 20525641)
I didn't realize that this was against their terms and transfered 50,000 points to a mileage broker from my wife's account. Now she has two messages from the membership rewards fraud department. Would it be best to just be honest and state we didn't know this was not permitted? I don't want her to be blacklisted.
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i've sold "points" twice. Since I don't fly these points are no use to me. Got checks within 4 days, better then useless gift cards.
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The rules of most airlines say that you're allowed to give tickets to your friends or family members, but not to sell or "barter" them. But what if your teammate's cousin-in-law has miles on one airline but needs to fly somewhere they don't go or have convoluted routings or no award availability, while you have miles that work for him/her? So you use your miles for their ticket, while you fly using their miles a few months later! The airlines could nail you for "barter," but you should be safe if you can prove a relation/ friendship.
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