selling miles - is it legal?
 

I saw this banner ad on FT (!) and decided to look into it. Brought me to this web page.

http://flyer-miles.com/selling-frequent-flyer-miles

I am OK with friends using my miles, but has anyone done this?

I bet they will offer you like $20 for 50k miles.. Also it is not illegal to sell miles but airlines put clause in their FF rules that you must not sell miles. So if they do find out about you selling miles they might close your account along with all miles that were there

While selling miles is not illegal in the sense that it is a criminal act, it is a violation of airline/hotel terms and conditions and may result in forfeiture of the account and its contents.

Fill out the form online only to find out that you have offered to sell your miles back to your main miles/points program:D With all your data included.

Use at own risk!

so how does a place like points.com exist?

I do beleive in the US state of Utah, selling miles is a criminal activity.

However this is the exception, not the norm.

Using a ticket for transportation in violation of its terms and conditions is an offense in (I believe) several places, including (at least) California. I don't know if this statute has ever been used to prosecute someone who bought a ticket for miles, but I think it could be.

I have bought (not sold) miles for a ticket. It is (generally) not illegal, but against FF program policies/rules. YMMV, but they do not police this very toughly.

IMHO, nope. I know several folks who have been denied boarding because of airline suspicions that they were using purchased miles redemption tickets. And there are reports on FT about accounts being closed and all miles lost.

Probably no fun to be denied boarding when you want to come home from Hong Kong. And, too late to buy a discount ticket.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/5.0.0.591 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

They negotiate with the carriers to provide that service. They cut the carriers in on the deal in many cases and the rates are generally awful from an end-user perspective so the carriers permit it.

No need to ask the same question twice: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18359959-post30.html

Not to mention you'd started a thread on your own: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...my-points.html

Do you really have to keep cross-posting the same thing about selling your miles over and over and over again when there are quite a few threads on FT already? :td:

I'd provided you the links to some existing threads on this topic. There are more threads on this if you want to perform your own search, but the answer remains the same.

The discussion is current since the policy about selling miles for most, if not all, frequent flyer programs has NOT changed. It's against the programs' rules to sell miles. Period. In terms of the topic of your interest, this old thread is still current:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...s-illegal.html

You may not be aware of our TOS w/r/t cross-posting on FT. That's why I also provided the link to FT TOS in your first thread. But you kept doing the same thing after 2 FTers had pointed out to you not to cross-post. That's not cool. Please respect our TOS, because (from FT guidelines):

I'll close my comment with our forum mod's note from another similar threads:

Without understanding and/or reading through the existing discussion threads, you seem determined to sell your miles and points anyway. FWIW, good luck!

It's silly to post all over the place. You'll get they same answers. It's against airline rules to buy or sell miles. They can freeze your miles and delete the account. It's not worth it.

Posts by new member attempting to sell his miles both via posts and PMs have been deleted and his account suspended. Because of that, knowledgeable responses above might not seem to have context.

SanDiego1K
Community Director

With the blessing of the airlines as many have outsourced to p.c for sale and transfer of miles. The p.c rates, however, are typically unattractive.