LarkSFO

If that $4,800 PQM purchase counted towards PQD, how would you feel about your offer? Halfway to 1K for about $5K... Gulp...

In any possible outcome, I cannot imagine RDM spend counting towards PQD.

Sykes

In general I'd rather get it flying ... $0.10 per PQM all-in is my target for business/first class fares these days anyway (and one that is achievable with some flexibility). If offers remain this reasonable, though, I may be tempted to top-off Platinum given my Presidential Plus PQD waiver. I'm going all-in on AA this year, but the fee waivers for award tickets for Platinum may make it worth it to purchase a few miles.

RNE

I realize the following advice is anathema to many hereon, but you may want to beat Jeff Baby at his own game and "jump" on some PQMs now, lest you post the same lamentation next year. Consider the purchase of "cheap" PQMs early in a year to be like an insurance policy. Sure, you may not need the insurance�but then again you may.

RNE, rhetorically asking if I'm "wasting" money on car insurance when I don't get into a wreck?

sj22

You can only get to platinum level with bought PQMs, not 1k.

mahasamatman

Not true. Purchased PQM can get you to any level, including 1K and additional GPUs.

WineCountryUA

incorrect.
You can use purchased PQMs for 1K. FlexPQMs are limited to Plat or lower.

RNE

Now, two of my domestic paid itineraries are offering me 3,000, 5,000, 12,000 or 15,000 PQMs for 10� each.

5khours

Offered 75k miles at 2.8/8 cpm. Took both. For me $6k for two years of Platinum status makes sense. I'm exempt on both the 4 segment rule and PQD.

With the diminished MP program and all the service cuts, I've stopped buying paid tickets and am just burning through a couple of million miles. Platinum gets me exemption from all the award booking fees. The only extra benefits from 1k is the higher mileage accrual rate and the GPUs, but since I'm not buying any paid fares, neither does me any good.

mahasamatman

So you expect to be subject to more than $6,000 in award fees over the next two years?

5khours

Yeah. (I fly a lot). Had a 161 cancellations/redeposits in 2013 alone. Probably an equal number of changes plus several hundred close in bookings. I'd probably run up about $20~$30k a year in fees without status.

LarkSFO

The beauty of jumping on this offer in early January!

2 years of status for the 'price of one'.

wco81

So you wouldn't see any PQDs even if they give you PQDs for those PQMs?

mahasamatman

OK, I can see how the status how such value for you, but I have to wonder how many of those were actually necessary and not just "oh well, it's free anyway"? Just curious where the cause and effect is here.

5khours

Assuming UA had PQM/RDM accelerator rates optimized to maximize profit (a big assumption considering how incompetent they are at everything else), then since they have effectively reduced the redemption value of those miles, they will also need to reduce the price of those miles in order to stay optimized.

(This is incontrovertible from an economic point of view).

I would not be surprised however to see dynamic pricing on redemption rates.

Depends on how you define necessary. Demand always depends on price right?

If UA made the price high enough, they could cause me to book everything 6 months in advance and cut my travel by 75%.

For me though, having complete flexibility for last minute bookings, changes, cancellations and even no-shows is definitely worth $3k a year.

WineCountryUA

But since a significant part of the user population has seen no change in value, the issue becomes how much of the user population has seen a change in value of this method. None of us has access to those numbers, so it is going to be hard to make any predictions. It may smaller than the chatter on FT might suggest.