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Old Dec 5, 2008 | 8:31 am
  #19  
sbm12
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Originally Posted by pshuang
Here's my stab: LoyaltyMatch wants you to redeem your miles/points for physical merchandise, and plans to make money by charging listing fees for the resale/exchange of that physical merchandise for other merchandise. Programs may choose to tolerate LoyaltyMatch's existence if the negotiated cost of merchandise to them is less than the amount they can take off their financial books for the redemptions of miles/points. To the extent that LoyaltyMatch facilitates and encourages such redemptions, its marketplace may actually prove financially beneficial to the companies.
I don't see it this way at all. Sure, they expose the merchandise redemption aspect that the programs offer, and that part is almost certainly amenable to - ever encouraged by - the airlines as they do get the best value there. But the title of their home page is "Convert your loyalty points to cash with LoyaltyMatch" and I cannot see how the airlines permit this as a reasonable redemption.

If the airlines approve it (and I asked that previously and it remains unanswered) then that's great. But I highly doubt that they do.
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