Originally Posted by
runninaway
DL made the choice to make Amex the EXCLUSIVE credit card partner of the combined airline effective sometime in the fall. So until then, USB should still be the EXCLUSIVE partner for NWA, right? In what, February or March, NW/DL started to heavily promote the Amex card and they enabled us to link our DL and NW accounts to transfer miles between them.
Originally Posted by
runninaway
This is a joke, right? Two billion for a slug of miles, a healthy chunk of which will expire without being redeemed, is not profitable? I could use some unprofitable business like that on my month-end reports.
^ I agree completely with these and most of your other points.
Originally Posted by
runninaway
The opposite of being cynical is not being gullible, it's being naive. I would humbly suggest that a healthy measure of cynicism, in dealings with airlines and credit card companies, will lead to far less misery than a healthy measure of naivetee.
In fairness to
JSFox, "gullible" was my word, not his. I was of the opinion that while it is cynical to assume that a big company is taking a given action
solely out of greed, to improve its bottom line, it is gullible to assume that the big company is taking a given action
solely out of kindness, to benefit its customers.
And I agree with your point that, while extreme cynicism and extreme naieveté (or gullibility) are both undesirable, a small amount of cynicism pays off much better than a small amount of naieveté (or gullibility) does. While cynicism makes you unhappy in the short term, naieveté or gullibility makes you unhappy in the long term.