Originally Posted by
boar
I do believe people should start following CC more closely.
It has always been full of offerings where one side is trying to secure an extremely favourable deal for themselves whether its' trading Marriott 7 day vouchers, Hotel nights for sold out events such as Obama's inauguaration, (both of these cases are definitely hoarding) people trying to get 2 2010 EVIP's for 1 2011 EVIP - how on earth can that be the case in early September. I also saw somebody successfully getting 75k AA miles for a $500 AA voucher. The list goes on.
It's full of these type of trades. Cant/couldnt see too much evidence of the same people, who highlighted the IC Vienna cases, focusing in on those trades.
If I nominate another person to stay at the IC Vienna instead of myself and this person fails to show I am still responsible for the First night's stay in cash. I think this is worth something to me. Call it a premium or whatever you like. I have been on the wrong side of bad trades on CC so I believe I have right to expect some form of extra compensation. I dont call a 2011 EVIP for 4nights at the Vienna IC an excessive deal, certainly not gouging.
I certainly didnt make the original booking in order to gouge FT'ers. If I was in that game I would be using my points for all the major sold out events that I referred to previously.
My OP was not specifically directed at you although your offer was obviously cited. A stand-alone trade is really not a problem but if you book and trade 4 nts and another poster 8 and perhaps I'll book a dozen next time and so on and the future awards will be gone in no time since we'll have an opportunity to trade later on therefor why not grab as much as possible.
I can see two way to minimize this - one, as I mentioned, is to change T&Cs on PC side another is to draw attention to those trades here on FT and perhaps generate a collective thumbs down that can reduce FT marketplace for those trades.
Some examples you cite represent the deals between two parties (evip or miles trades) - if they agree there is no harm to the rest of us whatever the valuation is. But hotel nights/sold out event etc speculation is quite different as the inventory is limited and shared by all of us and I really hope not to see this on FT.