<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Gui:
Still a bit intriqued with the notion of buying 500,000 points. As I understand this is allowable provided I transfer directly to the participating account...in this case my Delta Skymile Account. Does it matter if I already a balance of several hundred thousand miles in this account. </font>
Amex has no way of knowing your current airline mileage balance. The purchased miles transfer to the airline in the same manner as if you had the points balance. Actually, when you make the purchase, it's done as two steps - the purchase itself results in a MR points deposit, then a transfer occurs to your choice of airline programs. As far as the transfer is concerned, it acts just like any other transfer of a MR points balance.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Also, I am still curious to know if anyone has done this in one transaction...or a least only a few transactions...and what reaction did you get from the person at Amex MR on the other end of the phone when you did this? After pursing the small print in the MR 2002 directory it does not appear that there is some proviso that would preclude anyone from buying 500,000 miles as a maximum purchase in one calender year. Am I seeing this clearly...or put another way..What am I NOT seeing here ?</font>
I haven't purchased 500k miles in one transaction. I have done a couple of 20k purchases back when that was the limit per month. Even a 20k purchase seemed to catch the MR rep off guard, but they really didn't fight it. I got the sense that not too many people purchase miles at all, let alone a large number of them.
Since most people seem to value airline miles in the 1-2 cent range, only a relatively few people are going to be willing to buy them at 2.5 cents a mile. But, if you have a use for them that's worth at least 2.5 cents, I think the MR purchase program is great.