Originally Posted by
QL_714
I post your whole quote, what do you mean selectively?
What I mean is exactly that. You chose only to quote the following:
Originally Posted by
thehawk75
What I find quite ludicrous is the value Citi is assigning the points. 2.5 cents per mile?? Wow! Of course, it doesn't help matters that AA themselves in their facebook contest are valuing them at 2.75 cents per mile -- double wow!
Then ignored the immediate following sentences:
Originally Posted by
thehawk75
I don't argue that points 'can' be redeemed for that value, even more. But, this would be to redeem the points on first class fares and then compare the retail cost of said seat purchase. But, it's a bad comparison, how many actually pay 'cash' for their first class seats?...
You effectively chose to argue a point that was never the argument, thus your point was irrelevant and pointless. Nonetheless, it's a common theme with you. Either you're doing this deliberately, or, you really do fail to comprehend the larger point being made. I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt and believing you to be intelligent enough to be doing the former, unfortunately that also makes you an as$hole. If you're actually missing the point, sorry for striking back, I will treat you with kid gloves from now on.
Originally Posted by
QL_714
Are you the only one that can be sarcastic? I guess my sarcasm flew over your head!
Well, actually... you weren't being sarcastic, you were being literal:
Originally Posted by
QL_714
...And for the record I am not your buddy!
But, when has not being accurate ever stopped you from making a comment in the past?
At any rate...
Might as well just address this briefly, since it's the only honest debate point you've ever bothered to bring up:
Originally Posted by
QL_714
...
I was making a simple post that a lot of members claim their miles are worth 3 – 6cpm and when CITI says they are worth 2.5cpm they start whining. You can’t have it both ways.
And to start off, I was also one of the members who said that you can get a value of more than 2.5 cpm (i.e. the immediate sentence following the one you quoted). This doesn't mean that's what they're 'worth'. AA puts controls on their miles to prevent free exchange, but, I can tell you they are no where near worth 2.5 cpm on a liquid market. Before AA started cracking down on eBay. People were selling the miles at about 1 cpm. Actually most never actually sold them due to transfer fee, but rather booked tickets for the amount of miles purchased behalf of the winning bidder, or, simply sold their AAdvantage account in it's entirety.
This is no different than those timeshares, and what they want to sell it for during the presentation. Just because they are asking $13,000 for a week in Los Vegas each year, doesn't mean it's 'worth' that much, it doesn't even mean it can be sold for nearly that much -- ever. Oh, and in the case of timeshares, the secondary market has established them to be worth about 2 and 10 cents on the dollar.
Also no different than selling a $500 home depot gift card. If someone were to pay me in gift cards, and I was expected to settle a tax liability at the full value of the gift card in cash, I'd be rather annoyed. Without getting into cashback portals and other exceptions, no one is going to pay you the face value of the gift card. If you know of someone who is, please put them in contact with me, I can sell them many if they'd like.
So, back to the point about tax liability, since there is pretty little chance one could settle the tax liability through the proceeds of the sale of the awarded miles; AA will let you 'share' (i.e. sell) all 40,000 awarded for a fee of $400. The tax liability for some would be (at a 2.5 cpm valuation) about $450, this ultimately means you've got to get about $850 for the 40,000 miles. Not impossible, but considering many will look at the miles and think 'theres not even enough for two domestic tickets 2 trans con tickets can be bought in most cases for less than that', it does make it a tall order. At the end of the day very few will redeem the miles for the higher valuations. And consider, all this effort to settle the tax liability through the proceeds of sale of the miles themselves would be to merely break even.