Originally Posted by
ijgordon
Yeah, but if they did that, then folks here would claim that there's no benefit of Plat/1K as they get the same benefits as Silver/??.
But seriously, while low and mid elites on AA don't have close-in fees, they have to pay the full $150 redeposit fees or change fees (other than date/time). Sorry, I'll take the COUA system as a sub-100k flier any day.
I am surprised that some here have been so conditioned to "accept" whatever the airlines throw at us and start looking for ways to justify these "enhancements." Who cares what AA does or doesn't do (or any other airline for that matter), it's still a devaluation of the program by charging all these fees. I can understand if these fees were instituted to help defray costs, but all these fees literally go right to the bottom of the airlines (does it really cost $150 to redeposit those miles??).
Before the next post reminding me that UA is a business and its goal is to make profits comes up, I also want to mention that these miles have inherent costs (ie: not really free) as many of us often pay more for the privileges of banking these miles with the intention of redeeming them for future travel. Thus, with these fees, one can argue that one is paying "twice", once to earn and another to use.
LAX