gleff, you quoted me correctly.

While I do not condone the outright sale of miles and/or points, I have been happily involved in many exchanges, ranging all the way from "Hey, just take it and enjoy!" (what goes around always comes around), to, "There really is no point in your trying to book a round-about UA award ticket to Mexico. I'll just book a direct ticket for you on AS and somewhere along the way you can book me a ticket on UA." Win/win. I have even received certificates in the mail with notes that said, "I enjoyed your post about .............. very much. Hope you enjoy this upgrade as much." Ah ha!!! Trading joy for joy. Are there rules against that?

These exchanges are almost always privately conducted with FT folks whom I consider friends--and I have lots and lots of FlyerTalk friends. Thank you very much.

I have always been very honest with UA and AS about my exchanges with friends and they think it is cool that I would, for example, give an internationally traveling friend a SWU that I wasn't going to use in exchange for my friend upgrading me with a HK 50 that she wasn't going to use.

Even Starwood and Hilton could care less to whom I give award stays. They get XX,XXX number of points for a room, no matter who sleeps in the room. What's the issue???

FlyerTalk would be a far less friendly and rewarding place if were not allowed to make happy, mutually beneficial exchanges with our friends, both new and old.