Originally Posted by
alex_b
I would be interested in whether there is any
legal precedent for whether this is permitted? I have asked this question a couple of times only been told that a) the T&Cs say they can b) that some people have had their accounts closed for dodgy behavior. What no-one seems to have answered is whether anyone has ever fought such a thing and what the outcome was.
In other jurisdictions (e.g. the UK) such a transparently one sided contract would be deemed 'unfair' under the relevant consumer legislation; this would seem doubly so if UA tried to engage those unfair terms on an arbitrary basis to punish lawful behavior (e.g. complaining too much, only buying 'mistake fares') and took away something of value (miles, instruments etc). However I don't know US consumer law and therefore would be interested in whether there is any
settled case law in this area.
PS In case you can't guess I'm not interested in the "my bud Joe says the conditions of carriage say that they can take away your miles if you're rude about their videos" type answers that seem to predominate this thread.
MP is a separate legal entity from UAL. You absolutely do not own your miles, MP does, and you agreed to those terms when you joined. If you had a problem with those terms, then you shouldn't have joined. The reason that there is no legal precedent for defending the loss of MP membership and miles is because the terms are so cut and dry that no lawyer would take such a case unless it was a clear case of discrimination, allowing for application of civil rights law, etc. If UA were to take the miles and close the accounts of all British citizens, it could be argued that there was a likelihood of discriminatory behavior. If UA closes the account of someone obviously gaming the system, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. UA has closed thousands of accounts of scammers, mileage award and upgrade instrument sellers, serial complainers, etc. There is one sad case where a 1K flyer was suspended for selling only 4 SWUs on ebay!
As others have pointed-out, UA can even blacklist you so that you can never fly on their airline again, although this is exceptionally rare.
It is unlikely that UA will close the accounts of the offenders here, so I wouldn't worry about it. But, the real truth is that they can close anyone's account and confiscate your miles with little or no recourse on your part. They have even blackmailed a few FDers to retroactively pay unpaid YQs, holding the loss of their MP accounts over their heads. Every FDer knows that this is a risk and freely accepts it. That is why so many of them are really PO'd that this got posted here and on other travel blogs in the clear. That is a violation of their rules of conduct because it changed the nature of the deal from under the radar to higher than Everest. Yet, the most important rule, that many violated here, is the "Never, ever call the airline" rule.