<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Online auctioneer eBay is launching a program that allows buyers to use their airline frequent-flier miles and other promotional points to buy products through the company's Web site.

So far, the San Jose company has partnerships with Sprint, Hilton HHonors, McAfee Security and the points exchange company Points.com.
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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Frequent-flier-program enthusiasts gave the new program a chilly response.

Gary Leff, who runs a frequent-flier Web site (www.webflyer.com/blog/), called the eBay program a ``very bad deal.''

Leff said that, once converted to eBay points, airline miles end up being worth less than a penny a mile.

``But properly spent, those miles are worth far more,'' Leff said in an e-mail. ``I recently gave my grandparents two first-class tickets from Miami to Sydney. Those tickets would have cost over $20,000, making the 240,000 miles spent worth 8.3 cents apiece. That's a far sight better than an Anything Point.''</font>