This is a surprisingly small community. I reckon around 100 people are responsible for most of the BA posts on here, and I would be surprised if the number of lurkers was a large multiple of this.

Tesco, as we have seen, has hardly tightened up its structures at all. At present you can get bonus miles from life insurance, pet insurance, motor insurance and the savings account! Bonus points on the shelves have been cut back, but they may have decided that casual shoppers - without clubcards - are more content with old fashioned "£1 off" price cuts instead.

If you take the Tesco phone recycling offer, Tesco is saying in-store that 500,000 phones have been sent in by its shoppers. I reckon 100 max have come from Flyertalkers buying them on e-bay!

The Sterling travellers cheque anomaly was a one off, a mistake which Travelex should never have allowed to happen in the first place. I seriously doubt that they would have repeated it anyway in this form. That said, FT'ers probably did do £250k-£500k-worth of £TC's between us (and, of course, paid commission on the lot).

BA Miles ARE a cost to the companies that supply them. However, so is advertising. ING Direct spends literally millions on TV, radio and press advertising its savings account, whilst Tesco puts a few leaflets in store with the words '1,500 free points' on the front. Same for the life insurance. This board actually offers free advertising for the companies concerned - look at how many people switched to Tesco for their groceries to get premium status to double up their mileage from the life insurance etc.

At the end of the day, we are ALL better off as a community by sharing mileage earning opps. If we kept promos to ourselves, then over time we would earn fewer miles each - not more.