I currently have balances over 500,000 miles with USAIRWAYS, 100,000 with Delta and 80,000 in American. I have used over 700,000 miles in American's AAdvantage program and also have used over 700,000 miles in USAIRWAYS Dividend miles program over the past 7 years. I have always used miles for travel. Although I have had difficulty lately using American and USAIRWAYS miles, I have only used airline residual miles for magazine subscriptions in other airline programs that I seldom fly. If I value the merchandise at 2 cents/mile or even 1.5 cents per mile, the catalog merchandise usually offered for miles is highly overpriced. A friend got a CD changer for 35,000 miles. He realized later the same model sold for $150 in stores, but he exchanged $700 worth of miles for it.