And this is exactly why sometimes I think it is totally ok for me to try my hardest to scam or abuse the system... Now I know how that sounds, but I think we can all attest to the fact that they started the fire...

You cannot book awards... with miles you "paid" for thru whatever long ongoing marketing or promo means you participated which gave them or their partners business and money. YOu have these miles, cannot use them and that is a scam. Thus, the only way to fight back to this is to do what we sometimes do in here, which is to find holes and scams on them.

It sounds silly, and should not be this way, but it is. I have had luck redeeming miles but it does take lots of work and experience. And had it not been for forums like these and a real affinity to find the ways to make things work that should work, I may be stuck--like so many other customers who are blindly falling victim to all these promos and scams that basically sell them nothing they can ever use. And the airlines know it. That's the sad part. Why ARENT they making money then? Cant figure it out.

Oh well.

MM