We used to flip LD companies on a monthly basis when I was in college in the early 90's. Those were the good old days when MCI, Sprint, and AT&T would send you a check in the mail. Go to the bank, deposit check, and your service was automatically switched. We used to earn most of our beer money in a given year from these bonuses.

Only problem was that we didn't *really* make a lot of long-distance calls. I think we eventually found our way onto the blacklist of "cheap-o college students who flip too much", so the checks stopped coming. By then, Sprint had hooked up with TWA, so I started earning Avaitors miles.

I haven't paid for a long-distance phone call in a couple of years (I have Sprint PCS), but I still switch once in a while if someone is dropping 5000 miles in my lap. Sprint PCS now offers Northwest miles if you pay the full nondiscounted rates (usually not worth it, if you can get a discount one way or another).

I do not think that any of this is an abuse of the phone companies. They created this monster, and phone companies don't exactly have a stellar history of playing fair with consumers to begin with. If you are gathering tons of miles for very little revenue, that's great: you are getting a little bit back after decades of mistreatment.

[This message has been edited by rmccamy (edited 04-30-2001).]