Originally Posted by pinniped
... you've essentially purchased AA miles through some sort of middle man...The broker is going to invest your payment for the miles as long as he can, and then manually purchase the miles from AA.
If the customer is going to get 20,000 miles as a by-product of his purchase of the goods or services, what is merchant/broker/whoever paying the airline for those miles? Anyone have any knowledge of that part of the deal that we as customers don't see?