I stumbled across a site called POINTS.COM the other day that seems to exist solely to track and swap mileage between programs. It seemed like a really good idea until I did a trial run-through and it looked like it would take a 90% hit to swap miles from one program to another - i.e., 'swapping out' 11,000 miles from my Alaska Airlines account would only 'Swap In' 1100 miles to my American Airlines account.

Is this the norm for this sort of thing, or is this just a particularly disreputable site ? Any better deals out there for transactions like this?

With programs like NorthWest's Worldperks that work with a number of airlines, it no longer seems to make sense to maintain individual accounts for each airline. But what do I do with the existing miles ? Heck, I'd rather donate them to charity than take a 90% hit.

- FM -