What a pack of nervous nellies we have around here. Are you afraid NW will put a black mark on your "permanent record"?

1. I stay at a hotel. NW doesn't make a nickel on that.
2. The hotel gives me some miles. NW makes money, because they sold them the miles.
3. For some reason, NW has decided that if I put miles in from a hotel chain, they will give me a bonus. They still aren't making a nickel off the hotel, other than the miles.
4. They (NW) have no idea where the miles from Hotel Chain X come from (stays or my bank account); all they know is that the hotel send some miles over, and they have agreed to pop in a bonus.

What incentive does NW have to track this down, much less try to ban it? They've already limited their exposure by maximizing how many miles you can get, so as far as they're concerned, I'm just another frequent traveller/good customer.

Now, if this is unethical, what do you say to hotel-hoppers? Are you aware that some people on this board actually change hotels on a nightly basis in order to maximize the bonus points?

Have you ever seen the forum called Mileage Run? Would you expect an airline to call you up and say, "I'm sorry, but your ticket from A to B goes through C, D, E, and F. We don't allow that. Here's a ticket directly from A to B. Have a nice day."

BFT (Before FlyerTalk) I was just another schlub, scraping a couple miles here and a couple miles there, hoping that, if I was a good boy and said my prayers, maybe I could scrape together enough miles for a couple of off-peak coach tickets to Europe with my wife. Hopefully, before we both died.

Then a couple of years ago, I bumped into FlyerTalk.

Four First Class/five-star European trips later, I'm still playin' and I'm still smilin'. And I'm still pushing the envelope. That's what we do here.

I'm in the kitchen and I can take the heat. If you don't want me to share the recipes, don't read them.

PS - second transfer tonight. NW usually "sweeps" on Tuesday nights, so we'll see tomorrow (I hope) how it works.

Against the expert's advice, I'll still post the results. Damn the torpedoes, I say; damn them!