My comment is clearly OT, but this quote makes me think that this whole bartering and suspension thing is mostly a problem for the very frequent flyers since these are the people having so many miles and no time (family?-) to use them. At the same time, enforcing the rules with these people is very costly for AA too, since I would consider switching (status matching) if they closed my (exp) account... So, I wonder if AA randomly investigates or if they have some rules about whom and when...