PG: I always enjoy it when you disagree with me, because you do it so well

OTOH, I do agree with your premise that miles should NOT be a commodity. To clarify, I think that this program made the mistake of allowing the points to become a commodity, and that this is an abject lesson for other loyalty programs as to why they should pay careful attention to their rules to keep this from happening. This experince also proves that once that mistake is made, natural market forces will come into play.