FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Ask the lawyers: Miles and Mileage Programs
Old Oct 15, 2007 | 5:55 am
  #2  
itsme
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Programs: united airlines
Posts: 4,967
Originally Posted by NorthernAtlanticRacer
Currently, the International Bar Association`s annual conference takes place in Singapore. Among other things, we have panel on legal issues surrounding loyalty programs, with experts from the US, UK, Canada, and two EU countries. The session will be on Wednesday morning. If you have questions, please post them here, and I will try to have them answered - and post the answers, of course. Obviously, no legal advice is being offered for indivdual cases, and we must reserve all liability.
Wow, that should be of great interest to many of us. Will that session be transcribed? If not, I hope you will take copious notes and share them with us.

I imagine there are a huge number of questions people might want to ask. I would like to know if the FFPs (hotel and other "loyalty programs" too?) are the quintessential application of Murphy's Golden Rule, that is "he who holds the gold makes the rules"? They make up the rules in the beginning, then change them whenever they please, perhaps with just a brief pause to consider whether what they are doing is so outrageous (rarely, if ever, do they really "enhance" their programs) that it will produce massive disaffection, and we are told, probably correctly, that our choice is to like it or lump it. Is there any alternative to like it or lump it, or is it the case that they could role them up tomorrow if they chose to do so and we would be SOL, so to speak?

I suppose another question might relate to the non-transferrability of most miles/points, and attempts to quash and punish those who would try to get around the rules about such. Again, they can strip one of their miles/points without proving wrongdoing?
itsme is offline