Hi,

As you can see, this is my first post here... so take it easy on me :-) I've been reading the forums for a couple of weeks now after reading rather belatedly about the Westin points bonanza that was to be had by subscribing to the magazine of this site...

I find it very curious that people were clamouring over themselves to buy dozens and dozens of subscriptions in the quest to accrue cheap miles. This obviously shows that there is great demand to be had for offering miles at reasonable prices. What I don't understand is why aren't there more opportunities to simply buy miles w/o the need to buy a secondary product? Surely it would have been in the interests of the owners of this magazine to simply sell the miles rather than include subscription to the magazine? Simply, the magazine must cost a lot of money to print and post, whereas the cost of distributing the miles must be negligible. By cutting out the cost of running the magazine, there must be great profit margins to be had by just selling miles, or the opportunity to pass on cost savings to the customer, who after all is really only interested in the mileage?

Am I missing the obvious? The companies that give miles away as promotions - are they contracted not to sell miles? IF so, what's the issue with selling miles... what don't the FF program administrators like?...inflationary fears, risk exposure to unused miles?

Oh, I hope that this hasn't been covered all before... found the search engine a little unwield!

Cheers,

Morgan!