flyingstudent

Curious what type of tricks you pull. If it's with credit cards and refunds, they can catch up. I did hear some folks book multiple reservations on the phone on within minutes of each other and hoping that they manually only debit one or twice.

MSPeconomist

My *guess* is that it was a new AS account that never earned any miles from flying, etc., just credit cards initially, including all of the opening bonuses and maybe transferring additional miles in from other credit cards. AS wouldn't especially want to give precious award inventory to customers who aren't genuine loyal customers, so I can imagine that AS wouldn't minding losing the customer anyway. Someone who travels on AS would probably have looked at their account over the months between ticket purchase and attempted travel and they probably would have checked on the itinerary for schedule changes, etc. too.

Or maybe one of the travel award booking services advised the credit card strategy, including the spending and possibly returns too, and then booked the award tickets. Does Loyalty Lobby offer such services for a fee, or just push the credit cards?

rustykettel

I wonder if the negative 9k miles was due to a claw back of the initial bonus. Return could have been far less than $9k to drop below the minimum spend threshold. Another point that will probably never get answered is if the person maxed out their annual mileage purchase and so wouldn't be able to purchase any more to cover the shortfall without elite status.

missamo80

Neither. I've read John's blog for years and he's about as vanilla a travel blogger as you can imagine. Posts about his experiences at hotels, flight reviews, notices of point bonus opportunities, etc. I don't think I've ever seen him post a credit card deal. He pretty regularly posts experiences other people have while traveling too.

notquiteaff

Agreed. One of the few blogs I still read. Most other so-called travel blogs as nothing but credit card pushers where every post is written in such a way that it maximizes the number of referral links.

azepine00

Nowhere in T&C i can find that running into negative balance (especially such small amount) is considered fraud.
If returning items is fraud - lock me up - i returned several hundred $ worth of stuff to ikea and costco just today...

Perhaps there is more to that story but witch hunt in this thread is amusing...

pbd456

File a DoT complaint and see how it plays out.

eponymous_coward

The blog post has the person who wrote in admit they returned items that put the account in a negative balance months before the award flights were flown, and never corrected this (or apparently checked the account).

The airline apparently judged it as fraud. It does not appear to be an open and shut case in small claims court, but perhaps you are more expert on these matters than I am.

https://www.investopedia.com/bust-ou...nition-4684002

You could probably do the same sort of fraud on a frequent flyer account if you were sophisticated enough. This is probably the type of fraud the airline is looking for.

pbd456

just curious if Alaska airline can get FBI involve like the case that Delta had as the case is already public.

eponymous_coward

Someone who just returned merchandise after getting tickets for their honeymoon (in a circumstance that COULD be innocent mistake; what we know is enough to raise some doubts but it's surely not the whole story) might be in a different class than someone who used multiple FF accounts and misrepresented them as employee travel for a business in what appears to be a years-long scheme. In one case, you can yank some award tickets and there's a good reason to get a hold of Alaska to straighten things out, and Alaska's downside is gone. In the other, there's misrepresentation of identity going on and the people who were being tagged as employees weren't doing anything wrong; it was the travel agency perpetrating an alleged fraud.

tom911

I remember when I had a UA ticket on a partner of theirs that stopped flying. They told me that payment for the actual flight does not occur until after the flight, so if Alaska is similar they haven't sustained a financial loss for the Emirates tickets that ended up not being used.

One thing I would be curious about is what happened to the miles used for the ticket. Would they just go back into the travelers account, minus the 9,000 miles, or would Alaska hold them in limbo along with the Emirates ticket that wasn't used. Blog didn't cover that.

Tom in Redding CA tonight