AS offering to “sell” me Gold status
 

Just received email from AS. Offer was to sell me Gold for next year. $1,099 or 110,000 miles.
currently, I am 2,900 miles short of Gold. Not worth that much, IMHO. (Meaning, price too high)

Personal opinion, but for this price, I’d rather get on a plane and go somewhere...

DUT

I probably would too. But, in LA for holidays and the idea of LAX travel through the end of the year is a No Go for me.

2 BUR/PDX (or SEA) R/Ts would put you over too, and likely be significantly less $$ than their offer, while not nearly as hellish as dealing with LAX.

Interesting how they are doing targeted pricing. For 3,000 miles, they proposed $810 or 81,000 miles on my account.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a15a1f8c33.png

Wow, 23,486,449 mile..... That's about six 737 aircrafts full of passengers, redeeming their standard domestic roundtrip award (assuming there is no capacity restriction) using your account. That would be a dream party plane. ;)

Jiburi

I'm more impressed with the 23million miles on your account. :eek:

Yeah, isn't the main story here that someone here has 23 million miles!!! Is corporate flying you around the world in F class on some alaska partner or what, and more importantly why not redeem!

I don't know if I should be offended or grateful that they view me as a cheap customer. 3000 EQM for me was $735/73500 miles. Incidentally, the 10k mile offer was in line with what I actually paid this year in terms of CPM.

Also, holy crap you have a lot of miles.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5a09479b43.jpg

Ha. TBH, that is not the right number of miles (wish it was). Classic AS tech error.

or one RT in F/P/I although BUR-PDX is a bit short (817*1.75*2 = 2860; LAX is 2919)

It got my attention. How many million miles do you really have?


Back on topic.

"Penny a point and no one keeping score" Arlo Guthrie.

Okay, how many miles do you really have in that case?

Currently 1,815 miles short of MVP but no email for me...

Is AS' IT smart enough to know that I have upcoming trips that will put me well past 20,000 miles :D

No it isn't. I'm a whopping 14 miles away from MVP, scheduled to take two more AS flights before the end of the year (one of them exactly a week from today), and today I get an email offering status for $499.

I've got the same offer. I do have some holiday traveling planned which would put me across the line.

I wonder what my offer would have been for the 48 miles I was short?
I ended up spending $150 to add a LATAM J segment from FRA-MAD during my last RTW award.

That is what I did recently. I did not get any status buy up email, but I got to the next tier so I can get additional RDMs on an INTL J flight to Asia next month. Well worth the few hundred dollars and some extra time spent in a place I like (on a plane).

I requalified for gold on Monday but got the mail today anyway.

Same. Just crossed 50k the other day -- and then I get the 'Buy Gold' email around 1pm today.

Also, my profile still says 'MVP' and I haven't gotten any sort of "you reached gold email" like I did when I hit MVP. Did you get one?

To each his or her own, but if I missed MVP or especially MVPG by less than 3,000 miles, I think I would be sick to my stomach.....my whole plan about where to fly during the year is at least partly based on the # of miles I need to earn whatever status I'm trying to get so ending up short is never an option....and given that this is FLYERtalk, I would always get on plane before I would just buy the miles. Seriously, PDX-JFK has been down to $99 one-way lately...there is over 2,000 EQMs right there.

For 14 miles I'd pretend I hadn't seen an offer email and just call in and ask if they can put me at MVP. I know you have two more flights coming up but why not see if you can get the MVP benefits a flight early?

Not yet. It'll come, I'm not worried.

Same situation here, it usually take a few days for the status to update in their system.

And just like that the email arrived. Gold baby. GOLD!

Got the same email for 75k, with some absurdly high mileage standards or costs...wayyyy more than actually flying somewhere.

Cash amount went from $300 for 1000 miles up to $1650 for 10,000 miles. I've got holiday travels planned already to hit the 75k threshold again, but otherwise might be more tempted for a mileage run rather than this exorbitant pricing.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...dba7e08ec3.png

I had this happen a few years ago. I am unusre uif its done now.

I was short of MVP status by about 400 miles. I got a free promo up to MVP. they had something for those 500-2000 miles that cost a fee ,

unusre if they have something similar for those short of gold.

I can do this?!? I mean I know it’s possible but like I had never considered they would be willing to do this, so thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try it and we’ll see how it goes!

Doesn't hurt to ask, 14 miles is nothing though, so would imagine they'd probably be willing to do it, especially if they can see you have future travel booked.

Other people have said phone reps have done it for them, and worst case they just say no. There's really no risk other than potentially having wasted a few minutes on the phone.

OK so called in (thanks for the tip guys!) and after the customer care lady went and talked to her supervisor she said they can, but that they only give one "bump up" per lifetime so I decided to save it. She also implied I could use this one lifetime "bump up" even if I am not on track to hit status, and she gave the specific example of being 500 miles away so I just said thanks but no.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I agree that BUR is more doable than LAX, right now. What I should have specified is that the miles I need to fly would be partner miles, not AS miles. Doing a quick day trip to SEA or PDX in F, would totally be on my radar, if that would work.
Did consider a flight to east coast on a partner but, not sure that can happen this year. Still considering purchasing the status and making sure partner and I are always on same PNR. Getting 2 U to open up will be the thing that makes this not so valuable. Although, The EQM’s for Gold would be sweet and another factor.
One question, would I be able to receive 50,000 mile bonus for Gold if I do the “buy up?”

Either I’m confused or maybe you are with reading your status tracker. You need to hit *either* 40k miles on AS or 50k miles on AS or partners to hit gold - not both. So if you’ve hit 40k AS, you don’t need to hit partner threshold. And if you’re 3k short of the 50k partner threshold, AS flights would also get you there.

The 50k bonus miles are a perk of hitting 75K status, not just basic Gold (75K requires flying 75K on AS or 90K on AS + partners). That perk is not available to those who take the buy-up offer, as I understand it.

the 50K partner threshold includes any AS miles; if you’re at 47k (with 36k on AS), 3k on either AS or partner would suffice

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pcoll (Post 31763991)

One question, would I be able to receive 50,000 mile bonus for Gold if I do the “buy up?”

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the 50k RDM (redeemable miles) bonus is for making 75K, not MVPG

(edit to add) I see be_rettSEA responded while I was composing my reply ;)

Thank you for clearing up my confusion. In my research, saw the mile bonus for AS Gold and missed the 75K part of the equation.
WE have always been MVP and had not thought we would fly more than that. This year, international flights resulted in the partner miles posted. Now , for the first time looking at possible Gold status.
I have 21,214 AS miles and 47,035 AS/PARTNER miles. So, to get to 50,000 for AS/Partner miles, would I need to fly partner metal or would the day trip BUR/SEA RT in F work as well? ( i know from experience SEA/LAX in F is about 3,600 miles with COS bonus.)

Either AS or partner miles count toward the 50k threshold. A BUR/SEA round trip in paid F (F/P/I fares) would get you there w/ the CoS bonus. A single round trip in upgraded F (or main cabin) would leave you short, but 2 round trips in main cabin would do it and may end up being cheaper than a single paid F round trip, if money's a bigger factor than time for you. If you can find a workable travel date at a reasonable fare, I'd say definitely worth it to get Gold benefits.

BUR-SEA base miles are 937 each way, and with the F bonus would be 1639 (probably rounding up to 1640) each way, to net you 3280 RT.

And as be_rettSEA points out, it's possible (if not likely) that flying two round trips will be less expensive than flying it in F. The F seats can be expensive.

ETA: looks like you can do it in F on Dec 7 for around $700. The price of two round trips in main the same day would be about the same (looks like you'd probably be on the same plane for all four flights, so no worry about missing flights), and it would be a little cheaper in BE.

Tue/Wed (10/11 Dec and 17/18 Dec) all four BUR-SEA flights are $329 each way in F ($109-$136 in coach), multiple LAX-SEA flights are available at $239 each way in F ($84-$119 in coach)

there is **absolutely** no guarantee that BUR-SEA will turn back to SEA-BUR, although the turn at BUR will likely use the same jet

I'm 4700 miles short of Gold and got the email last week. They wanted $799 or 80K miles. I laughed.

I might do an overnight PDX-east coast turn here to lock that up. Way less than what they want for that, even right after Thanksgiving.