DMPHL

I can't speak for AA, but I imagine opening several AAdvantage accounts for the explicit purpose of earning sign-up bonuses is not the kind of activity they want from customers, and something that they see as providing zero or negative value to them. Not to mention, their relationships with Citi and Barclays are important and provide huge revenue streams.

If a customer is churning cards for sign-up bonuses at the rate the poster in the other thread was (one every 33 days for how many years?), the bank is losing money, or at the very least devoting resources to a customer who is not profitable. For AA, having partners who are losing value on the relationship is not a good thing. Furthermore, if you're earning 1.7M AAdvantage miles from sign-up bonuses, and then redeeming them at outsized value for products that cost thousands of dollars, AA is losing money, and not actually receiving any loyalty.

I'm no AA apologist, but AA and Citi/Barclays clearly seem to think they have the prerogative to fire customers they think are taking advantage of loopholes to extract more value than they are providing.

Antarius

Yes and no. Citi has a time period (48 months?) On each card type. So you can open one regular Citi, one business and others, but one cannot open 5 identical citi cards on a single account.

Now, if you open 5 accounts, and get one of each card type on each account, then that's where one would get in hot water.

JonNYC

Bingo.

SeeBuyFly

That is not correct. If you have a friend or relative who receives a mailed or e-mailed Citi offer but is not interested in using it and passes it on to you, you can use it. They are not restricted to the person they are sent to, and for these 'targeted' offers there is no 48-month limitation.

Today's posts in this thread are sometimes ambiguous in their use of the word "account". Are we talking about opening multiple AAdvantage accounts and receiving bonuses on each of them; or about opening multiple CC accounts under the same AAdvantage number and SSN using offers sent to other AAdvantage accounts? The latter seems to me to be a non-issue, but who knows---it DOES bypass the 48-month rule.

Yes, of course, subject to the clarifying word I added to the quote.
.

sbrower

That's weird that you had a hard time combining them. With other programs I just called and all my miles/points/stays were just about instantly merged.

JonNYC

same with AA

There�s no ambiguity, try reading the posts again.

It�s opening multiple AAdv accounts and receiving bonuses in multiple AAdv accounts.

gumercindo

Just to be clear, which violation are you currently referring to? opening a new AA account with a fake name but my real email and home address in order to get mailers and then apply with my REAL FFN? Or is the issue the same person having multiple FFN accounts to his name/address? Is this a worse violation than buying/borrowing codes from other folks to use as your own? More theoretical question than expecting you to know.

sbrower

Okay, now I understand the problem. AA gets a certain amount of loyalty from having a customer. If someone opens 20 FF accounts AA gains nothing.

cmtlatitudes

Yes, but it's never clear cut. Citi approved these credit cards and bonus mile awards on the multiple FF accounts. I read the last couple hundred posts (out of 2000+) from the relevant thread and it seems clear Citi knew exactly what was going on. Some of their credit card / bonus offers no longer contained the max number in time period exclusions, the verbiage had changed slightly. A few threads spoke of customers called in to apply/accept the invitations on targeted offers they received, with Citi asking questions akin to "why are you applying for a 22nd Citi card?" -- and then approving the application along with the bonus miles. Even if Citi's algorithm only linked targeted offers to FF numbers, they were still knowingly approving the names, mailing addresses, and ss#'s on the applications, in these 35-60 day cycles.

Personally, it doesn't sit great with me, that I'm plodding along with my one little Aviator card, mainly earning miles the old fashioned way, unsavy, boring way -- flying and normal credit card spend. Especially when it appeared from the thread many who were scoring the million miles weren't even flying AA, except for credit card spend and bonus miles on churning cards every 35 days on creation of multiple accounts. It's annoying these are the people I'm competing with for F and J awards.

At the same time though, Citi was approving the volume and frequency of Cards to people applying. Even the most minimal data mining effort on Citi's part would have caught this, and from what I read of the thread, it's been going on for 2-3 years in one form or another. And it appears at least in some cases, Citi recognized it and let it go on. My sense was although their were some definite gamers (slightly changing name variances or new email addresses), many others weren't, were still being approved, and weren't sure there was anything wrong. They were just doing what everybody else was they'd read about someplace, and after all -- if Citi approved it, wasn't it legit??? I admit feeling badly for those people in the latter category.

It'll be interesting to learn what, if any, compensation / discussion there is behind the scenes between Citi and AA on this.

Another Getaway

Would you say there's any cause for concern for those of us who have been on the train for a while (but don't have multiple AA accounts)?

JonNYC

Happy to report, no.

Another Getaway

What if we have 1 or 2 accounts for our pets but only used maybe 1 mailer from each of them? In other words, a very minimal amount of "abuse"?

Finkface

Accounts for your pets? And you don�t think that is �abuse�?

sethMCOflyer

If Fido gets shut down we�re suing

sbrower

I think that was sarcasm. (And if it wasn't then I am going to be annoyed.)