nk15

FAs getting 6 month training in hawking credit cards, and a couple of weeks "safety" training (such as how to handle customer refusing to take a credit card application)...

footballfanatic

Is there any documentation anywhere that the portal will make a dime more than 1 LP per $. Is the base mile just 1/$, and then the rest is bonus?

vasantn

No, but there have been reports that all the miles are posting as base miles.

nk15

You interpret this any way you want, and in March AA will tell you if you have been wasting your money buying overpriced stuff for two months or not...

bryanb

You‘ve hit on something interesting here. AA does not have to model out every possible scenario. This shopping portal works just like any other similar one (Rakuten, TopCashBack, Chase, CapitalOne, etc.), It‘s the retailer that‘s paying American Airlines for those miles. Not the other way around.

As others have mentioned, FTD is selling these bonsai trees at a healthy markup. In fact, I‘m pretty confident that FTD‘s margins are much fatter than AA‘s. So they can afford to pay the cost of 20-25 miles per dollar as a marketing/customer acquisition expense. AA gets paid more for those miles than it would be paid by flying people around on planes. It‘s a win-win for both.

So people feel like they‘ve gamed the system by getting EXP. I‘m sure both AA and FTD would be perfectly happy with Flyertalkers perceiving it as a win-win-win.

For the record, I don‘t really think AA was the fool for that Healthy Choice pudding promotion either. I‘m sure the food conglomerate ConAgra had purchased those miles for a nice sum of money, and AA would happily sell millions of miles to another food company if given the opportunity to repeat the promotion. The marginal cost of giving David Phillips lifetime Gold and some seat inventory that would’ve gone unsold is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what American Airlines received from ConAgra for his million miles.

Herb687

You don't need to wait until March and you don't need AA to tell you.

You're wasting your money buying overpriced stuff if you're doing it for AA status!


Exactly.

Yep. Though the reality would be it's win-win-lose. The one loser being the chump who thinks EXP is actually worth what he spent to achieve it!

AA can continue laughing all the way to the bank.

nk15

Yes, but FTD is now back to 25 miles per dollar, who is laughing now, huh?

coleslaw

It depends what one spends to achieve it. It’s really not that difficult to extract a few thousand dollars of real value from EXP (mainly through upgrades, additional baggage allowances, etc) as well as “softer” value (better customer service). Just because it’s not worth it for you doesn’t mean it’s not worth it for anyone else.

Herb687

Better customer service is ridiculously nebulous and nearly impossible to quantify. But from thousands of anecdotal posts on this forum, we can see that when AA's operation is in the toilet, it's in the toilet for EXPs too. Attempts to quantify "better customer service" are nearly always efforts in mental masturbation / ex post facto rationalizing.

Never claimed it was. However, I will stand by the generalization that many people place an inflated and unrealistic value on EXP benefits.

coleslaw

Yes, that's why I said it was a "soft" benefit/value and not something that I would try to quantify. There is value to it - just not a value that is easy to put a dollar figure to. I have certainly benefited immensely from being able to deal with the EXP line in the past.

Well, you sort of did:

For many people EXP is worth (more than) what they spend to get it. It doesn't sound like it's worth it for you... and that's fine. But not everyone who is going for EXP is a "chump".

LlamaJesus

It was actually at 30 a day or two ago - I didn't get an email or see it advertised anywhere but checked it out of curiosity since I realized I'll be away on Valentine's Day and needed to start thinking about that, lol.

diburning

Other things to think of regarding the value of ExPlat benefits:

If this ends up working, will the benefits still be as valuable if a lot of people achieve ExPlat through this route? Will upgrades be less plentiful and phone wait times be longer because there would be more ExPlats due to this “shortcut?” Will half the plane board during Group 1 on flights out of hubs due to being ExPlat?

vasantn

Yes, no, and no. JMHO, of course.

coleslaw

FlyerTalk (and most of the BoardingArea and similar blogs) are not representative of the broader population. Although it seems like lots of people are going to be chasing EXP, in reality most people aren’t going to care enough to go out of their way to get status.

sxpsxpsxp

For anyone considering those bonsai trees, I thought I'd mention that looking at my most recent email from AA, the details for FTD say that I will earn 25 *bonus* miles per dollar.