sonora

My small business spends 300-400k each year on our Advantage Business card. Right now I earn all the miles and all the Loyalty Points. My employees do not care, none of them fly American. They are all Southwest Airlines customers.

I am also the only person who flies international, and I like my upgrades and Business Class mileage seats. Now I think I am being told that my employees who are authorized users will earn the Loyalty Points on their purchases, and these Loyalty Points will not go to my account.

Is this correct? If so is there a workaround? I talked to someone at AA on the phone and she was not able to even understand the question let alone solve the problem. I am EXP, will the EXP line help?

Thanks!

PHL

Employees will earn LPs based on the base fare of their ticket whether it's purchased through the business or not. Those LPs cannot be transferred to you or your business. Your business will earn AAdvantage miles (not LPs) for tickets purchased for registered employees that are booked through aa.com or the app. You can use those AAdvantage miles to redeem for awards like upgrades, tickets, etc. just as anyone would. You can also transfer miles to employees if you choose to (e.g. as a performance reward).

https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...w-it-works.jsp

sonora

Thanks. I want to keep the Loyalty Points we earn through credit card spend. None of the employees fly American-they are all devoted to Southwest. But they are authorized users on my business credit card, and I want to continue getting those loyalty points in my account.

PHL

That's fine. You'll get 1 LP per dollar spent on your business card. So if you're buying all the airline tickets (regardless if if it's Southwest or AA), you do earn those points towards status. However, if your employee is an authorized user and has their own card on your account, the LPs for spend go to them.

https://creditcards.aa.com/citi-busi...mpaign=smb_hiw

Each cardmember (primary and employees) earns one Loyalty Point for every $1 spent on their business card purchases.

sonora

I guess I will call them and see if they will change this for me. It makes no sense to have the LP earned split amongst us. None of us will ever get enough Loyalty Points to get any rewards worth having. The lower level rewards are useless to me-like Group 4 boarding. Woohoo. Failing a change in AA/Citi policy, I will be getting a different card.

PHL

I wouldn't count on them to change the rules for one person/business. Your AAdvantage business account is still earning the AAdvantage miles for all spend, on all cards. You can do what you please with those miles on award redemptions.

It's just the loyalty points that get credited to the person associated with the card spend and ticket spend, and those reset every year anyway since they're just a metric used towards earning elite status. If you travel and spend as much as it sounds, then you should have no problem earning enough LPs to get top tier status and the associated benefits.

sonora

Unfortunately the rewards that interest me require lots of Loyalty Points, and splitting them into different accounts dilutes the value and makes it impossible to earn the top tier awards like evips. I don't travel that much, but I do spend a lot on this card. They either will be interested in keeping my business or not, and if not there are plenty of other credit card companies who would be happy for the business, based on the number of solicitations I receive. And it is actually the miles that earn one elite status.

Antarius

Feels a bit like cutting of your nose to spite the face. If you value the AA program (which it seems you do), what else are you going to get? You can always book the flights with your card too.

Regardless, AA is not going to change the program for you. Guaranteed.

​​​​​​​No it isn't. It is the LPs.

PHL

You may be conflating loyalty points with award miles. Hard to tell based on your responses. Elite status is earned on LPs. And there are LP threshold awards you may be talking about like SWUs that you’re seeking. So, in the current program your employees will accrue LPs in their own aa account with their ticket fares and spend on their business issued card. You won’t get AA to change that. A company spending 300-400k per year is valuable, but so is one that generates 1M and they’re not going to start bending rules and coding in changes for a specific account just because the owner doesn’t like the rules they agreed to when signing up.

The previous version of this program still let employees earn elite status and keep their miles while dumping business extra points into a separate account that the business could use to reward employees or the owner could for themselves.

think about it from AA’s perspective. By letting employeees accumulate LPs and award miles, they might be enticed to fly AA more often, even if they are devout southwest customers.

CMTinPHL

No, it’s not. It’s LPs.

chatgpt

Citi should let the business owner (card primary holder) to decide loyal points go to whom for employee spending on employee cards, problem solved.

sonora

I can't even sign up for the Business program right now anyway because the site keeps crashing on me. I have spoken to several people at AA trying to get an exception or a workaround, and none of them even understand what I am talking about, even the EXP desk.

Since my home is STL, AA has become less and less valuable over the years. The only direct to Europe flight we have is Lufthansa to Frankfurt. So I am looking at switching to Amex platinum which will give me more flexibility with airlines. I will still have AA LTP for when I fly AA. I understand the argument that maybe AA thinks my employees will be more likely to fly AA if they have a handful of LPs, but in our situation it is just not the case. My peeps don't travel internationally. They just don't want to.

aisleorwindow

How much of the $300K - $400K per year is spent on airline tickets?
You might look into getting an American Express Platinum it gets 5x miles on airline purchases.

sonora

No business spend on airline tickets. I am looking at the amex platinum anyway though, the other benefits look pretty good. Thanks.

PHL

You're wasting your time trying to get them to change the rule. The department that would even entertain a request would be the business advantage program. And now that I read that your $400K spend is *not* on AA tickets, then there's even less incentive for them to bend any rules.

AMEX Plat is probably the one for you with that kind of general spend and the travel benefits it offers. I routinely transfer my AMEX MR points to the various airlines for business class tickets when I find availability on a particular route/airline. When I snag a $5000 ticket for 70,000 points, I've maximized value compared to redeeming those same points for a $700 Home Depot gift card.