Stefan Daystrom

Hm, for a moment I thought, a miles earning card (is there any that you could do this with except the BA Visa? all others like Amex and DC use nonreversible point-to-mile transfers I thought) would only earn miles at 1 mile/$, and that would mean $40000 that you'd have to buy, use the miles from, then return. And what that you could charge on a credit card and easily return could cost $40000 miles?

Then I realized: You earn 2 miles/$ for BA flight purchases, and how hard is to buy fully refundable first class tickets worth a total of $20000 (Concorde, anyone?) for many months (up to a year, right?) out, hold them until the miles from card show up (not caring that miles from the flights themsevles will never show) and you redeem them, and then get a refund on all those tickets? If I've got my math correct, do this on $20000 worth of fully refundable BA tickets, and you've got a negative balance of 40000 miles if you've already used those 40000 miles for awards they can't take away any more.

But if that's how you did it intentionally (ie, you never had an intent to actually keep all those fully refundable tickets), that sure sounds like a scam, though I don't know whether BA has thought of this enough to write any legal language to officially outlaw it...

Maws22

Thanks to the good people of flyertalk im sure they soon will. As im sure many people are aware a lot of people from BA monitor this board including some people fairly high up the food chain. Like Scott said, how many stevens could there be in Ann Arbor?

Grog

The miles are BA property, right? And they ALWAYS remain BA property, and are never possessed by a 'member', right? So, members can't 'take' really take miles from anyone, right? After careful contemplation, it looks to me like BA is also the owner of -40,000 miles. No one 'stole' anything, because 'we' can't possess 'anything', we're just responsible for any tax liability, that's all. Instead of only worrying about 'patching some hole' in the system, how about working on keeping more of us happy with the system in the first place?

--Grog--

(I really hate how bitter BA has made me )

[This message has been edited by Grog (edited 08-25-2003).]

ScottC

I always love how people try to justify these actions by pointing at how evil BA is and how terrible the changes are for them...

It's seemingly not ok for them to treat you like crap, but when you fight back it's considered getting even???

Maws22

Im not sure if this part is intended for me or not. Im not worried about 'patching some hole' as you put it, the audit team look at this forum and are perfectly capable of doing this themselves. Your logic that you use to justify using 40k miles that you did not earn is quite interesting though. You believe that since you don't own the miles you therefore can not own a debt with miles either, I think that's the point your trying to get across. Do you honestly believe this? You believe that if you have earned 20k miles but use 40k miles then that is fair and that you do not owe the airline anything because you did not own the miles in the first place? I don't think you actually believe this, I think that your clutching at straws to justify an abuse of a frequent flyer program. Anyway as the original poster STILL has not answered how he got a negative mileage balance I stick by my earlier observation that the orginal poster is not being honest with us and is in all probability trolling.

[This message has been edited by Maws22 (edited 08-25-2003).]

hfly

Not that I endorse this, but holding the 20k in tickets for a year amounts to an interest free loan to BA for a year, considering that their bonds are now JUNK STATUS, I would think it a great deal for BA as the miles are in effect worth less than the interest they would have to pay on even this piddling amount.

BigLar

Assuming BA doesn't go under within a year, those 20K worth of tickets would normally be redeemed and are worth, well, 20K.

If you do this same thing with checks, it's called "kiting", and it is indeed illegal.

Just my $ .02

hfly

Who's kiting what? Kiting implies that you are in fact "floating" on the time between when you write the check and it is processed, or floating money between accounts to cover more than what you have.

If the guy were actually charging the tickets and then returning them the same month (or billing cycle) then it would be akin to kiting. However as he stated 6-12 months, and one assumed that he paid his CC bill, it would be no such thing.

BigLar

We could get hung up on the semantics and worry about the exact time frame involved, but what's the point? If he's buying the tickets in good faith (i.e., he intends to make the flights), then using the CC miles when they post is probably OK, but it still seems a bit dodgy ("I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"). If he never intends to take the flights, then he would be, in my opinion, committing fraud.

How can we tell? It's ****ably difficult - he can always claim he changed his mind and who's to say him nay?

If you're kiting checks, you can keep them going around and around (if you've got enough accounts) and there is no crime committed until you pull the original "seed" money out and the proceeds from one of the floating checks. In the case of banks, the float period is normally a couple of days. In the case of an airline, the float could be several months.

I don't know how to define this legally, but surely, when viewed as a whole, the process doesn't pass the smell test.

Grog

Not intended for any one human--more of a rant toward the establishment. And, yes, I realize all too well that there are always humans behind that establishment.

No, I don't honestly believe this. I honestly believe that air miles should be the member's non-expiring property, not the airlines. Hah, possible tax liability on something that isn't even mine? ...?

I'm not justifying a member's abuse of a FF program, I've explained a position in which 'abuse' plays no part--big difference. I simply posed an argument which I believe has merit. Not clutching at any straws, either--I'm not sinking...

Could be a troll, might not be--who knows. In any case, if BA allows a negative balance without any provision for topping back up, whose problem is this?

--Grog--

BigLar

I've been thinking about this, and I've fallen into the trap of being impressed by big numbers.

40,000 miles is bupkus: 40,000 is a big number, but it ain't squat in terms of miles.

Let's see what we're supposing here: he spends 20,000 dollars to get some tickets. A month later, 40,000 miles show up. For that he gets, what? a coach r/t? That he could buy for $300 - $500? And when the miles show up, so does the payment.

How many payments (with interest) does he make before turning in the paid tix and "getting away" with that coach ticket - minus the interest paid, of course. Doesn't make much economic sense.

OK - what he really wants is a First Class ticket. Well, then he's exposed to the tune of $75,000 just to snag an F ticket.

The only way to avoid a lot of this is to pay off the credit card when the bill arrives, which means he has $75,000 laying around. So he avoids the interest, but he's got a lot of dough tied up until he turns in the tix.

These numbers assume he's getting 2:1 miles per dollar, which means either a Diner's Club card (valid during the current window), or a BA Visa card. If he decides not to get the miles from buying BA tix, his exposure doubles to $40,000 or $150,000 respectively!

Seems like a lot of work for very little reward. And if the airline senses that something funny is going on, they could cancel, or at least freeze, his ill-gotten miles, and then where is he?

Maybe it is all just a windup.