rwoman

Sorry, early morning jet lag. It violates the T&C for SM and, I believe, for eBay as well.

Teamstone

Why am I picturing Delta Cops taking someone away from the counter in handcuffs?

vincentharris

Take a look at what I found today....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Delta-Platin...oAAOSw0TxZYjAH

Somebody actually paid $250 for this!!!!!!!! If you read the description it looks like all the guy does is get you a status match.

Playing around on eBay somebody seems to be offering these "consulting" services for all the airlines, hotels, car rentals, etc.

If this is not new it is at least new to me. I am surprised this is allowed at all (just by eBays standards)

kop84

How would this work unless you already have status with AA, UA, AS, etc? Unless they're whole thing is they'll ALSO forge OA status credentials to send into DL.

So they are either A: forging documents, or B: charging you $250 to fill out a form.

lov2fly

2 Sold in the last 24 Hours!!

PT Barnum was right!

MSPeconomist

I'm sure that they'll say that it's their knowledge that's being sold.

Part of what some passport and visa service agencies do is filling out forms for people.

flyerCO

True, but unless person has status then they're forging documents to get them their status.

MSPeconomist

IIRC a while back there was someone selling hotel status by setting up fake email accounts (I believe for elite MBA programs) and using some targeted offer. I wonder whether the status being sold here could be part of some corporate contract.

ADDED: I just looked at the listing. It's $250 for PM status for three months (starting from some unknown date), with standard status challenge conditions to retain the status. Someone seems to be creating fake credentials in some other FF program for this to work.

The listing is also misleading about lounge access; it doesn't mention the international itineraries requirement. I'm waiting for someone to argue with a lounge dragon that the guy who sold them the PM status said that they could use lounges.

KDCAflyer

Reported to eBay and tweeted to DL. eBay needs to automatically flag any mention of the words "medallion" or "elite status" in the services category. This happens all too often.

MSPeconomist

I wonder whether the seller was dumb enough to use the same details for all of the status matches/challenges that he/she created. That could be fun for DL. Imagine catching fifty new PMs who all took exactly the same AS flights on the same dates, etc.

KDCAflyer

The partnership with AS ended months ago.

Auston

If you check out the sellers feedback profile, you can see he/she has been selling airline and hotel program upgrades for some time. Also appears to be based in Switzerland.

https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...rld=true&rt=nc

MSPeconomist

I know. I was just picking a random USA carrier with which DL would do status matches/challenges and maybe trying to get one where DL would be eapecially eager to capture genuine elites. Airline FF programs rarely do matches/challenges from their partners (also TK has recently been an exception to this).

jamesteroh

I'm also surprised Ebay is allowing this.

Before southwest made the changes to their rapid rewards program and it was easy to get free tickets I had more free tickets than I could use and tried selling some and everytime I would put one on Ebay it would get pulled within a couple hours (I had some luck with a few of them when I used the buy me now option, they would pull the auction because it violated their TOS and not charge me even though I had already sold the ticket) and threatened to close my account after doing it so many times and this was a bona fide ticket. I've also heard of Delta diamonds trying to auction off their Gold status choice benefit on Ebay and having it pull so I'm not sure how this seller is getting away with this for so long since it's an obvious scam.

schmoove

38 sold in total!