PM $200 Benefit Doesn't Count for MQDs
 

I have no idea if I should be surprised by this or not (probably not), but tonight I tried to book a flight and use up one of the certificates in my account - in this case, the $200 PM Choice Benefit I selected a week before Regional Upgrades were announced (grumble).

As it turns out, you don't receive MQDs for the portion of the ticket paid for by this certificate.

While this is an annoyance in and of itself, what IS annoying is that they don't credit the taxes/fees off of the certificate first. In other words:

My Fare: $375
Taxes: $75

MQDs (w/o certificate): $375
MQDs (w/ certificate): $175

At the very least, it should reasonably have been broken down such that the $75 in taxes/fees were taken off the certificate first, with the remaining $125 taken off the fare, making the total MQDs be $250.

It's not a huge issue (and may have been noted elsewhere already), but seeing as how I'll barely make FO this year because of MQDs (the Amex spend would exceed my annual salary, so, ya know), I felt particularly trashed on by Delta this time around...

You receive MQM miles on ticket purchased with $200 benefit though. Correct?

Yes, full MQMs, at least in my case for this particular flight.

You don't get them on the Choice Benefit vouchers (even though some bloggers said you did) nor on the Pay Will Miles portion of a premium cabin fare.

I recently bought a Z fare to TPE that went down by $100 about 12 hours after purchase and got the $100 back as a voucher. I'm hoping that counts towards MQDs but I'm not holding my breath.

Last year when they (retroactively) posted the MQDs for your flights they did (in my case) include my CB $200 voucher but I put that up to Delta IT and since MQDs didn't matter for 2013 I figure they just left it.

Actually my AmEx spend easily exceeds my annual salary multiple times. You need to google "manufactured spend" if you are serious about the mileage game without a huge salary.

You could have canceled the ticket for a full refund then rebooked it and you would have had the $100 in cash/credit card credit vs. a voucher. You can use this tip for the next time something like this happens.

Because I used PWM for part of it, it was more complicated. Plus I am buying another ticket this week and so it didn't really matter -- I'll meet the spend waiver so MQDs don't really matter.