How to Prevent Miles/Points from Expiring
 

Quite often the question is asked how to prevent miles/points in various airline/hotel, etc.. programs from expiring.

At times the search tool proves useful - other times it can be somewhat cumbersome and time consuming to find the info.

I would like to propose a Sticky showing easy ways to keep an account "alive" and extend expiration dates so that miles/points are not lost.

FT Moderator Mia, suggested that I first start a thread, which, with others contributing, could eventually turn into a useful Sticky.

I dont know if this should consist of a collection of ideas (I give an example below) or some uniform format:

Transfer From: xxxxxxxxxxxx

Transfer To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Points needed: xxxxxxxx




I came across something, quite by accident, as an example of something that could be useful to others:

Best Buy Reward Zone offers a daily "opinion poll" question - you can earn 10 or 25 points. It takes a few seconds, and the points seem to post into the Best Buy account immediately.

Best Buy Reward Zone is one of the programs that can be registered on POINTS.COM - and as I found out via a small test, you can transfer a minimum of only 5 points out of the Best Buy program to American and also to United - the transfer to American took under 24 hours in fact.United took 2 days to show on the account.

For both AA and UA, the expiration dates were extended to July 2014 (18 months from now)

So by answering just one simple poll question for 25 points, one has the means to extend, potentially 5 different programs (5 points needed for each).

There are 8 other airlines, Amtrak and Prioroty Club where Best Buy can transfer to - I have not tested these if the same 5 point minimum works.



I also know that using POINTS.COM, IF you have over 25,000 AA miles, you can transfer 3 miles OUT to Priority Club, and this will extend AA for 18 months.

Some programs offer magazines for a few hundred miles.
UNITED
https://magazinerewards.mileageplus....0/magPage.html

AMERICAN
https://subscription.points.com/maga...s1&lp=American


Some programs offer shopping malls - I know buying an itune song is a popular method (although can take a long time to post)

shoptoearn.hhonors.com

Recently earned some HH points for drugstore.com purchase - so this portal appears to be reliable

Via shopping portals www.abebooks.com, I ordered a Sudoku book for $3 including delivery - I will report back if/when the 9 (i think) AA miles post to my account.

www.digitalmediastore.mileageplus.com
You can download a song for 115 miles - and extend your UA miles for 18 months.



Some programs offer Rewards Network dining. A very good sticky here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/idine...y-program.html




I have no doubt there are many other "convenient" ways of keeping accounts alive - just thought having them all in one easy to find area on the forum would be useful for members - as many many folks (myself included) are not as savvy as some veteran Fters.

Please add your contributions, suggestions and assistance for the FT community.

Nice idea to start this thread.

E Rewards is a popular one that transfers to various places.

i.e. Hhonors, and SW.

it is an invite only survey. I believe by being a member of the various reward programs (i.e. hhonors and SW) your chances of them inviting you to join is higher.

You can also manage your account and set up how many surveys you would like to participate in. If you set the maximum, it does not require you to complete all of them, but you have the opportunity to complete them.

You earn E reward $'s that can be transferred for various amounts (i.e. $50, $100, etc).

Good idea!

Also, might be a good idea to list what the expiration time frame is, for instance AA is 18 months, Marriot 24 months, etc. (not sure if this already exists somewhere) Different rewards programs have different expiration dates.

btw, points.com requires 4 best buy rewards (not 5) to exchange to AA and UA.

I'm working on the best buy to AA exchange because i'm 34 AA miles short towards a travel award!

Good idea.
I didn't know about Best Buy rewards zone -> points.com -> airlines points route. Looks simple and no cost.

www.audiencerewards.com - by answering a few questions about Broadway shows, you can earn 2 miles per answer for United and for US Airways.

Also an EXCELLENT way to earn a few STARWOOD PREFERRED GUEST points, and extend expiration by 12 months.

Points to SPG seem to take around 2 weeks from when you answer the questions to appear on your SPG account.

Points can be earned for Delta (no expiration of miles) and Amtrak (but will NOT extend expiration - you must "ride them rails" to keep AGR points from expiring)

A thread with answers to current questions:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-s-air-49.html

I stand corrected - 4 BBRZ points = 1UA or AA is the exchange rate:)

This may be too obvious but...

If you have cc's associated with a specific rewards program (like a Marriott card or AAdvantage), set up auto pay for small monthly membership fees for those programs where miles/points could expire. For example Netflix or EZPass accounts can be linked to your AA card providing monthly activity so you never have to worry about the miles expiring.

Marriott says they CAN take your points after 24 months of inactivity but last I checked they were not enforcing it, has that changed ?

(my highlighting of "United")

Earning miles or points with US Airways, Delta, SPG and Best Buy via Audience Rewards Trivia is very well documented, as per the thread you referred to. I’m not familiar with earning United miles via this program, please provide the link for earning United miles. (BTW, FWIW, having participated in 3 of the trivia partnerships for over a year, my experience is that the points/miles generally post to the partner program in about 5-7 days.)

Sorry my error - I meant DELTA. You can use MP miles to buy tickets - potentially useful for some

https://www.audiencerewards.com/mileageplus/

I invite all FT members to participate in this thread - I have learned many things over the years from FT, and by starting this thread, I am trying to "give something back" to the community.

As a small example, I listed the "magazine" links for AA and UA - I have no doubt that other airlines offer magazines as an option to "keep miles alive" - so if you know the link for other airlines magazine sites, please post.

The same for "shopping malls" and small value purchases (I mentioned in my first post, buying a book for $3).

Keep the ideas coming :)

While I do not know the answer to your question, if you have points "potentially" at risk of expiring, why not use the shopping mall:

https://mrewards.shopmyway.com/#

I took a quick look and AbeBooks is one of the sites - for a $3 purchase, you will earn 12 Marriott points, and extend your expiration by 2 years.

Opinion Place surveys offer you the option to be paid in AA miles.

Also buying through shopping mall gets you few points on some airlines (BA).

Great idea for a thread.

HA miles can be extended by purchasing a gift card from the gift card mall on the HA website.

Laura

Alaska Airlines magazine site: https://subscription.points.com/maga...AlaskaAirlines

Link to thread on AS miles: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...-expiring.html

How can I get an offers for "opinion poll"? I dont see any opinion poll in my bestbuy reward zone account. Thank you for your help.

Topguest
 

You can earn miles/points through Topguest by checking in on Foursquare or Instagram for:

Priority Club
Hilton Honors (Doubletree properties)
Virgin America Elevate
and a few others.

https://www.topguest.com/

via facebook
https://www.facebook.com/bestbuy/app...0188063684#_=_

Airline Shopping Portals
 

Air Canada http://www3.aeroplan.com/estore/inde...ECO1AA?custid=

American https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/

British Airways http://www.britishairways.com/travel/eshop/public/en_us

Delta http://www.skymilesshopping.com/

Frontier https://www.skymall.com/frontiermall/homepage.htm

Hawaiian http://emarket.hawaiianair.com/

Southwest https://rapidrewardsshopping.southwest.com/

United https://www.mileageplusshopping.com/

US Air https://www.dividendmilesstorefront.com/

Virgin Atlantic http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us...ickID=50010455

Dining by Rewardsnetwork
 

My preferred means of retaining the miles is to sending miles to those expiring programs. I think it is the most reliable way, and it is affiliated to almost every airline/hotels programs.

However, there are programs such as airitalia and aeroplan which expire after a certain allotment of time regardless of whether you keep your miles active or not

That's true, some non-US program do that. I lost a few miles from Asia Miles. After that, I tried to stay away accumulating miles/points in those programs.

Now I'm confused. I'm currently set to SPG points at Audience Rewards. But I have an AmEx SPG card that gets regular use, so I don't worry that my Starpoints will expire. United is a different story - I closed my Chase United credit card so I'm no longer getting easy United activity.

If I sign in to Audience Rewards, and then click "Edit Profile," then select the edit link next to "Select Point Earning Preferences/Add New Partner," the dropdown list of partners includes Amtrak, Best Buy, Delta, United, and US Airways.

Are you saying that Audience Rewards works for United miles, or that it doesn't?

You can get United Miles for ticket purchases at Audience Rewards. Most of us are referring to Audience Rewards (AR) Trivia, a set of 5 or 6 questions which are posted about every 10 days, which earn both AR and partner (USAirways, Delta, SPG, BB) miles/points. The consensus today is that you need separate AR accounts, each with its own email address, for each of the partner programs. Suggest the long thread on MilesBuzz forum about AR for further information.

Here is the master US thread.

Shopping Deals/Keeping FF Accounts Active
 

Was wondering if there's a forum where we can keep track of VERY :)minimum spend opportunties (as 99 cent Itunes used to be) to keep our Frequent flyer miles/points accounts active.

Which miles/points? In most of the forums for each program, there's already a master thread about ways to keep miles alive in that program. Just go to the forums for the programs you're interested in and search that forum for the word "alive", and if that doesn't produce anything, try searching that forum on the word "expiring".

The problem is that there are different ways available to keep them alive at low cost for each program. For example, not all programs have shopping malls, but quite a few do. Not all programs have a dining program, but quite a few do. Some have things you can sign up for that take time but don't cost money (such as filling out email surveys with eRewards or looking at emailed ads with eMiles), but not all do.

The best thing that can be hoped for, given that, is a centralized thread with links to the program-specific thread for each program. But you can do that just as easily as anyone, by doing the above searches and then posting links to the threads you find. (I'm not aware of anyone having made a directory like that before.)

Most of the forums already have such a thread. When folks are looking for ways to keep miles active in program X, they probably will go to the program X site, which they should.

A threaded forum would be a poor way to track these across all programs, IMHO.