Is there a place to trade?
 

Hi All,

I was wondering is there a market.. or a trading place (either here or somewhere else) where one can trade or swap miles?

I need to find something like that and think its so useful..

I have 50K US Dividend miles and its still 30K short for an international trip am planning.. I found out that for my dates they have some award travel tickets available.. but to get the 30K bonus miles.. it definitely doesnt make it worth to buy them.. but I can borrow if someone is willing to share and with the double bonus program, all I need is to find someone who can transfer 15K miles.. and the cost of the miles transfer is fine with me.. now in return of the favor I can trade other miles.. like 15K delta miles..

so where can I find people who are willing to share/trade miles? is anyone here willing to do so?

Hello, and Welcome to Flyertalk.

There is indeed a forum just for that on this message board. However, you have to have been around for a little while, posting legitimate posts, in order to have access to it. When you get to that point, it will just show up.

Wirelessly posted (FlyerTalk.com/wap is fun : BlackBerry8330/5.0.0.438 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/389)

There is a forum called the coupon connection available to members who have established themselves on ft. The general rule is 90 days online with 90+ posts but there will be slight variation based on moderator workload and other factors.

Another way you could do it is look for someone else who needs USAir miles. You could send 30k miles to someone, and they could send 30k back to you. Both of you would net 30k extra miles. Each of you would pay about $350. This is cleaner because no money changes hands -- you both just pay on your own credit cards. This might also be attractive to someone because it really requires no trust on anyone else's part -- you do the first transfer and they know you're legit. (Although it would require trust on your part.)

The downside you might have is that I think most of the people here who wanted to get miles under this program have likely already done it and you can only accept 50k miles in your account. If you were preferred, it would probably help -- because your trading partner would get a 25 percent bonus on top of the 30k miles, which might make it worth it worth it to someone.

For what it's worth, when the program was first announced, I posted offering to do a preferred/preferred swap, where we both would get 62.5k miles for $567.50. I got no takers. I ultimately got trial preferred challenge from US and did a swap with a family member.

Lastly -- an even easier solution for you if you can't find a trading partner is to do a swap with a friend or family member that has an account. For example, if your wife has an account, send her 10,000 miles. This will give her 20k miles and you will have 40k. Now, she sends the 20k miles back to you. This gives her zero, and you now have 80k. The only down side is you pay the $37.50 fee twice instead of once if you can find a single transfer partner. But, still, the overall cost will be about $375, which is not too bad for 30k miles.

Thank you for all the advice!!

I did think about this option, and I am sure US Airways folks dont encourage it, but in between conversation I tried to talk to an agent who got a little friendly and was advising me stuff about my plan on doing this and she said there is a fine print or restriction and you cannot get your own miles back.. but you are saying folks here have done it.. so wht she was telling is isnt true right??

also, my other option was to open another usairways account myself.. and ask my wife to transfer the 20K (from your above example) to my other new account.. and then.. merge my 2 accounts into 1.. :D

but again! thanks for your help.. am sure if i stick around here for more i'll learn more tricks!! :D

You might want to check out...
 

www.points.com. They allow trading, transferring, and buying of airline miles.

How and to whom can someone request access to this "coupon connection"? (I read FlyerTalk daily, but do not always have a reason to post. Getting to 90 posts could take years...)

coupon forum
 

So this will just show up? No prompting needed? I don't have to contact a mod to get it added?

I lurked here for a few years. I finally decided to start contributing here and my post rate has risen steadily. At this point, I'm probably a couple of weeks away from getting 90. Just look for some places to contribute -- I've posted a bit about my experiences with USAirways sharing, with Marriott, some mileage run questions, etc., and my post count has creeped toward 90.

And this post will count as 1 too -- so let me try to add some value: There is definitely a valuable perspective that comes from the lurkers and novices too. The experts here sometimes talk in a language that is difficult to understand. I'm not a mileage optimizer or 1M flier by an means, but I'm mileage aware and looking for good deals. I think there is not quite enough posting sometimes by the novices or slightly above, who can get intimidated by the expert posters. So, switch from lurking to posting -- everyone wins.

A general rule applies that the airline and hotel programs do not condone trading. Certain exceptions apply, such as the referred to points.com program (which is an expensive way to top off mileage). In the case of the original poster, I might suggest he dig through the USAir forum for easy mile earning opportunities. Trading is not something for the inexperienced to risk.

For now, I'll retire this thread in the general interest MilesBuzz forum.