Buying large quantities of miles
 

Hi. I do about 10 trips a year from la to jfk. Usually I purchase us air miles through a promo and redeem them for united ps f for 50k one way. I'm looking to do a bunch of Europe travel which will require lots of miles for f.

Basically I'd like to consolidate all the methods we can use to purchase miles on the various airlines and card programs. Key here is lowest price per mile. Track it back was amazing but I missed it. Bankdirect is good but my major holding funds are in a Corp account and they won't give you miles for business accounts.

How can we buy miles for a cent each?

How can we buy a few Hundred thousand miles when we want to?

Other good ideas were paying taxes but that was expensive per mile.

Superpunkt looked good too but that game seems over.

What are the best games for buying bulk miles?

Can we band together to purchase them? How did the TIB proprietor buy them and what did he pay for them? I have healthy capital and own companies. These miles can have a value of nearly 15c when redeemed for certain F travel so this is quite valuable. And I think if we can figure out how to lower costs enough it will even be worth it to use double awards on American to just go F whenever the heck we want.

Lets out together a master list of all the schemes. For frequent F and J travelers, this is really the key method. Post here or PM if you dad. Happy scheming! X

I'm interested as well. I'm looking to replenish my UA/CO accounts. Delta has/had the 100% bonus but I think it came out to about 1.5c per mile.

Well to simply have 1 post on FT and that 1 post asking for any and all ways in which to maximize mile accumulation, gee let me think.........

Why don't you invest some time on FT and put some time in here to gleam the benefits that come with posting and reading posts. There are dozens of schemes already posted. Search and read them and formulate your list to report back to us. That is buying in to the community and we will give you a ^ for your efforts.

In any case, njarecki, welcome to the rough and tumble world of FT
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ha- well, yes i am a new poster! and i was in brevity mode since i was on my ipad when i posted ;) thanks for the welcomes by the way.

My personal setup in more detail is-- I use miles for RT F or J travel. I do JFK-LAX about 8-10x per year on United PS (which is the only way to fly domestic long-haul btw)-- that ticket is $5200 retail RT and there's basically no way to get it cheaper. So what I do is use Amex points and covert to Air Canada or I buy USAIR points. J is 40k Air Canada Aeroplan and F is 50k USAIR is an excellent path into United PS F... ;)

But can we think of some more?

What about finding car rental pricing errors where you can do multiple cars out at a time and leave them in the lot for a day and buy miles that way?

or something less onerous like another trackitback we find.

Per your suggestion, here's my working list.

1. Trackitback promotions as they come- amazing but must find
2. Opening online accounts (hard to replicate)
3. SuperPunkte (foreign and hard to manage/not get scammed)
4. USAIR- runs lots of great promotions to lower cost to 1-1.5c/mile
5. CC signup bonus- game requires time and effort, not amazing
6. Mint Coins- limits imposed and physical transpo lower benefit
7. Car Rental- How do we play this one best?
8. BankDirect bankdeposits. Not amazing as CD pays more interest but still of note.
9. There must be more. I'm having a hard time searching/locating

Okay, I welcome any comments. Maybe we can create a master strategy post.

I love FT.

Nick

You're basically asking for 25% of this website to be summarized in 1 post.

Is it a bad thing to create a synthesis and analysis of the information here? If it is intentionally a good plan to obfuscate it to protect it-- hey, I'm new, I don't want to mess the game up.

The way I see it though there is a lot of information on different topics that gets posted in milesbuzz that is useful, but for large quantity mile users it is not the most effective (how to pickup 2k miles here, 3k miles there, etc.) While the miles game is fun and I enjoy reading all the stuff- in the ultimate analysis the intelligence of the contributors here could be best used to focus on big issue items-- and it is (ergo trackitback, etc.)

If the goal is to share the information, collecting it into a useful master overview could be quite useful.

One question is whether airlines are reading this site, and if they're modifying their programs as a result. I doubt it. I've run a lot of businesses and I have typically encountered great sloth on the part of large institutions-- and we don't represent much to them, the profits from the promotions far outweigh their downside from us.

Anyway, these are philosophical ideas. If anyone thinks it is a good idea to evaluate the best big-ticket ways to buy miles, I'd love to talk about it. If my OP is nogoodidea-- just let me know.

On a related note, somebody pm'd me with cashyourmiles.com as a solution and it was not-- it's just another miles broker.

A lot of opportunities have come along over the years; the great ones are often the result of "clever" marketing gone awry. Therefore (imo), too much attention is a bad thing. Most truly great deals have died rather quickly once they were exposed to a large audience. It's not so much about airline lurkers catching on; rather, publicity invites attention from all sorts of people, including the extremes -clueless and ruthless-. Having some people go "all in" with total disregard for a deal's survival, and at the same time some of the clueless (yet fearful to miss out) people with their constant worry and need for reassurance (calling and asking for clarification!) can destroy a deal very quickly. Many of the forum regulars can tell you about very sweet deals that went on for years before they came here to die. So don't expect anyone to give up any extraordinary deals.

Otoh, extraordinary deals aren't always ongoing. The greatest ones usually have been very temporary purchase/rental/subscription etc opportunities that usually have a limited timeframe. So there may just not be anything uber-exciting going on right now.

In any case, welcome to FT!

Wow. Brilliant. Wish I had thought of looking for the lowest price per mile. Can you say "stating the obvious"? :p Okay, I am giving you a hard time. I'm just joking. I can't help but chuckle. So often a new FTer will ask "what's the best airline program?" not realizing that if there were a best airline program the others would dry up (or at least shrivel). ;)
Usually not directly from an airline. And think twice before considering buying miles. Usually the price is not worth it. It can be a good option if you want to top off an account that is just short of enough miles for an expensive itin. However, you are trading cash that can be used for a confirmed seat on the flight of your choice for a lottery. With capacity controls, blackout dates, etc you are limiting your options using miles that you wouldn't experience if you just bought a ticket with $. Avoid buying (lots of) miles from airlines.
Some (I won't say "most" because I haven't done the leg work) airlines limit the number of miles one can buy within a calendar year.... 60K...50K... amounts like that. So buying 100K+ miles is usually not an option. Even with 100% bonus promos you are spending a lot of money for the possibility of getting the itin you want.
Do you mean paying your federal income tax with a miles-earning credit card?
Again, can't see why you would want to buy bulk miles unless you are a business that want's to offer miles to your customers as a perk.
When you find out let us know. There have been some reports on FT about how much Avis, Hilton, TIB, etc pay per mile but I have yet to see any definitive numbers.
When you use a partner of an airline in essence you are buying miles. So keeping an eye on many forums at FT will be needed as part of your scheme. MilesBuzz is a good forum but many times a really great mileage earning opportunity is posted in the forum for that airline or the forum for that partner. Example: until the end of May Budget was offering a 5K bonus of Delta SkyMiles for a two-day car rental. The thread for that promo could have been started in the Delta forum, Budget forum, or MilesBuzz forum. Since cross-posting is frowned upon at FT duplicate threads on one promo are likely to be merged into one thread. From my experience the older(est) thread will be the hub for the other threads. So keeping an eye on many forums at FT is the best advice I can give you.

Here are a few tips that get repeated often at FlyerTalk:

- Consider the Starwood American Express card. It is often touted as one of the better cards for maximizing points/miles. If you are loyal to a particular chain of hotels and don't use Starwood hotels much then you might find another card to be more lucrative for yourself.

- Several credit cards allow one to earn card-specific-points that can be redeemed for $ amounts towards air travel on any airline. The real advantage to these cards is that the ticket is actually being purchased so you will earn miles on the airline flown even though your ticket was purchased (in whole or in part) with points from that credit card.

- Check out the thread in MilesBuzz titled Q2 2010 Car Rental Bonus Promos!. I maintain post #1 of that thread with various miles bonuses gathered by myself and many others who rent cars frequently. There are instances when the miles earned are so lucrative for the $ spent that you might even rent a car even if you don't need one.

- Keep an eye out for and register for EVERY promotion you can find. Even if you don't think you will actually end up using the promotion ... ya never know. Think of this time as a part-time job. I glean so much knowledge from FT that saves me money and earns me more miles that I consider my time perusing FT to be my part-time job.

- Consider attending the October FT DO in Chicago. You can learn a lot from the birds-of-a-feather that will be meeting there to trade tips, tricks, and deals. There is a link to the thread for that DO in my signature.

great suggestions! i will see if I can make the FT meetup.

there are in my experience certain routes that always have availability if you can wait till a few days before purchase. so those are the ones where i can reliably use miles that i travel frequently-- and why they're worth purchasing for me.

in a slightly off-topic note, has anyone found a way to change the return date on a *A partner ticket once travel has been commenced through Aeroplan or USAIR Dividend Miles? I've had trouble doing that and after call backs to 5 agents been unable to find one who could process it. Not exactly sure how to interpret their T&C's, and I've had agents say it was possible at time of purchase only to have later agents say it wasn't.

best,
nick

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Just wanted to see if this stimulated anyone else.

Today I found a couple ideas-

1. United is offering 25 miles per dollar on flower purchases. How about some bulk flower purchases that can be resold to a flower vendor at significant discount? You are paying 4cents per mile. If you could sell the flowers for half of what you paid for them you'd be able to buy united miles at 2c per mile. If you could sell them for anymore you'd be in the 1c range. Anyone know what the markup on flowers at retail is?

2. Car rental- right now with the 3000 mile bonus from avid and a double miles promo throughh us air you can get 4700 miles for a three day rental at near 3c per mile. Anyone creative enough to figure out another scheme to get this more in the 1cent range?

Suoerpunkte was one of the greatest things I've seen here where you could buy in the old days essentially unlimited miles and more miles for Bout 1.2c. A very good deal. Are there any bulk purchasing opportunities like that in the ether?

Nick

Okay where do I start? First of all it's Avis not avid. And US is not offering a double miles promo. It's actually a 50% bonus promo. But, yes, you can get over 4700 miles for a 3-day rental. Since you cited 3 cents per mile you are saying the rental costs, in full, would be 4700 x $0.03 = $141. And at 3 cents per mile this is not a very good deal unless you really need a rental car. So I don't recommend renting in bulk just for the miles. Unless of course you can get that price down to ~$72 all in. ;)

Buy retail and sell wholesale, is that what you are saying or did I misunderstand???

I almost feel foolish for responding to this because it's so ludicrous but, in case this is not a joke, you can trust me when I tell you (I used to be a florist) that you cannot resell flowers that you bought from FTD to a vendor even for half of what you paid for them.

Bobette