United's
Now, if it were 500 miles up front, or even if there were some tangible indication that it makes a difference...

We interrupt this discussion...
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPyl2tOaKxM

"...Half-humor, whole-serious."

To tell the truth.. these contests for hypothetical miles, is a just a big waste of time to me..

The time I spend winning a few miles, could be used to earn many more miles that will result in tangible FF redemption travel..

As does Delta for charging for fuel on partner awards..

Rereading the thread topic.. The most invested for the least return..

I guess a loss wouldn't be a return at all..

As does, or did, DL for charging extra for all partner awards. As I recall, when they showed CO itineraries during award searches, there was a surcharge for them when you reached the end, everytime. Don't know if this is still the case with other partners.

Maybe the fuel charges have to do with AC.. as AC's fuel charges a surcharge more than other *A airlines..

How much were these surcharges usually.. was it for fuel? or convenience of booking?

This was when CO was in the SkyMiles network, before they decided to merge with UA and shifted over to *A.

It was for convenience of booking, though in my book, all these partner arrangements are for the convenience of the airlines. I think it was about $50, but can stand to be corrected.

I'm not too impressed with DL for doing that..

Hopefully they stop this practice..

I had a good experience with DL, having signed up onto their program this last Christmas Break. as a result of super low fare to MCO..

But the point system, the availability of flights for FF redemption, and surcharges to book on partner airlines (now that its mentioned here), does not impress me at all..

The nice thing is for foreign accounts, the miles don't expire.. so I still may give them another try, but I'm definitely not going out of my way to use DL..

+2 lol

Club Bing for Delta Skymiles. I was new to the miles thing, and looking for free and easy ways to get miles. I came out with 600 skymiles after hours of play mind-numbing games. Even if I value for these miles at 4cpm (the value of the award I wound up redeeming them for), that's only $24 worth of miles. Given the amount of time it took me to get them, I was making money at far below minimum wage.

Stamps.com Joke offer
 

Had similar problems, nightmare to cancel (offerred 3 additional months of Free service!) and never have received points. Very disappointing with Chase and shopping services.

How about earlier this year when Randy was offering the free trip to COS for the tour of the House of Miles? I made DOZENS of meaningless posts and didn't win :p

The focus of that thread was YQ charges. What I'm talking about was DL's convenience charge added for choosing a CO flight from DL's list of domestic-only award itineraries in a search, which made that itinerary that much more expensive than a DL-only itinerary on the same list. (Just like UA showing US itineraries -- except there was no charge for choosing US.) The greater rub with Delta was when the mileage hit was 10,000 more, or double, for the listed DL itineraries over the CO ones, when the O/D were the same.

Back to scheduled programming... :)