cocobird

San Francisco requires payment of a parking ticket before allowing a formal hearing to challenge the ticket. My $800 credit card charge ended up being returned to me in a check when I won my appeal.

mahasamatman

As far as FT is concerned, it seems to me that the most unusual way to earn miles is to fly.

CMK10

Like pudding, AA and Kellogg's had a promotion in the early 2000's where you could earn miles for buying cereal. My Dad was really into it so we ate a lot of Product 19 in our house.

IAD_flyer

I would say test driving a car for AA miles. I brought with me my mother (to double the offer) as my friends and other family members refused to come with me. They just filled out our coupons and my mother and I, did not have to test drive.

rev

I always felt the Softcard promotion felt a little weird compared to the normal methods of being rewarded since the only 'merchants' around me were vending machines. I'd put my phone up to this one public outdoor machine to pay $1.50 for a soda once a month and accumulated something around 3500 miles on United. I don't even drink soda so if I wasn't with anyone I just threw it out.

Firewind

We have a winner. ^

But that AA promotion for 7,500 miles for not driving a cadillac is a solid second.

Efrem

I bought a BMW back then (late 1998 for a 1999 model). I chose the dealer in part because they participated in a program that gave you an AA mile for every $4 of vehicle cost, so something north of 8,000 miles - and at the time those miles counted toward your million-miler level, too. Unfortunately, the miles never came through. My salesman kept trying. Nothing happened.

Then I had an inspiration. I suggested to my salesman that I buy six 14-box cases of Kellogg's Corn Flakes at about $2 per box on sale. They'd reimburse me for the cereal. I'd cut out the 100-mile coupons, then donate the cereal to a local food bank. Salesman ran it by the sales manager. He said OK. Had a lot of fun at the food bank with three or four of their volunteers cutting out the coupons. They thought it was a great idea, too!

Not too long after, AA imposed a limit on how many coupons one person could redeem in a year. I don't recall what the limit was, but I know I was over it. (I also sent in quite a few coupons from cereal I ate, though it wasn't Corn Flakes.) Good thing they didn't make it retroactive.

Had a similar experience with Buick. I drove up in the brand-new BMW from the first part of this thread, parked it next to the showroom window, went in, and said to the salesman who greeted me "I got this offer in the mail [show the coupon]. I also just bought that car [point]. Obviously, I'm not going to buy a Buick right now. Do I really have to drive one?" I didn't.

Firewind

A tangent ... It may not be unusual - actually it's mainstream now (q.v. above comments re earning miles by flying) - but it's taken to the extreme: Turbocarging mile-earning credit cards. There's a better term.

A couple of regulars at the DOs I sometimes attend claim to have done over 1,000,000 mi./yr. As I don't do it, some of their m.o. are .

...OK, quaintly naive?

DrRodneyMcKay

These are some spectacular stories. The most exciting things I can claim to have done is complain that there was a child sitting behind me on the plane (yes, it worked, I got 2500 Skypesos), tweeing, and searching via Bing.

Incidentally, how does one earn miles for test driving a car? (I'm considering purchasing a new one in the next few years anyway).

Firewind

There are infrequent special offers. Your best m.o.: "Watch This Space."

beachmouse

There's a thread in the S.P.A.M. section for the car test drive offers that's worth subscribing to for that, though these days they're usually for a $50 Amazon GC or prepaid Visa card with test drive instead of for miles.

IIRC, United somehow gives miles for actually buying one of the German luxury brands.

gatzdon

Wendy's/AirTran promo was fun. I had 4 Wendy's on my way home from work. For about 3 weeks, I stopped into each one on my way home, grabbed the cups off the top of each garbage can inside, and rinsed the cups out in their bathroom.

After about 3 weeks, two of them asked me to stop, but by then, I had enough for 14 round trip tickets.

Best stop was when a customer asked me what I was doing. I explained. Turned out she was there with a large group of students. As I'm walking out, she made a big announcement to her whole group to save their cups and turn them into her after they finished eating.

DaveInLA

My wife and I did the Cadillac thing. The salesman knew what we wanted and said he didn't want to waste our time or his, but sounded really annoyed about the while thing. We definitely weren't the first to do it with him.

SanDiego1K

You'll find some interesting ways in this post by gleff.

Buying silver dollars from the mint with no shipping cost and selling them to the bank was very popular in its hey day.

pinniped

Back in the day, there was at least one offshore sportsbook who gave AA miles with deposits (circa 1999...it was kind of the Wild West back then).