Well, after badmouthing MilePoint in some earlier messages, I found some high-end items in The Sharper Image catalog that I wanted to buy and figured it would be a good time to give MilePoint a try.

Signed up with a few orphaned FF accounts, and headed off to the land of 10% discounts to do some shopping.

Well, even though The Sharper Image is "represented" by Skymall, only a fraction of The Sharper Image catalog is available through Skymall. None of the items I was looking for were available. Name brands like Sony, which are featured in The Sharper Image catalog, are not available.

What a scam.

I thought the 10% cap on mile redemption was bad enough, but being forced to use them on a "subset of selected products" is dishonest and smells of a bait-and-switch.

No wonder Crandall loves this concept. Get them in the stores but force them to shop in the "high margin" aisle of the store (high enough to support another middleman like Skymall).

If it looks like a scam, weasel-words like a scam, smells like a scam, well........ Ima glad I did not waste any time with it. Thanks for the acurate timely info!

MisterNice

Tino: If you are looking for a deal @ Sharper Image go to:
www.sharperimage.com/amex www.sharperimage.com/entertainment

Thanks for the tip - I will definitely give it a shot. I had mentioned in earlier posts that anyone wanting to get a good price from these stores can usuaully find a better deal from a promotion without giving up any miles.

I still wish that I could use miles for a more expensive item, though. Oh well. If it looks too good to be true...

It is a big disapointment that one cannot use miles alone for a purchase, and miles only count towards typically 10% of a purchase.

And while the milepoint web site says that miles are good are cash, they are not and cannot be used in conjunction with a coupon or any other offer. I was making a purchase at Amazon electronics where they have a coupon for $15 off a $100 purchase. I redeemed TWA miles at milepoint to get an additional discount. But I could not use the milepoint certificate. I wrote to milepoint, they took over a week to respond to me and said that they would put my miles in a special milepoint account for future use, but what am I going to do with those points? I have asked them to credit back my TWA account, and they have not responded back to me.

Tino--I agree with you that it is a disappointment so far. Hope it improves, or it will die quickly.

Interesting article:
http://www.colloquy.com/online/curre...4/pubnotes.asp

Agreed. When you can get same stuff elsewhere for 10+ % off, why throw away the miles. They need to get to at least 20% off or lower prices to get buy-in, IMHO.

Very interesting article, Eugene. Thanks for the link.

Very interesting article. I find the following quote from the article very interesting:
When I was buying from Amazon I had a choice of using no miles and using a $15 coupon code for the purchase and I could also double dip and get an additional cash back. Or I could burn 750 miles at milepoint and get the same $15 off.

Isn't Randy connected with MilePoint?

It was certainly HYPED enough here and in the magazine...

Until you can make a 100% "mileage purchase", why bother?

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Time..... is on my side.

Yes geordie6, Randy Peterson is connected with MilePoint. He is on their Board of Advisors as a Senior Advisor.

Thanks MrLimo.