Miles kept by the Corporation
 

Hi! Does anyone have any information on corporations keeping FF miles?
Any info on studies that evaluate administration costs to maintain program?

Thanks!

Are you writing an article for publication?

Welcome to FT. I would imagine corporations or individuals wouldn't want to release any information if they kept employees miles or required the employees to turn them over. I didn't even think they were allowed to do this since all FF account are suppose to be private.

I worked for a company that kept the miles. We had to sign Power of Attorney forms to give them the right to run our accounts.

Fortunately, the company merged with another company which did not have this policy and we got to keep our miles. Since I also had personal FF accounts, I had to merge the corporate account into my personal account. This apparently is not too common, because it took a lot of effort on my part to make it happen.

I was talking with some people, and either their company or the government (in the case of Federal employees) required them to turn over their miles to their employer. They simply refused to join any FF program, or if they were already a member they didn't bother giving out the number.

I can't imagine a company forcing one of their employees to join a FF program, and forcing them to use it.

A lot of companies have found that the bookkeeping gets to be more trouble than it's worth, and the cost in employee resentment can be very high.

The Federal government finally abandoned this practice several years ago. I recall a thread on FT a few years back. FF accounts are deliberately made personal accounts. That is something that either escapes some people or compells them to try to find ways to circumvent the programs in order to capture the value. Personally, I consider such policy decisions to be small-minded, at best; right up there with Wal-Mart's infamous "unpaid mandatory overtime" shenanigans.

No - just analyzing my companie's process for retention and administration of FF miles.

I could drive the bean-counters crazy if they tried to do this.

I suppose they can get you a Frequent Flyer account and then put that number on the record when you fly on company business- not much you can do about that.

But, if you have existing accounts and they just want you to use the miles you got on company flights for company business, how do they handle, say, mileage bonuses if you attained Elite status through a combination of business and pleasure travel? Even if that doesn't happen, they'd have to track what mileage you earned from business travel to separate it from miles you earned through pleasure travel, credit card purchases, etc.

May I ask what industry you're in and whether this is a small, medium or large company? This is a pretty rude policy.

If your company's employees fly Delta, the company can get many of the benefits of a "corporate" FF program by signing up for the SkyBonus program. It's free. And I believe at least some, if not all of the other major airlines have similar programs. It also removes virtually all of the accounting headaches and the employee resentment issues mentioned above.

Delta SkyBonus

(I have no affiliation with Delta other than as a customer)

MFG large company. One of the many management issues is trying
to manage "Elite" status, 2 cards (personal/business) etc. One card has
business address - other card is for personal miles kept by traveler.

You're not the pointy haired boss, are you...?................ :D

..

From the Northwest Airlines program rules:

"Corporations or other legal entities cannot be enrolled as members.
Only one person may be enrolled per WorldPerks account.

"An individual may have only one account and that must be in his/her real (legal) name. Membership will be listed under the participant's full name including title (Mr., Ms., etc.) and middle initial.

Employer policies to capture FF miles are penny-wise and pound foolish because they breed contempt and send a poor message about how the employer values the time away from home and associated hassles of being on the road. You also make a point about elite status. Since more than 90% of my travel is personal, how do you think I would feel about being told to maintain a separate, non-elite account and sitting in the back because of an employer policy? The bottom line is that the employee is being told to give up far more than the value the employer is likely to receive (if anything) so it's a bad policy move.

Aussie FTers may have additional info but to the best of my knowledge Australian Government employees need to waive their rights to miles accrued while on Government's trips.