Read it and Weep...
 

I found out today, when my mother-in-law arrived at the airport, that she had used 35,000 UA miles to fly ("FC") from BUR-SFO!! AND she got terrible scheduling (flights too early and too late, here too long even for her...) It was enough to make a grown woman cry. Next year we will buy her ticket for her. To think that there is a flight to Maui that could have been had ..... :(

It is quite tragic how ill-informed people are about their consumer options. When the currency is not cash, people have a harder time understanding their options and the best returns/value.

Woah, what an incredible waste of miles. :(

I just booked a 35k trip from HNL-SFO on UA for a friend and I thought that was a waste of miles... (flight was around $500) For your M-I-L, though, not worth weeping over. I hope she enjoyed the flight, learned a lesson and moves on.

aloha

To be honest, I didn't have the heart to even begin to tell her what she had done. I just resolved to send her a ticket next year before she could even think about doing it again!

Funny how things like this makes us mile-mongers cringe.

On AA, just got 4 tix for LIH-LAX-MIA-LIM-MIA-LAX-LIH at 35,000 miles each. :)

Hate to be the bearer of even more bad news, but she could have flown First Class on those flights for even fewer miles.

That's because United has had an "Award Sale" on flights of under 750 miles for several months now, thru the end of the year:

Is BUR-SFO a CRJ?

oh brother.

It can be. But they also fly 737s and A320s on this route.

whose fault IS it really?
 

My first inclination was to wonder how the woman could have been so willing to spend that many miles to fly that routing, and how she could have been "not so smart" about it. BUT, then I think of my own mother, who comes from a time when you actually could and would believe the advice of someone in customer service of a company to which you do loyal business.

What of the person at the airline who so willingly took her miles and didn’t even inform her of better, more economical options? I know some would have but not that airline!

WOW!
what a scam!

...and some people tell me it's wrong to try my hardest to find ways around all the rules in the airline world?

fahgetaboutit!

:)MM

"Read it and Weep"?

oh.

I'm far from perfect on my Airport Identifiers but as I interpret the above it deciphers as:

Lihue (Kauai, Hawaii) - Los Angeles - Miami - LIMA PERU - MIA - LAX - LIH

If the above interpretation is true I must have missed something. Is there an AA reduced mileage sale/promotion going on where one can go from HI to South America for only 35K miles?

Deleted

Maybe you can call UA and tell them that the customer service agent issued the incorrect award, if the short haul awards were available, and recover some of the miles back.

Chances! I don't think that will happen. Chalk it up to a good lesson and let it go!

Yup, most of public doesn't understand the return/value of FF miles. I had a hard time explaining that buying a ticket if under $200 rather than cashing in 25K miles is the better to one of my aunt. She thought she was saving $200 and my arguement didn't make any sense. But she learned the lesson later when she had to fly in short notice...

That occurred to me too. Not sure what happened; she got the ticket in October. I was too busy trying to keep from crying to ask questions :D

Yes. And actually, SAAver non-peak tickets from Hawaii to northern part of South America can be had for 30K miles. (Go to aa.com for details.)

Now that's a good value for your miles.

I know from dealing with my 80-year old mother that sometimes she gets an idea in her head and no one can dislodge it--not even someone from United trying to talk her out of something she really wants to do.

I also know from some of the postings on FT, that one does not have to have 80 years in order to have a little resistance to logic, etc. :)

My In-Laws take about 2 trips a year, one to Vegas and one to a NACAR race. I've been booking their tickets for the past three years, and when I found out they didn't have ff# the first time I set them up I signed them up and just shook my head over all the miles lost over the years. To top it off, I was told by my father-in-law that it was a bad idea; now the airlines were sending him credit card offers and other junk mail. :rolleyes:

Maybe he will see things differently when they both have 25K in miles after their trip next month to LAS. For them, just getting them to use a ff account was a small victory, it will still be a while until they understand the value of a mile!

Last year, my boss (a reasonably intelligent man but with little frequent flyer savvy) was so excited because he redeemed two 25,000 miles awards to travel from DFW to Albuquerque for a long weekend. He booked well in advance so of course that same weekend, DFW to ABQ was a netsaaver at about $129 per ticket.

I mentioned that he could fly from DFW to Anchorage with a free stopover for the same number of miles (Alaska is one of his dream vacations) and he just gave me a puzzled look. He gives me the same look when he finds out that I flew to Paris for the weekend for the experience and for the miles.

Thank goodness for FlyerTalk and its great group of people who understand!

The general perception of award tics is they are "free tickets". Consequently, non-FT flyers assign no value to these tics and as such I am sure we will continue to see people using award tics for no reason other than to feel that they got a "good" deal.

In all honesty, I wouldn't be at all surprised if most United Reservations agents had never heard of the Award Sale that's going on. They have no access on their computers to those awards at all. They can't even see them being offered. They are offered on the web site only.

Well...if United doesn't make it very far into next year, it could very well be your Mom that might be the one smiling at her suddenly good decision to use her miles back when they were still worth something. ;)

Remember...He who has the most miles when his program dies, is the loser! ;)

I think UAl will survive but US Air will go.
In fact I think I will start a thread on this topic

happy holiday!
:)MM

There are some non-obsessive people out there who really believe that these tickets ARE free. They acquired the miles through credit card spending or some such and thus attach no perceived dollars spent to them. I know of many folks who would cash in 25k miles for domestic awards (and I, too, fly out of LCC heaven, MCO) and take the $200 and spend it on something that they cannot get with FF miles.

Stevekoe

Yeh but can you go from LIH to MIA or vice versa? Does it exist for 35k miles?

I wouldn't worry about people who don't use miles in the best manner.

Redeeming miles is a zero-sum game. Every person who finds out how best to maximize their miles is one less award seat on that long flight to LIH for the rest of us.

I strongly encourage everyone to tell their friends and co-workers to not hesitate burning miles for DFW-ABQ and BUR-SFO round trips. :)

Loose lips sink ships. :D

yikes.

I spent 20k on CO and went from TIJuana, Mex to EZE with stops in PTY and MEX :cool:

I'm with JS!

I dont' agree. My guess was she was probably using my logic, of what I have more of, cash or miles. I have hundreds of thousands of miles, I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've taken flights using miles when I knew I could have been going someplace way different, but it was because I had the miles at the time, and not the cash.

The value of the miles isn't in how far you can go with them. The value in these miles was that she used them to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Then again, you probably can't put a value on that at all.

You can't fault somebody for using miles to visit the family for the holidays, no matter how silly of a trip that was.

impressed!
 

If you can tell me how to do this, or even just how to get to PTY this cheaply in miles, I will be forever in your debt. I originate from MSY.

Several years ago, my Grandmother used something like 95,000 UA miles to get a free DVD player, worth all of $125. She accumulated most of them over about 10 years, a trip or two a year and a UA credit card. She had no idea of their value.

She was so proud of herself for getting something so valuable "for nothing more than some worthless points." As sick to my stomach as I was, I didn't have the heart to tell her, either.

Bullseye, JS..
 

Bingo. While I hate to see a fellow FTer's parent waste frequent flyer miles, the large number of people out there that don't bother saving/redeeming miles at all or blow them on a "low value" reward make it possible for the reward levels to be what they are for those of us that are savvy. If every flyer in the world had the savvy that people on this site do, then the airlines wouldn't offer much of an awards program since it would be losing tons of money to the likes of us overall.

I paid for just two cheapo flights on Delta after also getting in on the IC Hotel deal in August and am now about to use the 50,000 miles I have with them (started at zero) to go to N. Africa. Two mid-range domestic and one mid-range int'l ticket for about $500 after tax? They simply couldn't afford these loyalty programs if everyone were like us when it comes to playing the game.

peace,
~Ben~

My brother is just as bad, he wanted to go from DTW to MCI and instead of buying a $171 fare, he cashed in 25,000 miles. He wouldn't listen to me that he was spending the equivilent of $500, people need to respect their miles more.

Ah, that is really the problem. In general, I don't disagree about others' ineffeciencies being to my advantage. But in this case, since I could have bought her the ticket and used her miles, I am still sniffling a little :D

British Airways offers '2 for 1' mileage redemptions (one per year) to holders of its Amex card who spend £15,000.

Most of us on the BA board use these to get 2 long-haul First or Business flights for the miles of one (up to £7,000 / $15,000 value per ticket). The BA staff who post on the board will tell you that most people use them to claim a second free ticket to Paris or Nice (retail value £69 / $110).

I just priced first class from Burbank to San Fran for a one week trip in
January at $608.20. There may not be many of us who would pay that
for that seat. But there must be somebody :confused:

This thread reminds me of times where I used miles to redeem an business flight from SCL-IPC (55K each) for me and my aunt. The time I spent 60K miles to fly my sister in business for a weekend. Or, the time I spent 25K to upgrade my mom and grandmother.

Was each occassion the best use of my hard earned miles? Maybe not. However, the fun to having my aunt with me at IPC, being able to pester my sister (and get pestered in return) like we used to do when we were little or the pride I felt of having my grandmother comment casually to the entire family that the seat and service that she received on her trip where the best ever, are moments that no amount of money or miles would ever buy.

I too chase the holy grail of less than $0.02 per mile earning. I sign up for the promotions and bonuses, attempt to maximize my flight segments, and have turned milage runs into mini-vacations (or is it the other way around?). I enjoy my elite status benefits. My family has commented on my apparent "obsession" with miles, and my friends have commented on the trips that I take.

Although I certainly don't fly the miles that most people do around here or have their milage balances, I have certainly enjoyed how I have earned and spent mine. To me, there is certainly more to this game than just numbers.

SAVE THEM! Tampa has the same issue. With any kind of advanced planning and flexibility, you can fly nearly anywhere in the 48 for $200+/-.

I only use miles for 2 things: Expensive emergency travel (death/illness in the family) & international (or Hawaii) travel. You get so much better bang for you mile using them for international. Plus, I've found myself "accidentally" earning free domestic trips on Southwest and AirTran from time to time.... if you travel a lot from Florida airports, you may find it starts happening to you as well.

:rolleyes: :td:

Alas! Alas! Alas!