Points.com investigative work
 

Well here is what I found out from points.com

Transferring from (A) 1,000 miles into (B) Clickrewards:

Air Canada - doesn't participate
American West - 75
American - 62
Beenz - doesn't participate
Midwest Express - 87
Phone Hog - 500

If anyone else has usefull tidbits, or thinks about better ways to convert please speak up.

My goal is to get my miles into NorthWest WorldPerks, and this is why I am leaning toward using ClickRewards.

American -> American West = 10 to 0.97
American West -> American = 10 to 1.17

American -> Midwest Express = 10 to 0.9748908
Midwest Express -> American = 10 to 1.3648472

American -> Click Rewards = 10 to 0.6201388
Click Rewards -> American = n/a

Points.com's exchange ratio is too ridiculous to be useful. Here are some examples:

To get 25,000 ClickMiles, you would need to spend 400,000 AAdvantage miles. Just to put it in perspective, 400000 AA miles can get you 16 domestic roundtrips. 25,000 ClickMiles can get you 1 roundtrip.

OR

You could spend 320,000 AA miles to get 20,000 ClickMiles, which can be moved to Starwood and redeemed for 25,000 airline miles.

Points.com also does the same with America West miles...and the ratio is a bit cheaper. Its 270,000 America West miles = 20,000 ClickMiles.

You can play around with this at http://www.points.com/calculator.jsp

Can someone point out a good reason why I would burn almost half a million AA miles to get 25,000 ClickMiles?

Air Canada -> Midwest Express = 10 to 1.4168933
Midwest Express -> Air Canada = n/a

Beenz -> Air Canada = 10 to 1.5875733
Beenz -> America West = 10 to 1.5292576
Beenz -> American = n/a
Beenz -> Click Rewards = n/a
Beenz -> Midwest Express = 1.5292576
Beenz -> Phonehog = 10 to 0.5002857

Gosh...these are FAR worse ratios than I ever imagined!?!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif <- 1st time ever using that one!


Dorian

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I agree completely. What ridiculous conversion efficiencies!

FewMiles..

But wait -- there's more!

There is a $5.95 per-use fee for exchanging points after the first exchange. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

Of course, you can avoid the fee by enrolling in a "pointsplus" account for $14.95 per year.

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He who dies with the most miles ... is dead.

[This message has been edited by ontheroad (edited 04-02-2001).]

I don't think ANYONE - even old moms & pops who are not technically savvy about the loyalty programs business would be foolish enough to burn 400,000 pts for 20,000 pts. Can anyone guess why American Airlines of all people decided to associate itself with these guys? I would think United would be the first, since AA already has AOLAAdvantage...!?

I can transfer 5 miles from Midwest Express for 1 AAL miles. Either that is a rounding error, or I could improve the (lousy) ratio and transfer from Midwest to AA several hundred times.

But, it's $5.95 per transaction. But I can get a yearly plan for $14.95. Hmmm...

"No matter how you slice liverwurst, it smells like liverwurst."

[This message has been edited by ontheroad (edited 04-02-2001).]

....no it isn't?

Points.com sucks the big time.

If you need to transfer miles between programs, HHonors is the way to go. HHonors is free!

The only use I can see is if I have 500 or 1,000 lonely miles sitting somewhere. Since I rarely use anybody besides NWA, I would probably take the hit to get less than 100 clickrewards (because at least it would be something).

I didn't know about the $5.95 fee though. I'll have to read up on that.

I may do a one time purge of all my vacant accounts to see if I can get up to a couple hundred clickrewards.

I agree, it seems really crappy.