Selling miles
 

I have 39500+ frequent flier miles on Delta. I will never use them for a free ticket or any of there stuff. I was thinking about selling them on websites like air-awards.com or www.mileageaward.com.

Has anyone ever did this? Any pros or cons?

Thanks for advice in advance.

How about it's illegal for you to resell miles?

Or that if the airline found out, they'd be within their rights to freeze your account?

But if he doesn't care and will never use DL again, the risk isn't as great as someone who cares about their skymiles account.

how do sites like these stay in business then?

Risk management. They're betting that the big airlines won't stamp on them as long as their operation is small. But if the big airline's FF programs decide it's worth their effort to stamp out this company, then they will.

I wouldn't be surprised if you were blacklisted from other FF programs. Just spend it on a ticket or something.. or donate the miles.

Donate the miles? That brings up an interesting dilemma. I wanted to donate a 25K AA voucher to a non profit group to auction off. I verfied first that it was ok with AA. They said NO I could not do that.

How would someone donate miles to a non profit?

Most airlines offer a handful of organizations that they have selected to be eligible to receive your mileage donations.

With continental, you can donate to four or five groups via onepass.com. The process is not as automated as they try to make it seem, but it usually works.

First of all it is not illegal to sell or buy miles. It may be not allowed in the policy but you are not breaking any laws. A recent lawsuit brought by Delta torwads a mileage broker in New Jersey was thrown out of court becuase the court claimed there was no merit. You will always run the risk of Delta finding out but if you know what you are doing you will have no problems.

A better idea would be to tank up your miles with a cheap mileage run to get the mileage account up to a level that you can use.

At least in California you are breaking a criminal law.

Why not transfer the Delta SkyMiles to the Hilton HHonors program? You would get two HHonors points per Delta mile. (I believe the transfer must be of 5,000 mile increments.)

Kathy

Really. Could you provide a citation?

There are no laws on the books in any state regarding the selling of frequent flyer miles. You are merely violating the contract between the airline and yourself. At that point the airline has the option of terminating your account and taking away all of your miles. They can also require a person to pay for a ticket if they are caught at the airport.

How about selling upgrade certs? Isn't that against the rules too?

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI...tem=1291417800

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Who is John Galt?
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AS Flyer,

If you are breaking a contract you are not violating a criminal law. That would be a civil suit, totally outside the criminal system. Though the totality of the results of the civil suits surrounding is mixed with regard to which party prevailed, other than in cases of fraud beyond the mere selling of miles, I don't recall any criminal actions

The California law isn't against selling miles. It's against "using any ticket in violation of its terms of carriage" or similar language. So, if anyone is at risk under this law, it would be whoever bought the miles and tried to use the award ticket. Since the seller isn't using a ticket, he or she is not (under this statute) performing an illegal act.

[I am not a lawyer. As legal advice, this is worth no more than you paid for it, perhaps less.]

I am not aware of anyone being charged under this law for using an award ticket purchased in violation of an airline's FF program policy, but I haven't looked very hard. If anyone knows of a case (not "my brother-in-law had this waitress at a diner who said the person who delivers their ketchup has another customer who ...," but REALLY knows) I'd like to hear about it.

If you really don't care about what Delta might do to your account, I'd say the other risks are negligible.

However, a long discussion of this here may not be a good idea. Randy Petersen, who provides us with this site as a free service, depends on the airlines' good will for his livelihood. Anything that could be interpreted as encouraging people to violate airline rules will not endear him to them.

Personally, I'd do one of two things:

(1) Ask Delta what their list of charities is and pick the one I like most.

(2) Top up the account to 40,000 miles by sending someone flowers, and give a 40K award to my favorite niece/nephew/etc.

California has all sorts of anti consumer laws that I question are ever enforced. A good example is the seller of travel fee's any travel agent that does business in california has to purchase. Any agent that sells a ticket to/from California has to pay the yearly fee even if they are not based in california. I would like to know how many non California based agents are even aware of this requriement in the first place. Seems like most non-California agents are breaking the law every time they sell a ticket to/from California.

California Penal Code section §483:

Added in 1979. Welcome to the wonderful empire of California. Think some heavy lobbying might have gotten this passed?

Now find me anyone that has been prosecuted under this statute... And note that it does not apply to buyers...

[Edited to fix quote]

[This message has been edited by Always Flyin (edited 11-01-2001).]

It looks like I stand corrected, at least from a technical point of view, and in California only... however, what an idiotic law

So far as donating miles goes....

You may mean well, but you are really only helping the airlines. They burn liabilities, while giving away seats that cost them nothing as they otherwise would have been empty.

Why don't I see sick kids filling the empty seats on airplanes? If the airlines cared, they'd let people in need go standby for free at anytime. Give the airlines my miles? Very funny. It costs them about $5 to let those people on the plane. They don't need my or your miles.

My advice, save your miles for a time when you or a family member or friend need them. Bereavement fares are often higher than unrestricted coach. That's when miles are really worth their weight in gold.

Well, I'll be...... I stand corrected also. I guess I'm not always right... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Don't put the contagious kids next to me!!!

Good idea, BoSoxFan. You never know when you'll need to fly somewhere immediately, and that's like keeping an insurance policy in your back pocket.

That said, I'm in favor of selling miles/tickets. The airlines are losing so much money at this point I would think that FF mile "security" budgets have been reduced, if not eliminated.

You could also put them into Diners Club 1:1 and have ~40,000 Diners Club points which could be used for a lot of thing and at a minimum 20,000 miles on another airline, 40,000 on British Air most summers).

Always Flyin: Thank you for finding the statute for me, I have been busy.

I'm not sure (and btw, I'm not a lawyer) that this statute prohibits the sale of FF *miles*. NB that "mileage or commutation book" as well as "thereof from which it was detached" strongly suggests that this provision applies to tangible tickets or ticket books (i.e., not intangible "miles" or "points.") Of course, since selling miles would require the cooperation of the airline FF department to transfer from one person's account to another, this distinction is probably moot. Oh well...

(On the other hand, there may be useful exceptions in the other sections noted.)

p.s. - And ditto the thanks to Always Flyin for tracking down that cite. I'd never heard of that one before...

[This message has been edited by Lucky5 (edited 11-02-2001).]

It's not clear to me that the State of California has jurisdiction over commerce in interstate travel. Doesn't the Constitution specifically reserve that to the Federal government?

QL: In this instance I don't believe that interstate commerce is relevant. First, it is a criminal statute on the individual doing the transaction. (Anyone driving a car on a freeway is potentially engaged in interstate commerce, but you can still get a speeding ticket.) Secondly, I am fairly certain that there isn't any federal statute to the contrary, so no express preemption. Third, by memory, the courts have determined that you can even sue an airline, in state court, over certain types of claims which are not deemed to be preempted.

So, I would suspect that states do have the power.

How do you transfer the miles to your Hilton account?

From someone who has sold well over 2.5 million of their own frequent flyer miles (not necessarily me) here are a few suggestions:

1. NEVER involve a 3rd party (an online mileage broker for example) in the transaction, they only complicate matters plus they are unnecessary as there are too many easy ways to deal directly with potential buyers (newspaper or online classifieds, ebay, etc) without a middle man taking his cut.
2. ALWAYS tell the potential buyer that your award ticket is 100% transferable but also warn them that the airline says that the miles shouldn't be bought/sold/bartered.
3. Tell the potential buyer that should they be asked by the airline if they bought the ticket they should reply that you GAVE them the ticket - along the same lines if the prospect of telling a lie at the check-in counter causes the buyer a moral dilemma then you should advise them to NOT buy your award ticket but to rather purchase a conventioinal ticket from a travel agent or directly from the airline.
4. Make sure that the buyer has your contact info (and vice versa) should they need it in the highly unlikely event that the airline does give them the third degree about the ticket. If both you and the buyer assert that the ticket wasn't sold then how can the airline prove otherwise? At the same time make sure that the buyer is able to quickly answer the question from the ticket clerk, "Who transferred this ticket to you?", if their answer is , "Duhh…" then they may shoot themselves in the foot.

Here is the webpage with instructions on how to exchange airline miles for Hilton HHonors points:

http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rew...change_1.jhtml

Kathy

I sell my miles through brokers also to
family and friends. The airlines can't have their cake and eat it too. I'm not here to kiss ... to the airlines.
I hate them and they can blow me.
Sell your miles make aprofit then make a friends with employees and get some free buddy passes like me. Just a thought.

I'm not getting buddy passes so I can fly STANDBY!! That's ridiculous!! Then I reaaly would be "kissing arse" to the airlines because I would have to wait until THEY had enough room for me to fly.

[This message has been edited by IM4Travel (edited 11-05-2001).]