Does anyone remember Nick Cage in Family Man where the girl in the conv. store doesn't fess up to getting too much change and the angel says "for a lousy nine bucks!"

That is what runs through my mind when I watch otherwise responsible business people scam (not work the angles - that is merely tiresome to watch) airlines, hotels, and rental car companies.

I'd be fascinated to read this dissertation, should anyone transcribe it from Liverpuddlian to English to American. :-)

There are several web travel agencies built on selling premium cabin seats which the "agents" pay people to book with miles, and then sell on.

Some of them advertise here on FT - and are quite open about what they are doing.

Ehem, many things have a round about way of getting something from us... I too noticed the "earn 500 miles on United" link when I checked deaper into some of the things listed online at the OP's university!

I am so TOTALLY kidding - besides, everyone knows that if it's a third party partner for United miles, you'd probably never get them in your account anyway.



(ok resume normal posting please - sorry )

Anyway, concerning fraud, I think one of the interesting "benefits" of the post-9/11 ear for the airlines is that they were able to invent, insert, enforce and charge for all kinds of new changes that made it harder for scammers to get away with many of the things from the recent past. Not that 99% of us would have really gone out of our way to do these anyway, but here are some things you USED to be able to do with greater ease than now:

-selling of awards/miles/vouchers

-flying as someone else (heck I did it, that was college!)

-changing plans at the last minute and just rebooking

-booking several awards and then canceling them to take the flight you wanted.

-having many award seats available that worked the same as cash did

-PAYING with cash!

-and so on...

Maybe the disertation will have some of the comparisons and newly installed stoppers to things from yesteryear VS. today.

carry on!
MM

Please note there is a difference between the UK and the US in the usage of 'dissertation' and 'thesis'. Here in the UK you write a dissertation at Masters level and a thesis at PhD. As I understand it in the US the terms are used in the opposite sense.

There are plenty of UK universities that require dissertations at MBA level - you can even buy a book on it:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Your.../dp/1844800997

I'm sure the OP will be gracious in accepting your apology for casting aspersions

{References now deleted posting}

I have learnt a story of a guy in U.K. trying to input his membership number of the same Family name to accrue miles without him flying and redeeming miles himself for award ticket around the world. He is not an airline staff. A big cheater.

After reading your initial post, I also wondered about which way you were headed.
Sorry to hear it's about "us" defrauding "them" and not the other way around.

The very, very few people who get away with a "scam" - or acquire/use miles in a manner the airline doesn't like - are far and few and pale in comparison to the contstantly changing rules and increasing limitations that the airlines continually dump on us consumers which make it harder and harder to redeem the miles they tempt us with on a daily basis.

I hope the airlines don't get a copy of your paper. Thanks for nuthin'!

Add me to the group that (seems to) think(s) you picked the "wrong fight".

Though I am sure there is some fraud against the airlines or hotel...by FAR I feel the greater fraud (though it may not be legal fraud in terms of rule of law, so we'll call it "ethically challenged") lies in how the programs work to our disaadvantage (oops, spelling malfunction), or how the affinity benefactor changes T&C right under our feet...over and over and over...or dilutes to the point of exhaustion...or puts in slick and stealthy capacity controls such that they *know* the rate of redemption is poor to essentially non-available. I am surprised the term "loyalty" enters the discussion any longer...lets face it...affinity programs have simple evolved into a "frequent buying program".

"They" ("they" = airline or hotel chain) have to offer "it" ("it" = affinity proram), to be competitive...but then try "they" immediately begin to figure out the slick ways to dilute, defer, deduct (set increasingly shorter redemption time limits (US Air and United being most-recent malcreants for this slick trick)) or hope the miles/points are never redeemed to begin with...so they can book literally INFINITE ROI ($0 / unredeemend award = infinite ROI in my book) profits. Once in a while we consumers get a rare & random "taste" of the loyalty these programs once induced, and I also maintain the very highest tiers of most of these programs do see tangible benefit...but CAVEAT EMPTOR if one is mid-tier or worse yet, no tier w/ any of these entities.

Good luck w/ your dissertation. I think you're missing the forest for the trees in a baad way. My take is that you might as well be doing a Human Interest story on Oswald and are overlooking the story that begs to be told in a professional and objective manner.

You might want to PM the OP of this thread. If willing, I think he could be of help to you.

I do hope that during your study of this issue, you get curious about why some otherwise normally ethical people would try to defraud an airline. There are lots of hints in this thread, all relating to the fact that airlines are beginning to seem to be a bit sleazy by many people.

I would be interesting to investigate whether or not the rate of redemption availablity for tickets is inversely proportional to the rate of fraud upon the airline.

Very well said!

I can tell you for one, I totally want to take advantage of a system of obtuse policy-ridden top heavy business that often makes me suffer more than making me feel pleased with what I spent on its products. Oh, sure, some could sit there and try to argue that it's cuz of cats like me that they HAVE problems to begin with, but I do not subscribe to this belief at all.

no, the airlines do a crappy job at nearly everything except one thing:

Flying itself is a pretty decent thing. That, the pilot is mostly trained for--even if he's drunk.

Nearly everything else surrounding the actual FLIGHT part of travel is littered with problems and issues and that's just got to change. If it does not, I will probably keep on keeping on, and continue to find a way to try and beat the system. I don't act this way, actually, in ANY other thing I do in life!! Just airline crap, cuz they stink at CS and a host of other things.

OK, so if they stop giving miles out or something, maybe that will stop me from finding loopholes that reap some of the benefits of programs, but on the other hand, maybe I will also travel less too, and then they lose another customer to the automobile.

I dunno. If your car stops working for you, you bike or walk or change the appointment you had to a better time closer to home.

There's definitely a grey area here, because there are a number of actions that airlines prohibit but that aren't otherwise illegal. Flying extra, unnecessary segments, or ticketing tricks, for example. Most people would also probably rate the selling or bartering of award tickets about where they would with ticket scalping, but to airlines it's a much graver offense. Ditto with selling certs on eBay.

Like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, you can give words any meaning you choose. So define "fraud" anyway you like for yourself, but you are fundamentally misinformed as to the meaning of "fraud" as the law in the United States and the UK understands it. Something does not become "fraudulent" just because "a program specifically forbids such practices and you have agreed to the membership conditions," then done that something inconsistent with the membership terms.

If I have say, 100,000 AA miles but rarely fly on them and so I book awards for a friend of mine who DOES want to fly their routes, but has no miles...

That's ok.

Now... if he books ME an award on NWA because he has lots of miles on them and I have none, that's ok too, right?

Yup.

OK, so whos to say we did a trade? Or did not trade?

Both things above are ok.

If that friend buys me a beer for the fact I booked him a trip with my miles, is that ok? Who wouldnt accept a free beer from a friend? I might say, oh no worries man, it's totally on me, but hey, if you are gonna buy me a cold one to enjoy at the bar together, then yeah, I will take it!

So, is that beer considered compensation or bartering for this award ticket I got you?

My friend and I are traveling out west to ski in Mar in CA. I am going to use my UA miles to fly us both. He is going to buy our lift tickets. We have been friends for over 20 years. Dayum, I'd probably buy his plane ticket anyway... and he'd probably hook me up with ski passes anyway too.

Did we barter?

These are very GRAY areas.

Now, if one of us did this as some ongoing business with people we do not know, THEN the world of lurkers, airline policy, and big brother sudenly considers it FRAUD.

Funny how the world works when it WANTS to see things a certain way, or just wants to let things go cuz they dont really count, eh?

This is where this paper could have some rather "liquid" arguements to it, or have to ignore a whole portion of the reality of trades and hook ups, and such things. If it does talk about some of the situations I bring up above, then it needs to discuss the overall psychology of all of us, and that will be hard!

MM