I think the king of it is Rudi on Miles and More / Swiss / Lufthansa

I think he bought 25000 packs of peppermint tea to earn 5,000,000 miles ... for the price of 50K CHF (that is 0.8 US c per mile!!) He just couldn't get more as the promotion was running out... there are a few runners up on this ...

He is famous in Switzerland ... because of it

Check the USAir boards for posts on the Get Out More promotion. US, probably trying some test marketing, offered the same double-miles promotion with several different codes. What they didn't realize was that the codes could be shared and they had no mechanism to prevent flyers from registering for all 6 codes available.

Thus, a CP would earn base miles, 100% CP match miles, and 6x matches through the promo, thus 8x miles.

So, just hypothetically now, if a CP was flying transcons every week, he (or she) would earn a free flight with every <$300 round-trip weekly flight. Theoretically.

Since the beginning of the year, my coworker has eaten at the nearby bowling alley at least every weekday to get his qualified dines.

This was supposedly similar to the flaw that existed for over a year and a half with the Holiday Inn Priority Club hotel points program. Taking advantage of all the promo codes I've heard could potentially earn half a million points in one year. A Microsoft exec did a Powerpoint presentation on this stated unethical points grab. Sorry don't have the link handy, it's in the IC Hotels forum.

-outoftown

How long ago was this? How much cheese did you wind up with? What did you do with the cheese? I trust you didn't run about yelling, "Who moved my cheese?"

now that I find comical.
the "exec" should have been concentrating on some of his own company's blatant acts of pure unethics, and maybe also invested some time into solving just one of the million bugs & viruses instead of blowing the whistle on a good promo loophole! :rolleyes:

some people...

;)MM

Bought $600 worth of cheese and donated it to a local homeless shelter. Got me 100,000 miles and a tax deduction.

I did the same. Netted ~650,000+ AA miles, and the local food pantry was happy happy happy to have shelf-stable cheez. Wish I had bought more, but the company caught wind of the rush on flyertalk and put the cabosh on it.

Which forums should I keep my eye on to find out deals like peppermint tea or cheese?

The relevant FF/airline forum or MilesBuzz or SPAM?

(Sorry for the n00b question, I only signed up last month)

Latin Pass million mile run ranks #1 for me. Second was buying Savings Bonds on my CC, and the many 25,000 mile offers from Sprint, MCI, etc. a few years ago. I had to use a spreadsheet to keep track of all the various long distance accounts I set up just for miles.

Although not a FFP, last year AGR had promos for 2X points, another for 3X points and still another for 3X points. (They were not meant to be combined, but it was discovered it worked! :D) Plus you got 100 points per segment. But through a loophole, if you broke that 1 segment into 4 segments (1 for each stop), you could earn 400 points per trip! And with the 2X and multiple 3X promos, it added up to 2,400 points per O/W trip!

So a short 2 hour R/T, with 4 segments and costing under $15, gave me 4,800 points! :D (Sadly this loophole was closed last spring. :()

And these AGR points could be converted 1:1 to FFPs - including CO!

Some of you that know me well are familiar with my insane success with Diners Club referrals back in the late 1990's. I'm still using miles from that promo to this day. :D

two kinds of extreme really
 

one kind: Bank deals, cheese, magazines (some really interesting, bizarre, lucrative stuff). I participated in some of those but think the better stories are with...

the other:

BIS extreme (butt in seat) earning for which my big 5 would be LatinPass million, SAS Fly 5 get 10 anywhere tickets, OneWorld 100k on any or ALL OW partners, KLM match (not much BIS work but a TON of miles) and my one bit of obscura... Chart House restaurants gave away 2 RTW tics for visiting each restaurant in the chain (much of the S in BIS for that one was a car seat! but I did get to as many as 12 restaurants in a day between Boston and DC!) I went with a friend and we netted 4 RTW and a boatload of free food/Dom Perignon and some cool swag.

No especially extreme but done quite a few times. Longhaul trip over weekend (>13k flown miles, much more earned mileage) arriving back at home airport early hours of Monday morning and straight into work (and lots of coffee).