Your most extreme mileage earner?
 

I'm researching for an article for InsideFlyer, Randy Petersen's magazine, and am looking for stories from frequent flyers of the most extreme activity you've undertaken to earn miles or points (something along the lines of the "Pudding Guy").

Please also share any stories you know of anyone who has taken advantage of a loophole in a program's system to maximize mileage/points.

If you would prefer to email, please email me at [email protected].

Thank you. The article is set to run in our June issue (www.insideflyer.com).

I'd have to say anything you find in the FT archives on CHARTER ONE GIFT CARDS and many other gift card deals that have come and gone would be the best ones I have seen.

Essentially, people here made like 500,000 miles for next to nothing in the course of about 6-9 months!

I even made money on it.
;)MM

I assume Randy told you that cross-posting is a no-no on FT?

Check out Emmi cheese and AAdvantage miles. A recent promotion offered a 500 mile certificate in every package of $3 cheese. FTers quickly figured out what a great deal this was and bought them by the boatload. The company tried to kill the promotion but FTers protested and they ultimately gave in, providing all the promised miles. I just flew to the Virgin Islands on cheese miles.

in the 80's, there was a period of about 4 months when some cc's were giving purchase credit for balance transfers....

i did tinker to evers to chance [famous baseball double play combo] w/ a mileage card [1/$], a car card [5% toward auto purchase] and a cash back card [1%] for an effective 8% return.[w/miles at 2 cents value].

fortunately, we were booking a lot of high $ travel and i spent about $80 k in the period...

In the '80's?

Last summer, the Juniper Bank card for US was giving miles for balance transfers. My wife and I both got the cards (and the signup bonuses), and then maxed out the cards with balance transfers.

ValueMags.

$1800 in magazine donations to my local library turned into 250,000 AA miles, plus a nice tax break!

supposedly several years ago US Savings Bonds were purchasable by Credit Card.

I got aadvantage miles through Idine at Extreme Pizza

I booked RDU-DFW-LGW instead of RDU-LGW, spending extra time and money on this. Sounds pretty extreme to most people *lol*.

But seriously, while some of the deals in the past have been very cool in that they gave lots of miles for little effort, I think the more notable cases are where people went through a lot of effort to get miles. Both could make interesting stories...

that wouold make a great thread! In fact, start it cuz if you dont I will.

One friend told me he added up what he thought I "spent" to get x number of miles and then said if I had bought the ticket I later used them on with cash outright, it would have been cheaper.

I mentioned that he forgot the fact this gives me a rise.
:D

lol, you go ahead and start it. I bet the mods would quickly move it to "mileage runs" (and other insanities :)

:D
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...79#post7524279

there you go!

;)MM

I recommend you search for "beef" and "gravy" over on the BA board.

Last Summer, UK supermarket chain Tesco was offering 50 points in its clubcard loyalty scheme (worth 120 BA Miles) for spending 70p on a disgusting frozen 'ready meal' consisting of beef covered in gravy. Many FT'ers were touring the country buying up thousands of boxes of the stuff.

Other odd things from the UK:

Travelex was giving 3 miles per £1 exchanged - INCLUDING Sterling Travellers Cheques. We were heading out to Heathrow with £3,000 IN CASH to buy £3,000 of UK£ travellers cheques, to pay straight back into our bank accounts, to withdraw again in cash, to take back to Heathrow etc etc

Buying some dodgy biscuits called palmiers, again from Tesco. Plus Tesco instant coffee, mobile phones (which we unlocked and sold on ebay), sim cards and many other products where the company gave out enough bonus points to make it worthwhile.

There was also, again in the UK, a targetted promo last year where MBNA gave BMI credit card holders miles on balance transfers. Some got over 200,000 miles by moving balances from credit card to checking account, paying off the card then starting again.

However, nothing seemed to top the AA Cinemark promo, where some AA FT'ers admitted to 'dumpster diving' outside cinemas to retrieve drinks cups which had a token on them for AA miles!

You should also look for the massive Marriott thread on the BA board. When Marriott let you buy points for 1c each (which they did for about 3 months before canning the offer last month) you could (by converting Marriott points to Tesco and then to BA) get unlimited numbers of BA Miles for 0.8p each. Using the American Express '2 for 1' voucher that is also available in the UK, that basically allowed you to get 2 F tickets to anywhere in the US for £1,200 + tax for the pair, or two J tickets for £800 + tax. The BA FT board must have bought at least 10 million Marriott points between us.

I did the max-out, pay off, maxout

wash rinse repeat on that offer to the tune of over 300,000 miles.

With the right timing I was maxing out my account 4 times a month and got miles for every completely fee-free balance transfer or convenience check.

Nice