miles in exchange for interior design fee?

Hi to everyone. I'm an interior designer that lives in New York City looking for some good advice from the forum.

Sometimes, in exchange for a design fee for my work, I tell my clients (many of whom travel a great deal) they can barter and give me miles. It makes what can be a very spendy decision (furniture costs a lot!) more light hearted and fun.

The question is: what is a 'fair' monetary exchange for every domestic or Europe ticket I get? For example, do I tell them every domestic ticket is worth $300 off the bill? Europe is worth $600 off the bill? Clearly, the tickets are not really worth retail value. Or maybe they are? Just not sure and this seems like the perfect group to ask.

My partner and I go to New York - Hawaii to visit the family every year. We'd also like to do New York - Geneva and Paris since we have friends with babies there. Plus there is the occasional New York - SFO trip to see childhood friends. Hope that info. is helpful in guiding advice.

Thanks in advance to everyone for the help.

Best,

Jarret

I like your enterprising nature there, looking for a good exchange.

However, you should be aware that most (all?) FF programs prohibit the sale or barter of miles, on threat of account termination and ticket cancellation. Trade at your own risk.

Most programs, the cost to purchase miles is around .02 or .03 cents per mile. You could use that as your base cost. On Delta, a domestic RT ticket on the cheap (SkySaver) is 25,000 miles or a cost of $500-750. Europe on the cheap would be 90,000 miles for a Delta SkySaver, $1800-2,700.

90,000 miles is the DL redemption rate for business class. (50K for coach)

Be aware that your client will need to book the award for you, and that can be a frustrating process. It can create wear and tear on your business relationship.

Regarding reservation wear/tear, I've done this with other clients and what I do is find the available reservation, make it and then have them purchase so thankfully that is fairly conflict free. If I made them deal with AA or UA mileage desks to find an available reservation, I think they would kill me and understandably so.

Thanks for the barter update warning. So far, no problems. Maybe I sound honest? Hah.

Thanks for the advice on the selling rate. The only concern I had about the whole .02/.03 ratio is that, frankly, if I were paying $500/$750 to go to SF or $1800 to go to Europe, I would be insane, no?

Might be worth considering NOT putting a monetary value on the miles, since there is no standard consensus on this issue. Further, the value of miles vary wildly depending on how you use them.

For example, a 25K domestic coach award is worth $125 if you fly roundtrip from Cleveland-Baltimore with no notice because Southwest competes in that market, but Cleveland-San Francisco with no notice could cost upwards of $1,000. So, destinations and notice afffect mileage value.

A 100,000 mileage bank could be used for a Business Class ticket to Europe or Asia that would normally cost anywhere from $3000-$7000 depending on time of year and destination. That same 100,000 could be used for 4 25K domestic tickets that could be valued as low as $500 or as high as $4000 (see previous parapgraph)!

Instead, why not just focus on the quantity of miles. For example, for purchases/services you provide up to X dollars= 25K miles; Y dollars= 50K miles and Z dollars= 100K miles.

Based on what you said, it doesn't sound like a award reservation at all. If you made the reservation (under your name, I assume), then your clients "purchase" it, it is more like they were buying the ticket with $$ instead of miles. Anyone can pay for someone else's ticket under their free will. It's not in violation of any FFPs's terms.

In terms of award tickets, the miles have to come from the account holders who are making the reservation. Generally speaking, the availabilities of award seats are different from the revenue tickets. Hence you can't just find the available award tickets and make the reservations yourself. You have to use the right tools/search engines to know the award availability. That can be a very frustrating process, as SanDiego1K had pointed out.

As you are aware now, all FFPs forbit selling/bartering miles. It seems you tactically bartering your "services" with your clients' miles. If your clients ever use their miles to book tickets for you and get caught, the airline WILL cancel your clients' accounts and your booked tickets. The airline WILL ask you to pay for the ticket out of your own pocket. Being honest or not is no issue here. This scenario had happened and will happen. With all the selling miles/tickets on eBay/Craiglists, the airliines are really keeping a close eye on this kind of activities. I even read from the UAL forum their total legit award tickets (gifted to relatives/friends) got challenged and cancelled.

Given you are asking for input on such a public forum of your busines tactics, you are calling attention upon yourself. IMHO, it's not a wise move.

If you and your clients are willing to take the risks, well, good luck!

Beaubo: thanks for the structuring idea re: how to value the miles. Sounds great and fair to everyone involved. Okay -- it sounds great to me and my clients, maybe not so great to the airlines and their rules.

bartering between two parties that really know each other like you and your clients, is pretty much risk-free as far as the airlines being able to nail you.
Best bet is to always have clients provide your their address, phone, mileage acct number, letters of authorization to take to the airport, etc.

The real risk is for people who book award tickets for 'third parties' that they have no affiliation with and those 'third parties' may or may not understand and/or care that they are on a mileage award ticket, and do not have a vested interest in protecting the account holder....usually a brokerage situation.

Working with clients is a solid and safe situation.

I do concur with SanDiego1K about the potential hassle factor of booking an award seat. Again, if you have he strong, trusting relationship with your clients, you should request that they give you their account info, so you can make your own booking, then contact your client, to simply have the award ticket redeemed and issued.

Boy, I wish you were MY decorator here in CLE!!

Best bet is to always have clients provide your their address, phone, mileage acct number, letters of authorization to take to the airport, etc.


Beaubo:

Ahh, and I have all that information because one has to be able to bill. And I do get all their info. so I can make the reservation, etc. And by the time I usually get an opportunity to use the mileage, I usually know more about their lives than their friends. That is the nature of the business.

Good to hear that I have been operating according pretty much to how the experts on this board would.

Thanks again to you and everyone for all their help.

Jarret, just make sure that your clients know & agree that, if they are ever ??ed by the airline, that they must say that the ticket is a gift 2U for Christmas/ your birthday/ anniversary or to their cousin's wedding or something. With your Post #11 & Beaubo's Post #10, U have shown me that U can make this plausible .

BTW, the price of $.03 per mile quoted by Griffinj is for suckers in large quantities, except for trans-oceanic 1st or Biz. It's tolerable to pay so high in small quantities if one is slightly short of an award.
More realistic is $.015--.02 per mile.

A place that I use to work at, all of their service folks had lots and lots of miles, they would sell you a ticket for about $0.01/mile. However, that was back when a lot of programs had expiration dates on their miles. At that time $200 for a domestic coach RT ticket wasn't bad.