What happened to milepoint?

Can't redeem miles for anything except magazines and Milepoint's new resort/cruise buyer club.

No more amazon gift certificates at 5% discount :-(

The site is useless now unless I need another magazine to clog my mailbox.

Sad but true...another site bites the dust! (I favored the Land's End certs myself

Following is reply from MilePoint customer service rep:

Thank you for contacting MilePoint.

Due to an overwhelming majority of requests, MilePoint has recently changed
its business direction.

As of January 6, 2003, MilePoint.com is an Internet exchange site that
allows members to use their frequent traveler miles and points for annual
Cruise & Resort Club memberships and magazine subscriptions.

If you wish to close your MilePoint account, please log into your profile
and remove all program accounts. We can then close the profile for you.

If you have any further questions, suggestions, or concerns, please don't
hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,
The MilePoint Team

Another company trying to spin a deflation in value as a positive thing: Due to an overwhelming majority of requests, MilePoint has recently changed its business direction. ?

Actually they did not deflate any value of the current magazine offers.

Here's my "educated" guess - probably more than 95% of all redemptions went to the free magazine offers and it might not have made sense to continue to carry admin and other expense for the other 5% of actual redemptions.

As long as they didn't change the rate of redemption for the mags then we're all set. Too bad more members did not see the value of the certs - i know I did and benefited from them.

Randy, didn't you have some affiliation with Milepoint when they first opened?

I cannot say about the value of all certs, but the ones I looked at were a total waste of miles. For example, while making Amazon purchases I could find discount certificates for Amazon posted on the internet and these free discount certificates offered the same discount as the ones from milepoint using miles. Why waste miles when one could get the same discount without using miles?

For Land's End certs, you paid 90% and the other 10% was taken in miles. As I like Land's End this was the only way I've ever found to get a discount there, and burn off miles in those unused FF programs.

It seems lately that I get free magazine offers all the time, so I really didn't find that part of the program attractive. For me, the devaluation is no longer being able to get the certs; and although I never did purchase anything the Outlet had some good deals.

Randy is listed on their website as being on their "Board of Advisors."

So, I'd guess his explanation is a pretty well-informed one.

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More Room Throughout Coach: the Website of Free Miles and Free Markets

There was a time when one could either burn the miles at milepoint and get the 10% discount or go through another site like greenpoints (to get miles) or stockback (to get a cash discount). Effectively the return on the miles was close to 1 cent per mile, which most FFers would agree is not a good value for the miles unless one is burning off stranded miles.

[This message has been edited by PG (edited 01-08-2003).]

I redeemed some excess miles for some certs a couple days ago, based on a warning in Inside Flyer magazine. Glad I did.

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On the road, In the air,
I enjoy travel, From here to there.

[This message has been edited by ontheroad (edited 01-09-2003).]