I'm new to the forum but have learned many valuable things since first discovering it a few weeks ago. A special 'thanks' for the info about buying savings bonds with your FF credit card.
My question concerns an offer I received yesterday from AT&T in conjunction with my Citibank Advantage card. They will award me 1000 miles/month if I switch to AT&T as my ISP for $21.95/month. The only hitch is that right now I pay only $9.95/month for internet service. Would it be a good deal for me to switch?

Hi mam_fly, welcome to Flyertalk. There are definitely a number of valuable things you'll learn by reading the posts here.....hopefully you'll be able to contribute as well.

There are a couple of threads discussing this deal. Try doing a search in the American Airlines forum (I'm pretty sure that's where it is). Some people have apparently had problems actually getting their miles to post, so I'd read up on it before you do the deal.

Assuming you're able to get the miles to post, I think it's a pretty good, but not extraoridanary deal. 1000 miles at $21.95 a month means that you're paying 2.195 cents per mile. Another way of looking at it would be to take the difference between what you're paying now and what you'd be paying for AT&T. With the difference being $12/month, you're paying 1.2 cents per mile. That become a better deal.

All of this depends on how much you value each mile. And that's only a question that you can answer.

Hope that gives some food for thought.

There's a couple ways to look at this. Make sure that the 1,000 miles per month has no caps and no end date and comes every month. Usually similar offers have caps on the number of miles you can earn.

As mentioned, there's a coupdl ways to look at this - and others will add. First of all it's a $12 monthly difference. If you kept this up for 20 months, you'd be 20,000 miles richer and at the special award level that Citibank has for various AAdvantage awards. Now, based on your currect ISP, that means you'll have spent $240 more than you would have if you had not changed ISPs. Bottom line for you - do you see the use of this free award from Citibank/AT&T as having more worth than $240? Would you have diligently saved $12 a month toward your next vacation trip costs? Do you see this as a 'Christmas Club' for free travel? Only you can answer these questions, but for most people - I included - I'd say it's a fairly good offer because as other will note for you - you're buying miles at 1.2 cents per mile. Pretty good for this situation.

I just got 10,000 AA miles out of them for $43.90. There is a 10,000 promo for signing up for ATT Worldnet on the AA website. Here's the link:

http://www.aa.com/apps/AAdvantage/Vi...057&itemDescri ptor=AAdvantagePartnersContent

I signed up for service on about Jan 20th, I was billed for the first two months on about Feb 20 ($43.90) The 10,000 miles posted on aprox Mar 20th, and I cancelled the service the same day. In fact, you can cancel on the website and don't even have to call anyone. I did use the service a little bit and was not impressed with the quality or speed of the connections I got around the country. However, the 10,000 miles are perfect.

Let me weigh in on one other thing. While, I think that the CPM (cost per mile) is very important in viewing how you value the mile you earn, you need to decide what type of earner you want to be.

Are you going to do everything possible to earn cheap miles?
Are you going to be someone who will divert purchases to earn miles?
Pay a little more for miles?

To decide this, you need to decide what your priorities are. Those factors include, among others, money, time (connections/Nonstops), program (CO,AA,UA...), objective (upgrades/free travel, international/domestic...), diversity among programs/consolidation in one, using miles for last minute travel or planning ahead, the list is long.

On the cost issue and using dialup service as an example: You can get 56K service for $5.95 per month: (www.access4less.net) w/o miles. So @ $16 per month, 25,000 miles would be equal to $400 of money I spent. To me, just not worth it I'd rather have the cash.

That said, I have determined that some things are worth the additional purchase and others not. I will do a mileage run to keep status or for reasons that are too good to pass up (See:LP million mile bonus program or triple miles on a cheap fare). I'll fly IAH-EFD in Houston to get extra segments on CO and there may be a small nominal cost to do that.

I think that two basic rules of thumb that will work are:
1) If the costs are equal then always take the miles. -and-
2) If you are already doing something and you can earn miles for it, get them. (See Idine and long distance.)
Thereafter, apply your own filter to the value of the miles.

I know that we FT's have discussed this on this board before. When searching for the discussions remember, some are diehards (4 day stay and stay in different hotels each night), some will get miles for everything they can without much additional effort and some just want to get all of the bonuses they can without any additional effort.

Just my 2c. I hope that some of this is helpful.
BSL

Welcome aboard, mam_fly!

Thanks everyone for your replies. I guess I am not as die-hard as most are about FF miles and mostly follow BSL's "two rules of thumb" about earning miles. But next year we plan on traveling extensively and I'd like to accummulate as many miles as possible till then, although who knows what kind of shape AA will be in by then. Thanks for the link for the 10,000 mile sign-up bonus. That sounds like a better deal if I only keep the service for the minimum amount of time. I might have to go for it, especially since I'm pretty unhappy with my current ISP.