Mileage is b.s. why bother?
 

I booked a great trip months in advance using Delta frequent flyer miles. When the night came to fly out, the flight was delayed 4-1/2 hours for questionable reasons - they said ATC, as another aircraft was delayed at our gate and then the aircraft we were to fly out was supposedly caught in traffic on the tarmac. The long delay left me in a pickle because I was going to miss a connection at the destination which I absolutely could not miss if I was to make use of it at all and I (among about 10 others in a similar situation on the flight) had to ask to be switched to fly out on another day. We were all told there was room on every flight over the next week, but I was told there was no room for me because my ticket was acquired through frequent flyer miles. The Global Sales desk refused to make room for me, even though there were empty seats on the flights I requested and merely offered a connection that would go a day later and divert me through a connecting city miles in the wrong direction. I nearly cancelled the whole trip, but on my way out of the gate area with only this other flight option, I mentioned my story to the supervisor in the vicinity and he told me to wait as he would use his influence. In one minute, his word was good enough to overrule everyone and I got on the flight I wanted. Had I not bumped into him and muttered my story, I would have been left miserable after a 7 hour ordeal at the airport.

Cancelling the trip would have entailed re-banking the miles for a fee and then using ten or twenty thousand more miles for the same trip trip in the future, plus possibly having to pay cash in addition.

I had the good fortune of using frequent flyer points on more than one trip, but those trips were more than 10 years ago. Things have changed drastically now and, unless you have a great deal of flexibility, you can be up the creek very easily. The lesson I have learned is that frequent flyer seats are hardly worth the struggle of accumulating the points. The airlines entice us with partner deals and bonuses, but the seats are so tightly allotted that one can be made miserable for simply hoping to use them. I will not go one inch out of my way to accumulate points in the future. I will find credit cards that give cash back instead.

Interesting observations......mine have been a bit different. I just obtained a $10,000 US Business Class ticket (had I purchased) for 110,000 FF miles. I will readily admit it was not wthout hassles...but I did succeed. It is getting a lot harder to execute the mileage transaction....especially when dealing with foreign CS people (India, Philippines, etc.) and US based CS persons who hate their job.

(thanks to this site and others....the mileage was fairly easy to accrue....credit card offers, bonus miles, etc.)

[QUOTE=
e lesson I have learned is that frequent flyer seats are hardly worth the struggle of accumulating the points. The airlines entice us with partner deals QUOTE]

To what 'struggle' are you referring? I have never 'struggled' accumulating FF miles.

Duh
 

Figured that out all by yourself, did you? :rolleyes:

Welcome to the new airline way of flying with attempting to use frequent flyer mileage as payment without a stack of cash as well....:rolleyes:

As for "cashback" for using such and such a credit card... DUH... you better look at that interest rate on the card and see IF it's indeed such a bargain.

Better to put a few bucks into a penny stock or spend a little playing the horses or currency market... you'll get a far better return, or at least more satisfaction with the rate of return than the few pennies back on the dollars you spent using plastic.

Try bargaining with the vendor paying CASH. Remember whatever you buy with plastic the vendor HAS to pay 3 to 6 percent to ACCEPT your card(s)...
plus the hassle of processing the transaction slips and waiting for the deposit to show in their business accounts etc and banking fees for their commercial accounts....so if you can bargain with them using CASH for a 2 or 5%
you're far berter off, and REAL money ahead, especially if its a LARGE purchase.

Who would want to say 50 or 60 dollars on a $1,000 purchase versus only $10? It's NOT rocket scientist what's going on with the TRUE cost of credit and plastic for everything.

That $10 you get back is part of what YOU put into it. BANKS do NOT give anything FREE as gifts. LEARN THAT TRUTH.

I do not know what tiny hooky merchants you deal with but Visas top percentage is something like 2.7%, no large merchant pays anything like that and big ones pay something like 1.1% +12 cents or less.

[QUOTE=VonS;10178108]one example of struggle would be if you had say, accumulated 49,999 miles on an airline that required 50k to fly to X. You have to wait 4-6 weeks or more for some partner mileage entities to post and most of the time, airlines will not front you a single mile (AA has been know to do this, thankfully) so you need to BUY them! Imagine paying for the min. 1000 miles just to get 1. Would be rather frustrating.

I believe that once a ticket is obtained, it should be considered as valid as any other ticket in its seating class weather it was purchased using cash or miles. This is what would be fair but airlines have found ways to disallow this.

That's what caused the OP's problem.

On the other hand, I find most any flight that gets delayed is riddled with controversy and corruption. Best bet: avoid connections whenever possible and if you have them, make those places part of your trip if you can.

for mile gain and use, I find the easiest thing is to order citibank mastercards for AA miles. You can still legally churn with them and have enough to fly first class in a couple months if you play it right. This may help aleviate some of the issues. Not that I want to pay extra miles to fly, but if I am going to, I will at least use them to sit up front.

:)MM

When it goes smoothly I think it is a great bargain, but if there is any sort of issue at all, it becomes a MASSIVE headache.

I have used miles to obtain at least 25 international business tickets and never had a problem. I certainly could never afforded them otherwise. Sure it requires some effort and some mr's. For me it is worth it. For others if it is too much of a bother, don't do it.

There's a lot of missing information here that would be needed in order to really understand what happened. Was the "connection at the destination" to another award flight on the same reservation? By "destination" do you mean the destination of this first segment that was late, or the final connecting destination of your ticket?

Based on your description so far, what it sounds like to me is that you voluntarily chose not to board your ticketed first segment once you determined that was going to be late. Unfortunately, this does put you in a position where you need award inventory for any rebookings, the same as if you just decided to move your trip back a day for other reasons.

Had you been a displaced passenger, such as if your original flight had been canceled or you took the first flight and missed a connection on the same reservation, then they would have accommodated you on a standby basis on any available flight without regard to award inventory.

I agree with your title, the perks are not what they used to be and the thresholds are ridiculous . Airlines should allow you to use miles/point like currency to offset the cost whenever you want like cell phone carriers have done with minutes. It comes back to them as revenue as anyway, which is why I think charging for redemption is ridiculous.

I realize YMMV but first, I was able to book 6 tickets for 30,000 each rt JFK/SJU for thanksgiving week on AA. Then, I was able to book 2 tickets for 60,000 each on Delta for the same dates.
When I needed one more ticket on AA, it was 60,000 and I had to transfer from Starwood. AA gave me a two day extension to allow the miles to transfer. In all I got 9 free tickets so I cannot complain. Whatever may change for the future, in the past I have flown several times in first to Hawaii.
as well as many other places and I am grateful for having been able to do that.
While disappointment surely lies ahead, the airlines are in much trouble and I have to accept they need to do what they have to to survive.

Retailers often make less than 5% return on sales. Some as low as 2%. In that light, the percentages you are talking about are actually a lot, even at the low end of you quote.

Its not a coincidence that the credit card companies have been investigated for fraud and restrain of trade.

As for miles, these days IMO they are only worth the time if you are accumulating them with someone else's money - i.e. expensing the underlying travel bill.

Zephyrus: So sorry you had such a negative experience but by taking your plight to a higher level, it was resolved in a positive fashion. Just goes to show what everyone on FT has learned, either here from others or the hard way like you: don't take "NO" from someone who can't say "YES"! (I believe that quote is attributable to Peter Greenberg). Me, I love to fly and getting miles & status makes it more fun 'cuz I usually get to go 1st class & often fly for free. In these crazy days of higher fares, extra fees, reduced routes, full flights, etc., being both proactive & having status can make the difference between a fairly good or great experience to one that is just plain awful. Hope your future airline encounters are better & good luck switching cards!

I was not debating retailers margins, I am debating the false numbers thrown about by another poster.

Well, I don't pay as much attention as I used to and I believe that miles are practically worth less due to the changes taking place.......but I bother because its free and there have been times that I've been able to use miles and save myself money.

I do take more trips today that don't accumulate miles due to either being a LCC or an airline that I only fly once a year type of thing. But I also still take a decent amount of trips on AA and accumulate the miles that I can and use them when I can. And why wouldn't I, it doesn't take a great deal of effort to enter a FF# when you make a reservation.