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.

I had 75,000 AA miles that I was able to book my freind to fly to africa. This was last month and on the way home it connected thru LHR, where she was able to stay in the trip at no extra cost. The taxes on this entire trip were about $100.

In return for booking this for her, she gave me points that will effectively enable my wife and 2 children and I to enjoy 6 days in Aruba at a hotel we could otherwise have not afforded.

All of this cost only some time and administration on both our parts, but really not much. Plus we enjoy the game!

This is where miles work.

Her plane tickets would have cost A LOT of money--ie, around $2,000 RT because of the destinations and time of year for travel.

On the other hand, when I am trying to grab some extra miles from doing partner transactions such as the WorldPerks mall and the miles fail to post, or some ticket needs to be booked before a certain date and I need to pay extra miles and money because the account was short, this gets a bit frustrating. Or, when United makes you be in the airport just to REDEEM a ticket for someone else if you try to book an award for them using a partner airline... Such policy cruches and glitches make it harder. In the end, though, I have won much more than I have lost.

The key to mile-ing is: It is a bit of a hobby and a challenge, and it is done because you like to travel and try to save money.

As said earlier, if those things are outweighed by one's inability to tolerate the game, it's not for you.

:)MM

The original poster seems more upset that he was being treated differently because he was on an award ticket. Frankly, if his award ticket included the connecting flight, there is no reason he should have been denied the re-routing when seats were available and others in the same situation (on paid tickets) were re-routed. Interesting that this was on DL as I've noticed a number of posts on the DL forum that relate similar failures by DL to re-book ticketed award flights following schedule changes, flight delays, or cancellations. I was always under the impression that once booked, airlines treated award tickets like any other ticket when things occurred that are outside the traveler's control. It's disconcerting that DL appears to be moving away from that. Requiring award seats to be available to re-route someone on an award ticket when there are delays/cancellations seems ridiculous and could easily lead one to be stranded.

MileKing, is this even legal? I'm worried because I've used WorldPerks recently to book a large number of award tickets, many of them all or part on Delta metal. I understand that the airline isn't responsible for weather/ATC delays and can't buy my hotel or lunch. However, I do expect the airline to get me where I'm going as the planes/seats become available. If you can just refuse to rebook someone's award travel, yes, you are not just stranding them, you can in effect steal from them. This can't be correct, is it?

I did not mean to imply that there is a DL rule or policy that states award seats need to be available to re-route someone traveling on an award ticket when there is a flight delay or cancellation. I know of no such policy and only meant to point out that these situations, in my view, seem to be coming up more and more frequently in the DL forum. People have also reported that they are meeting with increased resistance from DL to put people on flights with no award seats when prior to departure there are significant schedule changes to an award booking.

"Is this even legal?"
 

I'm not sure if the DOT has a regulation reguarding the draconian changes to FF programs. There certainly is a transportation contract between the FF Pax and the airline should not depend on if that person paid any money for that contract or not. Usually, there has to be some value for FF miles. Assuming the traditional "coupon from the newspaper" rate of 1/20 of a cent, a sum total of 2000 miles is equal to 1 USD so any DOT regulation should apply across the board, FF pax or not.

My 2 cents on the subject. FF miles are becoming more worthless every day. Most go unredeemed (78% is the consensus number) and the rampant inflation of mile reward levels ensures that fewer of them are redeemed for flights. I have given up on milage redemption and just decided to use hotel points instead to save money when traveling. I got some nice hotel redemption deals when I was in Europe 3 years ago and they are even better now that USD is pegged where it belongs given our national debt. USD will depreciate even more now that Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac have the keys to the treasury and allowed unlimited debt loads. Hotel points do have their own inflation but longer trips will necessitate more money to be spent on hotels than the flight there. Also, some hotel chains discount longer stay redemptions (or at least they did the last time I redeemed points). Airlines do not.

I am concerned about this Delta thing mentioned above.

It is as if the new flight that the OP would be put on was not one that had any award seats left on it so some idiot decided to use that as a way to conform to policy in a case where what had happened should have obviously overridden any such rules. ie, if you try to book an award ticket on a plane that has no more awards available, you cannot get that flight so you must pick another. If the flight you are on gets in trouble and they try to put you on one of those non-award seat flights, that should STILL not be your problem.

I am scared that somehow some way this snafu--if it did in fact happen the way I am guessing--will continue. (I have no idea what happened of course)
This is precisely why there needs to be a passenger bill of rights. And it needs to cover such minutia.

I can concur on what has been said about Delta in the above posts. I had two very similar situations, one involving Delta and the other AA. Both situations required a supervisor. I could see that the Delta employee was keyed towards not resolving the issue as it was an award ticket. The AA person felt that the situation was not good and took care of the problem even though it was also an award ticket. The words "award ticket" did not come into the conversation with the AA employee. The words "award ticket" were noted at least 12 times in the Delta conversation. I have a small amount of miles in my Delata account....I am done with Delta unless they are the only way out!!

what words or things should we ask delta to prepare ourselves for when booking awards with them going forward?

what were the conditions of your situation? was it a matter of them not wanting to give you a seat because you were a lowly award, or because awards somehow get lower priority in the minds of those at the gates, or because plane 2 was slated with no seats available for your type of--or any type of awards, and so they merely couldnt figure out how to key it in to make a stuck person fit in that otherwise never would have been there standing before them to pose such a problem?

I was thinking, for example...

"hey delta, i just booked this itin with 25k miles that connects thru slc. let's say it gets delayed and I need to take another DL plane out to make my other DL connection. Does this award prevent that?"

if they say "no, that wont be a problem," I will get a name and employee ID to have with me in the airport.

Is this a DL specific thing? I certainly have not suffered from a, "You're on an award ticket so no help for you!!" attitude at UA (and they aren't exactly considered benevolent masters either).

That said, it's sad that the airlines don't treat award pax with extra care as the award pax is the one being rewarded for his loyalty to the carrier and should be recognized as such.

ya, 'cept their attitude (all us carriers) has always been,

"Hey! We gave you something for FREE! Why would you EVER complain about any of it!?!?!?! GEESH!, Some people!"

On further consideration I think that a "mileage is b.s" attitude seems just an unsophisticated take on what is really just a game in which the rules are changing. While most of us might bemoan the fact, we're not ready to quit the game; we'll just learn today's rules and work with them.

Standard thinking is miles are worth 1 or 2 cents each. Your redemption is 9.09 cents per mile. I just burned up miles for the exchange rate of 10.3 cents per mile. Anyone here remember what the maximum rate per mile anyone has mentioned getting for their "b.s." miles?

not leaving the game
 

when the rules to a game change the better players adapt and overtake the ones that are unable or unwilling

I miss $99 RT's from AUS-DAL (ez miles) but AA pulled the route. It's going to cost $50 more to upgrade TATL/TPAC with miles. Cost effective mileage runs are getting harder to come by. I'm not leaving this game, but rather intend to figure out how to continue scoring and even improve the payback.

I like having elite status and hope to exchange the miles for something I'd never pay out of pocket: travel from US to AU in biz/1st. Both will require some gamesmanship and adaptation as the rules change. It's worth it to me.

I get 1% cash back on my primary card (I have a Starwood as a second one). I have no idea what the interest rate is -- if you pay your balance in full each month, you never get charged interest. Paying credit card interest rates is never a good fiscal decision.

As another poster said, the norm is far lower than this. The only case where the costs might fall in this range would be a small vendor accepting Amex (which has the highest transaction costs).

I recall a couple of years ago when I paid for two cheap "B" tickets on US and upgraded them with miles. Of course, we also earned miles for the flight. At the time, using published fare numbers, I figured I was getting about 13 cents/mile value.

Total BS.

Uh-huh.

I agree in part. Sometimes if we do this, the companies that make/change all these rules seem to know what we will put up with so they make it tougher. That's why it's good to still complain and keep them from pushing it all too far. Afterall some of the new rules of mileage use ARE a bit screwball.

Agreed.

I've been known to do my share of complaining.

Sure the rules are screwball, but sometimes that increases opportunity. Example (though not a new rule), I think it's crazy for UA to require the same number of miles to upgrade IAD-DEN as it does IAD-HNL, so I upgrade IAD-HNL with miles and IAD-DEN with 500 milers.

yup, and how a non saver mileage award on a certain AA flight I wanted was normally 35k and is now 60k to fly economy, but the business class awards that are also still available are ALSO 60k. And so why not just fly BIZ? :D

Well said. Last I checked, loyalty programs are voluntary. Rules change. Notice is given. We adapt. Accumulating miles via some partner offers is no doubt foolish given the premiums sometimes paid for goods or services just to earn miles. However, miles earned on credit card charges for purchases that would have been made even without the benefit of miles remains a nice perk. I have made numerous first class trips with my wife on miles primarily earned via the AMEX Skymiles card we use for most non-payroll business expenses. Sure its not as easy as it once was to find seats on flights with the desired times, but let's not forget: IT ESSENTIALLY IS A FREE FLIGHT. Some should try keeping it in perspective.

kinda don't agree:

1) yeah we signed up so we have to play by rules, but some change in ways that are beyond the norm for pretty much every other entity out there and we all know it. I know, I know, WE signed up for the programs, but still, I have strong belief --and some actual proof based on many many past dealings--that most mileage programs are akin to the common rebate scam. They don't always follow thru with what you did in terms of activity as promised at the time of action. When you call them on it, they have few or no facilities to deal with this type of problem. Think about it: You essentially paid them--ie, you signed up in their marketing database, which is numbers to them, and money to the investors. Your willingness to do that is a service you provided for them. In return they are supposed to give you the widget they advertised. But they failed to do for you what they promised YOU on the condition that you sign up! Why shouldnt we be upset about that when it happens? There's a COST to you if you have to go chasing them around to solve problems you did not initiate.

Sure, redeeming awards can and will change*, but in the above, I am talking about EARNING miles and that's sure part of all of this topic. And yes, using partners such as the airline malls can be 'foolish' for some, but hey, they are promoting it, right? Shouldnt they therefore run it well enough to do its job? If they fail to do this, that could be considered fraudulent!

2) All of this is a two way street. They need us too. It is not free. By using their portals and affiliated partners, cards and products, you are giving THEM effort, marketing input and a database entry per person and trasnaction. They PAY you to do for them in providing you miles for activities they drive you toward, and by promising that you can actually REDEEM these things when you want to. By making the second part an increasingly-harder-to-navigate gauntlet, they are once again bordering on fraud.

I could go on, but of course, WE signed up.
We also voted for a certain president who found no WMDs, but...

...time to vote again?

No, it is not a free flight. Accummulation of miles via a FF program credit card is an alternative to using a cashback card and receiving cash. Since 1% cashback cards are routinely available, every mile you earn on a credit card is costing you 1 cent (or 3 cents or 5 cents in the case of some of the grocery/gas rebate credit cards). The fact that you choose to take the miles in place of cash is your choice. The miles are anything but free.

YES! ...and if some kickback, cashback, miles or other rewards are present on your card, then you either pay a higher interest rate or have other hidden 'costs' to receive them.

This example is more clearly seen in bank accounts or mortgages that offer mileage to sign up. The interest you earn is lower in the first, or the rate you get quoted is slightly higher in the second.

In the case of credit card purchases, it is true that the price of products may be the same no matter what card you use, but the merchants are sometimes agreeing to pay into the ability to let this all happen too, so in the end, because they therefore raise their prices to the consumer, you are paying for the miles there as well.

Examples of this are like when you go to CVS stores and they print you a ton of coupons on the end of your receipt that give you all sorts of savings on future visits. If you go to the el cheapo pharmacy, the prices are lower and you get no coupons. It's a trade off. One version is about people who play the game.

Your credit score also plays into this: It makes you a viable candidate to play or not. You still have the choice to play...

...but it is clear that if the game does not like you if you have low scores or bad credit, that they conversely DO like those with higher scores and good credit because they know they can rely on these people to spend more money./

they will PAY for this data. Our playing gives them data. Investors love data.

Now for you, the consumer, what the use of award miles really is, is a very intricate method to do a pre-paid, self-financed flight. You paid into the system little by little day by day in tiny amounts here and there in order to build up to receive what it takes to fly. It is as if you paid off tomorrow's flight with a few pennies per day from day 1 to today.

oh yes, you paid for it.
now they MUST deliver!

and what I signed up for was the acceptance to play THAT game.
I did NOT sign up for any part of it that purposely fails to play its part in spite of if I do mine.

free frequent flyer miles are not free
 

if you accrue ff miles via actual flying, those miles are not free

you have implicitly paid for them as the costs of the frequent flyer programs - including IT programmimg, additional hardware , advertising, personnell costs - are all included in the price of your ticket

so not to use them is a waste of your money, and you essentially subsidize those flyer who do use them

i'm waiting for an airline to come up with multi tier priicing and produce a fare that doesnt inclide miles and is always10 to 15% lower than a mileage accruing fare

one could argue that those programs whose points expire in a year are at least tending towrds this, but they are notq uite there yet

Again, keeping some perspective would help. We're talking about a system that began as a relatively cheap way for airlines to reward their frequent customers. Most folks traveling for a living did it on someone else's dime. Of course that was before so much "downsizing" where half of the former workforce became self-employed consultants. Airlines doled out miles for you to bank. Your employer paid for the ticket, and you got the miles. Once you started to accumulate miles you had incentive to remain "loyal" to a particular carrier (assuming there was competition on that route). When you earned enough miles, you cashed the miles in for a couple of tickets to treat yourself and your spouse to a nice trip. You got free travel and were happy. The beauty of it was that it basically cost the carrier nothing to make you happy. They generally had excess capacity, so they filled some empty seats.

Twenty-five plus years later, the world has changed. Carriers are parking planes as well as switching to smaller planes on short haul routes to increase passenger loads. Flights are routinely near capacity these days. So an awards seat frequently does actually cost the airline the lost opportunity to sell that seat. Is it any wonder as airlines try to avoid a return trip to Bankruptcy Court that they tighten up on availability of awards seats and do anything else they can to improve the balance sheet? Selling miles to partners is but one way for the carriers to bring in additional revenue. Hell, in the past you had to fly quite a few flights before you racked up enough miles for a free flight. Now you can open some credit card accounts and have enough miles for a flight with your first statement. In the market place that's one big source of inflation. It's the equivalent of a banana republic printing more currency. More dinero chasing a set number of goods leads to devaluation of the currency. Same with miles. Everyone is flush with miles chasing fewer seats. That's the new reality. If we don't like it, we should play another game instead of .....ing about the rules of this game. BTW, there is no "fraud" at play. The T&C for every program clearly state the "rules" are subject to change. Well change is all around. Isn't someone running for high political office on a largely unspecified platform of change?

I'm not disagreeing with the rest of what you said, but I do think that miles can help you get something you could not otherwise attain, even with careful saving and penny pinching.

An example: last year I purchased 66,000 UMP miles for $1647.50. That's about 2.5 cents per mile, not a good rate by most peoples' standards, I know. I also have a MP Visa, upon which I earned another 24,000 miles or so for purchases I would have made anyway. I paid it off every month, but I did pay an annual fee of $140.00. The 24,000 miles don't represent a 1 to 1 $24,000, since I got double and triple miles on some things, but let's pretend they did. Let's say that I could have got a fantastic deal on a cashback card: 5%. $24,000x.05=$1,200.00. So the total cost, including "opportunity cost" of 90,000 miles was $1647.50+$140.00+$1200.00=$2987.50, about $3000.00, or approximately .03 per mile - again, a very bad ratio, I know (but remember, these numbers are inflated for this example - in reality, it would be about $2000.00).

However, for that $3000.00 I got 90,000 miles, which translates into a business class ticket to Japan. And since I've never seen a business class ticket to Japan on UA for less than $5000 to $6000, I still feel that the money was well-spent...as long as I'm able to get a ticket when I want to go. I did not get a free ticket, just a heavily discounted business class ticket. And that's why I still do it, because I won't pay $6000.00 out of pocket for a business class ticket, but I will pay $3000.00 over time to purchase one.

-kirax2