Delta20

I got a letter in the mail from United with the officious title: "Official Florida Resident Rewards Redemption Notice", claiming that my United Mileage Plus miles are expiring that I MUST urgently spend them all on magazine subscription within the month.

Only thing is, my account with them shows that the miles don't expire until October. Nice of them to remind me, but it seems like they're trying to mislead people with this notice.

SFflyer123

IT's not necessarily a scam; it is a lie, however. I've done this with all my AA miles, and I got some magazine subscriptions that I'd normally never pay for. It was great, actually.

Benny8444

I had DL miles expiring and I got this in the mail and got a bunch of Magazines for free ^

This was a great idea as the miles would have been wasted

TA

All you have to do is spend or earn one single mile to keep all your miles from expiring. There are many easy ways to do this, search under "expiring miles ideas" for example...

Doug 1029

Think I'm missing something here. Why would this be a "scam or a lie"? It's letting you know that your miles are soon to expire. In this case in 6 months.

Ocn Vw 1K

As the discussion shows, this isn't reserved for United MP members. I'll retitle the thread slightly and move it to MilesBuzz for further discussion of this offer as it affects airline programs generally. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, United forum.

rc408

I may not be a scam but it is extremely misleading. The notice usually says your miles are about to expire within about a month. But like the person above, the miles in question are good until October. I wonder if these offers are really from United or from some cheesy magazine reseller.

Delta20

There's two United Mileage Plus logos on the letter and no other company name mentioned on it. It's clearly presented as being from United. However, the URL they tell you to go to is magsformiles.com, and looking into it now I see that the URL that belongs to magazine reseller.

The letter reads, in part: "the last scheduled change for Mileage Plus miles redemption closes at midnight, May 24 2009."

Well... I guess it's nice that people are finding new jobs after being laid off as used car salesmen/women?

crhptic

Not necessarily the best use of miles, but better than letting them expire and getting NOTHING in return.

JenGal

I also got this official looking notice "Virginia Residents" for my mom's account that I take care of and was thinking of asking about it on FT too.

It not only had the date of miles expiration wrong, but she had put miles into her account in February, so she's no where near the expiration date. Granted, I found small print that said the info was generated in January, but even her miles from last year would not have expired until November of this year. It had a United logo towards the bottom I believe, but I don't think it was issued by them, but the sellers.

This is exactly why I take care of my mom's account, so she doesn't panic and blow her miles on magazines because someone is telling her she's gonna lose them. She has enough for a 1X Europe upgrade now and that's something at least!

I don't have any problem that people get magazines that want magazines, but this solicitation was in bad form.

AGS

I have used this a couple times in the past. Although it is entirely possible that there is a scam out there doing this, it seems unlikely. The expiring miles part is misleading, as other posters have already stated, but I think if the miles would otherwise go unused, it's worth considering getting a magazine you would otherwise pay money for.

It's not always available, but I've gotten my Economist subscription extended using these offers a couple of times. That one is expensive, so it was worth it for me to use the miles that I wouldn't have otherwise used. My subscription now goes through 2012.

AGS

CPRich

I've seen thsi for a few airlines over the last several months. I don't recall the specific wording, but do remember that it strongly implied that miles would expire soon, but the actual wording just notified you that you needed to use miles to prevent them from expiring. That's a true statement, even though one of the accounts had about 17 months and 20 days left to the 18 month expiration window.

I did use miles from one account (600, iirc) to get a 13 week Sunday subscription to my local newspaper - it kept my account active and I ended up picking up a paper at the store every week anyway.

So not a scam - you get what you buy - but "creative advertising", which is really nothing new. It's just not Billy Mays yelling at you...

drjhwang

Can someone please post the magsformiles link for United?

KathyWdrf

It's already been said on this thread as well as on NUMEROUS other threads in various forums:

There are other, often better and cheaper and quicker, ways to prevent your miles from expiring! Don't just assume that this is the only way! DO YOUR HOMEWORK FIRST!!!

The "homework" can be done on the respective program's website and/or on the appropriate airline forum here on FlyerTalk (check the FAQ stickies, etc.). In some programs, even the tiniest redemption or earning will automatically push the expiration date back by a certain period (specific to the program -- such as a year, or 1.5, or 2 years).

Also, these offers frequently try to deceive you into thinking your miles are soon to expire when they are not! (I've received them myself, and double-checked the expiration date on my account.)

crhptic

That is all correct. Implicit in my post was the assumption that one is going to let one's miles expire and get nothing for them. Nowhere did I say that this would be a course of action that was either a) hard to avoid or b) not foolish. Perhaps I needed to spell this out and use large bold capital letters with an emoticon so that it came across more clearly. Sorry!