There are times when it is best to praise God for fast-footed rats.

If Starwood fails to limited the sign-up possibilities for their promotions to those who are targeted or if Starwood messes up with the promotions in general it is their fault and the Lurker here should absolutely not hunt down and remove Flyertalkers from the chance of additional bonus points. Please Mr. Sanders, leave your hands from my account unless I ask you to figure something out. Thank you for your understanding!

Oh boy another one has not read the posts, cant understand or just doesnt want to understand, why? it doesnt serve the objective. I GIVE UP.
mike

Please stop trying to shout people down, it is not working.

attorney 28. Have to agree with you.

Above posts were 5 or 6 posts of his back. Just on this single page.

Originally posted by Starwood Lurker:
This indeed is the crux of the controversy.

There has been an excellent explanation by thesilb at the bottom of page one of this thread on the distinction between something being illegal criminally versus civilly.

See also Warning/Confession: I was caught selling miles!
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum.../008571-5.html

Speaking as a lawyer (I don't know if thesilb has gotten his bar exam results yet!), I would add that in most jurisdictions, attempting to register for an online promotion for which one was not targeted does not constitute fraud in a legal sense, unless there is an affirmative misrepresentation made.

Likewise, as Punki and others have ably explained, it is the view of most on this board that not only is attempting to so register devoid of moral opprobrium, it also confers a benefit on the loyalty program that permits such registration.

The key point made by Starwood Lurker is that such attempted registration is seeking to "gain from something for which you were never intended," and thus constitutes "fraud" in his view.

Not to beat Punki's arguments to death, but if I had to wait the three months for third class mail to reach this part of the United States, I'd never be able to register for anything.

Quite simply, there may be some circumstances where knowingly attempting to register for a promotion to which you are clearly not entitled -- such as for different elite status members -- may actually be an ethical lapse.

Yet given the equal or greater prevalence of morally neutral attempts to register, shouldn't the service provider limit online registration if such registration is not desired by non-targeted individuals?

Bottom line: It's not fraud legally. It's seldom fraud morally. Service providers have no business squelching the free flow of information on Flyer Talk.

Bottom line: It's Randy's site, paid for by Randy's money; therefore it's his call just how aggressive we can be in sharing information and trading benefits.

I'm sure Randy realizes that such sharing is a major reason for the popularity of flyertalk. So I suppose he could save some money (reduced bandwidth charges) by squelching the hottest information.

Managers of the programs might consider the value that flyertalk provides in promoting their brands. FTers are a small minority of customers, but we each have many acquaintances who rely on us for advice on which programs and brands are the best. In this way, the more useful flyertalk is, the more effectively we will promote our preferred programs to our friends.

If I were running a frequent travel program, I would launch a generous promotion by leaking it to flyertalk and not advertising it at all. Then I'd wait for the WSJ and USA Today to pick it up from here. This way everybody thinks he's getting an insiders-only deal, which, let's face it, is a major part of the attraction.

This way, you create buzz and milk it for free publicity. Some weeks later after the viral marketing ran its course I would release the promo information to email subscribers. Finally, I'd run an ad or two and put something in the newsletter.

If I can figure this out, why can't these companies?

It's been hashed to death here, but here my 2 cents.

TB members with multiple hats should be particularly careful with conflict of interest and that seems to me to be the case here. (In reference to promotion links, not in reference to the Hilton miles post.) It's disappointing to me that FT Admin swayed in the direction it did.

Why is it up to FT to police the corporate inability to prevent/notify ineligibles of their attempt to register for promotions? Almost smacks of a sellout and certainly not in the FT community's interest. (I suppose it's then necessary to define 'FT community')

--Grog--