Selling gold status
 

Hi, I wondered if anyone can help. As a Turkish platinum card holder I can upgrade 3 people to gold status for a year for 40K miles each time.
Is it against the rules of the programme to sell these? I know you can't sell reward flights, but that is different and I can't find an answer on their website.
I have miles that will expire by the end of the year, so now would be a good time to be upgrading someone.

I’m 99.9% sure this is against the rules.

I will be happy to take it as a gift as i can't buy it.

lol....well that's not a large margin of uncertainty.
I might nip into the Turkish airlines office tomorrow and see if they can confirm. I'm not going to break any rules and risk my own status. I know what it cost me to achieve it in the first place. Although a quadruple status miles offer a while ago helped out :)

lol. If only I were rich enough that 40K miles meant nothing to me ;)

I certainly wouldn't post it on Ebay. (nor would I necessarily hand over any money to somebody selling status on Ebay!)

But you could put feelers out as to whether any friends of friends might be interested...

Considering that it is almost certainly against the rules, I'm not sure it would be wise to inquire about it directly with TK. And I certainly wouldn't provide them with any info about you, like your name or account number if you do inquire. The last thing you'd want is to have them note something in your account, which could cause you problems if you later even legitimately use miles to gift the status to a friend/relative.

Here’s an idea that I think is legit (but you’ll have, of course, to check it beforehand).
Give a friend an Elite status for 40K miles and let that person repay the same amount, i. e., transfer 40K miles into your account.

Your friend get Elite status and you get 40K miles that are valid for another 3 years.

Rules say you can only swap status for family member

I don't see how enquiring if something is against the rules or not should penalise me. I'm asking the question to make sure I stay within the rules. I have 4 years of platinum status which I have no intention of jeopardising.

Interesting idea, but I would probably just spend the miles rather than do that. The elite upgrades might be useful for family in the future rather than giving them away for free just to extend some miles.

I'm not looking to swap status, I'm considering the options for using one of my upgrade vouchers that it says I can use to upgrade anyone I want to.

Logically speaking, you're correct, an inquiry should not have any effect. I'm just thinking in practical terms of what might happen due to a misunderstanding. Hypothetical example- you inquire, they say no, it's against the rules. But they've noted in your account something like 'customer was informed that selling status is against program rules'. Soon thereafter, you gift status to a friend/family member. Later some busybody at TK might deem it suspicious that you inquired about selling status, and later provided status to someone, thus launching a line of inquiry.

Again, I may be being overly cautious, but hence my comment about not providing your name, account details if/when you inquire, that's all.

I get where you're coming from.

Is it really worth it?

Let's say you find someone willing to pay $500 for Elite status. That barely compensates you for the 40K miles you must spend. Unless you really, truly have zero use for them and will let them expire.

OK, so let's make it $1000. Would you pay that to a random stranger in exchange for the promise of an Elite upgrade? Maybe, but probably not. So flip it around, is $1,000 enough compensation for the risk that TK audit why you gifted status to somebody whose name, address, etc. bear little resemblance to your own? Hard to say, but selling status is definitely not an approved activity, even if we're not quite sure if it is 100% prohibited.

While it's not illegal, it does violate the terms and conditions of most loyalty programs. On the other hand, you often see upgrades being sold on ebay. So the question then is, how would the airline know?

This is what it says on M&S pages. I remembered wrong in my previous post, you can give away a Gold card to anyone with 40k miles. But the upgrade vouchers you cannot give away to others.

"Please keep in mind that the upgrades cannot be used by other persons except the Elite Plus card holder. Upgraded flights will earn paid Economy Class miles.
The validity of the unused free upgrades will not be extended for the next membership year.

Complimentary Elite Card for your beloved one
Elite Plus members are able to nominate 3 individuals of their choice to Elite status against 40.000 bonus Miles for each people. "

If you have a friend who would like status and they have very generously shared with you a gift card worth $400 or some nice holiday gifts a certain amount. It would be perfectly reasonable for you to generously gift them elite status for a year. IT's just what friends do.