Finkface

Thank you for being honest. Althogh I'm not sure what future revenue there could be enough of to make you a valued customer. I fear that AS might be your next airline target of choice, which makes me cringe.

Baze

And anyone who thinks a few accounts would have any kind of an impact on UA is really delusional. Unless your family has control of a few hundred thousand accounts with 100's of millions of miles in them, you are a VERY small fish in the ocean and losing 1 or 10 fish has 0 consequence to UA which has millions of members and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of elite members who follow the rules. They don't need you or your family to thrive.

sybloc

Been in the churning and MS game well before reddit and DoC existed, son.

halls120

This. A fitting end to this discussion.

AirbusFan2B

While short on facts, a picture emerges of manufactured spend via credit card churning gone berserk. Exploiting loopholes and unintended benefits in UA's program, it's just a matter of time before the airline slams the door. Our mothers taught us not to play with fire but it's evidently too enticing for some.

J.Edward

Greetings All,

This thread's a bit too toasty and is closed for the time being to let posters cool off.

Reopened - remember to focus on the issues and avoid getting personal.

Safe Travels,

J.Edward
UA Forum co-moderator

Mike Jacoubowsky

I've upgraded friends, used nearly all of my miles for flights for my family, and nobody, ever, has had United ask them any questions about their relationship to the person throwing the awards their way. Or at least nobody's told me about it. If United had looked into things, they'd never find any evidence of bartering or selling, because there wasn't any.

I'm not talking zillions of miles here. Probably about 1.5 million or so over the past 7 years. Still, more than a few right? And never an issue.

Whatever United's doing, I think they're doing it fairly well, and possibly even conservatively, since FT seldom sees cases of accounts being closed that, upon closer inspection, don't appear fishy. FT is a community that jumps all over any airline's policies if their own (the FTers') position is less than 90% unreasonable.

Even the unreasonable reports here, if they were true, are infrequent enough to be below the threshold of something the average FTer needs to worry about.

eng3

Reading through this thread and trying to look at this from both slides. I think the lesson is that we optionally agree to be a part of the MP program and therefore are subject to all of the rules however fair or unfair we feel they are.

Whether or not a rule was actually broken is an entirely separate issue from whether it is "fair".

If sybloc did nothing wrong he should rightfully be pissed. He got his answer from this thread early on, just contact friends and family anyone involved to gather as much info as possible and then contact UA and figure it out with them. Not much more advice can be given. Perhaps he was not aware that most people would probably immediately pre-judge him guilty since so many others have been. When multiple people accuse you of lying or withholding the truth, its natural to get defensive and close up so some of his responses arent entirely surprising if that was truly his frame of mind.

If sybloc is guilty then I guess UA's system worked.

The other thing to note is that we FTers have above average knowledge of United policies, procedures, etc. You'd be surprised how many family members or coworkers that are GM, Gold, 1K, GS even that I've talked to that don't know they they can't sell/barter miles. The first reaction I get is usually "they're my miles, I earned them" then "well, what if I just answer an ad?" or other poor excuses. We FTers spend way too much time going into the details of UA's policies, I bet the average flyer has never read any of UA's rules. That doesnt excuse anything but it does explain it in some cases.

Perhaps it would have been nice of UA to give him the benefit of the doubt and give a stern warning first before just cutting him off but that's UA's discretion.

raehl311

I have burned piles of award tickets / upgrade certs over the years on people not obviously related to me and have never had any hint of curiosity on the part of the airline to me or any traveler about it. Nobody has ever been asked anything at check-in. That includes things like flying an employee's mother to Vegas, getting four extended family members with entirely different names back home from a funeral in Arizona to a city I don't live in, getting various friends to various travel destinations, etc, etc.

Given the complete lack of interest in my somewhat exotic award bookings, I always have a tough time believing when someone comes here and claims United closed their account just because they booked a bunch of travel for friends/family one time. I've given a LOT of miles away to a LOT of people, but it's always been given away and I've never had any question about it, let alone an actual issue.


To the matter at hand, I feel like United was in the right in closing Sybloc's account based on his attitude alone. He certainly has zero chance at getting his account back with such a perspective.

mahasamatman

I used to run a card trading web site. When there was an issue, I tried warnings, and they never worked. The only way I ever got anyone to respond to a trading issue was to revoke their access. Simply responding to the revocation message was sufficient to be reinstated, but forcing the issue was the only way I found to get even that level of response.

mduell

Reading your posts, and the rest of this thread, UA is remarkably accurate at spotting these rule breakings.

eng3

If simply responding to a revocation always gets you reinstated (even if you admit guilt) then I would consider that to be the warning and agree that to be the better course.

I don't know what UA's policy is. If I go out and sell miles to a UA undercover buyer and they revoke my account. And then If I call in, plead ignorance, and they provide a one-time reinstatement, I'd call that a warning. If they just say "too bad you broke a rule", then perhaps that's harsh for people that truly did not know the rule. But still UA's discretion.

Kacee

Not in this case. OP is a self-described experienced and sophisticated churner. IMO, termination was fully earned.

eng3

I agree, I was making a general statement as to how UA handles these types of cases.

And I really have no idea how UA handles these cases, for all I know they are very kind and reasonable and do give warnings and/or reinstate accounts. Their warning may scare a potential rule-breaker straight. Then they get to maintained their MP program AND still get all the revenue of that customer. If they just close someone's account, they've likely lost some amount of revenue even if its a drop in the bucket. On the other hand, these occurrences may be so low that they just dont care.

As for whether the termination was deserved, I won't make any judgement since I dont have all the info.

Kacee

And that makes sense given the factual vaccuum. I'm reacting to the continued insistence that "no miles were sold" after it was repeatedly pointed out that offering miles for sale is a violation.