Share Miles Split 100% Bonus until 6/30
 

Looks like there's a new share miles bonus as of 6/16. Share miles at 1.5 cents each, plus $30 processing fee and 7.5% excise tax. You get bonus 50%, recipient gets bonus 50%. This is unlike the usual bonus where the recipient gets a 100% bonus.

IMO seems to make maximizing points by transferring back and forth a bit more complicated since you can't completely drain an account of points with this promotion, as 50% of the bonus always winds up back in the original account.

But this can be helpful to top up each other's accounts. If you have accounts A and B, and B is 20,000 miles short of an award, A can gift 20,000 points to B. A gets 10K bonus, B gets 10K bonus. B then gifts back 20K to A, which gets A and B each an additional 10K bonus. A and B both end up with 20K more than before.

A higher price... and this lame bonus sharing. No thanks this time.

I am a bit confused at the terms and conditions of the offer.

Do I read it correctly that a recipient can only get up to 50,000 bonus miles via this offer?

So in theory
A --> B 50k miles. B receives 75k miles. A receives 25k miles back.
Repeat
A --> B 50k miles. B receives 75k miles. A receives 25k miles back.

End result
A has 50k less miles than they started with
B has 150k miles more than they started with

Correct?

sounds right. As long as A starts with at least 75k

A transfers 50k to B
A now has 25k and B has 50k
Both receive 25k bonus
A now has 50k and B has 75k

Repeat and A will drop by another 25k and B will increase by 75k leaving 25k in A and 150k in B

It works , for me, just as well as the last promo where A transferred to B and then B transferred back to A and both end up with an extra 50k which is what I am contemplating to do with this one

I didn't even notice that the price for each generated mile had gone up 50%. So now to create 100,000 bonus miles the cost comes out to about $1,640, or 1.64c per miles. And you don't have as much flexibility in making sure the miles end up ONLY in the accounts you want to top up (unless you want to top up 2 accounts, then that's fine).

50% more expensive and much less flexible. I think I'm giving this a pass too.

When did US increase the cost of sharing miles? Just 2-3 months ago with their last share promo, it was still 1 cent per mile to transfer plus $30 transaction fee. Its no longer attractive at 1.5 cents.

Good catch. Previously the 50K shared miles was $500, now $750. I don't care that they split the bonus miles but the price increase just makes it not worthy now anyhow.

I value miles at about $0.0171 each and this will make them cost about $0.0167.....which isn't worth the devaluation risk and effort to find award availability on less desirable flights/ routes.

Curious as to how you came up with your $0.0171 valuation.

Whichever marketing exec who thought of this ought to have their head split! I just can't get my head around it. So, rounding everything off, it will cost approximately+/- $800 to send someone else 75Kmiles, but I would retain 25K of that... and they, in turn, share back with me... so we are essentially 50K more than we had initially had for about $800 each.

A starts with 100K - 50K +25K = 75K
B starts with 100K + 75K = 175K

B 175K - 50K + 25K = 150K
A 75 K + 75K = 150 K

Is that right?

It looks like a very convoluted way to buy miles at a little less than half price.

And it was designed, I think, to minimize all of the A to B to C to D sharing...as well as costing more money. Why don't they just sell the miles at 1.6 cents each?

I read this email at 4am local time and it was confusing :) Now I discovered tge proportionslly HUGE fee increase... Not looking that appealing now... Did too many people use the last promo?

Usually just based on what I am likely to use them on next but the formula remains the same

=(normal ticket price - award fees - (miles earned * miles value))/ award miles)

In my case, my next trip is likely to just be a typical domestic coach award.

=(500-30-(2200*0.018))/25000

The tough part is valuing those nice long-haul International biz awards, which I usually just assign a value equal to the normal coach price plus a small premium of what I would consider actually paying for upgrading the entire ticket to Biz at the gate (usually around $500...something they would never offer, but I am cheap and not wealthy).

I threw together a sampling of trips on various airlines to various destinations and came up with an overall average of $.025/mile value. This is all Y cabin as the value of J class cannot be computed from the actual fares to be paid. I might pay an up of $200 for J over Y TATL, though it could be a different case to look at QF or NZ premium economy US to Australia. Value is usually greater on TATL or TPAC, especially for UA, but it is the opposite for BA Avios redeemed domestically on AA and having that taxes and fees penalty if routed through LHR.

More interesting is that the standard deviation on that average is $.011. This means that if you can buy miles for less than $.014 you are getting a statistically (one standard deviation) cheap bargain, and if it is more than $.014, not so much.

I didn't try to do this restricted to US or to prospective value on AA.

I think I would not buy this share offer.

Putting such an exact figure on what a (purchased) mile is worth is all a bit silly....

People tend to forget about the little details like a negative correction for the fact that:
- you pay now and you (maybe) book later with all risk that entails like devaluations etc.
- cash in hand can be used for anything at anytime, miles bought have a very limited use.
- award availability is limited, sometimes severely so....booking multiple tickets is even harder.
- you are limited to certain routes and specific carriers.
- missing out on the miles for status

And then there are things that can go both ways but also can have a major impact:
- the flexibility you have to cancel for a small fee vs paying for a flexible ticket, but also the US DM restriction that you cannot change once the first flight is taken.
- the sometimes very different prices depending on time or location when paying vs the standardized pricing for awards.

In general valuations need to be substantially less than what people come up with. But we all like to think we get a good deal, and sometimes we do... But the airlines almost always get a good deal when people buy miles.

Yes, I agree with all that in general. To that can be added the comment that people use miles in different ways, including upgrades, always in J, never in J, etc. I think in the end the value you get for miles is very opportunistic. But then if one has the opportunity to be opportunistic :cool:, the value can be marked up. That may offset some of the downsides. In my little set of examples the range was a high of $.060/mile using Avios on AA on a particularly unfavorable date and city pair to a low of $.012 which turned up several times. To be fair I have used ticket prices from Orbitz for the cost to make the trip and not the actual cost on the carrier that would have provided the FF ticket, and I exclude FF options that become silly, such as two stop trips when a non-stop is available, and so on.

To repeat, though, your comments are certainly valid.

I think of award vs paid travel as 2 different products that aren't perfect substitutes for each other. And so any valuation of miles is a rough approximation at best.

Miles will buy you trips that you wouldn't take on a paid ticket. Like visiting 2 distant continents on 1 ticket. I would never do that on paid travel. Generally wouldn't be cheap, and with that much flying in a short period of time I want to fly business class, and I can't be assured I can book J cabins on several different carriers at a reasonable price.

With paid tickets, I tend to fly only when the fares are cheap. Sales, fare wars, etc. And only 1 destination, or a small open-jaw. Rarely would I go for a stopover, and often only domestic stopovers are available.

Then there's the thrill of the hunt. I enjoy searching for awards. Seeing what I can find. Trying out new airlines, hubs and lounges. There's an intangible value there.

At the end of the day if you're buying miles, then you need to value the whole experience. And it's a different experience you get with miles than if you bought tickets, for all the reasons above.

A lot of people do only domestic coach awards. I would *never* buy miles for that. So many ways of getting enough free miles for domestic travel. And you can put a clear value on those.

The reason I bought USDM during the last promo was because they were a steal. 100K for ~$1,100. And now I can go on a 2 continent adventure. In business class.