Selling your frequent flyer miles?

[Nords]

Spouse has noticed a slew of Craigslist posts offering to buy FF miles. Apparently airlines will let you purchase additional FF miles for upgrades at a "retail rate" of 2-3 cents per mile, which has led to a gray-market business among individual consumers & brokers.

eBay actually hosts a number of brokers of FF miles. The airline industry has taken eBay to task but eBay rebuts that "against airline policy" is different from "illegal". Since the airlines don't seem to prevent the transfers from taking place, it would appear that they don't really care about enforcing their own policies.

It also seems that all of the risk is on the buyer. The buyer has to fork over a payment, wait for the seller to transfer their miles to the buyer's account, and then persuade the airline to comply. In this case my spouse is delighted to be offered $500 to sell her 60,000 FF miles.

Has anyone else done this? Is it too good to be true? Any recommendations for actually executing the transaction?

 

[maddythebeagle]

Nords: I dont know how the miles work, but I read about folks selling their GM card rewards points. I thought I read that you had to be become an authorized user on the cc account, though to be able to use those. I would guess that people could add an AU (but not give them a card) and remove them later. Still something that I probably wouldnt want to mess with for a complete stranger.

 

[Maximillion]

Not sure about GM Points, they will only allow you to pass them to direct relative.

Mine, they are starting to take back because I did not use them.

 

[rjk514]

Sold my wife 5000 of my NWA mile to give her
25,723 total. Now will attempt to get a seat on
a Midwest airlines flight in Nov to PHX. Nortwest
and Midwest have become partners as of May 1.
I fully expect to get jerked around by Northwest
on this deal. Will know on Monday May 1st. 

 

[tryan]

$500 to sell her 60,000 FF miles

Wow ... I just used 50000 miles to fly a flight my friends paid $260 to be on.

Heck, you can fly just about anywhere in the states for $300. But I guess if you're a few thousand miles short of a free international flight, you're willing to pay.

 

[tripletsjack]

Anyone interested in selling GM card points, I could use them. This can be done legally and safely. please contact me at

yadelivery@yahoo.com

 

[Nords]

Well, now I guess we know another motive that'd cause a lurker to decloak...