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More ways to burn your frequent flyer miles: miles auctions
A new type of miles Basically, if you're rife with miles and don't know what to do with them, you can join an Ebay type of free for all where you bid your miles for goodies, such as knife sets, club passes, vacations and the general like.
It's kind of a neat idea, for the seven of us who have way too many miles to deal with and can't think of another way to blow them.
Problem is, the volume of miles that these auctions is going for is way out of proportion. Most people who truly value their miles equate them to approximately two cents each. So a 25,000 mile domestic award redemption should equate to about 500$, which on a bad day could be in the ballpark for a NYC-SFO plane ticket. If I'm being nice and "taking a donation" from my parents, I'll charge something like one cent a mile or 250$. Reasonable.
But take a look at some of these auctions. With eight days remaining (at publication), this J.A Henckels 13 piece knife set is going for over 25,000 miles -- or somewhere between 250$ and 500$. But you can get the same set on Amazon for 50$. What the crap?
Who is bidding on this stuff? Stop! I'll gladly buy you the 50$ knife set if you give me 25k miles!
What this boils down to is an obvious way to deprive people who don't value their miles as assets. So listen up people and take my advice: hold on to your miles, use them to buy your parents a ticket to France and be patient. It's worth far far more than that bananaguard that you're about to drop 75,000 miles on.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jun San Juan Mar 13th 2008 8:55AM
I was also looking at the auction and I can't understand why people keep on bidding. I also value each mile at 0.01 dollar. A Samsonite 22" bag can be bought in store for about 40 dollars and yet, the bid goes beyond 4,000 and now, I think more than 25,000 miles or about 250 dollars. This is crazy, really crazy! I won't bite this auction unless I feel it is worth it.
Jun San Juan Mar 13th 2008 9:06AM
I am travelling this Saturday (March 15) on a Trans-pacific flight (16 gruelling hours)....but that's not the issue....I am travelling with my 3 young boys (ages: 9, 8, and 2)....I saw the free WC Pass but I was too late for the comments...anyway, that's not the topic here....
Going back to the Auction. It was a great idea especially seeing a lifetime WorldClubs membership being auctioned....unfortunately, I don't have more than 100,000 miles on my account! I hope they will exchange one-day Worldclubs passes for miles (5000 miles should be good).
David Mar 13th 2008 9:55AM
I wanted to let you know about another option to this problem. There is a new site called www.loyaltymatch.com that allows points/miles holders to set their own price and buyers of products to bid the amount they feel the product is worth creating a community based market place to turn points and miles into cash!
LoyaltyMatch.com encourages its members to collaborate and create a community around the trading, buying or selling of loyalty program rewards e.g. merchandise by leveraging their loyalty program points or miles. The approach ensures loyalty program members can acquire cash, while shoppers acquire goods or services at a price they agree with.
We do this all within the context of complete user transparency and value. The service is available now, signing up is free and your first transaction through the marketplace is free. Subsequent transactions are $1.99 CAD each. In addition, 1 % of the funds generated by each transaction is donated evenly to the Canadian Cancer Society and World Wildlife Fund.
Check us out at http://www.loyaltymatch.com. Let me know what you think? And are we solving a problem that the auction site is missing? We think that by allowing people to set their own price at both ends, we are.
Cheers,
David Howatson
www.loyaltymatch.com
Nick Hawkins Mar 13th 2008 3:00PM
Hay Grant I will trade you 500,000 AA miles for some golf clubs and steak knives!
RobR Nov 14th 2008 11:55PM
If you have miles you don't need immediately, especially if you are worried the airline will go bankrupt or change their policies so the miles decrease in value, don't by overpriced steak knives and stuff like that. Get cash for your miles, and then save the money for when you travel, instead of saving the less-versatile miles.
You can find someone in person on craigslist or anywhere else, and meet them in a coffee house with internet and they give you the money, you buy them the tickets, and they can call to confirm them before money changes hands. You can basically do the same thing in a safer way, with escrow accounts and etc but more overhead of fees, through http://points.com or http://flyhub.com.