A new type of miles scam marketing engine has recently started surfacing from airline sales teams called miles auctions and I wanted to set the record straight on how they’re valued. You may have already caught onto the foreshadowing — nice work.
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.