Losing Your Miles

Most of you have probably encountered frequent flier programs at some point in your travels; they’re customer loyalty programs that offer rewards for flying a certain number of miles on a specific airline – thus motivating you to book all of your travel on that same carrier. If you travel a lot – in excess of 100,000 miles per year, for example – most airlines will also give you membership in a special rewards club, which entitles you to special benefits, in addition to the free tickets and ticket upgrades you can earn with your flyer miles. In some companies, frequent flyer miles have become a perk all by themselves, and we’ve seen cases of the IRS ruling them to be income (under the non-monetary compensation rules) and requiring people to pay taxes on them, but all such programs have an inherent problem: they cost the company money…


To combat this, most of the airlines that still have frequent flyer programs have imposed limits on when the free tickets can be used, and on how long you can keep them. There are a few exceptions – Capital One is making a major selling point out of its “never expire, no blackout dates” airline miles cards, for example – but for the most part, it’s a “use them or lose them” proposition. This, unfortunately, has the side effect of lowering how valuable these “rewards” points are to the casual user, and thereby undermining the effectiveness of the entire program. The truth is, the airlines are attempting to have it both ways, and are annoying their customers into the bargain. The new program being offered by American Airlines, however, may have reached a new low…


Called the buyAAmiles program, this handy little offer allows you to purchase additional miles on American for cash. Now, this isn’t a new operation; most of the airlines that have frequent flyer programs have been doing this since the beginning, so that people who want to use a “free” ticket but are short a few thousand miles can make up the difference out of pocket. The new wrinkle is that since buying miles counts as “account activity” it can also prevent your account from going inactive and your existing stock of miles from expiring. American is sending out emails to their infrequent passengers (like me) saying that your miles are about to expire, but for under $60 you can buy a few new ones and some time…


I find this annoying for at least two reasons. First, having the miles expire in the first place is blatant cost-cutting measure; it’s good for the company and comes at the expense of the customers, and is therefore not a good choice. Second, my frequent-flyer miles do not expire until April. Yes, as I write this, it’s six months before the expiration date on the email I got yesterday. As with magazines sending you “Your Subscription is About to Expire!!!” letters half a year before your end date, I expect to be getting these messages every week until the due date comes up or I send them money. All of which is made even more absurd by the fact that I’ve only got 2,416 miles in my account to begin with; to actually get a free ticket I’d have to spend at least $250 on more miles, or fly cross-country seven more times…


Long-time readers (assuming I have any) may recall that I’ve been avoiding American ever since the episode when they refused to sell me two tickets (for me and my wife) because the departure date was less than 72 hours away; we each had to purchase our own ticket with our own credit card, and the airline also refused to guarantee that we’d be able to sit together on our cross-country flight. I generally only use American when there is no other way to get where I’m going, and even then preferably when somebody else is paying for the tickets. I can’t say I’m any more likely to avoid them after this stunt, but I’m certainly no more likely to fly with them. Of course, you could argue that having a spam-bot send me a spam email doesn’t cost the company much, and I’d agree with you – but that’s not the same thing as not costing them anything. It seems unlikely that they’re going to make much money doing this, whereas the extortionary nature of the offer may anger some potential customers enough to quit doing business with the airline for good…