The Deal Mommy

Frequent flier programs are a scam – here’s why you should quit yours now

was the headline that greeted us on Linkedin last Tuesday, written by Christopher Elliot, “LinkedIn Thought Leader” (among many other publications including the Washington Post and National Geographic Traveler). Many bloggers had some words to say on the topic, notably View from the Wing, but the message wasn’t getting through to the right people: the infrequent travelers who are harmed by such wrongheaded advice.

Before you get the wrong impression, let me clear up a few things:

1. One of the oldest tricks in the blog book is to start a fake “fight” with someone 100 times bigger and more successful than you in desperate hope you’ll get increased traffic and trackback links. Not my intention. (BTW, this always backfires and makes you look stupid.)

2. I respect success. Chris Elliot is successful and respected in his field, and in the area of ombudsman-ship, I rate him a 10.

However, I have a problem that Chris Elliot can’t solve, because he and his ilk are the cause. The so called expert who tells people that Frequent Flyer programs are a scam does a disservice to the very public he claims to serve.

The Negative Nellie routine frightens people into throwing away free money.  It’s as if some “consumer expert” watched a single episode of “Extreme Couponing” and told grocery shoppers to shred their Giant cards!  Do people in the points world go crazy?  Sure.  But for every pudding guy, there are thousands of everyday people going about their daily lives, collecting miles and points along the way for free or greatly discounted travel.

I should know. I am one of them.

Who am I? Well, I’m a Mom of two school age kids, a wife of a Federal Employee who doesn’t travel for work, and an occasional blogger. In other words, Jane Average. Without going into debt, in the past two years we’ve been to Panama, Guatemala, Quebec, Spain, France, Florida (three times), Las Vegas (twice) the Midwest numerous times for family and have flown family to us. For Christmas last year, I flew my husband’s best friend first class to meet him in Las Vegas. We’re just back from front row spots at the Macy’s parade.

I’m not telling you this as a brag, because there’s really nothing brag-worthy about it. By making some small shifts in how I pay my bills combined with a few credit card bonuses I’ve been able stretch my travel budget many times where it should have gone. For example, last summer we got 24 days of vacation for $2124, the cost of an average weekly beach rental!

Any family of four that flies twice a year, say once from DC to Miami (1,842 miles) and once from DC to St. Louis ( 1,432) will earn 3,274 miles each. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but you can use an airline such as BA (flying American) that has a household account and you’re already 1/2 way to a free ticket. Flying someone else? Wait until a share miles promotion comes around and transfer them at a penny each to one account, buying bonus miles at a penny a mile. Don’t even want to do that? I just used 1,700 of Deal Girl’s miles for a subscription to the Economist worth $51. Still want to cut up your card?

Is the system perfect? No. If you only want to redeem miles to get to Orlando for Spring Break, then, yes, you are probably going to get hosed. But with advance planning (tickets are released 330 days out) and flexibility I’ve never not been able to get at least close to where I wanted to go.

Do miles expire? In some programs. But, as View from the Wing also explains, simply buying an iTunes song for 99 cents keeps your miles active. I also recommend every other piece of advice Gary gives. In fact his is the piece I intended to write, but he did it better anyway.

So what is my dog in this fight? It’s the Snake Oil act. By calling miles anything other than what they are: a rewards program no different than that at Safeway, you put the fear of voodoo into people and I’m tired of it!

I posted my Macy’s parade pics to Facebook last night. Many of the responses include the word “jealous”, and I blame you. If people lost the fear and leveraged the earning opportunities in their own lives, they wouldn’t be jealous. They would be posting pictures from their own adventures!