5 ms·

Reminds me of the guy who gamed a pudding air-miles promotion to great benefit: http://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million-air-miles-by-buying-1339

Reminds me of the guy who gamed a pudding air-miles promotion to great benefit: http://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million-air-miles-by-buying-1339646546 http://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million-air-m...

pif 10y ago
Wonderful read, thanks!
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Obligatory warning that this wouldn't work the same way today, at least in terms of getting you frequent-flier status with an airline. Airlines have learned to give out two classes of "miles": one class is only redeemable for tickets (or transferrable to rental cars, etc.), and those are handed out like candy. The other class earns the enduring status levels that get you things like complimentary first-class upgrades, and can only be earned by actually flying (the frequent-flier community calls them "BIS" -- "Butt-In-Seat" -- miles), or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card. Also my favorite gimmick of all time, another now-closed loophole, was someone who realized the US Mint will sell you dollar coins at face value, with free shipping for orders over a certain amount. So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank and immediately pay off the card. For the cost of the time you spent placing the order and going to the bank, you get X frequent-flier miles.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    > or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card. There may be examples but I'm not aware of airlines that give you status through credit card spending today. The one sorta exception I know of is that United does currently waive their qualifying dollar spend requirement for some status levels given sufficient spend on an affiliate card.
    - asavadatti 10y ago
      So does Delta.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      They don't directly give you status, but in addition to waiving dollar-spend-on-tickets requirements, there are cards which convert part of their redeemable-only mileage earning into status-qualifying mileage earning when you hit spend thresholds. Before the American Airlines merger, you could get to low-level status on US Airways this way. Sign up for or renew a lounge membership, and you got 5,000 qualifying miles. Then hit both spend thresholds on the Barclays affiliated credit card, and 20,000 miles from that would convert to qualifying, putting you at 25k for the year, good for Silver Preferred. I believe it's still possible on Delta to reach Silver Medallion status, in the first year you have their top-end Reserve Amex, by hitting bonuses and spend thresholds that award or convert to qualifying miles.
    - URSpider94 10y ago
      Delta will give you 10k status miles per year if you get their AmEx Platinum card and meet a spending bar.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank Strictly speaking, that's against the policy of most credit cards, which normally charge a premium for anything equivalent to a "cash advance", because of rewards among other reasons.
    - giarc 10y ago
      Cash advance and buying coins from the mint are totally different things.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        The rules on many credit cards directly prohibit the purchase of "negotiable instruments" or "currency" or similar. Along the same lines, many credit cards will charge cash advance fees and rates for purchasing foreign currency.
  - camiller 10y ago
    There was also a incident where a guy bought travelers checks (fee free through AAA) and simply cashed them and paid the credit card bill, over and over..... eventually they stopped awarding miles for travelers checks purchases.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - zhte415 10y ago
    > Also my favorite gimmick of all time, another now-closed loophole, was someone who realized the US Mint will sell you dollar coins at face value, with free shipping for orders over a certain amount. So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank and immediately pay off the card. For the cost of the time you spent placing the order and going to the bank, you get X frequent-flier miles. This is genius. It also helps the economy. Banks hate putting small value cash into circulation - a $1 note for example 'costs' a bank the same amount to stock in a cashier desk as a $20 note in terms of space and time needed, leading to much complexity from central banks of how to get money into circulation. Coins have a pretty good amount of time in circulation, notes of low denominations don't, don't know about dollars (probably with a long tail as used as currency in many developing economies) but a £5 note has an average circulation lifetime of around 3 months before it is too crumpled, water stained, and plain worn out.

pif 10y ago

Wonderful read, thanks!

ubernostrum 10y ago
Obligatory warning that this wouldn't work the same way today, at least in terms of getting you frequent-flier status with an airline. Airlines have learned to give out two classes of "miles": one class is only redeemable for tickets (or transferrable to rental cars, etc.), and those are handed out like candy. The other class earns the enduring status levels that get you things like complimentary first-class upgrades, and can only be earned by actually flying (the frequent-flier community calls them "BIS" -- "Butt-In-Seat" -- miles), or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card. Also my favorite gimmick of all time, another now-closed loophole, was someone who realized the US Mint will sell you dollar coins at face value, with free shipping for orders over a certain amount. So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank and immediately pay off the card. For the cost of the time you spent placing the order and going to the bank, you get X frequent-flier miles.
- ghaff 10y ago
  > or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card. There may be examples but I'm not aware of airlines that give you status through credit card spending today. The one sorta exception I know of is that United does currently waive their qualifying dollar spend requirement for some status levels given sufficient spend on an affiliate card.
  - asavadatti 10y ago
    So does Delta.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    They don't directly give you status, but in addition to waiving dollar-spend-on-tickets requirements, there are cards which convert part of their redeemable-only mileage earning into status-qualifying mileage earning when you hit spend thresholds. Before the American Airlines merger, you could get to low-level status on US Airways this way. Sign up for or renew a lounge membership, and you got 5,000 qualifying miles. Then hit both spend thresholds on the Barclays affiliated credit card, and 20,000 miles from that would convert to qualifying, putting you at 25k for the year, good for Silver Preferred. I believe it's still possible on Delta to reach Silver Medallion status, in the first year you have their top-end Reserve Amex, by hitting bonuses and spend thresholds that award or convert to qualifying miles.
  - URSpider94 10y ago
    Delta will give you 10k status miles per year if you get their AmEx Platinum card and meet a spending bar.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank Strictly speaking, that's against the policy of most credit cards, which normally charge a premium for anything equivalent to a "cash advance", because of rewards among other reasons.
  - giarc 10y ago
    Cash advance and buying coins from the mint are totally different things.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      The rules on many credit cards directly prohibit the purchase of "negotiable instruments" or "currency" or similar. Along the same lines, many credit cards will charge cash advance fees and rates for purchasing foreign currency.
- camiller 10y ago
  There was also a incident where a guy bought travelers checks (fee free through AAA) and simply cashed them and paid the credit card bill, over and over..... eventually they stopped awarding miles for travelers checks purchases.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zhte415 10y ago
  > Also my favorite gimmick of all time, another now-closed loophole, was someone who realized the US Mint will sell you dollar coins at face value, with free shipping for orders over a certain amount. So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank and immediately pay off the card. For the cost of the time you spent placing the order and going to the bank, you get X frequent-flier miles. This is genius. It also helps the economy. Banks hate putting small value cash into circulation - a $1 note for example 'costs' a bank the same amount to stock in a cashier desk as a $20 note in terms of space and time needed, leading to much complexity from central banks of how to get money into circulation. Coins have a pretty good amount of time in circulation, notes of low denominations don't, don't know about dollars (probably with a long tail as used as currency in many developing economies) but a £5 note has an average circulation lifetime of around 3 months before it is too crumpled, water stained, and plain worn out.