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Or use them for a car rental or some other non-flight redemption.
Maybe if you don't need the Ginsburg knives or other services, you might consider donating the miles to a serviceman for medical travel? Just found this online:
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by N610DL
Funny - I was just looking to use MileagePlus miles to fly a friend out from NJ for my birthday in DEN. I don't plan on flying UA ever again, so figure I should just burn them. Now with this it's even more of a reason to do it.
BTW: Anybody know if you actually can gift miles (like Delta) or does United have some BS rule in place that prevents that too?
USA route are not changing Value, only International.
Why transfer miles when you are giving a ticket to someone else, Just book it in their name and it is theirs. I have been doing that with my UA mileage for many yrs. (funerals, weddings, sick family...) I have some friends that have access to my acct and they just book off my miles when ever they need to go somewhere.
USA route are not changing Value, only International.
Why transfer miles when you are giving a ticket to someone else, Just book it in their name and it is theirs. I have been doing that with my UA mileage for many yrs. (funerals, weddings, sick family...) I have some friends that have access to my acct and they just book off my miles when ever they need to go somewhere.
I rarely fly them so I wasn't sure - I know the procedure with Delta and it's fairly easy. But I know with United they have closed down FFP accounts for auctioning out miles on EBay and such. Seems like more of a restricted program.
But I know with United they have closed down FFP accounts for auctioning out miles on EBay and such.
Pretty much all frequent flyer programs will close down your account if you attempt to sell your miles. But giving them away to a charity or using them to book a ticket for friends or family members is fine.
Maybe if you don't need the Ginsburg knives or other services, you might consider donating the miles to a serviceman for medical travel? Just found this online:
I hate United, I was a 100k flier for years then overnight my status meant nothing because they came out with some secret "black card" premium 100k program which apparently was not only based on miles flown but average price paid per mile, so my upgrades and accrued miles weren't worth crap.
After I used all my international upgrades and a bunch of my miles, I gave the rest to Fisher House! It's a great organization
Pretty much all frequent flyer programs will close down your account if you attempt to sell your miles. But giving them away to a charity or using them to book a ticket for friends or family members is fine.
True but you can redeem them for gift cards legally on points.com but the exchange rate is absolutely atrocious.
Pretty much all frequent flyer programs will close down your account if you attempt to sell your miles. But giving them away to a charity or using them to book a ticket for friends or family members is fine.
Thanks I didn't know that at least with United. I'll try to gift them out - for all the good people that do work at United, there are way too many bad apples to continue to fly with them over Delta (or even American at this point.)
While there's always a risk of an account audit if you use miles on a ticket on someone else, a ticket purchased for someone to visit the home city of the account holder with an explanation of 'I was flying a friend into town' is far, far, more likely to be believed by the airline than if the account holder uses the miles on a round trip on the other side of the world with no easy explanation of a relationship to the account holder.
I've had family members with different last names use their FF miles for tickets for me to visit them, and there was never any fuss or question.
While there's always a risk of an account audit if you use miles on a ticket on someone else, a ticket purchased for someone to visit the home city of the account holder with an explanation of 'I was flying a friend into town' is far, far, more likely to be believed by the airline than if the account holder uses the miles on a round trip on the other side of the world with no easy explanation of a relationship to the account holder.
Absolutely, although the latter case isn't breaking any rules of the frequent flyer program (unlike selling miles to online brokers, which definitely does). It's just highly likely to be flagged as possible fraud. If I was buying a friend an expensive international ticket using miles, I'd be sure to send them a notarized letter stating that I had used my miles to purchase the ticket for Friend XYZ on Date Such-and-such for that friend to take to the airport with them, and I'd make sure they had my cell phone number just in case. I'd call the airline frequent flyer program as well just to be safe.
Don't be afraid to use your miles, just be aware that there's enough fraud out there that airlines have gotten pretty proactive about looking for it, and take the necessary precautions so your legitimate purchase doesn't get mistaken for fraud.
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