I discovered one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the traveling human race today, and it is a worth a post.
So here I am trying to buy two air tix to Portland, OR. Since the regular air fares for a trip from SFO to PDX were running a bit high, I decided to use my air-miles from United Airlines (can you already feel it coming, right? United, air miles… ). Over my many trips to India, I have managed to save a respectable 64K miles on the account. I log in to the united account, choose the option of using my miles to purchase two tixs. The price of two tickets including taxes is $634, (so I a already knew that I could fall a few miles short), but what came next took me by surprise and disgust.
The site reported that I needed 100K miles to purchase the $634 tickets and thus I was short by 36K miles. But I still had the option of buying these 36K miles. Now let’s do some maths:
100K miles == $634 –> 36K miles == $288. But I would be able to use my 64K miles to save $406. Right? Not so soon…
The purchase page shows me that the price of buying 36K mile is a whopping $1200!! Seriously?
So somehow my miles are worth $6.34/1K miles and their miles are worth $33/1K miles?
i.e. United Airlines’s miles are ~5.25X better, juicier, prettier, healthier, @#$%*&ier than my miles.
You would have never seen that coming.
Yours truly
