Worst Deal in America: Buying Miles
Need more miles to get a reward ticket for your summer vacation? Your favorite airline is likely to offer you the worst deal in America -- the chance to buy them.
Why is that such a rotten deal? Let's take a look at the offer I got from Delta: It allowed me to buy frequent flier miles in 2,000-mile increments for just 2.8 cents per mile. Sometimes, Delta will gives a 50% mileage bonus to make this a better deal.
In dollars and cents that means it would cost $700 to get 25,000 miles, which is the minimum amount it would take to buy a domestic ticket with miles. If I happened to buy miles during a bonus period, I'd have to buy about 17,000 miles to get 25,500 --enough for a free domestic ticket. That would cost me $476.
Now $476 wouldn't be a terrible deal if would get me to Hawaii and back. But no such luck. The mileage you actually need will depend on where you're going and when you book. A Delta representative told me on Monday that the only way you're going to get a ticket for 25,000 miles is if you book waaaaaay early (up to 331 days in advance) or are going someplace unpopular. If I want to get a ticket to Hawaii this summer, it's going to cost much, much more.
How many miles it would take to get from Los Angeles to Oahu in the first week of August, for instance? The representative told me that it would take a minimum of 65,000 miles if I were trying to book on Monday, June 7. Those 65,000 miles would cost $1,820 to buy without the bonus and about $1,200 with the bonus.
If I wanted to buy that same ticket today with cash, it would cost me somewhere between $520 and $600. And I wouldn't have to fly on Delta.
If that's not enough to convince you that buying miles is a boneheaded decision, here are a few other disclaimers from Delta's web site:
- Delta reserves the right to change terms and conditions at any time.
- Taxes and fees for reward travel are your responsibility
- Miles expire after 24 months from the last date of activity. If you need to "reactivate" your miles, it will cost $25 to reclaim 10,000 miles; $50 to reactivate between 10,001 and 25,000 miles; $100 to reclaim between 25,001 and 50,000 miles; etc.
- There's a $150 fee if you change or cancel a reward ticket
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