I’m quoted this morning in a story on Ebay’s new points program.

My thinking is probably a little more generous than the piece suggests, since my general take is that almost any new reward program from a major company is a good thing — but that I won’t be participating until the program becomes a little more generous.

Frequent-flier-program enthusiasts gave the new program a chilly response.


Gary Leff, who runs a frequent-flier Web site (www.webflyer.com/blog/), called the eBay program a “very bad deal.”


Leff said that, once converted to eBay points, airline miles end up being worth less than a penny a mile.


“But properly spent, those miles are worth far more,” Leff said in an e-mail. “I recently gave my grandparents two first-class tickets from Miami to Sydney. Those tickets would have cost over $20,000, making the 240,000 miles spent worth 8.3 cents apiece. That’s a far sight better than an Anything Point.”