One of the most legendary miles and points feats was when Dave Phillips earned over a million American Airlines miles (and lifetime elite status) buying Healthy Choice pudding. Individual cups of pudding sold at the grocery store for 25 cents, and he filled up a van full across multiple grocery stores. Then he got one to bulk order 60 cases.
In total he bought 12,150 cups of pudding for $3,140, earning 1,215,000 miles. He donated the pudding to food banks (tax writeoff!) and they clipped the UPC codes for him.
He had to fill out each 500 mile certificate. The cost was still high, but miles were worth a lot more then. And his feat was memorialized by Adam Sandler in P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love.
That deal was honored. So was the 7 million AAdvantage miles I earned two years ago via SimplyMiles (making charitable donations to Mastercard’s charitable for sextuple miles). So was the US Airways holiday shopping promotion in 2009, buying stickers in a similar manner.
Pudding Guy was became one of the legends of FlyerTalk. Among this group I’d have to count:
- the frequent flyer who beta tested his messaging app idea with fellow flyers. It was WhatsApp. When he sold the company to Facebook five years later for $19 billion, the sale close was forced because he had a Lufthansa first class award ticket and would be gone to Europe (and could not easily reschedule the booking).
- the frequent flyer member who successfully ran for Congress but then resigned after using congressional funds to settle sexual misconduct charges and refused to pay back the money.
Those members rose to prominence for things they did outside of the community. Phillips’ prominence was his mileage antics. As part of Punch Drunk Love he actually walked them through earning 1 million miles with LatinPass in the first half of 2000 by flying at least one international segment on each of the ten LatinPass member airlines, flying at least three segments on partner airlines (KLM, US Airways, TWA); staying at least three nights in at least two partner hotels and renting a car for at least five days from their car rental partners.
But not all of the greats are honored. Sometimes companies come up with a technicality. And sometimes these deals wind up in court.
One of the best attempts ever to leverage a company’s loyalty program offer happened 27 hours ago, and is going viral again in social media.
A 21-year-old biz student found a risk-free way to turn $700k into $23M.
Instead, he got embroiled in a lawsuit with a Fortune 500 company.
Here is the story that will make your blood boil: pic.twitter.com/ZxWB23skp3
— Jesse Pujji (@jspujji) December 12, 2023
Some of you have been around the points hobby long enough to remember
The Pepsi points thing went to court, and the corporate apologist judge — the norm for the position in US courts — sided with Pepsi.
The WhatsApp co-founder has done a stellar job of backing his country of origin’s fight against the Russian invasion. And his other co-founder has done a stellar job of backing Signal and other privacy-maximizing endeavors.
There have been a few political office holders who have made use of miles and points games to raise funds and to win elected office.
You left out how the charitable donation thing under SimplyMiles gave you AA Concierge Key status. That was well played.
I know the story of a person who made over quite the substantial amount in EC261/2004 compensation from award ticket use, but there is no willingness to go on the public record about that. That is a sort of a super successor to people booking travel to rack up bump compensation from oversold domestic US flights.
I seem to remember many years ago, a Traveler’s Check Company was giving points for buying those checks and they accepted credit cards. He would purchase several thousand dollars worth and get the points and put the money into a savings account. When the CC bill came, he would pay the bill using the money in his account. He would do this many times until they company realized what was going on and stopped it. But by then he had accrued over a million miles.
Don’t forget Mr. Pickles and the US Mint/Dollar Coins.
It seems to me the Harrier story is from more than 27 hours ago.
A new spin on manufactured spending.