Miles, Points, and Courtrooms: The Wildest Loyalty Program Exploits Revealed

by Gary Leff

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:

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.

Some of you have been around the points hobby long enough to remember

That made the fighter jet just $700,000 points. One customer sent in a check for the points along with a redemption request. Pepsi denied it, saying that the whole thing was a joke. Three years later a judge ruled that the commercial imploring customer to buy Pepsi and save their points and telling them they could redeem for a fighter jet was not a legally binding offer.

This story, which I’d seen covered at the time, reminded me of Jodee Berry who won a Hooters beer sales contest in 2001. A store manager had promised employees that whomever sold the most beer in a month would receive a new Toyota.As the winner, she was blindfolded and taken to the parking lot, and given a toy Yoda. She sued, and won a settlement.

Occasionally consumers win – or at least settle. A decade ago a US Airways shopping portal deal seemed too good to be true and customers earned 200 million Dividend Miles – but the mall refused to pay, when the merchant (easyCGI) refused to pay. The members hired an attorney with a history of taking his compensation in points. And they eventually settled (and signed a non-disclosure agreement about it).

(HT: Golden Rule Travel)