Does your employer allow you to keep your frequent flyer points earned on business travel?

[Anonymous]

Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd get another job if mine didn't let me keep the points. i fly 100k+ on United every year which works out nicely for my family. It saves us quite a bit of money. Also, i like being upgraded and the lounges.

Sounds great. Except then you have to fly United.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does an employer force to to give up points? My (large nonprofit) only says that meeting planners cannot accept planner points for booking entire hotel blocks or catering events, but individual points for my own hotel stay or flights I do keep. I'm not even sure how they'd prevent that.

Planner points FTW. Huge relatively unknown benefit for a select few.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

Yes--this is exactly the issue that the Federal Government ran up against. They had a policy that employees could not use FF points earned from government travel for personal use. Some allowed use for booking tickets or upgrades for business travel.

There were attempts at several investigations at multiple agencies of individuals whom they tried to audited for adherence to the policy but it was very intrusive into employee's personal lives and they had to back off. Plus it was very difficult to sort out--people get points for personal travel and personal purchases so in some cases it was very challenging to trace it all through. Plus online tracking of points was not nearly as developed then as now and the airlines refused to provide records--most employees had to keep paper from the airlines to know how many points they had. If they said they had thrown the papers out, there was really not much the IG people could do.

The federal agency IGs then shifted to trying to get the airlines to agree to two separate FF account numbers for federal employees--one personal and one for the government. The airlines said no dice and eventually the IGs threw in the towel and agreed employees could use the FF miles they had earned.

[Anonymous]

Travel about 50% of the time...keep all points and can choose whatever airline and hotel I want, but I have to book everything to the corporate card. Actually isn't so bad because then I don't float the $10k a month or so I spend on travel, but yeah those would be good points to have.

I don't see how companies could police FF miles...you just add to the ticket at check-in.

[Anonymous]

how do they know what points you collect? they cant force you to disclose your FF memberships anymore than they can force you to join one???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

Yes--this is exactly the issue that the Federal Government ran up against. They had a policy that employees could not use FF points earned from government travel for personal use. Some allowed use for booking tickets or upgrades for business travel.

There were attempts at several investigations at multiple agencies of individuals whom they tried to audited for adherence to the policy but it was very intrusive into employee's personal lives and they had to back off. Plus it was very difficult to sort out--people get points for personal travel and personal purchases so in some cases it was very challenging to trace it all through. Plus online tracking of points was not nearly as developed then as now and the airlines refused to provide records--most employees had to keep paper from the airlines to know how many points they had. If they said they had thrown the papers out, there was really not much the IG people could do.

The federal agency IGs then shifted to trying to get the airlines to agree to two separate FF account numbers for federal employees--one personal and one for the government. The airlines said no dice and eventually the IGs threw in the towel and agreed employees could use the FF miles they had earned.

I mean what was the government going to do with the miles anyways? That's just the gov being petty. They couldn't use the miles to pay for my business trips.

[Anonymous]

The issue may likely be that they don't want you to make business travel purchases based on personal loyalty gains.

ie Book a Marriott that is $100 more than a Hilton because you have status and get points.

But as PP says, how would they know. As long as you book in your corp policy???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

If you are required to use a corporate travel agent, the agent can add the company number to all reservations. Generally when reservations are made through an agent all changes go through the agent.

It's a crappy policy but can be done.

[Anonymous]

Yes. We book through our travel agent, however the points are ours. I have a corporate card that I use when I book several flights and room, but otherwise use a personal one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they allow us to keep our points from business travel. Two exceptions/points:
- If there's a large internal meeting, they'll book all the rooms as a block and do account billing. Then we don't get the points, those flow to the company which can be used for other future events.

- All airfare is booked on a company credit card, so we get the FF points but no credit card points. Expenses besides that (including hotel) are paid on our own personal cards and reimbursed, no company cards, so you get your CC points for that.

I think it's a decent trade off - no company credit cards (some people have them but not for routine basic travel) so we're floating the company a month of expenses, but we get the points.

We have the same policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

Yes--this is exactly the issue that the Federal Government ran up against. They had a policy that employees could not use FF points earned from government travel for personal use. Some allowed use for booking tickets or upgrades for business travel.

There were attempts at several investigations at multiple agencies of individuals whom they tried to audited for adherence to the policy but it was very intrusive into employee's personal lives and they had to back off. Plus it was very difficult to sort out--people get points for personal travel and personal purchases so in some cases it was very challenging to trace it all through. Plus online tracking of points was not nearly as developed then as now and the airlines refused to provide records--most employees had to keep paper from the airlines to know how many points they had. If they said they had thrown the papers out, there was really not much the IG people could do.

The federal agency IGs then shifted to trying to get the airlines to agree to two separate FF account numbers for federal employees--one personal and one for the government. The airlines said no dice and eventually the IGs threw in the towel and agreed employees could use the FF miles they had earned.

I mean what was the government going to do with the miles anyways? That's just the gov being petty. They couldn't use the miles to pay for my business trips.

The agency IGs were motivated mainly by not having employees profit from their employment. But that did raise the question of what would happen to the points. If you left or retired, of course the government would have no claim to them and couldn't penalize people for using them. But given the longevity of federal employees at their work, leaving them unused for thirty years was ludicrous, even to many of the IGs. That is why some agencies told employees they could use the miles but only to upgrade on business travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. My employer keeps the miles. Just another perk that has gone away, along with private offices, company phones and pensions.

I don't understand how this is possible. When you arrive at the airport, add your FF number to your ticket. How would a company police that?
If you mean 'keep the points' that are earned with a purchase of airfare...then, the company is paying for the ticket, so they earn the points.

Frequent Flier miles are earned on the actual flight...not at the time of purchase.

Yes--this is exactly the issue that the Federal Government ran up against. They had a policy that employees could not use FF points earned from government travel for personal use. Some allowed use for booking tickets or upgrades for business travel.

There were attempts at several investigations at multiple agencies of individuals whom they tried to audited for adherence to the policy but it was very intrusive into employee's personal lives and they had to back off. Plus it was very difficult to sort out--people get points for personal travel and personal purchases so in some cases it was very challenging to trace it all through. Plus online tracking of points was not nearly as developed then as now and the airlines refused to provide records--most employees had to keep paper from the airlines to know how many points they had. If they said they had thrown the papers out, there was really not much the IG people could do.

The federal agency IGs then shifted to trying to get the airlines to agree to two separate FF account numbers for federal employees--one personal and one for the government. The airlines said no dice and eventually the IGs threw in the towel and agreed employees could use the FF miles they had earned.

Out of curiosity, my husband is a federal employee (attorney) and only recently started to have to do a lot of business travel. He has not inquired about the status of the frequent flyer points. Do you think every federal employee gets to use them, or does it vary by agency?

[Anonymous]

^^it is my understanding that the whole FF-gate was inspired by the association of federal government agency IGs and that they collectively backed off together. I have not heard of one agency where this has been an issue since then, even stricter ones like the SEC. I think your DH is fine.