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.

Yes

Yes, I'd riot if they didn't!

Yes I have always been able to keep them. With premium status and some international business class flights I think I got 400k miles on United alone last year. Adding in United credit card points, I've already used that in the last year for 5 international flights and 3 domestic flights to an expensive destination ($1000 tickets).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The federal govt didn't used to let you so no one ever collected any.

When was that?

It ended about 10 years ago maybe a bit longer. I left federal service in 1998 and we couldn't use it then.

Yes my employer allows me to keep these.

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.

Anonymous wrote:The federal govt didn't used to let you so no one ever collected any.

When was that?

I travel about 50% of my time.

I get to keep all the hotel and airline miles, plus we book everything ourselves (and later reimburse), so I have a lot of points.

It's a nice bonus to offset all the time gone from home. My family and I can take some really nice vacations at no cost.

Anonymous wrote:I'm at a small company now that doesn't require travel. In the past all of my prior companies allowed employees to keep their points for airline travel and hotel stays. But points accumulated on our AMEX went back to the business.

+1

Current employer does.

My previous employer did not and it was a huge source of angst for the employees that had to travel. Many/most were told during the hiring process they would be allowed to keep those points for their own use and didn't find out until onboarding that they wouldn't. That, combined with finding out during onboarding that travel time was not considered billable/utilization time (when again, they were told during the hiring process it would be) caused one guy to walk out of orientation and quit right then and there. This was a big consulting org so this was a pretty big issue for the folks that were going to be traveling full time.

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.

The federal govt didn't used to let you so no one ever collected any.

I'm at a small company now that doesn't require travel. In the past all of my prior companies allowed employees to keep their points for airline travel and hotel stays. But points accumulated on our AMEX went back to the business.

Just curious, as my employer does not allow you to keep all FF points earned on business travel. I am bummed about this, since business travel prevents me from helping out at home in the evening and so creates stress for my spouse. It seems like it would be nice if I could at least use those points for a little vacation.