Selling or buying miles: what the program terms say

The ban, quoted from each program

A broker's offer usually arrives with a reassurance: plenty of people do it, the programs never check, it is your property after all. The program documents answer all three. Eight of them say points are not the member's property (Bilt's terms are silent on it), all nine bar the sale in one form or another, and several describe exactly how they enforce it. The table quotes the operative words and the consequence each document names.

Look at the third column before the second. The words differ, sale, barter, broker, auction, but the consequences cluster: the asset bought is void, the account that sold it can lose everything, and the person who tries to travel on it is the one standing at the airport without a valid ticket.

The traveler pays first: how enforcement lands on the buyer

People who buy award tickets from brokers often think of the risk as the seller's. Delta's rules put it on the person with the boarding pass. Award Tickets "obtained through prohibited sale or barter transactions are VOID, invalid for travel, and will be confiscated. Persons trying to use such tickets and/or benefits will not be permitted to travel unless they purchase a new ticket from Delta at the applicable fare." A second clause repeats the point for award tickets specifically: "Members trying to use such tickets must pay the applicable fare to Delta to travel," and purchased or auctioned awards "are subject to confiscation and travel will not be permitted."

Notice what "the applicable fare" means in practice. It is the fare on the day you are at the counter, not the fare you might have booked months earlier. A traveler who discovers the problem at check-in is buying a walk-up ticket, for the same flight, after already paying the broker. Marriott's equivalent is quieter but just as final for a hotel stay: "Award Redemptions believed to have been bartered, sold, exchanged, or issued fraudulently, or issued to someone other than the eligible Member, will be void and will not be honored." Virgin Atlantic lists "denial of travel and/or redemption of the Reward" among the possible results.

The seller's side is covered too, and some programs reach beyond the account. Southwest's terms say the account may be terminated and points forfeited "regardless of whether or not the transaction is completed", so an offer that falls through can still cost the seller the balance. Delta reserves the right to "assess the fair market value" of the tickets or benefits from the member "initiating or facilitating the prohibited transaction". Southwest and Singapore Airlines both say violators may be liable for damages and litigation costs. None of these clauses requires the program to prove that money changed hands in a particular amount; several use the word barter, which covers trades for anything of value.

What a seller actually holds: the property clauses

Every sale assumes the seller owns something to sell. The documents read for this guide say, in different words, that the member does not. Delta: "Miles are not the property of any Member." Marriott: points, awards and status "are the sole property of the Company and are not the property of Members." Virgin Atlantic: Virgin Points "are owned by VR and all rights in Virgin Points remain with VR and do not pass to FC Members", VR being Virgin Red. KrisFlyer: miles and rewards "do not constitute personal property". The bank documents match. Amex says points "don't belong to you and are not your property", Citi says "You have no property rights or other legal interests in Points", and Chase says "Unless required by law, points aren't your property. Points have no value until redeemed."

Read together, these clauses describe what a balance is in contract terms: a permission the program grants, to redeem for rewards on the program's conditions, which the program can withdraw for a breach of its rules. That is why the enforcement clauses are written the way they are. A program does not need to prove the member lost anything when it voids a sold ticket, because, on its own terms, the member never owned the ticket's value in the first place. Southwest says points, reward flights and certain other benefits "have no cash value and are void if sold, purchased, brokered, or bartered", and Marriott says points and awards "have no cash value".

Chase's "Unless required by law" is the one qualifier in the set, and it points in the same direction as the death-and-divorce discussion in the site's guide to points after a death or divorce: the programs state their position first and leave any override to the law. This page does not say when, if ever, the law would require otherwise. It does say that a broker who calls a points balance "your property" is contradicting the documents the balance sits under.

There is a practical consequence for anyone pricing a sale, too. A buyer's offer of so much per thousand miles is not a market price for an asset; it is a payment for taking a risk the program has written down. The seller carries the account risk described above, and the traveler carries the ticket risk. The real price of a point, on this site's method, only ever exists for one booking: the cash fare it replaces, less the fees that survive, divided by the points. A broker's per-mile number is not that, and comparing it with a cents-per-point figure from an award booking mixes two different things.

Buying points the legal way: from the program

There is a legitimate way to buy points, and the same documents that ban broker sales describe it. Marriott's Program Rules, section 2.9, set annual ceilings on what a member can buy: 150,000 points combined, for themselves or as a gift to another member, through Marriott's own buy and gift storefronts; 100,000 combined through the Points.com-powered window on Marriott channels; and, for members with an offer-qualifying activity, 100,000 through a Points multiplier storefront. Virgin Atlantic's terms, clause 3.6, say members can purchase Virgin Points and "pay to transfer and gift Virgin Points to other Members' FC Programme accounts", a service operated on Virgin's behalf by Points International Ltd.

Virgin's void clause shows how the line is drawn. Points and Rewards are void if "sold, auctioned, bartered, purchased by any other method than through 'Buy Virgin Points' (including 'Gift Virgin Points' and 'Transfer Virgin Points') and 'Points Booster' options". In other words, buying is not the problem. Buying from anyone other than the program is. The same is true at Bilt, whose terms treat as misuse only the "unauthorized buying or selling of Points, unless expressly authorized through the Bilt App or Website."

Whether a program's own sale price is worth paying is a separate question, and it has an answer only for a specific booking. The site's guide to buying points: when it beats the cash fare works the arithmetic: the price per point against the cash fare of the award you will book, with the fees that survive. A broker's price may look lower, but it is not comparable, because the program-sold point carries no risk of confiscation and the broker-sold ticket does.

Booking for someone else is not selling to them

The most common legal way to share the value of miles is also the simplest: book the award in the other person's name. Delta's rules say so directly: "Miles may be redeemed for Award Tickets in the name of passengers other than the SkyMiles Member, but Award Tickets are nontransferable once issued." KrisFlyer's terms refer to members redeeming for "the airfares of any of their five redemption nominees", which is how Singapore Airlines handles the same idea, with a defined list of people.

The difference between that and a sale is consideration. Delta prohibits "the sale or barter" of award tickets, Southwest bars redeeming points "for cash or other consideration", and the Marriott rules void Award Redemptions believed to have been bartered or sold. Booking a parent's flight with your miles is ordinary use. Booking a stranger's flight in exchange for a payment is the transaction every one of these documents prohibits, even though the ticket looks identical.

Hotels need a second look, because Marriott words it differently. Section 3.1.c says that "Unless otherwise noted, Award Redemptions are valid only for use by the Member from whose Account the Award Redemption was processed and are not transferable," and section 3.2.j, on redeeming for several rooms, asks members to make award stay reservations "in good faith for use by the Member and their invited guests only", ruling out "reselling, impermissibly assigning or posting on third-party websites". Before booking a hotel award for someone who will travel without you, read the program's rules on guests and on booking for others. The pooling and sharing guide sets out what several programs print about booking awards for other people.

Read the ladder from the top. The first four rows are things the programs print as permitted, three of them with caps, fees or a household test. The last three are things the documents prohibit. The seventh row is the one people underestimate: the traveler holding a sold ticket is the person Delta's rules turn away.

Gifts, donations and paid transfers: the permitted versions of giving points away

Wanting to give points to someone is not the same as selling them, and most of the programs read here offer a way to do it inside their rules. The catch is that the permitted way usually runs through the program, often for a fee, and with limits that a private deal would ignore. Four patterns appear in the documents read.

The first is the program-run gift or transfer. Virgin Atlantic lets a member "pay to transfer and gift Virgin Points to other Members' FC Programme accounts" through its own service. Marriott's section 2.8 lets members transfer points to another member's account within an annual cap and a monthly limit on transfer transactions, and section 2.9 lets members buy points as a gift for another member within the annual purchase cap. Delta points members to its Transfer Miles program, with its own fees and terms. In each case the program sees both accounts, applies its limits and records the move.

The second is the household rule. On Chase's education page the household rule is strict: one other person, at your address, and no one else. That is narrower than a gift to a friend, and it is the only person-to-person move for Chase points that this guide found on Chase's own pages.

The third is charity. Southwest's terms say a member "may donate points only to those preselected charities chosen by Southwest and no other charities may receive donations through the program." The restriction is the point: even a donation, with nothing coming back to the member, has to go through the channel the program controls.

The fourth is the award itself, booked in another person's name, which the section above covers. All four have the same shape. The program is a party to the move, the points never leave its system as anything but points, and no third party pays the member. A private sale has none of those features, which is why the documents treat it so differently from a gift that looks similar on the surface. For the practical side of moving points within a family, see the pooling and sharing guide.

Handing over the login is its own violation

Most broker transactions need more than a balance. They need access, because the seller has to book the award from the account that holds the miles, or let the broker do it. Delta's rules address that separately from the sale ban. Members "cannot use their SkyMiles account log-in credentials on, or otherwise provide access to, their SkyMiles account to any person or third-party website or app, including but not limited to, any mileage management service, mileage tracking service, or mileage aggregation service." The rules add that "Each Member is solely responsible for any actions taken with his or her password, including without limitation any transactions in their account."

Virgin Atlantic makes the same allocation of responsibility from the other direction. Its terms say it is the member's "responsibility to ensure that you take appropriate care of your account and identification membership number to prevent unauthorised persons from accessing your account," and that "Unless you tell us otherwise, we shall be entitled to assume that anyone using your details to access your FC Programme account is you." KrisFlyer asks members to keep the membership number, PIN and password secure and confidential.

So a seller who shares a password to let a broker book has two problems under Delta's rules: the sale, and the access. And if the broker then misuses the access, the clauses above say the member answers for what happened in the account, the same clauses quoted in the guide to miles stolen from an account. This is one reason a sale that seemed to go smoothly can still end with a closed account months later, after an audit; Delta reserves the right "to audit Members' accounts at any time and without notice".

Bank points: misuse clauses with the account attached

Brokers mostly trade airline miles and award tickets, but the bank programs cover the same ground in their misuse clauses, and the account at stake there is a credit card. Chase's Ultimate Rewards agreements list examples of misuse that include "buying or selling points" and "selling, or participating in the sale or exchange of, gift cards, travel or other items of value obtained through use of points". The second phrase is broad: it reaches the travel booked with points, not just the points. Chase says it may temporarily prohibit earning or using points, and that points are lost immediately if the account is closed for misuse or fraud.

Citi's ThankYou terms for Double Cash accounts list "Buying or selling Points" among examples of fraud, misuse and abuse, and the remedies include taking away accrued points, suspending or closing the Citi account or ThankYou account, and legal action to recover rewards redeemed and Citi's monetary losses. Amex's Membership Rewards terms, which deny that points are property at all, go further: for fraud, abuse, misuse or gaming, they allow Amex to suspend earning and use, take away points "even if it results in a negative points balance", and cancel products with immediate forfeiture.

For a bank currency the order of events usually runs one way: the points move to an airline, the airline issues the award, and the sale happens around that award. Once points leave the bank, the airline's rules govern them, as Amex's terms say of any transfer. But the bank clauses still cover the points and the account they came from. A household whose everyday card is the one carrying the points is risking more than a balance. The broader rules of moving bank points are in the guide to transferring points between banks and partners.

Reading a broker offer against the terms

Offers to buy miles do not usually describe themselves as violations. They talk about unused value, a quick payment, and an award booked "for you" or "for a client". Set the language aside and test the offer against what the program documents actually ban. Four questions cover nearly every case in the documents read.

• Is anyone paying, or trading anything, for the miles or the award? If so, Delta's, Southwest's, KrisFlyer's, Virgin's and Marriott's sale or barter bans apply, and the bank misuse clauses list buying or selling points.
• Will anyone outside the account log in to it? Delta's rules bar giving log-in credentials or access to any person or third-party site, and hold the member responsible for transactions made with the password.
• Will the traveler be someone the member does not know? A ticket in a stranger's name, paid for by the stranger, is the pattern the void and confiscation clauses describe.
• Is the seller being asked to move points out of a bank currency first? That transfer cannot be reversed under Amex's terms, and it puts the points under the airline's enforcement rules for good.

If the answer to the first question is no, and the points stay in the account holder's hands, the move is probably one the programs print as permitted: an award booked for a family member, a household combination, a paid transfer through the program. Those are covered in the pooling and sharing guide. If the answer is yes, the documents read for this guide are unanimous, and the points rules hub has the related questions on taxes and on what happens to points at death or in a divorce, in points after a death or divorce.

Before anyone else touches your miles

• Book awards for other people yourself, in their names, without payment from them, where the program allows it.
• Use the program's own buy, gift or transfer services for any paid move, and read the caps and fees first.
• Never share a program login with a broker, a buyer or a third-party service, and change the password if you already have.
• Keep bank points in the bank until the award is found; transfers are irreversible and put the points under the airline's rules.
• Read the current terms of the program involved before any transaction that involves another person's money.
• If you can no longer use an award, change or cancel it through the program, as the guide to canceling an award flight describes, rather than selling it.