Is AAdvantage Encouraging You to Earn Miles at the Expense of Your Employer?

Hans M. forwards along this email from Rewards Network which runs ‘AAdvantage Dining’ and most of the airline and hotel co-brand dining programs where you earn miles for restaurant meals.

It’s titled, Don’t Worry, We Won’t Tell Your Boss…

He writes,

I find this amusing how blunt they are about trying to bribe you into making purchasing decisions to reward yourself against the best interest of your company.

I don’t think it’s troubling at all, I don’t think it says you should reward yourself by acting against the interests of your company. It says go out to eat. Don’t eat at your desk. Like the old Keith Ferrazzi business book, Never Eat Alone (well, that would double your miles if you picked up the check).

This might be more troubling if the pitch was “spend more at lunch at these restaurants when it’s on the company dime” and yet that’s the underlying premise of frequent flyer programs themselves (that you’ll make decisions to fly a given airline regardless of price and bill the company).

Travel loyalty programs are all about conflicts of interest.

Might as well make it explicit. That’s more or less what the move to revenue-based accrual are doing in any case. More honest, in some sense. “Wait until the last minute to make your decision to fly, the tickets will cost your employer more and we’ll give you a bigger kickback.”

If anything it’s MileagePlus and SkyMiles that deserve the scorn here for their program changes which reward unethical behavior by employees, not this dining program.

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