Lighting Your Miles On Fire, United Style

I spend a lot of time telling people how best to spend their miles.  There’s not much else that’s more frustrating than seeing people use 50,000 miles for a $200 airline ticket.  One of the common refrains I hear is, “I can never find a way to use my miles.” Frankly, those people just aren’t trying hard enough.

But today, instead of talking about great ways to use your miles I figured I would spend a few minutes illustrating one of the crappiest ways to use miles I’ve seen in recent memory.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen worse.  It all started with this shiny, colorful brochure United Airlines sent me in the mail a few days ago.

Now, I don’t ever recall getting one of these in the mail before, but it’s entirely possible United has been sending these out for a while.  I figured the offers inside would be bad, but something told me to open it up anyway.  While there were plenty of bad options in there, this picture I took was of one of the worst.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Apple TV, along with a bunch of other Apple products.  I have 2.  You can watch MLB games, rent movies, stream pretty much anything from an iPad or computer to your TV.  I think they’re worth every penny I paid for them.

Only problem is, they’re $99.  Even in a state with a BIG sales tax number, that’s still less than a penny per point.  Try 8 tenths of a penny.  Pretty darn bad.

Public service announcement.  If you really feel you need to waste miles on a deal like this, send me 13,000 miles, I’ll ship you a brand new Apple TV and even answer questions about how to hook it up (hint, plug it into the wall, then into the TV).  Always remember, miles are a currency just like the dollars in your pocket.

Just goes to show that not every shiny object you see is worth the price tag.