Update on the e-miles Pimping

As noted in this post, e-miles wants to pimp people for miles and, miles-slut that I am, I thought it was worth it to get paid for what I was putting out for free.  Or something.  Having had an account with them for a little over a week, I thought I'd share the experience:

June 20: Earned 200 Miles 


When I first logged in, e-miles wanted to ask me lots of questions.  Worst.  First.  Date.  Ever.  There were four lengthy surveys, on which I said I was very wealthy and interested in EVERYTHING with the idea that these surveys help e-Miles target offers to you.

In addition, there were miles awarded for making e-miles a "trusted sender" in your email account (which I didn't bother to do but told e-Miles that I did) and for reading the e-Miles guidelines and then taking a quiz on them.

Interestingly, information about how easy it is to LOOSE miles was not in the quiz, but I found out that:

• e-miles are only transfered to your frequent flyer program in 500 mile increments.  Have 600 miles?  You can transfer 500, but need 400 more if you want the other 100.
•  e-miles expire one year from when they are earned.
• e-miles can suspend your account if you do not respond to one marketing message per month.
• e-miles has the right to terminate your account or deduct e-Miles if its rules change in the future

Big daddy can be mean to his children.  :-(

I also watched/read ads for Travel + Leisure, Disney and Zales to earn some extra points.

Click "Read More" to read about getting another 595 miles.

June 24: Earned 595 Miles


When I logged in, I saw that I had a number of offers that were 5 + 250, 5 + 100, etc.  What this meant is that if I looked at the ad, I could get 5 miles, but if I signed up for something, I could earn an additional 250 miles, etc.

Well, it turned out that some companies that I had abused before happened to be on the list.  For example, ING was offering 250 extra miles if I signed up for their ShareBuilder account, and they were also offering their usual $25 bonus.  I'd gotten that bonus probably a year ago and had never canceled my account.  I thought that would make me ineligible to open a new account, but I clicked on the ad anyway.

Sharebuilder asked if I already had an account and then asked me to log in.  I did, awaiting the rejection page, but suddenly they were giving me a second account under the same login and it was still good for the $25 bonus.  The bonus appeared in my new account a few days later.  So I just got 255 miles and $25.  Sweet.

Experian was offering 255 miles as well for signing up for a "free" credit score.  You have to give a credit card because, of course, if you do not cancel your account within 7 days, they start charging you monthly.  I've done the dance with Experian a number of times before, so it took just a quick phone call and repeatedly saying "No" to a customer representative to get them to cancel the membership.

I did a few more ad-looks and even applied for a "Free 2GB Flashdrive", only to be told that "We will contact you to let you know if you were one of the first 500 respondents" eligible to get the flashdrive.  Sigh.

When it was said and done, I had 795 miles in the account and asked for 500 to be transfered to Delta.


Final analysis: If you have free time, it's an easy way to juice your frequent flyer account, but considering it took two hours to get miles worth only $6.00, it's not the best if you consider your time to be valuable.