Delta SkyMiles Limiting Membership Rewards Points Transfers

Ouch. The two limitations together means they're trying to put the screws to you both ways.

"There were lots of people transferring in points and then booking mid or high level award tickets, that cost 300,000+ miles roundtrip."

Of course, partner miles only have access to DL's lowest award level.

So Ben, care to revise your previous statements that DL miles are easy to accumulate?

What about the thought that Delta is charging Amex more to be a transfer partner, thus Amex is limiting the amount that can be transferred in order to cap any (potential) losses? It would be interesting to see if this is the case as one of Delta's most profitable areas is the selling of points to amex and other credit card issuers to hand out to individuals who use Delta's cobranded CC's.

I happen to think if you're spending 300,000+ SkyMiles on a single award ticket, you're an idiot.

Maybe Delta is jealous that some MR cards (like the Gold Rewards Plus card) offer a potentially better way to earn DL miles than DL's own credit cards do, so DL wanted to encourage customers back onto its own cards? Seems more likely this will just encourage those with big MR balances to look elsewhere to use their miles.

delta simply doesn't want to have a ff program... step by step they are getting rid of it.

Time to get the Starwood Amex and Delta Amex instead.

So how quickly will United copy with Chase points?

@ Roger -- I certainly could be wrong, but I don't think they have as much of a reason to.

From what I've read, the transfer limitation is applied to ALL partners, not just Amex. So SPG, Mariott, Hyatt, etc. will all be subject to the same limitation. What I haven't heard is whether the 250,000 limitation is cumulative or per transfer partner (eg, if you transfer 250,000 MR points to you SkyPeso account, does that preclude you from transferring more from your SPG account?)

Why on earth would anybody want to transfer over 250k MR points to delta anyway? Just saying. 🙂

250,000 seems like a pretty low cap. For example if you wanted to book a single low level roundtrip for two people to Europe in business class, that is 250,000 miles. You couldn't book two people on trips to Asia, Africa or Australia by transferring from a MR account. You would have to transfer to two individual accounts and then book the tickets on separate PNRs (and lose out on any elite benefits such as free cancellations for platinums).

One other idea: maybe lots of Delta AMEX holders have been jumping ship to the PRG or other MR earning cards and transferring miles to delta instead. This rule will force big spenders to open up a Delta credit card again to earn miles rather than transferring miles.

With such amazing "enhancements" from Delta, I don’t believe people will be unhappy to see their stock price plummet to over 3% in the last few weeks!

This is clearly aimed to fix the flip-side of the revenue-based earning that starts next year. When that was announced, the consensus in the FF community was that only fools will be earning SkyMiles by flying now that credit card spend will get you so many more. This move drives people towards DL-branded Amex cards, which have no bonus categories except for spending with Delta, on one hand, and limits potential accumulation of SkyMiles via non-Delta channels (I'm sure they'd love to eliminate point transfer from MR or SPG altogether but that would piss of Amex way too much). Now, the most you can transfer in is enough miles for low-level Business Elite redemption US-Europe. You have kids/friends/family that need to come along? Too bad.

I agree with Aleks. This is being done to fix the imbalance currently favoring credit card spender vs Delta fliers. If you're going to benefit from being a credit card spender and not a Delta flier, Delta wants you to at least use THEIR card--presumably they make more per dollar spent this way than by Amex outright purchasing DL points via transfer.

AMEX and Delta seem to see eye-to-eye with regards to utilization of flexible point programs. Both continue to take away benefits from its customers. With exception of Everyday cards, every AMEX product has become crap. If Citi has better transfer partners, then Citi and Chase, here I come.

@Lantean,

Agreed. I'm not sure why Delta just doesn't end SkyMiles, they are so awesome in their own minds that they don't need to compensate their loyal fliers - those users are lucky and should be grateful to be flying Delta!

IMO, this is to curtail brokers using the Amex to DL transfers.

@ Benjamin Perley -- this is unrelated to point-selling by brokers as MR rules were adjusted recently to only permit transfers to your own FF account.