Use of FF Points in your Company

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u92741

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Hi,

I was wondering what policies Companies have for use of Frequent Flyer points. Our Company has just announced that it will now book all flights on a central Corporate card and use the points to buy equipment for the Business:evil: . Orginal policy was to use the points yourself as a reward for travelling on your own time and it was rolled into our package.

Interested to hear on any other corporate policies as we were told most Companies do this.
 
u92741 said:
Hi,

I was wondering what policies Companies have for use of Frequent Flyer points. Our Company has just announced that it will now book all flights on a central Corporate card and use the points to buy equipment for the Business. Orginal policy was to use the points yourself as a reward for travelling on your own time and it was rolled into our package.

Interested to hear on any other corporate policies as we were told most Companies do this.

Seems a sensible approach for the credit card points to use a central card and for the company to collect the credit card points and is not that uncommon.

As far as the FF miles for the flight goes, most airlines ime do not allow the pooling of various travellers points to a single account so you should get the flight miles yourself

Dave
 
Our company goes both ways on this - depending on whether you have a corporate card or not. If you have a corporate card the travel goes on that, otherwise it goes on a central card. Being an Amex, if you want reward points then you need to pay the rewards fee yourself.
 
I'm a little surprised to hear that. I don't know about other airlines, but I was told by DJ that the name on the Velocity Card had to match the name on the ticket if you wanted the points, so there's no way a central card would work for that.

I would have assumed that QF would have imposed a similar regulation.

Having said that, I do know with Government departments that the points are somehow accumulted but are considered to remain the property of the taxpayers and the Gov.
 
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I had assumed the OP meant reward points on a corporate charge/credit card. FF points are not very useful for buying office supplies/equipment.
 
oz_mark said:
I had assumed the OP meant reward points on a corporate charge/credit card. FF points are not very useful for buying office supplies/equipment.

What he said.
 
I haven't heard yet of a company which would credit you points from paying for flights via CC (ie. the CC points on, e.g. CBA Awards or Amex or the like). The only exception is if you had to pay for a ticket at the last minute or some other kind of monkey or gremlin situation. Now it would be just plain Gestapo if the company insists on you giving them the points you earnt in having endured that expense (even if they compensate you).

As for the actual frequent flyer points earnt, that is usually credited to the name on the boarding pass and/or ticket. What would a company do with frequent flyer points is beyond me (they can't transfer them, sell them off or use them to buy stuff and they can't use them to get tickets on other's behalves). As has been mentioned, frequent flyer points are usually allowed to be earnt for and by the traveller as a compensation for the time spent etc.

Imagine the tax implications that might arise if companies started collecting all those points anyway; it'd be a nightmare - not worth their 2c of time.
 
anat0l said:
As for the actual frequent flyer points earnt, that is usually credited to the name on the boarding pass and/or ticket. What would a company do with frequent flyer points is beyond me ...
I reckon, Qantas has negotiated some good discounts for large corporate accounts and government customers, and as part of the deal, the individuals taking flights aren’t able to earn points/status on those fares. (Of course for the decision makers at head office, it doesn’t matter much, because I imagine they would be comp’d status or CL membership.)
 
Some Federal Government departments have a rule that you must use your FF points (miles) earned on Govt business to pay for future travel on Govt business, ie, they're not your property (quite rightly so).

How do I know?. I was a senior executive with the Australian Trade Commission until quite recently. I don't think that Austrade is alone in its approach to taxpayer funded travel... Neither should it be in my opinion.

It's like stealing pencils from your employer otherwise.
 
All previous posters are correct re payment and in many cases restrictions on accumulation of FF points when a "private " negotiated fare is used.
Fot others whose company buys fare through atravel amager and insists FF points are theirs Good luck.
All fares and billing back to company is done at the time of ticketing...adding FF details after that point are non traceable by the company.
If fact I know that Qantas has told companies that the issue of FF points earning is between the company and the flyer ,not the airlines to police...
I agree companies have the right to use the points earned against a charge card..but equally once thats done and the fare allows you can do what you want with the points earned
 
Guess I've got it good then - all expenses (flights, hotels, taxi's, everything) go on an individual corporate AMEX which (provided I pay for the annual rewards fee) earns me 1:1 points for me to do with as I wish.

All flights earn FF points and SCs, and it's policy that all domestic flights are fully flexible Qantas flights. :)

Cheers,
- Febs.
 
Febs, sound like you do, we have a corp booked cheapest flight available policy, and if you change or cancel they wear the costs whoch is no doubt a lot less than fully flex.

But our hotels etc are on our own cards, and we get daily allowance.

E
 
The company I work for does not book fully flexible tickets domestically unless K class is sold out, but at least they are flexible

The company policy is to use a corporate AMEX debt card for travel which Ive been pressured into taking ( yuch debt cards - and the scam of indivual liability on a corporate card) ; it is not possible to sign up to membership rewards though.

Points earned from the flights et al are end up with me

Dave
 
The company I just started working for books and pays for all travel using FF points through Qantas. (We are all related I have since found out). Hence I no longer accrue status, points, nothing... I was a little caught out on that one!
Where a ticket has to be paid for it is normally on a DJ flight because it is cheaper, and paid for with a central Amex card. I have taken on average 1.4 flights per week every week for the past 5 months, and only 5 of those have been paid for... Not happy, but love my job... I hate trade offs...
 
Until recently I was told all flights had to be paid for on teh CEO/CFO credit card and they would use the points for award travel (never saw any evidence of business travel actually taking place) - and my other boss in NY didnt agree with that policy. After some changes of management my flights will now be paid for on my card (along with my offsider) and the points earned on that will accrue to me personally.

All the other points from hotels, flights etc. accrue to me personally and if I wasnt earning points I probably would be as keen to travel :)
 
I book and pay for about 80% of my flights using my personal Amex and then submit expense reports to get re-imbursed.

As the company I work for do not issue corporate credit cards, they have agreed to pay the annual fee on my Amex and MC.

If travelling with a colleague, I will often pay for their flights as well (if I am doing my own booking). This way I earn points on the purchase of the fares as well as my flights. Expenses claims are reimbursed before CC balance due so I can also avoid out of pocket costs (otherwise I wouldn't go to the trouble).

Hotel, meal, etc costs go on either of the cards above.

I can elect to use my points for work travel, in which case my employer will re-imburse me for 50% of the published fare. As we only fly economy, then this isn't a substantial sum. My points balance would also need to be considerably higher than present for me to even consider this.
 
Febs said:
Guess I've got it good then - all expenses (flights, hotels, taxi's, everything) go on an individual corporate AMEX which (provided I pay for the annual rewards fee) earns me 1:1 points for me to do with as I wish.

All flights earn FF points and SCs, and it's policy that all domestic flights are fully flexible Qantas flights. :)

Cheers,
- Febs.

Guess I have it even better - exactly the same as you apart from work also pays for either a) annual rewards fee or b) linkage fee to existing amex rewards account - which I have :D

All flights are fully flexible QF when we fly economy booked in several different code classes but same as Y for earn rates etc.

My employer has a great attitude to travel, its written in our code of conduct that travel is considered a necessity for our business and recognised as being sometimes quite demanding, therefore they ensure we are comfortable and happy with everything associated with travel (inc keeping points and getting cc points too) ;)
 
An employer of mine about 14 years ago used to keep a log of the points you would earn for travel paid for by them. When you had enough points they would then lay claim. (e.g. MEL-SYD-MEL was 1414, 7 such trips and you had enough for a MEL-CBR-MEL flight)

This all ceased when it became too hard with the advent of award credit cards such as the Telstra/ANZ/Qantas visa where personal points muddied the account balances too much.
 
Last edited:
serfty said:
An employer of mine about 14 years ago used to keep a log of the points you would earn for travel paid for by them. When you had enough points they would then lay claim. (e.g. MEL-SYD-MEL was 1414, 7 such trips and you had enough for a MEL-CBR-MEL flight)

This all ceased when it became too hard with the advent of award credit cards such as the Telstra/ANZ/Qantas visa where personal points muddied the account balances too much.

14 years ago I was learning the alphabet and how to do math! :oops:
 
clifford said:
Some Federal Government departments have a rule that you must use your FF points (miles) earned on Govt business to pay for future travel on Govt business, ie, they're not your property (quite rightly so).

How do I know?. I was a senior executive with the Australian Trade Commission until quite recently. I don't think that Austrade is alone in its approach to taxpayer funded travel... Neither should it be in my opinion.

It's like stealing pencils from your employer otherwise.

I am also in a govt dept (not quite at your level!) and it has a similar policy, except our flights do not earn FF points, only status credits. i disagree with the idea though because if your employer requires you to travel away from home, allowing you to keep a few points from the travel you do is a very small measure to recompense you for the inconvenience, its no real cost to them.

As was mentioned in someone elses post, if you ever got to book your own work flights and get the points, how they would make you use them for work travel if there wasn't enough from those flights they paid for? what about when you leave the organisation? to me its seems more hassle than its worth to have a policy like that but thats the sort of buearacracy that they're renowned for.
 
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