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American Airlines AAdvantage: Miles to Expire in 18 Months

American AAdvantageThe nation’s oldest and largest frequent flier program quietly announced on June 1 that anyone who does not earn or redeem miles at least once every 18 months will lose all the banked miles in their accounts. Previously, the time limit was three years.

The American Airlines’ AAdvantage Program now comes in line those of US Airways and United Airlines that cut their inactivity period to 18 months at the beginning of 2007.

*MOUSE PRINT:

AA chart

Translation: While the change doesn’t go into effect until December 15, 2007, it is retroactive. So, miles that you earned as recently as June 15, 2006 could expire this December rather than in 2009, if you have had no account activity since then. Here is the new policy.

An easy way to earn miles (and keep your account alive) is to buy something online at a store that gives AA miles with every purchase, or donate a minimum of 250 miles to certain charities.

If you lose all your miles, American Airlines will generously allow you to buy them back for $50 per 5000 miles, plus a $30 processing fee.

No doubt, AA’s new policy will AAnger many travelers.

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Comcast PowerBoost: Download Speeds Up to 12 Mbps*

Speed is the name of the game for Internet service providers. Competitors are continually raising the stakes by advertising higher and higher connection speeds.

Comcast generally provides 6 Mbps as their regular speed. (Don’t worry about how fast this really is for purposes of this story.) But, in the past year or two, they has been promoting “PowerBoost” which is an “extra burst of speed — up to 12 Mbps — when downloading large files.”  On their website, Comcast suggests some great uses for PowerBoost:

Music, videos, online games – whenever you’re downloading something big, PowerBoost kicks right in. Imagine you’re downloading a 10 MB file, like three MP3 songs. It would take about 53 seconds with a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection. Compare that to 6.6 seconds with Comcast High-Speed Internet with PowerBoost.

Do you really get twice the regular speed with PowerBoost? Yes and no. To read their advertising, one would think that whenever you download a large file, you get the benefit of PowerBoost so the file will be delivered in half the time. Not so fast says our trusty mouse, because of a little-noticed disclosure in their footnote:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“PowerBoost provides a brief burst of download speed above the customer’s provisioned download speed for the first 10MB of a file. It then reverts to the provisioned speed for the remainder of the download.” 

Who knew that PowerBoost only lasts for approximately seven seconds?

For example, if you want to download the trial version of Microsoft’s game “Halo”, which is 134 megs, only the first 10 megs will be delivered to you at the advertised “double speed”, and the remaining 124 megs will be at regular speed.

While smaller “large” files will indeed benefit from SpeedBoost, for most really large downloads, the promise of SpeedBoost is a speed bust. And that’s not Comcastic.

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Cingular’s Unlimited Text Messaging: Just $5 More*

cingular jillHave you seen the Cingular commercial (“BFF JILL”) where a distraught mother gets a huge cell bill because her daughter is sending text messages to her best friend, Jill, fifty times a day?

The solution, according to Cingular, is to get “unlimited texting, just $5 more a month.”

When our trusty mouse looked on Cingular’s website, there seemed to be no unlimited text messaging plan for only $5 extra beyond the cost of a regular calling plan. How could this be?

*MOUSE PRINT:

cingular $5 more

Those tiny words at the bottom seem to say “with qualified messaging package.” In other words, it appears you not only have to buy a monthly cell calling plan, but also a monthly messaging plan, and then you have the option to pay $5 more to convert that messaging plan into an unlimited plan.

The least expensive plan gives you 200 messages for $4.99, but for $9.99 — $5 more — you get unlimited mobile to mobile text, picture and video messages.

So does that mean you can send all the text messages you want to anyone you want?  One would think so, except for how Cingular defines “mobile to mobile.”

Now Cingular wireless subscribers can exchange unlimited text, picture and video messages! Instant Messages, alerts, off-network, premium messages, and messages to/from non-Cingular customers will be deducted from your Messaging Starter allowance.

Translation: That means you only get unlimited messaging to other Cingular customers. What if you want unlimited messaging to anyone? That costs $19.99.

While many people may have understood the commercial to say that unlimited messaging to anyone was only $5 a month, the truth is, it is actually four times that price.

TCBNT (Thanks Cingular, But No Thanks)

[Your comments on this advertising campaign are welcome below, but those not related to the BFF Jill ad will be deleted as this is not a message forum to bash Cingular.]

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