Before I started churning, I never took airline loyalty programs seriously. I never flew on the same airline enough times to amass enough miles for a redemption, so what was the point? Back in 2012, I had a few thousand United miles with no plan to use them. So when I received a letter from Magazines for Miles (also known as Mags for Miles) imploring me to use my miles before they expired, I figured I was getting a good deal.
I’m sure you’ve received these mailers before. It says your miles are expiring so you can redeem them instead of letting them go to waste. After receiving the mailer, I made two mistakes.
- My miles weren’t expiring for another year so there was no really no reason to take immediate action
- I didn’t know that using miles would extend their expiration so I assumed I had to use all of my miles
As a result of mistake number 2, I subscribed to SO MANY magazines. I feel dumb typing out this list, but here it goes:
- Cosmopolitan
- Elle
- Glamour
- Self
- Health
- Entertainment Weekly
- People
- Time
- The Economist
- Food Network Magazine
- Money (why???)
It got to the point where I had so much reading material that I would spend two hours eating breakfast trying to get through it all. For some reason, recycling them without looking at every single page seemed wasteful. I’ll admit, I had a lot of free time on my hands. I had graduated from college early so I had a semester to kill before grad school started. The things I could have accomplished while I was sitting at home reading magazines…
Final Thoughts
Magazines for Miles aka Mags for Miles is one way of extending your miles if they’re expiring, but for your own sanity, only redeem for ONE magazine, not every magazine on their list. However, Mags for Miles is generally not a worthwhile redemption. In the age of the Internet, magazines are so unpopular they can barely give them away. For some reason, I’m still receiving Elle despite never having paid for it…Despite my apparently lifelong subscription to Elle courtesy of Mags for Miles, whenever I receive these mailers nowadays, into the trash they go.
We all learn lessons in this hobby 🙂
MagsForMiles is a SCAM! I used my Delta miles for 2 (Free) magazines and within a just a couple of months my credit card (which is attached to Delta) was charged $39 subscription for one and $36 for the other. It took me WEEKS of calling & emailing MagsForMiles, the credit card and the magazine itself to get those charges off my card! DO NOT GET MAGS FROM MagsforMiles! EVER. It’s a SCAM
I’ve had the worst customer NON-SERVICE from this company. They redeemed my miles for InStyle magazine. 4 months later I never got the magazine so I email and called their customer service. I was told that InStyle is no longer in publication and they would send me People magazine. 6 months have past and they still have not sent me ONE COPY of People magazine!!! What a terrible SCAM.
I ordered a Young Riders magazine on April 2 and received an order number,.
Now 5/27/23 I got a notification that I forgot to complete my order.
Can’t get in touch with anybody by any means . Their 800 number is a joke . Every time I repeatedly say what I want I get the same “sorry I did not understand what you are saying, please repeat”.
How do I cancel my order?