Question about selling airline credit

[ShannonSM]

Good morning,

I posted an ad on Craigslist to sell some airline credits and requested payment by PayPal. I want to make sure the payment is legitimate before I transfer the credits to this person. He would need my name and password for the airline account to access the credits and book a flight.

Since this is Craigslist, I want to make sure I don't get scammed with fake payments and am going to say that the credits wouldn't be transferred until the money is transferred from PayPal to my bank account.

If the money is placed in my bank account, is it then 100% assured that the transaction is valid and that the money he sent is legitimate? In other words, I just need to know when exactly I could proceed with the airline credit transfer. I know this sounds simple, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Thank you!

[angelleye]

Personally, I see lots of potential problems with this.

First, I doubt that selling your points is allowed in the Airline terms.  Otherwise, they'd give you a simple way to transfer them without having to share your login credentials with the buyer (which I would never recommend you do for any account of any kind, personally.)

For the payment itself, you are essentially selling a digital good.  Digital goods are not covered under Seller Protection, which would require the following:

Here are some additional requirements you need to meet for Seller Protection:

• You must ship the item to the address on the Transaction Details page.
  • Even if the buyer sends you a request via email or an eBay message requesting shipment to an alternate address, only ship the item to the address provided in the Transaction Details.
• Provide proof of delivery. For transactions of $750.00 or more, you need to provide signed delivery confirmation.
  • We require online tracking to confirm delivery.
• Respond to our requests for documentation and other information in a timely manner.
  • These requests will be sent to the primary email address on your PayPal account.

Since you will not be able to provide such tracking information about a digital delivery, if the buyer does file a dispute you would likely lose the dispute.  At that point, if they already took the credits you'd be out both the credits and the cash.

If you know the person and trust them, then that's fine, but since this is a Craigslist sale I'm guessing that's not the case.  

I would steer clear of this whole idea if it were me.  If you want to do it, just be aware of the risks.

[ShannonSM]

Thank you. I checked with the airline already (it's JetBlue) and was told by customer service that I could give any money away in my TravelBank to any person as long as he or she had the login information and TravelBank number. I had booked a flight that I had to cancel and the money was refunded in airline credit that had to be used by a certain date, so I'm not selling miles.

The information about digital goods was valuable. I will see if I can sell to a friend first, and then consider whether or not I want to go through with the Craigslist option, which is a lot more scam prone, so I can avoid giving out personal information.