OK, quick question here. (Please don't flame me, this is just a question, I don't expect something for nothing....)

I see people selling space positive upgrades on eBay for fairly cheap prices. Are this legit? I always thought these types of things were non-transferable.....

Thanks!

Could you post a link to the specific auction so we could take a look at it?

Hope this works.....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...;category=1310

I can't vouch for USAir certs, but AA has something similar, and YES they are transferable. You can't admit that you paid for these as that would cancel the certs and get the seller in big trouble with the airline. If asked, just say that they were given to you by a friend.
I'm not sure how these work, but it sounds to me like you can't confirm till 1 day before the flight, so if F is full you end up with some worthless paper, unless you fly USAir again in the near future.
But to answer your question, they are legit, and when it works like it's suppose to it's a beautiful thing.
Good Luck!

We have upgraded a rlative on both USAir and AA using my husband's points. With AA, no certificate was involved, so I am not sure there would be any piece of paper to sell. USAir used to have transferrable paper certificates for upgrades, but these have been replaced with e-upgrades - that is, your FF account stores them electronically and you can draw on them. Any paper upgrades were supposed to be converted to e-upgrades a while ago, even if they had longer expiration dates, so make sure someone is not trying to sell you one of these.

Gail,
Again, I'm not sure about USAir, but AA gives it's top tier flyers 8 free certs every year which are called VIPOW. 1 is good for a free one-way upgrade on any AA flights systemwide from just about any fare. This has nothing to do with miles, so please don't confuse the 2. AA mails these out to anybody that qualifies as an Executive Platinum, they are free, and they are transferable. BUT, AA does not like for these to be sold. If they find out that the cert was actually sold they would cancel the cert, and they have been known to cancel the sellers mileage account, a very harsh punishment if you happen to have 100s of thousands miles in your account, which usually a ExPlat would as they fly a great deal.

USAir also gives top flyers "certificates" per year, in addition to one earned each 10,000 miles flown - but they dump into my husband's FF account - we stopped getting paper certificates mailed last year. Don't have that kind of frequency on AA - but he's working on it! I agree, airline would not look kindly on sold upgrades.

Just one more clarification. AA also give 4-500 miles Upgrade stickers for every 10000 miles flown. These are given to any status holder. They are electronic and are put into your account. These you could only use on domestic routes, but that also includes Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Central America. So let's say I'm flying from Tampa to Dallas(929 miles) to LA(1250 miles) I would need 5 certs. to upgrade both flights. Again, these are electronic. No paper. They could also be bought for $40 each by any status holder.
VIPOW are a different breed. They are paper, and each one will entitle you to upgrade to anywhere in the world AA flies. So let say I'm flying Tampa to Chicago to Tokyo, I could use one cert to upgrade both flights to the next class, so basically if I bought a cheap coach ticket, I would sit in First on the domestic flight, since these are 2 class planes, and Business on the International flight, since these are 3 class. If I bought a business ticket, this cert would put me in First all the way. They are given for free by AA to anybody that reaches the top tier, 8 per year. They are great because they could be used systemwide and includes up to 3 segments each way. And of course you don't need to use any miles and/or Upgrade stickers.

back to the original question - I think it would be fairly easy and a good idea to check on the individual airline's rules for certificates and transferrability. You certainly don't want to buy anything that isn't even transferrable for free! Then you decide if you want to take your chances on the safety of buying thru ebay - lots of semi-legal stuff changes hands on ebay all the time (like scalped event tickets, for example) and both the buyer and seller are taking a risk. Every football season, for example, there is some article in our local paper about someone's season tickets being pulled for selling them on ebay, but I am sure many others are not caught. I wouldn't take the risk, but I am a fairly law-abiding chicken!

babyblue78 said:

"I see people selling space positive upgrades on eBay for fairly cheap prices. Are this legit? I always thought these types of things were non-transferable....."

One thing that I'm surprised didn't come up earlier (altho AAFF touched on the subject), is that almost ALL of these type of upgrades are capacity controlled.....

So, even if you don't have to wait until "x" hours before flight time, which is worst of all possible worlds,,,,you still may not be able to get confirmed in ADVANCE on the flights you want because you won't "clear" waitlists that are full of the airline's "elites".

Just a word to the wise,,,,,Hope its of help to someone contemplating taking the Ebay dive! Best wishes, Dave