One of the best parts of the MS/churning community is how friendly and interesting the vast majority of the people participating in it are. Outside of a couple of bad apples, it’s one of the least toxic online communities I’ve personally ever been a part of. For a side hustle that is pretty lucrative and closely guarded, we can all come together over shared success and wins. 

In the overall churnosphere, there’s much more than just the individuals playing the game – a whole cottage industry has sprung up offering tools, platforms, arbitrage and more. From relatively high profile tools like seats.aero and Cardpointers that have widespread adoption to more niche platforms for navigating MS possibilities, there’s a whole little churning economy going on.

In many cases, these businesses are built by members of the community themselves. They first got into churning/MS, and then used their knowledge to build tools that solved real problems in the game. 

I could be wrong, but I doubt any of them are fat FIREing from development of these tools – just compensation for the time spent to build the tool. I’m glad to support people like Teddy and Ian that are helping the community improve their CPH.

There’s other businesses and players out there catering to MSers as well, but it’s a bit less “I’m developing this tool to solve a MS problem” and a little more “we’re going to piggy back on what you’re doing and take a cut”.

These other players are a necessary part of the ecosystem, and I’m glad that (some of) them are here. But lately, I can’t help but feel there’s a perception among the community that we’re dealing with friends when working with these parties, which is false – they are a business, and you are their customer. 

These other businesses earn from your spend, your targets, your points, your credits, etc. etc. They have a vested interest in you going harder and finding new avenues (and in one particular notorious platform’s case, blasting those new avenues to their entire customer base).

Again, (most) of them provide a necessary service and are an important part of the ecosystem. But we should all be cognizant of the fact that they are not our friends, they are a business, and we are the customers. 

They are not trying to help you streamline your time spent in wholesale stores or award searches – they are small and medium businesses trying to squeeze every last drop of margin from a transaction or sale. It’s awesome that MSers have options for earning/spending/liquidating at better rates, but these services are only being offered because they’re making money too. 

Ultimately, even the most seemingly MS friendly of businesses can end up getting you into unwanted territory. A returned payment from Amex is often a death sentence, and there’s no amount of cat pictures that can bail you out when that happens. 

And it’s not only on the MS side of things – there’s a graveyard full of frequent flyer accounts that are now banned after assurance from your third party “friend” that there wasn’t any risk in doing things a certain way. 

Having access to this economy is a win-win, but make sure you’re looking out for yourself in all of these negotiations. 

Good luck out there in the marketplace friends, and hope your year is off to a good start.

Баяр хүргэе!