Buying and giving miles

I am trying to understand the rules about buying and giving miles and wondered if anyone can help me. I am pretty sure I am right, but the terms and conditions on the VS website are not as clearly drafted as they might be.

1. Am I correct in thinking that, in theory, if you'd not bought any miles all calendar year, on 31 Dec you could buy 30,000 miles for yourself, and then on 1 Jan another 30,000 miles?

2. Likewise, am I correct to think that someone could, in theory, on 31 Dec give you 30,000 miles, and then on 1 Jan another 30,000 miles (again assuming they'd not given any other miles away that year, and you'd not received any)?

Obviously I realise that this is not a very cost-effective way of flying (!), but in some situations I can see it paying off.

All help very gratefully received. I am wondering purely out of interest -- just curious.

The VS website does say 'calendar year' so yes in theory you could do the 31st December / 1st January thing.

But it also says allow 24 hrs for miles to appear in your account and given the vagaries of the VS IT systems I certainly wouldn't do it on 31st December just in case !

Not so sure about the 'gifting' miles though.

And what is the difference between 'gifting' and 'transferring' miles??

[honey lamb]

Not so sure about the 'gifting' miles though.

And what is the difference between 'gifting' and 'transferring' miles??

Gifting miles is when you buy someone miles directly from the website to their account in the same way that you buy miles for your own account. Transferring miles is when you move miles from your account to their account (and paying a transaction fee to do so)

Thank you both for your replies.

Tonty, yes it was the gift bit that I was most unsure about. The terms and conditions include these two sentences:

2. A member may receive a total of 30,000 gift miles into their own account each calendar year. This may or may not be in addition to any miles (up to a limit of 30,000 miles) purchased by themselves.

The second sentence does not make logical sense. Either the gift miles MAY be in addition to bought miles, or they MAY NOT!

[Neil]

I think what they are trying to say is that, the gift miles are separate to the buy miles, so you can buy and receive as a gift 30k miles from each, so a total of 60k miles.

You can buy 30k miles for yourself (credit card must match your account name) and buy miles for other people up to 30k per person. If you were particuarly generous I think you could do this for a number of people.
However, you may only receive 30k as a gift(so several people could not buy you 30k each) and this is as well as the 30k you can buy for yourself.

It is an extremely cheap way to get/redeem miles in my opinion. 30k miles will cost you about GBP450 which is enough to get you from economy (L) into UC.