Lately I've been becoming more and more tired of the way many online businesses are operating as if they were a brick and mortar business. Specifically, the concept of processing fees and business hours.
Alaska Airlines, for example, charges a $25 "processing fee" to transfer frequent flier miles from one account to another. I don't think that amount of computing cost has been worth $25 since about 1955. It doesn't require any human processing at all. They should just call a spade a spade and admit they're charging a bogus fee just because they can.
Washington Mutual, as another example, lets you access your accounts 24/7, but transactions only take effect during "business hours." For example, if you transfer money between accounts in the middle of the night, it won't take effect until the following day. What are they waiting for? It's not like someone comes in in the morning and processes the pending transactions, it's all done by the computer. There's no legitimate reason for the delay.
I guess it comes down to the fact that you're essentially a captive customer. If an online store had a message at 11pm saying "Hi, please come back during business hours to place your order", customers would just shop elsewhere. But in the case of airline frequent flier miles or bank accounts, you're pretty much stuck. You're not going to abandon those frequent flier miles, or leave the money untransferred.
Ultimately you may decide to look for another airline or another bank that doesn't have these restrictions and fees, but the problem is, they all do this. There really isn't anything you can do.
