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| Inside Haya Sofia, Istanbul, from my trip June 2012 Definitely one of “those” travel moments for me |
HOT OFF THE PRESS JUST NOW!
Ok, just adding this at the last second as I am about to finally catch some sleep. Milevalue reported of an unheard of Starwood promotion! I am not eligible, maybe you are. It may not hurt to see if you get it!
BEST OF MILES/POINTS
Million Mile Secrets wrote an excellent post “Hotel Points Expiration“. This is good content, it is obvious he works hard at putting these posts together and always has a full disclosure on the top unlike so many other bloggers! Yep, this one went to my Evernote. As I scan my Award Wallet hotel expiration dates, I may pull it up to see what I can quickly do to renew them.
Frequent Miler wrote about “The best portal finders get better“. He tests Cashback Holics, Ev’reward and Nerdwallet Shopping. At TBB we are a creature of habit and online shopping is one thing I rarely do. I do have ev’reward bookmarked and may check it a few times a year. It works for me. Will I switch to Cashback Holics? No, because I am lazy. For portals I do use ebates. And that is my referral link! If you sign up for it AND make a purchase through it of $25 or more they throw me $5, yippee! Why ebates? Because it works and it works fast! I made a Hotwire purchase on Jan 21 and the cash back money was in my account on Jan 23! No fuss about it, bingo! This transaction at TopCashBack took me months after checking numerous times and even following up! If you ever see another referral link in the body of a post in my blog you can bet it is something I am a BIG fan of!
Gary at View from the Wing continues to respond to comments. “Travel Blogs and Credit Card Signup Bonuses“. Well, let me say I was really curious to read all the comments and I did read them all. This is our hobby’s HOT button as it has become THE only way to really monetize, make a killing! Banks appear to have pulled back just a little, we have a new SEC chief in town, the prepaid cards will continue to grow, we just need to see how this develops.
FrequentFlier reports of a study showing loyalty Programs are on the decline. I like to think big picture…With Delta finally breaking the taboo of revenue based programs…are we seeing the first signs of a long decline in the BANG of these programs? And when I say bang I mean our cherished first class seats and caviar for one or two credit card signing bonuses! I hope not but I am afraid so. #deevelopingoverthenextfewyears
For the record, I predicted the merger of American Airlines and US Air a long long time ago. I saw a report we may be just a few weeks from the announcement. This is MAJOR of course!
Just Another Points Traveler had a fun post asking readers to rate how obsessed they are with miles/points from a scale of 1 to 10. I gave myself a solid 7…for now.
Heels First Travel shows us a way to successfully extend United Global Premier Upgrades!
Pointchaser continues the Club Carlson best redemption series with picks for Category 2 hotels.
Very interesting thread in FlyerTalk. “Are bloggers getting paid to fly?” Or the subtitle should be “How does Ben do it?”. No comment from me as I need to read it in its entirety. But if the other pages were as good as the first one I certainly will over breakfast!
BEST OF TRAVEL
The Wandering Aramean wrote “Monks on parade in Luang Prabang, Laos“. Wow. I am not sure why but I found this post deeply moving. Then again it does not take much to move me:-)
This guy DC Rainmaker likes to run and take pictures, this time in cold Stockholm! I like the pics of things you do not normally see!
NOT SO BEST OF
The Frugal Travel Guy again writes the regular Churning “challenge” on how to get a family to Disneyland. I do NOT like this type of post. Let me tell you why:
-The much better non-affiliated US Air credit card link is mentioned at least but the links lead to a more prominent placement for the affiliated much crappier US Air credit card offer. Thank you newbies…you wouldn’t know the difference anyways!
-Recommending Delta cards and relying on getting award tickets on the date you want and at saver level…Seriously? I can see the newbies cursing up a storm trying to get that done!
-Several typos. Come on, can’t Internet Brands afford an editor? I woke up in the middle of the night once to edit my typo as it hit me that I had mispelled one word! Ok, I better stop now.
I was going to let this one go..seriously! I am talking about Milevalue‘s post “The Incredible Frontier Airlines Award Chart“. Ok, I excuse the overly generous description of this airline and award program. I even excuse pushing the Frontier credit card…I guess it is fine for someone who really wants to go to Denver and maybe continue on to a few international destinations. Okay, award availability is good I get it. But then finding a way to mention the crappy US Air credit card offer AGAIN is a bit too much! The Milevalue brand is sure getting mixed up lately…the brilliant award related posts are getting fewer, the “Welcome NYT readers” Bluebirdy newbie targeted posts are increasing. Wish you commercial success the way you decided to take this baby. Until next time:-)
ODDZ & ENDZ
What is really odd is that I found nothing odd…now how odd is that!
The milevalue Frontier coverage is interesting. I’ve actually though of getting the card myself. I’ve had every other credit time three time already, so why not. If they ever drop the annual fee, I’ll go for. So it was actually useful for me skim through the program overview. Doesn’t change the fact that I can’t find a disclosure on the post.
Have to agree. I actually didn’t know about Frontier’s card. I read the article, and was informed. And then because Frontier doesn’t fly to my home airport, I closed the tab and moved on.
harvson3
For some people Frontier may be useful, had no problem with that. I just did not like the USAir crappy link added out of nowhere!
b
Sorry about that typo.
Just to clarify, I’m not defending the link (milevalue’s relationship with Barclays is interesting too), I just find it useful to see an advertorial for something other than Chase Sapphire.
Chase pay is the highest. And they are the pickiest. MV was canned from Chase, notice how the Chase app links go to a different blogger. Just fyi.
Milevalue’s SPG post is odd as its a promo that multiple bloggers covered months ago, which is highly targeted. A quick search of my RSS reader shows 10 bloggers that covered it in late 2012
My bad, I had tottaly forgotten about it! But some new readers may have benefited from it so no harm done!
woah, slow down there on the urgent Bonus Beginnings excitement
“unheard of Starwood promotion”? Hardly
it just wasn’t “heard of” on the blogs because there’s no CC pimping related to it
Here’s an FT thread on this started in May
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starwood-preferred-guest/1344337-spg-bonus-beginnings-promo-bonus-starpoints-free-night-targetted.html
They’ve had it in previous years as well
I wasn’t eligible when I first checked it months ago, nor when I re-checked it just now. I wonder what the criteria was?
I am no Starwood expert! I learned some readers successfuly registered for it. No clue what criteria are!
Another day, another TPG rip n’ read of something Gary posted 2 weeks earlier…. with of course no credit given
I don’t suppose you’ll eventually call him out on these practices?
http://thepointsguy.com/2013/01/maximizing-the-delta-suntrust-debit-card/
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2013/01/19/delta-suntrust-debit-card-now-available-to-everyone-online-and-how-to-use-it-to-earn-large-amounts-of-miles-cheap/
I did in next day’s post only on the lack of original content. I am not going to get into plagiarism stuff…that gets deep and no way to prove it FOR SURE.
Let me preface this by saying I’m a fan of MMS….
But reading that Chase post of his left me wondering – did Chase write that post for him, or did they merely provide the general framework of what he should write, and then he put it together?
Because I find it hard to believe someone would write such a transparently gushy post about Chase unless there was some quid-pro-quo involved (particularly with this post coming on the heels of him “Meeting the Chase Team”)
On the plus side, if this was FTG or TPG writing that post, we would’ve been bombarded with Chase referral links as well
Please see my few comments tomorrow on this.
See Dave’s comment at 3.32pm in the MMS Chase post.
Then visit his blog. No ‘points’ posts since November 15, after Chase cut him off.
Perhaps the first full casualty?
Yes, very interesting comments. I was not aware of his site. There have been other casualties; he may have been the first one indeed!
Thumbs down to Gary on his comments in MMS post:
“And I didn’t decide to do a post on the event because it wasn’t all that enlightening, mostly social”
Yeah, I’m sure they had you over for a beer or 2 because they enjoyed your company. They had no ulterior motive whatsoever with this event
“No real revelations. No efforts to influence content, in fact I’ve been explicitly told that as long as everything is accurate that’s fine”
Would hold more water if this comment didn’t come in a post whose content was very obviously influenced by Chase. The only question is whether it was directly influenced, or “wink wink nod nod” influenced
For a guy who fancies himself on being very open about disclosures to his readers, disappointing to see Gary not tell his readers that he had a “meeting with the Chase team”. Especially when just yesterday he had a post about “Travel Blogs and CC Signup Bonuses” – how about you let your readers decide whether or not there was any undue influence?
Christ almighty. Some of you need to give it a rest already. Now, not only do they need to disclose any financial relationship at the top of a post when they write something, they need to disclose a relationship for things they don’t see fit to post about?
Holy zoinks Batman! Chase had an event where they invited affiliate marketers!? You mean Chase actually communicates with their affiliates???? I mean, I know he discloses in each post when he uses affiliate links that he will get compensation from those links, but now that I know that he is also communicating and meeting with Chase, and maybe getting a beer or two, I’m going to steer clear. And here I thought Gary just copied and pasted those links from other people’s sites and money showed up in his accounts. I guess I am going to have to rethink my strategy of posting Gary’s links on my facebook page.
I think Robert Hanson brilliantly poses the obvious question about how uneventful this meeting was. I suppose Gary could’ve flown cross-country on his own dime to a benign meeting with Chase, who had no ulterior motive other than to have an open bar for some bloggers. I’m not holding my breath though
“So, yeah, Daraius cashed in 25K miles, and flew not United, but United commuter SkyWest, for over 4 hours. Leaving, by the way, at 7:45 am. Meaning getting up at what, 4 am to make that flight? For a social gathering, that wasn’t, oh no, not mandatory. Just a chance to hang out with Gary, while Gary had one drink and despite a cross country trip, no food. Gary just got a thumb drive and a hand sanitizer.
If I was a skeptical person, I’d think this was a command performance event, and they were ordered not to discuss the content of the meeting, and to downplay it’s significance. In line with what Dave told us in his prior comment. But I’m not that sort, so I’m sure Gary flew cross-country just to share a drink with Daraius and replenish his hand sanitizer supply.”
The point is that he’s already disclosed he has a relationship with Chase. Adding a post to the blog that says, “Hey, had a meeting with Chase, didn’t find it of interest to you, but then again, they pay me, so maybe it was of interest to you and I’m not telling” doesn’t add anything to the mix. You already knew Chase was paying him for promoting links. You can already judge the content to decide whether he’s biased.
Both Gary and Darius are pretty upfront about their relationship with affiliate links, promote non-affiliate links, provide critical comments of their sponsoring companies, etc.
And is there really any doubt that Chase provides some solid offers? Is that even debatable? All these machinations would suggest that there’s some incredibly convoluted scam being run. The “scam” is pretty straightforward. The CCs offer these deals because they are banking on the fact that swipe fees and interest will offset the bonuses by an enormous margin. That’s it. That’s the rub. Pay your bill on time and in full and you win. It’s not like these credit cards that are being pushed by affiliate marketers work any differently than every other credit card on the market. But that’s what you’d think based on this crack team of whistleblowers that you guys have assembled.
I made a few comments on this in tomorrow’s blog. Thanks. It’s a murky world when you get in bed with banks…and you can take that to the bank (pun intended)
Check out the DP comments (the ones he lets through) – reader corrects him about having only one card in the profile and says he uses the Amex Premier Rewards gold card instead. What does DP do? defend his post and then slap the link in for the mentioned Amex Premier card. Can’t let a card go by without trying to milk it!
I can’t stand that practice!! Then again I never got to the comments as the post was okay.I just find anything Delta related these days so painful for still forcing their “valued” members to that criminal award search engine!
I must admit my two flights to San Diego (upgraded in both) were excellent. Delta does a pretty good job in the air domestically!