It was a wild day yesterday. Shockingly, TBB had to make a separate post about all the confusion from the US Air “new 50k” credit card offer. You can read it all about it here. There is so much materail to cover, so let’s get the show started!
BEST OF
Frequent Miler expands on his Marriott Platinum Challenge try. Some really good advice here on how to get the status if you have Marriott stays in the future. TBB generally avoids Marriotts because they have ridiculously strict Elite requalification criteria and suite upgrades are not a stated benefit. Also because they do not allow porn…and that goes a bit too far, lol.
My name is Dan and I am a credit card churning addict. There is only Dan who can manage to churn each card 22 times while paying no annual fees whatsover:-) Seriously, you can learn quite a lot from this post and Dan’s answers to the comment questions! If you are in awe, we are too! It’s okay, learn something, find time to implement it (always challenging) and then reap the benefits. And if you carry credit card balances, WTF are you doing here reading this??????
TPG has a post on Lifetime Status in Marriott, Starwood and Hyatt. Marriott became a little easier, Starwood is doable for some readers I am sure and Hyatt requires ONLY a spend of $200k in Hyatt hotels, insert hysterical laugh here!!!!
The Wall Stree Journal Middle Seat column had a pretty good article on “The Short Path to First Class“. Hope you can access it, I have had a WSJ account since birth! Gary Leff has a pretty good analysis of the WSJ article. What is my take on this? If you don’t fly much, be a free agent, Silver (lol) and Gold does not mean that much anymore and bennies are likely going to be devalued at these levels even more! If you fly a lot, it still makes sense to be a higher level elite. And hell no, I would never buy status from an airline!! The good old glory days of mega mileage run deals are over; these days the airlines will stick it to you with ever so imaginative fees. Plus, their darn computer systems have improved so much! Except Alitalia’s, lol.
Another ridiculous and inexcusable customer service showing by United. Pointchaser has the gory details. Yikes! I can’t help but think if Skymiles did not suck so bad…Delta could easily be the best US airline!
New Girl in the Air has the scoop on the 1st Quarter 2013 Priority Club “Stay X, Earn Y” and other promotions. I liked the commentary!
Matador Network has 46 quotes and photos for reflection. Love it!
Matador Network (againg) has amazingly stunning pics of 11 bizarre species to find in a Great Barrier Reef dive. Love it, love it, love it!
NOT SO BEST OF
Here is the apology from GhettoIFE. Very welcome of course. Still, it should not have happened in the first place! And I always wondered about the “Ghetto” name, never made sense to me!
Roms Deals had an interview at Million Mile Secrets a few weeks ago. In the comments there I predicted “it will not take long now until he adds affiliate links”. Well, it looks like they are already here; that was fast, wow! Everyone starts with Discover;-)
The Points Guy FINALLY wrote about how to get 1,000 United Miles for Joining BCKSTGR. Why is this here? Well because it is at least a week or longer before eveyone wrote about it! As THE points guy with contributing editors and staff…I would expect them to be faster on this!
Gary suggests we should all open AviancaTaca Lifemiles accounts now. I am not convinced after reading the article and the comments. The negatives appear, to me (subjectively as always), to outweigh the negatives! But he certainly made a thorough post about it, maybe it belonged in the “Best Of” category? I am just inserting it here as he has been in the Best Of corner way too many times and I need to make sure he doesn’t slack:-)
Ok, I am on a mega rant mood today. It amazes me how many different “angles” bloggers take to assault us with the same darn credit card links over and over and over, help! We all now can recite all the benefits of the Chase Ink/Plus cards and the Sapphire Preferred. If I only had a dollar for every link I see for these cards I could afford a crack web design team, a bunch of contributing editors and fly Etihad F around the world non stop! The latest “innovative” angle is…, drumroll please, Ben’s “The simple approach to credit cards“. Really interesting that Ben has now become a credit card expert, shaking my head here..We do not want to read yet another post how the Chase Sapphire gets us a 7% dividend or how we can earn 5x at office supply stores with our Ink cards. We come to you to read about…your Etihad experience for crying out loud, when are you going to finish it, we are all on pins and needles waiting for it…I actually can’t sleep, I just day dream about it while scrolling up and down my Google Reader feed!
ODDZ & ENDZ
2012 – The Year of Bank Fraud. Nice list of fines listed here, well done!
The 30 Most Powerful Photobombs of the Year. If you don’t laugh here, there is something wrong with you:-)
21 Hilarious Tweets for the End of the World Very very funny!
7 Things You Will Smile About When You’re Older Check out number 1, is this blog becoming a passion? hehe. I am all for number 3, creating happiness!
Nomination for “Not So Best Of…” TPG site has links to ‘100k bonus points” in his top deals section (top right on new layout) Neither one lands you on a 100K offer. The AA one doesnt load and the Chase one lands on the, drum roll, the 50K Ink Bold application……He He
TPG seems to have been working on his site….Ink Bold is now 50K. The AA card still says 100K but lands on an application page with no mention of 100K He He
I think TPG needs either a proof reader or just keep checking this blog He He…Well, the AA link goes to TPG’s June 13th blog about getting 100K from AA Citicards..except UP TO 100,00 means you have to apply for 2 separate cc’s to get 50K each hmmmmm So what looks like a 100K offer is REALLY two 50K offers He He
They read me. We are doing our part to make the blogger world a better place:-)
I agree with the above statement about the deception on TPG 100k Bonus. I clicked on that because I thought it was a new ‘deal.’ Shameful. Just shameful.
I also agree with this statement… The Points Guy FINALLY wrote about how to get 1,000 United Miles for Joining BCKSTGR. Why is this here? Well because it is at least a week or longer before eveyone wrote about it! As THE points guy with contributing editors and staff…I would expect them to be faster on this!
If a Blogger can’t post something timely, why bother?? As it is/was, every other blogger posted that ‘deal’ when it went live. As a matter of fact, I tweeted my displeasure about Bloggers posting deals after the fact.
dhammer
Great post George (and not just because you wisely put my post in the “best of” category). I’m glad you pointed out that Gary’s post probably doesn’t belong in the “not so best of” category. Even though he has posted about Avianca before, I still think that his advice is solid: sign up for an account. It costs nothing, Award Wallet can track it for you, and it gives you the ability to buy miles on sale during future offers.
I got discover affiliate links about a month after I started blogging. At first I included the link, then I realized there was no point to it.
I am getting the distinct feeling that the “Not so Best of” part of my blog is the most popular:-)
@ Anonymous: Thanks for the tip.
@dhammer: That was inexcusable. Then again, maybe the excuse was to give it a little time to see if the site was for real and not a spam machine?
@ Frequent Miler: I agree that you agree:-) I should probably open an account too just for the principle. But I am very anti “purchase miles” direct from airlines out of principle. And there is no way Avianca will ever have a meaningful/sizeable credit card promo. And too many negatives on that program…so I am not doing it. I have better things to do, like attacking my Google Reader feeds so I can keep it all under control, lol
@ Kathy: Yeah, the Discover aff links are indeed meaningless, I agree!
Keeping them honest- I like it! Nice to be featured again. Now I have to work hard to stay off the “not so best of” list. 🙂
Hi Ariana, I thought that United interaction was too good not to feature! As far as staying on my “not so best of” list…ok you do that, I am watching you:-)
TPG has had a major design overhaul if you are using Google Reader to follow him …
Lots of YouTube media clips now available of his TV spots!
Why the sudden complaints about TPG’s being late on a deal?
Despite being a full time blogger and having a staff, he is always late on all the deals
When was the last time he actually broke a good deal?
His posts are just copying other bloggers…. usually without a H/T (what Delta Points is to comment censoring, TPG is to not giving proper credit)
I am not going to argue these points;-)
Wow. And I thought that post was doomed to NSBO for sure.
Happy I was able to teach ya’ something new 🙂
Any recommendations for a good 12 step program?