Heads up about the coming Starwood Triple Up promotion, the sticky situation of hoarding miles explained, visit the world’s extraordinary toilets & much more!
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We have a preview of the new Starwood SPG promotion “Triple Up” starting May 9 and ending July 31, 2016. Registration starts May 3rd. Stays of two nights or more get 3x points in Sheratons and 2x in the other brands. Watch out for non-participating hotels. (HT: Loyalty Lobby)
A JetBlue exec says what we all suspected. That Virgin America was nice to have but not worth it at $2.6 Billion. Time will tell if this was a smart move or not as it always does. Sure does not look like it to me. But I am not an airline industry leader. Actually, I do my best to lead my household at times but Mrs. TBB somehow always gets the last laugh lol.
Hoarding Miles by asthejoeflies. Controversial subject. I have been accused of that. I am still trying to get my balances under 3 million. Even after using about 2.5 million miles in the past 27 months. I know some of you will snarkily offer your help to burn them, I appreciate the offer but I have a family to feed and travel with!
I was freaking out when I started seeing bloggers encouraging readers to transfer SPG points to new transfer partner Virgin America. So they can get deals with fuel surcharges up the wazoo. WTFCome on! When the news affecting our hobby are so few and in between, I guess you can grab at anything remotely beneficial to your readers and talk it up so you can conveniently sell some more travel rewards cards to them in the next posts coming right up!. At least Travel Codex said what should be said. Why You Shouldn’t Transfer SPG Points to Virgin America. I think Scott nails it and agree 100% with his comment below:
In any case, I think some people were a little exuberant. Ben’s post this morning called it a “fantastic value,” an “innovative partnership,” and “pretty incredible.” Gary called it a “fantastic rate” (the same as most partners?) and “amazing partner redemptions.” MileValue leads with “HUGE!” in all caps.
Any wonder why Travel Codex belongs in the Blogs I Like and those three blogs he references belong in the Blogs To Ignore? I didn’t think so! I expect Tagging Miles to link to this post by View From The Wing again 🙂
The 5 favorite airlines of the wealthy are:
- Singapore Airlnes
- Qantas
- Japan Airlines
- Lufthansa
- Air France
I was shocked to find out no Middle Eastern airlines were not in the top five, wow! No surprise about Singapore Airlines being at the top, not at all. I was also expecting Lufthansa to rate higher and what the hell is Air France doing in there? Some of these top lists are bizarre. Like Marriott winning the Freddie awards every year. Shaking my head violently.
We have been using our credit cards with the EMV chip technology for six months now, this is a status report. It has not been easy, it has been slow and online fraud has exploded. We all hope when fraud eventually subsides, the generous promos will return. And when the travel industry hits the skids again…we travel hackers come back BIG #thedream.
You should find 5 minutes to watch this incredible video. Or bookmark it to watch it later when you have some time. It is a dude on a mountain bike riding. Or let me just paste here the description of it from the source: “DreamRide was filmed in Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington in the Fall of 2015. The goal was to find the most beautiful locations possible and create the sense of a never ending ride. ” The scenery and the use of drones to film this is breath taking!
Speaking of drone racing, ESPN is on it to make it a mainstream sport. My PR agent is available if you wanted to name a drone “WTFTBB” drone LOL.
I forwarded this to my son. And my wife and told her it is about freaking time she stops doing his laundry already! “What are the skills every 18 year old needs?”
Only in Montana two are so drunk and horny in a bar kissing to completely miss the armed robbers! Wow, only in…Montana!
Okay, this time I am going to hear it from reader Ramsey. Please be gentle…Blame reader John P. for this as he brought the link to my attention. I present to you:
The World’s Most Extraordinary Toilets
Whoever does a selfie here I will post in my blog! I keep my word. So sick of bathroom selfies aboard Emirates. Or in some Hyatt Suite. Check this link out, some wonderful toilets indeed! Ramsey, please come down, no airplane or hotel toilets at all!
So The Points Guy is starting a charity. Pointsforpeace or something. And you can donate, all tax deductible. I wanted to tell him I will pass as I do all my donations to Wounded Warriors. Ok, that was a joke. Don’t donate to Wounded Warriors, they blow most of the money on themselves and not much goes to the veterans people! Anyways, it sounds like all these donors will end up in a database and may be used for some hardcore credit card pumping practice #theusual.
And I leave you with this…
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Did I sneak a #1?
2nd. Love the mountain biking video.
George, have you been keeping up with this Theranos story? It’s fascinating. Why are there so many foreign policy / defense types on the board of a biotech company? Why wasn’t the media sounding alarms about this years ago?
Also: third.
I have been following it keenly for a variety of reasons. It’s sad that people can hype up companies with unproven technology simply because it helps make people rich. Very few people actually will do any due diligence on the company they’re representing, but will assume someone has done it.
And I hate to say it, but in this case, it certainly helped the story that a pretty young girl in a male-driven location (silicon valley) had come up with a breakthrough that no one else could.
Because there was nothing to sound alarms about until they started to apply the test to humans in a few Walgreen in AZ last year.. No potential harm could have been done to humans until that data (research use only). Private companies can claim anything until they enter the regulatory space. Some investors decided to believe the hype rather than investigate the company. There were several red flags. The most important question for a biotech company is “Does the technology work”???
Their approach has been widely questioned in the scientific space. No publications and no certifications. Publications are ALWAYS at the heart of any scientific marketing campaign.
While I don’t think I travel enough, I recognize that I’ve spent a lot more time outside of ‘Murica than the average citizen. Maybe that’s why I don’t find EMV all that disconcerting…. had at least one chip card for 5 years or more. My local pizza joint processes an EMV transaction in 3 seconds flat. CVS…now that’s another story. Frankly, I hope the USA catches on to pay at the table. I like the idea of my credit card not disappearing for 5 minutes when paying for a meal. Outside of the higher than average number of third party payment processors in the USA, I don’t get the whole “reinventing the wheel” feel of our march towards EMV.
Snarkily ?
Watched the movie Winged Migration a couple of times on TV, wow nice ! Calming and nice to go to sleep by ! Your comment about DreamRide made me think of this.
When are you in SD ?
George, love the bathroom highlights 😉 As for you “3 million balances” it’s nice to live outside NYC where they don’t strip search when tiring to use or buy a GC, oh yeah and NO Walmarts….
@Pointsloverrrr: You are back where you belong!
@ctbarron: Yeah, amazing video indeed!
@Nick PFD: Nope, never followed it.
@MJ: We do things our own way in this side of the pond. We’ll see where we are 6 months from now…
@Mike: I will be in SD in late September.
@John: Thanks for that link. Waiting for Ramsey to unload his wrath next 🙂
The mountain biker needs to be punched in the face. Even if he was legally allowed to bike in all those places he is denuding the landscape with bike tracks that no one wants to see. Entitled twit.
George, I picked up 2 AXP C. Schwab Platinum cards, so that’s extra $400 in amazon GCs for me that I need to spend now. Watch out, you may get a nice pay out when I use it soon to buy a TV and Roku box for the river house. That offer still stands, you can come and visit and we’ll stream a game on a TV thanks to American Express! I hope you’ll get at least enough from Amazon for a beer as well!
Thank you for blogging, it’s a pleasure to visit this site.
Cheers,
PedroNY
What do you mean by Amazon GCs? Are you converting the points to them? Thanks.
Why this over Ameriprise?
When PedroNY speaks (comments) we all listen very carefully.
PedroNY: One day. warning: I have been saying I will visit BRT for years until it actually happened. Well, it will shortly.
I am guessing he has done the Ameriprise ones….And he has enough miles/points so why not get a TV and Roku box with my links 🙂
Each AXP Platinum card gives you $200 travel credit, so through some voodoo you can get $200 in AMZ GCs instead. At this point I had all Plat versions, Schwab is brand new, hence I got ’em!
Cheers,
PedroNY
ET TU BUZZ, ET TU? ……………… I know it is all about clicks and getting your Alexa Rating up there with Titans like Extra Pack of Peanuts but WTF is going on here with daily toilet bowl pictures? Maybe TBB now stands for Toilet Bowl Buzz!
Its’ weird. Two toilet links back to back. I am struggling for quality content man!
That avatar gets me every time. Every time!
I have a lot of comments today!
Did anyone see this? Came up on my Yahoo homepage (I’m not really that old, just never got around to changing it if I ever restart my browser)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chase-5-24-rule-mile-churners-211932315.html
Also, today’s may be the worst in a long line of recently bad posts by FM. I commented there too, but come on, if you’ve got nothing to write, don’t!
http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2016/04/14/how-to-convert-80000-marriott-points-into-100000-alaska-miles/
I saw that and was about to post that here. Just wow!
I saw that and slotted into tomorrow’s TBB Buzz post!
I was shocked. I know the writer. I will email her. Can’t believe she is asking credit card salesmen at TPG instead of fiduciary TBB 🙂
Seriously Buzz? Both blog posts mentioned (asthejoeflies, Travel Codex) are complete garbage.
Lots of words about absolutely nothing. I have no idea why you are promoting these.
Maybe it’s seriously time to start collecting stamps?
BTW yesterday I noticed a funny process – FT posts about Cathay to India – 1 hour later
boom, lucky has a post about it; FT Starwood guy announces the promo, 1 hour later boom,
lucky has a post about it. Crazy. Original content my a@@…
I disagree.
I have a large stamp collection. I stopped when I came to the US. It is probably worth mega bucks, I was really into it!
90% of content probably generates at FT and reddit. At least.
Is that AMEX Schwab Platinum Card a different product or counts against the lifetime rule? I already had a Platitum personal and business.
Yep, different product, can get bonus once. Last time I checked 😉
Yep, different product. There are a few different versions of the Platinum out there, that you could take advantage of.
Thanks for the reminder about using Amazon links Pedro.
Amazon links are not used much. But readers have responded with credit cards in the last month, I am impressed. Thank you!
I seem to have a few IT contractors among my readers who order huge chunk of monitors etc on a regular basis. It’s great!
points.com lets you convert Elevate to IHG at 1:0.85
So ….
80,000 SPG
100,000 Elevate
85,000 IHG
No idea why you would want to do this but ….
You can also get 137,000 Esso Extra points for 80k SPG this way, or 94,000 Melia Rewards or ….
By the way, points.com pays commission if you encourage a reader to do a swap transaction so you may see this tip appearing elsewhere soon!
You are on a roll man….get IHG, Esso and Melia Rewards points…the dream 🙂