We bring you the latest on The Hobby in mainstream media like Bloomberg & Forbes, check out the upgrades in Korean Air holds, weep w/ the Venezuela suicide and so much more you will click on our links obsessively and maniacally!
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More mainstream coverage of our not so little quirky hobby…
Welcome Oprah viewers. Just kidding!
Inside the Risky, Jet-Setting World of Credit Card Churning. From Bloomberg. Oy…I will let you draw your own conclusions, it is a difficult and complicated subject. From quality writing about this hobby in the mainstream media, I think this one got many things right. I made a longer comment in the TBB comments yesterday and want to reiterate this:
I repeat: Bloggers are not your friends. This hobby does not thrive on popularity. On the contrary…it dies!
(In the old days) We were not in the radar of any commercial establishment. We were a rounding error in the marketing budgets of big corporations. And it was effing awesome!
A few excerpts from the Bloomberg article with my incendiary commentary in brackets:
But “people tend to go overboard,”…applying for seven cards at once without a sensible strategy. At best, they may fail to win the rewards they wanted, or find themselves with a random pile of points they can’t make practical use of. At worst, amateurs can let their debt spiral out of control, ruin their credit ratings, or get cut off completely by banks suspicious of their behavior. – [What really gets me is some of the bloggers involved in pumping readers to oblivion about how they can too apply for seven cards at once are still invited to conferences to speak. I mean, explain THAT to me! No thanks, I am done going to any conference unless I approve of every single speaker. Which is likely not going to happen now. So be it. I am sticking to small gatherings involving no fees (or low fees for pizza and beer) with fellow true hobbyists. Bloggers are weird. That includes me lol]
One danger of churning is the temptation to spend more. [You.Don’t.Say! Why are bloggers writing at Frugal Travel Guy, The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets and many other Titans are invited to speak at conference when they repeatedly pumpingly encourage their readers to apply for credit cards with almost EVERY post huh? I mean, there are some bloggers out there who just can’t go without a post linking to one of them Titans? WTF! Like I said, BLOGGERS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS!]
One way is to use rewards cards to buy prepaid cards, then use the prepaid balances to pay off other cards. It’s a sort of legal money laundering or a one-person pyramid scheme, designed to put spending on cards in a way that you can—eventually, you hope—get that cash back. [THIS is NOT what you want to read in Bloomberg! “legal money laundering”, “one-person pyramid scheme”…OMG, serenity now, serenity now!]
Churners remain a tiny fraction of this lucrative market. [Not so tiny anymore dude, you are saying this in Bloomberg for crying out loud!]
“For people who game the system,” he says, “it may be over as I know it.” [Thanks!]
All right, that was cathartic! Wait, here comes another one at Forbes again!
How To Book A Luxury Honeymoon Using Miles and Points.
At this point I am thinking of divorcing and then remarrying, booking a mega trip that will make all these trips look like child’s play, contacting all my media contacts and then BOOM! Just kidding.
Matt over at Saverocity picked up on this and posed some questions on the whole subject: Love and Hate in the Land of Travel Blogging. Very difficult question to answer indeed. Reader plane2port picked up on the funniest line in the blog post: “After all, our blogs are to teach our family and friends about how inferior their lifestyle is, and a blog is one of the only ways to do that passive aggressively.”
In Flyer Talk there is a thread about View From The Wing. This post pretty much sums it up very well…
This company is on a tear, another AMAZINGLY ridiculous signing bonus offer! (HT: Reddit)
The Free-quent Flyer on another post about starting from scratch again, this time for hotel stays. Interesting methodology. I don’t fully agree with it as I almost never pay. But it may apply to you. The only time I used an OTA recently got me a room at a Marriott property with the biggest bug checking me out from the curtains and non working wifi. So now I am stuck with 4 nights (left after the third night) in Hotels.com expiring in 5 months, anyone know what can I do with them?
Things you learn every day. I did not know either that Korean Air had updated its ridiculously generous award hold policy (up to three days before departure!) to a too generous 30 days hold. I still think the negatives of the high fuel surcharges and potentially being tied up talking/holding on the phone still keeps me away. Maybe when I fly them this summer returning from Malaysia via Seoul I may think differently.
Looks like the Chinese are on a gigantic buying spree. There goes Carlson Hotels.
Ok, I suck in packing, no news there! But I sure had no idea that there are 8 packing techniques to save space in your suitcase. Wow! I just usually shove everything in about an hour before departure because I am too busy tweeting or something lol.
The Job Security of a Great Advisor. Your personal finance fix of the day. Ok, I am biased picking this one. But I think my colleague nails it! Hard! Just a few excerpts:
Major emotional mistakes in the investing realm are not calculated in basis points, they are tallied in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or, in extreme cases, in the millions.
Wealthy people know this. They’ve learned to forge alliances with doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants and advisors whom they can trust and confide in. The costs have paled in comparison with the benefits – in some cases, over generations. Consistently good counsel pays for itself where large sums of money are at risk – and we are all at risk at all times. In comparison, “free advice” or nearly free is worth exactly what it costs, nothing.
Social intelligence cannot be programmed. Hard-earned trust cannot be arbed or gamified. And, at its highest levels, empathy cannot be machine-learnt. Great advisors get into this business because they care and that is why they flourish. Advisors who do not care, or who peddle one-size-fits-all solutions where nuance is important, can absolutely be replaced by software. And they should be.
Venezuela. The state of the country is just tragic. Give it a few years and Greece will be there as well, it’s well on its way…So sad. This read will make you realize it: The Suicide of Venezuela. So please STFU about not getting your predeparture drink or having to wait ten minutes to check in to your hotel!
And I leave you with this…
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Back to back firsts!
Just like the Golden State Warriors? #maybe
Please no. ALL IN CLE!
Buzz-
Does that video Nicole Kidman did for Etihad demonstrate the on-board shower?
You won’t believe what happened next! 🙂
Bronze.
I no longer see the value of any public blog in this space. Even the well-written, non-cc churning blogs encourage more participation into a space that is already vastly overpopulated. At least posters in public forums like FT or Saverocity have largely self-regulated in recent months and now rarely expose things. But not so of the bloggers. The entire travel blogging industry needs to practice abstinence for a year to help curb our overpopulation problem. Of course, I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen…
I am not a betting man. I only bet when I am 100% assured of winning. And I will gladly take this bet that this is not going to happen 🙂
The Bloomberg article now approaching 300 comments at Reddit/Churning…
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/4godx7/inside_the_risky_jetsetting_world_of_creditcard/
This was a classic by churn_or_burn:
Haha I didn’t even read the title, amazing. It’s like reaching for a “Wolf of Wall Street” vibe. There should be a movie about it with some really great voiceover.
After that first big score there was no looking back – we were full time churners.
For some people it was about the money. For others it was status. Me? I didn’t care about any of that. For me it was all about that first class experience.
We started signing up for a dozen credit cards a day. If a bank had an offer you can bet we applied for it.
Some of us were taking home 5, 10 Gs a day in pure cashback rewards. This was before the Postal Inspector started sniffing around.
Back then we didn’t care, it felt like the world was ours. And really – it was.
People said we were crazy, and hey, maybe we were. But we were young and we had all the time in the world.
The future looked pretty bleak after Target stopped debit reloads. A lot of people had to transition back to “civilian” life – some couldn’t cut it.
Yeah, one of my former students is a journalist for Deutsche Welle and is their correspondent in Caracas. So I have been following the goings on there pretty closely the past few years through his FB posts. It’s pretty grim. Even his own family has left. Brilliant guy. Hope he stays safe.
Elect a socialist and its bound to come to this. Add in the poor resources and dependence on only oil for revenue and multiple by bad dicator and square it with electing his right hand moron bus driver and you get Venezuela.
Bloomberg is covering Venezuela too. Not enough money to pay for its money. Sounds like a bad MS story gone wrong.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/venezuela-faces-its-strangest-shortage-yet-as-inflation-explodes
It’s very sad and tragic indeed. I am very afraid Greece will become the Venezuela of Europe!
I really liked Joel Hirst’s piece on Venezuela, particularly:
“Revolution – cold and angry. Hate, as a political strategy. Law, used to divide and conquer. Regulation used to punish. Elections used to cement dictatorship. Corruption bleeding out the lifeblood in drips”
It has been a shithole for years now and the capital flight — both legal and from corruption – has funded much of PTY’s skyline. At some point the whole mess will collapse into a bloody shitstorm and the rest of world will pump funds into it for decades to come.
At one point CCS was an incredible – and mostly unknown – travel hack. CCS to SIN via FRA on LH F and SQ F (suites!) for ~$3k and CCS to HKG via MIA (AA crapola) and LHR (BA F then CX F) for under $4k. Had to buy the ticket there, do some dancing to change USD to the toilet paper Bolivar but sweet for someone based down here.
Thanks TBB for the link…
I should have saved that link for a Sunday “3 Awesome Links I Love”. Oh well.
Thanks for the background info too!
you got mentioned (and linked) in a post by pointchaser..
http://www.pointchaser.com/on-bloggers-killing-deals-affiliate-links-and-polluting-the-river/
“Many of the big blogs had written about this deal right before it went bust – it was definitely a great opportunity to promote the Chase Ink Bold card, which at the time offered an affiliate commission of $500. ”
A, yup.
🙂
Thought briefly about wrecking that post by, cough, logical reasoning…but then I came to my senses that It makes no sense doing that as I would be thought of as angry or something…
rolleyes
Buzz, I will be joining the Target boycott…………unless that whole Target/Redbird MS hack starts working again………………………………………..Ted picks Carly Fiorina because she “has broken the glass ceiling several times.” Ted forgot to add she has broken the mirror a few times too. With that I have to quote D.Trump, “that face”.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/apr/28/carly-fiorina-sings-lullaby-as-she-becomes-ted-cruzs-running-mate-video
I have a few former HP clients. Whenever they hear the name Carly they get really angry….I mean, makes my angry-ness meter looks like child’s play!
HP is trash. Its a dying business that no one is gonna save.
Well, she sure played a role to make sure of that!
During John McCain’s presidential run in 2008, Fiorina said the best economic change that could be made to help American women was to eliminate the estate tax.
Maybe that was women she had lunch with this week.
Fiorina goes well with Ted. Someone called them ‘Mean and meaner”. Trump is right on that one…calling them desperate!
The Bloomberg article indicates this hobby has officially jumped the shark. Most lucrative programs and deals have been killed by now. Churning is nowhere near what it used to be. MS is nearly dead for those attempting to do any volume. What kills me are the idiots willing to talk to the reporter and let them use their names. Smh!
I’m surprised the pimps are still throwing FTUs. Can’t be that many noobs to fleece now that so many methods have died, can there?. How do you tell noobs to go MS $5K any more? No more BB or Target or Netspend or Avira or Amazon or Serve or Buxx or a dozen others I’ve forgotten. Most WM refuse to take vgc and most grocery stopped selling vgc, so both sides are much harder to accomplish. Office supply only sells $200s. OBC is capped. Current situation is a far cry than where it was during the Golden Age. Plus redemptions are far worse with all the program devaluations, while CC apps from many banks have been severely limited.
I now tell people now it’s not worth it for back of the bus and to simply book cheap fares and avoid all the hassle with churning, MSing and dealing with arcane redemptions. Learning curve is now too steep for the “free” rewards one gets.
And based on what I see at WM, the vast majority of MSers have given up. I don’t see the 20 Somethings fidgeting on their phones and nervously fumbling their vgc trying to get MOs any more. If I see them now, I tell the CSRs to check their cards and they walk away with their tails between their legs.
I think you nailed it. I may publish this so more readers will read it. Thanks.
Too many bloggers looking for clicks…
So you list all of the MS methods that were killed and how terrible it is, but then brag about going full on narc mode on those buying money orders. Because that helps.
Yeah, kind of ashamed to share the same first name- what exactly is the point of messing with the “20-somethings”? And telling people that it’s not even worth doing anymore? Sure it’s not the “golden age” and America’s not what it used to be and when I was a kid I used to walk uphill both directions in the snow to get to school and back, but come on…not worth it? Guess it depends how rich you are and how much spare time you’ve got, but personally I’m still killing it and foresee continuing to be able to do so for some time in the future…
@ other Paul – Like you, I’m still MSing (at far lower levels) because I still have some limited MS options alive. But I can’t in good conscience advise others to begin the game considering almost all the easy options are dead. The few remaining options can’t absorb any extra demand – and I suspect they’ll be dead sooner than later anyway.
Those who want back of the bus can fly almost as cheaply as one can MS, so barely worth the bother. Front of the bus still offers value and that’s about the only time I’d advise interested noobs to learn this game. Yet if one considers the steep learning curve and limited remaining MS avenues, it simply isn’t worth most people’s time. I’d tell them to set an alert on the “mistake fare” sites and be ready to pounce.
The Golden Age of MS is behind us and it’s slim pickings today for most people.
Thank you both Pauls, really good commentary!