I thought I had more material for you today. But as I go through the day I keep eliminating entries as I narrow down my choices. If you have something that you think has a shot to pass my incredibly high eclectic threshold, please email me at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com or tweet me at @FlyerTalkerinA2
TRAVEL
A panoramic view of Chapman’s Peak Drive at Cape Town.
Incredible picture of the Grand Canyon!
MILES/POINTS
“What’s in an Award?” by Fozz On Uptime over at Upgrd. I think it is a must read because, well, it is a worthy subject to learn more of! And it sure breaks the monotony of being assaulted with yet another Chase Sapphire and Chase Ink Bold credit card affiliate link! The article ends with:
So, I ask, with a flawed voting process, lack of auditing and corruption, what is a travel award worth? To me, nothing. Over the years I’ve learned to give these awards very little credit as I’ve learned more and more about how they work. Furthermore when you sit their wondering why a certain vendor won and listen to the explanation provided, they often don’t line up to be truly accurate.
Personally, I always wondered how the Marriott folks win so many awards!! These awards do not mean much to me too! It is good marketing fodder for all involved in the business and a very nice way to spend an evening. The loyalty program folks burn some of their marketing budget on these events only to stick it back to us later by devaluing their programs because they were too…expensive:-) Sigh.
What’s up with so many bloggers talking about how to take advantage of the Club Carlson 10k per two night stay promo? It is really not that big of a deal folks! Besides, I still have truckloads of them points! No mattress run material. If it was 50k for just one night I would be all over it!
View from the Wing had a nice post on how to keep your miles from expiring from a few days ago. I had it bookmarked in my browser and not in the Google Reader queue for some reason. Sorry about that.
ON MY MIND
Bloggers LOVE to answer questions like this: “Any idea if Chase is going to return the $300/30,000 point bonus for the Freedom card? Have the Chase Sapphire, so would like the points, but 10,000 is low right now.” The usual links follow…Thanks One Mile at a Time. Zzzzzz.
We are not done….What is this? Everyone short on their bills today? View from the Wing conveniently informs us, sit down please, “Why You Should Add a Small Business Credit Card to Your Wallet”. Come on guys, this is getting ridiculous! If I only had a dollar for every Chase credit card link my eyes have seen in my miles/points career:-)
Extra Pack of Peanuts does what it always does. Another app-o-rama play by play. Zzzzzzzz. And this blog has the weirdest graphics by far!
ODDZ & ENDZ
20 Amazing Examples of Animal Camouflage. From Bored Panda. Amazing indeed, I can’t find some of them!
Moving Mona Lisa: The WWII Story. From Twisted Sifter. Incredible story and pics here!
CHASE CREDIT CARD RECONSIDERATION DEPARTMENT HAS CHANGED, BEWARE!!!
From this FlyerTalk thread by RetiredRoadWarrior
Me: Good morning. A splendid day, is it not? Hope you are well. I was wondering if . . .
CSR Cratchit: Declined!
Me: But but . . .
CSR Cratchit: What, you got a banana in your ear? I said DECLINED!!
Me: But but I don’t understand why my application . . .
CSR Cratchit: Too many inquiries!
Me: But but I’ve only applied for two Chase cards in the last 14 months.
CSR Cratchit: Listen, Toadstool, I said TOO MANY INQUIRIES!! Everywhere, not just Chase. Eight inquiries in the last four months.
Me: I believe it’s only seven, but . . .
CSR Cratchit: You made an inquiry to the produce manager at WalMart as to whether the rutabagas were from Mexico. That’s eight.
Me: But but I believe my Experian is 787 . . .
CSR Cratchit: It’s 784 after I dinged you for a credit pull. Bend over and I’ll do another dozen pulls and spank you into Credit Hell, you degenerate jerk.
Me: But but my credit utilization is under 5%.
CSR Cratchit: Your credit utilization is 6%!!!! You are a fraud and a despicable human being. And you smell like the inside of a Russian horse doctor’s valise.
Me: You can smell . . .
CSR Cratchit: Thank you for calling Chase. Is there anything else I might do you for today? Sharp stick in the eye? Proctology exam administered by Genghis Khan?
Me: No, thank you for your time and consideration.
VFTW did NOT approve my comment so far. I already see 2 replies and mine says this :
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Quite a lot of misinformation going on here in this article. Credit cards report mid cycle ?
To newbies reading, do not fall for this trap. Your balances get reported at the end of statement cycle which is different for different cards and adjustable to your liking by calling CSRs. Just pay in full before statement cuts to report 0 utilization. End of story as far as utilization is concerned.
I am ok with CC advertisements, but spreading false information and propaganda is uncool.
To me it is end of story as I never get nearer any “dangerous” utilization levels. I just pay when statement closes. These “credit enhancing” moves I just glance over, I move on…Never paid a penny in interest in my life. And I can count rejections in the fingers of one hand.
Oh, I am not ok with cc advertisements so often! And VFTW is by far not one of the mega offenders!
Todays MMS interview pretty much blew away every other as far as craptitude goes. And that says something
If you want comic relief, click on this guys “blog” that he writes to keep “family” informed on his travels
That is the mantra for all these crap bloggers… I want to show my family ….
Filler+CC Pimp
Filler+CC Pimp
Credit Pimp exclusively
Steal Info
Too Lazy to write an actual trip report. So spam with pictures and caption them.
Filler
Cheap car rental tricks over and over and over.
“Interview” no one gives a shit about.
That’s how we roll…winning.
That might be how MMS rolls, but the guy he interviewed has a long way to go before he gets to that point
His home page is literally just 3 separate tabs of credit cards
There isn’t even filler, trip reports or car rental tricks
Just credit cards links
He interviewed a “blogger” who doesn’t even really blog
“Welcome to our Friday interview series, where we talk to renowned miles and points experts….”
Nothing surprising there. Hey give MMS some credit, he is not “excited to talk” to these guys anymore.
I agree with most comments…I am going off on this in tomorrow’s blog. This crap is getting ridiculous with all these people blogging, getting MMS interview and then bang bang bang all the cc links are ready to help family fly for free. %&&$#*(^$#
@Harvson3
Have you noticed the infinite supply of female bots who thank MMS for pretty much any crap he puts out?
Lisa, Angie, Mary, Nancy …. endless. In-house bots to give the cue at the beginning and in between flaming posts to steer people into thanking for all the crap that gets shoved on a regular basis.
Love the whole concept of bots. Female bots is even better:-)
I am really surprised there are no comments at all yet about the “What’s in an Award” link I posted!!
Will get to the other comments later. Whole bunch of little things going today, dentist/car service/plumber appt and more driving kids around…
I think there are lots of Marriott bots roaming the internet…
You mean there is more and more greed and corruption brewing within this industry? Crooks have taken over the thin white line where travel hackers used to hang around and take pride in not crossing it.
Same as Gary’s, but better: http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/01/03/airline-miles-expiration/
Even better. Birth of a newbie cc pimp
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/intercontinental-hotels-priority-club-inter-continental-ambassador/1223648-priority-club-points-cash-trick-deep-discounts-priority-club-hotels.html
Not relevant to my post above, but completely amusing nonetheless! 🙂
Also, even better: Death of an oldie CC pimp: FTG. (Does anyone read him anymore? I can’t remember the last time I read it and thought it a good read…)
I think MMS has come a long way from the early days. He hasn’t pulled that same stuff like the PC points & cash “trick” in a while. I hope he does not for the sake of all of us but…we can’t stop this stuff anymore…Blog rules I guess.
Ridiculous. What was the last time an original idea was published by him, not seen anywhere else before? He leeched off Frequent Miler’s GC pin@MoneyCenter trick the very next day for crying out loud. Just wants to hoard other peoples ideas all the time. It is like those pyramid scheme people, once you are brainwashed there is no coming back. Stealing ideas is not going away from that blog.
This whole “industry” lacks original ideas. There is a lot of what you mention going on. It is a special talent to write it all out in a neat easy to understand manner (darn arrows and all)….regardless of how much we veterans hate it! Where would you send a newbie? I would send him/her to MMS.
I am so with you about the pyramid scheme people!!!
Well some of us prefer to start our own blog to show our friends and family how to travel for freeeeeeee 😀
So no not all of us will send a newbie to a CC minefield.
We praise Frequent Miler for having a separate CC tab so that affiliate and other links don’t clutter the actual content in the blog
The guy MMS interview had a separate tab for his once-every-3-months blog posts…. so that it doesn’t clutter all the CC links on the home page of the blog
Somewhere, TPG is wondering why he didn’t think of that
Yep…
As always, MMS’ friday chat comments prove to be a goldmine. This one had me in splits!
Who is this guy? | May 17, 2013 at 4:51 pm |
“Dave writes Free Travel Genius to show his wife and family how to travel the world for less.”
Do people normally start blogs to show their wife how to travel the world for less?
Assuming you both live under the same roof, that seems like a pretty inefficient method
Yes, gold mine, I link to it in tomorrow’s blog even though I try not to link to blogs in my “On My Mind” section:-)
MMS is censoring!!! I hope Kathy Will Run for Miles and the Arizona guy will let others know about it. 2 bloggers claimed to have been offered to get interviewed and the comments got deleted.
Instead now the last comment is this one which is equally hilarious
DumbAndDumber | May 17, 2013 at 8:49 pm |
Everyone in this blog is now dumber for having read this “interview”. He is awarded no points and may God have mercy on his soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3JzbWVDzac
Another comment was removed after the bloggers posted that they declined to get interviewed. Something about MMS brand dilution I think.
@Anonymous – I’ve been out all day and I do see comments from Kathy from Will Run for Miles and Arizona Guy. I haven’t removed any comments, but do email me if yours didn’t post and I will see if I can find it in the spam folder.
Well they magically came back. I see even KWRFM thought her comments were deleted so it wasn’t just my observation. That would have added insult to injury otherwise!
MMS does not censor. TBB does not either.
The way I see it is if some person writes a very nasty personal post it reflects upon him/her. These are obvious and they amuse me. We live on Planet Earth people:-)
I actually find it an honor if someone takes the time to comment and I will try to learn from it.
Well I find the timing of the post about deleted comments and then MMS appearing here coincidental, that’s all 😉 I know TBB doesn’t censor and we all know that.
These comment systems can be quite finicky! I have deleted comments by accident before. They just act weird sometimes. I am scared when I move to WordPress the comments may lose the “edginess” they have here in this clunky Google Blogger interface!
Okay…What I really want to know is…
Where THE HELL is the damn snow leopard?!?!
Please let us know when the snow leopard is found. Maybe he can tell us where my pet giraffe has escaped to!!
Think I found it…
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1448/animalcamouflage22.jpg
Tell me if that looks like a face, or am I just imagining things?
BUZZ, you have been on a roll since Vegas. Love it, go get those guys!!!