On with the show…
TRAVEL
Northern Michigan Country Dreamland HD Video. WOW!! Love these timelapse videos. This is in my back yard! Found at the Adventure Blog.
Extreme Plane Spotting at Maho Beach, Saint Martin. BEST pictures I have seen! I need to get there one day…
The Faces of Yemen. From foXnoMad. I really like ordinary people pics!
You Went Where??? wrote an interesting post “Don’t Believe Everything You Read on Blogs: American Airlines Is Not The Second Coming of Jesus Christ“. What, it’s not? 🙂 You know it is an entertaining read with an opening like this: “If you are a regular reader of a few of the major travel/points blogs, it would be understandable if you thought two things: (1) every two or three days, there is an AMAZING credit card deal you would be a fool not to sign up for, and (2) American Airlines is the most amazing air carrier in the world, all of its planes have brand new lie-flat state of the art seats, and that its elites are treated like royalty.  Neither of these things are true.”
Christopher Elliott says “I’m just wrapping up a super-secret project that could change your life. Honestly. I’ll have an announcement on that soon.” Honestly, I am afraid. Honestly2, I don’t care!
MILES/POINTS
75k AMEX Membership Reward Points for the Business Gold Rewards Card
Good until May 17, 2013 or whenever Amex feels like it.
$10k spend in four months, annual fee waived in the first year. READ THE FINE PRINT. If you are new to this and you don’t like reading the fine print get another hobby please. If you think $10k is a lot, do a Google search on “manufactured spending” 🙂
Frequent Miler is at it again with “Best options for buying $500 Visa gift cards“. I am not into grocery shopping and I do not shop at Kroger. I never understood the logistics of them fuel points, any blogger who wants to do a blog post about it to enlighten us?
Plastic Jungle bites the dust.
ON MY MIND
It is amazing to me how credit card pumping bloggers almost trampled themselves to push the short lived affiliate AMEX 75k offer last week and then when an equally impressive offer for the same 75k offer came through (for $10k minimum spend instead of $5k spend) they were well, err, not so eager to get it out! What I found appalling was that some who mentioned it tried to stick in the same post a bunch of other affiliate links (you know, the usual affiliate links you see every day)! Couldn’t you , just for a SINGLE day stick to the offer and hold yourself from assaulting your readers with the other links as you will have the opportunity to do so again….tomorrow? 🙂 And, of course, the most appalling was watching some bloggers who are obviously way too busy to even mention this offer while they were acting like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders for the affiliate Amex offer! But I digress. I could call names here but it is already past midnight…I am trying to keep this together. Feel free to comment, TBB does not censor!
The Points Guy managed to stick sixteen credit card links to the post about the 75k non affiliate Amex offer. Sixteen!!!
Mommy Points wrote “Top 11 Credit Card Sign-up Bonuses Available Now”. Because 10 was just not enough:-)
Delta Points promotes Adam who also blogs at the Boarding Area at Point Me To The Plane and runs award booking service Juicy Miles. My readers had plenty of comments about this. When I read “Skymiles are an extremely valuable currency” I almost started flogging myself 🙂
Extra Pack of Peanuts, known for always being on top of all deals, is promoting the…Lufthansa 50k credit card deal!!
ODDZ & ENDZ
“Wealthy Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides to bypass lines at Disney World“. Oh…this is so so wrong!
MMS ,,,..This card could make sense for many, but be sure that you can comfortably meet the minimum spending requirement and that it won’t take away from other good sign-up bonuses!
He also stuck Chase links and shows how much better it is to sign up for IB and CSP for a combined $8k spending.
Hypothetically if IB raised spending to 10k for the same amount of affiliate kickback, you bet all of these commercial bloggers would be showing how to make that spending easily.
The Chase links do not go directly to the application but to a blog post talking about the cards.
I hate it too when bloggers throw in the IB and CSP references in posts with headlines about Amex cards. But it is what it is…
^^ This. If the Chase Ink were to come out with a 10K spending requirement (along with an affiliate link), bloggers would be tripping over themselves with lines like “you can be a mom and apply for a business card because you sold crap on eBay last year” and “dont get dissuaded by the 10K requirement – there are very many ways of meeting it including AP, VRs etc”.
Yes George, that’s ok. We can call a spade and spade while you try to mend the burnt bridges 🙂 Fortunately some of us do not have to worry about the networking with bloggers shtick.
Cut capitalism, disclosures, blah blah blah.
“If the Chase Ink were to come out with a 10K spending requirement (along with an affiliate link), bloggers would be tripping over themselves with lines like “you can be a mom and apply for a business card because you sold crap on eBay last year” and “dont get dissuaded by the 10K requirement – there are very many ways of meeting it including AP, VRs etc”
So so true;-)
Well, having said that, I also believe that it WOULD in fact be easier to meet the 10k requirement on a Chase than on a Amex.
I don’t make anywhere near that kind of money to justify spending $3-4k a month.
If I tried manufacturing spend on a Amex, I’d get hit with a FR.
Yes, I’d come out unscathed, but that’s beside the point. Who want’s a FR?
Whereas with Chase, I could just do $5k of VR and meet the minimum spend in 2 months and not worry about a thing.
Until Chase doesn’t do any FR and closes all your accounts and takes away all the points without any explanation.
I like to mix things up and always stay under the radar. You know the saying…”pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered” 😉
If you slowly establish a pattern of spending and gradually build it up…Chase won’t take adverse action most likely. If you go WILD well then…if you get cut off then you will cut the hand that feeds with the 50k offers.
Latest comment on FT thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase-ultimate-rewards/1396906-chase-closed-my-sapphire-preferred-account-due-transfers-other-ur-accounts-20.html
“Here is my story… I discovered this hobby on January and applied for 4 credit cards (Chase Sapphire, SPG, Hyatt, and HA from Bank of Hawaii) – I met the minimum spend and got all the points and free nights… Waited 3 months and applied for 4 more cards (Ink Plus, AMEX Business Gold, Citi AAdvantage, and HA from BoA) – Yesterday Chase closed my three accounts and told me that they did a review of my credit and that I opened too many accounts recently (including 3 more cards the same day I applied for the Ink – they cited TransUnion), that I have too much credit available to me and that it represent high risk. I only made 3 transactions w the Ink ($1508.85 – 3 amex gift cards and it appears as “Mall” in my statement, $844.94 – Staples, and $185 – ATT). I also used the UR portal for online shopping in Lowes, Shutterfly, and JCP.
I checked my TransUnion report and there were only 3 hard inquires related to credit cards. (The other inquiries are in Experian) Credit Score=800, Never been late, always pay my cc in full each month. What was the trigger for the review? “
Bloggers are not under FTC radar yet or even Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. They should be and will be 😉 By the way you can initiate CFPB inquiries on blogs that describe churning/spending etc. I don’t think it has been done yet, but the free ride of stealing info and making money out of it will become harder.
My guess: Chris Elliott’s life-changing announcement has something to do with acai berries. That, or the time wasted on reading travel blogs for deals is costing Americans $x billions a year, so stop it!
I think you are up to something…
I always wanted to do a post on the true costs of this hobby. I am not talking about just the monetary costs. I am talking about the constant attention to keep going after deals, mileage run opportunities, constantly on award wallet & booking awards & researching destinations, FTUs and seminars and Mega DOs, and I can keep going and going…How many in this hobby, after getting addicted, ended up losing jobs, spouses, built up mega credit card debt, picked up alcohol & drugs, etc.
If you don’t understand fuel points and and you don’t like reading the fine print to figure it out on your own then get another hobby please. 🙂 Seriously though, how hard are fuel points to understand? $1000 in purchases earns 1000 fuel points at many grocery stores. 1000 fuel points = $1 off per gallon on your next fill up. We don’t really need this spoon fed to the masses to dimwits who can’t think for themselves. Already dead at one local Kroger owned chain but not the other.
George, I wrote about Fuel Points a while ago. Pay attention! 🙂
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/frequentmiler/2012/09/25/what-is-a-fuel-point-worth
George, how can one be “not into grocery shopping?” Do you and Mrs. Buzz eat out all the time? Can’t you just tell Mrs. Buzz or Buzz Jr. which card to pick up on their way out? (Send them a picture of Emily standing in front of a grocery gift card stand.)
Granted, the local grocery store that gives us gas points is down-market and only has eligible gas stations out in East Nowhere.
harvson3
There has been a misunderstanding about fuel points. The issue is Kroger. It is a store I despise because I had a traumatic experience many many years ago. I blogged about it, see it on the May 16 blog:-)
I was talking about the mechanics of redeeming the fuel points. Do you go inside after you fill up? Do you go inside before you fill up? Do you get the coupon cashed outside by the pump somewhere?
I fill up at Speedway. I have its Rewards card and they do run promotions. Plus I like their coffee. Many times Speedway has saved us when I am driving my kids around and we pop in for a quick snack courtesy of the loyalty card.
Mrs TBB takes care of the food. I only shop at Whole Foods down the street and get told to buy milk. I usually pick up my favorite bread, hummus and sometimes some fruit or yogurt on sale. The rest is Mrs. TBB, she is into cooking! And she does have cards with sticky on it for, you know, gas, groceries, etc:-)
The only other time I go grocery shopping is when I get the urge to grill:-)
Maho Beach is awesome…there is a Royal Sonesta right there that is great for boat drinks and plane watching.
Looks awesome. I should make it there one day.
To Bloggers: Do a post on how to get to Maho Beach on miles & where to stay. A DO there would be awesome!