Lets go on a wild ride through Cyprus and Spain, learn about Freedoms and hotel loyalty programs, reach the frontiers of Manufactured Spending heights, learn about another 2% cash back card, shake our heads on the duel between Chris Elliott and Gary Leff, laugh at some corporate logo fails and the typical mayhem and stuff like that.
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order
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I am trying hard to keep the blog going and make the time spent on it manageable. Therefore, no more bolding the name of the blog and adding the link, I just add the link to the name of the blog. I also intend to take several blogs off my Feedly list. Thank you to all who have used my Amazon link, sure helps keep this crazy blogging adventure going…
Probably the best post of the past two days was this by Hack My Trip on which is the best hotel loyalty program.
An interesting article about all those 5th Freedom Flights you keep hearing about. Actually there are nine of them according to Cranky Flier.
Hilton is out with its 2nd quarter promotion: Double Points or Double Miles. Please go for the points. Register here. Stays between May 1 and July 31, 2014. Crazy long list of non participating hotels.
Personal Finance Digest has some interesting stuff as always. But the most bizzaro find was this about the new cryptocurrency by Insane Clown Posse; it is called “JuggaloCoin”. If this is not WTF territory, I don’t know what is!
More cash back offers on Amex Gift Cards by Frequent Miler. By using the Arrival card (insert imaginary affiliate link) you could get 6.6% back on travel expenses. READ all the fine print details on the site about these cards! I am sticking with my reliable 5% card (#hint because I am not one of them bloggers to lay it all out to…kill it hehe!).
Apparently there IS a Fidelity Investment Rewards Visa Signature card that earns 2% on purchases (but AFTER earning 1.5% on the first $15,000 of purchases). No annual fee. HT to View from the Wing via Mr. Pickles. I have no idea why the Costco “trick” was even mentioned! THIS card should be the one most people should be carrying (or the Amex 2%). No hassles with annual fees, devaluations and keeping track of miles and then trying to burn them unless you are a hopeless addict like us who still play the game even as it is getting harder and harder…#sadface.
I guess if I was a blogger earning most of my money from the banks pushing credit cards and “selling” my lifestyle I would think and act differently lol.
Apparently the “Vanilla”/Bluebird game is still on but requires a visit to the grand mecca of WalMart. I don’t want to be laying all this out like some bloggers so in case you are not “on it” you can ask non angrily in the comments and we’ll tell you 😉
Apparently, Chris Elliott is on again in one of his usual rants against loyalty programs and Delta Skymiles. I LIKE reading his rants because….they entertain me as they are usually over the top and extremely biased against these programs. BUT, as time goes by, he is making more sense. And among all the sensational stuff he comes up with, there is also a lot of truth to what he says. I find it equally more entertaining (if not more) to see View from the Wing‘s response which I think it is even more over the top for its anti-Elliot and pro-loyalty biases! And I think time is on Chris’s side…I would love to moderate a panel session between these two one day lol. I trust no attendee will throw things at us, thank you!
Uber is coming to Ann Arbor and offering 10 free rides for the next two weeks. I am conducting an experiment on them affiliate/referral links. I pimped my own Uber referral link the past few days and just want to see how many click on it (so far no one has!). Feel free to change this by the way, you CAN BE FIRST at last lol.
Travel With Grant. Serve. Enough said. Now all shut up about it. Waiting for the pics and arrows guy next…tic tac. Be VERY careful switching from Bluebird to Serve!
Do you know what hagwalah in Arabic is? No? TBB likes to educate sometimes so here it is. Watch the video and see what the Saudis do for fun. Unbelievable!
In other news, Pointshound was acquired by Points.com. Which means it will proceed to suck like everything at points.bomb sucks!
Cares Gorge Trail Adventure. One of the most beautiful hikes in Spain. Found at Bored Daddy. Wow, this looks like fun!
Photos of Cyprus’ Frozen In Time Border. I have several friends from Cyprus. I visited in 1987 when my brother was stationed in Nicosia with the glorious Greek Army. Hard to believe it has now been 40 years since the island was split in two.
Financial Matters. Fantastic personal finance article at A Wealth of Common Sense.
10 shocking Facts about the Drug War at Matador Network. If this article does not convince you about the futility of this stupid war, nothing else will.
The 15 Worst Corporate Logo Fails. This is mega LOL material. TBB entertains #Word!
Come on, run through to the other side, you can do eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
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George
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First!
I kind of cheated, WordPress told me that you linked to my post. #technologyFTW
Cheating is not allowed, so your First is disqualified. #thisismyjoint #IcandowhatIwant #Word:-)
Shouldn’t honesty be rewarded? #justsayin
Honesty rewarded? How old are Grant? LOL
It’s all about credibility lol
#thisismyjoint ? Are you a weed hogger? Remind me not to party with you. #TBBdontShare
Not sure about the weed but I can share the brownies lol.
Non-disqualified first!
The Fidelity Visa is nice, but has a 3% foreign transaction fee and requires a Fidelity account. The Capital One Quicksilver has no foreign fee and a small sign-on bonus. For someone under $15,000 of credit card spending per year, I’d rather take that.
Great points, thanks.
Second!
You are moving up in the world we see…
In the world of TBB and in the world of churning. Successful AOR done. Can you guess which bloggers’ links I didn’t use?
Yes
🙂
A part of me hopes the Simon mall GCs stick a lot of people with duds like HIGCs did. Is that bad? Probably. But there’s a difference between informing a wider audience and just blowing up a deal for people proud of how they’re “too busy to read through forums.” The tone of those thankful for circles and arrows shows a real lack of awareness and appreciation for those who actually put in the work and risk to produce this information (hint: not Bowtie). And those people, eg MMan, are left helping others without lavish funding in their back pockets from fine upstanding corporate criminals like JP Morgan Chase.
/still a real ass
Oh please. The game still dies whether it’s MMS or morons without lavish funding.
It was quite interesting as very soon after posting this he got many angry comments.
He responded calling his readers trolls and liars. After that he removed his own message…
Anyway I lost any respect I had for him after his latest trip report which I followed as he flew Etihad
which I’m also planning to do. Yes, that was him, he posted his “part 1” where there was
a picture of Emily, who else, commenting “Cathay flight was nice, but Etihad was amazing,
a much better cabin and a personal service” this kind of stuff. He later changed it completely
turning it into “I can’t really decide which airline is better, both are amazing” etc.
The reason is simple – many readers are “aspiring” to fly Cathay, it’s easier to book and it’s
less miles, so he realized it wasn’t in his best interest to present it as “not as good”.
Something like that makes me really sick and seriously takes away any fun related to blogging.
Leaves a bad taste and it puts any blogger in a bad light. He not only destroys his reputation,
but reputation of anyone related to this “hobby”…
You are late. He already successfully destroyed it which is why we call them used credit card salesmen to distinguish from real bloggers.
I echo the sentiments expressed.
Unfortunately, this has become a big business and these business men gotta push the product out the door…
Third!
Bronze!
There are more rewarding avenues for AMEX GCs but best not to lay it all out to… kill it
sooner or later it will die 😉
Do tell us.
I hope MMS doesn’t find out about the INSANE profits to be had with the JuggloCoin.
Nick are you a ICP juggalo? They have a dating site called juggalove.com, that’s where I met Charles.
“juggalove”? Oh dear.
I think these comments are getting out of hand so I am going to pretend I am the Kim uno dude and censor you guys…so watch it 😉
Every time I see mention of this JuggloCoin I shake my head…violently
Are you familiar with the “Miracles” video? It’s the stuff memes are made of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insane_Clown_Posse_-_Miracles
I was kind of hoping my post would attract some Juggalos who would talk about how awesome the Juggalo Coin is, so then I would talk about how awesome the Eminem coin is and we could get a lively discussion going, but no such luck.
I wasn’t familiar with it. Love learning important things every day like this, gracias!
Is it just me, or has the mile & point blog space become, well, really boring? I am not sure if it is just the lack of much good news, or the lack of drama/hysteria about credit cards when all of a sudden the affiliate space changed or what. Of course there has always been a lot of repetition, but it is getting harder and harder to find something interesting and worth reading. How do you keep from losing your mind reading all these?
I just want to add that it would NOT be boring to watch Gary and Chris go at it and you would be the perfect moderator. Work on that….GO!
I’ve been getting a little bored in the last few months, was wondering if that was just me.
i agree with you guys and it’s interesting to hear that I’m not the only one who’s been having these thoughts as of late. I’ve definitely thinned the heard of my blogroll in the past few months, keeping only those with original content. I’m thinking there’s a good chance i will pull out from miles and points nearly all together as it’s becoming less and less worthy of my time (with a few exceptions including this blog of course :-). If i were just getting started today there is no way it would hold my interest for more than a day.
I think I completely lost my mind soon after I started TBB! I think I have become numb to it all. Blog posts disguised as “helpful” and I can smell from miles (pun intended) the affiliate link coming and lately I can predict the paragraph and the angle for it 🙂
I am down to 590 blogs, I am cleaning up my Feedly list. I have deleted many that have gone away. And many that were just only crap.
I think the latest affiliate movements will speed up the death of many marginal blogs and that’s a GOOD thing. But still there are so many out there repeating everything that this is just becoming a bit of a chore for me. I think I am doing TBB to help ME from becoming TOO bored lol.
Just poppin’ in to say hi!
Was wondering if you were lost in Western Australia. Those guys with the guns looked a bit unpredictable 😉
Those guys with guns were very unpredictable.
But, I’m now safely in Singapore.
So the question to George is if Briarwood carries VGCs 😉 One FTer reports they now have the PIN in the folder that has the VGC. This is going to be a bloodbath of VR proportions 🙂
I am allergic to malls 🙂 I just go to Wal Mart these days and can’t wait to get the hell out of there fast 🙂
That Saudi link was the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long long time! Yeah, the dude hanging off a building by one hand is insane, but this car thing ups the insanity. If hanging guy fails, just one guy dies. If 2-wheel car guy fails, then we have a mass of bodies. Craaaaazy!
The Spainish hike looks awesome! Not THAT is what I would call an “Aspirational travel destination!”
Thanks for putting in those links.
You are very welcome. Appreciative comments by readers do make my day, thank you!
What bugs me is when lousy offerings are passed along as if they are a great deal. Nine out of ten marketing emails are junk, so why blog about them? Where’s the filter? I suppose the justification is that someone, somewhere may find an offer beneficial; but some of these blogs are like reading through my junk email folder. No value added there.
I agree. It is sad but it is what it is out there…
Just popped in to say I liked this, which you posted on Twitter yesterday:
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/financial-matters/?utm_content=bufferee03a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Thanks; sent it to my kids.
Nearest Simon mall that has them is too far away. Probably just as well.
I wish BB and Serve would just merge and offer the best of each program. FM thought it could happen. The sooner, the better.
I do hate getting an email from a program about some promo only to see almost every blogger and his brother blogging about it. And that’s been all too frequent this week in particular.
I only try to post good stuff on twitter, ilke the link to my latest TBB post at least three times per day 🙂
Yeah, the BB and Serve products can be so darn confusing…never really GOT the differences in them two and the marketing appeal for it…would love to merge and keep the best from each one (well, u know how mergers go).
There has been a deafening silence about Amex cards lately so that is a plus lol.
Another pet peeve: duplicative posts. It’s easy to do a google search to see if a topic has been covered already.
To make money you got to repeat/pump/repeat/pump. Preferably targeting newbies who do not know any better, are lazy and simply want to be spoonfed.
I am starting to get it now…Hey, I am slow with these marketing things. This whole blogging thing sure has been a very educational experience, priceless actually.
Not related to the above post, but I thought of posting here for the information of readers of this site. Given below is the complaint I raised with Barclays, their “wonderful customer oriented” response and my response back. This is the sorry state of affairs of Barclays portal. Users beware?? Any thoughts?
Customer Kumar Srinivasan via CSS Web 04/23/2014 08:00 PM
This is the most ridiculous response I have ever got in my entire life with a credit card company. You are asking me to provide the details about the order number and all – do you expect me to go and search the bills just to find out these information for you? – is this your service levels? Extremely humiliating. I already gave the details on the dates, the merchant names and the transaction amount but you are now asking for order number. What kind of online tracking mechanism do you have in place to track the orders for me to get my bonus points? With this kind of system, what reliability do you bring to your customers who use your portal to rack in some extra points? Better you can close the portal if you are not able to track the order and credit me with the points.
Response Customer Service via Email 04/22/2014 08:40 PM
Dear Kumar Srinivasan :
Thank you for contacting us regarding your Barclaycard Arrival MasterCard.
We understand your concern and apologize if you have received anything less than superior service from us. We strive for excellence and appreciate the time you have taken to provide us with this feedback. We will ensure that your comments are forwarded to the appropriate department.
In order for us to further review this issue, we ask that you provide us the following information:
-merchant’s name
-order date
-order amount (excluding shipping / handling)
-order number
Once we receive the additional information we need, we will be forwarding a case to the appropriate department for further review. Please allow 7 – 10 business days for us to resolve the case. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you have any other questions and concerns, please reply to this message.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
Customer Kumar Srinivasan via CSS Web 04/22/2014 06:49 PM
Complaints raised on 3/19/14 and 4/7/14 are yet to be resolved. I certainly didn’t expect this kind of service from Barclays.
Complaint already raised without any resolution so far, except for response that they will be credited in 45 days, which is already past for one transaction. Can I have the points credited without any more excuses or delays?
I am losing faith in your rewards boost portal purchases. Purchase made with Travelocity on 3/5/14 for 321.50 didn’t fetch me 2 extra points per dollar. Similarly, purchase made on 3/15/14 with Dockers for 93.28 didn’t fetch me 4 extra points per dollar. May I know the reason for the same? I don’t see any use in using your shopping portal to boost reward points if they are not getting posted properly.
I am skeptical about your entire bonus points system. This is not what I expect from a bank like Barclays. Can some one look in to this and revert back?
I have not used the Barclays portal.
You need to be more patient with these things. And being nicer will go a longer way to get it done. Give them what they are asking for (yes, get the order number too) and give them more time. Tracking these things sometimes can be a nightmare. I wonder if it is Cartera who runs it. If yes, you need to be even MORE patient with them. This is why in general I avoid these portals, tracking them can be such a time waster! I understand the bonuses sometimes can be worth it but I sure do not envy your predicament. I am not a patient guy when it comes to these things. So, I just try to buy online using my own Amazon link 🙂
Has anyone else had similar experience with the Barclay’s portal? Or positive ones?
Barclays does seem rather confused. Today they sent me an email offering bonus points for spending $750/month in May, June and July. It was clearly from them and is a well-known targeted promo that comes around a lot. When I sent a DM to ask a quick question, I was told they had no record on my account of having made such an offer. I replied offering to forward the email or send a screen shot. Perhaps if they look again they will find it. Or maybe the right hand will tell the left what it has been doing….
It goes a long way to give them your order number. I haven’t had any problems with Barclays….Stan(Kumar) why are you so mad?
People ask me why I do not have Ben/Lucky of One Mile at a Time in the “Blogs I Like” list? Do you wanna know why? Check all his Fairmont related posts in the past few days. Do you see a Fairmont Visa link? Do you care to guess if there was an affiliate link for it that it would NOT be forgotten and it would be mentioned in EVERY post? (perhaps more than once).
Ok, then. How about this? In his post titled “Chase Fairmont Visa Signature Card Benefits” he manages to slip in links for:
Citi Hilton Reserve
Marriott card
IHG card
Hyatt card
Chase Sapphire
Chase Ink Bold
Chase Ink Plus
Barclays Arrival
And this explains why I have not added this blog to that list.
Ludicrous and he should know better. And yes I may have different standards (and they are higher with him because, well, he does know his stuff and his passion shows but…)
The Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and Hyatt cards in that post aren’t to the best offers which is strange because the IHG and Hyatt cards aren’t even affiliate links so why not point out where to get the best deal on those?
So this year, with most bloggers losing their Amex links, do they still write long blog posts everyday about the US Travel Getaways daily deals, because of the filler potential it provides for an entire month, or does it go the way of Hyatt Visa coverage?
TPG, MommyPoints, DealsWeLike et al essentially mail in their efforts for a month because they get to write long drawn out posts every day “analyzing” whether a deal is good or not, even though most of them can be answered in 1 word
Will the bloggers be as inclined to let us know of “some of the cards” that can give you 10% back on your purchase?
I am shocked that that glorious Amex Platinum card posts just…vanished 🙂
Remember the old days, when you could redeem Chase points at a reasonable rate for LH F by transferring to United?
Bloggers were tripping over themselves in a mad dash to proclaim that the LH FCT must be what heaven is like
Then it was replaced with the Centurion lounge in DFW in desperate attempts to justify the Amex Platinum annual fee
What’s it going to be now? Can the Arrivals card get you into any lounges?
DP beat you to it 🙂
He is doing an MR to visit (what else) the DFW Centurion lounge…unsurprisingly, the post does not have a single link to the Amex Platinum card! Instead, he says he got access through the Amex Platinum “airline travel card” and the link of course leads straight to his credit card link page where he doesnt even have an Amex Plat link (MB or regular)! WTF?! The Barclays Arrival card makes an appearance in the post of course!
Does anyone actually believe that he booked it yesterday?
He booked it back when he still got affiliate commission for the “airline travel card”, and was ready to do the same as every other blogger has – turn it into an excuse to get the Platinum card
Rest assured because it won’t pay him, his trip review will be far more reserved than it otherwise would’ve been