Lets take a ride through Buddhist Hell in Sri Lanka, the destruction of the Choice fares by AA, a must read article on frequent flyer programs in the New York Times, a new yummy flavor of chips, more #deltarage, new credit cards by Amex for all and Mrs. TBB, the best space picture ever, snow covered trees, weird collection and more. Buckle up!
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Yomadic does Sri Lanka and publishes some photos from Buddhist Hell that got banned by Facebook! This is some sick sick stuff, I had no idea about them Buddhists! Did I say this is just one of the four blogs in my “Blogs I Love” list?
Pizza in Motion got the scoop on how American Airlines pretty much destroyed its new Choice Plus and Choice Essential bundled fares. I always thought these were crap and did not appeal to me as I almost never pay for airfare anyway!
If you are a fan of loyalty mileage based programs, this article by Ron Lieber of the New York Times is a must read! “Now May Be a Good Time to Bail Out of Frequent-Flier Programs“. Ron knows his stuff, he is a Flyertalker. This is no biased pseudo expert on the subject. This is how his article ends: “If the [Fidelity 2%] card continues in its current form, a regular user with a child born today could pay for a year of a college at a state university with the cash rewards. My guess is that an increasing number of people will choose to do that, rather than entering an airline lottery with unknown odds that may or may not land them a few family trips to Hawaii.”
Courtesy of PFDigest, our favorite flavor of chips!
TBB: My pleasure
I love it when Andy at The Lazy Traveler’s Handbook gets angry at, what else, “Delta Airlines, Hotel, and Casino“. I personally think that ranting while blogging is vastly underrated 🙂 I mean, it is more fun, isn’t it?
My wife shops at Costco so I was thinking about getting her the 2% cash back Fidelity Amex card as the Amex PRG is coming up for its annual fee. Then I read at PFDigest (I think) that Fidelity will stick with the generous 2% bonus for at least 18 months which leads me to believe that it may not stick around for longer than that. So, in sheer panic (not really) “she” decided to go for the AMEX Starwood SPG Business card with a signing bonus of 25,000 SPG points after the $5k minimum spend is met. You see, old habits die hard. Cash back is going to be the way to go but we are not fully there yet lol.
A kind reader informed me I should be reminding readers I can do the Amex SPG referrals as we now have a personal and Business SPG card in our household. I am kind of shy with these things as I am just not a very marketing friendly blogger and hate the thought of you thinking I am pimping away. If we do this, lets please make sure you get the most SPG points because I could not live with myself if I was the cause for you to get less points! So, you know what to do (hint: email me) if interested. I do make an exception with my Amazon link, thank you for all the support! When this site gets bought out by Internet Brands I will treat you all to a weekend in Vegas. If you thought the previous sentence was serious I think you may have some problems 🙂
Huge development in the credit card world! View from the Wing (nobody from Amex calls me directly to give me the scoop!) has the details on two new cards:
Amex Everyday and Amex Everyday Preferred. Pretty cool to finally have a no annual fee card that earns Amex Membership Reward points. Is this a game changer? Of course not. But certainly welcome to add these in the war arsenal we have in our disposal. Initial signing bonuses of only 10k and 15k leave me yawning. Available on April 2nd. Expect to see the bloggers pushing hard on these as Amex got Tina Fey to do ads introducing these cards so I am assuming the marketing budget is on the high side! Perhaps this is the reason we have not seen any serious transfer bonuses lately…the money was going into these two cards! I also pray that this will not affect Bluebird, that will be a monumentally frightening development!
I LOVE this image. I found it here along with some other amazing photographs released by NASA. Thanks again Twisted Sifter, I love you too! Yes I featured it before here…I saw it again so I had to share it again because it is worth it. It reminds me of a dream I had as a child of looking at Earth from space. To this day I never forget the strong emotions of that dream.
Snow covered trees in Lapland, Finland. At Twisted Sifter. This just looks so weird!
Colorgasm. Or tripping would be more like it.
I asked the @DeltaAssist people on Twitter whether it is true that Delta has ended the practice of issuing meal vouchers when taking a bump. Their response was this: “You’d need to speak to an agent at the airport or Red Coat Specialist for details”. Looks like they got trained well in spin Delta style. A yes or a no or a simple “We don’t know” would have sufficed! Reason #1,234 to hate Delta! There will be more, I guarantee it!
As a Platinum Fairmont member, we are seeing all the certificates for the new year in our Presidents Club accounts online. We also used to pick four additional “Passion Benefits” each year but that number was reduced to two. I went for another $100 dining/spa certificate and also chose “A locally authentic dish experience for two”. Sadly, the merchandise in prior years were discontinued, boo! I had picked Adidas bags, bathrobes, teas, etc. I am not complaining 😉
How to Take Full Advantage of Your 401k. Really good article at DailyFinance.
This guy collects Do Not Disturb signs from Hotels around the World. By Messy Nessy Chic. While others are fixing credit card links or cross bombing their blog posts with internal links to help this SEO thingie I find stuff like this for your entertainment. You are welcome 🙂
Sister went to the bathroom so the dolls were “rearranged”… a little
And I leave you with this…
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George
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Wow, this long and I still got 1st?
Congrats. I threw off everybody posting so late! I split late at night to go see a movie. Kevin Costner’s film, harmless 2 hours of bad ass action. I will forget all about it tomorrow 🙂
Third? How is this even possible? Where is everybody?
4th? Wow… what is going on here?!
“I am kind of shy with these things as I am just not a very marketing friendly blogger and hate the thought of you thinking I am pimping away.”. Bullshit TBB and you know it. Daily pimp: “You can support TBB by clicking/forwarding any of our Referral Links and starting your online shopping at our Amazon affiliate link . Or click on the Amazon Banner on the right, thank you!”. I’d focus on adding content that actually makes affiliate linking worthwhile rather than just sticking in links with “please use me” then the false modesty bullshit
It’s long been the case that the average family with occasional coach travel is much better off with a cash-back card. And I think Lieber’s article does a great job of making reminding people of that.
But I actually get quite a bit of comfort out of Lieber’s article about the future of the miles game — that Delta abandoned the idea of revenue-redemption; that the 25,000 mile redemption isn’t going anywhere; that there’s recognized value in the “aspirational award”. Paradoxically, most of his article supports the notion that Delta credit card holders are better off post-change; it just happens that there is still an even better alternative for most at the moment.
For our hobby, what seems to be lost in all the Delta-bashing is that the traditional award structure is going to survive — Delta couldn’t make it work, and if they couldn’t, who would? Sure, Delta will devalue the chart at the end of the year, I’m sure AA and UA will as well. That’s part of the game, but the game survives.
Andy’s post and FMiler’s post about the Delta changes contrast well. Andy is pessimistic, given Delta’s history of unfriendliness toward its flyers, and FM is cautiously optimistic that Delta will find some middle ground that respects and rewards skilled mile hunter-gatherers. At the moment, I think Andy has the weight of evidence on his side (and FMiler has hedged his take), but it remains to be seen.
In the end, the #deltarage campaign is about as effective as is the liberal crusade against Wal-mart. Those opposed to the corporation never buy either company’s goods, and it’s a loooong road to organize a boycott. At the end of the day, business travelers (and 99% of travelers) will choose the flying metal tube company that gets them there the fastest for the cheapest. Corporate accounts want on-time planes with reasonable upgrade chances. The difference in miles is under $20 or so for a transcon (remember that we’re still talking about a difference in Skymiles, the Turkish lira of loyalty currencies). In short, #deltarage isn’t about to take off.
That new Amex card looks worthless or extremely limited for MS purposes. (At this point in the game – which may change soon – it’s sign-up bonuses + category bonuses + MS opportunities + default cash back.) The new card may be useful for saving your MR points on the cheap, however. Hey, George, how did you decide to save your MR points anyway? The card from the bank named after the founders of American Express, however, looks tempting. Apparently gotta open one of their checking accounts. (The obtuse reference in the second sentence was the Final Jeopardy question when I saw the show filmed live, years ago.)
The Buddhist sculptures bring to mind the carvings at Konark, but I’m at a loss to explain either.
First comment here.
My impression of the Amex card is that it will be popular with the general public, not so popular with people who comment on TBB. In which case: well played, Amex.
And was anybody else reminded of Hieronymous Bosch upon seeing the Buddhist hell, or is that just me?
Good call on Bosch.
Bosch yes, but an even better match would be the Buddhist Hell theme park near Bangkok. If I had known about it when I was in BKK a month ago, I would’ve visited for sure. Forgot where I saw the pics, @TBB or elsewhere, but I thought they were insane enough to warrant a trip.
There’s one of those near Vientiane, Laos, on a bus route out of town. Worth a visit.
And I first thought of Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat 🙂
I will be visiting the BKK airport on the way to HKG. Next time I will venture out. I have a good friend here who is from Bangkok who is giving me grief for not getting out of the airport!
? Any Amex that will earn up to 1.5x MR on all purchases has this MSers attention. I’d take that over a Plat card any day (unless a juicy 100K offer is out there). Although a bunch of splashes of gas to get 30 swipes could get tiresome. Still, helpful for boosting Amex gc purchases…
Capped at $6K annually in top-earning category (supermarkets). Can crank much more onto a PRG (2x at supermarkets, no cap) without having to go through the many, many swipes. Helpful, I agree, but not game-changing.
True, not game-changing, however, the second, premium card actually makes sense. It’s like getting 32,500 easy MR points after the AF plus 2X gas, or 3X with 30 monthly purchases. Of course, it would need to be downgraded by the end of the 1st year to avoid the fee.
At the end of the 1st year, downgrade it to the no-fee card, and it could be useful is to carry MR transfer ability when you have to cancel a PRG or Plat. I had to move my miles to ANA before canceling the Plat just a month ago. Not that I regret it, but having a card like this could be helpful so you can wait and utilize an occasional transfer bonus.
Agreed on the saving the MR points cheaply, with the big caveat that we don’t know whether having this card, is going to disqualify one from new bonuses with the dreaded:
Also, I was wrong above. The Buddha Park outside Vientiane is not a vision of hell, just cool sculptures.
I still have not made up my mind about these everyday cards yet. We need to see what happens in real life about the new bonus disqualification effect and (hopefully) the signing bonuses go higher. Wife’s annual fee i the PRG card coming up soon…and do not want to transfer out yet…So it will be very close to the 30 days cutoff to cancel to get full refund and have one of these babies in our hands.
The 20 to 30 purchases could be a problem in changing present routines and making life more complicated than necessary as I do not get excited like Tina Fey does 🙂
The Academy awards are a joke, Bad Grandpa walked away empty handed.
@ Nick & TPain: Haha, I threw everyone off with my timing. Sure sounds better for me than “where are my readers?” 🙂
@ Miles Abound: I stand by what I wrote. Everyone should know that having an Amazon link probably brings in $$ in a year equal to just one or two credit card hits. The only ones who don’t know that are the ones reading the blogs in my Ignore list 🙂 I did say this: ” I do make an exception with my Amazon link, thank you for all the support!”. So pleeeeease don’t bust my chops for being a whore, I spend more time producing a single post than many Bored Area bloggers do combined in a week amigo! Anyways, aren’t you busy in that Tournament? I think you guys should all keep track of the miles you drive and deduct it from the MS scores 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback, I really appreciate it.
To the person who keeps ordering diapers with my Amazon link, I love you!
@ Richard: I also changed my view on this after reading Ron’s article by postponing the date it ALL goes revenue based to 2017 instead of 2016. I found it very interesting that the DL execs got cold feet about it, therefore they announced this to get the reaction first. I still think we don’t have too long before it all goes revenue based….Robertson was right back in 2010, the current system is just unsustainable! The only thing that can stop it is a severe recession and who wants that? Thanks for taking the time to comment.
@ harvson3: Just saw Milevalue’s blog post today ripping the New York Times article and kept shaking my head. I think this guy has found a new way to generate clicks by being confrontational and keep selling credit cards, unbelievable. Anyways, I agree on the boycott issue, it’s a goner. I think Delta management will be vindicated about this move and it will be copied.I also see the new Amex card as a cheap way to keep alive the MR points at first glance. I am glad they finally showed a pulse. I called to inquire about canceling my Platinum card hoping to score some more credits but they were not cooperating. It was hilarious actually when I asked them to tell me why I should keep the card “we have two lounges with more coming but I can not tell you more details”…Yeah, aha, riiiiight. I intend to pay the fee and cancel within 30 days for full refund or shortly thereafter for prorated refund. I need to tell my clients I have given a card to that the ride is over. For a little while anyway…I still need a place to transfer my MR points, I will wait until the last day hoping for a transfer bonus.
@Nick: Hieronymous Bosch??? What? I did not google that.
@ Johnny Knoxville: What a shame. But I must admit every time I think of that scene in restaurant in the walls….yikes 🙂
I saw the Italian film that won the Oscar already. It just looks awesome. And it has a few legendary party scenes…I swear Berlusconi was going to appear in them LOL
I love AMS Schiphol Airport. Probably my favorite international airport. How did you get into the KLM lounge? Did the dolls sneak you in?
I used to be Northwest Platinum for many years. And flew Business through there too. Love the main KLM lounge there, I miss it 🙂
Why? The cows??I hate going to UK from AMS. Why have security check just before you leave Schengen area? BA lounge is always overcrowded.And once you exit and stay at Hilton of Sheraton, there is no good restaurant.
Still a decent airport, but not favorite in my book.
Hehe, them ladies at the KLM lounge are not known to be too friendly 🙂
I have stayed at both Hilton and Sheraton at AMS. The Hilton was a dump, I think they renovated (or rebuilt it). I have a wild story from the Hilton but I better shut up as my wife reads my blog 🙂
A trip to a Buddhist hell theme park–fascinating stuff:
http://io9.com/5915890/spend-a-lovely-day-with-the-kids-at-thailands-hell-torture-theme-park
And I thought them Buddhists were all peace loving kumbaya singing zen type folks…This is where you should take your kids Nick LOL
Points Guy had an interest calc on Delta. If you fly JFK to LHR in fully flex J, as many do, a Plat Medallion will earn 60,000 miles return. A huge number, by any justification too many.
Ironically, these guys have minimal influence in who they fly. Corporate signs a route deal and thats that. So what ‘loyalty’ are you rewarding?
Gary got it right ages ago. The point of a loyalty scheme is to encourage marginal spend from ALL customers.
I am also intrigued by Delta’s arrogance. The US airline industry in only ever 1 crash or 1 terrorist attack away from meltdown, and when that day comes Delta will need all the guys they’ve forgotten.
… or a depression. But corporate HQ weasels leave in TODAY. It’s TODAY where they get promotions, bonuses, and Forbes cover. Tomorrow? They don’t give a …
I thought the point of a loyalty program is to increase switching costs for members?
I think airlines have improved a bit in running their businesses too! I am not intrigued by Delta’s arrogance, this is how they operate! Like I said, what can turn the tide is a big recession which I am not seeing it. Obviously a 911 type attack…sure. But I am not seeing that either and I certainly do not wish either to happen!
Time will tell. I made my (useless) predictions.
Andy: They do give a damn about…hitting the numbers in the next quarter, not today…unless it is the last day of the quarter haha
George, thanks for the mention. Delta doesn’t anger me any more than a scorpion; how could one change one’s nature, right? It’s Delta fanboys who anger me. They swallow all they get and ask for more punishment! Surely, all 90 million members or even 1/10 of them cannot be captives or high fliers!
I have no other explanation…they must be masochists. They like the pain I guess. I think most are clueless and Delta has done a great job in not making them think about Skymiles much at all…it’s just there, one day we can look into using them. The ones who really follow up these rules and look to maximize our returns from these programs….well, they are on to us and they have been on the attack (look at how many fees are involved, booking/redeposit/changes/peeing (coming probably) and of course the gazillion devaluations. They are making now and they like it….we hate it. I am not saying the end is here but it is coming IF the present pace keeps up…it’s just not sustainable, so much earning going and not much burning. Chris Elliott makes sense (sometimes).
Masochists sound about right. Delta should start selling paraphernalia for pesos, of course.
You should try to wrangle in as many SPG referrals as you can buzz (lord knows I’d give it to you if I needed an SPG Amex), but you should warn the potentially unsuspecting newbie that if they just hold out a bit, they can probably get a 30K SPG sign up bonus
HURRY!!! LAST CHANCE TO GET THE SOUTHWEST 50K VISA!!!!!
Thanks Steve. And true about the 30k…Should come around in the summer time. I wonder how these Everyday cards affect our game. I think the marketing dollars that went into it was the primary reason to stop the great MR transfer bonuses! Just my theory, I don’t get the inside scoop like GL or TPG 🙂
You miss the Fairmont merchandise?
I was more than happy taking the $100 spa credit and $50 Fairmont GC on each of my Plat accounts. Like candy from a baby.
So far I’ve stayed free in Fairmonts suites in Banff, Boston/Copley Plaza, Chicago, NYC Plaza, Maui, Pittsburgh, Singapore, Washington DC, Vancouver/Pac Rim.
Plus all of the free bottles of single malt and massages. Heck of a deal.
I liked those robes. And wife LOVED the teas. That Adidas bag has a lifetime warranty by the way!
I went for the Locally Authentic dish for two instead of the $50 gc. Did you have that in the Kea Lani, I am going there next month!
I just Googled “Delta Points”–I need to because I certainly don’t have him in any of my blog reader apps–and this is what appears next to the name of the blog:
>>>>This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through the American Express Affiliate Program.<<<<
Just made me shake my head about this. When someone starts off a sentence with "To be completely honest with you…", you know to be on guard. Same here!
Proudly in my Ignore list.
Giggles 🙂
Probably should look into renaming blog Delta Dollars lol.
To be completely honest with you…you could be right!
Thanks George for the 5,000 SPG bonus Starpoints I received for referring you back in the days! I won’t forget that.
Oh yeah I had forgotten about that, I am certain you put them to good use.
I actually just burned 3k for a Four Points at DTW to spend the night before my flight to DFW to spend the day at the Centurion Club. Sneaked it just in time before it went up 1 category. I was not successful trying to do that for client for a hotel in Athens 🙁 Damn cutoff is on hotel local time, I thought it was EST. Learned something new…
Sheraton DTW at 4,000 Starpoints wasn’t too bad – http://first2board.com/pointssummary/2013/05/10/sheraton-detroit-metro-airport-hotel-review-2/
The Sheraton looks nice, I never stayed there. The Four Points down the street is perfectly fine for my overnight short stay. It was best bargain at Cat 1 and I am sad to see it go to Cat 2.