We talk about the Chase Sapphire Reserve Massive Hit, read an interview about the MS Hobby, visit Sarajevo, and ponder transportation’s future!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
Hello from beautiful Traverse City where we are enjoying the last weekend of the summer before schools start!
Just four links today with my incendiary commentary in brackets in selected excerpts. Get outside! Unless you are outside already and reading this on your phone, which is okay I guess.
You know the Chase Sapphire Reserve card has been a hit when this hits: Points Geeks Have a New Favorite Reward Credit Card.
Chase approved “tens of thousands of applications” in the first two days, said spokeswoman Lauren Francis; the majority of the cards are going to millennials. [Two WTFs here: “tens of thousands of applications”…ok, this is not surprising actually. But to millennials?? Are they that smart or are they going to be the victims that will keep allowing us more experienced travel hacking types to keep traveling for free on their backs? Discuss]
And the bank didn’t have enough of the special cards—made with a proprietary mix of embedded metals—to meet the demand, so for the time being, it’s sending out regular plastic versions. [ Wow, ran out!]
Chase says it has spent nothing so far on marketing the new Sapphire Reserve card; all the interest in the Sapphire Reserve is coming from word of mouth or the Internet. [Hmmm, not sure what this means as I am not up on this affiliate stuff. I do know that the Chase subsidiary named The Points Guy Inc. has DIRECT affiliate links for the card but all the rest are cut off? But even going out with the indirect affiliate route with the same vendor I have…Chase pays so how can they say they have not spent a dime? Anyone care to comment to clear up this confusion in this super murky non-transparent affiliate space? Thanks]
Miles for Family, who is probably more stubborn as me to keep on blogging, had an interview with one of her readers who is into this MS thingie. Again, some selected excerpts with my commentary…
4.How often do you think about miles and points? More often than I’d like. To be honest, it’s been detrimental to my work at times — instead of working, I would find myself researching ways to MS or actually MSing when doing actual work would give me far better ROI, as in I could make more $ per hour and just pay for stuff rather than scrape together some extra points. [At times? Better ROI? Sometimes I wonder if this hobby is a disease. One day I will move on, like the Pudding Guy did…]
Then a bunch of cards that I resold started going bad, and I ended up losing about $1,000 [I think this happens way more than you hear. Same with credit card balance carrying. Why? You know, it is human nature. We like to brag about our successes instead of our failures. Like when buying Apple and selling 5x times higher while conveniently forgetting about all the dogs you sold at a huge loss!]
There are times when I feel that if I were to put the time and effort I’ve invested in the hobby into growing my business instead, I could afford to pay cash rather than points to fly business class.[Wow, second time the same point is raised. So, maybe…you know…]
A great piece on “Google, Uber, and the Evolution-of-Transportation as a Service“.
And I leave you with this…
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Yo.
Mike, call me asap
Gladys Kravitz is watching you
Start of the week.
Nah-just a Sunday before a holiday.
tres
Hey, love your blog, too lazy to comment more often. Would like you to dedicate a few words to those crazy cheap deals coming from Momondo aggregator. They are being broadcasted through the big blogs and no one is really warning about the travel agencies that are invariably behind the cheap prices. Very shady ones like travel123 and many other you never heard of. They sell consolidator fares, but the problem is they would not confirm the price you see, most of the times, calling you back to ask for an adjustment up. Semi fraudulent way of doing business.
Momondo, Kayak& Co live off the affiliate revenue OTAs are willing to pay. The OTAs in turn discount the price of scheduled fares to be on top of the list. This has been going on since years here in Europe. The OTA wants your business in the hope of sticking you with an upcharge for travel insurance etc during the booking process. We had some spectacular bankruptcies of OTAs here. Google Airfastticket and Unister for details. A similar racket is done in the retail sector with Zalando. It’s crazy, they spend money to get revenue to do an ipo and make money there.
Hello to all from the breakfast room in the Coutny Inn and Suites in Traverse City. Very nice hotel I must say, we got upgraded to the Family Suite both nights, goodie bag as Golds, very nice service by all the staff. Great use of my expiring Club Carlson ecerts over Labor Day weekend here. There is a long line for the breakfast, super busy!
@Petecus: I had a really bad experience with consolidator fares a long time ago. And I avoid them like the plague ever since. Not really familiar with Momondo and travel123 at all….probably good to avoid. If you had a specific experience that nicely wraps up the status of these things, please email it to me and will post here.
My kid is working in a WASPy dude ranch up your way. In the middle of nowhere.
She says the Aurora has been amazing to watch at night. I wish for your Greek niece (?) that she gets to see that!
Enjoy your time with the kids. Having another one with you is a blast, I bet!!!
“There are times when I feel that if I were to put the time and effort I’ve invested in the hobby into growing my business instead, I could afford to pay cash rather than points to fly business class.”
A hobby is a hobby, not a job. As I said a long time ago, no one can do business 24/7. It’s when you start treating the hobby as a job, bad things happen. In that regard, it’s simply not worth it, no matter what your reasoning is. Unless you seriously treat this shit as a full-time job, there are other, more rewarding and intellectually stimulating ways to earn extra income than driving to SMs and Walmarts all day long. Or whatever.
Well that’s because you’ve got some clown bloggers who shall remain nameless who say this dumb sh*t like “I value my time at $X” and they show you dumb convoluted ways to earn points buying and selling gift cards.
Really? How much do you value your time buying thousands of g’s in gift cards to earn 2,000 points and 5 bucks? 0?
And how did that work when that big card reseller went under? Or when you are having fun with a fraudster who’s trying to scam you.
Exactly! Time is something I value beyond premium cabin experiences (although not beyond travel itself). And risks in this hobby are far from negligible, too. I didn’t just figure it out, though, it took a long time, so I understand the obsession.
This was a pleasant surprise to see my interview with Leana get such special treatment over on TBB.
George, I actually happen to be one of your loyal readers, and was close to meeting you in person for the real Brooklyn tour or whatever that was called, since I’m a Brooklynite myelf.
And Andy, a big fan of yours as well.
I wanted to clarify that my MS activities have nothing to do with Walmart. New Yorkers know that we don’t even have a Walmart (the closest one is deep in LI, I believe). My time is very limited with four kids and a freelance business, so yes, I treat miles and points very much like the hobby it is. I simply don’t have the “luxury” of working another job.
I don’t mind sharing my failures, but the journey has been a net positive in a big way. The BoA business account bonus from last year alone netted more than what I lost in the CardCash fiasco, though I regret the time lost much more than the money.
And also, George, I feel like you missed a major point from that interview. If it weren’t for the hobby my kids might never have met their grandfather, aunts, uncles, etc. — dropping $7,500 for five tickets (one lap infant) is tough to justify with so many real expenses. But I was able to pull off an epic two month long trip across the West Coast, New Zealand and Australia that most people could only dream of for less than $1,000 in airfare. I feel tremendous appreciation for the opportunities we have here.
Mark,
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
I really liked the interview, it was very educational so it appeared here even though it comes from that blog that tries to be so nice to everyone and being so familyish 🙂
You make some points that us old timers have always wondered. Heck, I wonder about this lately too. But, admittedly, after starting this blog I wonder about them less as time has been limited so I guess it is a good thing. Brave of you to write about the failures, not many do…or do so of the little ones and keep mum about the grand ones.
I got into this hobby to save money on trips to Greece and Singapore/Malaysia. Someway somehow, this hobby allowed me and our kids to see the world and create many memories. And that is what is all about. Until it became a a big business by business men and it now reaching mainstream levels and, naturally, the value proposition has become MUCH harder so some or your questions become even more relevant. We are reaching the point where “:it is not worth it” anymore. Not there yet, we can still extract value but it is much harder and the “scores” just not that easy anymore. The days of the coins and Vanilla reloads are over. Elite mileage runs are over. Need a degree to book awards (feel sorry for you, I thought finding 4 seats was bad!). And on I go until PedroNY jumps in with his eternal optimism 🙂
Now if I could only get the Chase Sapphire Reserve 🙂
I absolutely LOVED that last piece of advice I quoted, I could not have said it better myself!
Chase’s “we didn’t spend money on marketing” is complete crap.
Forget the affiliate payments (which are marketing), the sign up bonus is ALSO marketing.
The question of whether they spent money *advertising* is more open to interpretation, but again, affiliate payments are going to count as advertising pretty much everywhere.
So maybe they didn’t need to buy banner ads or TV commercials, but…
It makes one wonder whether they need affiliate links with all the organic interest in the card anyways… or at least for launch.
If it makes anyone feel better, I was denied from the new chase reserve card.
I was 5/24’d. 😉
LAST (I hope).