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| Kenya. From The Planet D, see link below |
Lots to cover, weekend action AND Friday! Here we go:
BEST OF MILES/POINTS
Million Mile Secrets has a plethora of credit card links in a single post. Not a single affiliate credit card link, wow! Readers, remember that! Nicely done, TBB always supports don’t do harm (as in never promote a crappier afilliate link!). ‘Nough said, keep it up MMS!
View from the Wing wrote how to get “Free Hotel Platinum Status with GHA Discovery“. GHA what? Looks like another Platinum status it will likely go unused. But ya just never know if a status match can happen in the future. And there is just something about an Elite card that can make you feel more importan than you really are:-) While you are at it, get some Platinum at LeClub Accor Hotels too!
One Mile at a Time is, where else, flying again. This time on Turkish Airlines. The post is no big deal. But this is just unbelievably funny, just picture it! “The most interesting part of the flight had to be when the chef (a guy in his lower 20s) popped a zit before takeoff and then proceeded to walk around the cabin at least a handful of times while he was holding a bloody tissue to his face (and by bloody tissue I mean bloody tissue, not the British use of “bloody”… nevermind).”
TJ on Miles wrote about ‘How to file a Best Rate Guarantee claim with Starwood“. And an interesting way to monetize this for $29 a pop for each successful BRG claim. I am not sure about the business model here but worth a shot I guess, good luck. Interesting how the monetizing options come out right after an interview at Million Mile Secrets!
BEST OF TRAVEL
Will Run for Miles wrote a beautiful post about her marathon at Miami and ecountering the “One Million Acts of Kindness” Man. Wow, what a story! Glad to feature Bob Votruba’s website here!
An absolutely stunning 15 minute video capturing a single day in Yosemite National Park found at Gadling.
From The PlanetD “Kenya Photos, A Visual Journey“. Ok it is here because it is worth it!
Google Maps Now Lets You Explore the Grand Cayon. From Gadling. Very nice!
10 Natural Phenomena You Need to See to Believe. From Budget Travel.
I always leave a tip every morning for Housekeeping. This is the reason why:-)
NOT SO BEST OF
“Diverted: JetBlue flier ‘unruly’ because seatmate paid less” – From USA Today. Sounds like an entitled flier to me!
Milevalue amazingly continues to push the crappy US Air card! And, since he made a turn to target the newbie market (which makes business sense by the way), he shows them how to apply for FIVE different credit cards at once! Now, excuse me, most of you know what I do for a living and definitely most of you know so many people who are just NOT cut out for this hobby! So many people freak out for having a second credit card and don’t get me started about so many people having huge spending control issues for crying out loud! And now they have $12,500 of spending to do in three months!!! Yes I can do it and most of us in this for a while know we can do this. But the complete newbie who just discovers all the bloggers targeting them and so drunk with the message ‘You can fly free in first class just like me” now they have FIVE cards to juggle?? Wouldn’t it be easier to get them started on doing just one credit card to see if they are cut out for this? Oh wait…where is the monetizing in just one card? This crap drive TBB nuts! I liked the post on how to redeem Malaysian Airlines miles, you can find it after you click the link above if you are interested in it.
I am starting to think some bloggers really care about the links and the way they drive alexa or seo rankings? Points, Miles & Martinis is at it again with blog post title as “My Platinum Amex Experience With $200 American Airlines Credit“. Interesting, I read it, good info and then halfway through the post, here we go AGAIN, BANG (BA Visa), BANG (InkBold), BANG (Ink Plus)…not done yet…to finish the reader off small bangs for the AMEX Business Platinum and AMEX Platinum. Unbelievable, shaking my head! No disclosures at all too. Sad.
Delta Points has a post that has nothing to do with Delta. Of course it has to do with an affiliate credit card from, you guessed it, the leader Chase Bank! So, nothing new, why here? Because a Chase Bank employee posted how he got a better offer in the branch. I appreciate DP’s willingness to publicize a better offer but you must stop and wonder what type of institution (I am talking about Chase!) we are dealing with here! Unbelievable. I believe DP later apologized which is also very welcome, we can all learn in this hobby. Some folks are just better in making money at this blogging thing than me I guess. definitely not my expertise:-) I would never ever censor legitimate comments calling me out or disagreeing with me!
ODDZ & ENDZ
From the Onion: “God Freaks Out By Lying Awake Contemplating Own Immortality” If you don’t laugh reading this, you have some serious issues;-)
Clearly, a WTF news headline! “Some Male Soldiers Are Growing a Left Breast“
THE END OF 5POINTS PER DOLLAR
The reason these cards were pulled is *not* due to fraud, actual or expected – there is one specific reason why these cards were pulled and that is due to “their use as a cash or other incentive program by people who are not legitimate customers of Office Depot” – did everyone catch that? It means they discovered the specific reason why sales of these cards spiked astronomically in a very short period of time, why the ONLY form of purchase used in 99% of the cases was a Chase Ink Bold card, and when the Vanilla Reload cards were pulled for this reason, the spend was tracked shifting to the gift cards. This means that OD was (and is) aware of the mileage blogs that touted this scheme with photos, arrows, and instructions and directed swarms of people to the stores who had no purpose to be there except for buying these cards and nothing else.
I don’t know if the 20, 50 and 200 cards will remain on the shelves or for how long, but there was a cost/benefit discussion that weighed getting rid of all of them vs punishing all customers who periodically buy these cards along with normal retail spend.
If the blogs keep up this “show and tell” tactic and direct people into these retail establishments like programmed shopbots who keep repeating the same purchase behavior and create traceable spikes in activity directed at specific products paid with specific forms of payment, guess what will happen – same thing with the coins, now this. Good job
That statement on its own makes no sense at all. Legitimate should mean that the credit cards aren’t frauds. Chase obviously has some power here over OD.
Chase has no power over OD.
I posted it because it represented an interesting viewpoint. We will not know for sure.
I posted a shout-out to you on PM&M’s post in anticipation of that post appearing on your list. I was right (yay), but then PM&M censored me and deleted my comment (boo).
Don’t be “angry”:-)
So a national retailer doesnt want the additional cash flow ?? Doesnt a chain want to maximize cash flow????
Not if they are losing money on it.
I think bocastephen’s explanation made the most sense than anything else I have read on the subject. At the same time, it is really hard to make sure unless we hear from company management!
The post is extremely good for all readers.
Thank you!
That post by bocastephen is one of the greatest amount of BS I’ve read in a long time and it doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint, as it is exactly the opposite any company wants (or should want): have a couple of products that make marginal profits, but are capable of attracting new costumers outside the regular (or “legitimate” as they are called in the post, whatever that means) costumers of the store. Probably only 1 or 2% of the people that go and buy gift cards at OD buy anything else that is more profitable? Maybe so, but these people were not customers before, and now they are.
Let me tell you I read loads and loads and loads of BS all day:-) That was not BS in my opinion; yet…it could still BS. We just won’t know for sure…so we all speculate!
bocastephen had several other posters call him out for BS on another FT thread on the grounded 787. I’m not convinced he’s 100% reliable.
harvson3
Never trust anyone from La Boca;-) We are all speculating on this!
The miles and points opportunities have nothing to do with Office Depot pulling these gift cards.
There’s tremendous fraud. They’re favored for washing funds derived from illegal activities. People steal credit cards and use those cards to buy far less traceable gift cards.
And with the credit card processing fees Office Depot isn’t making enough.
If Office Depot was making money on these products they would be HAPPY to see all of us buying them. Chase doesn’t tell them what to stock and what not to stock.
Office Depot pulled them because their loss management folks decided it wasn’t worth it at current price. We’ll have to see what they do or do not bring forward in place of the cards that have been removed.
Maslow said that when the only tool you have is a hammer (hating on bloggers) every problem begins to look like a nail…
If there is fraud why don’t they pull ALL of these gc’s?
P M & M – redunctulous! BAM BAM BAM, it is actually weird to read.
That was a useful post. Then he/she should stop when the title subject text ended…or just come out and say:
“Listen readers, hope you like my content, you can support me by applying on one of these cards below, if you have specific questions email me”
Just be direct & upfront instead of…
OD has to pay cc processing fees just like any other business. They weren’t making anything on these gcs.
I agree
Anyone who doesn’t actually have direct knowledge of Office Depot’s deal with Amex on the gift certificate costs and knowledge of their credit card processing costs — or direct knowledge from Amex corporate (including management of their prevention department) should really shut up.
I agree, we are all speculating!
What is the big deal with OD? If all you need is a category spend from “Office supplies”, can’t you just get the gift cards from Staples, Office max or similar?
The big deal with OD was that you could buy $500 cards with 4.95 fee. At Staples and Office Max the largest gift card is $200 with a $6.95 fee. So OD was cheaper to manufacture spend at 5x.
Thanks for the info Jack. I’m an expat gearing up for a trip to the US in Sept, ordered a Bluebird card sent to my Mom’s house but not sure what I will be able to do with it by Sept.
Maybe you should order a MVD;-)
Looks like you were dead on with your new years prediction of the increased BA Visa affiliate bonus
TPG has pushing it really hard again this weekend. And another reader who just so happened to link a card in his own question. How do these people even do that? 🙂
Also, while Gary’s filler post actually wasn’t too bad (as far as fillers go), it still seemed really awkward to have a CSP affiliate link there when the context was talking about how it’s inferior in the specific case he discusses in the post
I haven’t seen the post in question, TPG is in my reader but I just scroll past the credit card posts. But I can tell you that in WordPress, the blog admin can choose to allow hyperlinks in comments or not.
Haha MTTW, I was just joking around
It was in his “Sunday Reader Questions”, and I was referring to how in the past few weeks he hasn’t even waited until the answer portion of the post. He just sticks the links in the question part
TBB has hit a speedbump guys, news at 11, no 12….no 1 am maybe
Uh oh, i see on FT the 7% bonus on CSP spend is posting this month
You heard it here first – expect lots of blogging about the BREAKING NEWS!!! 7% BONUS IS POSTING!!!!* (of course, CC spend posting exactly as expected is not the slightest bit newsworthy)
*oh by the way, here’s a CSP affiliate link which was really the only reason I posted some expected news
Bingo;-)
Safe to assume we’ll get the TBB daily updates as the faux-excitement posts about the 7% bonus start trickling in? 🙂
You know we’re about to get bombarded with it any day now (except for TPG, who will break the news in 3 weeks), and every single post will contain a CSP link
We should have a TBB contest (doesn’t FTG owe you a few gift cards?) – who can guess the blogger that pimps the most CC’s besides CSP in their “OMG 7% bonus posting!!!” post. Triple win if the blogger you chose finds a way to incorporate the Lufthansa Mastercard
In FTG’s defense, if I took well-deserved criticism as poorly as he does, I’d try to whine about “angries” too
On your blog of course. On his blog he can just censor criticism
FTG telling someone on your blog that “if you don’t like the blog don’t read it”
You can’t make irony like this up