Let’s go on another wild run to learn more about the IHG Rewards Into the Nights Promotion, the Worst Store in America, look at incredible pictures on a behind the Iron Curtain tour, go surfing in Texas, check out some great personal finance links, and remember the good old days of the Blog Buzz (making an exception for the weekend, back to shorter Blog Buzz this week!)
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order
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!
MILES/POINTS
The Worst Store in America. By Mile Nerd. Everytime I go there I have similar thoughts…
TRAVEL
Let’s take a trip around the world in 80 clips in this wonderful timelapse video found at The Adventure Blog put together so beautifully by Shutterstock.
Behind the Iron Curtain: An Abandoned Tour of the Eastern Bloc. At Twisted Sifter by photographer Rebecca Litchfield. The building below always leaves me in…awe!
Stunning Black-And-White Photos Show Texas’s Surprisingly Large And Vibrant Surf Culture. Did you say…Texas?
PERSONAL FINANCE
Why are Americans So Bad at Saving Money? By The Atlantic. Interesting. Perhaps it is because they are pumped to death to get more credit cards with higher and higher minimum spend requirements? Discuss 🙂
3 reasons not to raid your retirement accounts. By USA Today. Yeah, please don’t do that!
Why You Should Ignore Expert Predictions About The Stock Market Excellent post! When you hear market predictions…you make your own out loud and start laughing because yours are as laughable as theirs 🙂
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is for long time followers of this hobby and references to blogs/bloggers may not make much sense if you are new to this. You are welcome to stay and read it of course but if you go WTF just remember this note! I think of TBB as the SNL of miles/points blogs and the content here is intended to be satire. If you get hurt I can refer you to my therapist!
Million Mile Secrets had another blogger interview, this one by the “Travel Sisters” who just started collecting miles and points two years ago and…suddenly wanted to let everyone know about it! Pssst, you can earn miles by…online shopping, WOW! And you can go through an online shopping portal too, double WOW! And saved the best for last folks: Waste your time doing surveys at e-rewards, triple WOW! Yawn…Then MMS had the most hideous of pump posts: Getting readers to earn 3x points on the first Friday of the month eating out at restaurants. Barf!!! To readers who feed this blog content to get even more pump posts (if that was even possible!)…are you insane or just an idiot?
Delta Points says don’t vent on social media. Funny telling others not to do stuff like this! And asks what is the dumbest thing you can do to earn discounted travel on Delta? I would answer that by “reading Delta Points” 🙂
Milevalue has broken the blog world record of how many times you can sell a Barclays Bank card. Latest way is to pay for Airbnb stays. I am sure more will occur….they never end! You know what they say…when you have apples you sell apples…or something like that! Barf again!
We had the typical screaming posts with the latest credit card promotion ending nonsense. This time it was the crappy Delta Amex credit cards. And this is where the exclamation marks come up and the urgent SELL SELL SELL happens. The most ridiculous screaming blog headlines were:
The Miles Professor – Ending Monday! Delta Amex Increased 50,000 Mile Bonus
Mommy Points – One Day Left for 50,000 Mile Delta Offers
View from the Wing – ACT FAST: Last Day for Delta Amex 50,000 Point Bonus. Will You Grab Yours?
One Mile at a Time – Last Call for 50,000 Delta Amex Offers
Milevalue – Last Chance on Three 50k Cards
Million Credit Cards – Last Day to Apply for the AMEX Delta SkyMiles 50,000 Mile Sign-Up Bonus
Noob Traveler – Ending Today: 50,000 American Express Delta Rewards Credit Card Offers – Partner Offers
Good job ladies and gents, I was out of barf I apologize! You are great bank mouthpieces after all!!!
Even higher levels of absolute ridiculousness were reached by One Mile at a Time bitching about the First Class meal on American Airlines. I was banging my head with stuff like this:
The salad consisted mostly of shredded lettuce, which I found puzzling. I expect shredded lettuce on my Subway footlong and not in a salad. [Phuck me por favor for not ever looking at the lettuce! bmh —>banging my head!]
Personally I’m not someone that cares all that much about domestic catering… – [Only care about the lettuce and its degree of shredding-ess WTF!]
… the salad was horrible (I really felt like they created it at the “topping” bar at a Subway) – [Dude, don’t eat the salad then, won’t be the first time a passenger does not eat the freaking salad you know!]
and then goes more beserk when OMAAT goes off on the Etihad Abu-Dhabi pre clearance facility:
I’m passionate about this industry, and I want to see airlines do well. – [How about United?]
I had to turn on all my electronics and even take shoes out of my bag – [OMG, what a horrible and inhumane treatment!]
…I had to wait in the queue to talk to an immigration officer, which was (again) shared with wheelchair passengers. – [What? Are you serious? Those slow wheelchair passengers, how dare they?]
…you’re kind of just stuck standing in the small departure area. There’s a single coffee kiosk, but nothing else to do on that side of security.
No restaurants.
No shopping.
No lounges.
And you can’t even bring bottled water or anything, since it’s confiscated at the security checkpoint.
– [At this point I am beyond words and barf material! ]
Unbelievable!
Not to be undone by OMAAT getting a guest blogger not to outsource anything….sister blog View From The Wing gets a guest blog contribution. I am sure the time was better served to prepare some credit card sale posts…
The Points Guy went on a spree of videos selling credit cards answering questions designed to…sell credit cards.
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs I Ignore
Please pass my blog link to your friends and family if you think they will enjoy it too.
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Join over 3,029 TBB followers on Twitter @ FlyerTalkerinA2 and add TBB on Google+
Back from work! First.
You are back…
Second?
Yes!
Shameful bronze
No shame…no shame. One day you will bring Gold…I know you will do it!
It’s a Simpsons quote: “People! People! Please. You are forgetting what the Olympics are all about! Giving out medals of beautiful gold, so-so silver and shameful bronze”
Ok, got it!
I saw all the “LAST CALLS”. Then I introduced my young son to the epic book “It’s Not Going to Get Any Better When You Grow Up”.
http://www.mustlook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/growingup.jpg
Lol…I added more by the way. Yeah…what a waste of my time
Whilst Into The Nights is impressive, you can’t call it the best promo ever. You are, after all, capped at earning 2 free nights (plus your spouses) which de facto limits its level of wonderessness. After all, in the land of airline miles, I would want to see the potential to earn 1m miles to consider a promotion for the ‘best ever’ title.
Plus, of course, the value of those 2 free nights cannot be viewed as more than $700 because you can buy 100,000 points for $700. However you cut it, you will need to spend at least $200 to trigger the $700. In my case, the need to do Saturday stays is an issue because that is when I at home with my kids, not tramping around doing mattress runs.
Obviously it is exceptional in the context of what else is about and I am a little stunned to see it at this point in the economic cycle.
Great points.
I am stunned to see it too! These IHG guys are having a great imagination and the tech they use is “extraordinary”. I still think they may surprise and pull a “oops, we did not mean that & we changed the T&Cs”…I don’t know, make the nights limited up to a certain category.
And whats’ up with HIs only?? The only one nearest me is in the cosmopolitan city of Flint, Michigan 🙂
The HI here in Thessaloniki can be had for around $68 per night – that will be my stop to get my points. 🙂 Come on back and I will get you a room too. Of course, we will really be staying at the Hyatt, or at least take breakfast there!
$68, wow! You need to tell me how next time I come by 😉
Mine require different HIs and nearest one is Flint. I am all set to try the Kimpton in November and may shift some of my stay in Hong Kong. Nothing else planned for now…too busy to look into this…have some time to figure it out.
It was a foggy morning…thinking the Hyatt was $68! Mondays are just nuts around here!
As I commented on Drew’s post, since this promo is targeted, it is a YMMV promo. In my family, I have one person that can get 2 free nights after 2 stays. For him, we are just going to shift the stays we already have planned. For the rest of us, it requires too many nights or other hurdles. I refuse to open new accounts in my name because I do not want to get shut down by IHG.
Yep I agree, especially on the opening new accounts. I am not going there!
It’s different for everyone. In my case, that’s 32K and 2 free nights. But to me, it’s also more than $200 to spend because there are taxes, gas, food, and besides, I don’t do mattress runs (per se). I’m gonna use these stays to take my wife and kid out. Which will, of course, increase the total cost to get these two nights, but whatever…
good morning, good morning! I too loved MileNerd’s rant on Walmart. I don’t go to WM often but, until yesterday, was always lucky to encounter nice employees who would actually help me. Until yesterday….. until yesterday.
Will you help me? I’d like to participate in a MMS interview, but I’d like to rewrite the questions which I am asked to answer. Any good ideas?
Mile Nerd’s response to the “haters” today was even better!
Please don’t do it 🙂
Kathy-
Just do what the politicians do-ignore the questions and just say whatever is on your mind. For example, if the ask you
“Why did you start your blog? What’s special about it?”
You could take off on a rant about how banks don’t allow blogs to publish reconsideration phone numbers or use the word “churn”.
For your closing remarks, you could ask them the real mother-in-law question: What’s the commish this month on a CSP conversion?
It will be rejected by the MMS Editorial Review Board lol.
Blogs aren’t allowed to publish reconsideration #s? When did this happen? Am I the only blogger that didn’t know this?
No, it is just the blogs that have direct affiliate links. I remember (last year, I think) the affiliates had sent out messages (to me as well – Amex) saying that those phone numbers had to come down. They may have backed off that a bit, though, as I thought I remember seeing some of the big blogs listing them again.
Today’s MileNerd rant was a little weird. The guy says he got 100 positive emails about his WalMart post and then proceeds to rant about the TWO negative emails? He didn’t strike me as someone overly sensitive or one who focuses on negativity much, but the guy gave way too much space to just a couple of guys.
TBB, maybe you could repeat your speech about needing to have a thick skin. I like MileNerd but today’s post was below par for him.
Yeah, I agree, I told him about it how I ignore them.
Except one…I am missing Ingy 🙂
The main reason I would ever do the MMS interview would be to answer the question re: the most interesting or surprising way I earned miles. I would tell how the proctologist accepted a credit card payment for a colonoscopy, which I nicknamed FLYING BY THE SEAT OF MY PANTS…..
(this is true, but I still crack myself up thinking about it….. crack myself up, literally, ha ha)
What cracks me up to this day, so many years later, is how when I first came to the US and had such a hard time with English…I could never figure out what the hell was going on when I heard “shit hit the fan”….with my dictionary and all lol.
Agreed. Loved the Mile Nerd rant as always. He needs to ignore any haters. Can’t control those things on the internet.
Yep, absolutely, they come with the territory!
Panera cracks down on George:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/panera-bread-guns-restaurants-article-1.1932198
Think I’ll be okay as long as they let me bring my laptop 🙂
Honestly, every time I step into a Wal-Mart, my main thought is “there but for the grace of God go I.” It’s a terrible corporation that receives generous public hand-outs to keep its workers alive in the form of food stamps and social assistance. You and I subsidize that for-profit enterprise with taxes. If it paid Sam Walton’s heirs less, it could certainly pay its employees more, or at least afford them more dignity and respect. I try to minimize my time in a Wal-Mart, and I pass up on multiple MS earnings as a result. I’m sorry it treats its customers poorly; it treats everyone poorly. We’re luckily rich and secure enough to not have to rely on patronizing those stores or seeking them out for employment.
I agree.
I only use the machine (when it’s working which is…not often) and treat the staff at MC very nice every single time. And I try to minimize my trips and time inside the store. I know I know…
A few times I have feared for my physical safety late at night thinking there I go…
From my experience, there is a big difference between urban Walmarts and rural Walmarts. The more urban stores are sad; the rural stores have better employees and generally cater to a better clientele.
I think I made a new friend, the clerk at the DVD/Cell Phone. Hardly any lines! He thinks I am Bill Gates getting $500 cards out of my pocket again and again 🙂
Where to find a flagellating monkey in Danzig.
Beautiful silky man hands.
Transparent unicorn poop
OMAAT is trying to scam a free trip in the Etihad Suites. He goes on an overblown drama queen rant and will now reach out to the execs and say you can make this better by giving me a free Suites ride. The scammer will get his suites one way or another. Kickstarter failed so let’s do it another way. Sad.
I had similar thoughts. If it does not happen, he will find a way to try Etihad Suites. He can very easily pay for them, it’s probably a post full of Amex Platinum card links and done!
He is more likely to be 86ed form the airline then Etihad giving in. Did it not already happen with United. I would not be surprised if going forward the hotels and especially the airlines saying thanks but a giant no thanks, to the typical FT/Blogger divas we have spawned over the last 10-12 years.