I am rearranging the sections and now place TRAVEL first.
ON MY MIND will have what comes to mind when I go through the blogs. I NEVER take anything personally. When I mention a blog I refer to the business (it is a business, isn’t it?) and not to the specific blogger. Think of it as constructive criticism and, more importantly, as ENTERTAINMENT. Please make fun of my blog too, it amuses me!
In a few weeks this blog will move over to WordPress which, it appears, it means I will have to re upload all the pictures. This is something I dread doing. Oh well…
I am behind on Flyer Talk reading & PMs. I am getting there, be patient por favor.
I will do my best for daily blog updates but sometimes my eclectic taste just does not produce enough material so…I may slack for a day or two. How convenient huh? 🙂
If you like my blog please let others know. You can email me at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @FlyerTalkerinA2
TRAVEL
Argentina Ghost Town Re-Emerges After Being Underwater For 25 Years. These are some freaky pics!
The Ocean Is My Playground: Cave Diving. Incredible Video, WOW!!!!! Found at the Adventure Blog.
When Google, NASA & TIME come together they produce Timelapse. Very cool! See how Earth changes over the decades. You can even type in the place you want and sit back to watch how it changed over the years.
Yomadic is at it again with “Photography on the Mean Streets of Macedonia“. Yep, he is one of my favorite bloggers. Always great pictures and I always learn something from his posts.
USA-Mexico Border. Amazing pictures here!
The Israeli Prime Minister wanted to sleep on a five hour flight. So, he ordered a bed installed in the plane. Cost: $127,000. Thank you Israeli taxpayers, booo!!!!!
10 Wonderfully unique beaches.
Onion does an investigative report and here it is “FAA Report: Spirit Airlines Is The F***ing Worst“. You will have issues controlling the laughs, I sure did! Quote gems like: “Nobody with any shred of dignity should ever fly Spirit Airlines” and “In addition, the report confirms that the airplanes suck, the terminals suck, and the seats—which don’t even f***ing recline—suck.” Warning: Foul language all over this piece!
MILES/POINTS
Club Carlson’s new promo is 10k points per two-night stay between May 13 and July 21. Register here.
Points And Travel joined First2Board
Jason Steele had a nicely written post on Green Dot Money Paks at The Points Guy. Newbies would love it. Why am I not linking to it? Because it is my blog and I can do what I want here:-)
I got another check from ebates today. I could easily slip in my referral link right here again but I am too lazy to do it. #justsaying
ON MY MIND
I started finally seeing some blog posts about the Boarding Area BAcon conference (Of course no words on what the credit card pushing execs talked about!). The reasons I was not invited were: I do not eat bacon (too fat), drink beer (prefer wine), listen to country music (prefer techno). Mystery solved:-)
Frugal Travel Guy pushed the UPromise World MasterCard. Saved us from more Chase and Amex links for a day! After The Points Guy recently pushed the AARP card. Give them an A for trying to spice it up:-)Â Nice job on the redesign by the Internet Brand tech guys by the way, looks so much better. They can work on my site and I promise to stop bothering you for a while wink:-)
Thank you One Mile at a Time for yet another brilliant post about how to strategize how to apply for, yep you guessed right, the Chase Ink cards. %&^$%$#&()+
The Noob Traveler wrote “The Business Rewards Cards Making My Wallet Fat“. Some are not even pretending anymore;-)
ODDZ & ENDZ
Chinese DIY Inventions. Must click, so clever/bizzare/interesting/WTF with pics!
I am catching up too: Happy belated anniversary to you and Mrs. FFB!
Gracias!
I genuinely think that you could have made a valuable contribution to BAcon.
Thanks. If BA was not around my blog would probably not exist;-)
Holy crap! No bacon, wine not beer! Techno??? That sounds like me……are you me???? Lol
I am certain I am not you. And I do drink beer once in a while. If there is one type of music I never got into it is…country
There were a lot of great sessions (and socializing) at BAcon. Let’s just say that several of us felt like taking a shower after the CC session though 🙂
I can only imagine the Bent Offers rep PowerPoint slide saying something like “If you get 10 Discover Card apps through, you can get a $$$ bonus, for 25 apps you get an all paid trip around the world” or stuff like that:-)
CAN’T STOP SINGING “DEAD GIVEAWAY” IN MY HEAD. THANKS BUZZ.
Can’t stop singing “We ate ribs with this dude Bro!’
So who do you guys think Steele plagiarized the Money Paks post from?
I am not sure plagiarizing can be proved. People can read stuff from elsewhere and then can write it on their own and not considered plagiarism. I think it was a nicely written article. Only a few bloggers can actually WRITE well in this space. I admire that. I am certainly not one of them lol.
Don’t flatter him that much. Let’s just say that there are more chances that he will be caught doing something illegal and or immoral rather than winning the Pulitzer.
I already left a comment at FTG that the UPromise card is… meh …(and I have nothing against UPromise itself, and use it occasionally for higher cash returns).
Does anyone live in a town where the Dining Rewards places are any good? The restaurants in the AA/UA/US/DL/UPromise Dining Rewards network around us are rather mediocre. It makes sense that mediocre restaurants would pay out more than decent restaurants to attract customers (see also, Restaurant.com). Every time I see Mommypoints (“I’ll earn close to 10,000 miles in the dining program this year” :-0 ) or others enthusiastically endorse a Dining Rewards deal, I cringe. Maybe the restaurants are better elsewhere.
On the Green Dot: I trust FMiler’s judgment, and I seem to remember him having a mixed experience with them. Also, this isn’t the first time TPG has featured the item. See the comments here: http://thepointsguy.com/2012/11/there-are-more-flavors-than-vanilla-maximizing-miles-and-points-with-green-dot-paypal/
No thanks. I’ll keep my toes out of that pool.
harvson3
I am with you on the Dining Rewards “deals”.
I do remember FM’s post on Green Dots and not that great experience so I pass too. But it could work for some.
Two bluebirds funded to the max every month with Vanillas from CVS and using myvanilladebit for estimated tax payments works for me.
I need to get going on the gift cards/WalMart angle but I am too busy to get started. Plus one thing for sure…I am not greedy!
Out of curiosity, and on a slightly related note, what’s your opinion on Zingerman’s?
I’ve had no problem with two Chase 5-bill prepaid cards for free loaded at WMart. I’ve stopped at two, however.
harvson3
Come to the Houston area and I’ll point you to some good local non-chain joints that are thankfully part of the dining network. We are pretty lucky here in that respect. 😉
If we’re waylaid on a trip to Latin America, I’ll give you a call. And in if you’re in Western NY stay clear of the RN places. Trust an anonymous guy on the internet on that.
harvson3
Zingermans: It is an institution here in Ann Arbor. They have various companies now and are very active locally and known internationally. Where am I going with this?…I am a value oriented person and I do not get any value at Zingermans, just overpriced but excellent quality. Well, okay, very good to excellent quality. Been here almost three decades now and have only been there..say five times or so.
You asked for it. The deli and the restaurant should be experienced at least once I guess. Yeah RN restaurants are not that great around here either. I am definitely not a foodie type!
Delta Points really bothers me. Not for the credit card pimping, every post no matter what thee subject ends with a text banner (at the bottom of the post itself!) for the Delta American Express card (his referral link, ka-ching!). That doesn’t bother me, I can ignore it, and I do.
What bothers me is that he makes claims on his blog and then deletes the slightest criticism of the substance of his posts, even ASKING QUESTIONS, the answers to which might reveal he isn’t the expert he proclaims to be.
The following comment was left on his post today about “Point Me to the Plane”‘s award booking service.
“In making this recommendation are you suggesting that Adam is better than or even equal to what I could consider the top three — Gary (BookYourAward), Lucky (PointsPros), Matthew Klint (Upgrd)?
And if not, how can you justify the recommendation?
Have you used Adam for a trip — do you have first-hand experience with his service to be able to say that he is good?
And as far as the claim “Delta Skymiles are some of the most valuable points in ANY miles program if you know how to use them” do you think that’s a little bit of hyperbole perhaps?
You can definitely maximize Delta miles. But are Delta miles more valuable than United, American, US Airways, Starwood, American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, AviancaTaca LifeMiles? Which of these mileage programs are Skymiles better than? If none, then at best Delta would be 8th (behind the aforementioned seven). And that would certainly cast doubt on the claim that Skypiles are “some of the most valuable points in ANY miles program””
Maybe he’ll see this comment here and be shamed into going back and approving it instead of deleting it.
Nope. He is arrogant and knows the sheeple will still keep coming back to “read” and then complain about him. Spread the word not to even go there and boycott his business. That’s where we can make a difference.
Likewise for all these bloggers who learnt a trick or two to get started on Flyertalk and then pushing credit cards up everyone’s throats need boycotting too. Don’t click their affiliate links.
Oh, you “Angry” 🙂
You are absolutely right, though. My guess with highlighting Adam is that the other three are not even close to speaking of Skymiles like Deltapoints does. If he can promote someone who loves Skymiles as much as he does, he can push more of his card links at everyone.
Rene is the nicest guy. I am just not a fan of the Delta Points blog. “pushing credit cards up everyone’s throats” has a little to do with it:-) Censoring too!!
I have made some comments about this in tomorrow’s blog.
Be nice George. The above commenter LIED and pretended to be Gary Leff on my blog and I will be happy to post the IP (and screen shots) and the LIE and the FULL NAME of the guy if you want to see it. Just so you know the kind of ANON we are talking about! The ANGRY’s will always hate. They do not have the class that you have both here and on your other blog in public!
Would never get the Upromise cc but have had the best experience with using Upromise for cashback. They’re like Discover. 5% cashback on almost everything.
A little slow on paying out, but every transaction has tracked, so far.
Good to know, thanks!
It’s weird…. the Amex 75K deal is back….. and the same people who acted as if the world was ending 5 days ago all of the sudden have posts ranging from “meh” to “crickets”
Surely increasing the minimum spend from 5K over 3 months to 10K over 4 months can’t alone cause TPG to go from 3 alarmist “OMG OMG OMG OMG AMAZING DEAL ALERT. HERE IS EVERYTHING YOU CAN DO WITH MR POSTS” posts to 1 mere post where the thread title almost makes it look like he’s begrudgingly posting it (in his defense, that didn’t stop him from slipping every single CC into the post anyways)
Hmmm….. what could it be? Anyone?
Last week the credit card ‘angries’ complained that 75k/5k spend wasn’t THAT great an offer (it was). Now the complaint is the bloggers ought to be *more* effusive when they blog about 75k/10k spend that they don’t get paid on.
Pick a story and stick with it. 😉
75k/10k spend is a good deal. But it isn’t the best deal ever for this card. It isn’t the best deal this month for this card. It’s one they have done before and will do again.
But….
The credit card pimps who don’t bother posting on this (they don’t get paid) absolutely do deserve the criticism they get,
I think MP is one of the worst offenders. She had two back-to-back gushing posts about the 75K/5K offer. When the 75K/10K offer comes around, she sticks it as an edit/update to a post that talks about 10 other credit cards!
I agree the 75K offer with 5k spend got plenty of coverage last week. It was clear it wasn’t going to last long at all, and it probably wasn’t coming back in that form, so it was an act now situation that was emphasized. I haven’t done a separate post on the 75k with 10k spend other than including it in the best offers post today because I think most who wanted it probably just got it via the better offer last week.
I may mention it again before it ends, but on the heels of the 5k offer I’m not sure it deserves too much coverage…but of course I could be wrong about that.
Fair. The 75k/10k offer is posted on your site today. Nothing wrong with that.
I have a few words to say about this in tomorrow’s blog. Thank you for taking the time to comment!
So…. HackMyTrip was going to send credit card folks over to Lucky’s links. And then he wasn’t. What happened?
WOW! I noticed that and was going to email him to learn more about such arrangement as I thought about perhaps using it myself to save me all the heartache dealing with them affiliate companies:-) I do not know what happened! I hope I hear back from him…I told him I certainly will understand if he can not elaborate.
Is this allowed or not allowed? That IS the question!!
Update on the Slickdeals Amex 75k thread.
“where the heck is my credit limit didnt see it in the paperwork; set up online account cant find it either..can someone help me?”
Mother of facepalms.
Add my facepalms too…Free entertainment:-)