TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
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Short post today. Looks like most bloggers mailed it in today…
TRAVEL
Stunning portraits of the world’s remotest tribes before they pass away. This is a must click! Just click it. Blown away by the sheer awesomeness of this post…
DELTA RANT
Late in 2012 I had enough. It hit me suddenly. Out of Detroit where Delta dominates, I was making every excuse I could find to justify flying them and remaining an elite flyer. I had given up on the Platinum a few years earlier and was clinging to Gold. After repeated insults to me by Delta, I went back for more to feed my elitist addiction. And then I decided enough was enough, I just could not take it anymore. I could not support a company like that, it became a personal thing. My 2013 New Year’s resolution was not to give them a single dollar out of my wallet! And, unlike most resolutions, I will make it. You do not realize how happy I am for that!
This company was not to be trusted ever since they came into my life by taking out beloved Northwest. Well, take your elite upgrades and shove them up your behinds Delta execs. It has been widely known that your Skymiles totally suck. And then you had the cojones to devalue AGAIN just a week after United did after another recent major devaluation (who is counting?)…on a Friday…effective immediately with the patented BS news release claiming “… to balance continued investments in products and services”.
You know, this is exactly what I am talking about: You treat Skymiles members like they are idiots who will just sit there and take it again and again. Someone who will gladly burn 50k miles to Orlando and be happy about it or pay 325k miles to Asia in economy (probably not exaggerating) after pulling their hair out dealing with your intentionally broken search engine to squeeze more out of your most loyal customers. You can’t be taking and taking and taking, loyalty is a two way street!
I missed hanging out at the Detroit Sky Lounge but other than that, I did not miss you much at all. I am a free agent now. I am happy flying Southwest, their peanuts are better and their website works. They treat me like a valued customer and not some piece of meat ready to be squeezed out of more money. You are doing well now as a company and you are likely treating your execs with fat bonuses. Things will come around and then you will come begging to me. And I will be like: pfft, get lost. Enough is enough. Sayonara and good riddance.
To my Delta pilot friend M, I am sorry man, nothing personal!
You do what is right for you. Loyalty is a two way street, Loyalty 101. I sleep better at night without Delta in my life. Living life of principles allows happiness to come in.
Let’s move on (pun intended).
MILES/POINTS
Airlines love to sell you miles. Here is American Airlines selling you miles to reach for status.
To understand what is going in this space read Mile Abound’s piece “I just spent $14,000 – and that’s why your miles are worth less“. I think he nailed it.
Useless predictions: Frontier will devalue next. Hyatt too. And of course AA/US will say “screw it & let’s do it right this time from scratch”…I need to burn but I am too busy #notfair
ON MY MIND
It’s all good.
I have my three nights at the Fairmont Kea Lani. I need two more nights in Maui. I haven’t checked yet at all. Two options are the Hilton or the Andaz. We have had good experiences in Hiltons over the years so we are inclined to blow away our points there first. But I am scared to learn how many points it will cost 🙂 Not sure the Andaz is worth 22k per night…I then need to book 3 nights at Oakland Airport area (one before and two after Maui) with horrible flight times in and out. But the main travel goal is pretty much set, we are going to Maui in early April 2014! Oh I need to book a car too.
ODDZ & ENDZ
The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti.
BLOG BUZZ
Is Boarding Area under some type of ultimatum by Chase bank or what? I am seeing so many blog posts that are just super lame excuses to pump affiliate links, come on! Some are getting to be a bit much.”Act quickly to get the most out of these sign-up bonuses”. Really Mommy Points? How about an original headline, such as “Act really slow for these bonuses, only idiots hurry” or something like that! I may be tempted to click on something original…Not!
Another Friday interview with an expert at Million Mile Secrets. Same old boring questions, how about some originality? Spend some time on it instead of just cut and paste perhaps? “I first started collecting miles and points in July 2010.” Well, it is better than the other guy before you who just started and traveled to Topeka, Kansas! “…felt like family travel wasn’t covered well and I wanted to share what I was doing with others in my situation“. Say what? Family travel is not covered well, seriously? I do love the blog name”: milebucket. Sounds a little nuts and TBB certainly appreciates that. So welcome, hope you give us something new.
Yes, you can add one more Chase Ink link!
First
mother of god it is hard to be first
Delta sucks. What do you guys think I can do with 200,000 Delta miles (an unwanted cancelation unfortunately)? I can go up to 300-320,000 if you show me a great award for two people I can actually book for real… I checked Europe and I only see a few 100,000 business awards with a 23 hour stopover in Minnesota. What a joke. Nothing on AF I used to book easily any time I wanted…
Will go with second? MilesAbout’s 14K in an hour is a pretty impressive manufacturing spend. Thanks, and have a good weekend.
Check out this post about Frequent Miler and Travel Summary (not sure why he wouldn’t share his real name): http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-the-rube-goldbergs-of-credit-cards-fly-first-class-for-free
Maybe because he wants to be anonymous?
Greetings from India. Yesterday I had to think of my angray Greek from Ann Arbor as we had a curry with the vegetable variant of Durian. Tasted delicous, didn’t smell of DP 😉
Loved NW/DL when I was based out of DTW: club access via my corp Amex plat, occasional upgrades as Gold. Never chased plat, flew US Air and credited to bmi DC instead ;). Blew my last 70k on a last minute F ticket JFK-DTW for me and FIL (missed a train and was late to catch a hidden city JFK-DTW-PIT :p
Once AA-US sort out their merger it will take the path of Skypesos. UA assumed the merger would take place so the plan was set in motion. Feel bad for all the blogger devotees who thought vanilla-bb-chase UR on fake business EINs was the path to flying US-Europe-Japan in LH F. 🙁
The vegetable variant of durian???? I had no idea such a thing existed but I still think about how …uh…overwhelming…durian is
like a rotten onion pretending to be a fruit and pretending to be edible
Ok, just teasing our fav greek: in India we have the jackfruit, a variant of durian (same great taste, no smell) which is cooked like a vegetable in the early unripe stages. Google ‘echor recipe’ and see for yourself 🙂 Its a bit like artichoke hearts minus the fibre. And a whiff of durian :p
oh yes! I’ve had it. apparently you can use it to make a vegan version of “pulled barbecue pork” too.
You really have no credibility. How could you miss Dan’s Deals ( a blog you like) pimp the lower version of the AMEX Platinum (25K) and not mention the AMEX Mercedes Benz with a 50K bonus?
You know what you would have done if it was TPG who missed the AMEX MB.
Instead you take out your hatred towards two women in the BlogBuzz section. Bravo!
Dan is George’s new mancrush. What is the excuse for him?
We heard the excuse for MMS garbage posts for being burned out drawing arrows and circles all day long…
Let me be the FIRST To Congratulate you on your One Year Blog Anniversary. November 9, 2012 was your introductory post.
Quite the accomplishment George.
Your Buddy
Rick
How many blogs make it beyond the first year? Very few would be my guess. Consider it an accomplishment.
Thank you. I am certainly proud I lasted a whole year!
Hi everyone,
I will respond to all comments later today Saturday around 4ish pm EST.
Things are hectic around the household as Mrs. TBB abandoned me to go volunteer at the UofM Big House football game to raise funds for son’s high school rowing team.
I invite ALL comments, let me hear it. I appreciate all feedback.
TBBon!
High school rowing? Can we be more elitist?
@Tim: Congrats, you joined an esteemed group 🙂
@ The common man: it sure is hard, persistence wins!
@ Lenticular Travel: And just when you thought Delta could not suck more…they usually come up with another reason! Of course the few bloggers who love DL do so because it is their bread and butter. If you counted all the time they spend to “figure” out the website and how many miles they spend on the “free” trips….me and you would, well almost everyone, freak out! I had enough for two C tickets to Australia but now may need to send more to my account as the award (surprise) went up again recently (goes from 150k to 160k). You out of LAX should look to book the Australia V tickets to SYD or Brisbane. This route has always been one of the very very very few gems in the SMPesos program. It should be easy for you. It is hard for me as finding the domestic leg on DL to LAX from DTW is a major bitch.
@Nguyen: Almost 2nd 😉 Yeah, MA’s article captured perfectly the reason for the unrelenting devaluations. And, if you read between the lines, what he did is considered absolute peanuts to a very small (but growing I assume) minority who hit these deals like there is no tomorrow. I never did that, just don’t have the time. I always aimed to stay under the radar so I can still play the game. Turtles win the race 😉
@Grant: Come on man, I posted the article you referenced a day EARLIER. Come on, get it together, will ya? 🙂
@Oliver2002: No more durian references, you are tempting me to censor you lol. I agree, the days of LH F are almost over. I wonder how many of the bloggers will now discover that coach ain’t so bad. You know, pics of flat beds with champagne and caviar just sell better than the pics back in coach!
@carrie: Friend was asked to describe durian once and he said “tastes like onion ice cream”. I always thought that was insulting to ice creams lol.
@Anonymous and Chris: Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate YOU taking the time to give me your opinion. What I do is no science. I used to be a lot more thorough with my critiques but that got way too time consuming. I now pick eclectically and feature some posts that stand out to ME. I respect your opinion. I will try to improve.
Confession: I was easy with MMS because I was counting on doing the interview myself at some point. Well, I just couldn’t do it…pretending about something with the goal of driving traffic to my site. So I wont’ be doing the interview (that blog drives A LOT of traffic!). I never liked it anyway and got upset with myself for pretending so 🙂 Life is better when you spill your guts for the world to see in your own blog!
DD made my “Blogs I Like” list. I am a lot more understadning/lenient towards these blogs=Fact. To me, they earned it.
As I said, thanks again.
@ingy: Thank you. I am certainly proud that I am still standing here. This is my baby. It has been an awesome ride indeed. Future is uncertain but I intend to make it entertaining, educational and occassionaly even inspiring. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment and letting me hear it by private emails. I said you are right on your approach if mega dinero was my ultimate goal. Some people march by a different tune. I would not take the bet TBB will still be updated as often as has been by November 9, 2014 😉
Just checked Alexa numbers, all time highs: World:157,826 US: 29,702 Sites linking to TBB:107 No toolbars, no SEO, no meta tags (all this google manipulative practices…no nothing). Just a one man show. Just imagine if I pumped lol.
@ABC: Thank you!
Organic Traffic is the Best Traffic. No aggregators. No paid advertisement. Just plain old worth of mouth.
I agree. OMG, again!
A blog like this can definitely attract organic traffic. I just share it to my friends in Facebook…
You are right George. Not sure what happened. I remember reading about in yesterday and then saw FM publish the link on FB. Rough weekend for me :/
Don’t let me down again 😉
Salute on the confession and coming clean. But there have been damages ….
So here is another question for you since it has been in the back of my mind for a while. I started seeing the trend to dismiss any commenters critical views on MMS and especially mine since maybe December 12/Jan 13 timeframe. Anytime we would say too many link fest, link orgies or downright awful posts, you would say “nice disclosure policies”, “mother-in-law” rule etc and dismiss things outright, sometimes attack me back like “why are YOU so stuck on blah”, I have agenda etc.
Was this incessant defense after the 10 min face to face last year? I am guessing you came all out with how every blogger was milking it and not even disclosing etc and MMS respected you and agreed to maybe start disclosing at the beginning of his posts. He wasn’t doing that before you know 😉 But man just think about the link orgies that started happening once an arrangement was made. Other bloggers had to compete with him you know? You simply cannot avoid one famous blogger and attack others while having a common criteria. People can see …
In my opinion simply coming out through a comment section is not doing this whole situation justice. I am not saying do a press release(ha hah ha), but you should blog about it and at least mention it in your personal disclosure page.
“…there have been damages”
Lol,
All true on the link orgies, awful posts link fests…I was “quiet” thinking to take advantage of the Friday interview effect (it works by the way!). I confessed 🙂
Still, speaking about disclosures, MMS does have good ones. Heck, his is better than DansDeals!
There has never been any arrangement, come on, don’t be ridiculous. What TBB does here is so far from a science! Thanks for contributing to my improvement…this is a work in progress man!
Your last sentence made me laugh.
I did not take you seriously before because you looked fixated on MMS. Lately you diversified 😉 With this comment you are back on the fixation. Please diversify, don’t put all your eggs in one basket…
Thanks for taking the time to comment as always.
Congrats on your anniversary. Wish I had been here at the start – might have begun with a better US Air offer had I known more about the ins and outs of things 😉 – but glad I did make my way here. Not quite sure how… maybe from FT?
Got a happy surprise in the mail today. When my husband was approved for an Alaska card, he was invited to immediately apply for the Business version as a great “companion to the personal card.” I figured – why not – and was not the least concerned when he got a “we’ll let you know” message. Pretty much forgot about it until just now – he is not into recon calls and figured I’d rethink it if a denial came – when a card arrived in the mail! A nice little 25,000 points on first purchase. Which brings his Alaska bonus point total up to 50,000. Not bad for a card that wasn’t even on the churn list.
The current Safeway promo – get a $10 coupon on your next Safeway purchase for buying a 100+ Mastercard GC – is making it super easy to make the spends in my poor CVS-less state. Check out Milenomics for the details but the $10 more than covers the 6.95 fee on the $500 cards I have been buying.
So he is 6 for 6 – SPG, Alaska personal and business, United Explorer, Chase Freedom, UFB Direct (for their miles earning debit card) and the Barclay Arrival. I know the debit card is low earning (1 points/$2) but the Winco I shop in takes no credit cards and I got it for use there and the few other places where I can only use a debit card.
Thanks. I need to get on the Alaska cards myself one of these days. And the Arrival card. Maybe I should just get me the aff links so I can at least have TBB the blog make some revenue on my own and Mrs’s apps 😉
Your progress has been outstanding…6 for 6 and all.
Actually we have been approved for every card applied for during the last year, until this churn – I just realized I totally blanked on the only rejection which came from when I tossed in a CITI card for him at the last minute, since there were no CITI cards on his list. I fully expected a rejection based on an FT thread, since he has gotten 2 CITI cards in the last 11 months. Figured I could just provide one more data point by applying on churn day with no consequences to us. Indeed a rejection came in snail mail, which surprised me, since it said “too many inquiries” not too many CITI cards! I guess I ignored it since I never had planned to try for it for him and when I did it was just for research purposes 😉 !! Just as well – I am happy with the current spend we have, which will allow me to do my own churn in a few weeks.
George,
Just a quick note about your Alexa score since you reference it on occasion… it doesn’t make a massive difference if YOU have it, its about the others that have it installed (such as myself) and many bloggers will read your blog out of fear/hope they will get a mention, so there is a lot of Alexa ranking skew occurring with your stats.
So if Ingy or Jeff or myself F5 your page for comments your score improves.
The irony is that unless your market is other bloggers then you don’t really want them on your site and the score is meaningless as a metric, since regular human folk don’t install the toolbar.
The manipulation comes from teams of like minded people, such as a blog network who have a number of bloggers checking their own site, this can have an inadvertent affect and create a score that appears impressive. The more I learn of this score the less it impresses me.
That said – good job keeping up the work for a year! It’s a labor of love for sure.
Go pimp your blog somewhere else.
Are you one of the Angries I hear about?
I’ve been unaware that you’re now working for TBB and are authorized to tell others where they should go. How have I missed that announcement!
What’s F5? Remember I’m the old discriminated against senior citizen. I was too old fat and slow to react to the HKG 4 Mile deal. Is that a tornado size? 😉
You need a good old keyboard to find the F5 button.
Yeah, what is F5?
Thanks for the feedback on Alexa. I still like the site for giving a GENERAL take on the direction of a blog! And it has been steady improvement ever since I started. Continued record highs just like in my other little business 😉 I go to google analytics once a month, typical techie friendly design there, I get lost, so much crap on it. But alexa is easy to look at the two main numbers and see how many sites link to mine.
I notice the better the alexa numbers get the more spam/sales crap I get with sales types asking to add infographics, guest posts, advertising promos (bingo banner ad, no thanks), etc. I also have been getting press releases from travel related companies. No comped trips yet damnit! 🙂
F5 is refresh. and angries go away, byee
George, you seem to be upsetting some of your followers by refusing to trash one blog they love to hate so much. Give people what the want or face the consequences. They might just go ahead and create their own competing
partyblog to get their fix:). You know how it happens…Delta devaluation is great to me. Now, I have something to write about tomorrow. Seriously, though, I did not expect anything less from Skyfall Pesos? Pfff…
And yes, congrats on your anniversary!
Wow this guy is impressive stuff. How did you deduce that we want George to “trash” one blog? There are no consequences for anyone. There are no threats. Just trying to have a convo with my friend and we have made huge progress there…
I am not sure about your role here because I think you headbutted or tried to the other days as well? Are you a paid writer for MMS blog? Are you going to be featured in the blog or are a former interviewee? What are your commercial interests and or connections with the MMS blog?
First, “this guy” has a name.
Second, “this guy” is “impressive stuff” indeed. Thank you.
But most importantly, “this guy” doesn’t owe you an explanation. Have a nice day.
Yah you do not owe me any explanation at all. I was just wondering why were you attacking me when I don’t even know you and you were not even the subject of any conversation at all. If it was an opinion, you could have done it in a way that wouldn’t be offensive to me, but since you probably have a blog, you have the right to attack anyone who doesn’t like what is going on here.
You do have a name. But George wouldn’t like the literal meaning of what I would name you. You are yet another angry blogger and don’t like that people are objecting to fierce commercialization in the name of hobby.
“fierce commercialization” – Bet you it will go away in a huge way if Chase decided to cut off the affiliates.
But don’t bank (pun intended) on it. Until then…
You do have a name. But George wouldn’t like the literal meaning of what I would name you.
Don’t hold back. Charge first. Butthead if you have to.
Andy: Domain name for sale: “Tabloid Blogger Buzz” Cheap!!!
RIck, George is good people. Some folks who come here are plain crazy, but I think he tolerates them for “entertainment” value. And besides, he doesn’t sensor. Imagine what would happen if he began censoring now:)
If you remember that old, ridiculous hate-fest on Flyertalk, then you know exactly where some of those folks come from.
@ Andy: There has never been any trashing here from my perspective, only constructive criticism due to the “eclectic” journey through the blogosphere. We praise the best and critique the worst to entertain, educate and sometimes inspire. Some take it well, some others don’t. This hobby, err I mean business, had grown so much that there was time for a site like mine.
This is all personal tastes here. I am not perfect by any stretch of imagination!
Delta is all about expecting less and watching your wallet from these guys. Hey, a major pro Delta blog says GL and Lucky have no idea what they are talking about and one of the reasons to like Delta is that their pilots are professional.WTF!!!!
Thanks
@AgendaGuy: Thanks for the support. Diversify please 😉 Andy is a blogger who also writes for FTG (the blog). He is cool. I hope he still likes me when I critique his blog lol.
@Ingy: Always on sell, sell, sell mode. I offer $1 and a Southwest free drink for it 🙂
George, I do like you buddy, and you know I don’t have an issue with constructive criticism. The issue I do have is with some “free radicals” who come here and claim that “the damage has been done” because you have refrained from trashing the blog they hate. I’ve never seen anything as wacky as that, plain and simple! I’m sorry, but SOME of your followers come here not because of the eclectic nature of your blog–they come here because you give them the platform to bitch. Hey, if they can do that, I don’t see anything wrong in using your platform to bitch about the “bitchers”:). Yep, I love butchering English just as much as the next guy.
As I’ve been writing about Delta’s new transgression, I actually feel sorry for Rene. Just think about it, his blog is called DELTA POINTS. There is no way for him to go from here, other than keep at it no matter what, or close the shop. I wouldn’t like to be put in his position. What is he supposed to do? I mean it’s easy to ride on a high horse when you don’t stand to lose your livelihood or at least a large part of it. I don’t mean you in particular, just saying…
It’s all gotten to light (painfully) in my quest to burn the remainder of my Skyfall Pesos. I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to find 2 J tickets to Paris for the next year (I honestly wouldn’t bother with J, but my mom is almost disabled and she NEEDS that bed). Granted that I was looking for as easy a route as possible, but because I’m inflexible with the routing, I tried to be as flexible with the dates as I could. I tried a 3 MONTHS WINDOW. I even tried to find a Y and a J on the same flight–never could find anything with return. So when Rene says how he’s always been able to book the saver rate on Delta… I’m sure that’s because he knows a lot of secrets we do not. Right!
Free radicals are everywhere on the net and they tend to be wacky 😉
My no censoring policy FAR outweighs the negatives. If I start censoring them where would it stop? No, no way. Everyone can post here. If someone wants to look like an arse that is their problem. This has been raised here before. Everyone can post or bitch or praise or whine or whatever. Freedom of expression! Free Pussy Riot 😉
I do not feel sorry for DP. Even if the blog name contains the world Delta the coverage of that airline has been weak there and so repetitive of the same issues that…never mind. I think Points and credit cards would be a better name for it. To go after GL and Lucky is just plain…________ (self censored not proudly!). The reasons laid out For Delta are completely ridiculous in my own opinion (and I bet 99.99%) of others. Hey, Delta pilots are professional….WTF!!!! On the burning of them….riiiiight 😉
Just another angry 😉
$1? Disgusting.
I’m gonna offer it around to F2B, IB, Linkoffers, MMS, MV, Noobtraveler, DP and BA. Maybe the banks as well to get more exposure as a parasite (or is that parody? to your site 😉 You know what I mean, to pick up traffic from your site.
Why it could be worth tens of dollars 🙂
You convinced me…I am raising my bid to $1 and TWO Southwest free drink coupons. Better grab it fast 😉
$1, hah! Love you all, and happy anniversary on your blog, george!
I bet IB would overpay, as usual. I doubt they’ve had great return on ur deal.
Congrats on 1 year! Question on Maui, as someone who has three nights booked at the Kea Lani in January but am still missing two nights as well why don’t you think the Andaz is worth the 22k per night? It seems like a good deal to me, or I was considering the trip over to Lanai but sadly there are no ways to get free Four Season rooms or at least any that I know of.
And not sure how much down time you have in the Oakland area before and after but there are much nicer areas to stay within an hour or less drive. Maybe I am biased living on the peninsula but personally wouldn’t be spending my down time in Oakland.
The truth is I have not spent the time looking at the options more closely. The few blog posts and pics I saw of the Andaz just did not “do” it for me. That was my initial take on it. And we get no breakfast there so that may had something to do with it. The Chase UR points are valuable and I don’t want to blow them there when I have plenty of HH and SPG points too.
OAK stop is due to the flights to/from Maui. On the way there, we have half day and flight out next day is at 8 am. On the way back we get in 11.30 pm, have full day/night and then fly out the next morning at 6 am…so getting one as close to OAK is paramount. Planning for a drive that full day and/or going into SF Chinatown.
I will update when I get more info to make a better judgment.
I called FKL to book my stay, MUCH better than the “cops” at the toll free line at F’t 😉
Dear Bloggers and Tweeters (I know y’all do stop in here at TTB),
Please stop referring to your wives as “wifey.” While perhaps not meant that way, it just sounds demeaning to this wife!
Thank you.
PS – I hate “hubby” too but not quite as much.
Good point.
And the PS was VERY funny!