We ponder about the future of revenue-based loyalty or not, we barf at Delta for giving us something and taking more as usual, learn all you need to know about maximizing Amex Small Business Saturday, we go underwater with Fakarava, visit Canada and Eastern Ukraine, learn some more awesome things about Personal Finance & we buzz it up a little!
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Why Revenue-Based Loyalty Programs Aren’t the Right Answer – The Cranky Flier This is the analysis you used to read at View From The Wing. All you read there now is the last credit card promos (50k offers anyone?), cookiegate and repeats of news found elsewhere (Delta award search engine, etc.). All I know is distance based is not the answer and airlines are moving away from it and going to the right direction for THEM. Is this the right way? Probably not. Is CF’s way of three different ticket “buckets” the future? Probably not. We shall see what happens….it is fascinating to watch it all develop!
Delta’s better award search is still broken, here are the settings to use for the most results – Milecards Ok, this site sells credit cards but does have some good original content. There is some good helpful advice here how to navigate the new award search engine of our favorite hated airline. Best option to search, it appears, is the “One Way 5 Weeks”. In a typical Delta crappy fashion they make it sound like you can book all partners…you can’t of course, only: Air France, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, Alitalia, Korean Air, Alaska, KLM. And of course, in yet another typical Delta fashion, it does not properly display longer connections properly…So, yes some improvement but still crappy overall. And I am afraid they will yet devalue again to pay for these improvements, you know, it is Delta after all. Any word on this huge development by that blog that specializes in Delta? Nope, getting ready to go on a 5 day domestic mileage run…No, I am not shaking my head, I am wearing a helmet haha. Update: To be fair, as expected, Delta Points reported cut and pasted a report by Delta that stopovers and open jaws are GONE as of 1/12015! I just had a feeling that something was going to come down to “pay” for the 5 years in the making award search engine “improvements”. Well, they telegraphed that move, didn’t they? This airline just infuriates me!
Small Business Saturday FAQs: Your Questions Answered – DansDeals Watch out for all them Amex cc links in the end 🙂 This is good stuff you should know how to get the most out of this promo.
‘FAKARAVA’: an Underwater Utopia of Sea Creatures and Sharks by the Hundreds – Dashburst The video is AMAZING!
Why British Columbia is the most Instagrammable place on the planet – Matador Network The pictures prove it.
The broken-down beauty of Eastern Ukraine, 25 years after the end of the USSR – Quartz Sad to see all the developments there…
Striking Photos Of The Homeless Community That Lived Beneath Manhattan – Striking and devastating…
How I got started in Finance – The Motley Fool This is from a writer I respect. Excellent read on investment banking, private equity and stuff like that.
Investing: 2 men save same, end up $234K apart – USA Today Great read! Too many focus on the performance results, instead of how much they invest and for how long #hint the more, the earlier the better!
The Chase Freedom card came out with an offer doubling the bonus. DansDeals was on it with his affiliate link. And then we waited…and waited….and waited some more. All the other bloggers were silent! First one out with it was Mommy Points. Expect more! I am so bored, zzzzz… Love the poster BOP (Best Offers Patrol) who in the comments posts the location of the best offers this site offers, thank you Sir! “Cash Back Cards/Page 1” Or you can get your own referral yourself bypassing your favorite bloggers #sadface #notreally. Check the Chase Refer-a-Friend site to see if you qualify!
We have the most important news in the history of Delta Skymiles program and Delta Points writes about how well the blog does, the hit records, praises other blogs, gloats, gosh, giggles, five day mileage run including the same exciting cities as earlier ones, including the metropolitan SBN. And he posts at FT reminding everyone (post #9) how now I pimp my links…yikes! Dude, the post by milescards is great content because, you know, they actually spent time trying to book, well, awards! For you to take credit for being the first to report the award search engine changes is ludicrous, graphics changes and tweaks in four tiny paragraphs is NOT good content! Whatever! But thanks for passing on the official word from the mothership about the demise of the stopovers and open jaws…We are totally shocked by it LOL.
The amount of selling going on every Monday is, well, surreal! And I got so much grief for doing two tweets with one linking to that tab. Are you kidding me? All of a sudden I became this big time pusher…the absurdity of this space sometimes just, well, entertains the hell out of me! I could be One Mile at a Time and leave Dad alone to write the earth shattering news that Amex is opening a tiny version of its Centurion Lounge in Seattle and bang bang sell the Platinum card links twice in the post! And I could mention ridiculous examples of biased content like that ALL day long. But there are only 24 hours so…
Yes I opened a Silvercar account from a referral link of a reader. So, if you are looking for a referral, please email me. Still a tiny presence in the US but pretty darn good referral bonus! Love it when companies give it away…Still have no idea when I will take my first Silvercard ride…hope they are still around lol!
And I leave you with these…
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Yiiiippee! First!
I knew you can do it!
Dos
DosEquis? Interesting…
Stay Chasey my friends…
thirsty evening apparently
Pauldium!
Bronze—–>Pauldemonium!
Prediction: United will change its award routing rules too, because United always follows what Delta does.
Greetings from Heathrow, where a cop is asking questions of the twentysomething who “broke up with his girlfriend in Brazil, and so returned to [his] home country.” The latter was sleeping across some seats, and doesn’t look like he has a place to go home to. Sigh.
I am afraid you may be right which will be another hit to what we do…but who is counting?
Quattro!
harvson3 snuck in a few minutes before your Quattro…we are sorry to inform you. Please try again 🙂
Cinco!
Cinco de Mayo
signed
Frozen in Ann Arbor
Just wanted to see how my new Gravatar looks
Looks awesome!
The problem is the airlines are all copying Facebook, who asked the earth shattering question “why should we pay you when you collect likes?” If your friend sees you get two likes for a post, they’ll tote baby out in the snow nearly giving him pneumonia to try and get three likes. Delta can’t be far behind this. Make your mileage balance visible on FB and people won’t care if they can ever use the miles, only if they have more than their friends.
Hmmm….maybe you may be on to something…
I saw that DD’s Dan was referring to his seminars as charity work because he donates the proceeds of the ticket sales. TBB zings back with “Why share all the potential market participants…you can keep them all to yourself” Credit cards, anyone?
If someone profits greatly under the guise of charity work, is it still charity?
The fact is all the DD seminar ticket proceeds all go to charity.
I never said that the seminars are charity work.
I said I pay my own travel expenses and give all ticket sales to charity.
Regardless, I donate more than 10% of DD income to charity.
I’m calling BS on that Motley Fool piece… I worked IB for years at the start of my career and you wouldn’t dare let an intern (let alone a Junior at university) or even a first year analyst have that kind of exposure to the deal process. There’s just simply no need to do so. These kids get paid very well to staple together pitch books and manage databases, not to tear down financial statements….
Maybe the times have changed? 😉
Is Chase Freedom 20K any more exciting than Southwest 50K?
Personally, I’m hoping for a lucrative December offer or two from somebody. It seems like there’s always an issuer or two (I’m looking at you, Citi) in December who has a sweet offer so they can make their numbers at the end of the year.
I have a feeling the end of the year offers may be really really good.
Now let me wear the credit card salesperson hat:
Chase Freedom bonus DOUBLED…so HURRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
hehe
Who else is loving Ben’s trip reports with his father?? Raise your hand!
(I am!)
Yeah, he is a very likeable fellow. Lost interest though when he ditched him to post about the amazing Chase Freedom bonus…or maybe that was a template 🙂
Wait…just saw the post about saving on Hyatt…another lame excuse to push some more credit cards. He has been on fire lately…selling plastic!