TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
This blog has been a labor of love so far. If you like what you see here, please let others know by passing them a link to my blog, thank you!
TRAVEL
My favorite travel blogger Yomadic visits Transnistria, a country that does not officially exist. Super fascinating, I enjoy his posts and pictures so much!
Since we are on the topic of Transnistria, this post “Dark Tourism: The last of the USSR, Transnistria” at The Bohemian Blog is also quite fascinating!
Mexico’s Giant Crystal Cave at Twisted Sifter. To say the sight of this is stunning would be a huge understatement! To learn more about this cave here is its entry in Wikipedia!
Africa’s Least Visited Countries. By Africa Review. Figures of visitors below in 2012.
- Equatorial Guinea: 6,000
- Sao Tome & Principe: 11.000
- Comoros: 21,000
MILES/POINTS
Loyalty Lobby shows how to get Hilton HHonors Instant Silver Status + Fast Track To Gold After Four Stays Within 90 Days. It is apparently some promotion code for a specific company so you are responsible for your actions! All the other bloggers followed 🙂
Mommy Points has more details on the incredible United ticketing screw up! She is asking what would people do? I would not pull the trigger as it was an obvious mistake. But that is just me I guess.
ON MY MIND
It is 11.52 pm on Sunday night and typing this from my iPad at Starbucks! Internet went out at home one hour ago and Comcast will be here Tuesday morning. Something is definitely wrong, this time is not the cable modem I got just last week! So please bear with me! Thank God everything was in the post except this paragraph, phew!
ODDZ & ENDZ
26 Crazy Things That Happen Only in India. Some are:
- People put up photos of deities on building walls to prevent public urination.
- Men spend thousands of dollars on gold shirts.
- Billionaires build entire skyscrapers and live in them as homes.
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is intended for long time readers and miles/points addicts who follow the blogs in this space. Readers not familiar with this crazy hobby could skip this section! Do not take anything personal. TBB reviews blogs. Call me Siskel.
Weekend marketing of credit cards go way down in the blogosphere!
Delta Points: Barclays Arrival World Mastercard And Amex Platinum. Giveaways. Soft ball questions with MJ on Travel who does have a credible Ethics policy which would be great to see others imitate. It should be about credibility and not marketing imho.
New Girl in the Air is rebranding to The Girl and Globe. I like it.
Giddy for Points maintains a blogger database. I wish I can push a button and transfer to her my Feedly blog list for completeness 🙂 I kindly asked to be transferred from “Travel” to “Miles Points & Deals” category. Actually, I am confused. Giddy for Points said ” You are your own category ;)” So, I grabbed me some wine and asked myself “what is TBB?” and came up with: ” TBB is a mix of 60 Minutes, Consumer Reports, Oprah (!!) and Jerry Springer perhaps? :-)” Lol! I wonder if Delta Points laughed just now 🙂 Ingy is fuming for TBB’s “negativity”
Entertainment. For Free. TBB (it rhymes!)
You should publish your list of 572 blogs that you follow!
Tribute to Ingy ……………….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tN6_1dJveM
The video must have been before I was born, because I don’t get it. 😉
I don’t get it either, even though I was born about the same time as Ingy. But I loved the video! Those guys are great on the cellos. Thanks for posting this.
Huh?
I got it…I think 🙂
Thanks for linking me and whatever your blog chooses to be, we love ya regardless 🙂
“Entertainment. For Free. TBB” <—– I like it!
You are very welcome!
Chris Elliott had a question up last week about whether he should help Nancy, a reader who bought a $0 United ticket. He was inclined to help her despite his stated opposition to those booking mistake fares because she booked by accident and didn’t find it on one of those evil greedy travel sites. No, she wasn’t at all like those greedy b-stards at FT at all. She called Chris for help. This mistake fare is different.
What a clown.
Whoops, apologies for negativity! Here’s something constructive: Chris Elliott entertains me and my cold little heart with his obtuse website, and he should definitely keep it up.
Don’t worry about the negativity 🙂 Express yourself. I am starting to think that a FTer did something really really bad to CE!
Pander, pander, pander.
Elliott knows his audience, and plays right to them.
Yeah, he is really good at that too!
Worth mentioning that Loyalty Lobby turned two last weekend. This blog is surprisingly low profile, because it covers a huge amount of ground and is my ‘go to’ for hotel news now, rather than Ric (who I still bookmark, though).
It is also totally free of any income generation whatsoever, unless I’m missing something! Which is interesting, because I reckon John must spend at least 2 hours per day putting it together.
Yep I agree. He does have some referral links here and there. I think he is not US based so getting in all the US based bank cc stuff is just not feasible. I am awed by his consistency and lack of monetizing efforts! I need to reconsider my options after year one….feel like it is long enough I paid my dues lol.
By the way, NonSense rejected my appeal after writing them an honest appeal. Looks like my haters won. I find it…entertaining 🙂
The latest issue of Consumer Reports completely tore apart Hoover’s latest vacuum in their review of it. Completely uncalled for
And I see 90% of the US currently disapprove of the job congress is doing. We need to repeal the 1st amendement
Insert “vacuum sucks/no it doesn’t” joke here.
You guys are just so negative! What a pathetic nest of discontent all you angries bashing bloggers and vacccum cleaners do here! I like to mess with you, you are one of a kind. Do you know you are 1/10 of 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent? I will keep popping my head here whenever I am bored with my life and show you how to be positive for a change. You do not realize it is all marketing; we were never experts…we just pretended to be and shoved credit cards to the unsuspecting public who had the full disclosure somewhere buried on our website and could read it and make up their own mind…Look, it is called capitalism for a reason. Oh, it is Monday I need to mail it in again.
Would love others to make a parody of me too 🙂
Entertainment.For Free.TBB!
Actually, come to think of it, FTG might not be so against repealing the 1st amendment
Seems he’s gone beyond his usual scope of censoring critical comments on his blog to requesting that such censoring be done here too
Maybe what attracts FTG to this blog is your extensive coverage of North Korea. I can see why someone who wants criticism of him to be censored would be enamored with that country
Guess what’s coming next?
Yawn
Totally don’t get cello guys playing Metallica relating to Ingy somehow.
Please spoonfeed me..
Just a cool video that I wanted to share
What a coincidence, the Boston Red Sox just had the Cello Quartet do “Enter Sandman” last night as the opening act of the tribute to Mariano Rivera.
This just clearly shows Ramsey is a genius 🙂
Ingy’s Yawn:Sandman (Sleeping)?
I think Ingy is completely off base suggesting that all content whether by TBB or us commenters should be positive. I was one of those newbies who did not know that all credit card offers are not created equal and so applied for a middling US Air offer as part of my first churn. The friend who turned me onto this stuff had just said “google and find an offer.” My first forays onto FT were rather off-putting, which was why I did not check FT first. I wish I had known about TBB when I first started as I might not have made that mistake.
I was lucky in that a call to US Air got them to refund the annual fee but I still did not get the best deal. I have since gotten more comfortable with FT and know to go there before planning a churn.
It was George’s experience – which he described over the course of a few blog posts – convincing US Bank to give him a Club Carlson card that motivated me to call them multiple times until I too convinced them. My two free nights in Tel Aviv were a direct result. I wonder if Ingy would consider George’s remarks about US Bank as too negative too?
I’ve been traveling for the past four weeks and haven’t had much time to follow Twitter and the blogs I usually read, so have really appreciated TBB’s highlights of the blogs not to miss and the ones to skip.
I guess in Ingy’s world, every restaurant serves good food, every movie is great, all hotels are wonderful and no books are boring. After all, someone is just trying to make a buck. How dare the consumer state their opinion publicly?
Keep it up, TBB!
You guys constantly miss the point. I grew up in a world, where if couldn’t say something nice, you said nothing at all. We obviously live in a different world now. Nuff said
You sir, are a Southern Gentleman!
Ingy: I think you suffer from this: confirmation bias Craploads of it. Here is what it means from Wikipedia (not marketing):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Last time I checked Siskel and Ebert started their show in 1975! They had some infamous take downs of movie directors and actors. Yep, you are yawning right now….—->Confirmation bias.
The answer lies in TWA44’s comments.
TBB does not censor. You are always welcome here.
“I grew up in a world, where if couldn’t say something nice, you said nothing at all”
Agreed, Consumer Reports, Siskel and Ebert, Food critics, Gallup and Rassmussen polling, booing at sporting events, op-eds in newspapers and political protests are all new fads that have materialized over the last couple of years
THAT is quote of the week!
I also learned from my mom the infamous “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say it.” But I was taught that it applied to a friend’s new haircut or the art a neighbor had on his walls. But it didn’t apply to everything.
I also learned to speak up for myself and my rights; my grandma, knowing the law in NYC at the time entitled her to getting her apartment painted every three (?) years called the mayor’s office to say her three son in laws were returning from WW2 and she wanted them to come home to a clean apartment, but the landlord was not answering her calls.
She got the apartment painted and the landlord got in trouble. Maybe Ingy’s grandma just thought “live and let live” and would have considered my grandma too angry and negative.
I believe in praise when appropriate and constructive criticism/problem solving when called for.
Thumbs up for mom and grandma!
>>>>>>>>I believe in praise when appropriate and constructive criticism/problem solving when called for.
Absolutely. Everything here (well, aiming at least!) is to Entertain or Educate or Inspire. Bottom line is some people just can NOT accept any criticism, however valid it is. Minds can not process the validity of the points…yep, confirmation bias.
Very entertaining to watch, that’s for sure…
Careful in Istanbul!
“We obviously live in a different world now. ”
Please come join the rest of us (not just this blog readership, but ALL of us) in this brave, new world.
Thank you for taking the time to state what it is about so eloquently!
B is for the Boeing Company
Please explain why you should be betting your retirement on the company making those 787s that keep catching fire
If not, just explain why you should be investing in the stock market at all? The debate is not about active or passive, it’s about WHY you should be investing in equities, period. I’m still waiting to hear 🙂
Why do you write about Maldives in your Blog, it’s been done over and over and over and over again. Why should I spend 4 days on a plane for the Maldives? How many U.S. economic cycles have you lived through here as a resident in our country? 2? You are no Charles Schwab?
Some people like Maldives and he loves it. It’s okay, we are all different.
I am not continuing the “debate” about investing in the comments…it is crazy, don’t have the time! I got to get ready for my soccer game!
Sorry… if you don’t want to read about Maldives…. my blog is the wrong place to be 🙂 My wife and I have a love affair with the place, and like TBB my blog is a labor of love so I write what I like and if people like it great and if not …. who cares?!! I have lived and worked in three continents and many economic cycles. I may be no Charles Schwab, but more than most people I have an understanding of what I do and don’t understand and know, and I choose to only invest in what I know about. That means I am left with a small pool of investments! LOL. But at least I can explain why I have each investment I do have.
My blog is a labor of love “so far” 🙂
I know Charles Schwab. You my friend you are no Charles Schwab 🙂
I am not taking the bait this time.
U serious? B for Boeing…If you keep this up I will start calling you Ingy 🙂
We do not see eye to eye on this. It’s okay. Just don’t blog about your market timing calls 🙂
I like your Maldives posts, especially your pics from there!
Your response to me and Matt on Twitter had me rolling on the floor!
Ok but the one thing you are mistaking me on is I am NOT claiming market timing. *IF* you invest in equities. No, if *I* invest in equities it is because I believe in the very long term it’s because a company has underlying value in it’s business. And the only thing that would cause me to sell is hopefully the need to liquidate in retirement, or if the business changes and it is no longer of value. And I vehemently disagree with the idea of just investing in the “market”. I very much understand the passive vs active debate and while I actually agree that passive management beats active in almost all cases, it doesn’t take away from the fact that all of that investing ignores the reason you should be investing in the first place: because you believe in the underlying business.
I will end it on one of my favorite quotes from Seth Klarman, one of the quieter kings of investing who has certainly outperformed the market on a consistent basis at Baupost. This quote here really gets to the bottom of my issue with the way almost everyone invest in equities – active or passive, index or selective:
“hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in virtual or complete ignorance of underlying business fundamentals often using indexing strategies designed to avoid signinificant underperformance at the cost of assured mediocrity”
Frankly, I never pretended I had the abilities to properly value a company. I believe in diversification, low costs, keeping Uncle Sam in the picture while rebalancing. Then spend time where it really counts instead of finding businesses to believe in…underlying businesses.
Been doing this too long, shit happens. It usually happens when you least expect it. Been there done that. If it works for you, go ahead keep on doing it!
Never heard of this Seth Klarman, he is sure quiet. Usually these guys cheer from rooftops their performance figures.
“…using indexing strategies designed to avoid signinificant underperformance at the cost of assured mediocrity”
Complete nonsense. Start your own hedge fund then, you know, 2 and 20 🙂
I should be preparing another blog post…phuck it, I am taking a day off, I deserve it.
This is a debate that never ends in our circles. And numerous studies show who is winning. There will always be a Klarman dude some years.
My interaction with you is the MOST I have talked about performance in years. Clients receive an annual statement showing performance for the year. And we just never talk about it. We are on track focusing on goals. You are a doityourselver guy, you will never ask for help and certainly not pay for it. If you do, you will demand performance. I RUN AWAY from people like that, they NEVER get satisfied. But you are always good for drinks and stuff 🙂
Ok, please let’s stick with miles and points. So, is Sun Trust really shutting down Skypesos debit cards or is Mr. Pickles pulling our legs?
Glad I have you somewhat engaged. Though you still don’t actually answer any of the questions. You should try politics!
I don’t demand performance at all. I would not be a US treasury investor if I was driven by performance! What I do demand is a justification of any investment recommendation. Reading between your lines, the only justification I see for yours is that you think someone in the future is willing to pay more for whatever index you are buying today than what you are paying for it today.
Klarman runs Baupost, which is not a “some years” shop. Problem is very, very few managers are genuine value investors. Most take the theories of value investing and botch them up by trying to combine market timing, and they then make all the fodder for the studies you talk of. You should read the Klarman book, it’s out of print and sells for a fortune but you can get it free online e.g. at http://www.my10000dollars.com/MS.pdf. The sub-title really summarizes my view on investing – “Risk-averse strategies for the thoughtful investor”.
And I can break you down on fees too. Sure Vanguard may only average 25bps vs a Hedge Fund charging 2/20 but 25bps of $2 trillion is more than any hedge fund in the world ever takes. The whole 401k business is about taking a small clip of a huge, huge pool.
That said I do have stock market exposure, much by necessity than choice, and where that is the case I would agree you are better off in broad indexed funds as opposed to the typically “managed” fund on the basis that the management is so poor and driven by short term results, and intended to appeal all shareholders whereas any proper investment strategy should be tailored to the individual.
So… SunTrust? I did see Pickles post on Twitter. I never subscribed to First2Board given the fiasco of how they handled credit cards. I just can’t reward that kind of behavior. But as for ST it happens to be the second shut down report I’ve heard out of California in as many days so maybe there is something. That said no other deal has attracted so many false shut down reports. I had one idiot on FT PM a group of us saying he got shutdown, and then the same clown send another PM a few months later saying he got shutdown again. Idiot must be forgetting who he is trying to scare off! Just like every other deal it will eventually die but I will keep milking it in the meantime so I can afford my 100k round trip to Orlando 🙂
I can never be a politician…they are professional liars!
>>>>>>>>>the only justification I see for yours is that you think someone in the future is willing to pay more for whatever index you are buying today than what you are paying for it today.
I have no crystal ball. A lot of it is just…faith. You can justify all you want and call it what you want to make you feel better. Bottom line is you have no crystal ball either, nobody does.
Never heard of Baupost either. Deep down I am a value investor at heart, I just have no misconceptions I and most managers can do it well. Some will always do every year. With the passage of time, very very few will outperform and if you think you can predict who will do it I think you may be delusional. If you think you can do it well and/or you can identify the manager to do it for you, please go ahead.
We both agree about the 401k business.
I know you follow the ST debit card FT thread. Please let me know if the shutdown reports increase to any credible levels. I am shocked ST still has these debit cards!
Check out the cc ads and warning label/disclosure in mrpickles comments…
Yay! I got you admit it is done on “faith” – told you it’s like religion 🙂 And you are right NONE of us can predict the future. Hence I come full circle that given you can’t, really you should be invested in treasuries, where it is highly, highly likely to the point of near certainty that the 39 cents you pay today for 20 years will be worth a dollar at the end of that time.
But yes ultimately we likely agree quite a lot, and I can tell from your mentality that you too would appreciate the true value investing theory at least. It’s worth reading Klarman’s book. At the very least it is an exceptional insight into Wall Street (whom he is obviously not a fan of) – but this is back in the 90s before bashing Wall Street was in fashion. Yes they are a hedge fund, yes they charge 2/20, but I have seen these guys in action and they are exceptionally smart and trade only very, very rarely. Absolutely very few people could reproduce what they do. I make no claim to. Hence I choose not to play in the same sand box 🙂
I still think credible ST reports are lacking. The only credible reports are those outside their physical footprint. Are they up there in Michigan? Round here you can’t go more than a mile without finding a branch. I feel it’s pretty safe down here. I did here credible reports of shutdown for using billpay rather than MO’s though. Makes you think it’s coded differently at WM. So stick to MO’s for safety
You took the bait.
Maybe you can respond to the MilesAbound posts in his blog. Keep this posting area a bit more tidy. 🙂
Okay:-)
Will the real slim shady please stand up?
Two links for you:
How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you — and don’t blame Coleman Young | Detroit Free Press http://buff.ly/168Sd2x
Great reporting. You may change some views about Coleman Young.
Love Eminem. Imported from Detroit ALL THE WAY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc
Do any bloggers have anything original to say, or do they just recycle each others’ content in one giant circle jerk?
January:
http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2013/01/02/using-hotel-points-for-suites-and-upgraded-rooms/
http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2013/01/11/suites-on-every-stay-why-do-i-ever-stay-in-a-regular-room-at-a-hyatt/
Today:
http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/09/17/best-use-of-6000-hyatt-points/
I should probably just unsubscribe from all of the blogs and just read TBB. George can tell me what’s new that I actually should spend time reading. I would get so much of my life back. Thanks for taking one for the team, George! Just please don’t sell out.
I wish I had my life back too lol.
I hope you do not consider the way FM is doing it a sell out. One day I will try to do it the way he does…One day…been saying it for 10 + months now…when I get around to it.
Thanks for the kind words and taking the time to comment!
His mother-in-law would be better off reading Gary’s blog
Posting from somewhere over Europe just because I can – free wifi on TK. Trip has been absolutely terrific but I guess we had to have something go wrong which it finally did when our flight out of IST got delayed. Which meant missing our connection to PDX. The gate and rebooking agents were utterly at a loss and seemed not to have any systems in place to handle such problems.
We were lucky to be at the right place to hear what was happening before a very late in coming announcement and thus in the front of the mob that gathered round to get boarding passes back. One poor man was heard saying “are the business class boarding passes separated” but I didn’t wait to hear the answer, having managed to get our two passes back and about to make a run for the Transit Desk.
They too were woefully unprepared, and as people massed there without forming a line an irate American passenger shouted at them – I later heard him announce “I am United Gold!” as he fought to get help – and finally a line was formed. We were at the head of it but ended up actually among the last to get rebooked. The reps just took boarding passes and walked away with them, into a semi private staff area. Passengers began looking over a glass partition to see what was happening, if anything. Our rebooking was actually accomplished early on but we did not get the needed final paperwork for about an hour after the rep showed it to me. It was a pretty stressful two hours. They kept saying “lady take a seat” pointing to six already occupied chairs. They did not like us watching.
By then there were perhaps 15 or more agents milling around, looking over eachother’s shoulders, interrupting eachother, and such, with few actually working the computers, so very little work seemed to get done. They finally brought my new boarding pass to me but it had the wrong first name and my husband’s wasn’t with it. What an inefficient mess.
I do think my persistence made a difference but if TK wants to be more of a player in the US market they had better sharpen up their act, and it would not hurt to require better English skills for employees working with international passengers. I happened to sit next to a man at the gate who was part of some Turkey/Texas group as we waited to finally board – which again happened en mass! – and he said he’d worked hard to get the airline to come to Houston but that they would never make it if they didn’t get it more together.
We had just enough time to get some food – people were totally confused since there were no vouchers – and that slowed things even more as reps working on someone’s ticket kept stopping to give directions to the place where a Houston boarding pass would get you a free meal.
We are rebooked on a morning flight which means Mr. TWA44 will miss a pretty important meeting. I warned him when we chose the tix but he is the eternal optimist and bet it would work out. Once we get to Houston we will see if we can somehow get him home, even if we need to buy him a seat. But this was a better choice than the offer to rebook us from IST tomorrow even though they would have paid food, hotel, shuttle, etc. Indeed, I loved Istanbul and would gladly return. And the TK flights themselves have been great. But I would think twice before booking TK again since if I find myself with a connections problem, I think I’d rather be flying a carrier that deals with problems more efficiently. Given the choice of returning to IST tomorrow when something else might go wrong, or a ten hour layover in IAD, it was no contest.
I think I’ll see what I can find in Houson-Portland flights tonight…. Otherwise I am glad I have two United Club passes with me!I
Turkey doesn’t work off of bakseesh?
Right! Maybe that was my mistake.
I kept wondering if we would have done better had we had working Internet, or super duper status, or something. Could we have gone to the TK lounge or used Skype or called the awards desk for US Air or ….
Maybe. But we really don’t fly more than a few times a year so international iPhone service and fancy status are really not thing we need. The main difficulty was my husband’s concern about missing the meeting. Had it not been for that, we could have just traveled tomorrow although watching the TK reps struggle to deal with the delay made me eager to just get back to the US of A.
We ran into a long delay clearing passport control on the way in, and saw similar disorganization. But unlike others with us, we were in no hurry then. We really did love Istanbul and everyone we dealt with went out of their way to help us and make certain we were having a good visit. From the airbnb folks to people we stopped on the street for directions, from the people in stores whether we were buying milk or souvenirs to the folks we met through various personal contacts, it has just been a pleasure to vacation in Istanbul . A friend says that the way a person behaves in a crisis tells you a lot about him or her. Sadly the TK folks did not measure up to the other people we interacted with.
Looks like there are no better flights we can get than what they booked us on. Got a message to my son so it looks like we’ll rough it in the United Lounge, fly out in the morning, and my husband will go directly to his meeting, having missed th first three hours, So be it.
It still was a really great vacation.
Sorry to see the trip had its challenges in the end. These things happen. Yeah, Turkish Air is not too bad in the air but on the ground they can get a little bit flustered:-)
I loved Istanbul too. Something about the Asia-Europe atmosphere. And the food!
TPG posts to tell us about a new inferior affiliate offer!
http://thepointsguy.com/2013/09/new-delta-gold-amex-offer-including-50-statement-credit/
No surprise. He then includes a better affiliate offer, in case we don’t like the new one. And other affiliate links too for other cards. I guess just in case?
Words fail.
Here’s another one one that cannot be a coincidence.
TPG: Top 10 Most Valuable World MasterCard Benefits
http://thepointsguy.com/2013/09/top-10-most-valuable-world-mastercard-benefits/
MMS: Discounts and Special Experiences with MasterCard Priceless Cities
http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/09/16/master-card-priceless-cities/
EPoP: How to Use Priceless Cities, MasterCard’s Hidden Gem
http://www.extrapackofpeanuts.com/mastercard-priceless-cities-review/
What’s with the discovery of MasterCard all of a sudden? (Promotion? Increased payout? Direct payment to bloggers?)
Equally interesting are the bloggers we are not seeing this from: MP, OMAT, VFTW. Or will we???
Thanks for this so much! I edited tonight’s post 🙂 I was wondering aloud how TPG broke something and was asking for help if had missed something as TPG always has a…delay 🙂
Yeah I have a feeling we will see more Mastercard posts very soon!
I don’t bother with Delta offers anymore…Are there better non affiliate offers around these days?
Can’t be a coincidence. Only MMS tells his readers about the better offers for the cards on the MasterCard page.