We bring you the latest on Starwood’s new bidder, we travel to Kazakhstan & Greenland, go back to how we did this hacking thing in the 80s & more!
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The big news of the day was that there was a surprising competing bid for Starwood by another company. It is a Chinese conglomerate named Anbang that has been on a recent buying spree. Which gives us some hope that the Starwood brand may be saved. Then again, they also involve some private equity guys. Sadly, when you hear “Goldman Sachs” be afraid, be very afraid. It will be very interesting to see what Starwood does now, we are talking more money and ALL CASH. If they go with the Chinese, Marriott receives a cool $400 million for walking out of the deal, probably the easiest money ever made. Hmmm….By the way, I believe I was the first one who saw it and posted it here.
Review of the new Hilton Amsterdam Schiphol airport hotel. Looks great!
Another awesome set of weekly amazing travel photos at Matador Network.
Getting Lost in the Forests & Folklore of North Kazakhstan. Awesome post at The Bohemian Blog. You will learn more about Kazakhstan here than many moronic trip reports involving Krug and flat beds inside a tube peppered with credit card hard sells. THINK!
If I had a dollar for every single thing featured here that shows up in a gazillion other blogs without a proper link back I would be a…Titan!
Video animation showing every flight in the world in a 24 hour period. WOOOOOOOWWW! There is a crapload of airplanes in the air every day! I saw it very early in the morning at Panera where I redeemed for a free coffee and then staff gave me a free croissant somebody ordered but never picked up…come on you guys, stop it! 🙂
If you missed the 60 Minutes segment titled “Should the terminally ill control how they die?“, it is definitely worth watching however you feel about this. I think I made my views about this known recently. I support this initiative!
Paralysis by Analysis. Your personal finance fix of the day. There is so much crap out there unleashed to you to separate you from your money, wow!
Greenland, the land of amazing landscapes!
Fascination Look at Windows Around the World
MILESBUZZ
I have as of now 36 flight segments booked for me and my family coming up, wow! And that does not include a single one for my trip to Iran. I continue to surprise myself. Nearing 300k miles & points burned this year after burning more than 1 million in 2014 and 2015. High Five!
I did my first hacking job back in the mid 1980s. It involved scalping football tickets in Vienna and it was awesome!
It will be really nice by Drew at Travel Is Free to update his readers with what is going with his site. This is why we all need to help responsible talented bloggers; if not…they give up!
If anyone has any tips on where to stay in KMG Kunming airport in China please let me know. Wife volunteered to be a chaperone in daughter’s dance scholarship tour in China and one of her duties is welcoming everyone in this airport which means they need to spend the night! There is an airport hotel and looks okay…If you can help, please do.
If you kept your Club Carlson Visa for another year, remember you need to generate some activity in your monthly statement to receive your annual bonus points!
It has now been three weeks since my wife applied for an Ink Plus card…still nothing, wow! I guess we better call soon.
PSA: Avoid mega credit card salesmen, they don’t stop! How many ways can they find to sell the CSP card, wow!
This bank is really getting on my nerves lately…
How in the world does The Points Guy gets over 1 million Likes on Facebook? Oh wait, I read somewhere his employer spends $100k on Facebook advertising! Advertising spent here: A big FAT Zero, yeah baby!
Updates on my Blogs I Like page: I added Legal Nomads under “Travel” and deleted Medium under “Other”.
A year after I edited my Credit Card page…I did it again to make it easier to navigate, it was about time! If you carry a credit card balance, please leave now, this hobby is NOT for you!
And I leave you with this…
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Boom!
Finally adjusted to the time change and back on my game.
Aaron could not do it three in a row…so sad!
I choked! But still present for roll call!
Early on, I used to pay for a small amount of advertising on Facebook to get some traffic flowing to my blog. I quickly stopped because the amount of likes I was getting from people that did not like anything similar, had not updated things at all on their own page, etc – it was all looking too much like the paid likes I had read about.
Too many articles to count have talked about why it is a waste to pay for advertising on Facebook (unless you are a big company) because you really want engagement and interaction, not just a big number of likes for your page (or fans, followers, etc). Check out the number of likes he gets on his Facebook posts and that will tell you about the level of engagement he has with his 1 million. He has an average of between 50 – 250 likes on his posts! That is terrible for having a million followers. More likely, it is just about growing a big number to be taken more seriously by companies that want to know your social media reach.
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t even have a Facebook TBB page 🙂
The marketing done at TPG is mind boggling!
I am less cynical about FB advertising because the targetting is so good. If you run a Delta blog, you can tell FB just to show your ad to people who ‘like’ or have some interaction with the official Delta page. This sort of targetting is priceless.
I love FB. When you find out a hot cheerleader you went on a date back in college and thought she was an airhead is now going nuts over Trump and you pat yourself in the back for making the right decision not to ask her for a second date. Sadly, she is still super hot 🙂
FB is doing things right from a business perspective, that Mark dude is proving much better at this than so many others who got shot…
Third
Squeezed into the medals stand again!
your paralysis by analysis financial link also goes to the terminally ill story
Ooops, fixed that now, thank you!
Just as a data point. It took me almost a month to get approval on my Chase Ink card as well. One day it just showed up in my mailbox which was a nice surprise. 60k+ points later I am a happy man.
I wonder why they are taking so long! You would think if it was denied we would have heard of it by now? (I hope). I will give it this week…Thanks for the data point too!
Up to me, I’d leave Chase alone on that Ink app. Lots of data points on FT and elsewhere that calling often starts a contentious conversation, with topics like ‘why do you have so many cards’, ‘you don’t seem to use some of your cards’, ‘do you subscribe to The Points Guy.’. OK, the last one was a joke (though not funny), but you get the picture.
We currently have a Hyatt app that is starting its fourth week of waiting “to be notified in writing in apporoximately two weeks”. What do you think Chase would do to my credit if a payment was a week or two late?
I’m going to wait that app out with no calls. At least until tonight.
I also suggest not calling (yet) based on recent experience. SW biz in January took exactly 4 weeks. SW personal after that took between 3-4 weeks. Eventually approved on both with no calls to recon. They tried to call me on the biz card and I ignored the call, approved anyway later that day.
Agree with Sam here. Many datapoints on FT to not call. I got approval within a week for the Ink and I definitely wasn’t planning on calling unless I got the denial letter.
Ok, thanks everyone. Nothing in the mail again today. I will hold off…this week.
Currently in my third week of waiting to hear back on a Chase Marriott. They denied me last summer and that took four weeks.
My ink plus was approved after four weeks. No notification. I was on the phone about something else and I inquired about the status. Good thing because I never got the first card in the mail and had to get a second.
Thanks again to all, I am not calling…
Huge change to my mode of operation with this bank…I used to call about an hour after I applied online. And never take no for an answer 🙂 Oh my, how things have changed…
Get matched to the Citi 60k AAdvantage offers!
http://www.doctorofcredit.com/citi-also-matching-cardholders-60000-aa-mile-offer/
Can you explain the comment about generating some activity on the Club Carlson Visa? I don’t recall a problem with my annual bonus posting in the past…
The bank usually does not give the 40k annual bonus at renewal, it comes after one or two monthly statements. But it won’t…if there is no activity as no statement is generated! So…if you want it asap, make sure you have one purchase in that first month and/or second to get the statement to generate…When that happens, the 40k come with it. This was the case last year and I am assuming it has remained the same. But I could be wrong. Anyone to confirm?
I confirm. But paying annual fee does not count. Buy a twinkie.
in re: Legal Nomads making “the” list: HURRAH. Jodi has a lot of class and style and I’ve enjoyed reading her. Never would have known about her except from TBB so HT: TBB and gracias amigo!
One of the other bloggers I discovered here had an “interesting” post this morning. A “sponsored” post “reviewing” an airline she’s never flown. WTF? How does that work? I mean, I get the fact everyone has to pay the bills but it just seemed a bit slippery and slimy to me.
Happy Tuesday Buzzers — make it a great day.
I know I know…I am shaking my head too. I call it the FTG virus, convert readers to $$$ at any chance you can get. Shaking my head…
It’s a great day already resting my bones from last night’s soccer game. We won 5-2 and that last goal was a beautiful one by moi! I swear if ESPN was there, it would make the Top 10 Plays of the Day! I guess I am a little biased 🙂
Yo buzzy what’s your infatuation with Drew over at TIF??! IMO he’s not that great of a writer and his blogging has always been sporadic. Maybe he ran out of stuff to write about like all the other bloggers.
Well, I thought he had an amazing run for a miles & points blogger. Really excellent research and great resourceful posts he was cranking out. Looks like he gave up. There was an illness at first but then it appears he just lost his blogging mojo. It happens. I was hoping he could be the shining example a blogger can succeed commercially WITHOUT becoming a pumping plastic machine like so many of the Titans. I was wrong it appears. I sure tried my part to help him out, heck I went out of my way. I am not going to talk about his writing, I did once and did not take it well…when all I wanted to do was challenge him to improve on that part. Oh well, I speak my mind. Him and his wife are wonderful people and wish them the best. I am here to help in any way I can if asked.
Yeah the dude calls himself a writer because he blogs. WTF?! I love his blog but as an academic, if your work is not peer-reviewed, you are not a phucking writer…
Besides, his writing could really use some improvement. Peer reviewers (who can be very nasty because they are anonymous) would destroy the hell out of him after reading his writing
I miss his blog. Then again, my workload here has been reduced since I don’t feature his stuff anymore so often 🙂
Re Drew, this piece from Nomadic Matt may be relevant:
http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/work-life-travel-balance/
Seriously, the only way I can run my travel (well, points) blog is by not travelling. The time doesn’t work otherwise.
Thanks for this link, I will read it today at Panera drinking my hazelnut coffee, looks very relevant at first glance. This Matt dude had been ALL over the place online, wow!
Nomadic Matt is not the most experienced traveler. I read his blog a few time. It was painful to read about his attempt to move to Stockholm. Amateur!