It is time to rant!
First, let’s all rise and have a moment of silence for one of the most exciting deals to ever happen in this community. Getting a free round trip Detroit to New York for $2k of Vanilla reloads in the local Office Depot was just too good to be true, we ALL knew it!!
All mega miles earning deals come to an end eventually. But the speed of such crashing halts appears to have accelerated with the proliferation of blogs and the convenient easy money that affiliate credit card links provide them. The popularity of such “schemes” or “hacks” (absolutely hate both terms so I will stick with “deals”) lately with all bloggers raving on and on and on about them (including having idiotically detailed step by step posts, even pictures holding the cards!!!) has directly contributed to the crashing halt! Why? Well, it is simple really. The more exposure, the more “newbies” get in on these things. The more newbies get in, the higher the probability of them behaving like hogs (admittedly, there are a lot of old timers who still behave like hogs!!). Therefore, the crashing halt just comes faster and faster!
You may counter and say, wait a minute, the US Mint went on for years, AmazonPmts still goes on. Well, those were a little different. The first one had to do with the US Government which is probably not the most efficient organization in existence (never mind the end goal was to get people to USE the dollar coins instead of paper bills, a VERY noble goal in my opinion). The second one is of limited max damage to AmazonBezos as it only concerns up to $1k per month. I have no doubt that this will be killed eventually when Amazon likely gives up on throwing money after this market (wish I am wrong!)
In the old days, such deals were talked about on a thread in FlyerTalk and among people in this hobby (yes, networking!). They still are by the way but…
There are just way too many bloggers out there competing for good content and trying to “break” news to differentiate themselves from the others. Would you think such a major deal would have so much exposure if it was not for the amazing convenience to serve MANY affiliate credit card links to their audience? Yeah, I thought so.
So, please, lets hold the outrage and, for god’s sake, I do not want to hear about class action lawsuits against Office Depot ( I bet some people are thinking this already!). If you want to blame someone, blame ALL bloggers who made this a LEAD blog post and RAVED all about it almost daily! I blame them. Hey, this is what I do here, bloggers keep my blog going (for the time being anyway).
This type of debate has been going on in the community FOR YEARS! The explosion of blogs/social media has directly contributed to such deals getting killed faster. So, just like in mistake fares, you should book it and leave for the airport…for these, take advantage, be a little pig once in a while and NEVER become a hog and try to keep a low profile. I heard someone got their super green/noob sister in law on this who went on a Vanilla spree & bragged about it at work. Areyoukidding me???
I am not optimistic about deals like this lasting for a meaningful amont of time. Some blogger will break it, they will all repeat it & serve us affiliate credit card links & it will get killed before you say…Mike Brown (the just fired Flakers coach).
As I said, this debate has been going on and on for years. Nothing new! We move on. Getting 1x or 2x or 6x (with HiltonAmex) is definitely nowhere near as exciting as 5x ChaseUR pts, that’s for sure.
Now it is time to go to a meeting with Frequent Miler, BikeGuy, MidTierStatus and a few more addicts.
Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, but I also think that with internet searches and twitter and RSS readers, information is a lot easier to find. I got the Ink card for the VR deals and now it’s gone. Oh well. I’m one of the new people who I guess screwed it up for others. But not really. In this case, thieves really screwed it up. I don’t think OD or Mio had a problem with these cards falling off their shelves.
I like your blog roundup, but it seems pretty time consuming. Maybe a “Best of the day” blog post. Just an idea. You going to the SMD?
Between the hogs and fraud factors, I think it was the fraud factor that killed this deal!
I am working on the time management of this whole new adventure. It is a big challenge. This may make me even more disciplined. Time will tell as always, we shall see.
I am not going to SMD but I will be at FTU later this month.
Thank you so much for your comment!
You’ve mentioned MMS and FrugalTravelGuy doing well financially given their blog/affiliate incomes. Just how much are we talking here? I cruise around and click on links from blogs all the time and naturally am aware such activity puts coin in pockets, but what levels of income are realistic?
I can not discuss this here publicly, especially answering to someone who is “Anonymous”. Let’s just say is more than you think, probably lots more!