We here at TBB follow the travel blogs and write whatever comes in our heads. Sometimes we get people to laugh and we are so proud of that. Sometimes we get bloggers pissed off at us. We are sorry for that and we do get over it pretty quickly. We believe in enjoying life and getting pissed off about anything is a waste of time. We do not take ourselves seriously! We admit there are some practices that set us off and get us ranting uncontrollably. We have admitted very often that the TBB founder (that would be me, George) has “issues”; therefore, his dear therapist’s instructions to transfer the rant from a verbal to a written outlet has definitely been therapeutic indeed! So, don’t get mad at us, get mad at the therapist instead! If you need one, we can highly refer her to you. She takes ALL credit cards by the way, gift cards too! I knew you would ask:-)
As we went through our daily rounds of wasting time following the blogs and completely neglecting other more important things in our busy lives, we were struck again and again and again by the same “news” that the amazing American Express Business Gold Rewards can be had for a 50,000 Point Signup Bonus. Why are all of them screaming about this now in unison we wondered? It is “EXPIRING TOMORROW” we were told repeatedly in blogs, tweets, emails and Facebook/Linkedin updates! We lost count how many times we saw the exact same post!
Dear bloggers: We understand your readers may not read other blogs; we don’t care if they do or not, THIS IS WHAT WE DO HERE, WE REVIEW BLOGS (CAPS for emphasis!) and it felt like we were being carpet bombed by the 50k offer! Phew, we survived. We just can’t wait for the next EXPIRATION DEADLINE to come again. It would be really funny if Amex decides to do a one day 75k offer on this very card very soon. Would the bloggers say “we are so sorry we scared you to apply for the 50k offer?”. Nooooooo, of course not! They would just say “AMEX 75K OFFER EXPIRING AT MIDNIGHT”. TBB promises to work on a “Best practices in pushing credit cards to everyone who reads us” post. When we get around to it. Which means may be a while.
The policy of linking to each site we feature here will be continued. Thank you for your feedback, which is ALWAYS welcome!
Blog Developments:
TBB Founder George here: I met with a local college student who may be helping with the site. We discussed her stock options package and we decided to award her 5 million options for her efforts. To preserve cash ( a whole $32 has been spent so far on this site!) she is very willing to get paid in miles/points. We gladly jumped on this opportunity as we have several millions miless/points lying around. So at some point you may be looking at some changes around here so the site does not look so awful! Without help there is absolutely no way I can get to so many tasks that should be addressed. I am losing my mind already working on this darn blog! There, that makes me feel better already.
Media/blog Mentions:
TBB was mentioned at Travel For Boomers:
If you’re a travel hacker, or wannabee, who is always on the look out for the best deals , it can be daunting to try to keep up with all the hacker blogs out there. Never fear – George is here! Travel Blogger Buzz reviews the most popular blogs that focus on finding travel deals. The author puts his own edgy, often biting, twist on what he thinks is pertinent. But if you want to know the “buzz” of the day, click on the link above.
[Thank you so much. There is nothing to fear indeed! We waste our own time going through blogs so you don’t have to. Hmm, this could be the TBB tagline?:-)]
[Incendiary, love it! We had to look up the word “mirthful’, we admit it! Lots of people get this miles/points stuff so seriously…to the point of filing class action lawsuits, imagine that! Hey, we are just trying to keep true to the “incendiary” title, hehe]
Great post by the old Rick and his new credit card spending strategy! Good info on what HE does and his thinking. Nice references about the old timers, some of these still bring tears (of joy) to my eyes. And, gasp, no credit card app links. Who said TBB is the best thing that has happened in the blogosphere recently, keeping all other travel bloggers in check, lol. Hey bloggers, we are joking, get used to it, let’s keep that ego down a bit, it is healthy, thank you!
After reading so many horror stories by other bloggers about the great pain Korean Air and Asiana inflict on whoever tries to redeem award tickets…I realized that my sanity is more important. Consider using any of the award booking services around to help you through the ordeal. Us here at TBB are too poor to afford the award booking services! We don’t even have one single ad to generate a few dollars for crying out loud!
We at TBB have a crapload of AA miles, nearing 7 figures! Fantasizing about Citiblank going back to its old churming ways, ooooh yeeeeah baby!
Good work Mommy.
The Wackiest Things You Can Buy With Rewards Points
I guess when you have gazillions of miles/points to waste you can burn them this way. I am certain PointsEnvy has done most of them!
Because through your participation, you’re propping up a pyramid scheme that’s fundamentally unfair, unsustainable, and yes, fraudulent.
Airline loyalty programs as they currently exist should be banned and the accomplices who pushed points on an unsuspecting public should be arrested and put on trial. But I’d settle for killing the programs and letting the charlatans off with a stern warning.
Comment by dayone: Any blogger that posts more than one credit card offer/link per week should be ignored (or worse).[why don’t they do it like Frequent Miler is beyond me, is it greed?, please continue #incendiarydiscussioninmysite? :-)]
TBB: do I even have your number? :p
Parts of today’s post rattled the back of my brain about something I hear a lot on various blogs: “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”. I would like to understand what this means and how can I tell if I am a hog or not. Jeff Foxworthy-ish answers are fine for me. 🙂 (Tongue is only partly in cheek on this one…)
I’m not really Anonymous. I can’t get the WordPress ID to work this morning…..
Anyhow, keep up the good work George! You are a great mirror for the blogs….I think maybe it’s hard for them to step back sometimes and have a look at themselves.
And I’d like to be on Oliver’s call list as well!
miffSC
“We waste our own time going through blogs so you don’t have to.”
Excellent tagline.
This blog is getting quite boring quickly. At first it was a refreshing critique of everything wrong with the travel bloggers, but it’s getting stale fast
One example – you criticize those like FTG that go into complete overdrive with CC referrals (and it is irritating – he is the single worst blogger of the bunch, and his whiny defensive tantrums on other bloggers comments sections are comedic gold). But now you’re incessantly pushing your blog on the comments section of every single post on every single blog. You’re doing the same shameless promoting of your blog that other bloggers do of CC’s
You don’t need to remind us in every MMS thread where he posts a picture of his wife, that you are going to/have commented on the fact that he posted a picture of his wife… nobody cares. If you want to blog about it, blog about it – you don’t need to remind us every time he “made your blog” in the comments section of his own blog
Leave the shameless promotioning to FTG. You fill an important niche in the blog-o-sphere it it would be terrible if your blog circled down the drain like his
@oliver2002:Ok;-)
@bluecat: Excellent question. The answer is certainly subjective. It may depend on how YOU FEEL. I definitely feel like a pig sometimes. Never felt like a hog. I know some hogs and I don’t have the desire or intend to become one:-)
@MiffSC:Thanks!
@Bikeguy: Thanks for confirming! Next step is to hire some super whiz tech geeks to send a bot all over the blogs and summarize it back to me in one email, now THAT would be AWESOME. Ok, I am dreaming!
@Anonymous at 10.14 am: Thanks a lot for taking the time to comment! We welcome all feedback here at TBB and take insults especially well, we just laugh at them! I am NOT saying you insulted me, far from it. Some bloggers tend to claim I say things I never say or imply things that I never even thought of. I think they are all stressed out or too busy counting the $$ from the aff cc links, LOL. I reserve comment on FTG because he may jump on me again:-) I hear your msg loud & clear about me leaving a comment on blogs! Guilty as charged! Remember, I am a tiny tiny blog not even 10 days old. They say you have to build your readers and leaving comments on other blogs is one way to do it. Who am I to argue? I thought WordPress was a publishing company!! Ok, I will cool it; there is no point in saying “hey, congrats, you made my blog”. But if I have something positive to contribute I will do so. Of course I usually don’t bother doing that to blogs that censor comments!! Same msg I think about MMS? Ok, got it. The greatest fear I have is “getting stale fast”…I also realize there is no way I can continue this frenetic pace, I do leave another life which I am pretty happy about…at least, until this brillian blog idea came into my head and would not leave it!!! Thanks again.
You would be much better off “building your readers” by providing quality content
And by providing insightful comments to whatever topic you are commenting on in other threads
Pimping your blog on every single thread by every single blogger (i can’t recall a single post you’ve made in the past week that didn’t reference the fact that you have a blog) is no less annoying than the incessant CC pimping you so accurately call people out on
@Anonymous: Is that you MMS? Say hi to Emily!!!
@Anonymous at 11.19 am: Content always comes first and should always come first. No filler content here, at least not yet:-) This is a bare bones operation. When I am done with each day’s post and go through the blog reviews for the next day I may say something in that blog, otherwise readers will not ever know about me. According to Gary L., 70% of HIS readers do not read other blogs, that was VERY surprising! So…please, take it a little easy on me man, thanks!
@gregorygrady: Fun thread you started in FT, thanks for the material, I appreciate it. I am scared to now go see how many pages I will have to read through;-)
I appreciate this blog. Keep doing what you do. Nice to have some humor, and to read a ‘travel’ blog not pushing CCs
Thanks a lot Brian. I am keeping it going; it is an exhausting endeavor to tell you the truth. But I am soldiering on like a trooper. Positive comments like yours do help in my determination to continue this insanity:-)
> Tweet by @jamucsb: “You know you have a
> problem when you go straight to the gift card
> section at CVS and Walgreens” [know what you
> mean;-)]
No, you realize you have a problem when you keep going to stores until you find your beans.
Property tax funded!
As long as you drive around a few miles I guess it is OK. If you drive more than that, yes you do have a problem. We definitely understand this condition at TBB. If you cross state lines or drive around your town all day long to find beans…well, what can we ssy? Get some professional help quick:-)