News and notes from around the interweb:
- Scott Mayerowitz reports that TSA PreCheck is now being rolled out with international airlines.
- AT&T plans to offer inflight internet service. Competition is a good thing.
- If you don’t want your credit card account closed down, stay out of the porn industry. Total speculation: Chase employees aren’t watching films to identify banking clients. Instead, perhaps accounts receiving funds from specific high risk businesses are being deemed high-risk by extension.
- Always interesting when “goodwill adjustment’ bonus points show up in an account when you haven’t made any sort of complaint. It’s like Christmas in April!
- Seattle’s KOMO tv news runs a piece with me on overweight carry on bags.
It will be interesting, with more than than just Spirit, to see if carry on bag fees reduce how common it is for passengers to bring overweight carry ons onboard (since the relative savings to do so versus checking a bag falls).
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I checked my SPG account after reading this, and I got the same goodwill adjustment too. Which probably means they’re giving it to everybody. Now I wonder why.
@FP exactly, curious indeed!
I got the same adjustment too. I did call on Sunday. I thought it was related to that, but apparently not.
No random free Starpoints for me… 🙁
None for me either and I have the Amex. That chase porn article is slightly NSFW.
I got the random free SPG points. I assume they won’t stick…
@Nick – hadn’t even occurred to me, since this is a mainstream paper I’m linking to albeit a UK one (and sensibilities tend to be different there).
That KOMO piece was terrible.
The banks are not shutting down porn stars for perk abuse. They are getting squeezed out under a directive from the Dept of Justice in an attempt to shut down businesses that the DOJ wants gone. A direct govt action would run into legal problems, but private businesses are not so directly handcuffed.
Saying it was perk abuse was meant as (probably not very funny) humor
Gary, I’m getting tired of your more frequent posts with sexual innuendo and often sexual content. This article is not related to travel and it’s reinforcing porn and reinforcing the degradation of women. The photos are not needed to get the news/issue out to the public. Please reconsider your value system and if the increased traffic to your site is worth degrading women. I keep hoping its a ins time thing. I will have to follow select BA blogs and not the entire group.
KOMO: Hey, let’s interview an economist.
Gary: “blah blah blah incentivize blah blah.”
KOMO: Crap. Now we have to translate for dumb people.
KOMO: “Gary said airlines willfully put children and old people in danger.”
Very sorry to point this out but the juxtaposition of your picture next to the words “overweight” (bags) made me decide to go outside and get some exercise.
Spirit should have some balls and charge for overweight passengers.
P.S. Not ashamed to admit that the word “porn” hooked me!
@Anon – I didn’t post the link for the pictures, the story of Chase shutting down cardholders is of inherent interest (I thought), if I was doing it for the traffic I’d have the pictures on the blog which of course I didn’t do. Of course, appreciate the feedback. Best, Gary
You are misinformed. The porn stars did not have their credit cards closed down due to perk abuse. Nothing in the article you provided points to that. Their bank accounts, not their credit cards were closed down. Chase is closing down both business and personal checking accounts for many people. But not credit cards. What is perk abuse anyway? You charge, you earn and you redeem. Is it perk abuse to be a porn star and do this?
I checked my SPG account after reading this and realized, damn! I don’t have an SPG account! No wonder Marriott always wins everything.
@ Gary: On a semantic note: you should consider separating the words ‘me’ and ‘overweight’ by more than just one little ‘on’.
“runs a piece with me on overweight carry on bags.”
Perhaps: “runs a piece on overweight carry on bags that I was featured in” 🙂
So…..Now I know Chase shut down my accounts because I’m a 250 pound male porn star.
Isn’t it funny, how some “anons” have gotten to believe in their god-given right to dictate the bloggers what news articles they are and are NOT allowed to link to!
On a sadder note, no SPG soup for me, either.
I almost did a spit-take after reading about “Operation Choke Down”