News and notes from around the interweb:
- 750 Free Southwest points: AirTran members are getting emails with bonus point offers for linking their accounts to a Southwest Rapid Rewards account. This is part of their preparation for the end of the AirTran A+ Rewards program.
- A bit of kvelling: I wrote about my award booking service partner Steve Belkin’s really cool project Competitours which is an ‘Amazing Race’-style adventure that anyone can sign up to do back in February. It’s now featured in the May issue of Singapore Airlines’ inflight magazine for June 14-25. Go Steve! And check out Competitours!
- No changes to Kimpton: Earlier in the week Loyalty Lobby speculated that Kimpton could be changing the ability to redeem for free nights at their hotels because they added “Rewards are subject to availability at each property” to their terms and conditions.
I reached out to Kimpton, and the head of their loyalty program emailed me to assure that there were no changes at all:
It was just a clarification (we realized that some members weren’t clear that there is limited inventory every night so we wanted to be more explicit). We still do not black any dates out (with the exception of major events like Superbowl, ComiCon etc).
- Every consumer’s revenge: In the UK you can make a credit card company pay you for eliminating a benefit without sufficient notice.
- Do they add a bonus to the fuel surcharges, too? Air France KLM Flying Blue has a mileage purchase bonus of up to 50% for elites, 40% for everyone else.
- I Like It When Previously Stingy Banks Get Generous: Wells Fargo has a new American Express card with a signup bonus worth ~ $500 on travel after $3000 spend. Key here is that the Wells Fargo portal appears to be giving more value per point than it’s supposed to.
The blogger who I learned about this card from calls out others for not having written about it already. My excuse is that I learned about it for the first time from him!
- I Like It When Previously Stingy Banks Get Generous: Wells Fargo has a new American Express card with a signup bonus worth ~ $500 on travel after $3000 spend. Key here is that the Wells Fargo portal appears to be giving more value per point than it’s supposed to.
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Thanks Gary! I was hoping that calling out bloggers might be a good way to spread the word. 🙂
Thanks for the trackback Gary! I certainly hope banks and credit companies learn their lesson as a result!
The WF AMEX card seems somewhat like the AMEX PRG. I assume WF runs it, though, not AMEX?
Yes, Wells issues the card and it’s run on the Amex network.
“My excuse is that I learned about it for the first time from him!”
And that’s partially why some don’t come here to learn about best CC offers.
@ABC – I’m on vacation in the Maldives. Everyone is allowed, from time to time, to take a couple of days not paying 100% attention to new offers in real-time. But I thought it was important so I linked to it.
Yeah ABC that was a pretty lame callout. Did you know about it before reading here? Btw i have not seen it on any of the other blogs i read and even flyertalk only has a very small thread with little info
@ABC – I actually think Gary does a pretty decent job of informing his readers of the better credit card offers.
Gary, enjoy your badself on vacation, man! I appreciate what you do for us on this blog, in spite of those who snipe at you.
To be fair, Wells Fargo hasn’t even issued a proper press release for the new propel cards yet. They just did a soft launch and pfdigest was good enough to spot it and the value it implied.
The Maldives? Again? Good for you!
That must be the reason I never saw the post listing the winners of AAvantage miles/AAdmirals Club passes? 😉