Rewards Network’s Dining for Miles programs are being revamped, a.k.a. gutted. You may know the program as iDine (what I’ll always call it), and its precursor was Transmedia — the old program where you paid to sign up and had a membership card which you needed to present at restaurants for a cash discount. The program awards frequent flyer miles in the program of your choosing when dining at a participating restaurant. Traditionally the award was 10 miles per dollar, although increasingly of late some restaurants only offered 5 miles per dollar spent and some restaurants gave miles only on certain days of the week. Now comes the announcement that earning in the program is being changed dramatically. Instead of a default of 10 miles per dollar (plus frequent bonuses), most members will only earn…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2004.
A second Hawaiian airline files for bankruptcy
Aloha Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, joining Hawaiian Airlines, United, USAirways, and ATA in reorganization. Hawaaian Airlines is expected to emerge from bankruptcy next month.
Luggage discount
Tumi is offering 40% off selected luggage.
An end to the Amtrak-United Partnership
The Amtrak/United partnership has ended, apparently effective immediately. It used to be possible to transfer Amtrak points to United miles at a 1:1 ratio, up to 25,000 points per year (50,000 points for Amtrak elite members). That option is apparently gone, removed sometime in the past 48 hours, with no notice whatsoever. This is a real blow to the value of the Amtrak program for several reasons. I used to recommend the Amtrak Mastercard as the best free points-earning credit card. It had several benefits: Obviously, it was free Points could be transferred to United, Midwest, Continental and Hilton It’s issued by MBNA, so the foreign currency conversion charge is only 1% (rather than 3% for most issuers) In fact, it was a better way for most people to earn United miles than the United…
Bonus miles for filing taxes
American Express OnlineTax is offering 1000 Delta miles for using their online tax filing service from January 1 to April 15. $34.95 buys filing of your federal and state returns, which is somewhat higher than other online services I’ve seen and likely higher than the after-rebate price of some software packages.
Support Disaster Victims
Flyertalk is accepting contributions for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund in support of the earthquake and tsunami victims. Red Cross contributions are tax deductible, and there are of course only a few days left in the calendar year to seek such deductions. What better cause?
Time to start thinking about taxes again
Lots of rebates, and all your finance and tax software needs for $6.49, shipped. Note, though, that the Norton Anti-virus rebate is an upgrader’s rebate so the deal only works if you already have a version of a Norton, Symantec, or McAfee software product (which in my experience a large number of people do). Borrowed from FatWallet.com:# Amazon.com is carrying this TaxCut 2004 Deluxe for $24.50 # Search for “B0006466DA” to add TaxCut 2004 State to your shopping cart for $24.50 # Search for “B0002D1572” to add Microsoft Money Standard 2005 to your shopping cart for $27.99 # Search for “B000646EGO” to add H&R Block DeductionPro 2004 to your shopping cart for $19.95 # Search for “B0002UCJV6” to add Norton AntiVirus 2005 to your shopping cart for $46.99 # There is a $5 Mail-In Rebate…
Free Magazines
Free subscriptions to Stuff magazine and Field & Stream are available.
Free Starbucks Card
Oracle is offering a free $15 Starbucks gift card for completing a survey. It looks to have been originally targeted, so no guarantees whether the card will be delivered (but the survey is short).
Are Delta’s Frequent Flyer Changes Their Death Knell?
Joel Widzer (whose book I reviewed over the summer) doesn’t like the changes to the Delta Skymiles program that I reported on last week. He sees Delta as [c]aving to the protests of its stingiest customers and believes that the changes will “accelerat[e] Delta’s path toward bankruptcy.” I usually start by giving an airline, or any company, the benefit of the doubt – concluding that they know a lot more about their business than I do as a simple armchair observer. Certainly they have more data at their disposal and knowledge of their specific circumstances. It’s hard to do that in the case of a company on the verge of bankruptcy with losses in the 10 figures. But I could have made that same negative assumption about Delta before the announced changes so the simple…