Opentable secrets: Opentable is an online service for making restaurant reservations. It’s the market leader in the space, you can search for a specific restaurant and make a booking or search an area and find restaurants that have availability for when you’d like to eat, near where you want to eat, and for the number of people in your party. What’s more they offer loyalty points, most of the time you earn 100 points for a booking, that’s worth $1 because 2000 points can be redeemed for a $20 gift certificate for dining at any restaurant listed on Opentable. Greater numbers of points can be redeemed for larger gift checks, but it’s still at that same redemption ratio. So it’s always a good idea to redeem points as soon as you have enough, and use…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for September 2012.
United’s Computer Woes: Yanking Miles from Your Account Improperly When Partner ‘Fails to Confirm’ Flight Activity
If you’ve been flying United’s airline partners recently, and crediting those flights to your MileagePlus account, check your balance — apparently United has been removing legitimate flight credits en masse when their flight partners haven’t confirmed the activity. Some attribute the lack of proper confirmation to United’s IT woes and inability to properly sync up with its partners for validating the credits. Many flyers inconvenienced. Normally I toss boarding passes once miles post. Note to United flyers: save partner boarding passes even after you receive credit for the flights. Miles from Blighty reports a similar and perhaps related problem, with paid business class travel on Air New Zealand reverting from having earned elite qualifying miles to earning just redeemable miles. These sorts of IT problems, along with problems like failing to properly issue award tickets…
Qatar Not Joining oneworld After All
Qatar’s CEO says they will not join oneworld. Qatar Airways has no plans to join the oneworld airline alliance, its Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker said on Sunday, dismissing reports that the airline had become the newest member of the group as “rumor.” Asked if the carrier would join oneworld, which includes British Airways, owned by IAG (ICAG.L), Baker said: “No, we will not. It’s all rumors.” Flightglobal had claimed to have documents to the contrary, and that such a move would be announced on October 8. The early October event could also be an announcement that TAM would move over from Star to oneworld, or perhaps that Malaysia Airlines had completed its integration to join the alliance. Flightglobal’s claim to have leaked documents to the effect seemed persuasive, though as I noted earlier it did…
Second 15 Minutes of Fame: TSA Agent Who Sold CNN Camera on eBay Released from Prison
The TSA agent who went to jail for stealing a CNN camera and selling it on eBay (after first simply going on paid leave) is now out and talking about the TSA culture that permitted and even encouraged such behavior. He explains he only got caught because he forgot to remove some of the CNN stickers before the sale. “It was very commonplace, very,” said Pythias Brown, a former TSA officer at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey who admits he stole more than $800,000 worth of items from luggage and security checkpoints over a four-year period. “It was very convenient to steal,” he said. ..Brown is one of almost 400 TSA officers who have been fired for stealing from passengers in the past decade. According to the TSA, 381 TSA officers have been…
Qatar Expected to Join oneworld Alliance
There’s been lots of speculation of a Middle East carrier joining the oneworld alliance. Etihad is a frequent flyer partner of American, and owns a stake in oneworld carrier Air Berlin Qatar’s relationship with United has been terminated, and there’s been some public comment by British Airways’ Chairman about the desirability of a tie-up with Qatar Emirates has a new strong relationship with oneworld airline Qantas, though at the expense of the Qantas relationship with British Airways and even Cathay Pacific, my own sense was that Emirates was the least likely to get closer to oneworld overall The speculation has intensified in the past weeks, and now it’s being predicted that Qatar will join oneworld in an announcement slated for October 8. Oneworld will hold an event announcing a “significant membership development” on 8 October,…
Credit Card Purchase Protection Pays to Fix My Samsung S3’s Cracked Screen
Some of you will remember that I cracked the screen of my new Samsung Galaxy S3 phone a month ago, when the phone was just two months old. I was walking along the sidewalk, it slipped out of my hands, and hit the pavement glass-first. Since then I got case for the phone… but that’s not the subject of this post. It gave me an opportunity to test out a purchase protection claim for the very first time., so it was a great learning experience. Ancillary Benefits on Credit Cards, Do You Know All the Benefits Your Cards Have? Talking to folks around my office most don’t realize that there are all sorts of benefits that come with their premium credit cards, such as: Premium travel benefits, such as Visa Signature Hotels Travel accident insurance,…
Bits ‘n Pieces for September 28, 2012
News and notables from around the interweb: Hyatt Gold Passport clarifies its Diamond member breakfast benefit. In a good way. Up to 4 guests registered to the member’s room get free full breakfast in the restaurant when there’s no club lounge or the lounge is closed. It’s the most robust breakfast benefit of any hotel loyalty program. Mommy Points highlights the NFL Extra Points card – $400 after $1000 in spend. In many ways not enough to get me excited about a credit card signup bonus but it’s from Barclays, so that helps mix things up a mix from the usual Chase, American Express, and Citibank offerings. I still like the US Airways Mastercard and the Travelocity American Express from Barclays better, however. Aeroplan is offering 500 bonus miles for flights on Air Canada booked…
Mistake Fare – One Way First Class Originating in Myanmar is Back!
Some months ago there was a major mistake fare where you could fly first or business class direct cheap as long as your trip started in Yangon, Myanmar. Sounds crazy to many, but frequent flyers from all over the world have been descending upon that country to start trips. Now – crazy thing that it is – someone has pointed out on Milepoint that the fare is back. It appears to you fly between Yangon (RGN) and cities in Eastern Canada for under $600. Here’s business class on ANA from Yangon to Tokyo and then continuing on in Swiss first class to Zurich and then JFK, with American (economy) up to Montreal. One could of course just get off in New York, or without checked bags in Zurich if one preferred. Getting the Yangon –…
Buying United Miles at Under 1.4 Cents Apiece
MileCollector emails that the shopping portal site MyPoints.com is offering 150 points per dollar on purchases at OpenSky. Earlier I wrote a post, half-finished, and hit publish instead of ‘save draft’. So some may have seen this in their RSS feed. I abandoned the post for a brief time, though, when I started reading about the Open Sky rewards program and saw some folks over at Slickdeals being told that they would receive Open Sky rewards points rather than Mypoints. But the bulk of folks in that thread seem to be confirming and confident that it is indeed Mypoints that they’re earning. Here’s the value proposition: 10,100 Mypoints convert to 5,000 United miles So $67.34 in purchases buys 5000 United miles, for a cost of $0.01346 per mile. You can spend up to $500 with…
25,000 American Miles for DirecTV Subscription
Through December 5, DirecTV is offering 25,000 American AAdvantage miles for new customers. Customers who have been with DirecTV within the past 24 months are ineligible. Miles are awarded 6-8 weeks after passing 60 days of service. They advertise packages from “$34.99/mo. for 12 months after rebate” and packages generally entail a 24 month commitment. Interestingly, no credit card is required in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. State laws are weird sometimes.
