$50 More For Your Credit Card Signup, 50,000 Points Down Under, and Fewest Airline Fees

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Couldn’t apply through the “better” link – when click on Apply Now, get notice that youa re leaving chase and transfers to UA website. Anyone having similar experience?

  2. I think not updating the original post is pretty unethical. Apologize in advance if you want to call me out for “snark.”

  3. @Stvr – I don’t think Gary is trying to “hide” the better offer in favor of his referral link. It’s posted plainly in the comments section (which he moderates) of the original article, and it’s in the title of his follow up post. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize him for this unless you think he’s also responsible for all the outdated info in his old posts–new info comes along regularly and it’s probably impossible to keep up. Anyone who reads the post and comments thoroughly or regularly checks this blog will know about the better offer and sign up with it if they wish (like I did, sorry Gary).

  4. @Stvr honestly I have yet to get this new link to work. I thought about saying so above, but I didn’t want to look like I was dissuading anyone from using a better offer than one that offered credit to me. Bear in mind that I have been writing about the 50k+ signup bonuses for a long time, and not offering my own link for a lesser bonus. So I really do try to make sure the best available offer is known.

    When i wrote about the 50k offer yesterday, I did not know about a 50k offer that also had a $50 statement credit. And the writing I’ve seen on that offer was all posted after I had put up my post.

    As soon as it was flagged for me, I was immediately interested. I was committed all last night, could not post about it from my phone, so got this up first thing in the morning.

    And at the point where I posted it not only hadn’t I been able to get to the actual application myself (I just get redirected to the United site and cannot get out of that loop for some reason), I hadn’t seen reports of successful submissions and approvals either.

    I now see some people saying they were approved, which is great!

    I don’t take your criticism as snark, but as genuinely held. I happen to disagree with you, I think i got to think reasonably promptly (not all have done so) and to the best of my knowledge at the time on a Saturday morning.

    Original post, since there are several on top of it, is 99% down the memory hole already. It mostly doesn’t get read. Still developing my understanding of what’s going on, and from comments on the original post it appears as though I am not the only one having this issue.

  5. Re: feeling no less safe and the woman flying under someone else’s name:

    Look, the fact is, we have an extremely porous air travel infrastructure in this country. But for every data point like the above, you can find an example of TSA getting it right. Mine, for example: flew LAX to JFK redeye in F on the AA a321T last Monday. Took the flagship elevator up to security, skipped the line and STILL subjected to full scrutiny of my drivers license and BP despite having pre-check. Then, when agents saw a candle I bought as a gift for my GF in the X-ray imaging, I was taken aside and given a full bag search and swabbed for explosives. The TSA agent apologized and humorously thanked me for my incredible patience and I responded, “no, thank YOU. I sincerely appreciate you guys’ attention to detail.” I felt much, much safer knowing they were being so diligent.

    So there you go. Chalk one up from the other perspective.

    PS: FWIW, ironically since I have been assigned a known traveler number, I have experienced MORE secondary screenings than ever. Go figure!

  6. I’m not a huge fan of the TSA. By any stretch of he imagination.

    But I’m even less of a fan of the author of that story. The ticket was for ROBERTMR. That makes the fact that her name is Roberta rather relevant to the story. I can easily see how a TSA agent would blow Robert verses Roberta, people see what they expect to see.

    The author tried too hard, IMHO, and made herself look bad in the process.

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