News and notes from around the interweb:
- Which one of you did this?? “Infinite money glitch” from General Motors, someone even managed to “pay off their $59,370 2024 Cadillac Escalade V loan.”
Reminds me of the IHG Hotels shopping toolbar glitch and also Southwest Airlines offering enough free points to Hawaii residents (when they first started service there and wanted to build a local customer base) to redeem for gift cards and people opened new accounts at scale.
The promotional points were too generous and too easy to obtain. The transfer system had no meaningful restrictions. And critically, there was no verification that transferred points came from legitimate activity.
Most loyalty programs prevent exactly this kind of abuse with transfer limits, account verification, or restrictions on how quickly you can move points around. GM apparently had none of these safeguards in place, or at least not effective ones.
The company likely designed the system assuming people wouldn’t coordinate mass account creation and point farming. That was a bad assumption. When you make free money available with minimal friction, people will find it.
There was a loophole at GM today that allowed people to stack 15,000 rewards points every few minutes.
Multiple people have reportedly paid off their cars. https://t.co/fp0XkLR0Ot
— RC (@ResellCalendar) November 25, 2025
- United taunts Southwest Airlines on Denver-area billboards. It’s gained tremendous market share there. Southwest finally shot back:
- If you’re flying actual first class, you’ll use the first class terminal. This looks pretty nice for elites:
New Lufthansa First Class Checkin Opening Soon @FRA
byu/yannicknef inLufthansa - Standing up on arrival, as soon as the seat belt sign goes off, is not rude – it is a moral imperative.
Is it okay to pop up from the aisle seat the second the boarding door opens? Travel expert @garyleff weighs in. What’s your take? pic.twitter.com/XeNcz55xcX
— Mackinac Center (@MackinacCenter) November 25, 2025
- Frequent flyers with PreCheck spend more time in airport security lines each year than infrequent flyers without it. Meanwhile here’s TSA at Newark last week still promoting the shoe carnival as a reason to get PreCheck. But sort of an odd symbol of ‘economically divided’ public spaces when it costs $17 per year (with renewal even cheaper).
“We used to all stand in the same line…and eat the same soggy hot dogs.”@WalterIsaacson on the rise of economically divided public spaces—from baseball games to TSA PreCheck—and the inevitable resentment it fosters. pic.twitter.com/NMiBJQ4Tcu
— The Free Press (@TheFP) November 24, 2025
- Ok, even if this holds flying Delta I do not think it can possibly stretch to include Frontier. This is the airline that’s too cheap for jet bridges and figures it’s fine to just have passengers weather the elements – they don’t get to dictate passenger attire. Besides the airline advertises $19 fares. Sure it comes with fees, but not the cost of a bespoke wardrobe.
Gary – I haven’t seen a video clip of you since I met you at BACON in Colorado Springs. I didn’t recognize you – great job on getting healthy!
I’d nearly forgotten about the IHG toolbar glitch. Still boggles the mind how people thought redeeming for hotel nights wouldn’t result in cancellations. There were better options.
“Frequent flyers with PreCheck spend more time in airport security lines each year than infrequent flyers without it”
Wait, what?
People that drink a lot consume more alcohol than people that drink very little.
The metric of concern is time per trip through TSA. But that’s not what you wrote.
Can’t tell if this is lazy headline writing, engagement farming, or slow news day.
PREACH about that aisle seat moral imperative, Gary!
100%
I watched the video clip and was in shock. I knew you lost weight but didn’t realize you lost that much weight. You look great and congratulations! How did you do it?
@ Gary. Don’t be like a Tarrytown/Westlake real estate agent…be proud of what you have accomplished, update your photo to the 21st century. BTW, the weight you lost, I found it here in Lakeway!
Gary, I’ve been reading your blog for around 15 years and enjoy it and I greatly respect the scope and breadth of your knowledge but it gets more than a little creepy when you try to present your personal views as facts, whether it’s “Knowledgeable/Smart Travelers do (insert opinion)”, your take on when to arrive at an airport, trying to make your view on armrest ownership a fact, or presenting your take on when to stand in a plane as an “imperative”.
Just say that you feel a certain way. Averring that “Smart” people do things just because you feel that way essentially says that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid. That’s not right.