A month ago American AAdvantage announced an exceptionally generous 2013 ‘elite rewards’ program offering choices of additional rewards for reaching milestones between the various elite qualifying levels. Unlike in past years, the offerings are based on miles flown and not just the more revenue-based ‘points’ system and in addition all members are eligible to earn rewards at each milestone rather than just earning rewards for exceeding requalification for their current status level. Put another way, an Executive Platinum (100,000 mile flyer) like me can earn rewards after 40,000 and 75,000 miles — not just after 125,000 and 150,000 miles flown. This afternoon I received an email prompting me to login to the Elite Rewards page to claim my 40,000 mile threshold bonus. The choices after flying 40,000 miles, earning 40,000 points, or flying 45 segments…
About Gary Leff
Did You Win the National Car Rental #SummerOnTheGo Contest?
National Car Rental wants you to enjoy summer even though you may have to work. So they made some prizes available to give away to folks I could find that are combining leisure with their business trips. They provided iPod touches, gift cards, and swag. And I asked folks to tweet a picture of themselves adding leisure to a business trip or business meeting. The winners have been selected at random. The two winners are @Bruce_Charlotte who went to a Dodgers/Brewers game while in Milwaukee on a business trip and @barry1levine who went off to the lake while still in his suit. I think this tweet featured my favorite picture, though. He simulated a photo with some sort of stuffed animal to recreate adding leisure to a past business trip. Creative. But with random drawings…
500 Free Lufthansa Miles & More Miles
With lots of folks taking advantage of the 50,000 point signup bonus for the Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard® from Barclays (20,000 after first purchase and 30,000 more after $5000 spend within 90 days), there’s a heightened interest in Miles & More miles. Free Frequent Flyer Miles flags an offer of 500 miles for signing up for their newsletter. The Italian blog Frequent Flyer Italia says you can earn 500 Miles and More miles (Lufthansa et al) for signing up for its newsletter. Use Google Translate to read the blog in your language. It works very well in English. You need a PIN for your account before you can get this bonus, and apparently you need at least one mile in your account to get a PIN. Please tell me whether or not you received the miles if you live outside of…
Don’t Donate Your Points to Support Tornado Victims!
Mommy Points offers a nice roundup of opportunities to earn points donating to charities that support disaster relief, as well as opportunities to redeem your points for charitable donations. By all means review the list, perhaps it will inspire you to be more charitable than you otherwise would have been. At the same time, it’s worth considering the ethics and efficacy of small mileage-earning donations. Is it ethical to earn miles for your charitable donations? Is that even charitable? Will your donation actually benefit any of the causes that you think they will? Earning Miles for Donating to Charities that Partner With Frequent Flyer Programs is Probably Ok If a charity that you believe does good work also earns points for your donation, consider that — especially if it’s a charity that partners with the…
Time for American to Decide Which Bank Will Issue its Credit Card Post-Merger
In February I made a bold prediction that Citibank will remain the issuer of the American Airlines co-branded credit cards once American merges with US Airways. Some would say the prediction was not so bold, that the conclusion is obvious, but in any case I stand by that assertion. At the time I read through American Airlines’ year-end 2012 10-K filing (I was on the beach in the Maldives, so that makes me a very strange man) and was reminded, In 2009, American entered into an arrangement under which Citibank paid to American $1 billion in order to pre-purchase AAdvantage Miles (the Advance Purchase Miles) under American’s AAdvantage frequent flier loyalty program (the Advance Purchase). Approximately $890 million of the Advance Purchase proceeds was accounted for as a loan from Citibank with the remaining $110…
Crying Babies on Planes and the Social Sciences: Economics Tells You to Just Deal
Art Carden takes a Coasian law and economics approach and tells people who complain about crying babies on a plane to just deal. Of course, he’s more subtle than that, couching it in all social sciency language, [T]he bundle of rights you purchase with a plane ticket includes the reasonable expectation that there will be a crying baby or two on the plane. As one of his readers explains, “Your tickets are cheap because crying babies fly too.” Which isn’t quite true, in that your tickets might not be cheap especially coast-to-coast or internationally at the last minute. But in the limit this seems more right than it does wrong. Carden reframes the question not as ‘babies are a disturbance’ but as each side staking out a possibly valid position. There wouldn’t be a conflict…
It’s Called “Stealing”
Woman charged with keeping rental car for over year A 52-year-old Monroe County woman who allegedly kept a rental car for more than a year was arrested Wednesday, according to court records. Leslie Lindsay, of Stroudsburg, had rented the car on Dec. 30, 2011 from Budget Rent-a-Car, 2443 Lehigh St., and was expected to return it three days later, according to court records. The car was never returned to the Lehigh Street location or any other Budget Rent-a-Car locations. On Feb. 13, 2012, the rental car company sent Lindsay a certified letter demanding the car be returned, but it came back undeliverable, according to court records. Charged with ‘keeping’ a rental car? She had the vehicle nearly 8 months before it was reported stolen, and that’s six months after the rental company’s demand letter was…
The Very Best Basic Miles and Points Advice
I love Joe Brancatelli’s new column on loyalty programs. I wish I could write this clearly. But I have this compulsion to give too much detail, to hedge, to be completely accurate and so I avoid making too many useful generalizations. And I think that limits both my reach and my ability to help people. The advice he offers is generally sound, and echos what I write here though much more clearly and succinctly than I write it: The IdeaWorks study on award availability is flawed The best use of airline miles is premium cabin international awards. Only top tier elite status really gets you a good flying experience, but having some status can be helpful — the kind of recognition you pretty much get just by signing up for your airline’s co-brand credit card.…
A Strategy to Save Big on Great Hotels in France.. and Many Other Cities
Last week the AP’s Scott Mayerowitz was tweeting for advice on booking an award stay in Paris. Getting rooms on points for his nights was a bit of a challenge, I did see options but they weren’t for the best or most convenient places that he was looking for. I used points for my own Paris stay a few months back. But the advice I failed to offer Scott is that there are often better value ways to get rooms than award redemptions, and that it’s worth running the traps on all of them. I tend to see my points as currency. Some people view them as “free” and so they want t spend points to get “free rooms” rather than spending money. I won’t spend my points unless I’m getting some minimum amount of…
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 25, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Never Let a Mile Go to Waste: Always sign up for the program (and track your miles with a site like Award Wallet). Don’t Link Your Facebook Photo When You’re Trying to Stay Anonymous: Accor hotels exec caught posting glowing reviews of his chain’s hotels on Tripadvisor and writing negative reviews about their competitors. (HT: Udi A.) Stay in a Hotel Bed Even When You’re Home: The W Hotel Store has promo code MDXTW for 40% off through May 31 (sometimes the codes don’t expire when they say they will). Good deal if you’re shopping for a bed. I have the Queen Plush Top with featherbed (the more expensive pillow top mattress sometimes sees reports of a ‘memory’ and may not last as long). They’ve got good, overpriced…
