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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Citi Platinum American Express Offer

Via Frugal Travel Guy, the Citibank Platinum American Express has comes packed with goodies: 15,000 Thank You Points after spending $300 on the card Free Priority Pass annual membership, with first three lounge visits included ($24 thereafter) For the first 24 months of cardmembership, receive 5 Thank You Points per dollar spent at supermarkets, drug stores and gas stations and 3 ThankYou Points per dollar on all other purchases. Annual fee waived the first year ($125 thereafter, I’ll consider keeping it for year two given the spend bonuses but definitely won’t keep it for year three). Thank You Points can be deceptively valuable I haven’t checked to see whether this card is eligible for Citi’s fixed point redemption chart, but if you link it to an Expedia account the points can be used with the…

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Up to 6,000 Worldperks Miles for New Northwest Members

Via Frugal Travel Guy, Northwest is offering new members who enroll by July 15 up to 6,000 bonus miles for flights. You will receive 1,000 Bonus Miles for any flight you take on Northwest Airlines or KLM within six months of enrolling. If you take a second roundtrip flight on Northwest Airlines or KLM during this six-month period, you receive 5,000 Bonus Miles.

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United Raises Fees on Award Redemption and Changes

United is increasing a variety of fees for redeeming awards effective May 15. Change fees go from $100 to $150 (matching changes United made to many of its revenue fares). Telephone ticketing goes from $15 to $25. “Close-in Processing Fees” (1) now $100 (from $75) for ticketing less than 7 days from departure (2) $75 (from $50) for tickets less than 21 days from departure — where the $50 used to apply less than 14 days from departure, so they’ve stretched out the period for this fee. This doesn’t appear to change the fee waivers of United 1Ks (100,000 mile flyers) who can still change their award tickets at no cost over and over, constantly striving for better routings and carriers to meet their needs (thank goodness). (Hat tip to One Mile at a Time.)

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A Snippet from Expedia’s Elite Customer Service

I booked a South African Airways ticket on Expedia yesterday. The person I booked it for wanted to include their South African frequent flyer number with the reservation. But Expedia doesn’t include South African in their long drop down box of potential programs. So I dropped a note to the Expedia Elite Plus email address. A couple of hours later I received this strange reply: Unfortunately, due to technical, regulatory, and/or other limitations, we currently do not support frequent flyer programs from all airlines. In this light, you would need to contact South African Airways directly and provide them with the passenger’s frequent flyer number. The number is 800-722-9675. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Technical, regulatory, and/or other limitations?Certainly there’s no regulatory barrier to adding a South African Airways frequent flyer number…

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A Mileage Run Primer

Lucky walks through how he goes about constructing mileage runs. A useful narrative for those that have thought about taking an extra trip to earn the next level of status (which is how I generally recommend mileage runs) or to earn redeemable miles.

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Improving Travel Photography

I’m a terrible photographer. I have a pretty good camera, at least as far as small digitals go, but I really don’t know what I’m doing beyond point and shoot. I’m also not a particularly steady hand, so I have a tendency to blur photographs (although fortunately my camera corrects for shaky hands to some extent — that setting I’ve figured out!). My picture taking strategy as a result amounts to take lots of photos. I don’t take just one picture of anything, I take several, on the assumption that some of them may not turn out and I really want to be sure that at least one does. Since digital memory is so cheap, I use pretty substantial memory cards, and I can just keep snapping phtoos at almost no marginal cost (ok, a…

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Generous Northwest Worldperks Online Shopping Bonus

Northwest is ofering 500 Bonus Miles for every $50 spent shopping at the WorldPerks Mall between May 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. Registration is required. The following merchants are excluded from the promotion: Blockbuster, FTD, Gamefly, Netflix, Teleflora and Vinesse. But otherwise all merchants are included. Gift card purchases don’t apply towards the bonus, except for GiftCertificates.com and Home Depot gift cards. Bonus is based on net purchase, excluding tax and shipping. The neat thing about this bonus is it isn’t offered on each purchase of $50 or more but rather is based on total purchases through the Worldperks mall. So your $20 and $30 purchases add up towards the promo. And the bonus can be earned multiple times, up to 50,000 bonus miles. This amounts to 10 bonus miles per dollar spent (if…

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