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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Summary of Free Stuff Offers

by Gary Leff

free electronics
Nov 12 2004

A summary of all the Gratis Networks free offers I’m aware of: free photoiPod free handbag free iPod free desktop computer free flatscreen TV Please email me if you come across another Gratis Network offer that I haven’t found yet. The offers are pretty simple. Sign up for the sites. Just click on the links and create your account. It’s quick. With most of the sites you’ll be given a bunch of offers and asked to say “yes” or “no” to them. Just say no, because replying in the affirmative doesn’t get you anything – those offers don’t help you get free electronics. (They’re just an extra moneymaker for Gratis Internet.) Check out the offers that you’re able to complete. My favorite by far is Infone, but it seems to be only sporadically available. If…

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Biscoff Cookies

by Gary Leff

delta-airline-plane
Nov 10 2004

One of the things I love about flying Skywest, a regional carrier in the Western U.S. for both United and Delta, is that they’ve long served Biscoff cookies. The Gourmet Center in San Francisco (which sells these wonderful treats) is now offering one Delta mile per dollar spent at their online store, plus 250 miles for each order (500 miles on orders of $75 or more). This isn’t the most lucrative offer on its own terms, but for folks like me who have long considered ordering the cookies anyway this gives me a pretty good excuse.

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Continental Bonus Miles for Online Ticket Changes

by Gary Leff

continental-plane
Nov 10 2004

Continental Airlines continues to push their website, this time in a new and interesting way.Airlines began by offering mileage bonuses for online flight bookings. This was win-win. They took business away from travel agents, and even reduced their telephone agent costs at the same time. This was worth well more than the cost of awarding bonus miles. Plus they figured they were changing consumer behavior at the same time, creating substantial long-run cost savings. Some of the most lucrative offers (such as America West’s offering 3,000 bonus miles per booking) have gone away as consumers have taken to the web for making travel arrangements. Then airlines began offering bonuses for booking award tickets online. While this doesn’t take business away from the travel agents, it does save substantial labor costs for the airline. Award tickets…

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One for the ladies…

by Gary Leff

free handbag
Nov 10 2004

The free photoiPod people also have an offer for a free handbag — a Prada mini-hobo, Kate Spade Pia Pochette, Burburry Novacheck Minisling, or Coach Signature Demi-pouch. For the record, I don’t know what any of those things are. But they’re authentic, and they’re supposed to be good. As with all of these offers, the key is to sign up for a free trial that doesn’t require you to spend any money. The best offer is infone, as it doesn’t even need to be cancelled. AOL is another good offer, you don’t get charged anything and have 45 days to cancel.Then you need to refer folks to the site who need to complete an offer. Unlike the free computer, which takes 10 referrals, the free handbag takes only five.

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Priority Club Blog

by Gary Leff

Priority Club, the loyalty program for Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and Intercontinental Hotels, has a blog which lists bonus point and redemption offers.Strictly speaking, I don’t know that this is an official blog of the program, but the offers read as though they originate directly with Priority Club and without any additional commentary.

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It’s amazing how much bad advice is out there…

by Gary Leff

One of the more common questions about miles and points is, “are my miles safe when files for bankruptcy?” And it’s amazing how many bad answers there are. This story in today’s Daytona Beach News-Journal may take the award for the worst advice yet. Responding to a question about Delta miles, Bob Desiderio writes:You have cause for concern, because while survivor airlines have in the past honored the mileage programs of bankrupt airlines (As Delta did for TWA customers), the major airlines now are hanging on the ropes and no one is stepping forward to help them. If an airline goes bankrupt and sells off its assets, mileage programs disappear because they are viewed as a liability; the eventual cost is transporting a passenger for free. So, in addition to using them or losing them,…

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New Travel Search Tools Online

by Gary Leff

Frommer’s has a new article on travel metasearch tools like Mobissimo, Kayak, and FareChase. These are sites which regular readers of this column should all be familiar with. The piece lumps these companies together with tools like ITA Software (perhaps the most powerful search tool, but rather complicated in some of its functionality) and deal advertising site Travel Zoo. The major item left off of Frommer’s list is downloadable hotel search tool TravelAxe.There are good descriptions of each of the sites in the Frommer’s piece, though you’re still better off using my own FAQs as a reference: How to find the best airfare dealsHow to find the best hotel deals

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Cheap Vegas

by Gary Leff

TripReservations.com often has some of the best rates on Vegas hotels. For instance, they’re showing the Statosphere hotel for $19 per night with several dates available. Not where I’d stay otherwise, but $19 is a pretty good rate.

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