PlasticJungle.com, a website that allows people to sell gift cards, has a co-branded offering with United that allows you to turn your gift cards into miles. Basically you’re (a) selling your gift cards and (b) using the proceeds to buy miles. And this ‘bundled transaction’ turns out to be a bad deal, because they’re selling miles at way too high a price. Now they’re offering a 30% bonus on the miles you’ll receive when trading in gift cards. And it’s still a bad deal. Here’s the website’s example of what you’ll get trading in gift cards: This example has you paying 2.9 cents per mile. Even accounting for gift cards being worth less than cash, that’s a bad price for miles. United’s coming devaluation on February 1 makes this an even worse deal. You’re generally…
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Category Archives for General.
Free Points for Joining Southwest’s Frequent Flyer Program
Join Southwest Rapid Rewards, and receive: 250 Southwest points for enrolling 500 Southwest points for subscribing to their emails (and staying subscribed for at least 3 months) 100 My Coke Rewards points You’ll receive an email with a claim code for the 100 My Coke Rewards points shortly after signup. (HT: Points, Miles, and Martinis) You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Free $5 From Amazon
Via Heels First, Amazon will give you $5 for downloading something — anything, even a free item — from their Android App Store through December 28. You can even be an existing customer of their app store, just update to the latest version of their app. You have to have one-click ordering turned on in order to use the credit. And app store purchases made via Kindle Fire don’t count. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
TODAY ONLY: 200% Bonus on Purchased LifeMiles
I only got an email reminder about the Avianca LifeMiles 100% bonus on purchased miles that expires in a few days. But GlobetrotterHQ received notice of a short-term 200% bonus. You can only purchase miles through this offer by calling a call center. Mommy Points didn’t receive the e-mail but confirmed with LifeMiles at 1-800-284-2622 that they would honor the offer for her. I don’t love not being able to take a screen shot of the offer myself (the graphic GlobetrotterHQ received notwithstanding), but it’s a fantastic opportunity to purchase miles at about 1 cent apiece. It’s likely targeted, responses from agents may very, I would call myself but I am inflight and bans on inflight calls remain in place (for now? hah!). Some will find it worth calling, though! When they joined Star Alliance…
Post-Christmas Open Thread
What’s On Your Mind? You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Would You Fly HERE?
I wouldn’t want to land here – I am not sure I would trust air traffic, or the ground controllers for that matter. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Spend Miles on Breast Implants, Drive Planes Like Cars, and Drink Like a Cathay Passenger! (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 25, 2013)
News and notes from around the interweb (err, mostly blasts from the past of View from the Wing: One of the strangest things you’ve been able to redeem miles for (breast implants). How to think about an All You Can Eat buffet Hilton’s big devaluation this year shouldn’t have come as any surprise since they were the only program to actually devalue during the Great Recession too. Planes should be driven more like cars. The recipe for Cathay Pacific’s signature cocktail Congratulations to Online Travel Review for his 10-year blogiversary. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest…
The Night Before Christmas Flight Safety Briefing
Many flight safety briefings are done by video nowadays, at least on aircraft equipped with inflight entertainment. But flight attendants used to do safety briefings live. In fact on a recent flight where the video wasn’t working the flight attendants were quite proud of themselves for ‘saving the day’ and averting a lengthy delay when the video didn’t work, they went ‘old school’ and did it themselves (they were quite nervous and out of practice). As long as all of the relevant information is included in the briefing, the particular verbiage isn’t dictated. So I’ve been on plenty of flights where it deviated from the standard script. Back in 1999, I think, I first heard “‘Twas the Flight Before Christmas” and it went something like this: Twas the night before Christmas on this [airline] aircraft…
Best Introductory Mileage Tips, The Inn of Bethlehem Reviewed On Tripadvisor and Questioning Airport Security (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 24, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb:Great basic lessons for earning and using miles from Scott Mayerowitz and Travel and Leisure 7 Reasons the TSA is Worse Than You Think (HT: Bill L.) US Airport Security is Just a Show (HT: Don H. The new American-US Airways merger commercial. Not very inspiring. Review: “The Inn” Bethlehem, Judea (HT: Jane F. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Hyatt Eliminating Stay Certificates, Weekend Certificates, and Spa Certificates January 7
For a long time Hyatt ‘Stay Certificates’ were a great way to buy Hyatt stays at a discount. For many hotels, Hyatt would let you make a reservation with what’s effectively a gift certificate that they would sell for less than the price of the room on the Hyatt website. Then, once you had a reservation in hand, you could buy the gift certificate. These stays wouldn’t earn points or elite credit, and weren’t always available, but could get you room nights in some very nice hotels at substantial savings. Back in January they fiddled with the pricing a bit, but overall these certificates remains ‘one for the arsenal’ at least. I did know they were re-evaluating their gift card (buy a card that serves as cash to pay for your stay) and stay certificate…
