I’ve appreciated the emails, the calls, the writhing pains of withdrawal. The last month has been so busy with work and travel and mostly mentally draining. There have been a hundred things I’ve meant to write about… Continental’s mileage devaluation, new credit card offers, this and that scheme or deal. I just haven’t had it in me. But I’ll be back by this week. I promise. So don’t go anywhere!
General
Category Archives for General.
Expedia’s New VIP Program
Expedia has launched a new VIP program for their frequent customers that is strangely like… their old VIP program. The program is called ElitePlus and offers fee waivers on changes and cancellations made through Expedia as well as a special phone number for assistance. Most of the world avoids Expedia change fees by making changes directly with an airline, for instance. But existing Expedia VIP’s (what they used to be called) got their fees waived. And a special phone number. That last part is a real perk, I’ve heard of 3-hour hold times when contacting Expedia but I’ve always had my calls answered right away. Sure, there are other throw-in benefits of dubious quality, such as ‘special sales’ (more spam?). The announcement email, though not the website, notes that Expedia elite members will get access…
American Express Bonus for Transfers to Hotel Programs
Through November 30, American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 50% bonus on transfers to Starwood, Hilton, Priority Club, and Best Western.In most cases this still won’t represent a good value. In fact, with the bonus, Hilton transfers are still shy of 1 Amex point to 2 Hilton points — which is what you can get all the time with a small dance of going Amex to Hawaiian to Hilton.Still, in the past I’ve transferred Amex to Starwood using a similar promotion. The normal rate there is 3:1 and this makes it 2:1. But that was before the Starwood devaluation…(Hat tip to the MilesLink Newsletter.)
The Downside to Being a Maximizer
It’s not just miles and points, I’m looking for deals in just about everything that I do. I don’t always sweat the small stuff, a dollar here or there, but if it isn’t costly to do so I will (I’ll grab frequent flyer miles or Fatwallet cashback even on a $15 purchase). I scrounge for coupons when making online purchases, I used to find Googling the online store’s name and ‘coupon’ would work but there are so many bogus coupon sites looking for their own referral commissions that it’s a pain to sort through. In addition to searching Ev Rewards for the best shopping portal returns, I also head over to the Hot Deals forum at Fatwallet (and to a lesser extend Slick Deals) and search for the merchant I’m buying from, it’s amazing how…
Checking the Status of Your Flight
Scott McCartney’s latest column is on the various flight status websites you can use to track a flight, monitor position, gate changes, etc. Frequent travelers know that airline websites, and those from the major booking services, are often lacking. The conclusion of the piece? That my own favorite and most used, FlightStats.com, comes out as most useful and reliable. (This is also the one which the KVS Availability Tool integrates with.) Not mentioned in the piece, one of my favotire tricks for United Airlines flight status is to check United Cargo, when a flight is delayed this site will give you the real reason why — useful when the airline doesn’t want to give you compensation, claiming that a delay is due to ‘weather’. Update: Upgrade: Travel Better reports that American’s cargo website offers useful…
Request Your Records
Unsecure Flight has sample forms online to request copies of records kept on you and your flying by the Department of Homeland Security.
New Starwood Amex Small Business Card Offer
As a companion to the best offer for the Starwood American Express (10,000 points with first purchase, 15,000 points for spending $15,000 in six months, and first year free), there’s a new best offer for the Starwood American Express small business card: free the first year, 10,000 points with first purchase and an additional 5000 points for adding free employee cards (1000 per additional card).That’s a potential 40,000 combined bonus Starpoints.
The Internet Porn Defense
The internet porn defense, or “I was just safeguarding my AdultCheck account.” Prior to starting Hawaiian intra-island low fare carrier Go, Mesa Airlines considered acquiring either Aloha or Hawaiian Airlines. Now that Hawaiian is back in front of a bankruptcy judge, they’re claiming their failures are a result of ‘unfair’ competition from Go, that Mesa pretended to be interested in an acquisition in order to learn their business strategies and use the data against them. (Of course, Hawaiian’s track record underscores the value of their strategies, ahem.) But Mesa had to answer the charges, and apparently Mesa’s CFO destroyed some computer files relevant to the case. Mesa had to answer in court for this, explaining that the deleted files were an accident, their CFO was just trying to erase all the porn off his computer.…
The Coming Spinoff of Airline Frequent Flyer Programs
Last week the largest shareholder of American Airlines publicly released a letter calling for the airline to spin off its frequent flyer program. Air Canada’s Aeroplan was spun off and is valud at about US$2.5 billion. The American program is ten times larger, but Aeroplan has a stronger relative position in its home market. Certainly, though, the AAdvantage program has to be worth nearly the $5 billion total market capitalization of the airline itself. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) covered the issue yesterday. United is also considering spinning off its program, as is Qantas. The Journal claims, though, that United in 2002 moved its 48 million-member Mileage Plus plan into a UAL subsidiary called United Loyalty Services LLC. Last year, the plan produced $600 million in revenue, though it isn’t a stand-alone company and…
Scare An Annoying Seatmate
Via Joe SharkeyIf you are sitting next to someone who irritates you on a plane or train. Follow these instructions: Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case. Remove your laptop. Start up. Make sure the guy who is annoying you, can see the screen. Close your eyes and tilt your head up to the sky. Then hit this link: Click here: http://boortz.com/mp3/archive/countdown.swf
