There are a couple of ‘blog awards’ out there at present, this site is nominated in both of them, but I’m not pestering you for your vote. Instead, I’m highly amused by the approaches others are taken. The Frequent Miler blog wrote an amusing piece on their supposed ‘campaign strategy’ for winning one of those. He’s doing opposition research on other bloggers and developing talking points, in case he has to go negative. About this blog? View from the Wing: Full time job, owner or partner in numerous businesses. writes 40 to 50 blog posts per day. Alien? Cyborg? Talking points: still researching (need to check that Cyborg angle) Commenter Rob wrote, View From The Wing is obviously an automated SEO-driven software agent set to draw advertising and referral revenue by posting highly precise content…
General
Category Archives for General.
Selling Vanilla Reloads at a Profit, Star Alliance Status Match, and British Airways Sticks it to Gold Elites (Bits ‘n Pieces for April 1, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: As reliable as a Delta.com award pricing error: A new alliance member means a bonus miles promotion. Double AAdvantage miles on all TAM flights in May There’s one born every minute: People appear to be selling Vanilla Reloads at a profit on eBay. The Onion: Flight Attendant Quietly Informs First Class Passengers Where Real Emergency Exits Are British Airways Sticks it to Their Top Elites, With No Notice: Reader Dave M. emailed me early in the morning on the 31st to let me know that BA started charging their top tier Gold elites award change and cancellation fees. The change was implemented without any advance notice — or any notice at all, as members haven’t been informed, it’s simply in the price quote details when making an award…
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Testing Higher Fees: Consider Signing Up Now
Scott at HackMyTrip writes, Wandering Aramean found that Chase is doing some research on its new applicants, offering variable annual fees that range from $95 to $149. All of them still waive the fee the first year, but it is worrying that they may be planning to make this card more expensive. The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is the best all-around frequent flyer points card and the best for beginners. It’s the card I’d tell people to get if they could only have one. That’s because: it’s got a strong bonus, 40,000 points after $3000 spend within 3 months plus 5000 more if you add an authorized user and make a purchase it’s a great card for earning, double points on all travel and dining it’s great for foreign travel with no foreign currency transaction fees…
Star Alliance Gold Status for Sale
Avianca LifeMiles will now straight-up sell you elite status. And with this change they fully supplant US Airways’ role inside of the Star Alliance. US Airways used to be known as ‘the official consolidator of Star Alliance premium cabin seats’ (HT: eponymous coward), the idea was that they would sell miles cheap and as a result let people buy the business and first class seats that the rest of the Star Alliance didn’t expect to sell for cash at a deep discount. No one monetized their frequent flyer program, and the award seats of their partners like US Airways. But now US Airways and American have merged, US Airways has left the Star Alliance. Fortunately Avianca LifeMiles has stepped up to the plate — with frequent discounted mileage purchase offers (selling miles even cheaper that…
Buying Vanilla Reloads at CVS With a Credit Card May End Chainwide By April 4th
CVS apparently sent out a memo to store managers that they would no longer be accepting credit cards as payment for certain prepaid and reloadable financial products, effective March 31. My favorite local CVS didn’t know anything about the change and indeed, despite reports by many that their CVS’ would no longer sell them Vanilla Reload cards via credit card, I was able to buy more yesterday. So what’s actually going on? The memo from CVS corporate seems genuine, and sent by the person there in charge of the product line. And yet not every store has stopped selling the cards this way. Some people have surmised that it’s really regional rather than nationwide, since some CVS stores have stopped selling these via credit card and others have not. More likely, some stores are enforcing…
IHG Rewards Club Introduces Digital Rewards
IHG Rewards Club, the hotel loyalty program formerly known as Priority Club that services the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental and related brands, updated their terms and conditions to account for a new type of reward. Digital Rewards. Selection of IHG® Rewards Club Digital Rewards will direct you to TFC International Limited (“TFC”), a third party provider which hosts this private label web site (the “Site”) and provides digital media download and streaming services (the “Services”) designed to enable you to access and purchase or redeem legal digital content (the “Content”). The Content may be transferred to you from third party websites, by third party content suppliers acting on TFC’s instructions. The Services are for your own personal and non-commercial use and you are not authorized to make any copies of any downloads or streams…
April Fool’s Day Travel Warning!
Watch out for mistake fares that can only be booked on foreign websites. And trip reports claiming new first class inflight amenities like hot tubs. They aren’t real. It’s April Fool’s Day. Be on guard. Don’t be fooled. Although I’m really tempted by the Rocketmiles “private collection” At least they’re offering bonus miles for their April Fools’ joke! Finally, I thought this was pretty clever. 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!
10 MORE Free Starbucks Stars Towards Status and Free Drink
On Sunday I posted codes for free Starbucks ‘stars’ which are credits towards free drinks and elite status. At the time, I noted the codes weren’t working for me and most readers found the same. And yet – oddly – yesterday they started working for most people. At least some of the codes did, and which ones worked varied by person trying them. I successfully added two of the three codes I had posted. http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt254/viewfromthewing/SbuckStarws_zpsb4e447ac.png But one of the codes still didn’t work. http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt254/viewfromthewing/ErrorSBuck_zpsb32df0fd.jpg This morning I went back and re-tried the code that didn’t work for me last night. And it went through. Furthermore, a fourth code was added in the comments and that one worked for me also. So I successfully added two codes (worth 10 ‘stars’) yesterday, and two more codes today.…
Free Starbucks Stars (Towards Status and Free Drink) Working This Time!
Yesterday I posted a deal for possible free Starbucks ‘stars’ which are credits towards free drinks and elite status. Most people reported it wasn’t working, and indeed I noted in my original post that it didn’t work for me. But since Dan’s Deals had success with it, I passed it along in case it was useful to anyone. Then today Ivan Y posted in the comments, Thank you! Didn’t have any stars in my account and 1st & 3rd codes worked 🙂 P.S. This was at 5:30 pm CST on 3/31. So I went and tried it again myself, the first code didn’t work for me but the second and third ones did. No guarantees it’ll work for you, but could be worth trying again. The very quick instructions and codes here. You can join…
Using a Credit Card to Buy Fee Free Stocks, Earn Points, and Generate Spending Towards Bonuses
I’ve seen plenty of discussion of the idea but haven’t covered the ability to buy stocks with a credit card (and earn miles, as well as generate spend towards signup and threshold bonuses) without a transaction fee. That’s because the particular company offering it, Loyal3, doesn’t execute orders real-time, so you aren’t buying in at an ex ante known price. So there’s some price risk. Plus it’s not really a costless way to earn miles since there’s both upside and downside in the pricing of the investments you’re buying. I tend not to invest in individual stocks. There are very smart people who do that full-time and they get killed on it half the time. As a casual observer, even in industries where I have great familiarity, I consider myself at a disadvantage. Instead, I…
