New TV Commercial Totally Undersells Chase Freedom Unlimited Card, Misses Most Lucrative Strategy in Points

Apr 22 2016

Chase has released its first tv commercial for the new Chase Freedom Unlimited Card. It’s a fantastic card, and a really good commercial, but they’re totally underselling it.

It’s a clever attention-getting card, and attention-getting ad, but they pitch it simply as ‘unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you buy’.

Getting the most value out of the product — 90% more — takes an extra step.

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United Taking Away Benefits in the Second Half of the Year to Get You to Pay More

Apr 21 2016

On United’s first quarter earnings call this morning they re-iterated a plan to roll out basic economy fares in the second half of 2016.

This isn’t about offering you lower fares. United already matches the low fares in the market. Basic economy is a way of moving some passengers who buy those fares today to buy more expensive fares instead.

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Man Gives Up Seat So Family Can Sit Together, Family Sells the Seat. Would You Be Outraged?

Apr 21 2016

Reader Adam P. paid $69 for an extra legroom economy seat. He researched the seat and chose the specific one intentionally. It’s a widebody aircraft, and an aisle seat in the middle section.

Onboard he encountered a family that was separated. He agreed to change seats. She then took $100 from another passenger to give up that seat, and sit farther from her family.

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How Airlines are Destroying Customer Loyalty, and Why That’s Bad Business

Apr 21 2016

Miles are still an amazing means to get premium cabin travel without spending a lot of money.

Redeemable miles are no longer a reason to choose to fly one airline over another. And if you’re going to earn elite status from your flying anyway, that’s great, and you should try to put yourself over the top of the next-higher tier you’d make naturally anyway.

But the airlines are diving head first into destroying their success using frequent flyer programs to turn a commodity product (a seat that gets you from A to B) into a differentiated one. By offering revenue-based programs for earning and potentially burning, they offer mere discounts to customers who had been the least price sensitive. By limiting benefits they give those customers who would spend more and never consider another airline little reason to do so.

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Donald Trump’s Plane is Illegal

Apr 20 2016

Donald Trump may want to build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it, but the wall won’t keep illegal aircraft out of U.S. airspace. In fact, Trump’s own Cessna has gone illegal.

An insurance company could refuse to pay out claims in the event of an incident with his plane, and he could be subject to “a civil penalty of up to $27,500, a criminal fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for up to three years”

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