Christopher Elliott thinks that car rental companies are too quick to blame consumers for damage, and consumers too unwilling to own up to damaging cars. Both claims are probably true. As the last renter of a vehicle, a rental car company may assume you caused damage. But a car could have had pre-existing, undocumented damage or may have suffered an incident after the rental was returned. If you ding a rental car, and the company doesn’t say anything about it, are you generally the first to bring it to their attention? Although telling businesses they should stop doing what they’re doing, and consumers that they should behave differently too, is certainly tilting at windmills. I know that I do not look for dings and dents. If they aren’t major, I won’t notice them picking up…
Should the Details of Your Hotel Stay Remain Private? Should They Be Kept Easily Accessible to Police?
The Supreme Court has granted cert in the case of City of Los Angeles v. Patel, meaning they will consider the Los Angeles regulation requiring hotels make guest records available to police for inspection. The lawsuit is a ‘facial challenge’ to the regulation, meaning it argues the regulation is always unconstitutional as a violation of the 4th amendment, rather than the hotel owners bringing suit because their rights were violated in a specific case. The initial court split 2-1 in rejecting the suit arguing that a facial challenge to the law can’t succeed because without a specific fact situation at issue they cannot know that the rule is always and everywhere unconstitutional. (They cite precedent on this, of course, the details of which are beyond the scope of this post or my existing set of…
Opting in for a Targeted Promo, Big New Member Signup Bonus, and Sketchy Changes to a Hotel Promo
News and notes from around the interweb: Some reports of Barclaycard signing up consumers who ask for a targeted spending bonus on the US Airways Premier World MasterCard. 10,000 bonus Qantas points for new members who earn 10,000 points in their first 3 months of membership. United has a 20% bonus for transferring hotel points to miles. Conceivably a decent deal when redeeming Marriott travel packages, but hard to see myself taking advantage of this offer. My offer for IHG Rewards’ “Into the Nights” promotion — the most generous hotel offer in the market by far — has not changed. But others are reporting that the requirements for them to earn free nights are shifting after the promotion is underway. I’ve reached out to IHG to see whether there’s some sort of technical glitch, or…
8 Hours Only: 80% Bonus on Purchased Virgin America Miles
Tomorrow Virgin American will run an 80% bonus on purchased miles. They declare it ‘their biggest point bonus ever’ although they ran an 80% bonus about a year and a half ago, too. The offer will run 9am to 5pm Eastern tomorrow, Tuesday October 21. With this offer you’re paying about 2.9 cents per mile, which sounds high but Virgin America’s currency is somewhat deflated compared to most mileage programs. Virgin America’s points are worth 2.2 cents apiece towards Virgin America travel, so it’s not a good deal to buy points and redeem them on Virgin America. But it can be a good deal to top off an account towards a specific award. For instance, 30,000 miles is enough for a one-way San Francisco – London award in Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic, but that…
Today Only: 2% Rebate on American Express Gift Cards
BigCrumbs is offering is offering 2% cash back on American Express Gift Cards today only. That’s not the biggest bonus offered, but shopping portals have been removing Amex gift cards from their rebate offerings so this is the best we’ve had and my guess probably the best we’ll see. (TopCashBack still has them – at 1.5%.) Keep your personal orders under $5000 every two weeks to avoid the hassle of order cancellation, or scale it if you have a tax ID and make American Express for business orders. Citi cards code these purchases as cash advances, so you pay for the privileges and don’t earn points. Don’t use a Citibank credit card to buy American Express gift cards. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up…
CVS Imposing New Limits on Purchasing Gift Cards In One Week
The Forward Cabin reports on new gift card limits at CVS effective October 27. No more than $2000 total per person per day ID required for purchases of $300 or more Purchasing Vanilla Reload cards with a credit card ended April 4. But CVS has still been a useful place to buy prepaid cards. They’re placing new limits on the purchase of those cards, and it’s pretty clear they’re doing it because of concerns over fraud or federal financial reporting rules. That’s why they’re hard-coding limits of $2000 per single transaction into registers for purchase of prepaid cards, and why the memo to store managers warns about ‘structuring’ or breaking up larger transactions into smaller one. The memo warns that structuring to avoid reporting requirements is illegal, which points to the concern or motivation for…
A Great Rental Car Mileage Deal, and Airline Fee Increase for the Holidays
News and notes from around the interweb: Interesting article on American Airlines’ strategy in Asia 3000 Virgin Atlantic miles per 3 day Hertz rental. Book by November 17 and complete your rental(s) by November 30. Here’s what you can do with Virgin Atlantic miles. 10,000 or 20,000 easy Qantas miles “Winter is Coming” at Spirit — the airline will charge even higher fees over Christmas and New Years Here’s the best worst thing that can happen to you on vacation. How not to carry your neck pillow through the airport Passed along without comment. Apparently from London’s Luton airport. You can join the 40,000+ 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…
When Will American and US Airways Finally Become a Single Airline?
Pearls of Travel Wisdom suggests that the American and US Airways frequent flyer programs will be combined by year’s end. That’s 2014. I believe this is wrong. While they could always beat their timeline (although I’ve never known an IT project to finish under cost and ahead of schedule), public statements on integration are: Frequent flyer programs combine first half of 2015 (my bet is end of first quarter, although that could be aggressive — at one point I understood they were looking at late 2015). Single operating certificate in the second quarter of 2015 (target late April) Passenger service system (single reservation system) late 2015. The biggest challenges here are IT/data. I don’t think they actually know when the programs will get merged, they have targets but will do it when the IT is…
Don’t Take Advantage of American Express Transfer Bonuses!
Yesterday American Express came out with a 35% bonus on transfers to Virgin Atlantic. But Virgin Atlantic has the worst miles and hits you with fuel surcharges. Today they came out with a 50% bonus on transfers to Starwood Preferred Guest. Starwood points are awesome, but you’re still only getting 1 Starwood point for every 2 Amex Membership Rewards points. There’s the occasional person that’ll find some value in this offer. But most should hold onto their Amex points. There’s now also a 33% bonus on transfers to Hilton through November 30. Oddly, I don’t see the bonus when using Google Chrome. But it does come up for me using Internet Explorer. In any case, especially after Hilton’s massive devaluation last year (and that was after program changes during the Great Recession that was ‘the…
The First Class of Etihad’s Residence Butlers in the Sky Have Graduated. Here’s Who They Are.
When Etihad’s Airbus A380 takes to the skies, it will include the most luxurious accomodation by far in commercial aviation — in addition to what looks to be an amazing first class, there will be a single three-room “residence.” The residence offers: a single or double occupancy 3 room cabin with double bed, 2 dining tables, lounge room, private shower suite (4 minutes of water) and dedicated butler. The Residence is 125 square feet. The living room has a reclining sofa, dining tables, and a mini-bar as well as a 32 inch television. A door separates the living room from the bedroom and shower room. The bedroom has a 27 inch TV. The Residence can be booked with miles. Cranky Flier thinks the Residence is clever because it makes effective use of otherwise dead space.…
