Silvercar is a new car rental outfit that only rents Audi A4s and gives you: Free GPS, wifi, and satellite radio Free toll tracking (you pay the tolls you consume, with no markup) If you don’t refuel the car, you pay a $5 admin fee and the local rate for premium gas. They’re currently in five locations: Austin Dallas – DFW Dallas – Love Los Angeles – LAX San Francisco – SFO The business model isn’t a clear no-brainer, they used to have a Houston Hobby location but that’s been closed. Lucky noted that discount code AFF-FTD is good for $50 off a rental through June 30. And since rates start at $59+tax for a weekend day, I thought I’d check them out for a one-day weekend rental I needed coming up. Entering the promotion…
Rocketmiles 3000 Aeroplan Mile First-time Booking Bonus
Rocketmiles is a hotel booking site with a limited number of hotels and in a limited – but growing – number of cities. It rebates you a potentially large number of miles for your reservations. (You generally won’t earn hotel points for your stays booked through the site.) You get to choose whose miles you want to earn for your stays. In addition to the standard bonus they are now offering a 3000 mile bonus for making your first booking by April 6 for a stay consumed by December 31 and earning Aeroplan miles. Qualifying Activity: To be eligible, the hotel reservation MUST BE BOOKED USING THIS PROMOTIONAL LINK (www.rocketmiles.com/aeroplan-3k-bonus) by 11:59PM CT on 6 April 2014 and travel by 31 December 2014 (a yellow banner at the top of the search results page will…
How Credit Cards are Made, Watch Planes and Get Hit By a Truck, and Inflight Streaming Video Coming Next Year (Bits ‘n Pieces for February 6, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: How a credit card is made. (The actual, physical card, not the benefits.. which themselves involve a negotiation between card issuer, card network, and co-brand partner.) Another US Airways flight gets hit by a truck. That’s costly, and they’ll need to make it up somewhere in merger synergies… The observation deck on top of the old Encounter restaurant at LAX will re-open Saturday. It’s one of the many great places at LAX (like the In ‘n Out Burger next to the Sepulveda Parking Spot location – free bus!) to watch aircraft. The end of digEplayers? Alaska’s CEO says they’ll add servers to their planes and start streaming 1000 movies inflight in a year. Good Costco joining deal. The Truth About the Luxury of Qatar Airways (HT: Lucky) It…
Pretty Proud of My Award Booking Partner!
Many of you know that I offer an award booking service. It grew too big to handle on my own, and I was fortunate enough to be able to partner with one of the real veterans and gurus in the frequent flyer game, Steve Belkin (known in online forums as ‘beaubo’). Steve is most famous for exploiting loopholes in frequent flyer programs like Aeroplan and United’s MileagePlus in a truly big way, scaling opportunities to earn millions instead of thousands of miles. And in that pursuit he has hired disable Thai rice farmers to fly in and out of the Golden Triangle area of Thailand, and New Zealand college students to fly to Europe for the summer. One of the really fun projects he’s had is called Competitours. For 12 days every summer, Steve disappears…
United Won’t Charge More for Connecting Flights on Partner Airlines (Despite Their Earlier Threats)
United’s big devaluation also creates a more complicated mileage program. There are distinctly different award charts for travel on United (or Copa) and for travel on United’s partners. The complication of course is that there are plenty of world destinations that United doesn’t serve. And they still want you to fly United for the major portions of the trip, since that redemption costs them less. The initial clarification was that you could add a partner connecting flight in a lower class of service than your United flight without forcing the higher partner award chart price. In other words, they said they were going to allow you to fly US – Europe on United in business class, and then Europe – Your final destination in Europe on a partner in coach and you’d still pay the…
What Changes Will Be Allowed to United Award Tickets Issued Before the Devaluation?
United’s big award chart devaluation which was scheduled to go into effect on February 1 was put off a few days but is now in effect. Lots of folks booked awards speculatively before the bloodshed. Transatlantic business class awards on United’s partners went up 40%. Some first class awards went up more than 80%. Of course, there were few changes to coach awards and to awards within the Americas. And a handful of awards actually get cheaper. But for Americans looking to travel to Europe, Asia, Africa, or elsewhere in premium cabins prices went up a whole lot. And for those who planned ahead and booked future travel under the old rates, there’s been lots of uncertainty about what kinds of changes to travel would be permitted without an increase in mileage cost to the…
New Groupon Restaurant Reservations Save Up to 40% Without Vouchers or Pre-Purchase
As Groupon struggles to find a new business model — they’ve learned there are no barriers to entry in marketing discounts, and that there’s limited appetite of businesses to pay to offer deep discounts to mooches (read: us) — one thing they’ve apparently hit on is restaurant reservations. (HT: S.) Groupon’s new service is Reserve. They offer reservations up to 30 days out, with limited availability at selected upscale restaurants in the following locations: Atlanta Boston Chicago Denver Long Island Los Angeles Miami New York City North Jersey Philadelphia San Francisco Washington DC Westchester There’s no vouchers or pre-purchase, just make a reservation and save up to 40% (though most savings in the 20% or 25% traunch). While it’s not as deep a restaurant pool as Opentable will offer, I’d definitely check here before making…
Here’s Why You Should Be Glad You’re Not in Sochi for the Olympics
Twitter is the new TripAdvisor, and in Sochi journalists are our hotel reviewers. And the hotel experiences there are very, very bad. (HT: rwoman on Milepoint) 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!
25,000 Bonus Miles for Booking at Etihad.com
I realize not everyone is going to be buying tickets on Middle East carrier Etihad. They fly from several US cities and are a pretty good way to get not just to the Middle East (they’re based in Abu Dhabi) but beyond to places like India and Pakistan. But some readers might be, and a surprising number are based in regions where this could be especially useful as well. Plus it’s a huge bonus: 25,000 bonus miles for online booking to any destination in any cabin as long as you book before February 15. That means a short hop, say, Abu Dhabi – Doha even earns the bonus. The only restriction seems to be that you have to enter your Etihad Guest number in the reservation at time of booking. There’s also double miles to…
The End of Newark, American Sells Miles Almost As Cheap As American Does, Or You Can Buy Them From Flower Companies and Get the Flowers Free (Bits ‘n Pieces for February 4, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: A few weeks ago I summed up the best mileage earning offers for flowers. United and American both have 30 miles per dollar offers with FTD plus 200 or 250 additional fixed miles. There’s also now a 35 Delta mile per dollar offer with FTD. Here’s where Southwest plans to fly non-stop from Dallas Love Field once the abominable Wright amendment limiting flights at that airport finally goes away. American has two stackable bonuses for purchasing miles that — through February 6 only — allow you to buy miles at 2 cents apiece. Of course US Airways and American are merging, and US Airways is currently selling miles for even less (and does so regularly). In another reminder that new management at American (i.e. old management at US…
