Eight years ago James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic that California high speed rail “will cost too much, take too long, use up too much land, go to the wrong places, and in the end won’t be fast or convenient enough to do that much good anyway.” Now the New York Times has caught on.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A Marriott Bonvoy member writes about a recent award redemption experience – a flight delay caused them to miss the first night of their award stay, so they got the free night certificate back and the hotel charged them cash for the missed night. They were fortunate the cash amount was only $153. I’ve seen it as high as $2000.
CLEAR is a private, fee-based service that takes your biometrics and lets you identify yourself with your fingerprints or retina scan instead of showing an ID. At airports where they’re located you can then skip to the front of the security line – whether PreCheck or regular security.
However at some airports, like Atlanta, the lines for CLEAR can be longer than regular PreCheck and as a result this confers no advantage.
PayPal updated its user agreement, and sent an email to business account customers, explaining that effective November 3 customers would be subject to $2,500 fines per instance of ‘promoting misinformation’ or “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable.”
If they deemed you to promote messages they objected to 10 times, or to have spread misinformation (in their sole discretion) 10 times, they could take $25,000 from your account. It isn’t clear whether – if your PayPal balance was $0 – they could withdraw funds from your linked accounts, but other areas of its terms would suggest this possibility. After an online backlash they’ve pulled the language from their update.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
There are a lot of sites that purport to tell you how much a mile or point is worth.
The range quality and rigor offered by various sites to value points is significant, I think. But what I stumbled across is that one company that puts these out cannot even agree with itself.
On September 29, a woman flying Star Alliance airline Aegean from Athens to Amsterdam decided to let it all hang out. Her hair, that is. Sitting behind her was a food blogger with a big internet presence. So I’m not really sure she minded, for her it was content gold even if the behavior was reprehensible.
Oddly the blogger comments on the woman’s beautiful and freshly-washed hair. But it did drape down far enough that it almost grazed the coffee cup on the tray behind her.
There is, a path where credit card rewards survive this legislation if it’s passed. They’ll just look different. The key is that financial institutions with less than $100 billion are generally exempt from its requirements.
As a Dallas-based airline, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that American Airlines doesn’t know what a bagel is. There’s really strong Asian food in Houston (especially Vietnamese) but not as much in the Dallas Metroplex. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the folks working on American’s food and beverage team aren’t familiar with Asian cuisine, either.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
