PointsHound

Ever being tired of having so many reward and cashback programs, never knowing the passwords and never having enough points to actually redeem anything of value?

Well, let me introduce you to PointsHound. PointsHound is another cashback program but it allows you to be paid in miles in a program that you already use.

I have used it for the past six months and have found it pretty amazing to be honest, letting me earn miles with United Airlines MileagePlus, American Airlines Aadvantage, Delta Airlines Skymiles, BestBuy etc.... Miles have always tracked properly and posted within the allocated two weeks after check-in. This is a nice way to top-off an account with reservations and purchases you would make anyways.

I have found PointsHound particularly useful to book reservations for hotels that do not have any reward program at all or hotels that have reward programs that you do not use (think resorts in LasVegas for instance or resorts outside the US or even a non-chain motel).

Plus, by enrolling through this special PointsHound link, you get an extra bonus of 1,000 miles posted to your preferred reward program after your first hotel reservation. Pretty nice deals I think! As usual, if you are not happy with the service you can always cancel the account after your first bonus has posted. Pretty sweet!

Plink

I have heard for quite a while about Plink but did not find any opportunity to try their services. Plink.com is another website that allows you to earn points for in-store purchases at participating merchants. Some of these merchants are those very merchants that you use every now and then and for which you never have any point, mile, cashback or any other incentive to go.

Luckily, Plink solves this matter and you can now earn points to redeem free giftcards by bringing your business to participating merchants. In the list of merchants, I have seen KMart, 7-Eleven, Arby's, Footlocker, Dollar General, OldNavy, Taco Bell and many others.  At 7 Eleven for instance, a $25+ purchase will earn you 250 points which can be valued at $2.50 which is 10% back. Nice deal!

How is the valuation done? Well you may redeem your points in 500-point increments and you can redeem them for many different gift cards including Walmart, Amazon, Barnes&Noble gift cards at 100 points of the face value. For instance, 500 points earned at 7 Eleven can buy you a $5.00 Amazon gift card. Awesome!

Sign-Up here to earn giftcard for your everyday purchase

A: Sign up for Plink here
B: Link your credit card to your Plink account
C: Add any merchant to your Plink Wallet account
D: Finally, shop in store and earn

Shop and earn!

Unethical advertisement by Southwest Airlines

Today Southwest Airlines sent a flyer with 30% off base airfare on selected dates in September. When comparing these selected dates with nearby and comparable dates, I noticed that the selected dates were already systematically and artificially increased.

Why send ads claiming 30% off when Southwest purposefully deceive and mislead customers by first raising the airfare on those very dates?

Example:
ATL-OKC on 1-6-17-24th of September:
Advertised price is $170, with the discount it is $126 for a one-way flight in the round-trip ticket.
All nearby and comparable dates in September (5, 16, 18, 19 of September) have at least one $148 base airfare.
Discount, yes but 30% definitely not. More like 10%
Unethical

US Airways Credit Card

Final call for the US Airways Credit card

I just received today the latest offer from Barclays Bank Delaware for the US Airways co-branded credit card. This is a solid card with a nice offer that is going to vanish soon. So hurry up! It is well accepted that Citi will be the new credit card issuer for the combined American Airline / US Airways once the merger is complete.

So probably one of the last opportunity for astute travelers to grab the Barclays US Airways Mastercard before it disappears for good. Remember, this comes with 30,000 miles free which is sufficient for more than one domestic round trip in North America on US Airways or any of its Star Alliance partners such as Air Canada or United Airlines. It may also be used for a free one-way ticket to Hawaii and an off-peak flight to South America or Europe. There is an additional 10,000 miles leading up to a 40,000 mile offer for balance transfers but I do not particularly recommend that.

In addition, you get two $99 companion-certificates for roundtrips within the 48 contiguous states and Canada. This can be of significant value for high-value airline tickets such as the ones for major holidays (Thansgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Christmas) when airfares skyrocket.

The US Airways Mastercard will most probably disappear once the American Airlines and US Airways merger is complete which is scheduled to happen later this Summer. So this is probably one of the last opportunity to apply for this credit card.

You can apply here for the US Airways card.

Some of the benefit are given below:

For a limited time, you can earn up to40,000 bonus miles with qualifying transactions on a new US Airways Dividend Miles Premier World MasterCard.

Start earning benefits such as:

	30,000 bonus miles with first use
	Up to 10,000 bonus miles on initial
	balance transfers
	First Class check-in and Zone 2 boarding2
	Annual certificate redeemable for up to
	two $99 companion tickets

United Airlines Mileage plus adds award change fees for non elite customers.

These are my thoughts regarding the recent enhancements of the United Airlines Mileage Plus frequent flyer program. For quite some time, Mileage Plus has been one of my preferred frequent flyer program even though I was based outside the traditional catchment area of United and Continental frequent flyers.

It has been well publicized during the past year that United Airlines CEO, Jeff Smisek, has carried on a campaign against the “over-entitled frequent flyers” although with a questionable track record for United Airlines. Along this line, came yesterday the announcement that the frequent flyer program would add some revenue requirements for earning Elite status.

What is new however is that this campaign has been extended and now also target what I will refer as the general public. I learnt this morning with shock that United Airlines has added some new fees for changes made to award flights outside of the 21-day period. This is definitely a non-customer-friendly step that I believe is in the wrong direction. 

After all, even the famed former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall said recently “I think the airline industry is making a fundamental mistake when they rely as heavily as they are now on ancillary revenues. The industry cannot have a long future if they are focused on hosing their customers”

It is well admitted that using and reserving capacity constrained awards can be difficult due to the lack of availability at many desirable dates. Some frequent flyers try to grab seats almost a year in advance and as soon as awards become available and before they are gone to other customers. Most of the time, this is done without a full knowledge of our own schedules, meetings and vacations for the following year. However, customers were still allowed to change their awards without penalty whenever more desirable dates became available or if their business schedule warranted so. This will no longer be the case.

Besides, this new fee has nothing to do with costs. Instead it is merely another revenue stream, trying to nickel and dime customers. Indeed, the cost for United of letting customers change awards more than three weeks before departure is minimal. On the other side, changes made less than 21 days in advance, when it becomes critical for United Airlines to find new customers to replace newly vacant seats have always come with a fee which I believe is fair.

I urge United Airlines to reconsider this decision although I am skeptical this will be the case given the recent consolidation in the airline industry and the resulting bargaining power legacy/network airlines now have compared to their customer base. I will nonetheless reconsider my flying choices whenever I can because I don’t want my business to favor non-customer-friendly airlines.

Let me also add to this that I am quite annoyed by the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Transportation that drink the airline kool-aid and that keep letting legacy airlines consolidate and therefore reduce competition. With only three major network carriers remaining in the United States, it is no surprise they are making so many customer-unfriendly moves. Yes, I know there are also some other supposedly low-cost carriers but their networks and particularly their international networks are very limited. I can't fly JetBlue to Guam, I can't fly Frontier to Bangkok and I can't fly Southwest to Dubai...

Conga

As I mentioned before, this blog will go in a different direction from now on. Besides the usual trip report, new posts will be added regarding the subjects listed below. The general theme for this blog will still be travel but more emphasis will be given on the booking aspect and how to score great bargains.

• Travel bargains
• gaming the system with mileage running
• Free money laying around for us to grab!

Free money laying around for us to grab!

Let's start all this with the third point. If you hate leaving money on the table then you are like me and there are thousands of ways to earn free money out there on your everyday purchases. Let me introduce you to the world of cask-back portals. 

Cash-back portals basically work by funneling prospective customers to merchants. Each cash-back program earn a commission whenever a customer reach a merchant and make a purchase using a referral from an cash-back portal website. This commission can be quite large ranging from less than 1% to easily over 30%. Hence why the cash-back business is thriving  

Now, how can these cash-back portals entice you to make your everyday purchases through their portals and therefore earn money? Well they simply give back to you a fraction of the commission that they earn. In the end, this means that you will earn as cash-back a percentage of your spending. 

However, not all portals are created equal. Some are giving you back more than others, some are giving less.

One of my favorite cash-back portal is MrRebates. MrRebates consistently scores some of the highest cash-backs out there and is therefore my preferred. Besides this, you can choose when a check is being sent to you with all your hard-earned money (minimum $10.00 apply)

MrRebates Link

Another of my favorite cash-back program is Ebates  Ebates also have some of the highest cash-back out there. In over a year I have had all of my transaction post within two weeks. Ebates sends cash-back checks four times a year

Ebates Link

Start saving now!

Alex

A new start for this blog!

Hello All,
Long time no see...

Just to let my readers know that this blog will undergo a surgical transformation to transform itself in something new and something much more exciting!

Stay tuned!

Alex