iDine/Rewards Network - Looks Like Double Miles on M - W Is Ending

There was an earlier report that RN had slashed the cash rebate for those not earning miles. Now, it looks like they are following suit with respect to double miles -- there are no double miles for 10/5 - 10/8.

Stock up on gift cards this week!

Thanks for the sad post.

With the lack of miles, bonuses and the like, my iDining has gone 'waaayyy down this year. At the same time, Open Table 1,000 points dines have been proliferating, and at generally a better class of restaurants (with precious little overlap,) so I have been enjoying some of those (equivalent to a $10 rebate on a dine.)

At least in my case, RN does not know how to incentivize me as they pare back the benefits to increase their margins.

I'm gonna miss this along with the UA "Sky's the limit bonus." For example, I just had a birthday dinner at a participating restaurant. $200 bill and I should get 1000 normal miles, 1000 for the M-W bonus, and 1400 (Sky's the limit 700 for every $100 spentX2) for a total of 3400 which comes out to 17 miles per dollar. Not Bad.

Definitely disappointing. At least I maxed out the last 5K promotion...now I'll just start burning the GCs that I bought in Sept. and wait to see if any other promos roll around.

The promos are rotating between programs. Programs that had a promo last quarter don't tend to have one this quarter, but program that didn't have a promo last quarter (or at least not the same one) have it now.

Last quarter I did a promo giving me 500 bonus miles for every $50 of accumulated dines at AA, a similar one at NW (with different amounts of bonus and threshold), and registered for (but never participated in) a similar one at UA (with different amoutns of bonus and threshold). Now all those are silent, but AS (where I had only been doing one dine a year to keep my miles there alive) just sent me an email a week or so ago about a similar bonus (again, different amount of bonus and threshold, but otherwise identical) but for foruth quarter, so this quarter I'm focusing on AS (until/unless someone whose miles I care about more comes up with a bonus late).

But this general strategy is not new: For years I've found it to be the case that different airlines have the best bonus at different times, often non-overlapping, and you can only max out bonuses if you beling to dining programs for several different airlines and "follow the bonuses" (as opposed to always sticking with only one airline).