Travel Hacking Cartel

If the cartel provided a guide and glossary to the whole trick it / negotiate it thread, I'd pay some money for it. But I'm guessing that's "beyond the scope".

And then again, maybe someone on this thread will say "you ignoramus! A guide to the trick/negotiate thread is already posted on flyertalk! Here's the link!". And once again, FT will have saved me money.

Thanks for the tip, but for a $1.00 I'll let him have it for convincing me to sign up. If only I could shove a dirty George Washington in his mouth.


; )

I think the Travel Hacking Cartel is over-priced, even for its target audience. I made use of the trial to check it out. I think it's a useful product that has its place for some people (though probably not anyone reading this here). I'm relatively new to this whole world myself, and found my way to FlyerTalk because of Chris. And I learned some valuable things on the site. But it seems rather expensive, even for the cheapest plan.

I've been disappointed by the service.
The site is beautiful but the information has no added value and it is just interesting for the newbies (which is the vast majority of travellers anyway).
There was a guarantee of 100k miles even for non US people but as a non US guy, and without the possibility to enjoy the CC deals, all I saw was just a few 100 miles offers for surveys and sign ups. I haven't able to redeem more than 1k miles (and the worse thing is all these miles are in different accounts) in two weeks which is far from the garantee.
There are a few videos which explain the basics to people new to this world but nothing really original.
Chris is a great guy and he writes good articles but this service is really overpriced.

I'm going into my thirteenth day. If the average noob gets on slickdeals or fat wallet or any other discount site and searches for mile deals, they are more likely to do better.

The site gets my pants no more excited than watching my grandmother peal a grapefruit.

+1

I love the Frugal Travel Guy's singular and undying devotion to credit card sign-up bonuses. That's mostly what I get, and what I expect, when I visit his blog.

Used to follow gleff's (excellent) blog View From the Wing, but ceased when it became a showcase for photos from fancy hotels, restaurants, food, and and airport lounges. Quite valid but not my thing at this point in my life. I'd rather go more places with greater frequency at low prices than, say, save up miles to fly business and first class. I don't begrudge those who do. But I simply don't rack up enough miles and points to pursue the luxury angle.

What other blogs can I follow where, right on the main page without any drilling down, I can learn about frequent flier credit card bonuses? That's my main chief interest at the moment--accumulating more miles and points through initial sign-ups since I rarely have the opportunity to travel for business.

Basically, I want to read another blog or two to be sure I don't miss anything that the Frugal Travel guy might have. That said, I applaud everyone out there putting up free content related to loyalty travel programs and how to play them to our advantage.

I know there are blogs that list deals if you drill down far enough, but some are a bit dull. I prefer blogs that also have narrative and a perspective like the Frugal Travel Guy's blog. It makes keeping up with the latest deals entertaining as well as profitable. FTG, thank you for all you do.

Update:

Perusing View from the Wing just now, it seems there's no longer a preponderance of luxury hotel, food, and posh lounge postings. Looks to have interesting content relevant to me again. Perhaps I caught it during a limited marathon of posts whose themes I didn't care for (e.g. long photo essays of luxury stays).

Amen Aschuet!

Do you mean
"$468 can take you pretty close to a UA 1K with intelligently booked flights" ?

http://manvsdebt.com/travel-hacking-for-noobs/

He's apparently selling an ebook for $49.

I am a new member on here, but have been reading FlyerTalk for about a month.

Because I consider myself a beginner, I signed up for the 14-Day $1 Trial of the Travel Cartel. Unfortunately, even I didn't learn anything new, and I don't have a whole lot of experience.

Worse, I cancelled on Day 14, and was still charged $39. I have initiated a credit card dispute for the $39 charge.

And as pointed out earlier, he does not offer a money-back guarantee, he apparently just gives you extra months of membership until you get enough ideas to garner the 100,000 miles per year he guarantees. I got much more than that by reading on here for about 10 minutes... for free.

And it just makes me mad, when businesses don't honor their word about refunds, or charge you after you cancel. I feel cheated.

Also, there seemed to be very little difference in content between the $15/month membership, and the $39/month membership. They were both equally as useless, to someone that reads FlyerTalk, or any of the free blogs already mentioned.

In one of the videos, he suggests opening an ANA account, in order to search for Star Alliance award availability. I had to find out on my own, from FlyerTalk, that his info was out of date, and that you now have to add miles to the ANA account, or use workarounds, to use that ANA tool.

I did get one good idea, and that is to basically get a round-the-world ticket in business class, for only 100,000 miles, by using Air Canada miles, which allows you to cross the Pacific, and then the Atlantic, with a stopover, on the same ticket.

I guess that idea was worth the $1 that I paid for the trial.

Well, I am just grateful to have found FlyerTalk, and to have all of you helping me instead!

Even though these threads require a little more reading sometimes, it is much more valuable... and free!

^

First, there are 3 different plans, $14, $25 and $39 a month. Not everyone will do the $39 a month plan.

I did the introductory 2 week period. It has a lot of good information on earning miles and redeeming miles. This would be a good for newbies or people who don't have time to search the FT forums. But, it is overpriced. I'm good with the $1 I spent for the trail, but I only saw 1 thing on there that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

a $1.00 app is about what this thing is worth.