Travel Hacking Cartel

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this query, so feel free to move it as necessary. I saw a Tweet today from Wendy Perrin with a link to a site called the Travel Hacking Cartel. Their sole purpose is to rack up non-BIS miles. They even "guarantee" 4 free tickets a year worth of points. Anyone have any info about this? I wouldn't even look at it if it hadn't been tweeted by CN Traveler guru Perrin.

I'm just wondering why you would want to pay $39/month to get the same information that is available here for free - and when it is presented here with more discussion, thought, insight, and expertise.

Yes, I've signed up for the cartel. The site has a number of deals that can be used to get frequent flyer miles/hotel points. The site also has a number of tutorials about how to earn and burn miles. It also includes an alert service for when deals happen.

The cartel works on a monthly subscription basis, with three different price points availible. The "guarantee" is that the cartel will provide enough info to get 4 free tickets- you still have to act on the info. The cartel does give you miles though for one of 3 programs (UA, AA or US) if you refer people and they sign on for at least two months.

My overall impression is that the cartel is for folks who don't necessarily want to wade through posts on Flyertalk and other blogs just to find a deal. Most of the deals listed can be found elsewhere, but I did see a couple of new ones that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

For $15-35 a month, it's not a bad deal if you have more money then time and just want to know what the latest deals are. If you have more time then money and are a savvy Flyertalker, then this site may not be as useful. However, it's just starting (signups began yesterday) so I'm waiting to see how useful it becomes over time.

If you want to find out more or to join, go visit the site (this is also my referral link).

And reading just this one forum can pretty much guarantee twice that or more.

Send your money to a charity instead and do some good in the world.

Can you post an example of something special you received from this site?

I looked at the home page but not much else to go by.

Right now, the site has 10 deals listed. Some of them include how to get Priority Club points for filling out some quizzes (something Gary Leff already covered in his View from the Wing blog), how to get points from Delta for signing up for a FedEx account and how to get Hilton silver status. So far, mostly stuff I've already seen elsewhere (except that Delta/Fedex thing, but probably just missed the thread about it on FT).

So far, not much the diligent FT surfer doesn't already know about. But I'm going to try it out for a month or two to see if it's worth the price or not. I've already found a way through it to score 2,000 more SPG points that I didn't know about before, so there are some nuggets of good info here and there.

BRG?

All things I've covered (along with other bloggers like Gary and Lucky)for free on my blog in the past week or so. What is it they say about imitation?
PC Surveys
FedEx deal
Hilton Status

If people don't have time to cruise FT all day and check blogs, you can easily sign up for RSS feeds so you get daily emails with key posts from good travel blogs.

I am part of the initial membership of the Cartel and I think you guys pretty much hit it on the heads. It's a newb friendly aggregate of travel and miles hacking methods and tricks. It might be old hat to this audience, but I don't think people who frequent these boards are the target.

It took me a while to get much use of of these board because I always felt like everyone was speaking in travel slang and threads went on for seemingly ever. I'm comfortable with using this resource now, but others might wanna pay to have their hands held.

Save your money

Visit daily:
FT MilesBuzz forum
www.boardingarea.com
thepointsguy.com
frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com

You'll find 95% of the good deals that way

$39/Month?????????????????? Wow, that's a rip. Perhaps for $39/year it might be a decent deal for some...but that's just crazy. Just a couple minutes a day or even a week at the sites listed above are all you need.

I think I remember coming across http://chrisguillebeau.com/ and was pretty much a blog trying to sell his digital books. One for $50 promising that after reading the book you'd come out with xxx,xxx frequent flyer miles. Basically you are paying someone $50 to then tell you to go earn miles for getting a lasik exam or hair club for men meeting. Spend $6-7 and pick up the Frugal Travel Guy's book which the money will probably go to a better cause in the long run.

Can someone tell me why they call it travel hacking? Sounds like a much cooler name for something that's not that fancy. You really aren't traveling to Europe for free... you are getting to Europe for a very very cheap price. If you have to sign up for credit card offers and spend a few $1k.. that's not exactly "free".

I wondered the same thing, if I was the only one who'd never heard of the phrase "travel hacking"...other than some article that was linked here on FT once recently.

There are things in life that some folks choose to pay for, which they could get for free otherwise with a small investment of time. More power to them, but the price seems pretty steep to say the least. This sounds like the old "pay $XXX so I can tell you how to make millions on real estate"

Moreover, is the service also going to provide advice and tips on how to redeem those miles? Warn about things like Starnet blocking? deal with new AA/BA fuel surcharges, creative routings? I can see a lot of uninitiated people ending up very disappointed and/or not realizing the value they could get once the miles are earned.

$468 could be put to use in a lot of ways to aid in travel goals,other than paying for free info.

Sure, sometimes there's a lot of superfluous info to wade through on some threads. And the occasional snarky response to a newbie inquiry, which is unnecessary. But some of that goes with the territory of online forums.

Plus, many blogs as noted above, and others, pretty much spoon feed you the info you need. FrugalTravelGuy literally walks you step-by-step through the recent Delta AMex/MR transfer-for-SkyMiles and MQMs deal.

I'd put that money towards new fees and taxes in 2011 instead. :-)