I couldn't find a master thread for DansDeals (http://www.dansdeals.com) and I'm aware that Dan doesn't exclusively cover the travel/miles/manufactured spending space that most other bloggers we cover do, but he does spend enough time on travel/miles/MS that I figured a thread is in order.

Let me state that I'm a huge fan of Dan from the business perspective. I'm pretty sure he's making money in the Ben and Gary range but he goes about it from a relatively different angle. Sure, he mines the credit card space aplenty, but he also really works the affiliate angle - so much that, I believe, he prohibits talk of cashback and miles affiliate sites on his forums. He also has some regular sponsors like Plaza Auto Leasing and he has banner ads.

Part of my admiration of Dan is from years ago when he demonstrated extreme patience and willingness to help. He'd post about, say, a T-Fal deal at Amazon, and someone would ask in the comments about help with a rental car rate in Brazil. And Dan would answer these not-even-tangentially-related questions. Patiently. He really went the extra mile for his readers, and he built a really solid fan base.

Because he never allowed affiliate talk, things like the Amex GC deals never made it to his readers. That was a shame for them, but maybe a good thing for everyone else. Of course, his readers may have read multiple blogs like we all do, so maybe they learned from other sources.

Anyway, as an admirer but also critic of Dan, I wanted to open up the discussion.

I was especially annoyed with Dan this morning and he made me think of Gary's clickbait titles when I saw "Today Only: Save Up To 91% On Luggage And Travel Accessories From Amazon." Naturally, as a long-time reader of Dan, I was suspicious, but he does unveil great Amazon deals at times, so I took the bait. One such "91% off" deal is Amazon item number B0183QG0G0. That's a "Columbia Chill Out Three Piece Rolling Luggage Set" regular price $920.60, now $87.39. I don't know what a reasonable 'original' price for this item is, but there's no way it's north of $250 (it doesn't appear on Columbia's site - maybe it's even counterfeit?). The fact that he not only doesn't call out Amazon for this BS on the pricing, but attempts to use it to his advantage is both misleading to his readers and it furthers the deceit on Amazon.

I know bloggers aren't the Fourth Estate, but I expect better, at least, a little better, from Dan.