pgary

Some bloggers earn commissions for you using their links for credit card offers. Some of those bloggers will not list better offers for which they do not earn commissions. Others put the interest of their reader first. Today we have an opportunity to see which we can trust. The commissionable offers for the personal and business American Airlines credit cards earn bonuses of 60,000 and 70,000 miles resp each. But there are better offers of 5,000 miles more for each card. Here is how some of the more popular blogs deal with this.

• Doctor of Credit deals with it rather bluntly: Better Citi American Airlines Offers – Don’t Trust The Affiliate Links. Good for him.
• I always list the best offer I know of. If there is a better offer that I don't list, it is because I don't know about it. So please send me a link to it.
• FrequentMiler handles it well: 75K and 65K AA offers (non-affiliate)
• So does US Credit Card Guide: CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum Credit Card Review (2019.4 Update: 75k Offer!). And Citi AAdvantage Platinum Credit Card Review (2019.4 Update: 65k Offer!)
• View from the Wing touts the affiliate offer. He allows me to post better offers in the comments, but does not change his write-up to reflect those offers. His headline still says the affiliate offers are the biggest offers. They aren't. This is consistent with how he has handled previous similar situations.
• Million Miles Secrets touts the affiliate offer:Limited-Time Increased Citi American Airlines Card Offers! Earn 60,000 to 70,000 American Airlines Miles With Low Spending Requirements & Waived Annual Fees. AndIs the Citi American Airlines Platinum Select Business Credit Card Worth It? YES – If You Like AA, Travel Perks, or Have a Savvy Card Strategy. I posted the better offers in the comments section of the first post I mention. That post was promptly deleted. I wrote to him about this. I was very disappointed. He has always told us that he always posts the best offers. No response.
• The Points Guy has been the most flagrant ignorer of offers better than those for which he gets paid a commission. Choosing the Best Credit Card for American Airlines Flyers. Well, the ones he list aren't the best. I tried to post the better AA miles in the comments section of his write-up. This was listed as under review, then denied. This has happened many times before, though I keep giving the opportunity to change his ways. I think only once did made the mistake of allowing my post. He has received many angry comments from the miles seeking community for his policies.
• Frugal Travel Guy partners withcardratings.com, which lists only the commissionable cards. I have not posted comments or written to him about this.
• Flyertalk usually gets it right in the blog for AA cards, though it might take us awhile to get around to posting the best offers there and then discussing them ad nauseum.

To be sure,all of the blogs I mention add quite a bit of value to the vast sea of information about miles, points, and travel. I read them all regularly and list them in my section describing my favorite blogs. We just have to be careful about the information they provide about commissionable offers. Buyer beware.

estnet

Well I always do a web search to see if there are better offers - but you advice is good b/c I think most people don't.
In any case I only would use an affiliate link if I had some reason to want to reward the blogger rather than just going from the airline link ...or.............

mia

Him? The author of the article is female, and the site does not appear to have an identified owner, only a "team".

Staley Cornell

Thanks for posting! You are right, most people don't shop around and are too trusting.

ehallison

The original MMS blogger was a "him" named Darius...but it seems the blog has a big staff now.

(MTA: now that I've googled it, the references I've found refer to Darius and his (now ex) wife Emily being co-founders. When I used to read it back in the day, it seemed that he created the content and she was more of a traveling companion, but I could be mistaken)

mia

Indeed, but it appears "he" is no longer there in any capacity:

How is Darius formerly of mms these days?

erik123

ThePointsguy and MMO are owned by LinkOffers, Inc. Likely some other big Incs behind some of the others. It's big business - as is flyertalk.

akr1970akr

OP's counsel is generally applicable to everything on the internet. But thank you for pointing out the specific cases with each of those major blogs.

I don't think its reasonable to expect a blog to have any duty of care to their readers. Expect them to be advertisements, and act accordingly: caveat emptor

I find that the best content is on FT, reddit, and in the comments on select blogs (DoC et al), but I'm not a member of any private reddit or slack groups where (from what I hear) a lot of the best/great ideas are shared. There's enough actionable stuff out on in public that I have still do to, so I don't think I need to stretch for those.....