benzemalyonnais

I don't think the Points Guy is useful for information, since he knows no more than I do. His posts are like stories and not useful. He's just showing off being in BA f. The trip reports on a.net are more authentic. I also don't like how he does stupid things like paying 1500$ to get upgrades or stays in 600$ rooms. It's a points website and should be about maximizing savings.

belfordrocks

+1

Other than the banner ads and the silly box at the end of every post plugging the Chase cards (blocked thanks to ....... Plus), most of the content on that blog seems to be nothing but panhandling for referral links. It started out well, but then the posts ended up being about silly topics such as the $200 Amex airline credit... Come on.

There are also other blogs guilty of referral link panhandling- anyone remember Miles Momma who used to post here a lot trying to get referrals- and a couple of others as well.

Also noticed a dilution in the quality of Boarding Area blogs- back when it was just Gary, Ben and Dan plus a couple of others the quality was a lot higher, but now there are more and more "content-free" blogs...

Now speaking of good blogs, I'd (again) recommend some of the pilot blogs- FL250 by Captain Sam is one of my favourites, as well as FL390 by Captain Dave. Things in the Sky by Dan Webb is still one of my overall favourites

Other than the aforementioned issues, some of TPG's stuff is factually questionable as well. He mentions BA/Avios awards as good value, but neglects to mention for short haul awards, LAN offers awards for just 6000 km's (2.4K SPG), over the 4.5K Avios required- not to mention fuel surcharges. And recommending one transfer Chase points to Avios is just silly at best...

coremill

Yeah, I don't really care about product shilling as long as there's full disclosure. And for the most part they do disclose that they receive referral fees. The problem lies in the murkier areas where there's not a strict pay for play but they get some special treatment. If you know how strict AA normally is about handing out SWUs, you'd have to be hopelessly naive to think that they'd just give 2 of them away as ''compensation'' for a one hour delay due to their ''fantastic customer service''. I searched the AA compensation guide/list thread (which has more than 2000 posts over 9 years), and I couldn't find a single example of anyone being given extra SWUs as compensation for ANYTHING, let alone a 1-hour delay where you traveled in the same class of service in a better product. Occasionally people had SWUs reinstated (e.g. you upgraded to J but the seat didn't work properly, so you got the SWU back), but that's obviously not the same thing.

ma91pmh

Actually the Amex $200 airline credit is interesting to me but his handling was very telling - saying that buying gift cards is not allowed under the terms & conditions and he didn't really encourage it. Basically he was trying to please his master! The threads on here are FAR more useful sources of information for making the most of that benefit


Really sad but have to agree. View from the Wing in particular it is really sad to see. That was a real high quality blog, I use to be enthused to see new articles and always found them well written and insightful. Nowadays every other post is about credit cards, or has a link to credit cards. I am guessing Gary got tired of seeing all his buddies pulling in high five / six figure sums and wanted his share of the action

Will give these a try for more interesting reading. Out of the BoardingArea gang I think Seth's Wandering Armenian is my current fave. He has started blogging more it seems and always something interesting. And never any mention of chase frikin this or amex that. I also really appreciate Ric's LoyaltyTraveller, you can see it is is generally well thought through

teege

Huh? Going to have to disagree. I think TPG is where I first found out about how serious the Avios hit was going to be. I think I also find out about most Amex transfers through his blog. These are just recent examples. Knock him all you want, he's a great resource.

teege

It's funny—if he gave step by step directions how to rip off an Amex benefit he'd probably face brutal comments. His blog is a lot more public than random threads in FT. Leaving out ways to circumvent the rules was probably the right call, and likely benefits most people who do circumvent the rules (i.e. Amex is less likely to fix the glitch).

fti

True.

Censoring? I know deltapoints.com severely censors his comments.

I notice it too. Even Gary's blog has taken a quality nosedive lately.

sbm12

My understanding is that many of the MegaDo group got that. AA isn't stupid and they know that pissing off a bunch of very vocal customers that paid a lot of cash for that trip as part of a marketing junket would be a bad idea. I'd say they probably went too far, but they certainly were in the ballpark of what is smart. This wasn't just a normal flight cancellation and they knew it.

josephstern

What drives me nuts about half of these blogs, these days, is that they are adding travel reviews.

Especially on TPG, there are reviews of restaurants, hotels, and meals on planes. OK, if you are redeeming points, you want the best you can get, so maybe there's a bit of an overlap, but certainly not with restaurants, which you can't get by redeeming points.

I've seen Chinese tour guides, spa bathtubs in Turkey, and zip lines in Costa Rica. None of these guys are experts on this stuff; when I want info about it, I'll find it on TripAdvisor or somewhere else.

I read (works in past tense) these blogs for tips on accumulating points, and inventive ways to use them. I feel like these bloggers are all losing their focus.

Maybe it's the credit card thing? They thing that more content is necessarily better to get more credit card affiliate commissions, so they'll put up any blog post remotely related to travel, just to pump their commissions?

With the recent proliferation of these bloggers, and with the loss of focus, I'm driven back more and more to FT.

benzemalyonnais

Yes - as a sort of expert on China I found it ridiculous that he would post that review about a trip that didn't have anything in it that I would consider to be a good value. And he was writing like it would be scary to fly on a Chinese airline in Y. Frankly his travel advice wasn't good and it had nothing to do with POINTS.

HikerT

I agree - I can't think of a more complete resource, especially for those who are less than knowledgeable. Unfortunately those are the readers who will suffer the most from bad advice.

ingy

I only got two swu's and the points guy really got four

thepointsguy

Actually it was 8. But I heard mommy points got 10 and she wasn't even on the TATL portion!

PS I dont censor or even moderate comments- there was a mis-checked box blocking comments on the BA post that was a result of posting it from my iPhone. Feel free to comment away!

wijomas

I got 14 because I'm a foreign citizen

ThreeA4Me

He got four! That's outrageous.
Someone should start a criminal investigation! Marjorie, get
me DOJ on line 3