Open Jaw

That's why I ALWAYS register for every program bonus even if it's not in my main program. I am always ready for that unplanned major dine with 15 friends who love to drink and eat! The last one netted me around 6,000 miles and $800 extra dollars in my pocket!

KathyWdrf

Oh, not to worry, I registered for the "10,000 Reasons" bonus the instant I got the e-mail about it!!! The fear is more that you have accumulate $250 in charges to get each 1,000-mile bonus, so an early termination of the promo could be especially frustrating.

sdsearch

As I recall, that one early termination did have advance warning. Sufficient warning, for example, to calculate how far you were to the next threshold (had it been a threshold bonus, though I think it wasn't) and buy a gift card at a restaurant to top it off if "natural" dining doesn't get you to a threshold in time.

And you sort have to go through the same thinking around the scheduled end of all such repeated spending thresholds promos (if they aren't terminated early) anyway, don't you?

(I, in fact, have to do it right now, to time my shift from my DL One Bite At A Time bonus, which is based on $100 multiples, to my AA 10,000 Reasons To Party bonus.)

lwildernorva

A head's up on a little bump in the road that occurred regarding the United promo. After registering, I got a confirmation email. I didn't bother to read the email but simply moved it to a folder where I keep my UA dining information. Then, yesterday, I got another email telling me that the earlier email may have contained incorrect information and that I would now earn 1500 miles for each spend of $250. I thought that's what I'd signed up for, but when I went back to check the original confirmation email, I saw that they had actually put in that I would receive 2 extra miles per dollar for registering for the "Get Ahead" bonus--the promo that occurred earlier this year. I checked my confirmation emails for US, WN, and PC but did not see any errors there.

An obvious mistake, but I've kept both emails. Some of my miles from dines under UA's program have posted and I have exceeded the first $250 level. It's too early for me to have received credit for the bonus, but I'll be checking to make sure no wires continue to be crossed. You might want to check your confirmation emails for your various promos just in case you have not received a second email to make sure you got the correct bonus information.

sdsearch

You also may want to check what is says on the BONUS page when you're logged into each particular dining program you've registered for a bonus in. In both the dining program (DL) where I have registered for my targeted One Bite At A Time bonus and the dining program (AA) where I have registered for my targeted 10,000 Reasons To Party bonus, it spells out my bonus terms on the BONUS page.

fbnewyork

Been using mostly IDine (15% back after the first $70), but had two 'inadvertant' AA Dines so far this year. So this will rais it to 11 miles per dollar (Base of 5, based on status, plus 1500/250=6 due to promotion), so I'll do the dines to requalify for next year (and see what that will bring). My wife called and tried to sign up, said she was not eligible (She has no AA dines YTD, but also is at premier level....., she does have about 75 IDine charges so far this year, wonder what the selection was for this promo...

lwildernorva

Yep. Good catch, and a better and easier way to confirm the current status of all bonuses.

Fortunately for me, no problems--other than making sure I hit as many program restaurants as I can during these promotions. . .

sdsearch

This is a bizarre one!

I signed up for my targeted DL One Bite At A Time bonus when it came out, but waited until the (extended) UA bonus from earlier this year had finally ended (at the end of May). So I started dining with DL at the start of June.

Then I got the targeted AA 10,000 Reasons To Party bonus, and shifted to that in August.

It's now mid-August, and I get the following email from DL (SkyMiles Dining):
By the way, after a lengthy call to RN CS, I was informed that the email is incorrect about the "not combinable". They said that since one bonus (One Bite At A Time) was registered for, but this bonus (whatever it's called!) does not require registration, they can and do "stack".

However, note the other discrepancy: The email was sent today, August 13, and it says to dine "now". But a dine today or tomorrow won't earn double. The fine print says that the bonus starts August 15, and RN CS confirmed that part is correct. (And thus the "now" part is incorrect!)

sdsearch

Well, it just gets more bizzare:

A day after I got the above from DL, I got the same (except for the name of the program) from AA!

But the timing seemed even more bizarre with AA, since their email said:
But that's exactly where I'd been eating the previous week and a half, and in fact several of my dines had already posted, and I'd started getting "How was" emails for some of them already, when I got this "where have you been" email from AA dining offering the double miles.

Since (unlated to RN except that it works out) I have also gotten a promo from Citi for 3x miles on (among other things) dining on my AA Visa, and because the 10,000 Reasons To Party Bonus at AA is bigger than the One Bite At A Time bonus, I'm going to stick with AA miles after all, now that I've gotten the double miles (Aug 15 - Aug 31) promo from AA (as well as DL).

Open Jaw

Today I received the double miles promo for all dines between 8/15/12-8/31/12 with US. I have also been earning more bonus miles with US for the Step Up to the Plate bonus that began a few weeks ago.

sdsearch

They can't seem make up their minds as to what to call this bonus!


Here's the email I got today:

But when I go to log in to my AAdvantage Dining page, it says that's actually the 3rd of 3 such bonuses I earned (each dine's bonus posted on a separate line), and on the website, it's listed as:

BONUS - REACTIVATION

So is it the August bonus or the Reactivation Bonus?

Open Jaw

Reactivation bonus is what US calls it. Just got notice that my bonus miles will soon post too for the 5 dines I have since 8/15/12! The crazy thing is that the reactivation bonus page is blank. There is no info on there at all. I am just gonna dine a lot until the 8/31 deadline for the double miles. I also hope I will be able to earn another 1500 bonus miles toward my US account before the "plate" promo ends on 9/30.

Jailer

My bonus:

BONUS - NADA

sdsearch

Had you stopped dining completely in (one of your) program(s) for a while?

The word "reactivation" in the bonus name implies that they only offered this bonus to people who had stopped (not just slowed down) their dining in a program.

And, of course, that makes it far easier to get this sort of bonus if you keep jumping around between several RN programs "following the bonuses". If you only ever use one RN program (and thus slow down but never stop because you enver simply move to another RN program), I bet you'll be skipped over on most if not all of these targeted bonuses.

(The world is full of situations where you only get offered something if you act like you don't need it, and you never got offered it if you act like you do need it. The trick, of course, is to figure out how to seem like you don't need it, to the people capable of making such an offer, even if you do need it.)

Firewind

The complication I've run into when jumping around has been that each jump (not just each circle back to a program I've previously steered miles to) has required a new email address. Actually, the challenge is keeping track of the addresses I've used.

Now, if only my disuse - due to the paltry returns and that I've had other means of keeping dormant accounts live - would pop one of these offers.