stealph

Actually, I believe he was tipped off :-) March of last year

Milezjunkie

I just went to OD around me and they pulled all Amex prepaid cards but not Vanilla Visa cards. Between my friends and I we purchased $6K without issue. The manager did have to come up and enter a code to approve the purchase and they said this was new. I'll report if they still have them when I return to the store in a few days.

aba20

Why do you need them to admit this? Of course it is for the money as it is there job.

Ducati

Do you really think he was the first? He may have been the first widely-recognized blogger to post about it, but there are many who knew and didn't say anything for obvious reasons.

aba20

Sorry, I didn't give you credit! So you are the reason the deal is dead. I have my pitchfork out! Lets ban stealph, but not before he gives us the new 5x!

Ducati

I don't. But when they come out and say it's not only for the money, then we have a right to call them out on it.
Obviously, like you said, it's for the money. I have absolutely no issues with that. Just don't ... insult our intelligence. We're not stupid.

samnc0

yeah, some people who make blogs are in it for the money. They might be ONLY in it for the money.

But, why on earth do/did we get an Ink card (when we generally have no legitimate business need for one), go to OD to get a visa $500 card, then drive to CVS to get the VR? It isn't becuase we are are bored...we are in it for the points/miles.

fangtl

At this point in time, I say go back and clean them out, all the stores around me have pulled the $500 varieties.

glocklt4

With the way that I see so many people on blogs posting "GOOD, I'M GLAD IT'S GONE!!!", I wouldn't be surprised if there were people out there clearly showing all of this directly to OD execs. Damn traitors!

amolkold

I've found that the people saying this either (1) didn't have ODs near them (think PHX area) or (2) didn't have the ability to get Ink cards to rack up so many miles.

ferrari_fan

If you are in this hobby for even a few months, you can figure out all sorts of new plays, typically using methods not even posted here on FT let alone other outfits. The only service you can do to others is not post openly about it anymore if it is clearly a loophole in any institution involved. Don't cross the lines and there is plenty of fun to be had.

5X is dead. Long live nX.

trekjoe

Then don't post deals on the internet where EVERYONE can see them. Yeesh.

trekjoe

Right. Here's the deal. When I was in college a bar had "Taco Tuesdays" with tacos for only 10cents. Clearly a money losing proposition from the taco angle but they made up for it with beer sales. Some people came and only ordered water and ate 10cent tacos. The bar owner didn't care. Overall the promotion made money and that's all he cared about. If EVERYONE just drank water and ate tacos the deal would have died.

The same is true of things like the OD deal. A handful of people shifting spend into cc's then liquidating was a rounding error on the balance sheets. But then the bloggers couldn't shut up about it. Over and over they posted about and took photos, and drew arrows, and "updated" us with trips to OD and seemed to find any excuse to write an article about this phenomena. So much in fact that googling bluebird brought up travel bloggers on the first page of results.

It isn't that the OD people "found out." They've always known. It's the internet. How hard could it be. The problem with the bloggers isn't that they let the OD or Chase folks in on the deal. It's that they drove volume into a program that couldn't sustain it. Too many tacos were being sold and not enough beer.

Happy

This!

And this, too!

Happy

You forgot to mention the big presentation in the "university" event...

I wonder what will the replacement topic in the upcoming "university" now one of the big topic of nx is dead...