zozeppelin

Actually greed is the reason arbitrage exists. The majority of the mechanisms used exist to explicitly make money or to secondarily aid in making money elsewhere. Think of all the products you use, bank funding with cc aside (which is arguable), all of those are geared to make money on people, the companies aren't doing it out of the kindness of their heart.

We are not the target audience and that is why it works. Ironically the exploiters are getting exploited

Working for a fortune 50 company you learn how colossal these businesses are and how many day to day "critical" issues are that need to be fixed and how short staffed everyone is. This is a leaking damn and as long as the leak is small it is ignored or not even seen because there are more important (costly) long hanging fruit to resolve. Now if it becomes significant or you poke the bear in the eye, well there you go.

aeneas3

Not blaming anyone at all but I will tell you that the landscape has changed in the year in which I have been privy to this game.
Over a year ago I read a lot, posted a thread asking for guidance and suggestions to help fund a trip to Maui with credit cards, got some nice replies but then realized I should have just read more.
Then I got into the game and read more and figured things out while trying to help along the way but then discovered that more and more information was on the internet with circles and arrows to help people.
Not saying this is what caused it, but the landscape has changed tremendously. The process and the results are more conspicuous.

Henry II

Effects of Crowd (result of open card application link, easy access/cashing of GCs, yeah, spoonfeeding of various sites) with greed and trouble-makers (CGT).

Chain Reaction Sequence: CVS VR (Cash Action) --> more (CGT) moved to WM --> WM OV/VGC (no go) --> more (CGT) moved to other GCs such as MetaBank VGCs to WM (no go in near future) --> more (CGT) to other stores ... --> CGT ruins all easy-MS linkeage --> MS turns underground like the era before the easy-MS rush/links eventually. All are happy, quiet, and peaceful.

RJP3

Things run in cycles. The current hiccups will thin the herd of many of the people that lack imagination, initiative, or both.

It's the circle of life.

grayland

In the beginning there was much less specific information actually posted in the open on FT. The blogs had no easy source for specific information.
Good opportunities were not discussed in any detail. Methods were shared by PM and private groups.

Small private groups were very common and tended to be local in nature but cooperated privately.

This is happening again and is a good thing if MS is to continue.

horseymen

Sadly, I've only been at this for a year - and probably spent 100-150 hours reading old threads - even the Mint threads - for perspective, knowledge and history (after all, we do learn from our mistakes, right?!) - and it seems like we are seeing an exponential growth in information and players in the game.

I even thought of starting my own blog - with an emphasis on big and tall travelers (Like mommy points does for travelers with young kids) - but thought breaking in would make me look at desperate as some of the blog shillers here sometimes, and who wants that?!

You guys rode the Mint hard for record times, though...

GeorgeMilesArnold

They could just have the MS forum be unindexed. Make it know the the remaining (indexed) forums that the "premium" forum would become available after 100 posts. This would INCREASE the number of posts and traffic. As I understand it, the MS forum is only a small percent of the total site traffic.

They can still show ads on non-indexed sites.

doinky

I have to agree with Havokmonky. I truely believe the biggest reason is fraud. And I agree there was a thresold that the cc companies had that tolerated the ms scene. The Target Data Breach during the holidays pretty much hit that threshold and hit their pocket books pretty hard. If you are a bank, merchant, or any observer looking into the world of MS, it looks like money laundering. Easy way to charge on cc and get back hard to trace cash or mo. Look at VR and the rash of theft and fraud. Headache for the cc companies but not as bad as the Target incident since the MS scene is still small compared to rest of the population.

Banks are just still jittery and watching accounts like a hawk after the Target breach. Compounding smaller factors like MS blogs, VRs, and the famous 10k spending limit AA Aadvantage cards soon after.

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues...1066493-1.html
http://paullarsenconsulting.com/more...data-breaches/
http://www.wib.org/publications__res...y14_stolz.html

TheGreatMongo

what do you guys think about a pay membership to this sub forum. maybe charge a modest $20/yr. that'll drive away the newbie curiosity. it'll still need to address bloggers taking paid info and feeding it to the mass for free.

trippinbilly

Someone also posted awhile back about trying to create groups regionally. Seems like a good idea and take info offline

bmrisko

I'm all for it. It's pretty typical on other various forums for supporting members to get access to "hidden" forums. Of course that won't stop bloggers from joining and taking the info to circle and arrow for the general masses.

RJP3

Only if I can pay through Evolve...

Fuerza

Why do we need to pay anyone? I've been leaning on the idea of creating a FaceBook Group. Allowing selected persons only, obviously it would start small with a few select members and slowly branching out as we learn who we can trust and who we can determine is trolling.

Anyone interested?

bmrisko

Not a bad idea...I'd be all for sharing ideas with a select group.

TMKTakot

Mixed feelings on this. Seems like it would have the potential to go stale really fast as well.