Travel Hacking Cartel
 

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this query, so feel free to move it as necessary. I saw a Tweet today from Wendy Perrin with a link to a site called the Travel Hacking Cartel. Their sole purpose is to rack up non-BIS miles. They even "guarantee" 4 free tickets a year worth of points. Anyone have any info about this? I wouldn't even look at it if it hadn't been tweeted by CN Traveler guru Perrin.

I'm just wondering why you would want to pay $39/month to get the same information that is available here for free - and when it is presented here with more discussion, thought, insight, and expertise.

Yes, I've signed up for the cartel. The site has a number of deals that can be used to get frequent flyer miles/hotel points. The site also has a number of tutorials about how to earn and burn miles. It also includes an alert service for when deals happen.

The cartel works on a monthly subscription basis, with three different price points availible. The "guarantee" is that the cartel will provide enough info to get 4 free tickets- you still have to act on the info. The cartel does give you miles though for one of 3 programs (UA, AA or US) if you refer people and they sign on for at least two months.

My overall impression is that the cartel is for folks who don't necessarily want to wade through posts on Flyertalk and other blogs just to find a deal. Most of the deals listed can be found elsewhere, but I did see a couple of new ones that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

For $15-35 a month, it's not a bad deal if you have more money then time and just want to know what the latest deals are. If you have more time then money and are a savvy Flyertalker, then this site may not be as useful. However, it's just starting (signups began yesterday) so I'm waiting to see how useful it becomes over time.

If you want to find out more or to join, go visit the site (this is also my referral link).

And reading just this one forum can pretty much guarantee twice that or more.

Send your money to a charity instead and do some good in the world.

Can you post an example of something special you received from this site?

I looked at the home page but not much else to go by.

Right now, the site has 10 deals listed. Some of them include how to get Priority Club points for filling out some quizzes (something Gary Leff already covered in his View from the Wing blog), how to get points from Delta for signing up for a FedEx account and how to get Hilton silver status. So far, mostly stuff I've already seen elsewhere (except that Delta/Fedex thing, but probably just missed the thread about it on FT).

So far, not much the diligent FT surfer doesn't already know about. But I'm going to try it out for a month or two to see if it's worth the price or not. I've already found a way through it to score 2,000 more SPG points that I didn't know about before, so there are some nuggets of good info here and there.

BRG?

All things I've covered (along with other bloggers like Gary and Lucky)for free on my blog in the past week or so. What is it they say about imitation? ;)
PC Surveys
FedEx deal
Hilton Status

If people don't have time to cruise FT all day and check blogs, you can easily sign up for RSS feeds so you get daily emails with key posts from good travel blogs.

I am part of the initial membership of the Cartel and I think you guys pretty much hit it on the heads. It's a newb friendly aggregate of travel and miles hacking methods and tricks. It might be old hat to this audience, but I don't think people who frequent these boards are the target.

It took me a while to get much use of of these board because I always felt like everyone was speaking in travel slang and threads went on for seemingly ever. I'm comfortable with using this resource now, but others might wanna pay to have their hands held.

Save your money

Visit daily:
FT MilesBuzz forum
www.boardingarea.com
thepointsguy.com
frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com

You'll find 95% of the good deals that way

$39/Month?????????????????? Wow, that's a rip. Perhaps for $39/year it might be a decent deal for some...but that's just crazy. Just a couple minutes a day or even a week at the sites listed above are all you need.

I think I remember coming across http://chrisguillebeau.com/ and was pretty much a blog trying to sell his digital books. One for $50 promising that after reading the book you'd come out with xxx,xxx frequent flyer miles. Basically you are paying someone $50 to then tell you to go earn miles for getting a lasik exam or hair club for men meeting. Spend $6-7 and pick up the Frugal Travel Guy's book which the money will probably go to a better cause in the long run.

Can someone tell me why they call it travel hacking? Sounds like a much cooler name for something that's not that fancy. You really aren't traveling to Europe for free... you are getting to Europe for a very very cheap price. If you have to sign up for credit card offers and spend a few $1k.. that's not exactly "free".

I wondered the same thing, if I was the only one who'd never heard of the phrase "travel hacking"...other than some article that was linked here on FT once recently.

There are things in life that some folks choose to pay for, which they could get for free otherwise with a small investment of time. More power to them, but the price seems pretty steep to say the least. This sounds like the old "pay $XXX so I can tell you how to make millions on real estate"

Moreover, is the service also going to provide advice and tips on how to redeem those miles? Warn about things like Starnet blocking? deal with new AA/BA fuel surcharges, creative routings? I can see a lot of uninitiated people ending up very disappointed and/or not realizing the value they could get once the miles are earned.

$468 could be put to use in a lot of ways to aid in travel goals,other than paying for free info.

Sure, sometimes there's a lot of superfluous info to wade through on some threads. And the occasional snarky response to a newbie inquiry, which is unnecessary. But some of that goes with the territory of online forums.

Plus, many blogs as noted above, and others, pretty much spoon feed you the info you need. FrugalTravelGuy literally walks you step-by-step through the recent Delta AMex/MR transfer-for-SkyMiles and MQMs deal.

I'd put that money towards new fees and taxes in 2011 instead. :-)

I just sent 4 packages today on the Delta-Fed EX deal,

sent one last month and got the 500 miles , so this will get me the other 500 miles

plus I needed it anyway for ebay stuff, but its on the Delta.com under earn miles if you want to look,

Rally

+1^^

They have a refer a friend and get 500 miles bonus, and one of the methods of referral is to "tweet it".

trying it
 

I'm sort of disappointed by some of the negative comments from people who haven't actually taken the time to give it an objective look. I guess I should have thicker skin since forums tend to be this way though.

I'm signed up on the trial basis for 14 days to check it out. Chris has a couple of digital books out about travel hacking/miles gathering and the Travel Cartel is designed to be an ongoing and updated information source in the same vein. Observations that it's an aggregator of deals are correct. A lot of the information posted there is certainly available here as well..... after you wade through years of posts and then try to subsequently figure out what is current and what is not.... Or I could just read a paragraph and know instantly on the Travel Cartel. Is it for someone who has elite status every which way to Sunday? No. Is it incredibly useful and a massive time saver for someone like me who is just getting my feet wet? Yes.

It's worth mentioning also that Chris frequently credits sites like this one for having useful and up to date information. He's not trying to "trick" anyone. He's a blogger/writer and is simply offering a product which he is happy to refund your money for if you decide it wasn't worth it to you. In fact come to think of it, I found this site as a result of his product.

I have a feeling the people with 1 post count above are spam from Travel Cartel.... maybe we should move the thread over to SPAM?

^ As a cartel member, 95% of the info presented there can be found at one of those sources. Really, the target of the cartel is for people who don't want to spend a lot of time checking multiple sources to find out about travel promos. I'll probably let my membership expire after the trial period since I'm finding most of the info here and on those blogs.

No, it was for adding authorized users to the SPG credit card. I felt a bit silly when I read that for not figuring that out myself.

i've actually been following Chris's blog for a few years now. Interesting guy. Actually i met him last week while he was in town promoting his new book. While the book doesn't teach me anything new, it does have an interesting approach.

regarding the travel hacking cartel, I had read about it from his blog, but i didn't realize that it was a monthly subscription! I just thought it was another one of his books. I agree that the price is a bit steep if it's truly just a site for deals.

Yeah, Astro free is a misnomer. My last trip to Europe cost $36 in taxes. Can we get a class action suit going for product misrepresentation?:p

And thanks ftfolk for surfacing 2k (Delta & Holiday Inn) in overlooked opportunities. That Holiday Inn "global opportunity" was very creative. We should have some annual awards for the most creative ff accumulation method.:D

Keep me post on their new ideas, most of the ideas on here never get used.

We all read and very few of us do...

FT has a premo membership, on $12.00 a year give it some support...

Many here shutter at the thought of giving $59.00 for 2 free trips on South West...

$39 a month...never get off the ground...

No kidding, I am sure there will be more sign up this month and make their first post just to defend this rip off!

The other 5% come from reading 'key' forums on FT and attending local dinners and DO's. ;)
I can't imagine paying a fee for the occassional 500 miles or 2. The cpm (cost per mile) isn't worth it.

no
 

Or maybe they are someone who is genuinely interested in FT's content and have been hanging out here for several weeks (note my join date well before Travel Cartel's release). Or maybe they are a person who generally avoids post padding in forums just so they can have street cred with someone else.

Add viewfromthewing

I will hand it to Chris though... his Art of Non-Conformity website is very well done and easy to navigate. I just think that anyone who pays $50 for a 50-70 page digital book is not going to come away happy, especially if they find out most all the stuff is spelled out in detail on those given blogs. People read the blogs then jump over to the thread on FT and are willing to jump in on the conversation if it is a great deal.

He also posts on one of his pages a screen shot of his SPG account from 2009 showing that he has stayed one night and had 80k SPG points. Is that not false advertising? Taking that he was hauling in thousands of dollar coins to the bank to get those points. IMO this is just a dressed up version of a "How to get things for free book", only it's 60 pages long and he's not running around in a suit with question marks all over it on TV.

Am I the only one that also checks (along w the above listings):

www.frequentflier.com
www.webflyer.com

Could not find the sign up bonus offer. Is it done through AMEX or SPG?

Found it at freefrequentflyermiles.com thanks

Or maybe if frogs had wings.......... :D

I found the AONC before I knew about Flyertalk. I can honestly say it was because of Chris G that I found Flyertalk and most of the travel blogs I now follow, many of which have been mentioned in this thread already. He actively promotes others who focus on travel deals.

I do not think a regular FT member/follower should sign up for his program. I did the 14 day trial to check it out. So far, what I have seen is all information I have seen on various other travel sites.

With that being said, if someone wants to follow just one site, I can see where the Travel Hack Cartel would be useful to them. I personally have decided not to renew the subscription as I get the information elsewhere.

I will say that once you have the membership, the information is laid out in a really, really easy to follow format.

$468 can take you pretty close to UA 1K with intelligently booked flights

Please do share!!!

:eek: If true, please explain!

First, since this is only my 2nd post on Flyertalk, let me say hello. Glad I found you.

My journey to acquire (then spend) miles began a few weeks ago and over the course of the past 3 weeks I've been reading most of the sites mentioned in this thread, Chris's AONC site and others (like credit card review sites). It was an immersive process and I just feel like I'm finally coming up to speed.

I joined the Cartel because I want to get as much knowledge (and miles!) as I can in:

• The most basic "layperson" terms
• With the least amount of effort
• In the shortest period of time

to help meet my travel goals.

The information is well organized and presented in small digestible videos and articles. Do I recommend it for people who already have 500K miles, elite status, etc? No, you guys have already conquered this game - and I'm thankful you share your learnings here. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute my knowledge to the conversation at some point in the very near future.

As a person who consults for a living, I can appreciate that Chris created a business model that capitalizes on the knowledge he's acquired through all his traveling and miles accruals. The Cartel will just have to prove to be a value for me as I start gaining more knowledge.

Sorry but he probably acquired his "knowledge" of certain deals from this website and the travel blogs already mentioned. Glad you feel happy for what you paid for, but you could have gotten for free with the websites mentioned and you will probably get the "newest" deals days before it is posted on the Cartel by reading those websites.

This is the only part I have a small beef with. When a decent chunk of the tips are "Go read this thread on FT" then are you really getting value for that cash paid? On top of that, at nearly $500/year the tips for 100K RDMs don't seem like a worthwhile investment to me.

Welcome to FlyerTalk!!