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Went through the entire blog and not one trip report :confused:
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I have to nicely disagree. I don't think there is anything wrong with sharing information and encourage any interested persons to visit my blog. If you aren't interested, just click again to a different thread, there is thousands.
Originally Posted by belfordrocks
(Post 17520620)
Especially. ^
Also, the formatting is very hard to read and paragraphing almost non-existent. |
Sorry. I just don't have endless amounts of time to blog being a busy Momma. I have a personal blog that I just haven't linked up but I have request to blog about but just haven't got into it. I like to stick to the miles & points deals really.
Originally Posted by Saas
(Post 17524248)
Went through the entire blog and not one trip report :confused:
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I'll have to nicely disagree with your view point. There are so many ways to put together a free vacation. I could write a ton of plans with all the ways I know. In my opinion, this is a simple easy way to earn a free vacation for a family of 5. Are there many other ways! Of course, I've written about others too. As far as misleading my readers, that definitely not the case. If you bothered to read my site before slamming me, you would have noticed that I have "Hot Deals" page which I let readers know are all the best deals I am aware of and some I do not receive referrals on but wan them to be aware of. I also solicit any reader to email me if they know of a better offer on that page that I should update.
My question to you is why are you here? Why didn't you just click to somewhere else? You obviously aren't a newbie and don't need any advice? Just wondering?
Originally Posted by sun_aa
(Post 17521090)
The main issue is that the post has bad advice and bad strategies and seems to be mostly about earning you commissions. Have you looked at the sticky in this forum and read the threads that it links to before coming up with your plan? There are so many cards which offer 50k points and you are instead talking about 30k offers from UA/DL and 25k offers from AL.
Other glaring issues: Why talk about 40k Citi HH Visa when you would get 60k from Amex for spending a lesser amount and more points upon upgrading to Surpass? There's even a 50k offer from Citi. Although they might not give you the best value, other options would be 70k/100k from converting HA/VS card bonus points. Didn't you post another thread here regarding this exact thing? Why are you linking to the 50k Marriott offer when there is a 50k+$75 offer which has a working landing page? Better yet, the 70k offer should work since Chase is good about honoring bonuses. Even if they don't give you 70k points they will give you 50k+$75 since that's publicly available. As far as flight tickets go, a single person could get two Citi AA cards and a Chase BA Visa. The current best offers would give you 106k AA miles, 53k BA miles and $300 after the minimum spending($9500 in total). 100k AA miles will give you 4 domestic RT tickets. 53k BA miles will give you 4 segments of up to 2999 miles on AA or 5 segments of up to 1999 miles or 7 segments of up to 1149 miles. If you are looking at short haul nonstop domestic flights, getting two Sapphire preferred cards, one BA visa($9500 minimum spending in total) and converting the Sapphire points into BA as necessary would give you a great value. Then there are the Southwest 50k offers for plus/premier cards and ThankYou 50k offers for premier/preferred cards which might be better suited if you are redeeming for low-cost tickets. It also looks like every card that you mention in your credit card offers page earns you commission. There are a plethora of offers there which offer far below than the best offer for the same card. Why advertise them at all? It is clear to me that your don't at all have your reader's best interest at heart. |
Originally Posted by sun_aa
(Post 17521090)
The main issue is that the post has bad advice and bad strategies and seems to be mostly about earning you commissions. Have you looked at the sticky in this forum and read the threads that it links to before coming up with your plan? There are so many cards which offer 50k points and you are instead talking about 30k offers from UA/DL and 25k offers from AL.
Other glaring issues: Why talk about 40k Citi HH Visa when you would get 60k from Amex for spending a lesser amount and more points upon upgrading to Surpass? There's even a 50k offer from Citi. Although they might not give you the best value, other options would be 70k/100k from converting HA/VS card bonus points. Didn't you post another thread here regarding this exact thing? Why are you linking to the 50k Marriott offer when there is a 50k+$75 offer which has a working landing page? Better yet, the 70k offer should work since Chase is good about honoring bonuses. Even if they don't give you 70k points they will give you 50k+$75 since that's publicly available. As far as flight tickets go, a single person could get two Citi AA cards and a Chase BA Visa. The current best offers would give you 106k AA miles, 53k BA miles and $300 after the minimum spending($9500 in total). 100k AA miles will give you 4 domestic RT tickets. 53k BA miles will give you 4 segments of up to 2999 miles on AA or 5 segments of up to 1999 miles or 7 segments of up to 1149 miles. If you are looking at short haul nonstop domestic flights, getting two Sapphire preferred cards, one BA visa($9500 minimum spending in total) and converting the Sapphire points into BA as necessary would give you a great value. Then there are the Southwest 50k offers for plus/premier cards and ThankYou 50k offers for premier/preferred cards which might be better suited if you are redeeming for low-cost tickets. It also looks like every card that you mention in your credit card offers page earns you commission. There are a plethora of offers there which offer far below than the best offer for the same card. Why advertise them at all? It is clear to me that your don't at all have your reader's best interest at heart. You can have these same disagreements, to one degree or another, with every one of the usual bloggers who post around here with the primary motive of getting traffic to their personal blogs. Your own advice about the best way to get miles is arguable, as most all miles advice is. For instance, advising to get a couple of Sapphire cards and a BA card for Avios for domestic travel sucks for me on various levels but I'm not going to accuse anyone of "not having my best interest at heart" because that would be ridiculous. It just means one popular size may fit many but it doesn't fit all. Nothing more, nothing less. Contrary to what some on this thread appear to think, no one has the final say on all matters miles. It's a discussion. But one of your more absurd critiques: "There are a plethora of offers there [the blog in question] which offer far below than the best offer for the same card. Why advertise them at all?" Seriously? Show me any of the usual suspect bloggers everyone refers to around here and NONE of their blogs provide links to ONLY the best versions of each credit card with regards to their bonuses. Some are a little better at keeping them updated than others but they ALL have their own constant, standard links to the usual, standard (often inferior) bonus versions with many of them having no disclaimer or warning about that inferiority. I'm sure all this thread policing applies to everyone so I'm sure you're asking each of those other bloggers why they are advertising those cards at all too and telling them that it's clear they "don't have their readers' best interest at heart",right? Hopefully you're not. Much better to just offer up polite, constructive criticism and hold the judging. Just a thought. |
Originally Posted by slotownmomma
(Post 17525343)
I'll have to nicely disagree with your view point. There are so many ways to put together a free vacation. I could write a ton of plans with all the ways I know. In my opinion, this is a simple easy way to earn a free vacation for a family of 5. Are there many other ways! Of course, I've written about others too. As far as misleading my readers, that definitely not the case. If you bothered to read my site before slamming me, you would have noticed that I have "Hot Deals" page which I let readers know are all the best deals I am aware of and some I do not receive referrals on but wan them to be aware of. I also solicit any reader to email me if they know of a better offer on that page that I should update.
My question to you is why are you here? Why didn't you just click to somewhere else? You obviously aren't a newbie and don't need any advice? Just wondering? Hang in there slotownmomma. Not sure why your harmless posts have some of these guys all bent out of shape either. Don't waste too much time defending things you don't need to defend. FT is all about discussing and sharing, not attacking. Or at least most of the time it is. ;) |
Originally Posted by brasov02
(Post 17525394)
Some of you guys really do need to chill.
You can have these same disagreements, to one degree or another, with every one of the usual bloggers who post around here with the primary motive of getting traffic to their personal blogs. The other concern might be the slippery slope. Sure, right now it's just ignore the one thread. But, is it 15 threads tomorrow from other bloggers? Great point on holding off on the judging--there's no need for that. But, slotownmomma should expect that non-newbies on the board will review this and offer comments since this is on FT and newbies will be reading it. So the "My question to you is why are you here? Why didn't you just click to somewhere else? You obviously aren't a newbie and don't need any advice? Just wondering?" also isn't constructive. |
Originally Posted by brasov02
(Post 17518227)
Maybe?
It's just a post. Click once and move on. How difficult is that? |
cool..is there something similar for solo traveler or just 2 ppl?
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Originally Posted by Mile-a-holic
(Post 17526166)
I think the difference might be that the other bloggers tend to tailor their blog plugs to specific requests or known areas of interest. For example, if slotownmomma had responded to the thread "Paris for a Librarian" with recommendations and a link to the strategy, I think the response would have been different.
The other concern might be the slippery slope. Sure, right now it's just ignore the one thread. But, is it 15 threads tomorrow from other bloggers? Great point on holding off on the judging--there's no need for that. But, slotownmomma should expect that non-newbies on the board will review this and offer comments since this is on FT and newbies will be reading it. So the "My question to you is why are you here? Why didn't you just click to somewhere else? You obviously aren't a newbie and don't need any advice? Just wondering?" also isn't constructive. Holy cow. Not sure what you mean by her reaction to this accusation not being 'constructive' but I don't think I would personally respond with a "thank you very much for your view" reply. "Click to somewhere else" was a pretty mature and reserved reply (as opposed to the comments that inspired it) as far as I'm concerned. But I do agree she could probably get a little more adept at posting information that provides useful insight concerning a specific subject being discussed in a thread as opposed to just making a post out of the blue telling people to go to her blog. And I think various people pointed that out to her in a nice, respectful manner but a few guys just seemed to really be torqued over it and way overreacted. That's what I can't figure out. There's just no reason to treat this place like a wack-a-mole game and flame someone for trying to raise their head. I'm sure she'll get better at FT protocol for those in her situation. There's no reason to feel threatened in the meantime. I think we'll all be o.k. |
My concern with the advice in the blog is the Plan B suggestion of getting 125,000 DL miles through their Gold AmEx cards and expecting five coach award tickets to any attractive destination using reasonable flights without one or more long or overnight connections, especially without elite status on DL. Anyone who has ever looked at the DL fora on FT or MP knows this will not happen, not even for several award tickets on the same flights let alone five booked at the same time and far enough in advance to secure award hotel reservations.
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Originally Posted by brasov02
(Post 17527896)
Holy cow. Not sure what you mean by her reaction to this accusation not being 'constructive' but I don't think I would personally respond with a "thank you very much for your view" reply. "Click to somewhere else" was a pretty mature and reserved reply (as opposed to the comments that inspired it) as far as I'm concerned.
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Slotownmamma,
I appreciate that you are trying to earn a bit of money from the frequent flyer industry, and let me make clear that there is nothing wrong with that- heck, even I'm doing the same. What is not alright though (at least in my book), is starting a new thread for the sole purpose of advertising your blog and personal financial gain, especially with a deceptive title like "Free Vacation Master Plan". If you do have something to contribute, and I suspect that you do, then feel free to do so. But even then, some of these ideas aren't especially useful or indeed practical- for example, one low-tier award to a "vacation" destination is hard enough on Delta, let alone FIVE (!!) on the same flight. Furthermore, even assuming that five tickets is possible, domestic coach flights are hardly the best use of miles from a cost per mile perspective, compared to both their revenue cost and opportunity cost (the EQMs and RDMs that one would forgo by redeeming for a coach award as opposed to purchasing a revenue ticket). Yet you neglect to cover any of that, instead simply providing your own personal sponsored referral links without practical and realistic information. And on top of all that, creating a new thread for the sole purpose of a blog link- (and your previous posts suggest a good percentage of them were used to promote your blog too)? That's very tacky, and in my eyes, not on. So please don't see this as an attack, because it's not. Instead, try to listen to what some of the others are saying, instead of spamming the forums with credit card referral links, then telling them "don't click on the thread if you don't like it" when they raise a legitimate conern. |
Originally Posted by slotownmomma
(Post 17525343)
I'll have to nicely disagree with your view point. There are so many ways to put together a free vacation. I could write a ton of plans with all the ways I know. In my opinion, this is a simple easy way to earn a free vacation for a family of 5. Are there many other ways! Of course, I've written about others too.
Originally Posted by slotownmomma
(Post 17525343)
As far as misleading my readers, that definitely not the case. If you bothered to read my site before slamming me, you would have noticed that I have "Hot Deals" page which I let readers know are all the best deals I am aware of and some I do not receive referrals on but wan them to be aware of. I also solicit any reader to email me if they know of a better offer on that page that I should update.
Originally Posted by slotownmomma
(Post 17525343)
My question to you is why are you here? Why didn't you just click to somewhere else? You obviously aren't a newbie and don't need any advice?
Just wondering?
Originally Posted by brasov02
(Post 17525394)
Your own advice about the best way to get miles is arguable, as most all miles advice is. For instance, advising to get a couple of Sapphire cards and a BA card for Avios for domestic travel sucks for me on various levels but I'm not going to accuse anyone of "not having my best interest at heart" because that would be ridiculous.
If I didn't make this clear, I am not questioning the usage of points. The OP's blog post mentions redeeming Sapphire points for cash back checks. I didn't say anything about that, did I? The OP links to inferior Hilton and Marriott offers which earns her commissions and then creates a thread on FT which is what I consider dishonest.
Originally Posted by brasov02
(Post 17525394)
But one of your more absurd critiques: "There are a plethora of offers there [the blog in question] which offer far below than the best offer for the same card. Why advertise them at all?" Seriously?
Show me any of the usual suspect bloggers everyone refers to around here and NONE of their blogs provide links to ONLY the best versions of each credit card with regards to their bonuses. Some are a little better at keeping them updated than others but they ALL have their own constant, standard links to the usual, standard (often inferior) bonus versions with many of them having no disclaimer or warning about that inferiority. I'm sure all this thread policing applies to everyone so I'm sure you're asking each of those other bloggers why they are advertising those cards at all too and telling them that it's clear they "don't have their readers' best interest at heart",right? Hopefully you're not. Much better to just offer up polite, constructive criticism and hold the judging. Just a thought. |
Have to agree with the :td: comments. It's bang out of order misleading newbies with an at-best half-assed research job on the blog, then trying to skim traffic off here and on top of that get snotty with people who are helpful enough to point out the error in doing this.
Poor form indeed. |
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