jonnydoe1234

You're right -- priceline almost always will not work if you must have a specific hotel in mind (this has happened to me frequently when attending weddings). I'm guessing as a priceline veteran, you know about betterbidding and biddingfortravel. Very occasionally, if you're going for a high-end hotel, and it is the only 4* or 5* that priceline offers in a specific zone, then you are basically naming your own price for that hotel only. But that is indeed rare. And the hotel lists on betterbidding and biddingfortravel should be cross-checked by running a general hotel search on priceline (i.e., not a name-your-own-price) and seeing what hotels come in your zone and star category.

And, even I'll admit that priceline is sadly not as good as used to be.

Mountain Trader

Nowhere except in Frugal Travel Guy's regular, ongoing advisements to not be greedy. Not to mention the advice in other blogs on guarding credit, applying for cards in an arranged sequence, planning for trips ahead of time, etc.

It's amazing to see a crowd of people looking for something for nothing criticize as greedy others who show them how to do it. On the other hand, maybe it's not that amazing at all.

Sorry to inject a fact or two into the rants. We can now return to our regular programming.

84fiero

Sorry to inject a fact or two into your flame on me, but you're completely quoting me out of context. I wasn't talking at all about "not being greedy with card apps" or not planning for and sequencing churns and trips in general. (Nor am I "looking for something for nothing"). In fact if you'd bothered to read my other posts I'm generally against the theory posited by the OP of this thread.

I was replying to jeautk01, specifically the bolded portion

My post was agreeing as to bloggers who are able to achieve regular miles earning at rates far exceeding what most people can, as jeautk01 commented. Bloggers who run high amounts of reimbursable expenses through personal cards, via their "award booking services" as just one example. Nowhere do those bloggers provide context as to their earn/burn rate and sources for such, and that the average Joe probably won't be able to get comparable results without similar sources of earning for example.

ma91pmh

If you use Schwab 2% cash back you are leaving a LOT of money on the table

You can use Amex Blue Pfd and get 6% cashback at supermarkets. Through gift cards that can be extrapolated to pretty much all restaurants, gas stations, Amazon purchases etc. If you can't get 6% cashback on at least half your purchases you are doing something wrong.

I agree with others that view the true value of points being the price you'd be willing to pay for the redemption. Belfordrocks narrow view of taking cost price / miles is foolish as it fails to account for the fact that people would rarely pay the kind of prices first class flights would cost, and those that can afford to have less to worry about collecting miles.

My best TRUE earning rate on a card has been around 15%. Using an Amex PRG at my grocery store earning 3x membership rewards. Those rewards were then converted to BA Avios at 1.5x rate. And then I redeem 9000 Avios for a coach flight RDU-NYC roundtrip. Actual cost would be $300 on average. So 3.33cpm redemption, times the 4.5x earning rate, equates to an effective and true 14.985% rebate. I am sure other better ones are available but this one is highly scalable and the flights in my case are actually required and would otherwise be met with cash spending.

So for me when bloggers bang on inanely about Chase Sapphire being wonderful because you can get 2x on dining and travel, I find that a bit galling as it is not only uneducated but it also spreads the same level of mis-education. This is where Frequent Miler excels in really trying to find the max way of earning (his 5x earner on all spend could replace my pattern above)

Now to the OP does this ruin flyertalk? I don't think so. You just can't put a lid on it. Deals will get killed "quicker" but more people will get in on them. Is is fair that one small group gets to enjoy a deal say 100,000 times before it gets closed off or is it better that 100,000 people get to enjoy it once? I don't buy the "lazy" argument as many of those who are defending the old closed network are frankly just as lazy and just hoping they get in on someone else's less publicized deal

Also I will add that all of my favorite deals I learned from a blog and did not get shut down that quickly:

* AA Citi card churning (thanks Rick)
* The Mint (thanks Rick)
* Expedia.ca $300 rebates (thanks Gary Leff)

The latter got HAMMERED by everyone and still lasted a full weekend

toomanybooks

Value is completely in the eye of the beholder.

Let's consider two guys in their late 20s:

1. A single guy with a very flexible good-paying job and no dependents and no real financial obligations.

2. A 4-day-a-week consultant (or a small business owner) with an extremely demanding job and a wife and 1 or more kids at home, six-figures of student or other loans, strapped financially, and 2 sick parents who want to go to Disneyworld with the grandkid(s) ASAP before they are not able to do so.

Guy #1 can fly off to Bora Bora or Thailand the next time a mistake fare or some great redemption pops up. Guy #2 cannot, and might be best off redeeming for a 50K-per-ticket-flight family trip to see the Mouse. Or, horrors, even cashing in for gift cards to pay for diapers! Neither guy is right or wrong, and it is insulting in the extreme for Guy #1 to argue that Guy #2 is a stupid doofus, but you see it all the time.

Except for some details, I have basically been both guys, separated by a few years in time.

This constant mantra in spots on FT and on some blogs, that there is only one way to run your miles/points habit (aspirational, F travel, 4-5 star hotels in the South Pacific/Paris) and that anyone who thinks differently is deluded, is quite irritating sometimes.

napilimom

Other posters on this thread have mentioned this similarly, but this is exactly spot on. I am, and am sure so many others are, on the verge of moving on from person one to person two in the above example.

I love this pastime/hobby/obsession, but in the early years I would happily spend 100,000 miles for my family to take a domestic vacation that we couldn't have otherwise afforded. I still would if the ticket were expensive - no qualms whatsoever. Now my children are old enough to have their own cards/miles and this give me more options regarding how I choose to travel. I still never compute any price per mile - it's just not applicable to how I plan.

Overthinking all of this takes away the fun...

Mountain Trader

Faulting bloggers for incomplete disclosure is an attempt to shift responsibility for one's decisions from the reader to the writer. Volkswagen doesn't tell us Toyota's mileage results in their ads, yet no one seems to deem them as without scruples.

If someone doesn't like what bloggers write, read something else. And if one can't or won't take the time to figure out what advice works for them, they had better read something else. And that goes for any advice-financial, medical or frequent flyer points.

Mountain Trader

To clarify, while I hit reply to your post, I have no specific disagreement with your statements.

As I indicated before, this thread focuses largely on people who seek something for nothing calling people who help them do it greedy or otherwise insufficient.

Now that's worth thinking about.

benzemalyonnais

I'll kind of agree here, because you have the right idea - even if I don't necessarily agree.

I could care less about the aspirational side of this stuff, since those valuations are always inflated, and half of the C seats out there really aren't worth that much.

I do think that some redemptions present a poor value, because I am very good at tracking flights and booking them when the price is right. I refuse to pay over $600 for a RT US-Eur ticket, and haven't done so for some time. When I couldn't get it under $600, I booked a 60k DL ticket since those miles were sitting around. I found the same KL/AF combo I booked for $450 and ended up cancelling that ticket.

For the consultants out there who work way too hard to travel, I guess it's not always a win-win situation.

What I think is the most valuable benefit of award flights is the flexibility involved with routings - like the free *A stopovers I routinely use. These are usually unaffordable, even in Y, so they make for an great value. I wish bloggers for once would talk about the importance of AVAILABILITY, instead of churn,churn,churn.

84fiero

I'm just calling out what I dislike and/or disagree with about some of the bloggers. I agree it's ultimately up to the reader to decide, and to seek other opinions. I certainly don't follow the advice of any of those kinds of sensationalist bloggers, or really any of them for that matter.

I agree that "if you don't like it, don't read it" but that doesn't mean folks won't express an opinion on the site. It would be a pretty dull community if no one ever voiced an opposing opinion and said what they didn't like about A, B, or C, wouldn't it? I don't continue to read blogs I don't like...though the disappointing part is when formerly good, down to earth bloggers become commercialized and/or hyped up shells of their former selves.

Your point about medical, financial, and other areas in life is one I've made as well, in other threads. I don't understand the hysteria some FT'ers have over referral links. Doctors, mechanics, plumbers, etc. all make money based on their advice to us, but only rarely do most people seek second opinions. Those are much more important than a stupid credit card.

jeautk01

I think this thread is wandering around like a pissed off drunk looking for a fight!
As I commented earlier in the thread I think there are a lot of bloggers that add value to FT and the Points Community in general (Gary would be one also I think Flyertalk could use a reformat or reboot as information can be really hard to find even the minor stuff. That is one area the blogs excel), but there are many other bloggers out there that take and never give back. That was what my original post my intended to address. FT is about everyone pitching in to make the points experience better for the community. I don't care if a blogger kills a deal by over publicizing it as long as he gives back with other deals or information to balance out. However, if I were the creator of that deal I might be upset, but then again I wouldn't be indiscriminately sharing the deal. There is obviously a perception though that some bloggers are doing this and that is creating a schism between the ideals of FT and the reality due to the fact that some of the deal creators believe they are giving and not getting anything back.

If Flyertalk were to close up shop tomorrow I wouldn't be impacted too much(I do like it though) as I did ok before I even knew it existed. The other comments were just observations. I think this horse has been flogged enough.

jammanxc

why do i sense you guys are all attacking The Points Guy ?? he's a freakin genius

belfordrocks

Get off the kool-aid please.

oliver2002

What bloggers do is address a gap in FT: summarizing a current deal in a concise simple to understand way. Each day/hours thousands of people end up on FT because it ranks #1 for every travel related google search and only a fraction stays back because they find what they were looking for and another smaller fraction stays on to becomes member etc etc. Currently Google ranks content on wikis, forums and blogs etc higher than traditional webpages, the day that algorithm changes others will rank higher.

Coming back to blogs, they have a major problem: if people want to talk and discuss the article they just read, the blog usually offers limited features and the discussion fizzles out a few days later. That is where FT can trump any blog.

The forum vs blog discussion is not limited to FT, this issue occupies a number of folks who make a living with this stuff since quite a while and I'm sure umpteen people are scratching their head trying to figure out how to solve this conundrum. Curious to see how it will turn out.

IMH

Sorry -- something compelled me to read that back to you. Thanks for lightening up the thread. More seriously:

Let's be fair and differentiate a little. Gary Leff and Ben Schlappig earned their readerships first and foremost by sharing their expertise on redeeming FF miles. Gary's probably the expert on availability and his VFTW blog is still the first place I'll go to search if I'm trying to get an overview of how best to go about finding seats on routes and/or airlines I'm not familiar with. Ben and Gary's blogs have both suffered from high credit card noise in recent months and it remains to be seen how long that works for them. For now, it means some of us only stop by their blogs once every week or two just in case we've missed something, whereas a year ago VFTW was one of the first pages I opened each day.

With that said, are either of them somehow hurting ("ruining") FT? I don't see it. The same goes for Rick Ingersoll and Ric Garrido. Rick's niche has been somewhat under attack but he's still the guy who knows most about credit card churning -- and I can confirm that he's put his readers in touch with offers that have brought him zero referral commission when these have been better than the best affiliate links he's had. Ric's Loyalty Travel(l)er blog is also in a category of its own, and often offers highly valuable and unique analysis, as Raffles pointed ouch much earlier in this thread. Brett, Jared and Seth also -- usually -- only write when they've got something worth saying.

Are there any other blogs worth mentioning, minority interests (sorry, Kevincm! ) aside? Probably none that will be around for very long. The worst 'offenders' (in the sense of upsetting a few people in this thread by spoon-feeding and sharing 'secrets') are, by happy coincidence, also poorly written and error prone -- their authors will either move on or, just possibly, become real experts and earn a long term readership. In neither case does their existence damage FT, annoying as they can be.