Surveys , etc . Ususlly a huge time waster . Miles runs-did my first one for a challenge- worth it totally for the top elite status fir 18 months....

Surveys - I have been there and don't want to go there again.

FB, Twitter, wine buying (and other) email promotions.

I was scanning the posts and was expecting many scathing posts against the "evil" of buying miles/posts. Pleasantly surprised!

SAME HERE!

My wife has FB and she manages it perfectly. I would be a mess (just imagine lol) and so if I have to miss some opps due to it, so be it.

Some have said, just make up a nic and join as not really yourself. But I know me. I would get sucked in, found, discovered, and I would cave and make blunders and then go all in. Then it would be all over. Why, they'd shut down facebook even!

I just know my limits on this one, trust me.

I won't buy stuff I don't need only to get miles or points. I'm also in the no Facebook and Twitter camp; it's refreshing to know I'm not the only one.

But you can have equal status as a companion when you travel together.

What I wont do is spend money to earn points, beyond my normal spending habits. I'd rather spend 10 minutes on a survey that gives me 50 points than spend 50 dollars to get the same reward.

Some people have kids and families. If I fell into that demographic I would probably not do surveys. But right now, I'd rather spend time than money for free travel.

With that said, I would do a manufactured spend for a really great benefit like Southwest's Companion Pass. But I'm not willing to spend $40 for 5,000 miles per month (and a bunch of time) for Vanilla reloads.

I bet it takes more time for you to do a survey for 50 points than it does for me to get a bunch of Vanilla Reloads

And if you're at a net loss doing manufactured spending, you're doing it wrong

I'm have pretty big reserves against MS. Buying gift cards just to liquidate them to pay of the credit card is sketchy business and while not illegal I find extreme moral issues with cheating a system that is rewarding you for your business.

Kinda frustrates me to see all these people cheat the system and get hundreds of thousands of points via MS then complain when devaluations occur. Lets not forget this is still free money and the banks are offering it as a perk that can be revoked at anytime.

I wrote a post called They know we MS in the link below... so who knows, maybe the buy-ation of many GCs is why they up the ammts of miles needed to fly these days.

But where is it wrong to buy them? My thinking is like this: You buy X with your CC. that can be done. If they code it to allow to earn miles, then you earn miles. If they do not, it does not. So the issue is a simple IT key stroke if these CCs and airlines really wanted it so that people did NOT get miles for buying GCs.

As a heavy user of all things MS I sure hope that doesn't keep happening, but once again, it is really up to the entity to work out their TCs, not us. We simply follow their own rules.

But why is it wrong to earn miles when buying many GCs? Why would you call it cheating the system!! There aint nuthin in no TCs that prevent this. I have heard that some newer versions of the Amex BCP can SEE what you buy and thus decide to not award CB or points, but again, that's simply one or more entities finally learning how to do their jobs and coding things that should or should not work.

As buyers, we can and will buy anything IF it works. And it works til it don't.

I actually take offense to your suggesting I am a cheater.

MM

What I wont do for miles, of course, is pay full rate for an airline ticket.

Also, frankly I find many who dis MSers to be jealous folk. Plain and simple. But aside from that, one could almost argue that the hotel and airline programs are the cheaters, not us.

Someone should start a class action suit saying something like, They marketed to everyone to go out and get all these high bonus CCs and spend money to get miles (little guys and big MSers alike mind u) and then just as we were doing that--with realistic redeption goals in mind, they upped the anti!

"Sign up for card x! Spend $$$$ on it and that's enough for two free tickets/nights whatever!"

And then, suddenly it is really just another big bait and switch

agreed.

I'll do a survey, but there has to be some value in it for me. You'll toss me a few hundred points or miles for it? Sure, I'll give you some of my time for that.

I'll even do a survey for free if I want to help you improve your business. Usually that happens when I've had either a strongly negative or strongly positive experience. Strongly negative, I want to let you know what was wrong so you can correct it. Strongly positive, I want to help those who made a difference get recognition.

One thing I will not fill out a survey for is "...a chance to WIN one of these great prizes!" The expected value on survey drawings is usually terrible. Sure, the prize is often a few hundred dollars, but if there are $1000 prizes of prizes total and 100,000 (conservatively) entering, my EV is a cent. "Chance to win" surveys are so bad it's usually not even worth pausing to figure out how bad they are.

+1. Definitely not social media....

What is MS? It's not in the FlyerTalk Glossary.