Where's my pudding!!!
 

I have been a voracious reader of flyer talk and several well know travel/points blogs. I remember reading about a guy that bought a ton of pudding to reap millions of airlines points or another who spent the day driving rental cars down the street between rental agencies effectively hacking the system for a large number of points.

Does opportunity like this still exist? I just feel like I missed that boat.

You are nearly a decade or two too late. Pudding Guy did his thing in 1999.

Yes, most programs are much more sophisticated these days. I haven't heard of a big bonanza opportunity like that in quite awhile.

This summer (for another month and a half) United is giving members up to 5500 miles for a mid-size Hertz rental booked through the United website, 1 day or longer. Theoretically, if you had nothing else to do, you could do 1 day rentals over and over and over again, if you were living near an airport where rentals are very cheap, and run up a bunch of miles that way. But you'd still have to pay for all those rentals, and you'd still have to go to the airport Hertz location to pick and return each one. And it would only work at certain airports (some are way too expensive for that), and only if it was easy for you to keep getting to the rental facility every day or whenever.

Now that Manufactured Spending exists, fewer people do things the above to earn miles. But MS (Manufactured Spending) itself is somewhat harder for many people than it was in its heyday a few years ago.

Nothing easy / simple lasts very long. If it's too easy, the airline or credit card company or whoever figures that out and stops it.

"How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"

Does that mean vegetarians can't eat vegetarian pudding? :confused: :p

Yes, you behind the bike sheds, stand still laddy!

You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!

Two posts above yours...

And just in case you do earn them (though the consensus so far on that thread is that it's close to impossible to earn that bonus), keep in mind that you've got to use them relatively fast if you aren't a QMiles Platinum member. From the wiki of:
Qatar (QR) Privilege Club: Hard expiration 3 to 3.5 years after earning (on June 30 & Dec. 31); may be extended or resurrected for a fee (link). No expiration for Platinum members

They can only have yorkshire pudding. :D

I was the stupid American who ordered a yorkshire pudding for dessert... :mad:

oooops!

There was (briefly) the SAS Eurobonus rental deal this summer. That could have been a gold mine if the terms had not been revised to add limits to US rentals.

Keeping aware of smaller deals is the way to go. Delta offered a partner promotion earlier this year that netted me 14k for under $100 in additional spend. American countered with a streamlined version and Alaska currently has a bonus for surveys, dining, and shopping.

The above deal is invitation only. I've been using it - I gave up having a full time car after my baby was vandalized last year to the point of being totaled by the insurance company.

To put the Hertz rental promo in perspective: 5500 miles is approximately what I earn with Mileage Plus on a round trip transcontinental flight these days as a Gold member. And while my home airport is a 1+ hour bus ride away and rentals are expensive to boot, the combination of lack of car and regular meetings 50+ miles away = a significant number of 1 day car rentals.
I've also only booked when I get $30ish rates = $50ish net cost - Hertz at this airport can be base $100/day or completely unavailable.

If not I am SOL ! :mad:

Actually, Mom makes Yorkshire pudding and uses the drippings from the beef, so I doubt a vege/vegan could in good conscience eat that.

CC sign up bonuses are still the "pudding" or as close to it as we'll come for some time.

Well I have to tell you, when I was a boy, after dessert had been finished at Sunday lunch my late father and uncle (both born and bred Englishmen) used to eat any leftover yorkshire puddings filled with thick yellow cream and strawberry jam. In fact they used to fight over them.

Probably more amazing was the fact that both lived on to a ripe old age despite a diet which today would be considered disgustingly unhealthy, if not life threatening.

Yes. When you can get 50,000 to 100,000 bonus miles / points per credit card, but only a few hundred for flying across the country, actually boarding airplanes is no longer the point at all.

Never any leftover Yorkshire Pudding at our house! We used to have it as a starter with gravy but I have heard of people having it with jam.

Well, earning miles from pudding, as many years ago as it was, wasn't about boarding airplanes either.

It was well before pudding that flying airplanes on routes you paid by yourself stopped being a great way to earn free flights. The last case of that was probably back when Southwest's Rapid Rewards 1.0 (the 16 credits = 1 free flight phase), during some promotions, would let you fly 4 cheap shorthaul (say, intra-California or intra-Texas) round trip and earn a free roundtrip that could be redeemed for a cross-country routing each way.

The main way that miles from airplane flights work for some people still is if they fly a lot for business and their employer uses a consistent airline. Then the employer is paying for everything, but the person flying is getting all the miles. (Unless, these days, the employer only pays for Basic Economy no-mile-earning fares, that is :eek:.)

Iberia and Avis had a deal for 18k Avios for renting a car over a Spanish holiday weekend last year. They also had a deal for 9k Avios per weekend rental which ran for almost 2 months earlier this year. I rented a car for 3 of those weekends when the rates were cheap...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iberi...vios-deal.html

There was also a convoluted route to earn 2400 Avios per HP printer cartridge purchased earlier this year and I got some good mileage out of that.

Also, 250 miles per ebook purchase earlier this year. The point is that these deals do still crop up from time to time but often don't hang around for long...

In the North of England its not uncommon to have it for breakfast with Golden Syrup, still something my mother does occasionally.

Of course, if you're in York, you can try it as a wrap...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...edia-sensation

At "Pie In The Sky", a small cult-ish restaurant/take-out place in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod (near Falmouth, Massachusetts), their sandwiches are available on a considerable choice of breads, rolls, or bagels... or Yorkshire Pudding.

However, theirs are served slightly sweet, and are freshly baked in several batches throughout the morning. And alas, no flavor of beef drippings, which might not work with the sweetness, anyway.

People queue up for them, starting early, or ask when the next batch will be hot out of the oven. So there aren't always a lot "left over" for sandwiches later in the day.

I've never heard of them as "sandwich" type uses elsewhere, until now.

GC

Heh, by sheer coincidence, I recall eating there, while waiting for a ferry to Martha's Vineyard on a holiday to Cape Cod a few years ago! Didn't notice or have the Yorkshire pudding, though (far too early in the day for that kind of thing, I was purely focused on the coffee...)

I was never a pure mileage runner, but I still earned miles at an attractive enough rate to "influence" some personal trips up until 4-5 years ago. The old Southwest RR 1.0 was certainly good for many, especially when they had a whole period of several years where you received two credits simply by booking directly on their site, which is pretty much the only way I've booked a Southwest ticket since their site has existed. (To me, it was the only *possible* way to book one, as our corporate travel portal never sold WN tickets until somewhat recently and third-party sites still don't.)

I used to find cheap transcons on AA and requalify for Plat and earn a ton of miles and upgrades in the process, usually for $200-225 R/T. But I actually spent the weekend on the West Coast, thus they weren't really MR's the way this board thinks of them.

The other big difference from the past is that the big FFPs would run promotions designed to drive you to a wide variety of their partners. There were cases where it was actually more rewarding to stay across 5 different hotel chains during a promo period and earn miles than it was to simply stay at your preferred chain, earning points and status. AA, US, and NW all had big multi-partner promos that I personally participated in. The last US one was about 5-ish years ago and I earned approximately enough for two R/T J tickets to Hong Kong.

Now the game is 99% about credit cards. Other partner promos are few and far between. The partners are still there, but the really great promos are mostly gone.

I posted in that thread about some Mexican Hertz rates for $1 a day. The truly ambitious could talk to the agency and do a ton of back-to-back bookings. I believe there was a trip report on FT somewhere about some guy who did something similar with Avis I believe.

I've done back-to-back rentals with Avis for the Iberia Avios promo - a pile of Mon-Fri and Fri-Mon rentals stuck together. The weekday rentals earned at the standard rate and the weekend rentals earned at the bonus rate. After the first week I didn't bother returning the car - I just phoned in my mileage to have the rental desk staff close out the rental and open a new one without me being there.

Small world!! :)

But being there early in the morning, you did miss a treat. That's when they keep bringing another batch out of the oven, and when they are fresh... YUM!

You'll just have to return...

(We stay at a relatively new (renovated) Inn almost next door, and that is mighty dangerous. We take turns bringing a few back to the room. ;) )

GC

There is an article where some guy in Las Vegas earned 1M miles (?) using this promo. Lived in Vegas, basically rented every day.

Yorkshire Pudding: the real thing (not just "popovers")
 

Funny timing, with a new post on this thread just now.
We are just back a few days ago from an early holiday cruise, and one evening, in the main dining room, we were surprised to see roast beef and "Yorkshire Pudding".

We cancelled our specialty reservations just tor this one item, having not seen it listed anywhere (other than as Popovers, at Pie In The Sky) for so very long.

It was a bit overdone, and didn't have much of the "eggy pudding" part, but was nice and crispy on top.
I should have asked for more, but we were already eating our way across the Caribbean.

We might just need a quick trip to Woods Hole soon.
Or... I could spend a bit more time in the kitchen... but I could never create what Pie In The Sky creates! [drool]

GC

Another pudding-like opportunity
 

Here in Australia we just had an opportunity with Flybuys where you could get 1000 Flybuys points (worth $5 off your Coles Supermarket shop) for various Gillette razor and blade purchases. It was a targeted promotion but a number of people got it including myself.

The offer did not set a limit on the number of times you could redeem this.

At the same time there was a qualifying Gillette product (ladies razors) on sale for $3.92. Theoretically you could buy 1000 of these razors (cost $3,920), get 1 million Flybuys points and thus get $5,000 off your supermarket shopping. This would effectively profit you $1,080.

After 2 days Flybuys changed the conditions to limit the number of bonuses to 10 per person but will honor bonuses for purchases made prior to the change.

cheers Peter