I haven't used iDine in a while, why? don't know. I guess they don't have too many restaurants in my area, but still, 500-750 miles or so extra a month is nothing to sneeze at. I'm on the iDine website right now, checking for restaurants. Will have to call to update the credit card info.

Linda

You can update your credit card information online, you don't have to call anymore.

Step 2 should read:

2. The restaurant gives iDine $20,000 in food credit, plus allows iDine to take over their credit card processing services.

Thats how Idine makes a profit : They then sell the $20,000 food credit (for which they paid the restaurant $10000) to their members for $20,000 minus the cost of 200,000 FF mile
(or 20% cash) rebate. Periodically Idine sends the restaurant 50% of the food credit used up in cash, thus replenishing the food credit.

For those people who had Transmedia and were converted to Idine, there was the option of no fee and 15% discount. I preferred the miles. For those paying $49, it's about $200 spending just to break even so you have to know what you are spending. IDine has always given me miles for restaurants who dropped out of the program, but were listed in a directory. Those that have day to day restrictions are listed separately under a location, so if you don't want to bother with finding out, just don't go to those restaurants. I have found some pretty good restaurants by using the book, so I love the program. Now, under AA's program, the web says you have unlimited visits up to $600 and I have told them by phone of this, and they say it is a mistake, but they have not fixed it. I don't know how they would handle payment with a subsequent visit in a month.

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DtG

I've been pretty happy with idine, I believe I've always had miles post, but I don't keep too much track on it, I know that I end up with a few hundred/thousand extra miles every month and that's good enough for me. There have been quite a few dropouts here in Austin recently, especially some of the pricier restaurants where its easy to rack up miles. (I planned my upcoming rehearsal dinner at one of the dropouts.. would have made 5000 miles off that easily!)

What I did was to keep the free 15% card as an old Transmedia customer and open an additional miles account linked to AA to keep my miles there from expiring as I do almost all of my flights on DL.

I also have been using Open Table for some time (FT has recently posted a link on their home page to them). Some Idine restaurants are also Open Table members so that you can receive double credit. Open Table is an excellent reservation tool for your home city and also when traveling. Often times you can get into "hot" restaurants that tell you they are totally booked on the phone by going online with Open Table. Last year I made a trip to South Beach and they had several of the best scene restaurants listed and I was able to get in without a problem. It appears that a portion of the available tables are always reserved for online reservations. At home in NYC, at least once a week I make a last minute reservation with them within one hour of the time I wish to dine in many of the city's best restaurants.

If I-Dine runs all the airline dining-for-miles programs, do all the restaurants listed for a particular airline work for every airline? For example, I've registered my CCs to accrue USAirways miles. USAirways doesn't have an on-line listing of restaurants, but United does. Can I look at the United list, patronize one of the restaurants on it, and be sure I'll get my USAirways miles?

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MHT, BOS, PVD

I switched my IDINE from United to Delta, and was told that United has some restaurants that Delta doesn't have. If the IDINE rep was correct, then you probably wouldn't get credit unless it was specifically listed as US Air. But then again, who knows.

Oldpenny, It's very unfortunate that a city as big as FT. W. has such a small selection of Idine restaurants. I keep an eye on the ones offered there because my mother and other family live there. They won't participate because there are so few (and they are not the die hard miles collectors you and I are).

Dallas seems to have a much more vast number.

Here in SAT we have over 60 restaurants. So it is very easy to select them for well over half of our dining out.

I consider it a real coupe when I can collect a friend's cash and charge the entire meal. Just wish it happened more often! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

United has a double mile promotion started 4/1-5/30 at selected restaurants, Sun-Thurs only. At their I-Dine site you can get a list by state of those participating.

I thought they took up to three cards only. Are you tying into the idine program or one of their airline affiliation programs?

The airline program is the same as the iDine program, even if you did not know this.

For example, I just switched my iDine account from Delta to CO in order to top off my CO account. The rep on the phone said you can't have the same credit card in both programs, so he had to close my DL account. I only thought I had one, but he said my DL Dine account set up through Delta was also an iDine account.

Rep said that the restaurants for the various airlines are basically the same, with a few exceptions here and there.

dingo -

You can register up to three cards in EACH program, as long as one card is only registered once in all programs. So, three cards registered to AA, 3 different cards to UA, 3 to NW, etc.

Thanks for the tip. I just signed up for the BA Exec Club iDine program and moved my BA Visa from the UA program.

Funny, almost every restaurant on Ocean Dr in South Beach Miami is a Idine participant! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Some better then others. I forgot my list and just picked the places I wanted to try. Only to find, that they were on the list. Nice touch, when you get the bonus miles.