An Idine personal record
 

of 17,749 AA miles last month, thanks to some bonuses, a senior staff Xmas luncheon, and a family trip. At that unsustainable pace, it would take 10 months to earn two B/C tix to Europe (one for me; one for my Idine-induced gut).

FWIW, for my bonus-seeking nickel, Idine is the most hassle free program taking the least effort for the most return. Maybe one dining reward failed to post last year, which was quickly resolved by one fax.

Quoting Mr. Creosote:

"Bring me a bucket" http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Excuse me ex-pal, since you were in the buying mood, you could have called your ex-best-friend in the LBC!

By the way, did I ever mention to you that you stole my OMNI Award then pulled some silly stunt to further enhance your OMNI aura?

How in the world did you get so many points!? 17,000 miles is 1,700 in food expenditures right? Doable, but still a lot of dining out.

What types of restaurants are mostly part of iDine? I've spent $7,000 on dinners (22 business associates, and, yes, a bit over the top) and at least $3K at 2 iDine locations I found in my hometown.

Maybe I should sign up.

There are all kinds of restaurants that are affiliated with iDine. If you go to iDine.com, you can see the restaurants for your city/neighborhood.

Most iDine locations I've found give 10/miles per $ spent INCLUDING tax and tip.
For $7,000 you could receive any easy 70,000 miles for just registering a credit card.

And there is something new for 2004 that is supposed to start today where they give 25% bonus miles (12.5 per dollar) if you are on United Idine. They haven't given the details, but had a special fasttrack if you ate at 4 Idine rest. in the last couple weeks.

I've found that it is not unusual for them NOT to post, and I have to call and then email a copy of the receipt. Be sure and save your receipts and double check.

Why wouldn't people sign up for this? It's free, you don't do anything, if you never use it you just don't get any miles, but if you happen to be in an Idine restaurant, even if you don't know it, a few days later you get an e-mail telling you that you got some miles.

The miles are just too easy to get not to sign up.

An idine place caters our monthly manger's meetings; another provides pizza a couple times per month to inmates in one of our halfway houses; and, I have a tab at the place right next door to my office. Further, there are about 8 eateries w/in walking distance to my main office and as many or more w/in 5 miles; and then there's quarterly advisory boards, not to mention travel....

Given the choices, I have not felt that I've given up any quality.

And Dave ol' pal, I'd buy ya lunch even w/out the miles. B

Pretty much all places have a $600 per month limit.

Per month per card. Register three cards, and you have tripled your limit. Join another airline's program, register three more cards.....

How many c.c. do you have? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif I have 4 and my wife thinks I'm crazy. Love those miles!

You don't need a ton of credit cards, visa and mastercard check cards count, most everybody has one or two of those, and you can also use the prepaid gift type cards that many people use for traveling.

If you are looking at 70,000 miles, then a couple of three or four dollar fees for a prepaid credit card is money very well spent.

Doesn't show up on your credit report as a line of credit, no application, etc.

I was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and tried to get some i-dine credits. Even with a up-to-date list of restaurant I was very disappointed. Many were shut down and the rest had limited hours of operation despite what the website stated.

Not a good i-dine run.

Idine can be a nice asset to your frequent flyer program when things go well.
However not all things go smoothly all the time.
Since Transmedia took over the program IMO the program has gotten a lot worse.
In one area with email notification of all finished dining transactions clearly better.

The high quality dining establishments aren't as common as they once were.
You must know exactly what days you are allowed to dine with the available current merchants.
Show up on the wrong day get nothing
I have seen merchants pulled from their site 1 hour before I planned to dine at an establishment !
Some require advance reservations thru Idine to get mileage credit.
Let the diner beware. They have refused credit in some instances.
Last week Idine insisted I could only earn miles if I made reservations for one of the last two seatings at an upscale dining establishment in Brentwood @ 9 or 9:30 PM .
One small problem the last seating was at 8:30 and then they closed for the evening http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Idine has a mixed bag with customer service
Some are rude and some are highly satisfactory.
Idine can take a lot of effort depending on the establishments and the rules of the merchant

I have had over a hundred transactions that did not post in the past.No fault of my own. Some were easily posted later by Idine. Others not.
Some airlines also do a lousy job of posting wirth no dining date or establishment name listed after posting. Matching them is a pain.Especially if you do a large amount of transactions
I believe the program was superior years ago
All listed merchants were always honored 24/7 as long as you used the correct credit card.And there was a grace period of 30 days after a merchant pulled out of a program.
They would always honor the miles
They have also stopped mailing out books.
On the road I don'y always have round the clock access to a computer nor do I want to call them each time and wait till their customer service locates a participating merchant.
I certainly appreciate the program but it certainly hasn't been all smooth sailing .
It can be very time consuming and unlike the older program that always earned you 10 miles per dollar and uo many are scimpy on earnings not making it worth the chance to get bad food for a small amount of miles.
Happy New Year

------------------
AA & Starwood,Marriott Platinum
Hyatt, Hilton Diamond
Swissotel Club Gold
U/A 1k




[This message has been edited by 777 global mile hound (edited Jan 02, 2004).]

...I don't remember being invited to any pizza parties...

I've earned 21,196 idine miles on AA in 2003 on 77 idines, excluding any bonuses. This is more than double the number of QMiles I earned in 2003! Also earned 910 miles on UA in December with 4 idine transactions. I have had one UA and one AA not post so far. Where does it explain the fax for credit? My main gripe is restaurants are in this program because they are trying to establish a clientele...if they are new, the restaurant may be a great find. If it's because they are trolling for customers, the place might not be so good. I avoid the listed pubs and college joints. I check the menus online but will still go someplace else if the parking lot is vacant. I'm glad my area (RDU) the choices are growing. Idine and the AA M/C will allow me to continue getting FC seats to HI each year!

[This message has been edited by outoftown (edited Jan 02, 2004).]

Actually I believe many of them are in it for the cash they borrowed from Idine through their working capital program:

Providing Working Capital for Growth
Perhaps you’d like to add a dining patio to your restaurant. Or purchase new equipment for your kitchen. Maybe you’d like to freshen your décor. Whatever your restaurant needs, iDine’s Cash Advance program can provide you with the capital to see them fulfilled.


Idine is changing it's name by the way to Rewards network

I don't remember locking you up. All good things in good time, however.

Don't forget people that iDine also has a cashback option instead of miles (called iDine Prime).

I was grandfathered into their 'Free' cashback program which gives 15% cashback. So, a $100 bill gives me $15 cashback. I would much rather have that than 1,000 miles.

I believe that their current cashback program gives 20% cashback, but there is a 'fee' for it now. The first $49 of savings each year will be retained by iDine and applied to your annual membership fee.

I was in the cash back program and moved to the miles. Getting a $29 check every now and then just gets deposited and means nothing to me, I really needed to set up a separate bank account for all these little checks.

Miles means something, as they can only be used for travel, not to gas up the car.


Edited to fix the spelling of account so that it's no longer a four letter word

[This message has been edited by cordelli (edited Jan 03, 2004).]

Also, I believe with the cash back program, there is an annual fee (about $49). Your first $49 of cash backs is used to offset this, so you won't get cash back immediately.

But I choose the airline option. The main reason, is whatever miles I earn is combined into my AAdvantage account, with all the other miles I've earned from doing different things. If my only way of getting miles was iDine, then I would use cash back. But since it isn't, I choose the miles.

Boy, you really need a spell checker around here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

In June I managed to earn 24,000 miles (some AA and some NW). That was 4 X $600 max. Unfortunately a month like that is a once a year thing for me. My industry has an annual convention where I'm responsible for entertaining some of our guests. This year happened to be in Chicago, which IMHO is the best iDine town in terms of number of decent restaurants where one could entertain business associates. Had three dinners, one of which I split the bill between two different cards.

If only every month could be that way http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif!

My miles didn't post. Is the mastercard receipt sufficient evidence for them to post miles and can it be done by email instead of snail mail?

I have done it by email before, but only after calling and getting a customer service person to give me their email address. I tried a second time to the same address, and nothing happened, so I had to call again and go through the same process.

I have managed to get missing miles posted 3 times via email and without submitting a receipt. Each time I was only asked for my AAdvantage account number.