I agree! It's interesting because this company keeps trying to "reinvent" itself!
Idine was previously the Transmedia card. You could obtain the Transmedia card by paying for it or through a promotion for free.

As an elite AA member - I get a 500 mile bonus for dining 3 times - so I make sure that I dine three times. I rarely bother with the less than 10 mile restaurant, unless I can pick up something really cheap - like 2 slices of pizza. I don't bother with the restaurants in which you have to commit to a time and I'm annoyed at the restaurants that have black-out dates. My favorite restaurants have dropped out one by one and it is VERY annoying. I use my Diners Club - to get the cash discount in any of the restaurants that take DC - and I get without paying an extra fee, so I get a bit of both. Wonder if they will be sending out surveys for the other airline groups. I definitely would bother less for puny points. If they took away the bonus miles - I definitely wouldn't be going out of my way.

Well, of course you can't deduct the 20% rebate and so therefore you should put the charge on your expense report reflecting the actual cost. What you can do is deduct the entire membership fee yourself (or put it in for reimbursement) if you use it for business at all, even if the lion's share of the usage is personal.

But if you get miles, in a sense your company is paying for your miles and get the miles. I think that is why employees usually take the miles route, and for personal usuage take the rebate.

I agree. Frankly, I don't go out of my way to dine at an Idine restaurant even now. If the one I'm eating at happens to be a participating restaurant, great. More miles for me. If not, oh well. My experience is that participation is pretty lame now, and restaurants are jumping ship all the time (my favorite coffee shop just quit the program). So if the pool of participating restaurants were expanded significantly, I would probably earn as many miles, or even more, than now. There would be that much more of a chance that whatever eatery I end up at would be participating.

First of all, on annual fees: If I had to pay ONE $49 annual fee, but that covered my membership in the 4 different airline iDine programs I belong to, then maybe. But if I had to pay a separate $49 annual fee for each one, and they didn't go "all unlimited visits" for the annual fee, then forget it. I depend heavily on being able to use 4 different airline iDine programs to get around the 1 visit per month limit at most of the restaurants I frequent. And beyond that, I concentrate my iDines in other cases more on one airline one month, perhaps another airline another month, depending if I need to top off somewhere of if one airline has a bonus that pulls me toward it.

Second, at 3 miles/$, that would be so minimal that I would not only stop dining at iDine places much, I'd vastly decrease my dining out (switching to take out from supermarket food bars, frozen dinners, and such, more). The current iDine setup is good enough that over 90% of my dining is at iDine establishments! They'd lose just about ALL my business if it dropped to 3 miles/$ (only during triple bonus periods would they see me sometimes). (Indeed, to date I've never yet continued to eat at a restaurant after it dropped out of iDine.)

Btw, I've not gotten any such survey, despite belonging to 4 miles-based iDine programs (plus the discount-based iDine program with Diners Club, tho that I never use).

dgordon and others who have the answer: I just became Plat on AA a few months ago. I am new to AA and wondering if the 500 bonus for eating 3X a month is automatic or something I need to sign up for. I do have an AA profile with idine. The idine CS reps told me they knew nothing about this and that I would have to direct questions to AA. I don't see anything about it on www.aa.com

(I apologize in advance if I asked this question months ago.)

How about apologizing for being severely off topic? <meant nicely not a flame just a polite jab>

The annual fee is for the rebate program - the one that gets you varying percentages back (up to 20%) on your credit card. The mileage programs are all free.

I have my primary credit card attached to the rebate program - I earned my way through the first $39 very quickly (I had a $10 promotional credit to start) and now get all sorts of little rebates on my Amex. Fortunately, a couple of my favorite lunch places are still in the program and allow unlimited visits.

If iDine reduced the rebates and miles, I'd probably dump the iDine Prime account and just keep my FF mile accounts, occasionally earning a few miles here or there. I would no longer seek out iDine restaurants like I do now.

If one of my favorite restaurants exited the program altogether, I would probably stop going there permanently and make a point to let them know why I was leaving.

I would be very disappointed if they lowered the miles/$. There is a 5 mile per $ restaurant in town. It is nice, but it limits to 3 nights a week etc., so I only go there if I am taking clients ( it is nicer than the other Idine restaurants in town). For 3 miles/$ I would not go out of my way. For 5 miles I would consider it but frankly, it is the 10 miles that make me choose a restaurant that I would not otherwise pick.
If they keep messing around with this thing I am just going to say to he** with it and if I hit one great, if not too bad.

gardener I do sincerely apologize. Peace!

most of the time. I wouldn't drive out of my way to go to one. My favorite bakery is an unlimited IDINE at 10 per $. I often fetch items for the office. A very good deal for me, but at a lower miles rate, I would find one closer to the office to save gas.

I know that they ARE free and that CURRENTLY the annual fee is only for the stand-alone rebate program (as opposed to the Restaurant Savings rebate program, which is no additional charge on top of the regular annual fee for a Diners Club card), but one of the surveys that someone mentioned getting here seemed to be asking them how they would react if there was a $49 annual fee instituted for a MILEAGE card (just to restore the benefits to 10 miles/$, keeping the mileage earning much lower for those who don't pay the annual fee, sort of analogous to how many FF programs have a free 1 miles/2$ credit card but make you pay an annual fee for a 1 miles/1$ credit card). And THAT is what I was reacting to.

I could save money just by eating at cheaper restaurants (iDine restaurants are rarely the VERY cheapest around)! So I see no attraction in a cashback program (as not enough restauarants around me are iDine that I'd very likely eat at them by accident if I was already choosing based on price). Meanwhile, since I don't fly on business, there is a limit on how many miles I can earn in a year from other sources, and iDine under its current rules is one of the easiest ways to earn miles I could earn no other way. (And I use my miles mostly for upgrades, which I couldn't pay for with the rebates I'd get if I got rebates instead of miles.)

We personally go out of our way to eat at idine restaurants because of the points and miles and would sharply curb this practice if the points are reduced. The simple reason is that I don't count any idine restaurants among my favorites, and if the incentive is not big enough we'll just go more to our favorites, or other dining programs like Diner's Club or Lettuce Entertain You. But this is a marketing tool that makes sense and should be workable - somewhere somebody must be failing to realize the value of gaining a bunch of customers that the restaurant otherwise wouldn't have, or idine is failing to demonstrate that to its member restuarants. I surely don't think a restaurant should stay in the program if it doesn't see value, but knowing how many idine members there are who eat at restaurants they otherwise wouldn't, you can't convince me there isn't value. Why not just issue an idine card to people to hand over when they give their credit card, so the restaurant knows you came there because of the program? Might not sit well with those who want to discreetly save 20% versus earning points or miles, but that's silly anyway - if you're treating, you shouldn't feel bad about getting the discount. If you're skimming, that's terrible! Anyhow, I can only think of 1 restuarant that we went to before we knew we could get points, but even that place we now go more often, at least once a month.

Aaaaahhh...now I understand everybody's reactions a bit more! $49 for mileage programs - I severely doubt I'd do that. I didn't get a survey - I just thought they were trying to expand the number of restaurants in the program in exchange for watering down the mileage return.

I think I'm in the opposite boat as you are. I go to the same iDine places frequently and don't feel like I'm eating bad food or overpaying just for the rebate. And I already have about a 1.5 million FF miles and hotel points, so for now I'd rather get the small cash credits back - at least until I've burned off most of these miles/points.