As someone who previously used to do an award service as well as other similar flight searching kind of services, let me just say that it's not any specific "special" expertise that you're paying for - not to say that the huge learning curve of being an award expert like Ben or his colleagues is an easy feat, but it is more the time and energy required (or grunt work, if you will) involved in actually piecing together these itineraries, then booking them (sometimes manually by phone) that you're paying for. In some extreme cases, $300 is a very small price to pay for the luxury of pawning of all the workload to a third party.

Of course there are also much simpler award tickets bookable directly online - for these, the time savings and hence value generated by these services I would agree is a lot less. As with all these things, YMMV.

I wanted to use his award service once - Tiffany was pretty much useless in her reply and I ended up doing it myself. That doesn't appear to be a common thing, but I was pretty annoyed that I was ready to pay them for something I was sure I could do myself to avoid the constant checking and they were less than helpful.

Actually I have to be honest here, I�m no fan of all his political grandstanding on his blog that�s gotten kinda dumb, and way too political. But his mileage searching service for people who have no idea how to use them was really great. Shoutout to working with Jimmy Yoon (I don�t know if he still works there) it was worth every penny. I believe I paid $100-300, it was a long time ago, maybe 2013, before I knew how to use all the different tools.

The guy used tools I didn�t even know existed at the time, and was constantly on the prowl for what I wanted and requested and constantly kept me updated. If I got lazy, and had a ton of Amex points lying around I might use him again because of the positive experience.

Someone mentioned they had a bad experience with Tiffany. I second that, she gave me a bunch of bad options, didn�t listen to what I requested, and didn�t really seem like she cared that much. She never followed up with me. Jimmy was the best!

Here he goes again recently yelling at people in the comments section who criticize him... it�s gotten kind of embarrassing. Just ignore them like he use to...

Given that another website has just gotten rid of comments, shrug

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"I question 5MM flyer over his climate crimes and unnecessary air travel"

Pot calling kettle. Another tick in the leftist agenda box.

At some point, your accusations of "the leftist agenda" Everytime someone posts something you dislike are meaningless. That point has come and gone.

Comment is free...

Leftists specialise in hypocrisy and with Ben he dishes it out with spades.

Apparently malapropisms are free as well.

Personally, I specialize in tearing down the patriarchy.

I know what I wrote. It's not a mistake.

I wanted the mental image of something being shovelled .

Yah you seem very good at digging holes deeper and deeper.

You don't expect to receive a compliment on a thread like this. Thank you for your kind words.

I mean, props to him for getting out of his comfort zone, but a story like that is just something you keep to yourself. He could adjust the headline: "While participating in unnecessary leisure travel, I explained to other people how they needed to do their part".
Unless the whole point was to have something to write about and not because he was actually concerned.

So do you similarly complain about Gary pushing the conservative agenda on VFTW? Or is this some hypocrisy �shut up and dribble� rhetoric only reserved for people who think climate change is real and a global pandemic is a bad thing?