Yes, KVS is providing a service, by making it very easy to grab the information from various (free or not) sources. For example, the *A awards, I would rather go with KVS then using the NH website, or ExpertFlyer, or your tool. It's way faster. So yes, this is a service, a valuable one that is worth paying for.

I don't think this is a KVS issue.

It seems the problem isn't with the YOW - YYZ segment, it is with the YYZ - LAS portion. Since IKK is linked to R availability, you'll notice that R=0 for the 2nd leg, and this is why it won't give you the seat for 40,000. There are significant threads on this very topic lately.

Not sure why the cancelled flight is showing up on KVS or actually still showing up on aircanada.com for that matter.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/5.0.0.591 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Considering I have never publicly published anything that searches *A inventory I'd say that not using anything I've done for that is a good idea. ;)

And I do not dispute that the tool eases some of the searches. But when people don't realize that there are other free options I see no reason not to offer that help, especially when this one isn't working.

sbm makes perfect sense, also do I understand that kvs evades the comment, and I also paid for kvs, as I think its a very good program, especially if we compare it to some others, and for someone that does a lot of searches, even if just easier, it does the job.

a blackberry app (before an iphone one) would be greatly appreciated (incl. in the price)

What's the fuss about?
 

Sounds like to me that the moderator isn't "flaming" someone. Rather, he is merely pointing out that KVS charges for something that is free. Indeed, he is protecting us, the regular consumer FTers out there. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

As a newbie to KVS (I only use the ANA tool), what advantages are there to KVS? I just went to the website, and I noticed that it charges money for 6 months of service. It is $75/year. Is there an advantage to KVS over the ANA tool? If there is value to the $75, then sure, I think it's worth it. But if it just doing the same thing that the ANA tool does, just more easily, I am not sure why anybody would pay them money.

If I understand correctly, this reminds me of how travelocity used to charge $5.00 if you booked an airline ticket with them. Of course, everybody would just search on travelocity, then go directly to the airline website to buy their ticket, saving the $5.00. Is this what KVS is like?

You are right however: People pay more to have a cellphone with a longer battery life, more ergonomic, easier to use, etc.

I use kvs because its easier to use, and when doing 10's of search per day, it pays to have something easier.

It's free:

http://tools.wanderingaramean.com/

If searching ANA easier is your main goal, you can also try AwardNexus it searches ANA, among others, and does it with multi-day searching. For free.

KVS Tool is actually a comprehensive suite of tools for frequent flyers, so Star Alliance award availability is just a small part of what one can do with it.

As to the "advantages", we believe that the actual KVS Tool members would in the best position to address this question, which they have done, both today and on previous occasions:

A selection of additional user reviews is available at http://www.KVSTool.com/Member-Testimonials.php

I did a bit of poking and am very surprised by the lack of resiliency in the KVS setup. For the techies, even the DNS was offline and wasn't resolving.

For the non-techies, that means even if there was a secondary server to auth against, it likely would have failed as the entire kvstool.com domain had no records.

I do question the provider that is being used as any halfway-decent provider tends to have multiple layers of DNS servers that live on different networks so the loss of a single site doesn't offline the entire domain.

KVS, i'd highly suggest you consider your provider and get a more resilient DNS solution. While an outage as today's can be forgiven easily on a free service, for those of us who pay, it really is unacceptable to have such a sustained outage.

Ouch!

For this very reason, the KVSTool.com domain itself has always been set-up fully autonomously from the web server and has 5 layers of DNS servers attached to it. As a result, the domain itself was not affected by today's outage, which, in turn, enabled uninterrupted e-mail communication.

If it wasn't for a series of inaccurate ETAs from our Web Hosting provider, we would have been able to switch the DNS records to point to an alternative server much earlier.

Nevertheless, once further redundancy procedures have been implemented, the new backup system will likely also use a separate domain for additional resiliency in situations like these.

On a more positive note, now that their network upgrade has [finally] been completed, the KVS Tool website is faster than ever.

KVS: commercial motive?
 

thanks. does it do the same thing as kvs tool?

Thanks, but this seems somewhat promotional, as sbm12, a moderator, has pointed out. Clearly, by your username, you've a vested interest in KVS tool, which is a for-profit website. The testimonials are on the website itself, which of course is biased because you will only put up good testimonials.

I think the spirit of FT is that we use FlyerTalk for ways of enhancing our flying experience, not as a vehicle for self-promotion and marketing our for-profit websites. I think this is what sbm12 has been getting at, and I think this is why he is constantly questioning your motives. I think if your website were free--like the ANA tool--then many people would gladly welcome KVS as a great tool. However, it is the for-profit nature of the website which makes people like sbm12 suspicious of your motives.

I just reviewed some of your recent posts, and almost every one that is not posted in this thread directs people to the KVS tool (one of which was in reseponse to my post for a paid C fare in the LX forum, yet you post this KVS stuff which has nothing to do with my question at all). The very reason I am posting in this thread is that you posted in the LX forum on a question that had nothing to do with KVS, yet somehow KVS was insinuated in there. It almost makes it seem that your presence is not so much to support the spirit of FT, but rather to promote and direct people to your website so that you can make money. :eek:

So I support sbm12 100%. ^

Just so you know, DNS queries for kvstool.com were also timing out for me from a number of different geographic locations. It appears you also had DNS issues at the same time.

Are you referring to the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/swiss...sfo-zrh-2.html thread?

If so, the original reply was to a post by SFO777, who referenced "ANA, KVS and EF" and raised the issue of LX awards not being available to other *A partners. The reply demonstrated a 'real-life' occurrence of that exact scenario, and was clearly on-topic (unlike some of today's discussions in this thread).

You then, yourself, asked for an explanation of the availability data codes, which was provided. In fact, you even subsequently replied "Thanks". :confused: