We pick some of the best comments of the past week in the TBB Comments. In case you missed all the action.
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I insert my expertly inflammatory commentary, as always, in brackets.
From June 8th post:
TWA44: TBB, you are not the only one ranting:
http://www.nerdseyeview.com/blog/2014/06/08/travel-blogging-2014/
Here’s two excerpts:
“…. It’s a lie to make you spend money on things you don’t need. It’s a lie to make you feel like you’re failing if you don’t live abroad six months out of the year. It’s a lie to make you go on needlessly complicated routes to Philly because it allows you to stack up the miles to get the airline status to get on the list for a free upgrade for flight across the Atlantic which you may or may not get because 30 other people are ahead of you on the list, did you know that? It’s a lie to make you feel like you will be a better happier taller prettier more interesting and therefore much more lovable and oh, smarter too if only you buy this idea.
…
I want travel marketing companies to stop mistaking bloggers for online marketers. Some are, some aren’t. Know the difference.
I want bloggers who engage in marketing initiatives to fully disclose to their readers, up front, what they’re doing. “I was paid a day rate plus expenses to travel to and write about this destination.”
I want my “friends” and my friends to stop using their feeds to sell to me.
I want people who equate travel writing with a “lifestyle” to disappear.
I want anyone who says “I gotta make a living” as an excuse for sleazy web practices to talk with people who *really* “gotta make a living.”
I want publishers to stand behind their sponsored content so completely that they’re not afraid to tell their readers exactly what it is….”
[Must read rant, amen!]
Friend: “How can I take my trip with miles and points?”
Howie: “Miles and points won’t work for this trip, but you probably should collect a bigger balance of miles and points that might not work for your goals by applying for these credit cards through my affiliate links.”
Friend: “But isn’t having a large balance of miles and points a bad thing in case of devaluations?”
Howie: “Apply for my credit cards, nothing could possibly go wrong.”
Friend: “What good are miles and points if I can’t use them for my goals?”
Howie: “Credit cards. Credit cards. Apply! You’re getting sleeeeeepppyyy… Credit cards!”
Friend: “zzzzzz *click* ”
I wonder if he prescribes credit cards as a remedy for various illnesses too. [Yes…probably. It is all about conversions man!]
Steve: Can we all agree that if you’re pushing the SPG credit card without making a single mention that you can give 5K to a friend by having them refer you….. you’re essentially pushing an inferior offer for the card (many people would get more utility from giving an extra 5K points to a friend or family member)?
Good. Well in that case, Ariana is busy pushing inferior offers of a card in a shameless SPG hack job
But what was the funniest thing in that entire piece?
“This luxury resort has won numerous accolades, including the #18 spot on Tripadvisor’s list of Luxury Hotels in Croatia”
[In a post about the CSP card an FTG reader asked about the 5k pts referral link and he/she was conveniently ignored of course because answering that would hurt conversions. Typical! ]
VC: Before the UA announcement, the Uber/Amex partnership was all the rage in the BA echo chamber. One post had 4 referral links to sign up for Uber (possibly causing the link to paragraph ratio to surpass 1) and at least two managed to mention the CSP. Imagine how AMAZING!!!! that partnership would be if amex still paid out…
ingy: …RoboForm?? At least the credit card links of others are pertinent to the topic.
Come home George. Help us with the Greek Yogurt campaign. The family needs you George. Your nieces need you to help with their calendar as well.
RoboForm?
Izzy [it’s ingy, keeps changing the handles!]
…I love you George … [LOL]
…You whine and complain but make no difference… [LOL]
…Your timing was just wrong. And you are wrong again. I don’t despise your blog. Your blog is the best laugh I get all day… [ You are welcome!]
I’m gonna hire some guy to put a “Whine-O-Meter on your blog to show the percentage of comments that are whining about bloggers that have much larger audiences, more influence in the space and are profitable. You represent the .2% of “angries” in the space. And you can have this audience all to yourself.
But in all reality you are heading to Pimpadopoulos Land with Amazon and RoboForm.
IB and their fact checkers didn’t catch the avios slipup either sometimes things get by even the best of us. [ Fact checkers at FTG? They are really good…they never slip up on getting one credit card link wrong! LOL!]
Amol: …even though smoking is prohibited on planes, lavatories still have ashtrays because if someone decides to break the law, they’d rather have them keep the cigarette in an ashtray rather than in the trash, where it’ll combust with paper and start a fire. One plane in the 1970s crashed because of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_820
harvon3: Most of the guns used in Mexico are manufactured in and carried in from the United States.
Mexico does not manufacture guns or ammunition on anywhere near the scale that the United States does.
http://catcher.sandiego.edu/items/peacestudies/way_of_the_gun.pdf
Steve: …At the end of the day, the average client loves mileage programs programs like Southwest and Jetblue and hates the legacy programs where they perceive they can never use their miles. You don’t need 7 book report length posts to analyze that Delta and United aligning their programs with heavily profitable and popular airlines probably makes business sense for them. You just need to admit that people like us are the exception and not the rule. Gary can’t do that.
ingy:
You have created a business model where you drive more income to the people you suggest “ignoring” than you earn yourself from the blog. Like I said, its like fighting a guy with one hand behind his back. [ I am sure Delta Points right now is going “Yeah, tell him ingy!” smh]
And each time you or one of your readers goes to one of “those ignore blogs” you are providing impressions in their CPM compensation model. [ LOL]
Don’t you love it George. [ No, I hated it that Colombia beat Greece in the World Cup, it made me really angry!]
Keep up the good work George. The other bloggers appreciate your readers impressions. [impressions…LOL]
Perfect. Just Perfect !!!!!!!!!!! [ Thank you]
I see George has now started deleting comments? [ What? I am not Delta Points! Do you see other things? Hear voices too?]
call me senile. Call me a sociopath. [Ok]
It doesn’t matter. I just state the truth in plain and simple UNspun English [ Sure…and I am Batman ]
…You guys can dish it out but sure hate getting it back don’t ya? Haters gonna hate!!!!! [Trolls gonna troll!]
I enjoy the banter and constant whining of your readers. I mean what the heck, they are traveling for virtually free and yet still complaining. You’ve got yourself a unique .2% niche here George that nobody else will ever touch. It is all yours buddy. [Gee, thanks.]
and so nice of you to be feeding those you wish your readers to ignore. [I hope team USA gets a better result than those hapless Greeks!]
I’ll have to check if FTG readership goes up when i post here. Last time I checked they picked up a couple of extra applications IIRC. Just think what fun that would be? I could get extra compensation for coming here. Now that would be a retirement dream come true:) [ Crap! I went for groceries and forgot to get me some hummus, tragic!]
it’s me: No Ingy, TBB does not send me to the blogs on his ignore list. I have been reading this blog since almost the beginning. George thinks like me and I trust him. He has great insights and so I let him do the ugly work of looking at the blogs and giving the truth on TBB. This blog saves me a lot of time and clicking! [ Gracias, it’s all about you here, not me and certainly not Chase and Amex lol]
Mark: The English team at the World Cup took a few hours to visit an orphanage the other day in Brazil. “It was so sad to see their heartbroken faces with no hope” said one, Jose, age 6.
Steve: Gary out with post number 56 trying to convince himself that airlines are hurting themselves when they make moves that hurts people like Gary
MVP Post of the Week by msmcmotown:
Starting with the disclaimer that IMHO TBB was spot on moving VFTW to “ignore” given the blog’s rapid descent from the top quartile of those I used to follow–I nevertheless find myself agreeing with the VFTW position on UA copycatting DL, at least within the margins of the argument. The DL hard and soft products are far superior to those of UA. FFers with a choice will choose DL over UA, everything else being equal. UA needs it’s FF program to offer a competitive advantage over DL’s, and should stick with a simple mileage based strategy to lure the masses. If you’re behind, you can’t simply mimic the leader if you want to gain ground.
But the argument being waged may be missing the forest for the trees. In the current airline oligopoly, everything else is rarely equal, and its unclear if any of the US airlines want to gain ground, or if they’re content with the acreage they already have. Competition has been significantly reduced or eliminated. If one wants to fly nonstop very early or very late in the day, then one gets one or two choices of carrier–and thats if they live in a hub. (If you have to connect, then your main choice is to pick the poison of which hub to avoid.) Fares rarely vary more than a few dollars. Without competition and real choice, FF programs that reward loyalty, measured by either revenue produced or miles flown, may no longer be needed.
However, the FF programs still serve a purpose as the drug of choice for Chase, Citi, AMEX, and to a lesser extent Barclays. As long as miles continue to sustain addiction to high interest/high-fee affinity cards, the FF programs will have value to the banks, and to the airlines selling the miles to the banks.
FF programs are no longer about building and sustaining loyalty to the airline. They’re about sustaining addiction to the CC and ancillary products, like the Catera portals.
Have a great week while I am depressed for the Greek national team that decided to lay an egg again in the World Cup and lose to Colombia 3-0 in its first game. I guess it wasn’t as bad as Spain losing 5-1 to Netherlands…
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I want to ask First? But by the time I post this, I am probably second or third.
You got it, you got it! Welcome to this exclusive club 😉
First?
Seconds…just seconds…i feel your pain lol
Please schedule a dramatic reading of your electronic exchanges with ingy. I’m kind of not joking, but it may be tough rounding up A-list actors for the project.
Lol, that’s really funny!
With good make-up to look less young, Brian Cranston would be amazing. My first choice would be Orson Welles, but, yeah, death happens.
Since Brendan does not claim 3rd, I believe that I would make the top three for tonight 🙂 The last picture is pretty funny. Thanks.
As soon as I saw that gif….I knew instantly it was TBB material!
It is the season around here of graduation parties for those completing a phase of their education, as well as retirement parties for some who did the teaching. We just returned from a super party with a live Zydeco band. The host was a 50ish economics professor who is retiring early. The guests were her family, friends and colleagues, as well as friends of her son, who graduated HS this week. The furniture was pushed aside so we could dance to fabulous music. It was terrific to share the dance floor with kids of all ages. Zydeco is clearly for everyone:
http://www.tooloosecajunzydeco.com/
Happy Fathers Day, y’all.
Zydeco: The punk of blues
Someone I know said about it years ago.
Went to a grad party too. Had so many medals, and awards and all kinds of things….felt a bit intimidated about our son lol.
TPG writes “We’re about to hit one million monthly unique visitors, which we’re really excited about.”
So full of it
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/thepointsguy.com#
Apr 2014 Unique Visitors
146,934
I wouldn’t trust compete… at all. It just means he’s not seriously popular among college students, or whoever compete is using to get traffic.
Maybe he is trying to get the attention$$ of Henry Kravis and KKR. Or maybe Lenny Kravitz.
I am not qualified to even mention anything about this stuff, I am clueless. I rely on FTG to let me know of my rankings as he is more interested in them than me LOL.
Not surprised. He’s gotta be paying his PR team a shitton.
I saw a comment few days back on saving 15% on hotels.com booking + portal discount. I see that Topcashback is offering 7% back now. Can some one please help me how to get the 15% discount? I have a major trip coming by and want to see if i can maximise my savings.
What they are talking about is that the Hotels.com site gives you 1 free night for every 10 nights that you stay (average cost of all stays). When you add that to the 7% cash back, you are at 16% – 17% savings
Ok, got it, Katherine. Was wondering if I was missing anything here. Thanks.
That’s right. I mentioned hotels.com. Be sure you’re registered for Welcome Rewards, their program. You get 10% of every stay (price only, not taxes or fees) back and can redeem after ten stays.
I also bid on priceline.com with tricks I learned around the blogs, but that’s when I’m interested in a cheap hotel in a general area.
For places like Vegas, there are sites that will tell you which blinded hotwire hotel you’re looking at, based on amenities listed and location.
Thanks, harvson3.
If you’re booking chain hotels, and don’t care about points/status, Hotels.com is probably best. But remember the 10% is only 10% after 10 nights.
If you’re booking chain hotels and do care about status, Hotels.com doesn’t really help.
If you’re booking non-chain hotels: Look at CheapTickets.com (Orbitz family). They always have 20-25% off coupons that actually take that much off (non-chain hotels, generally). Right now JETSET is 20% off. Coupon + 2% TCB + not having to wait for 10 nights = often a much better deal.
I could go and make a travelpony account and pump a referral link to it here but I am too lazy or watch too much soccer these days!
Thanks, Richard. Will give that a try.
Tried cheaptickets.com. The price has been inflated and the resultant price shown after discount for non chain hotel is almost 15% more than hotels.com price for the same hotel. I guess i will stick to hotels.com for hotel that i have in mind and for the rest go through Hotwire/Priceline route, if i dont have particular hotel in mind. I am sharing this as a genuine feedback for the benefit of TBB readers.
You must be one of the .2% angry TBB readers who like to share genuine feedback here 🙂
Hahah, George. Go you 🙂
FWIW, that’s not ordinary in my experience over my last dozen bookings or so — my guess is that means that in this case Orbitz/CheapTickets don’t have access to the same cheaper rate, not that the price has been inflated intentionally.
Just goes to show that it always pays to compare across sites (and these differences can often lead to great Expedia BRG opportunities).
And Priceline… it amazes me that it has more or less dropped off the travel hacking radar. With the exception perhaps of someone with top-tier status at a hotel chain, if you’re flexible on location, the average traveler is often going to come out quite well relying on a Priceline approach.
I agree with you Richard that we must compare before deciding. Thanks for sharing. Exploring all possible options is the key to unlock the best rate.
Buzz, I hope you are okay today. I just want to let you know that I am there for you. First, Greece loses their soccer game and now Kasey Kasem dies. How on earth are we going to know the top10 ten songs without him and his countdown. Certainly he is a sure candidate for Sainthood……………My breakfast was ruined when I saw Gleff post a picture of himself waving a champagne glass at us AGAIN. Didn’t he post this same picture a couple of weeks ago. He must think he looks like a suave Bon Vivant. He doesn’t. I am sure glad Common Man was out of the country and not able to see this, it would have ruined his vacation…………………………..I leave you with these words from the late Kasey Kasem ” keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars “. Happy Fathers Day!!
@Ramsey – At least Gleff wasn’t toasting us in his PJs. As I listened to that Zydeco band last night I found myself wondering vaguely if one of the musicians might be you!
yes that was me playing the scrub-board
Long live Kasey 🙂
Yeah, GL jumping on Ben about the British Airways first class review. WTF! Like we give a damn about the pajamas or whatever! I can’t stand champagne by the way!
Greece’s loss feels much better after the beatings Spain, Ecuador (losing a heartbreaker in the last few seconds, England, and just now Honduras)…
Greece beats Japan and then go all out against Ivory Coast. Amazingly, we are still in it. But that was a horrible display we managed to show…embarassing. Pisses me off, we just don’t have a good history in the World Cup at all. It appears everything goes wrong damn it. My brother was at the game, it was a long long ride back to Sao Paulo.
Thanks, happy father’s day to you too and everyone!
I have a LONG Frontline Report coming up….I am the chonicler (just made up this word!) of the ridiculous charade of “travel experts” who have morphed into “credit card pumpers”.
I think y’all like it.
That pic of Gleff was seriously WTF. I feel like it should have a caption that reads “I dont always wear PJs, but when I do I prefer taking pictures of myself wearing it in the lavatory and broadcast it on the internet. Stay Chase-y, my friends. And click my links.”
“Stay Chase-y, my friends” LOL
Not “WTF”. More like phucking awkward.
Greece??? Come on George, what’s going on? Free vacation to Rio?
Lost pride and camera LOL?
Please be kind. That was a mistake. From minute 1 to 91. Embarrassing. The coach will fix it. We hope so anyway. Must beat Japan in the next game and we are back on track! Greece can play much better than this, it was not our day all day long!
My username says it all. No one I’ve met multiple times has a more inflated opinion of themselves than Rick. Nevertheless, he’s not the worst guy around. Just the most egotistical.