This Year's Delta Bombshell Deal

By: Jason Steele

11/02/2010

A couple of years ago, Delta offered a promotion where you could essentially triple your miles by transferring them to your Delta account. You had to register for the promotion, and then a week after it appeared, they claimed it was all a big mistake. Delta ultimately did standby their offer for those who registered.

This year, there is a registration page as well. Here is the deal. First MAKE SURE YOU REGISTER IMMEDIATELY. Registration is free. Next, save and/or print out the page, just in case Delta changes their mind again. According to the offer, you transfer 50,000 Membership Rewards points to Delta SkyPesos, and you get a 50% mileage bonus AND 25,000 invaluable MQMs, or Medallion Qualifying Miles. Usually, the only way to get those miles is by earning them BIS, or “Butt In Seat”. If you are a regular Delta traveler, and you have 50,000 Membership Rewards miles laying around, you would be crazy not to do this. You would get 100,000 SkyPesos and be bumped up to the next Medallion level.

Another Delta Promo

Not nearly as great, but still worth the effort, is this promo from Fedex. You earn 500 miles for your first and fourth shipment on FedEx, plus a mile per dollar spent. If you send packages occasionally, this is 1000 free miles. If you are some lowly shipping clerk somewhere, perhaps you can sign up and for the mile per dollar spent. Just don’t tell your boss you are flying first class to Europe on your vacation with the miles earned through your shipping job.

Mrs A Reduces Her Credit Card Debt Further And Other Stories

By: Mr Credit Card

10/30/2010

Here are a couple of interesting credit card post that have appeared in other blogs. Firstly, my good friend Mrs Accountability has updated us with her progress in her credit card debt reduction efforts. She is making progress and hopefully, she’ll be credit card debt free by next year.

Meanwhile, Money Beagle just used his Citi Dividend card and earned 5% on one of their 3rd quarter rotating categories (travel). While I’d rather cash back cards pay straight rebates on fixed categories, there are merits to rotating categories if you take advantage of them. After all, there are no cash back credit cards that pay 5% on travel? I don’t expect folks to plan their lives and vacations around what their 5% cash back rotating category was (though you never know). But Money Beagle’s timing was sure perfect.

If you have credit card debt, hopefully Mrs A’s story will motivate you to get rid of that debt of yours. If it doesn’t work, perhaps this will. Jeff has just written a post about how indebtedness could increase obesity!

Does your FICO score matter? Not if you have a mortgage, have no debt and don’t intend to get into debt (which you shouldn’t). But even though it may not be such a big deal, always make sure your credit reports are free of errors or you may face silly things like have your credit lines cut etc!

Finally, Jolyn is starting to use her credit card again. In fact, she intends to earn enough reward points for a gadget! But check out how she is trying to make sure she does not spend more just because she carries a credit card.

Have a great weekend.

Hidden Southwest Card Promotion You Need To Register For

By: Jason Steele

10/29/2010

As regular readers know, the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards card from Chase is now my go to card. The interesting thing is that this card seems to get better and better. At least there seems to be more promotions coming out lately.

Concierge Promotion

A couple months ago, I wrote about this promotion from their Visa Concierge program. I was still waiting for my credit to show up, so I decided to give them a call. Remember, 16 Rapid Rewards credits is a free flight. That would be the equivalent of 25,000 airline miles, if you could actually find a free domestic flight for that number. That means a single Rapid Rewards credit is worth about 1,500 miles. Really it is worth almost double that because Rapid Rewards are still fairly easy to find compared to “saver” rewards on Delta, United, US Airways, and Continental. American is a bit better in my experience.

Double Points on Gas, October Through Year’s End, But Only If You Register!

I think I picked the wrong month to start bicycling to work. Anyways, when calling about the status of the concierge promotion, I was asked if I had registered for the gas promotion. My response was, “What gas promotion?”. It turns out that they are giving you double credits for gas purchases from October 1st through the end of the year. If you register, they will give you credit retroactively, so get on the phone now! Fortunately, my wife is still driving plenty.

Targeted Promotion For Monthly Spending

I also received a targeted promotion for spending $1,000 a month from September through November, no doubt because I had not been using this card much previous to that. If I hit $1,000 a month on each of those months, I will get an additional 2 Rapid Rewards credits. I will take what I can get when it comes to these things.

What Is Going On?

The representative I spoke to was really quite clear. They just want me to use the card. The cynic in me worried about what message they are sending to people who are in debt. I am sure that they would tell you that they just want customers to use their card instead of another, just like tobacco companies always claim their advertising is only to get people to switch brands. They would never want to encourage smoking, right?

The bigger picture here is that the market for reward cards remains highly competitive, long after many industry mouthpieces claimed the CARD Act would kill them. It is well known that the cost of acquiring a new customer remains high; at least several hundreds of dollars. What Chase seems to be doing is going after new customers in a novel way. They are encouraging existing customers to actually use their product. As an existing customer, I signed up for their generous sign up bonus, then rarely used the card. These incentives have achieved their desired effect as I am now using it for most of my spending.

More Thoughts On Airtran And Southwest

By: Jason Steele

As a huge Southwest fan, my initial reaction to the merger announcement was quite ecstatic. Since then, I have had some more time to digest this and read other’s opinions. Over at The View From The Wing, there is speculation that Southwest’s invasion of Atlanta might signal the end to bag fees. He makes a good argument, but I would counter with the fact that between Medallions and Amex Gold card holders, many people are already getting these fees waived. Furthermore, Southwest already blankets other airline’s hubs in fee free goodness, like Denver, yet United and even Frontier have not backed down from their stupid fees. I have a hard time believing Delta will react much differently.

What I could see happening is the expansion of bag fee waivers and discounts. I could see bag fees being waived for people booking vacation packages, or bag fees being included with certain sale fares. I could see it happening, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Airlines like Delta see these fees as the reason they are profitable. The could retrench, like United to catering to business and premium travelers who either don’t care about these fees as they are reimbursed from their company, or who are exempt from these fees anyways. By doing this, Delta would merely be focusing on their most profitable customers, rather than the market as a whole.

According to reports from Southwest’s media event this week, they feel that there is actually room to grow in ATL, and that it could easily be their largest market. What this merger will do is bring the Southwest effect to Atlanta. For those of you who don’t know, the Southwest effect is what happens when fares come down and service levels go up, due to competition. It is really easy to book a Southwest flight, knowing that without change fees, you are assured of receiving a lower price if the fare later goes on sale. You can also cancel your trip and use all of the amount paid towards a future flight. Neither is possible with Delta.

With extensive coverage in the Southeast, they will now become a truly national airline. In fact, with Airtran’s service to Mexico and the Caribbean, they will become an international carrier. From an aviation standpoint, the Caribbean flights require over-sea flight equipment, something they will also need if they are to fly to Hawaii. Southwest has acquired other carriers before, but it is becoming clear that the Airtran deal will completely change the scope of Southwest and the landscape of the competitive market in North America.

Choosing A Travel Card

By: Jason Steele

10/28/2010

The way to spark an endless debate among travel bloggers is to ask them, “Which is the best travel credit card.” Of course, that is an entirely different question than “Which is the best travel card for me?” The answers differ because obviously, people’s needs differ. Let me see if I can sum up my opinion quickly, much like Ben Schlappig did recently in his blog at TSlife.com.

The Frequent Traveler

If you travel frequently, and you are loyal to a particular airline, the clear front runner will be the card affiliated with that airline. In this way you will maximize your mileage for purchases on that airline, and can even earn a host of perks such as status qualifying points, discount lounge memberships, and two for one ticket coupons.

The Infrequent Traveler

As Ben points out, many people earn most of their miles from credit card sign up bonuses. I am like Ben in that regard. I certainly don’t fly every week, and I may only take a handful of paid flights a year. The rest of my trips are with award tickets using points earned from credit card spend and sign up bonuses. Ben cites some of the larger bonuses out there recently as ways to cash in on the whole sign up bonus phenomenon. This is for people who keep up with the trends and really make a hobby out of collecting miles.

For the rest of you, there is still mileage earned through credit cards spend. Ben, like most travel bloggers, is confident that the Starwood Hotels Amex is the best deal going out there in terms of both flexibility and value.

The International Traveler

It is stupid to earn reward points when you have to pay 2.7 cents per dollar for them, yet that is what happens when people use their American Express cards outside of the United States. They are hit with a “foreign transaction fee” of 2.7%, one of the biggest scams still legal in the credit card business. Almost all Visa and Mastercards have similar fees. If you travel out of the country, even occasionally, it makes sense to keep a Capitol One card in your wallet. They are one of the last cards on the market that do not charge foreign transaction fees. It is a great backup to the Starwood Amex, as not every merchant accepts Amex. It is also not a half bad cash back rewards card. I get 1.25% cash back on all purchases which is competitive. To get more, I would have to spend a lot more on a card like the Amex Blue or play games where certain categories of spending get higher rewards depending on the time of year. Since my Capitol One is mostly just a backup for my Amex and for use overseas, the difference is negligable.

The Domestic Traveler

Some people dream of visiting Paris in First Class, while others really just want to go to Disney World or take the family somewhere on vacation without having to spend $1,000 on airline tickets. It is for them, there is the Southwest Airlines card. The beauty of this card is both it’s simplicity and it’s ability to earn domestic awards quickly. Once you earn the award, redemption is much easier than on most other large airlines. Furthermore, you can actually bring your ski’s with you on your ski trip without paying an extra $100 for your “free” award ticket.

This is just a brief summary of all of the options out there. This blog is devoted to helping you find the best card out there for your purposes.

The "We Hate You Airlines" Rant And How To Get Delta To Help You

By: Jason Steele

Kevine Levine describes himself in his blog as “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, [and] DHARMA & GREG.” He recently posted the following rant “Open letter to airlines: We hate you”.

As online rants go it is a pretty good one, and I would like to touch on a few points. First, he talks about his experience following a recent systems outage over at my favorite airline, Southwest. Frustrating, but the fact that their computers go down for a few hours every few years is hardly the core issue plaguing the airline industry. Exasperated, he observes:

An article came out Friday saying that three major airlines made a big profit the last quarter. First time since 2007. How’d they do it? By reducing flights and cutting back on passenger services.

He is only partly correct on this one. The airlines have been turning a profit due to massive increases in ancillary fees such as baggage fees, change fees, and charging for food. As a customer, I think the practice stinks, but in a capitalist society, you have to give them a little bit of credit for making a profit in a tough economy. I would give them more credit if it were not for Southwest’s consistent profitability despite not charging nearly all of those fees. It appears there are two ways to make a profit in the airline industry, providing a good product with no fees, or providing a lousy product with lots of fees. Guess which strategy I prefer as a customer?

After that early misstep, he improves, when he cite’s the airline’s inability to communicate with their customers:

When our flight is delayed and a hundred frustrated people are milling around the gate, would it kill you to give us an update? You say you do but trust me, YOU DON’T. Instead we have to go up to the counter so you can blow us off individually. We’re not just doing this to annoy you. Many of us have connections to make.

This is a huge problem. On a recent American Airlines flight, I was told at checkin that the flight was delayed an hour. No problem, as I still had plenty of time to make my connection. I proceeded to enjoy a leisurely meal. Upon my return to the gate, 40 minutes before the revised departure time, there was no status update or any announcements, just a line at the ticket counter. Another 20 minutes goes by, with no plane in sight, when I interrupt the gate agent to esquire as to the status of the flight. Only then am I told, “Oh, it’s been canceled, you will have to wait in line to be rebooked.” By then, we had lost any chance of being accommodated on another carrier to make our scheduled connection. We only made our connecting flight because it too was delayed.

Tell Us The Truth

Here, Levine hits on the central problem of the airline business in this country, it is fundamentally dishonest. I wrote an extensive blog post on my personal blog about the Airline Credibility Gap. From institutionalized price gouging to deceptive frequent flier programs, very little of this business is on the up and up. As Levine concludes:

Passengers are tired of being lied to. You must either hold us in contempt or think we’re all really stupid. Either way you have let the credibility gap widen to the length of a cross-country flight.

Yes it is a rant, but a good one. Him and I have certainly been thinking along the same lines most of the time.

How To Get Delta To Help You

The staff at Delta Airlines is much like that of most major airlines; once they have your money their primary goal is to make you go away. As one airline insider wrote:

I don’t see how giving passengers better information actually saves (or generates) the airline any money at all. How would it? The tickets are paid for, and most of them are non-refundable.

Realistically, they do care about bad publicity. If you are a journalist or a consumer advocate, you could tell Delta that you are writing an article about something that happened, and they will fix it. If you are just an ordinary traveler, apparently Twitter is the best way to get Delta to actually help you, according to the this article in the Wall Street Journal. Sure their, poorly trained, outsourced customer service agents are only able to recite Delta’s byzantine policies to you, but if you Twitter your problem, someone will waive the rules and actually solve your problem. Keep that in mind next time your travel experience goes completely south.

Credit Checks Still An Issue In Hiring

By: Christina

10/27/2010

Over at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution,there is another article about pre-employment credit checks. This is a fairly well balanced article, pointing out the absurdity of the situation where credit checks are used to deny employment for little or no reason. While the law does require that employers inform applicants when they are denied a position due to information on their credit report, the reality is that they rarely ever do. In fact, few employers give applicants any kind of rejection notice, and giving a reason for their rejection is extremely rare.

What To Do If You Are Worried About Your Credit Affecting Your Application

There are many people in this economy who have fallen into debt due to unemployment. It is incredibly cruel to deny someone a job for this reason. If your credit has suffered, but a company would like a credit check before hiring, there are few things you can do.

First, speak candidly with the person making the hiring decision. Explain why you had problems with your credit, and show them how it will not affect your ability to do your job. The reason is important. If you were in debt due to unemployment or a medical issue, one would hope an employer would be more sympathetic than someone who got into debt due to a gambling problem. Don’t lie, as your credit report will show who you owe money to.

If you can, try to put off authorizing a credit check until the end of the interview process. If you receive a standard application, and you really feel that your credit is not relevant to the job you are applying for, do not sign the authorization. If the person accepting your application asks you to sign it, explain that you would prefer to discuss the matter with the person making the hiring decision first.

Ask to obtain a copy of your credit check as a condition of your authorization. At the very least, it will give you an opportunity to address and correct any errors in your credit report. Practically speaking, you should always be checking your credit report for errors, especially if you are looking for work.

Form A Relationship

Getting hired is all about selling yourself. The key to overcoming a problem credit report is relating to the decision maker as a person. Convince them that you are the most qualified applicant, and that the circumstances behind your adverse credit information are not relevant to the position. The challenge is to do so in a way that does not make you seem like someone who always has an excuse for everything. For example, you could say:

“Prior to last year I had excellent credit. Due to a medical condition, much of which was not covered by my insurance, I was unable to pay some of my bills on time. Thankfully, I was able to make a full recovery, but I take responsibility for my debts and I believe in working hard pay them back and rebuild my credit. “

Framing your bad credit as something you take responsibility for as a motivation to work hard disarms the interviewer from the notion that someone with bad debt is a deadbeat and threat to steal from their employer. Instead, you have used this difficulty subject as an opportunity to frame yourself as responsible and hard working.

Timing Is Important

The most important piece of advice that I can give is to have this conversation before the credit check is run, rather than after. For one, you will probably not get the opportunity to respond to a bad credit check, an employer will merely decline to present you with a job offer. Secondly, an employer who is aware of credit issues will not be surprised if you have told him or her about it ahead of time. They might even be pleasantly surprised that your credit is not as bad as it could have been.

Short of an unexpected windfall, gaining employment is a necessary first step to getting out of debt and improving your credit. It is important that you use every possible technique to overcome a bad credit report when your prospective employer decides to take a look.

NYTimes On Non-Airline Redemptions

By: Jason Steele

Over at the New York Times, they seem to have discovered that airline miles can be used for non-airline awards. Actually, this would suit me perfectly, as I acquire few miles from actually traveling, why should my awards be travel related. In reality, the author learns that the third party awards from chocolate to hotel stays, rarely produce value comparable to an air travel award. This is true unless you compare your third party award to an overpriced standard award, rather than the traditional awards.

These days, many awards are so rare and/or overpriced, that the mileage program becomes pointless for air travel. I am looking at you Delta. Converting your useless miles into merchandise only makes sense when you are accumulating miles through actual travel. If you have been getting miles through credit card spend, you are wasting your time redeeming miles for merchandise at .6 cents per mile. You would have been better off with a cash back credit card, or at least switching to an airline that still has decent award seat inventory, like Southwest.

The author mentions hotel and rental car awards. Hotel awards from airline programs are rarely a good deal when compared to the discounts commonly available. As I have shown, you should never rent a car with a loyalty point award, as your credit card will not provide insurance. Since purchasing additional insurance negates the value of the award, what is the point?

Surprisingly, the best use of non-airline award redemptions is clearing out orphan miles. The cardinal rule of airline miles is that they loose value every year. Worse, they expire with little or no notice. Let’s say you have 25,000 Delta miles laying around, and you are not planning on flying with them anytime soon. You check their award reservations system only to find that the theoretically “low” priced awards are just that, theoretical. Sure, you might be able to take that vacation to Buffalo in the winter, but a gift card seems like a better option. Sadly, you will find out that Delta offers $50 gift cards for an astounding 17,500 SkyPesos. That is a mere .28 cents per mile, but have you been to Buffalo in the winter?

If you have a Delta SkyMiles credit card, Gold or higher, you can use the “pay with miles’ option to get an entire cent per mile of value off of a Delta ticket. The only drawback is that you shouldn’t receive frequent flier miles for your flight, even if the vast majority of it was paid with cash. (I say shouldn’t, because the last time I used pay with miles, I actually did get the miles.)

The moral of the story is that you should always consider the value of your awards. Do you do a lot of flying? Or do you do more shopping? Certainly, if you fly more than three or four times a year, you may want to stick with Airline reward cards. But, in todays economy, sometimes gift cards and merchandise make more sense that airline travel.

Credit Cards And Skiing

By: Jason Steele

10/25/2010

Loveland Ski Area opened last week, here in Colorado. For the rest of the country, this news serves to whet your appetites for the upcoming ski season. While technology has traditionally been the skier’s friend, the ski areas are increasingly deploying new systems that may not be customer friendly.

Tracking Skiers, and their Credit Cards

The Denver Post had a story recently about how ski areas are inserting Radio Frequency ID (RFID) chips in your ski passes. The ski areas claim that this is a benefit to customers who will be able to learn how much skiing they did during the day. At best, the reason they are doing this is to track skiers so that they can gather statistics about where people are skiing. The next step is to use this data for marketing.

Where do credit cards come in? According to the article, “Any information the scanners acquire is to be kept separate from personal data — credit-card numbers, phone numbers, addresses — that are stored in resort point-of-sale databases.” This is simply not true, as I discovered last year. I was skiing at Breckenridge, using a lift ticket that was purchased for me as a gift. Unknown to me, the RFID chip in my discount card was scanned as well as my purchased lift ticket. Since the discount card was in my wallet, and it’s barcode was not scanned, I presumed that I would not be charged twice for my day of skiing. Only after a chargeback was I able to fix the problem, but it left me with a very sour attitude towards using RFID scanners that are linked to your credit card.

Fortunately, the article does point out some ways to disable the chip. These solutions range from punching a hole in your pass to encasing it in a shielded housing.

Why Non Skiers Should Be Concerned

I live in Colorado, so naturally skiing is an activity that I enjoy. When you ski, you carry with you a ski ticket, not unlike many other activities such as visiting movies, amusement parks, and sporting events. How long will it be until there is an RFID chip in each of these tickets as well? We can’t really expect the makers of this technology not to try to expand their market to other areas. At first, customers will be told some story about how much more convenient it will be to link your credit card to your ticket. Later they will attempt to show us the benefits of using our data to market products and services to us. Sure, the scanners might pick up our signal and charge us inadvertently, but isn’t that a small price to pay for these exciting benefits!?

The next step is when they start using location data against us. Maybe the computer determined that you skied down the beginner’s slope too fast? Perhaps the stadium determined that you weren’t sitting in the correct seat for a portion of the game? I fear that this is the world we are headed for.

My advice to you is to decline any offers to link your credit card to other passes or devices. If you really need to purchase something, you should spend a couple seconds taking out your wallet.

What Is A Go Around?

By: Jason Steele

It is quite interesting when highly experienced passengers start to talk about aviation itself, the business of actually flying an airplane. It occurs to me that you could spend millions of miles in the back of an airplane, blissfully unaware of the goings on in the front.

Over at the One Mile At A Time blog, there is a discussion about a procedure known as a “go around”. I occasionally see these types of discussions in FlyerTalk forums as well as other blogs. As both a commercially rated pilot and a frequent passenger, allow me to clear the air on the subject of the go around.

As the name implies, the go around is what happens when the pilots abort a landing attempt and go around to make another attempt. They may also choose to divert to another airfield. The procedure for a go around is to increase power to maximum, begin climbing, and then to begin to withdraw the flaps and retract the landing gear just as if the aircraft had just taken off.

Why Go Around?

There are many reasons a pilot would abort landing and go around. Perhaps weather conditions are not favorable for landing. There may be a potential conflict with another aircraft on the runway. There may be a vehicle or even wildlife on the runway. The pilot’s might have a warning light indicating some sort of problem. The instruments might momentarily fail to receive a signal. In one case, I choose to go around simply because I was about to sneeze! Basically, any time a pilot does not have confidence in completing a safe landing, the wise courses of action is to go around.

Should I Be Concerned?

Absolutely not. By performing a go around, your pilot is taking the most conservative approach to ensuring your safety. Virtually all landing accidents could have been avoided by a timely go around. Frankly, I am surprised that there are not more instances of go arounds on commercial aircraft. One factor is that a go around is a fairly costly exercise. In this day and age, pilots are under tremendous pressure to reduce fuel consumption. Going to full power and flying around at low altitude are the best ways to burn more fuel. Furthermore, airlines are trying to save fuel by reducing the amount of extra fuel carried to the extent that a go around could force a pilot to become so low on fuel that he or she would have no choice but to declare an emergency.

What About Aborted Takeoffs

This is the other unusual operation that people are curious about, and is even less common than a go around. In this instance, not only does a pilot decide not to take off, but the decision must come early enough in the landing process to ensure that a safe stop can be made on the runway. Otherwise, the pilots may actually take off with a less than perfect aircraft with the intention of returning for an immediate landing. Frankly, if I was in an aircraft that aborted takeoff on the runway, I would be concerned. If the pilot can maintain control over the aircraft and all of the brakes and thrust reversers work as they should, the flight will come to a safe, if exciting conclusion. On the other hand, the reason for an aborted takeoff may be serious, and many notable accidents have occurred when the pilots were unable to stop the aircraft before the end of the runway.

Ultimately, there is little you can do as a passenger in either situation. Just make sure to pay attention to the safety briefings to wear your seatbelt when taking off or landing. Just remember, commercial air travel in this country remains incredibly safe. Even when air travel was more dangerous, far more people were involved in accidents driving to and from the airport than were ever the victims of airplane crashes.