Kinglobjaw's Blog

Archive for the ‘Promotion’ Category

Just got off the phone with an US Airways Club agent to renew my annual membership. Since I wasn’t flying in March or early April of this year, I waited until today to renew. My membership is now valid through April 16, 2010. Same price as last year, $315 + no tax for basic Club membership. Was a pretty long hold until I got an agent (usually they pick up right away- very convenient 1-800-828-8522 with no menu tree, an agent picks up), so maybe a flurry of new members with the two added renewal promotions (either 2 months extra for free or 1,500 preferred qualifying miles, I chose the latter). Both promotions expire July 1, 2009. RNW15 is the code you use for 1,500 preferred qualifying miles which I blogged about a few weeks ago.

As usual, I asked them to email me a receipt and a printout of my membership just incase they want to card me (by card I mean, Club card, not driver’s license/ID). That actually happened to me once in a US Airways Club in PHX. Luckily I had the printout. Was promised card would arrive within 3-4 weeks.

While I connect in PHX next week, I will try out the re-opened lower ‘A’ gates Club (above A7/A9) which was severly damaged during a thunderstorm back in August 2008. Apparently they have brand new furniture in the Club. Anyway, here’s evidence of the damage. When I spoke to the Club agent a few days after the incident, I was told someone could have been seriously injured. Apparently, just seconds before the impact, a snob had to be repeatedly told to move to a different seating area away from the windows. After multiple pleadings, the agent yelled “Move away from the windows, NOW!” to which the passenger finally obliged. Literally seconds later, a big blow came in from outside and the result was this:

Something's Coming! US Airways A7/A9 Club in PHX damaged after August 2008 thunderstorm

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

I was just going through today’s when I got a call from a Sarah M. from the US Airways Marketing Dept at US Airways Tempe Headquarters. US Airways normally doesn’t call me and my caller ID displayed ‘PRIVATE’ so I have to admit I was afraid of scam at first. I wasn’t asked any private information, but Sarah actually confirmed the emails on the account so I knew I was in friendly “skies”.

The call was actually for my Mom, but since I handle all of our frequent flyer/stayer/reward accounts, Sarah was nice enough to discuss the matter with me. Apparently my Mom is a heavy spender with US Airways and Barclays MasterCard and was gifted two Fall Out Boy concert tickets. Since the concert takes place in Chicago, I guess our location had something to do with this selection.

Personally, I’m not a fan of their music and my Mom doesn’t even know who they are (when I mentioned we got 2 tickets to Fall Out Boy she asked me what city is nicknamed this way?). I’m going to email Sarah and ask if we can “trade” the tickets for some Dividend Miles, or maybe I can remove our names from the tickets and give them away to some of the my blog readers. (In exchange for lifetime loyalty to US Airways, of course!) If I do get to give them out to blog readers, I’ll post more details aside from the May 11, 2009 date.

Very nice surprise from US Airways.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

I would like to point out three new US Airways Dividend Miles bonus promotions that have been announced today in addition to extended Double EQMs until April 30, 2009.

• 10% off or 1,000 bonus miles on flights to Latin America when you pay with any MasterCard credit card. Details here.
• Spring Ahead- the more you buy and fly, the more points you can earn. Up to 25,000 bonus miles if you buy 10 roundtrip titckets. Details here.
• 25% free bonus on Buy Miles transactions (buy a maximum of 50,000 miles and get 12,500 miles as a bonus). Details here.

Nice set of promotions and kudos to US Airways for being very generous with promotions in 2009, but airline promotions will most likely never be as generous as in the past! 10 roundtrips is a lot of tickets bought considering you have to buy and fly all of it between April 8, 2009 and June 30, 2009. That’s less than two months! To be fair, if you’re flying less but stil flying nonetheless, 5 roundtrips will get you to the first level of the promotion for a bonus of 5,000 miles.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

I’ve been pretty upset lately. Hilton/AMEX closed down their Advance Your World Challenge due to an overwhelming number of cheaters and probably an underwhelming performance from their IT department. Both companies ought to be ashamed with they way they are handling this fiasco. Before I get comments bashing me and reminding me of Terms & Conditions, kindly recall my positive attitude when this promotion commenced. Nothing but praise. Worst promotion award should be a new Freddies Awards category.

Check out the message Hitlon/AMEX posted on the game’s site. They didn’t even have the decency to email people. I had to find out about this on a forum!

Thank you for playing the Advance Your World Challenge brought to you by the Hilton HHonors^® Card from American Express. Unfortunately, we have found some technical issues with the game that resulted in erroneous scores. As a result, we have made the decision to end the promotion in accordance with the official rules as of March 27, 2009.

 

We will still award the 1,000 prizes, but will do so through a random drawing of everyone who registered as of March 27, 2009 and meets the eligibility requirements. We will notify potential winners on or around May 18, 2009.

 

We know many of you devoted significant time and effort to playing the game. We thank you for your participation and apologize for any inconvenience. If you have further questions, please email questions@eprizefulfillment.com.

So they are now going to radomly give out prizes? Wasn’t the purpose of this “event” for people to win prizes based on their skill and practice? But, I do wonder, since there are were so many cheaters registered, how will the organizers of this game know if the players they chose for the prizes were cheaters or duplicates to begin with? They could contact every single person that registered and request an ID to be scanned and faxed to them. That’s what I’d do!

One more thing. If anyone is paying close attention to the FlyerTalk thread that discusses this promotion, notice that around page 44 of the thread, members are receiving emails with 3,000 and 5,000 HHonors points as an apology. Of course, you have to craft a nasty complaint email to HHONORS@HILTON.COM. I did so yesterday, and as of 8PM on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 I haven’t gotten a reply yet. We shall see.

Have a nice clicK life, (really AMEX, have a nice life as those form/generic replies are really starting to tick me off!)

-Mark

It was just two days ago when I was speculating if US Airways would extend it’s double EQM promotion. They did! That means my Hawaii trip now will possibly count for double elite qualifying miles! Even though it was booked in February, I’ve heard from quite a few people including my father, that itineraries booked before the promotion still got double the EQMs! I’m hopeful.

With my US flights taking me ORD-PHX-KOA; LIH-PHX-PHL-ORD, instead of getting 10,032 EQMs, I would get 20,064! Very hopeful! If only US would remove the silly “must ticket after registering for promotion” clause a la United doing so yesterday, I would be thrilled! Still, very nice of US to offer this extremely generous promo and extending it. Props for US Airways!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Right now, the best offer for earning miles on a car rental is Delta’s offer for partner Avis where you can earn up to 5,000 miles per rental. Here are the full details can be found here: http://www.avis.com/car-rental/html/partner/dl/deltaoffer2009.html

Basically, you get 2,500 Delta SkyMiles for 3 day rentals, 5,000 miles for 4 days or more.

Here’s the good:

• No flight required, so you can fly in on any airline you want.
• Bonus miles are valid on any car class you rent
• 2,500/5,000 miles is in addition to base miles you earn (base miles for Delta SkyMiles program are 50 miles per day or 500 miles on 5+ rental days.)
• Expires on December 31, 2009 (Rental must begin on/before this date, so it is a long lasting promotion unlike many other car related ones)

Here’s the bad:

• Miles only earned at airport locations (not promotion related, but a typical Avis rule; however you can rent at airport and return at non-airport location and still earn miles)
• only US/Canada rentals qualify for this promotion
• Must use the AWD discount provided by Delta on the promotion page (link again here: http://www.avis.com/car-rental/html/partner/dl/deltaoffer2009.html)

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Just as US’ double elite qualifying miles promotion is about to come to a close, other airlines are announcing their own versions of double eqms for Summer 2009.

Last year it was all about AA patching things up after their MD 80 fleet mishap, but this year it’s about getting more people on board planes. US is to be commended for leading the big six (soon to be five) into double eqms promotion which everyone matching, though Delta being the most restrictive.

But, I do wonder: could it end up hurting US Airways during the busy Summer travel season? Will they extend their promotion to last past March 31, 2009 to match the other airlines during the summer. Maybe! Probably not, though. Nice promotion given that US Airways rarely does flying related promotions. I am seeing however that for their new transatlantic routes such as TLV and OSL, they are offering 5,000 bonus miles for Envoy bookings, and 2,500 for certain Economy fares.

One final thought. These 2X EQM promotions have one pesky rule requiring that tickets be booked after the promotion commences, thus previous booking are immedaitely disqualified. Tricky, tricky!\

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Just got my Marriott Visa card statement and I usually don’t look through the offers and ads included, but one stood out. It read “3,500 Marriott Rewards Points or a $25 VISA Gift Card”.

Here’s the jist:

You need to call and set up an over-the-phone appointment where Marriott’s Vacation Club “steals” approximately 30 minutes of your time to tell you about the value of owning a Marriott Timeshare property. For that you get the equivalent of $25 in the from of a Visa gift card or 3,500 points added to your Marriott Rewards account. I chose the points.

Call 800-527-1889 or visit www.Marriott-Timeshare.com/VISA for more information.

There’s a page full of generic rules, but some of them could be dealbrakers:

• Open to couples and individuals making $60,000 per year or more
• Only open to residents of AK, CT, DE, GA, IL, KS, ME, MD, MA, MO, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, PA, SC, TX, VT, VA & WY
• 18+
• Expiration date is 3/25/2009, so act fast!

The agent I spoke with set up an appointment for Friday at 10:30 AM (only times available at this point are weekdays early AM), so I’ll let a Marriott rep waste 30+ minutes of my cell airtime.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

As I am typing this I am in quite a pain. I started working out to get into better shape last Monday and every foot (maybe not that much) of my body is aching. My solution? Go work out some more! I think my arms and shoulders hurt the most!

After Friday, March 13, 2009 I stopped playing AMEX’s Advance Your World Challenge that I have been praising so much since it started. Too many cheaters, and the company isn’t doing too much about it. What more? So many of these cheaters have suddenly become new members on FlyerTalk explaining how righteous they want to be and fix the problem. Since I started blogging about this challenge, I have to say, traffic on my blog has doubled. I’m sure being in the Top 7 added to this…

Here’s how I see it. New guy/gal learns about the promo and the prospect of getting $10,000 cash for virtually nothing, then Googles the Top 7. Kinglobjaw is quite a weird user name, so I guess people have stumbled upon my blog and it discovered my posts where I mention the direct FlyerTalk link. I read the FlyerTalk thread about this promotion daily and I see 5 or 6 new users that have joined FlyerTalk in March 2009 and have fewer than 10 posts at this point. These schemers want to be liked by others and mask their real intentions with a glitch that probably never occurred. I mean, the other FlyerTalk members who have been around for a longer time- not one has reported the “endless speed boost” glitch these newbies are reporting. I could be wrong, but these newbies are the cheaters! Food for thought.

Onto my next topic- Friday the 13th. I remember the day started out well because I made first place on the Advance Your World Challenge. Hours later, “lightning” had come to my place. You see, it was around 5PM when I decided it was time to vacuum again with the brand new DC-25 Animal Dyson vacuum. It’s a very powerful machine. A suggestion, the vacuum is absolutely amazing and a must have. To make the unpleasant story short, my hard drive got zapped. As unlucky as can be, my surge protector and fairly new battery backup failed during the less than one second it took for me to turn on the vacuum. Needless to say, my hard drive died, I got the “blue screen of death” and part of my stuff was not backed up! Lesson learned! As a replacement HD I bought a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black from Best Buy and so far it’s fine. It’s slightly quieter than the one that died. I will try to contact Seagate about the cost of data recovery and decide if it’s worth it.

My HAJ trip has been axed and what a shame!

Last but not least, I’m counting the days to my Hawaii trip which occurs at the end of April. We’re all set in First Class on US as we were upgraded at the time of ticketing. No need to check loads every day to see F buckets disappear and worry; however my PHX-PHL return could go into oversell mode so I’m ready to volunteer should the need arise. I know a lot about US Airways, but I’ve never been bumped before so I don’t know what kind of compensation to expect. Honestly, I’ve never heard the announcement before either so I am going to ask around on my next flight.

Different kind of post today, but I thought it would be nice to offer an update.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

This is a second update on regarding American Express’ Advance Your World Challenge in partnership with Hilton HHonors.

Got a comment in my previous post from another player, Eryeal. This is the good kind of player, not a cheater. He’s just less than half a second ahead of me and I am done for the night. Guess I will continue this tommorow or maybe I should take time off over the weekend?

I can’t believe how I’ve put my entire online life on hold to play this for hours!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark