I spend more time than I should in the churning/FF communities (all of which are centered around FlyerTalk). It's fun. Ben's blog is one of the few I follow, most aren't that great. Frequent Miler is a solid resource, as is Wandering Aramean, but nothing beats being active on FlyerTalk itself.
In the last five years I've managed to earn and spend about 1.5 million miles and points, with maybe 50k airline miles from actual flying and ~400k points from actual Hilton stays. Between churning, manufactured spend and promotions I'm able to do 1-2 international trips a year in first class, staying at good hotels. I mostly travel to Asia and get great value out of free flights on Singapore, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines.
It's an awesome hobby if you: a) have time to kill b) are single and c) have an insanely flexible schedule.
I used US and BA miles earlier this year to fly to Malaysia and Thailand for free (well, plus taxes) in first class, spending five weeks between Hong Kong, Penang, Koh Lanta, Beijing and Tokyo.
Drinking $300 champagne at 35,000 feet on a flight you didn't pay for is a rather fun feeling...
Good to see another FT'er on HN. I've earned/burned about the same volume of points as you and can attest that this hobby is awesome, with some caveats.
For the beginners out there:
1. Be sure to read as much about earning miles as redeeming them. Both sides are equally important and redeeming is actually getting much more difficult.
2. Don't let the newbie blogs lure you into hitting credit cards too hard. Banks are starting to tighten the clamps on our hobby. Be sure to learn, start slow, and then start ramping up. Banks like to see a relationship, not just a high credit score.
3. If you're dipping your toe in Manufactured Spending (MS), start small then ramp up over time. Nothing worse than getting shut down for hitting something too hard. That said, MS is a great way to meet minimum spending without using too much money.
4. Don't let headline point valuations fool you into thinking you have to fly in Biz or First to get a good value on your points. Blogs use these kinds of numbers mostly to get you to sign up for CC's. Figure out your your strategy and go that way. A person looking for a lot of domestic flights is going to have a different strategy than someone looking to travel like saryant (and myself, incidentally).
tl;dr; This hobby is amazing if you can figure it out and do the leg work. I too enjoy good champagne 35k ft in the air ;)
Also - stay organized. Every credit card should be accompanied with a spreadsheet entry with all details (un/pw, bonus, etc.), entry into Mint, auto-pay, and calendar reminders (end of free annual fee, etc.). Very easy to slip and forget, or not keep track of getting your actual bonus.
Of course - do not do this if you don't intend to pay your balance immediately. Any interest charges quickly undo the ROI.
Just got back from a completely free trip to Japan (flights, hotels). So worth it.
Banks give out airline miles to attract to credit card customers.
You can open a lot of those credit cards.
Redeeming those miles for international first/business class is a good value (some disagree but that's my use).
Really basic example: Citi routinely has 50k mile bonuses for their American Airlines cards. Round-trip business class US->Japan is 100k miles. Therefore, open two Citi AA cards and you can redeem for a free(ish) business class ticket to Tokyo.
It can get a lot more complicated but that's the gist. Understanding the alliances, the non-alliance partnerships, all the transfer arrangements. Taxes and fees. Routing rules. Flexible point currencies. Knowing how to work around deficiencies and bugs in the airlines' own systems. All that takes time to learn.
At the moment I'm sketching a trip that includes Etihad's new first class apartment, Qatar business class and Singapore's first class suite. Time in Dubai, Bali, Singapore and Tokyo. Four airline tickets, points from three airlines and multiple credit cards, banks and flexible point programs, plus numerous hotel point redemptions along the way. All told around 600k points.
To understand why this is even possible, it's good to understand the factors involved.
1. CC fees, carried balance interest, and merchant fees are extremely big business. So much so that banks and payment networks are willing to give out large bonuses to influence your buying behavior.
2. Airlines (and to a lesser extent, hotels and other brand partners) have evolved their miles and points programs into, IMO, basically an unregulated, overly complicated shadow currency. As a result of the complexity of the programs, valuation sweet spots have emerged where you get outsized value per point/mile
3. Since brand partners basically control the value of these currencies, they can sell them cheaply to financial partners. For financial partners, it's a win/win because they can offer a bonus that is perceived as high value without incurring the full cost of an equivalent cash offer. e.g. a 50k mile bonus looks just about as good as a $500 sign up bonus, but banks pay far less than $500 for 50k miles
4. A good majority of Americans will sign up for cards, use them, and regularly pay late fees, carry a balance, etc. This more than pays for the welcome bonus that card issuers offer. OTOH "travel hackers" sign up for the bonus, but use strategies to prevent incurring the costs usually associated with it.
Opening your credit cards definitely does not hurt your score nearly as much as you think it would. It can often increase your credit score. And if you're a proper churner, average age of accounts doesn't even get touched since you've got so many cards on record (closed cards continue to reflect positively on your average age of accounts for 7 years).
People that engage in churning are a bit self-conscious (source: recovering churner). Simple fact is you don't churn if you don't have to- it's not worth your time.
> Another layman question, what does this do to your credit score?
Opening new credit cards lowers your credit score- it adds weight to the single debt category(mortgage has a house backing it, a credit card doesn't), lowers the average age of credit lines (someone that has paid a home loan on time for the past 20 years is more 'reliable' than the naive 18-year old college student das company is preying upon), and, if you open too many at once, gives the impression you're desperate, insolvent.
All of this is solid advice. There are countless stories on FT of people rushing in too fast (especially with MS!) and finding themselves burned. Blacklisted by banks, holding thousands in gift cards they can't liquidate, points in programs that aren't useful for them.
It depends on the person. Generally, it dings your score anywhere from 6-12 points per application (or, more accurately, per hard inquiry). This recovers over the course of a few months and increases the score over the long term due to more available credit. If you're newer to credit in general, I've heard that it reduces your score more, possibly because the FICO algorithms don't quite know what type of risk you are yet.
I've actually found that the proportion of used/new credit has a larger effect on credit score. Don't max out your credit limits, folks.
I got into this pretty late, about 4 years ago; I've managed to hit almost every airlines first class cabin (most of them many times).
Just a few left; gotta catch 'em all!
I always assumed people on HN would be all over this kind of thing, it's a total minmax optimization problem. Especially back when this was even more of a game, with the US Airways Grand Slam through 2011. The puzzle there is worth reading about. You'd get up to 100,000 bonus miles for completing 36 'partner activities' (bonuses are only awarded in groups of 4 activities -- 1,2,3 you get nothing and at 4 you get all the miles for that group -- and the number of miles awarded for each group of 4 increased from nominal to significant. I spent weeks optimizing and figuring the marginal cost. After minmaxing the hell out of your strategy, you execute; fill in surveys, buy the cheapest thing on Skymall (in my case, a toilet lock for a child I didn't have), book phantom rides on the super shuttle. Maybe spend a few bucks and splurge on a bamboo plan. Ended at 140K miles for $700 -- at the time just short of 2 round trip business class tickets from North America -> Europe -> Asia -> North America.
Once you get into it, your average getaway is better than most peoples' honeymoons; I flew Etihad apartments to the Maldives for a weekend for 75K miles and $100. And that was just one of the many.
Agreed, lucky is one of my favorites. I actually got started with The Points Guy but the quality has gone downhill so much, and the blog has become a shill for card signups even if they don't make sense. My other favorite is Matthew at upgrd and Efficient Asian Man.
I'd add a criteria d): you truly enjoy flying. I know a person who does this and the thing that makes it work for him is that he truly just loves the experience of being in an airplane, and looking down and marveling at the incredulity of the experience. If you don't feel that way about flying, then the whole hobby becomes more of an unpaid job.
When I redeem points, the flight is part of it, but it's really about the destination. A year ago I used my points to fly first class to attend ScalaDays in Berlin. Last November, Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong over two weeks. Earlier this year, five weeks in Southeast Asia.
I would say you have to enjoy travel. If you don't like flying and don't care for international travel, yeah, it's not a hobby you'd enjoy.
Not if you participate in manufactured spending - i.e., buying money...like purchasing Visa gift cards (must be done carefully at the right places / times)
I didn't know there was a term for it. I gave it a shot one or two years ago buying $500 gift cards at grocery stores with a 6% cash back card (amex cash preferred). With the activation fee and taxes, I think each gift card purchase essentially returned ~$22. Surely not the most efficient - but it was simple. Each time I bought a $500 visa gift card I had that uncomfortable feeling like I was doing something illegal - the cashier calls out some code on the intercom and the manager shows up 5 minutes later to allow the purchase to go through. It wasn't worth the hassle - at the end of the year I might have made $150 - whoopty doo. At least I made enough money to pay off the annual fee for the card ($75).
The payoff comes from doing it to hit signup bonuses. If you needed to spend $5000 on a card, you could buy Visa gift cards and spend $59.50, but get 105,000 miles from the bonus.
Essentially a round-trip business class ticket from the US to Asia.
There are various methods that you can use to unload the cards back to either your checking account or directly to the credit card you used to buy them.
Buy gift card with credit card -> Unload gift card back to credit card. Repeat. Send the same $5000 around in a circle (less fees). I'm simplifying of course.
Bluebird, a prepaid debit card from Amex and Walmart, has been one of the big methods for some time but I'm not sure if that one is still viable.
many times what you will end up with is $XXXX in non-transferable gift cards or you will have to sit on them. in those cases you just use them to pay your bills or use them as your spending cash etc.
Well, you are spending money on those. Each card has a fee. But if you're doing it correctly you should realize far more value than you end up spending.
While I don't deny the possibility that you're right, if you're not involved in the community I'd consider it far more likely that people have already found the most effective manufactured spend techniques.
As an example, CC charge -> Amex GC w/ cashback from rewards site -> Visa GC w/ PIN -> ATM or money order to withdraw is a fairly "simple" MS chain. The convolutions that people have discovered past that get pretty byzantine. But even <1% adds up when you're churning 5 figures.
The lengths of some of the schemes are entertaining in their own right.
If you have steady business spending (eg you travel and are reimbursed for your expenses) with flexibility to make some of your own decisions (hotel, flight, etc etc), then I think that's the lowest barrier of entry.
Play by the same rules as the stock market: it's not about picking winners a low percent of the time but rather avoiding losing anything and running a reasonable risk profile.
If you've got a bit of business spend you can allocate, then you get to play without risking anything. At worst (if some bonus doesn't come through because you missed fine print), you're right where you started (not earning extra rewards).
Disclaimer: Assume it's implied, but no points are worth souring a business relation over. Don't chase points too far.
If you need to play solely with your own money, it gets a little dicier. For example, that $450 annual fee (not waived) card that results in $1,500 worth of travel points w/ $5k spend in 3 months? You'd better be sure you know all the rules.
I'd recommend (as someone else did), trying a few of the smaller card offers. Chase Freedom is a good small starter. They run decent cash bonuses with low spend, no annual fee, and it can ultimately pair with CSP.
Basically, approach it the same way you'd approach a casino. They're trying to attract your business. You're trying to game the system. They're constantly tweaking their rules to mitigate the impact of incentives on their bottom line. Learn the basics and then decide how far you want to go.
And frankly, if you're in the situation posited at the top of your comment, you may be better off just taking 1% Amazon points or whatever. (Or even a higher % for travel-related expenses on some credit cards.) It's often a lower exchange in theory but it's a lot more fungible and easier to spend than miles.
If you're in that situation, you're probably best off earning one of the flexible currencies like Chase's Ultimate Rewards or Amex's Membership Rewards. You can redeem for a statement balance or transfer to one of their partners.
If you do just want cashback, Fidelity has a straight-up 2% cashback card.
I actually use the Chase Sapphire Rewards card but I should probably look into the Fidelity as most of my points seem to end up getting shifted into Amazon anyway. It's a little complicated because of the minimum to get to 2% but it's probably a better deal than my free Chase Amazon card in any case.
> It's a little complicated because of the minimum to get to 2% but it's probably a better deal than my free Chase Amazon card in any case.
If you're talking about the Visa (?) with the spend then 2%, the Amex version is straight-up 2% from the first dollar. A free-to-sign-up-for-no-fees Fidelity Cash Management Account suffices for a transfer target for accumulated cash back, then you can EFT the funds wherever you like (side note, Fidelity has great EFT options).
The downsides to the Amex are:
(1) slightly lower acceptance
(2) FIA Card Services (the administrator is not Amex proper) has no auto-pay
(3) it's not an Amex proper, so you aren't eligible for most of the Amex $x off $y at z deals
Though I find this game to be lots of fun, I do think that most people are probably better off with a cashback card. Actually, most people probably shouldn't have a credit card to begin with (it pains me to say that given the differences in fraud protection but CC debt is something most are better off avoiding).
CC vs. debit is a matter of discipline but, of course, no real argument for most people if using a credit card in all but the direst circumstances means carrying a balance.
The issue with a lot of the rewards game is that the best "values" usually come from redeeming for awards that you'd never have considered actually paying cash for. There's still an equivalent cash value to you that may or may not be more than the 1-2% of actual cash you could collect but it's often not really free money in that you're giving up some level of actual fungible cash to get it.
I'm not quite sure these days. This hobby has gotten far more complicated than it was when I started. Ben's blog and The Points Guy are probably the best intros. I'm not a fan of TPG but he writes a lot of articles on the basics.
I've been active on FlyerTalk for about five years—after being in that deep for so long, it's hard to step back and figure out where to guide a beginner.
Plus, lots of it is based on your own financial situation. Available funds, credit score, travel profile.
I would argue that the vast majority of people are best served getting 1-2 cards with bonuses they spend in (I use the Amex Everyday Preferred and Chase Sapphire Preferred) and focusing on those. Especially if you have multiple people to bring along, you're better off with one of the flexible points currencies from Chase or Amex (or Citi, theirs is improving) rather than chasing airline-specific miles.
The exception to the multiple-people advice is hotels, as those redemptions are obviously per-room and not per-person. Hyatt offers the best value IMO but Hilton points are stupid easy to earn. Depends on where you want to go as they have very different footprints.
Honestly, I'd argue you are better off rotating through credit cards every 3 months for the sign up bonuses. 4 cards a year is few enough not to draw any real scrutiny, at least so far for me.
I'm not sure how you'd get 25,000-50,000 points every 3 months unless your lifestyle is pretty expensive compared to mine.
Question: Does a small company that operates as a sole proprietorship need a tax ID number?
Answer:
A sole proprietor who does not have any employees and who does not file any excise or pension plan tax returns does not need an employer identification number (EIN) (but can get one if they choose). In this instance, the sole proprietor uses his or her Social Security number as the taxpayer identification number. However, at any time the employer hires an employee or has to file an excise tax return, they will need a new, separate EIN.
In other words, in the absence of a more formal business structure requirement by the credit card issuer, you can be considered to be your own business.
Yeah, but I'm not sure its worth the paperwork hassle of doing that when you can get another 30k bonus from a different card. 150k v. 180k +EIN cost is likely similar value for $.
>Just realize this tears up your credit score so don't go getting large 5-6 figure loans for cars/houses while doing this.
What part of this tears up your credit score? The hard inquiries or the opening of new accounts? I may be buying a car in the next few months and now I'm a little concerned about opening up a new account or two for points.
There's a LOT of downright wrong information. There are some bad seeds there spreading FUD to keep newbies away or lead them down a dangerous path, especially around manufactured spend.
The outright lies I saw people posting during the Redbird heyday were astounding.
I'm half-curious about the whole thing, and I would be good at it- I enjoy the finance maze- but I have always felt like churning was rather dishonest. I'll do it for fifty bucks to cover the "last mile" on this or that promotion, but churning five figures worth...
There's a variety of justifications, such as "banks are evil anyway" or invoking Plunkitt, but they just never really sat with me.
> A 1996 paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found a higher incidence of myeloid leukemia, astrocytoma, prostate cancer and malignant melanoma among 2,740 Air Canada pilots than in the general population.
> One study of female flight attendants in Finland and Denmark found an increased rate of breast cancer.
Three LA to NY flights are more than the approximate dose received at Fukushima Town Hall over two weeks following the accident. But you have to make 175 flights to get as much as you get with just one chest CT scan.
I seem to have missed something, in that I don't get one moment of the story; given:
in April 2011, he received a certified letter from United, cheerily informing him that because he had taken advantage of the system his frequent-flyer account was permanently suspended. He was banned from flying, he recalls the letter saying, unless he paid the company $4,755 — the amount it claimed as losses through Schlappig's techniques. [...] Schlappig has repeatedly offered to send United a check but has gotten no response.
-- so, how he continued the Hobby afterwards? Did he switch to a different airline? Can anybody help me understand?
Anyone else find this "hobby" somewhere between low-grade morally questionable and a completely banal use of above-average problem-solving skills? Upper middle class man-children with disposable income can, I'm sure you're surprised to find out, game overenthusiastic corporate behemoths?
I don't find it morally questionable at all. The airlines setup a program and you find the best way to use it.
I do find the "mileage runs" a bit odd. You spend a day or two just flying and hanging out at airports? I guess it's all cost/benefit, but that would be a little to much for me.
That said, whatever floats you boat. Looks like a lot of people are really maximizing the points programs. Good for them!
Mileage runs are usually for status, not for earning miles. Back in the day it made sense since miles were a lot more valuable but earned at the same rate, 1 per mile flown in most cases, and airfare was lower in dollars, so basically nobody does it.
Going between mid-tier and top-tier status can make a huge difference in your rate of upgrades for the next year, mileage earning rate and in AA's case at Platinum you earn 0 international upgrades but at ExPlat you earn 8 one-way international upgrade certificates good for an upgrade from any economy fare to any business, or any business fare to first free of charge.
If you're at 90K of the 100K you need, it might makes sense for you to fly around a bit, see somewhere new -- cheaply, earn some miles and push you over. The next year you'll be a lot more comfortable.
Back when I was a consultant, you could always tell who was 5k miles away from a status threshold based on how many unnecessary meetings that required travel they scheduled in December.
I'm curious as to what the morality argument actually is, as this isn't the first comment to espouse that view.
What do you find morally questionable about churning? It's game in which banks and airlines write the rules and reserve the right to change them unilaterally.
I think the issue here is more one of externalities. We all know that fuel prices are not at the true cost which prices in all the pollution, geopolitical turmoil, military interventions, global warming, government subsidies etc, and that fuel is one of the largest costs airlines have. So when this guy and his followers hop on planes and fly millions of miles, often for no reason other than to game some tiny loophole in airlines' marketing for their own amusement, it's no different than if they had taken a bunch of oil tankers and lit them on fire and danced by the flickering light - in the end, they've killed some time, and a lot of valuable resources have been consumed to do so. Couldn't they have found productive jobs and just played Xbox on their time off or something? Did this really have to be their hobby/profession?
> Seriously, you could apply this to any hobby if you want to use an endless list of externalities.
I don't think you could. Fuel is one of the most mispriced things in the world; airlines may not be paying pennies a gallon like certain countries wastefully subsidize fuel in their countries, but it's pretty blatant that fuel subsidies of every kind are enormous, and they've been particularly singled out by economists like the IMF as wasteful.
> It's not like the plane would be sitting on the Tarmac if he didn't board it. It's flying anyway.
On the margin of plane flights, there would be fewer plane flights if he didn't have this 'hobby', and much more directly, every flight he boards wastes a lot more fuel simply carrying his weight.
Part of the reason this hobby continues to exist (and remain so lucrative for some participants) is because they are such a small segment of the total passenger miles traveled. If we had some numbers I think it would dramatically weaken this particular argument. Also in general the airlines' primary justification for giving away seats as awards is that they predict those seats will go unsold.
I'd be surprised if there are more than a thousand or so people who game the FF programs to this degree. And the number who do so to the degree of Lucky (subject of the article) is probably in the single digits.
That said, I don't think Lucky even comes close to the amount of flying Tom Struker does, United's only 10 million mile member.
Wikipedia suggests ~100 mpg/passenger [1]. As Schlappig has flown more than 400,000 miles, he's burned up about 4,000 gallons of fuel. That's a lot of fuel. It's enough to heat a northeastern United States home for about eight winters [2].
But it's not that much fuel. A 30-mpg automobile will consume a similar quantity of fuel (gasoline, not jet fuel) in 120,000 miles of driving.
Because it's a little bit similar to exploiting the snot out of a loss-leader product- a good-faith offer extended to generate some good-faith business, that is frequently a good thing for everyone.
You are exploiting a complex promotion system by finding tiny loopholes, at the expense of everyone else (because at the end of the day, the banks will get their money...)
And no, you can't argue that "because the loopholes exist, that's proof they don't care".
Or another comparison, a white collar criminal who embezzles his company but found a legal loophole that means he can't be charged. Just because it's not illegal, doesn't mean it isn't immoral!
Who hasn't overfilled their cup many times at self-serve drinks counter? Been back for three plates of ice cream at a buffet?
It's sounds like a lot of work but completely harmless. Finding loopholes in complicated systems to me seems like a type of arbitrage mor than anything.
Ben's only one of a growing number of high-profile frequent flyer bloggers: http://pointsbuzz.com/. As most of the strategies they promote for amassing ff points revolves around gaming sing up bonuses for credit card fees, the bloggers make money from affiliate fees for credit cards they promote. The airlines don't mind because they sell their miles to cc companies and gain customer loyalty. The credit card companies don't mind because they buy the miles for cheaper and use them as an incentive that is cheaper than the lifetime value of the customer.
I don't get the appeal of flying first class just for the "fun" of it. You can sit in a comfy seat, drink overpriced alcohol served by an attractive lady at your local Mens club with much less hassle. Flying first class is cool if you actually have to travel but just for the hell of it.
Flying business class is less unpleasant than flying regular class. But it's not pleasant.
I get that some people might like this. I was speaking to my other half about it last night. People go on about how great first class is. I wondered if people had a choice between teleportation and first class which would they choose? I'd go for teleporting. I think most would.
So how great can first class be if I'd willingly exchange it for just the time back?
Whereas for cash tickets, going up a class of service is exponential. A round-trip to Asia is going to be about $1K in economy, $6K in business and 20K in first. Points tickets are logarithmic, if economy is 1X, business is usually 1.5-6X and first is usually 2X. So you can pay 2X as many miles for a product that costs 20X as much.
Business is a better seat, edible food and free booze. First [on a decent airline] is a different world. Caviar and Krug/Pol Roger/Perrier-Jouet. Lufthansa has an entire separate terminal building with private immigration, security, private assistants, a restaurant, a massive bar and Mercedes or Porsche limousine service to the side of the plane. Flown it many times, and I keep looking forward.
First is no waste of time for me; champagne, caviar, gourmet dining and wifi (or the plausible excuse for not having wifi), it's a wonderful way to spend a few days.
The product does not deliver 20x the "value". It's aimed at people who have more money than they can spend. If you have a job paying less than 200k the cost of first-class is a huge deal. For them the cost is like you buying a beer.
Half the fun is knowing you bent the rules to get there in the first place. The other half is actually going wherever you're going. Sitting in a tube for 14 hours is a lot more fun at the pointy end.
There are some in the FF community who fly first class to Tokyo and then return the next day but they're a very small minority.
Trust me, FlyerTalk and the like are exactly that bad. Even worse since FF programs have been gutted over the last 2-3 years - fortunately some airlines have made changes that favor the actual business-class customer and have cut out annoying mile-runners.
> Sure you can get some free stuff, but at what price? What if you took that time and invested it in bettering your skill sets, etc.?
This sort of sentence is extremely annoying to me. I'm good at several things, one of which is a video game that I've played for most of my life, so I've heard people say things like this for a good portion of my existence and it's up there with some of my biggest pet peeves. I've noticed that when people say this, it's usually a skillset that bothers them on some level, and usually for reasons that are unconscious to the person saying it.
No one says "you could spend more time developing a valuable skillset" to me regarding, say, fitness, because most people would enjoy having better bodies and the reasons for this are immediately apparent. But they'll say this regarding a few video games I am extremely good at, even though the results of having a better body and being really good at a video game are both satisfaction on my end. You might say that fitness leads to better health, but that's still using the assumption that health maximizes enjoyment in some way by extending the number of years you're alive -- because no one would be parading health as a virtue if every year alive were miserable.
I'm sure the reasons differ, but the mentality is always the same: this thing I derive obvious satisfaction from is objectively good ("bettering myself"), while this thing I can't see obvious satisfaction from (or are threatened by) is a waste of time, even if both, extended to their ultimate goal, just result in more satisfaction. It ignores that our skillsets have the same extensional goal: things we value. When you extend the purpose of your skillsets, you're always going to end up with some sense of "I value this thing."
Example: a lot of guys will improve their skillsets so they can get money so they can have lots of sex with women they find really attractive. But if you're already able to do that, and that's your primary motivation for doing that, then you're not going to have as much of an incentive to develop that skillset. Conversely, if the skillset is intrinsically satisfying to you, you'll eschew sex and develop it. But the goal is the same thing: maximizing your own utility from what you value.
You'd better a skillset, in other words, to derive more satisfaction. And since you don't know that they don't already have a developed skillset, since lots of people are good at many things, you don't know how much satisfaction they already derive from their existing skillsets. So you're just saying "you should better yourself" in a vacuum, which is effectively telling them that they could be deriving more satisfaction arbitrarily, even if they're already deriving lots of satisfaction.
So either this ignores that you'd do these things for more satisfaction anyway, or presumes that you can tell a person you've never met how much they're going to get (or should be getting) satisfaction from utilization of their skillsets, which is insanely presumptuous.
As someone who's both heavy into this hobby and a software engineer at a major tech company, I'm going to disagree. I get to fly around the world having fun while spending very little.
> United offered coupons to passengers worth $200 or $400.
I'd be pretty surprised to see that now. On my last long United flight, which was 6-7 hours overseas, my in-flight entertainment system was broken, and they gave me a $25 voucher. I was not impressed.
The amount of comp you get for small shit (e.g. broken light, no recline, no IFE/wifi) is largely dependent on your status. A no-status member might maybe get 500 miles on United, where as a Global Service might get up to 10K+ (depending on severity)
They will often send you emails where you have to complete a form/survey to get the offer. I usually request the comp. You can call in or email - if you're 1K / GS, there are dedicated email addresses with 24 hr response
He's talking pre-merger. pmUA used to make $400 vouchers rain for basically anything. Once they tied the knot with Continental (and their team took over all aspects of UA) they went with the pmCO don't-give-anyone-certificates-for-anything policy. Oh, and every other policy for that matter :\
IDB/VDB compensation is very different from the compensation you get for a broken reading light. United used to give out absurd amounts of vouchers for the latter but that's pretty much dead these days.
IDB/VDB (what you get in an oversold situation) is an entirely different beast.
I use a British Airways branded Amex here in the UK and put almost all my spending through it. Thanks to their Companion Voucher my wife and I get a couple of business class trips on the house each year (Spend £10k in a year on it and get a Buy one get one free flight with points)
I guess this is not going to help you much, but for any Swedish or Scandinavian people that are interested in these kinds of things - there's http://www.businessclass.se/.
It's basically a Swedish/Scandinavian "FlyerTalk" community. One part editorial and many parts community/forum.
Not quite so! At least for Sweden, you can use https://www.betalo.se/ to pay any bill - like your rent. Some credit card companies partner with 'em and waive the fees. (I'm not affiliated with Betalo or any Credit Card company what so ever)
Also, let me remind everyone that Europe is not super small either. There's a lot of diversity. In the Nordic parts, people basically only use debit/credit cards for example. For good and bad, cash is getting rarer here.
Then probably not. A lot (though not all) of this is predicated on meeting significant minimum spend levels on co-branded credit cards and gift cards. In fact, for many/most people, a lot of this makes sense only if a lot of reimbursed expenses flow through a personal credit card.
Food of course (~200$/mo), and travel (but usually my employer pays for it, if they send me somewhere worth it I will take a few days off before coming back).
If I could 'hack' an extra return flight to SF, NY or Tokyo once a year
it'd be great however.
I update my phone and laptop every five years or so. Bike is free.
In Germany at least, food and groceries is almost exclusively in cash. I come from another part of Europe, I find it very strange and annoying sometimes.
By the way, if anyone knows of a good way to rack up miles with Star alliance/Lufthansa, I'd love to know.
Tough chance of any youth from my country trying to compete with him.
Our government has imposed tough regulations on credit card ownership in order to curb personal debt.
Those who apply for a credit card must be 18 years or older and provide proof of stable income >= $2000/month before banks will even consider the application. Also, all credit cards are registered at our national credit registration office with their max withdrawal counted towards personal debt risk, so applying for or owning more than just a few CCs at any single time is very unlikely unless one has a very well paid job or other sources of income.
Fortunately (for me) the US has no such rules, other than the age restriction. I joined this game four years ago when I was 21. Now that my credit file is built up, I can open five cards within a week or so and almost always get approved.
Within three years of starting I had available credit of 150% of my income.
I use miles to get flights a couple of times a year. A 'free' long-haul flight economy class costs me $700-800 in taxes, which can not be paid in points. How can these out-of-pocket charges be avoided?
Which program and what route are you flying? $7-800 is on the high side for economy taxes, which makes me think you are flying into LHR on BA or something similar.
If you really are flying into LHR from the US, one alternative is to fly into a different city in Europe and connect over.
LHR taxes are definitely brutal. Assuming award space and that the routing isn't too out of the way, you could look into flying on a partner. A quick google tells me that you could look into flying on Swiss, Turkish, or United to cross the atlantic. Flying on these partners using Aeroplan miles shouldn't incur fuel surcharges
+1 on BA being horrible. My points for them only cut the fare to London in about half due to the surcharge that you can't pay with points. They make you pay for taxes (~$100 or so, which is understandable), fuel surcharges, and, what appears to me, to be a ton of complete BS charges.
BA points are great... if you don't fly BA. I love using Avios for short-haul rewards around Asia that are otherwise expensive or would require inconvenient routings on the local LCCs.
Probably because it is insanely unreasonable for many to go through all the hassle for a few flights. I don't spend too much on flying but even twice the price wouldn't bring me to churn credit cards, save all the credentials, watch out for rewards, etc. This is all stuff I'd love to pay someone if I had to do it.
In your early days, yes, you can take a hit from churning, but after a year or so your credit should stabilize (assuming you never miss a payment). I've been churning for a few years and my FICO is around 780.
Some cards I close. If there's an annual fee, I weigh the benefits each year. If the benefits don't justify the fee, I try to get the fee waived. Failing that, I cancel.
OTOH cards with no fee get tossed in a drawer. I have 5 no-fee Citi Hilton cards just sitting in my file cabinet.
Actually, no. Airlines only release seats for award redemption if they don't believe they can sell them. Therefore, he's only taking up seats that would otherwise go empty on flights that are going to fly anyways.
I have an Australian friend who does this, so it's definitely possible outside of America. I know it works because he's flown to visit me in a few places (Asia, US). However, the insanely tight international travel schedules sound to me more like a boring and unpleasant experience than enjoyment. Glad you enjoy it though!
It's actually a big circle jerk that benefits the airlines. Most of the strategies that Ben and his cohorts promote is "gaming" credit card signup bonuses. Basically, sign up for X credit card and get X number of of frequent flyer miles. The airlines sell the miles to the cc companies for much cheaper than a consumer could buy and in return get some revenue and customer loyalty. In the case of co-branded credit cards, there's probably some revenue share going on. The credit card companies then incentivize a new customer by giving X frequent flyer miles after X spend threshold. The CC companies make money by charging retailers a merchant fee for transactions. The bonus miles they give to new customers is often itself cheaper than what they'll earn in transaction fee from retailers, but almost certainly after you take into account the lifetime value of the customer. The customer feels as if they got miles for free or super cheap as they often make purchases they would have made anyway on another card. And of course, bloggers like Ben get paid on affiliate fees for promoting specific credit cards.
I'm surprised these guys haven't gone to the next level and started up their own credit card company. That might allow them to buy frequent flyer miles at the dirt-cheap levels and offer ridiculous signup bonuses for their card. For example, if 100K miles costs them $X, have an annual membership fee of $1.25X and you get 100K miles a year bonus. Or for $12.5X, get 1M miles a year bonus. The use of this as an actual credit card is purely optional. Or is this only financially viable due to the transaction fees the credit card companies get?
> Or is this only financially viable due to the transaction fees the credit card companies get?
Yes. These reward cards work out to about 1-2% cashback equivalents after the sign up bonuses. From the credit card perspective, the financials are basically identical to their normal "cashback cards".
If you are like me and just want a couple free plane tickets a year, you just pick up 4 new credit cards [~160-200,000 points/miles] and cancel them. If you put 100% of your spending on credit cards and just cycle through the sign up bonuses every 3 months, its really easy and 160k miles is 2 round trip tickets a year anywhere domestically, with some leftover.
I'm not sure they care. They may be accepting these users because the programs are profitable for them in how they increase normal customers spending patterns.
Tightening up the rules or banning these users might be bad PR for them they don't want to deal with.
It's not strictly about being a bad customer of the airlines... You can get free flights by being bad customers of other businesses offering airline miles (like credit cards) or by defrauding taxpayers (the well-known "buy dollar coins from the Mint" scam). This might even be profitable for the airlines. Sometimes.
Once upon a time a nerdy young boy in a Catholic high school was obsessed with airplanes. He started flying around the country collecting frequent flyer miles, reporting small problems with the plane, and getting lots of $200 "apology" vouchers and stuff. It was fun.
Today he has a big fan club, runs some airfare-hacker forums and gives interviews to magazines with no journalistic credibility or fact-checking whatsoever (cough cough). Airfare hacking today is harder than it used to be, and you can't even defraud the US Mint by ordering dollar coins on your credit card (with no fee / free shipping), but you can still get lucky with mistake fares and/or pay people to violate all the terms and conditions and fly in your name, if you're sneaky about it.
Basically the person in the article uses various tricks to game the airline and accumulate as many frequent flyer miles and fly around as much as he can (accumulating even more points it seems).
Okay, I'm a frequent flyer, though not to the level of Ben (though I did once go LGA-ORD-DEL-ORD-LAX-JFK without leaving the airport in Delhi to get to Executive Platinum on AA).
Typically what Ben is doing is flying fares where the cost of the fare is lower than the equivalent value in miles, or where he can game the very complex rules associated with a frequent flyer ticket to add on a free leg or free flight.
So, for example, for my honeymooon I was able to snag round-trip tickets in business class from NYC to the Maldives. Once I had those tickets, I worked the frequent flyer system to move the dates around and add on a stop in Tokyo in First class for a couple of days for about $10 in extra taxes and fees - total retail cost of the tickets was close to $30k, our total cost was <$250. In terms of frequent flyer mojo, this doesn't even count as journeyman-level skills.
On top of that you have all of the points he's getting for using various branded credit cards, maximizing bonuses, giveaway offers, etc.
The only way I'm aware of to get FF points when you are flying on an award flight is when you get hit with IRROPS (irregular operations, usually due to weather and mechanical issues), and at the airport they rebook your award ticket to be a revenue ticket at no cost. It's something the airlines have discouraged their agents to do for obvious reasons, and they've tried to make it easier to rebook award tickets, but
still if you're a top-tier elite, there's 50 people that need rebooking behind you, and you're on an award ticket, decent chance the computer will spit out a revenue ticket to replace the award ticket that is no longer valid.
Well, the point of miles is to keep you flying on that same company, why not keep giving them?
From an incentive point of view it makes sense, otherwise, spending all your miles would be an opportunity to jump to another airline.
This particular abuse seems like an extreme case, and really, what is giving a seat to one guy who goes to extreme length compared to the returns on the general customer base?
Perhaps he buys a regular fare ticket at a deep discount, on a miles-rewarding credit card, upgrades it to first class using miles, then pays the cost of the original fare using some other mechanism that requires use of the miles to be remunerative. As the article mentions, finding anything wrong with the aircraft could be converted into a $200 or $400 credit.
By invoking certain rules or offers, you can actually get many more reward miles than the actual distance of the flight. That's why a large part of the practice is spending as much time in the air as possible.
Using those near-currency credits to bribe the airline employees with the airline's own stuff is likely another key part of the "fly free" strategy. The employees have some discretion in how strictly they enforce their employers' rules. Make friends there, and you have an easy flight. Make enemies, and you will have trouble.
There has to be some mechanism that makes this works for them, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
This article reminds me of one I read wherein a Chinese man bought a first class ticket for gratis access to the airport lounge, ate there for free, and re-booked his ticket for another day. Months worth of meals for the cost of one fully refundable first class fare, and he never explicitly broke a single airline rule.
This is just extreme couponing. This is the airline equivalent of walking into the checkout at your local grocery store with 3 carts full of stuff, and walking out after getting change back from your nickel.
> Basically the person in the article uses various tricks to game the airline and accumulate as many frequent flyer miles and fly around as much as he can (accumulating even more points it seems).
Not just frequent flyer miles (which you generally can't get on flights you get by redeeming such miles), but credit vouchers, etc. (that's the whole point of the analysis of which fights are likely to be oversold, so you get tickets on them -- perhaps with frequent flyer miles -- so you get to fly on a later flight after accepting the offered voucher reward for being bumped.)
Guy find ways to exploit the system - some of it is reasonable, for example taking advantage of airlines overbooking flights, but some of it is just being an ass, for example demanding a voucher if his headset is broken rather than a new headset. Plus, lots of boring multi-leg flights with no real destination just to rack up miles.
Guy should use his brains for something more useful, like solving the traveling salesman problem.
Correct, but it is still a form of hacking, by way of social engineering. The ethics of it are dubious, certainly, but there's still something to appreciate in Kevin Mitnick types, even if they don't necessarily deserve to be lumped as "hackers" in the sense of technical prowess.
Engaging in human hacking and systems analysis of institutions like this can have high personal pay-offs, but it also often requires to revolve much of your lifestyle around it, so whether it's worthwhile varies.
In the last five years I've managed to earn and spend about 1.5 million miles and points, with maybe 50k airline miles from actual flying and ~400k points from actual Hilton stays. Between churning, manufactured spend and promotions I'm able to do 1-2 international trips a year in first class, staying at good hotels. I mostly travel to Asia and get great value out of free flights on Singapore, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines.
It's an awesome hobby if you: a) have time to kill b) are single and c) have an insanely flexible schedule.
I used US and BA miles earlier this year to fly to Malaysia and Thailand for free (well, plus taxes) in first class, spending five weeks between Hong Kong, Penang, Koh Lanta, Beijing and Tokyo.
Drinking $300 champagne at 35,000 feet on a flight you didn't pay for is a rather fun feeling...