Author: michael

A lightning trip through Europe and lessons learned

December 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

My friend Alex and I recently went on a week long trip through Europe, taking advantage of a British Airways sale for business class to Europe. We hit Zurich, Berlin, and London, staying 2-3 days in each city. Here’s a mini trip report, as well as some travel tips gained from first hand experience. Tips will be at the bottom of the post for those who don’t want to read the trip report.

Admittedly, I am one of the worst prepared frequent travelers out there. Due to taking so many frequent trips, and being a bit scatterbrained, I tend to barely plan, always forget to bring something, lose things in hotels, miss experiencing things, and make small mistakes that could have happened with better planning. But things somehow turn out okay in the end. But hopefully you can learn from my mistakes! Continue reading ā†’

AwardFinder – a better flight awards search engine

December 7, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Apparently some of my travel hacker friends were not aware of this tool, so here’s a little introduction post for this very useful app. I’ve been using it for the last couple months and it has helped me find and book multiple awards. It’s mostly useful for Star Alliance, Oneworld, Etihad and partners, as well as certain specific partners for supported search engines.

AwardFinder is a App for the Chrome browserĀ that brings the power of many airline award search engines to one convenient place. ItĀ also adds additional features on top of the official airline search engines, such as the ability to search multiple cabins, multiple origins / destinations, save your searches, and more! Continue reading ā†’

Is the $1000 rolling limit at PayPal Digital Gifts gone?

December 6, 2015 / / 1 Comment

As you may be aware, there is supposed to beĀ an unstated $1000 rolling limit on gift card purchases from PayPal Digital Gifts from eBay. This limit annoyingly comes into play somewhat often when you are into the gift card reselling game, as I am.

I noticed recently that the eBay checkout page had changed, and also as I was making some recent gift card purchases, I was pretty sure I had approached or gone beyond that $1000 limit without hitting any errors. Checking my list of PayPal purchases (all of these are from paypal_digital_gifts): Continue reading ā†’

Is Gogo onto the free wifi trick?

December 4, 2015 / / 1 Comment

After learning about theĀ trick to get free wifi with GogoĀ on board a few months ago, I’ve been using WiFi happily on most of my flights, both on my iPhone as well as on my laptopĀ  (that is pretending to be an iPhone/iPad)

On my last flight on American recently, after doing the trick 2 times, I was hit with this screen when I tried to download the Gogo app again!

I tried disconnecting and connecting again, as well as clearing my cookies and that didn’t do anything. Only by waiting forĀ aĀ day to pass did I seem to be able to download the app again. There doesn’t seem to be a way around this on mobile, but I did see the CAPTCHAĀ screen flash before I saw this screen, so it may be possible to get around this screen on a laptop.Ā I will investigate further on my next flight, but possible courses of action are: Continue reading ā†’

Back to Aegean Silver… but still Star Alliance Gold!

November 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Back in 2013 when Aegean was still offering an extremely easy route to “lifetime” Star Alliance Gold by only earning 19,000 qualifying miles, I took advantage of this to get Aegean Gold status. It was great times with priority boarding, security, checked bags and Star Alliance lounge access, even domestically!

In September 2014, after realizing that people were heavily taking advantage of this route to gain Star Alliance Gold easily without much effort to renew the status, Aegean made it harder to obtain Gold this way, requiring 24,000 qualifying miles flown on Aegean or 48,000 qualifying miles flown on Aegean and Star Alliance partners. Furthermore, Aegean notified existing Golds that their status would actually expire at some point. All existing Gold customers would be transferred to the new Gold Tier when the program changed in November 2014. Continue reading ā†’

Interesting offer for the Chase Marriott Credit card

November 27, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Correction: There is a 5,000 point bonus for adding an authorized user and having the user make a purchase in the first 3 months. I missed it in the offer details.

I got this offer in the mail recently:

The offer is is for 50,000 points + 5,000 points for adding an authorized user and having them make a purchase in the first 3 months + a $200 Marriott gift card for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. Annual fee of $85 is waived the first year. Continue reading ā†’

Hilton HHonors status match and MLife status match from Hyatt

November 25, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Via an official HHonors representative onĀ FlyerTalk, Hilton HHonors has a status match program.Ā Email a request toĀ HHonorMyStatus@hilton.comĀ with your HHonors and something showing your elite status in another program, and see what happens! Send your request byĀ January 11, 2016Ā and you’ll have the matchedĀ status through March 2017.

Since you can automatically get either HHonors Silver from credit cards like theĀ Hilton HHonors American Express or theĀ Citi Hilton HHonors Visa Signature, or HHonors Gold from credit cards like theĀ Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express or Citi Hilton Reserve card, I would say it’s only worth it to match to Diamond or possibly Gold if you have neither credit card. Continue reading ā†’

Get Twitter or Facebook links from Chase’s Refer a Friend website even if they are disabled

November 19, 2015 / / 3 Comments

EDIT January, 2016: It looks like Chase has caught on and nulled out the social media links for certain credit card products like the Freedom. If you have an old referral link that you’ve saved before, that should work though.

I noticed a bunch of new referral offers in an email from Chase earlier this morning, so I logged into chasereferafriend.comĀ as usual to generate some referral links. However, when I put my information into the site, I sadly couldn’t find the Twitter or Facebook options anymore! Continue reading ā†’

AirBnB Amex offer, Amazon Prime First, and Best Rate Kerfuffle

November 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Disclaimer: This post may containĀ affiliateĀ links. You aren’t required to click on our links to get the deals, but it would be much appreciated!

Just a quick collection of posts I saw that were interesting, as well as a short experience with the Hilton Best Rate guarantee.

Via Doctor of Credit, there’s a great Amex Offer currently running right now, where you can get $50 of $100 at AirBnB, including gift cards. Please readĀ the follow-up postĀ with all the details you need to know about the deal! If you are are buying gift cards, here are the key things you need to know: Continue reading ā†’

Mobile Passport – better than Global Entry?

November 9, 2015 / / 5 Comments

Hello! I’m on my way back home after a quick trip to Bogota, Colombia (and sadly missing TravelCon II.) I’m currently sitting in the Admirals Club at Miami Airport because I’m too lazy to go through a security checkpoint without TSA Pre to get into another terminal for the Priority Pass lounge there. Just enough time to write a couple of short blog posts before my connecting flight! Continue reading ā†’

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