51–60 of 184 posts
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.
If you know a year-round supplier of $0 fee cards, let us know ;)
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.
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 The lengths of some of the schemes are entertaining in their own right.
Is any of this (realistically) applicable if you are european? We're still reluctant to use credit cards at all here.
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Any recommendations on how to get started?
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 ow…
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.
For example:
https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferre... -> http://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture/ -> https://creditcards.chase.com/6000356?CELL=6WKP -> https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/southwest-premier...
180,000 points for $198 [the last one is a business card but this is HN so I suspect a bunch of people have ways of getting one of those]
iirc, 180k points is ~$1800
Just realize this tears up your credit score so don't go getting large 5-6 figure loans for cars/houses while doing this.
> 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.
My family still gets those oversold-flight coupons when they get bumped to the next flight. I don't because that would require flying United :P
IDB/VDB (what you get in an oversold situation) is an entirely different beast.