7 free FlightTrack pro codes from starbucks, in case you didn't get it before ...

i wrote about flight track pro in a previous post. they were offering free codes at starbucks for canadians. i don't think americans can use these codes as these are all linked to the canadian app store.

i grabbed a whole deck of them when they were about to be chucked by starbucks, and i started handing them out to friends. but now i'm out of friends who want them, and i'm left with a whole bunch of codes that all expire on september 24, 2013.

so if you're interested, go ahead and grab the codes for yourselves. it's for flight track pro, normally a $9.99 value, for free. and free is the best word in the universe. i took a picture of the instructions as to how to download and install. please let me know if you've used a code ...

1) WLM46FYREHN
2) E7KJ6EPP3K6M
3) 7PEY7XMENRK6
4) J96FF7LYLFYE
5) ERWWYP6N6PXK
6) 73464FJJM3TP
7) YL7JMXPWX6PM

expedia rewards makes a surprise "enhancement", but it's pretty neutral for canadians.

expedia rewards is a program for the american-based site. i gave an extensive introduction here. unfortunately, the program does not reward for purchases made on any of its international sites, including expedia.ca, which vastly limits its utility for people north of the border. technically, i think the rules and conditions also state that it's only for people living in the united states.

they made one major surprise change to their award chart last year, making it slightly more expensive to redeem things and slightly harder to earn points. then suddenly, i get an e-mail in my inbox on august 19 announcing new changes to their program that they made on august 16. someone needs to tell expedia that changes should be announced ahead of time, not retroactively.

the new program

they've changed their earning rates. you now earn 2 points per dollar spent on hotel bookings (up from 1 point per dollar, although previously, they had frequent promotions that doubled your earnings). they've kept their 2 points per dollar spent on vacation packages that include hotels. of note, back in the glory days of the program, they would offer an additional point per dollar spent for each additional aspect of a vacation package booking. for example, hotel + car = 2 points per dollar spent, but hotel + car + airfare + activities (and there were many "free" activities to be had in hawaii, like their $0 breakfast orientations) = 4 points per dollar spent.

on the downside, airfares went down from 1 point per $2 to 1 point per $5 spent. and while they've made it easier to redeem points by lowering the threshold needed to redeem for the lowest reward value (3,500 points = $25 coupon), they've now made it such that every 7,000 points = $50. under the old redemption program, you could get up to $1,000 off with 50,000 points, or a 2 cent value per point. now, each point is worth a maximum of 0.67 cents per point. even if you double the number of points earned on hotels, the maximum benefit is 1.33% back per dollar spent as opposed to the up to 2% back per dollar spent.

the 2% argument, however, is a bit of a stretch. i would argue that 50,000 points for a $1,000 coupon is not realistic for most users. anyone who has 50,000 points just sitting in their account is just begging for trouble. as we see in the frequent flyer world, points only lose value over time. i would have assumed that most people would collect 20,000 points, and get $200 back. this is more reasonable, and would still give a 1% return on hotel spending under the old system. with the new system, we are in a position to get 1.33% back on our hotel spending, which isn't so bad.

but people angry about the airfare devaluations
gary from view from the wing was unimpressed with the changes. he cites mainly that earnings on airfare took a substantial hit, and they really have. if i were american, and if i did all of my transactions in american currency, then yes, this would have been a substantial hit. he argues that expedia rewards are only really good for the airline tickets that you can purchase. very few places incentivize the purchase of airline tickets -- you get no benefit from purchasing them directly from the airline website anymore. expedia was one of the few exceptions to that. and if you earned 1 point per $2 spent, and if each expedia point was worth up to 2c each, that would be like a 1% return. now at 1 point per 2$ spent, and each point being worth 0.67c each, your rate of return for airline tickets drops to 0.13%. yikes!

but the good news for canadians is that it doesn't really matter. airfare spendings never really mattered because they were always priced in american dollars; you were always better served by booking on the canadian version of expedia. even if there weren't currency conversion fees from your credit card, expedia always had strange currency conversion fees of its own.

an example: vancouver to calgary, one way, departing sept 21, 2013. direct flights only.

expedia.ca -- the actual price, as displayed on the next page, is $161.83 CAD

expedia.com -- the actual price, as displayed on the next page, is $160.58 USD

the nice thing about the expedia websites is that they match onto the actual airline prices almost precisely (even with air canada tango fares). as of today's writing, the canadian dollar sits at $0.9520 per american dollar. so if things worked out well, the expedia.com price should be $154.06, but in reality, it is $6.52 USD more than expected. at the old point earning rate and award rate, you would earn 80 points on this booking, which could have been worth up to $1.60. it was not worth it to book on the american website to begin with, so this devaluation was never really an issue for me.

but what about hotels?
it's rare that i book hotels from expedia. even at 1 point per dollar spent on hotels which could be redeemed at 2cents per point, this represented a 2% return. these bookings would not be eligible for hotel frequent stay credits or points (unlike points hound). and if you really wanted to book an independent hotel, you'd be better served by hotels.com. if you use the hotels.com website and select your currency as canadian, you get the same rates as expedia.ca, don't have to pay any odd foreign exchange rates, and still get 10% back in hotelrewards money. 10% return > 2% return.

the only time i book hotels now on expedia is to use their best rate guarantee. a $50 travel credit represents an enormous savings that sometimes can't be ignored.

what have i learned?

1. the devaluation isn't really that big of a deal for folks north of the border
2. never hold large sums of points in your account, because devaluations can come swiftly and without notice whatsoever.

starwood's 3rd trimester promo registration is now live!

i must have missed this earlier, but registration for the third trimester promo at starwood is now live. you can register here.

nights stayed between september 1 and december 15 are eligible for this promotion. you get:

• double base points for each paid night
• 2,500 points after every 5 paid night.

you must register by october 31, 2013. a list of non-participating hotels are here. of note, my two go-to hotels in seattle, the four points by sheraton downtown seattle, and the westin bellevue, are not participating. boo! but ... register, register, register anyway!

lifetime status on AA: westjet flights take you there ... eventually.

i preface this post with the fact that lifetime status doesn't really mean your lifetime. given the fact that programs can be devalued in at a moment's notice, the allure of lifetime status is not what it used to be. alliance members can change, benefits can be "enhanced", programs can fold, and airlines can disappear. what we think is great now shouldn't be counted upon in the future.

american airlines' lifetime status program used to be quite the unique gem out of all the programs with lifetime status. it used to be that 1,000,000 points earned in any fashion (i.e., buying flowers, credit card spending, flight miles) would earn you lifetime gold status (oneworld ruby, similar-ish to star alliance silver). 2,000,000 miles would get you lifetime platinum status (one world sapphire, similar-ish to star alliance gold).

other programs that offer lifetime status have much more stringent ways of earning. asiana airlines requires 500,000 status miles (any alliance partner airline) for lifetime diamond plus status, one million status miles for lifetime platinum status. both of these map onto star alliance gold status. united airlines was a bit more stringent, requiring one million butt-in-seat miles on united metal for lifetime premier gold (and higher lifetime levels for each additional million). air canada requires one million status miles on air canada metal for lifetime elite status. it's possible to buy air canada's million mile status by buying recurrent flight passes that earn 8,000-10,000 status miles a month.

in december 2011, american changed their rules to make it only butt-in-seat miles that counted towards lifetime status. you could no longer earn it by credit card spending alone, for instance. but what i didn't realize was that the wording was quite generous:

Starting on December 1, 2011, base miles earned by flying on American Airlines, American Eagle^® or the AmericanConnection^® carrier or any eligible AAdvantage program participating airline will count towards Million Miler status.

 unlike the other programs, these need not be status miles. so it all made sense when i saw that my westjet points were crediting towards lifetime status miles on american despite not counting towards yearly status requirements. american has a lot of airline partners beyond their alliance.

so for those who are flying a combination of american airline partners on a frequent basis, westjet is not a complete loss in terms of status.

air canada's program gets "enhanced" again

yesterday, a friend of mine alerted me to air canada's latest changes to its program. there are some good points, but of course, some really, really bad points. the original post on flyertalk was here.

first, the good: 
starting today (august 20, 2013), all tango fares, regardless of booking date, will earn at least 25% status miles. domestic markets will earn 25% status miles (from 25% non-status miles) and international markets will earn 50% status miles. they also count towards qualifying segments towards elite status. this is important for the domestic business traveler who is forced to buy the cheapest fare because of company policy. this way, at least they earn some sort of status miles. of course, this still doesn't match westjet's 100% actual miles that can be credited towards american airlines (and incidentally, i found also counts towards their million miler status). it also doesn't match the 100% status miles that all of the american based airlines offer. but it's a start.

premium economy and latitude fares will earn 125% status miles (up from 100%) and business class fares will earn 150% regardless of destination (e.g., to asia, it used to be 125%). helpful, as always, although i should note that the us-based airlines typically give 150% status miles on all their fully flexible latitude-like fares.

what would truly be impressive is if all the other airlines partners would also give status miles for all of the tango fares (especially asiana). usually, if the base airline makes a change, all of the other partners do as well. so we will see.

then the bad:
one of the big benefits of the air canada top tier status are their e-upgrade credits. you can exchange various amounts of credits in order to upgrade your seat (space available) on both domestic and international flights. it was a good value if there was space. last year, without warning, air canada began to introduce tango fares on their international markets. the new tango fare was the same price as what the old flex fares used to be. these new tango fares would not only earn 50% status miles instead of 100%, but they would now be ineligible for e-upgrades. e-upgrades only work with tango plus / flex fares or higher. and for international markets, tango plus fares were upwards of $500 more expensive. so you were paying $500 more round trip for the chance to earn 100% status miles and be eligible for a space available upgrade.

this caused a stir and everyone called it the aerolotto -- you pay the $500 but there was no guarantee that you would get the upgrade if there were too many other people who wanted to upgrade as well. and if you didn't get upgraded, you basically wasted that $500. air canada mysteriously began the practice of zero'ing out all of their upgrade space (booking class "R") even when business class was wide open. this was known as the R-games, named after the blockbuster movie of the year "the hunger games".

and then today's announcement: for international destinations, they are now introducing co-pays with the e-upgrades for altitude elite 25/35/50/75k members (super elite 100k are exempt). and they're not cheap:

that's per segment. so in addition to the aerolotto (which is an up-front co-pay), you have to pay another $1,500 round trip between canada and asia.

the nice thing is that they gave 6 months' notice. these changes take effect in march 2013. however, i'm sure that there are many who, had they known this would happen, would have credited their miles into other programs. but now it's too late -- they've most likely already earned their status for the following year, and they've already earned the e-upgrade credits which are now of significantly less value.

how do the e-upgrades compare to the american-based airlines?
by and far, i think their most significant competitors are those south of the border. united, delta, and us airways all offer unlimited complimentary upgrades for domestic and short haul flights. american airlines offer complimentary domestic upgrades on all full fare tickets. air canada makes you burn your precious, limited e-upgrades.

• delta: when you hit the 75k miles, you can pay for a higher fare in order to use your system wide upgrades (4 for 75k platinum members, 6 for 100k diamond members). apples to apples, 75k members on air canada will need to pay the co-pay whereas delta does not.
• united: for its 75k members, you get 2 regional premier upgrades valid for north america, hawaii, and northern/southern south america (the latter via copa airlines). you pay a higher fare, but no additional co-pay.
• american: it's a bit stingier for their domestic upgrades. they give you 4-500 mile upgrade certificates for every 10k miles you fly. the amount of 500 mile upgrade certificates required to upgrade a domestic/caribean/central america flight is dependent on distance. system wide upgrades only occur at the executive platinum level (100k)
• us airways: offers 2 free upgrade instruments to/from hawaii and to/from europe at the 100k level only.

so what is elite status really worth?
for the 50/75k members, i think the real benefit remains star gold status. the e-upgrades are now expensive. the bonus points may be helpful if you can redeem for seats, even if the points have been devalued a few years in a row. but if you're really gunning for star gold status, and you're finding yourself really stretching it to make the threshold, then it's probably just another reason to earn your points through asiana (40k over 2 years gets you star gold for 2 years). if you're anywhere between 50-99k, one might suggest a us-based airline, although you would lose your domestic lounge access.

i *was* going to try obtaining air canada 50k in the next few years, but i may just opt to look elsewhere and/or keep my asiana account alive and well. after all, with asiana, there's lifetime star gold status at 500k miles from any star alliance source. until, of course, asiana decides that it needs to "enhance" its program as well.

starwood encourages you to "make a green choice" for starpoints

the starwood group of hotels has offered their "make a green choice" promo for at least a year now. this promo is worded as a way to encourage green behaviour. if you decline housekeeping and all that comes with it (changing bedsheets, changing towels, replenishing toiletries, cleaning bathrooms etc), and if you do so by hanging the sign on the door handle prior to 2am, you are rewarded a 5$ food voucher or various amounts of points. i saw that the four points by sheraton in calgary offers a 250 points, whereas the sheraton bellevue offers 500 points. i assume the higher the brand, the more points you get offered. the program is not offered for the day of departure -- they have to do housekeeping whether you want it or not.

 

so in that quest for more points, i went out and hung the sign on the door handle. well before 2am. i usually decline housekeeping anyway -- i'm too embarrassed to have people see the state of my room while i'm out.

there's a flyertalk thread out there that talks about the program in general. starting with post 35, there's a suggestion that there's an ethical dilemma. dhammer53 writes:

You do realize that by taking advantage of these offers, we're going to put some people out of work.

if enough people opt out of housekeeping ahead of time, like, say, 2am the night before, it is possible that the hotel could ring up some of their contracted housekeeping employees to cancel their work for the day. after all, you don't need an entire staff of housekeepers to clean half of the hotel's rooms. and so it suggests that this is the hotel's sneaky way of reducing costs. the 500 starpoints that they hand out probably only costs the hotel $5, but the cost of cleaning one room is probably higher than that.

so the thread continues by someone else suggesting that maybe this is a good thing -- maybe they still hire the same amount of staff but that the staff will be able to spend more time on the room and do a good job -- they can eliminate errors. itsaboutthejourney writes:

... or maybe it will allow the hotels to not rush their staff through the rooms it cleans, eliminating errors and allowing better maintenance of the rooms, public areas, etc. I'm guessing there is a huge turnover in housekeeping staff and any reduction in staff needs helps the hotel focus on training, etc.

and then Helena Handbaskets writes, tongue in cheek:

So how many points can I get if I park my own car and they can lay off the valet? 

the thread goes on and on -- the ethics of the program fades and it becomes more about the details ... for another 24 pages of posts at last count. 

i hang the sign on the door handle dutifully as soon as i step into the room, thinking less of the ethics and more on the points. would you do anything differently?

hotels.com 10% coupon codes -- to use or to skip?

hotels.com typically has 10% off coupons all the time. you can find them everywhere. sometimes they use individual one-time use codes, other times they have a generic code that anyone can type in. recently, they released one for their e-mail subscribers.

it's clearly a generic code -- i can't imagine that i was so lucky to get a randomized code that spelled exactly CAVACATION. as above, you have to book by september 8 for stays between august 13 and january 31, 2014. the fine print says that this is not eligible for welcome rewards. this is exactly why these codes don't really offer much benefit to me.

welcome rewards is their reward program which gives you a free hotel night after 10 eligible stays. after staying 10 nights, your free hotel night stay is worth the average price paid for those 10 nights. this is a 10% rebate right there. so the choice is between whether to get the 10% up front or whether to hold off and redeem for a reward.

there are two reasons why i don't redeem up front:

1) there are times when i won't have a coupon but still need to book a hotel, and it would take forever for me to reach those 10 nights in order to get my free night reward otherwise.

2) sometimes, those rewards will void your big crumbs rebates since it's a coupon code you're using. sometimes it won't. if you don't use the coupon, you get 4.55% back on your hotels but that one free night won't earn you anything (obviously). sometimes, the coupons will allow you to earn rebates by accident. if that's the case, then you get the rebate on the lower final price. by not redeeming the coupon now, you will get a rebate on the higher total, meaning a larger rebate. that's what i end up going for.

but all that being said, the coupon code is there if you want it. you get the most bang for your buck by using the big crumbs link to purchase through hotels.com (not .ca). make sure you change your currency to canadian dollars and then everything will work as if you were shopping through hotels.ca.

spg gold bonus -- double points or 25% off redemption

i woke up to a nice surprise in my inbox the other day. i guess when you hit gold with spg, they give you a nice welcome bonus. either double starpoints for a month, or 25% off a redemption.

 

if you were to redeem for the first option, then it would make sense only if you stayed a lot. it would only make sense if your double points bonus is equal or worth more than the latter option.

in a hypothetical scenario, let's say you were to stay at a category 4 hotel which costs 10,000 points a night. a 25% off redemption coupon is equal to 2,500 points. that means that one must spend $1,250 within a month to simply break even. the double points only counts on the base earning rate. so if $1 spent gives you a base of 2 starpoints, then $1,250 will give you a base of 2,500 starpoints. if you double this, then you would get your bonus 2,500 starpoints above your base. 

if you were to stay 5 nights in a row, you would get a) the 5th night free bonus and b) the 25% off bonus. so 5 nights would cost 40,000 points - 25% = 30,000 points. you've gotten a 10,000 point bonus. to break even with the double starpoints option, you'd have to spend $5,000 in hotels in that month you chose.

it's not even a question for me: 25% off a single redemption for me, please! i do like how they give you something that resembles choice, even though the better choice is very clear.

flight network -- price drop protection

there are ads everywhere for flight network these days. they market themselves as canada's #2 travel agency, presumably behind expedia. a quick search online reveals that at least in 2011, this was the case.

flight network's basic selling point is their price drop protection -- a feature that is not offered by any other airline or travel agency on a consistent basis. if the price of your flight drops between the time of booking and the time of travel, then you can submit a claim online ("grab a deal") and have that amount refunded to you in the form of a travel credit ("price drop dollars"). this travel credit can then be used (in that person's name only) to book future travel (flights, hotels, packages, insurance).

it's not a bad premise, especially given their claim that 1 in 3 purchased airfares will drop in price. once you purchase your ticket, you can log in to view your bookings. you can ask flight network to search the current selling price of that exact itinerary. if the price is lower, then you have the option of grabbing the deal. while you can ask flight network to scan the price an unlimited number of times, you can only grab a deal once. so if one day, the price drops by $3 and you claim that difference, then you can't make another claim for that booking even if a few days later, the fare drops by $50. the idea is to choose when to grab a deal wisely.

some other details:

• economy class flights have unlimited price drop protection
• vacation package price drops can only be claimed from the time of booking to 31 days from day of departure
• hotel bookings and hotel+flight bookings: price drop protection between time of booking and day of departure. for hotel bookings, the first named traveler receives the credit
• you can only redeem your price drop dollars on the base fare, as opposed to any taxes
• when booking an airline ticket with price drop dollars, the full amount is charged to the credit card, but a cheque is sent to you for the price drop dollar portion.
• price drop dollars expire one year after earning them.

the booking engine
i like expedia's interface more than i like flight network's. more specifically, what i like the most about expedia's is that there are ways to find the booking codes that the flight would be made under. this will affect how many frequent flyer points you can earn, and how many elite status qualifying miles you can get. for example, on a transborder flight between canada and the usa, it would be awful if you found that the flight that you wanted would only earn 50% elite qualifying miles rather than 100%.

what has recently changed (since the last time i booked with them in july 2012) is that after you've booked, the booking code is now present. i suppose if you aren't in agreement with the booking code (i.e., it is less than what you were expecting), then you can always cancel your ticket within 24 hours (i think). one can also make an educated guess as to what booking fare you will get based on what the airline is selling the tickets for (i.e., for the same flight, if the air canada website says it's a tango fare, then you're probably buying a tango fare on flight network).

i do like how the tickets are competitively priced with the airline websites, and i also like how the airline website coupon codes are also applied to the flight network prices. for instance, air canada has a coupon code "SURPRISE15" to save 15% off domestic flights. without having to type in a code, flight network has matched these. expedia, on the other hand, has not.

my previous experience with the price drop protection 
i booked a round trip flight to SFO last year through flight network. i kinda held my breath regarding the booking code, but in the end, it turned out to be a 100% fare. the price did indeed drop on my outbound ticket, but because i had a late night return on a sunday evening, the inbound ticket price went up. the net result was that i couldn't grab a deal.

because two one way tickets are almost always the same price as a round trip, it makes more sense to book one way tickets for the price drop protection. this way, your benefit will only depend on one segment as opposed to both

my latest purchase
i decided to give it a try. i booked a ticket from YYC-YVR for mid-september. the fare was $190 all in, and i know that the flight normally can be had for ~$150 all in or less. so we will see if i can grab a deal or not.

i do note that their website suggests that the air canada bag drop-off cut-off time for domestic flights is 30 minutes. this is wrong. it is 45 minutes. it's the small details like this that makes me wary ...

links from the web: aug 4 edition. toilets, chinese tourists, angry tweets, and expedia

1) gerry from the tarmac writes a post about the history of airplane toilets and how they work. it only occurred to me after reading this that the blue-water systems are indeed much less common today. who knew that some variants contained formaldehyde?

2) i scrolled down a few posts from him, and saw that he wrote about how much the average chinese tourist spends in vancouver. $1,600 CAD for a person who is used to the chinese standard of living, is a lot!

3) hack my trip writes about angry united airlines customers accidentally tweeting to #unitedairlanes, and how the parody twitter account is kind of embarrassing for united. very similar to #untied.

4) it's not a link, but in the last few weeks, i just found out that expedia.ca was now offering air canada tango fares online. it used to be that they didn't -- they would only offer their flex fares and above, and so it was only really beneficial to use expedia.ca to book westjet flights in canada. but now, they have "web fares" -- funny, i didn't realize that people actually booked their tickets any other way for expedia these days.

i like using expedia to book my tickets because via great canadian rebates, each ticket you purchase will get you a $1.50 rebate. i book two one-way tickets at no extra cost just to get two rebates. and while $3.00 is not a whole lot, it's better than the $0.00 that you get back from booking on the airline website directly.

hotel 3rd quarter promos

1) hilton hhonors introduces its third quarter promo a few weeks ago. hotel stays between july 9 and september 30 earn triple base points on fri-sun nights, and double points on mon-thurs nights. registration is required here: triple points promotion

2) starwood introduces its third trimester promo today. hotel stays between september 1 and december 15 will earn double points. every 5 eligible nights will earn a bonus 2,500 points. registration is required here but not yet open: take two promotion

3) and while not a hotel, still very deserving in its own right: kfc's latest coupon book is available online at kfc.ca. choose your province and get your coupons. never pay full price for finger lickin' good food again.