flight centre's $100 off airfare promotion

i received another promotion in my e-mail yesterday from flight centre. they are offering $100 off of roundtrip airfares but only in store and only on october 19, 2013. there are few rules: new bookings only, one coupon per person. flight must originate in canada. you have to  bring in that e-mail, but i can always forward it to those interested ...

typically, the way that this works is that you pay the regular ticket price to flight centre. in turn they cut you a check for the promotional value. in this case, they would cut you a cheque for $100.

normally, these are only valuable for domestic flights where they do not add any booking surcharges. for international (including american) flights, they charge somewhere around $65 on top of that. the usual offer of $50 off does not make up for the booking fee itself, but for this particular promotion, it would.

where else would you get $100 off on an air canada or westjet flights? sadly, i'm in seattle, doing a mattress run that day ...

the taxi game + $50 coupon is back at flight centre!

i was on call last night. it being welfare check wednesday this week, and being in the downtown core, the call shift was extremely quiet. i ended up taking the cab home slightly early. as mentioned before, certain cabs in the vancouver region have seat back entertainment. and oh look! the flight centre game is back! i even took screen shots to show:

i've played the game before, and it actually does take a good 5 minutes of effort, which for a 5 minute taxi ride, makes it hard to complete the offer for the coupon. but just underneath the "enter to win", you can hit "skip the game".

once you skip the game, you have to choose where you would like to go if you were to win the "around the world" contest. if i were smart, i would have chosen a more expensive destination than las vegas ... but my finger slipped in my effort to get this done as fast as possible.

up until this point, all you think is happening is that you're entering a draw for a contest that you'll never win. but then the following screen appears. just for entering your e-mail, you'll get a $50 voucher!

 

it's been roughly 8 hours or so, and i haven't received my voucher yet so i don't know what constitutes a vacation. based on previous experience with the same wording, it usually means $50 off any domestic round trip flight, usually with a far expiry date (like 5 or 6 months). also, the vouchers don't have names or unique codes on them, so you can keep using them over and over again despite one voucher per e-mail. and the fact that it's 8 hours late doesn't worry me yet ... the last time it took about 2 days before it arrived in my inbox. 

have a good night out on the town, be safe, take a taxi home, and make sure you get your $50 coupon.

$30 off domestic airfares at flight centre + 2500 point rebate when redeeming on AA

i saw this in my inbox a few days ago, but thought i might as well post this again. flight centre is offering $30 off any canadian airfare (round trip, some conditions apply). this must be booked in store by july 7, 2013. you need to print the e-mail out and bring it in with you to the store. the webpage that is equivalent to the actual e-mail is here, so that you don't have to sign up for it if you don't want to.

flight centre retail locations aren't supposed to charge booking fees on pure domestic airfares. these airfares are exactly the same as what air canada and westjet charge -- they pretty much book it on their website in front of you. they will charge a high booking fee (~$65 depending on location) on us/international fares. if you have to make changes, they will charge an additional $50 on top of whatever the airline charges, even for domestic airfares. so the rule of thumb: this is a great coupon if you're going to book domestic travel only and it is very unlikely that your travel plans will change.

why pay the full amount to air canada / westjet when you can get the exact same thing for $30 less?

as a separate note, view from the wing notes that american airlines is trying to promote its award map. if you register for their sweepstakes, and book a reward flight by july 24/13 between sept 4 and nov 20/13, then you'll receive a 2,500 point rebate. partner flights are eligible but only if you can book online. the registration link is here.(remember that intra-island flights on partner airline hawaiian airlines is just 5,000 points one way, and is also eligible for this discount!)

10-50$ off of your domestic airfare from flight centre

flight centre is a full service travel agency with both an online presence and multiple retail locations. their agents are not super advanced, no more so than what expedia.ca can pull up in terms of deals. in fact, some of their agents can be pretty unhelpful. for example, during the days of HST in BC, they were unaware that if you booked a BC to AB flight as two separate one-way tickets, you'd save the HST on your AB-BC segment. if you booked it as a roundtrip, you were charged the HST on both segments.

but if you do your homework, know what flights you want and how you want to book things, then flight centre may actually present you with some cost savings for your airfares. the warning, however, is that this is only applicable to domestic round trip airfares. flight centre does not charge booking fees for domestic travel. they do, however, charge an additional 65$ for transborder or international itineraries. also, the two discounts i mention below only work for retail locations and not online. finally, if you need to change anything in your itinerary, they will charge you another 50-60$ above and beyond the airline change fees.

1) 10$ savings -- student price card
with the student price card, you will receive a 10$ off domestic round trip airfare coupon. there are higher discounts available for transborder and international flights, however they are both less than the 65$ booking fees. therefore, those discounts will actually cost you money if you were originally planning on booking online anyway. as a UBC resident, you get a library card which looks identical to a student identification card. alternatively, you just need to find someone who is able to book that flight for you.

2) 50$ savings -- taxi game
quite frequently, flight centre advertises a game in taxi cabs. i've only played it in vancouver, but i suspect it's in other major cities as well. in vancouver, the blacktop cab and yellow checker cab brand have in-seat entertainment on the passenger side headrest. flight centre has a world trivia game currently running. you don't have to actually play the game. there is an option to skip the game and enter your e-mail address for a chance to win a sweepstakes. but in even doing that, they will e-mail you a 50$ coupon for any roundtrip domestic airfare.

but wait -- there's more! in the e-mail, there is no unique code. there are no unique links. there are no identifiers. there are no names. you can print off that coupon as many times as you want and present over and over to physical flight center locations. if blogspot had a server that i could link to, i'd scan it and host it right here. all the agent has to do is enter the code FCTAXICONTEST1012. and to top it off ... the coupon had a broad expiration policy. i played the game back in january 2013, and the coupon expires june 30, 2013. if you're a point-seeker, you pay the full amount on your credit card first, and flight centre then writes you a 50$ refund cheque. bonus points for nothing.

go out ... and ride those taxis!