Rewards Network’s Dining for Miles programs are being revamped, a.k.a. gutted.

You may know the program as iDine (what I’ll always call it), and its precursor was Transmedia — the old program where you paid to sign up and had a membership card which you needed to present at restaurants for a cash discount.

The program awards frequent flyer miles in the program of your choosing when dining at a participating restaurant. Traditionally the award was 10 miles per dollar, although increasingly of late some restaurants only offered 5 miles per dollar spent and some restaurants gave miles only on certain days of the week.

Now comes the announcement that earning in the program is being changed dramatically. Instead of a default of 10 miles per dollar (plus frequent bonuses), most members will only earn 3 miles per dollar beginning July 1, 2005.

On July 1, 2005, we will be changing the benefit structure of the [Airline] Dining program. We will be introducing a tiered membership structure. … Under the new program structure your benefits and tier level will be based on your level of participation in the program as outlined below:




• Elite Member – 12 or more qualified transactions in 2004 (full calendar year) or between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2005 – 5 Miles/$1.00 Spent
  

  
  

• Engaged Member – 4-11 qualified transactions in 2004 (full calendar year) Or between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2005 Or have/create an [Airline] Dining Online Profile – 3 Miles/$1.00 Spent
  

  
  

• Active Member – 0-3 qualified transactions in 2004 (full calendar year) Or between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2005 And no AAdvantage / One Pass / Flight Fund Dining Online Profile yet created – 1 Mile/$1.00 Spent


At the beginning of each calendar year, you will be eligible for the benefits of the membership tier for which you qualified based on the number of qualified transactions at the end of the immediately preceding year.

(Note, some emphasis and elipses mine.)

Here are the notices for each of the participating airline programs:

• American

• Continental

• America West

• Northwest

• Delta

• United

• Alaska

• British Airways

That amounts to notices up on the websites for all participating programs except USAirways (as of this writing), which I presume is just a website updating issue.

Certainly this will save alot of money for Rewards Network. For me, I won’t seek out their participating restaurants anymore for miles earning. Miles now make the difference for me in deciding where to eat (I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, especially to my foodie friends). No longer.

The premium cashback program appears to be unchanged at the moment. In exchange for a fee, you can earn 20% back on your dining bills instead of miles. I haven’t seen any revised terms there.

And the Diners Club program remains unchanged as well — essentially giving you the premium cashback program for free when paying at participating restaurants with your Diners Club card.

I will certainly make the choice to pay with Diners Club where accepted now and take the cashback instead of the miles. And since Diners Club will become accepted everywhere that takes Mastercard next year, I will use the card at all participating restaurants period. No more Dining for Miles for me.

Aloha Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, joining Hawaiian Airlines, United, USAirways, and ATA in reorganization. Hawaaian Airlines is expected to emerge from bankruptcy next month.

Tumi is offering 40% off selected luggage.

The Amtrak/United partnership has ended, apparently effective immediately.

It used to be possible to transfer Amtrak points to United miles at a 1:1 ratio, up to 25,000 points per year (50,000 points for Amtrak elite members).

That option is apparently gone, removed sometime in the past 48 hours, with no notice whatsoever.

This is a real blow to the value of the Amtrak program for several reasons.

I used to recommend the Amtrak Mastercard as the best free points-earning credit card. It had several benefits:

1. Obviously, it was free
   
2. Points could be transferred to United, Midwest, Continental and Hilton
   
3. It’s issued by MBNA, so the foreign currency conversion charge is only 1% (rather than 3% for most issuers)

In fact, it was a better way for most people to earn United miles than the United Visa, since it was free and the BankOne United Visa generally carries a $60 annual fee.

I can no longer recommend that all frequent flyers carry this card, although it is still likely appropriate for folks wanting to earn Amtrak points.

United was Amtrak’s best partner. Midwest doesn’t offer alot of coverage, and Continental miles are notoriously difficult to redeem for Continental flights (they’re much more useful with partners) and the number of points required is often much higher than what United charges for awards.

Additionally, the ability to earn United miles no matter who you fly is gone as a result of this change.

Shame on ending partnerships without notice to members. And shame on the Amtrak program for simply deleting all references to United transfers from their website instead of announcing the change.

American Express OnlineTax is offering 1000 Delta miles for using their online tax filing service from January 1 to April 15.

$34.95 buys filing of your federal and state returns, which is somewhat higher than other online services I’ve seen and likely higher than the after-rebate price of some software packages.

A reader writes:

Hi Gary:



I’ve been reading your blog for quite a
while now and find it highly enjoyable and informative.
Thanks!



However, I’ve never seen one question asked or answered. How frequently can you sign up for an airline or hotel credit card, get the signup bonus, cancel the credit card, then sign up again? I’ve signed up for the various airline and hotel credit cards, used them for a while, then canceled them since I never actually used them much. My credit rating is good enough that it can suffer another round of hard inquiries on my credit reports if I were to sign up for those credit cards again and would be worth the extra signup points.



I’m somewhat puzzles that this isn’t a more frequently asked… Perhaps I am missing something.

This is actually one of those ‘dirtly little secrets’ that isn’t discussed very much but which some people take advantage of tremendously. I hope that posting about it doesn’t facilitate closing of loopholes.

The ability to claim multiple credit card signup bonuses differs by issuer.

While there are some exceptions to this, where the issuers don’t track properly or experience some other snafu, USBank (which issues the Northwest Visa) will only give a signup bonus once. American Express will give a signup bonus for a particular card once, but if a new signup bonus is better than the original one, Amex will give you the DIFFERENCE when signing up for a new card (e.g. you signed up for a Hilton Amex @ 7500 bonus points, cancelled, and the new offer is 10k bonus points you’ll get 2500).

Citibank, which issues the Hilton Visa and American Airlines Mastercard, allows multiple signup bonuses — though I don’t know how frequently. What’s nice is that the Hilton Visa comes with no fee and there are often no fee promos with the American cards that usually delay the fee for six months, long after the bonus has posted.

BankOne is by far the best and easiest for this. They issue the United Visa, British Airways Visa, Southwest Visa, Priority Club Visa, and Marriott Visa.

The Priority Club card is no-fee. The Marriott cards are no-fee the first year. And there are often first year fee waived promos with the United card. What’s more, the bonus points usually post with the first statement and the fee with the second, so if you cancel after the points post you may not even deal with a fee (and you could cancel even after the fee shows up and still not owe the fee provided you deal with the issue with customer service).

But there’s even a better way of dealing with the card than cancelling — BankOne allows you to combine credit lines from multiple cards, so just add the credit from the card you want to cancel into another credit line and zero out the card. That’ll prevent a fee from being assessed, in my experience. Furthermore, I’ve heard that you can apply for each BankOne card every three months though I haven’t tried it that frequently.

Bank of America I’m less familiar with. They issue the USAirways Visa, America West Visa, and Alaska Visa. I don’t know whether they’ll give you multiple signup bonuses.

In all cases you can certainly get different TYPES of cards (e.g. personal and business cards, as we all have businesses… “Your Name & Associates”)

Two credit line clarifications are in order.

The reason that it’s better to keep an account open, especially if it has no fee, is that the more credit you have that goes unused, the lower your utilization percentage, the higher your credit score (in general). The logic is that you demonstrate you can have credit without maxing it out, and thus are a responsible user.

Second, every time you apply for credit, a “hard inquiry” shows up on your credit report. If you apply for too much credit in a short period of time, your credit score falls temporarily. The fear is that you might be prepaing to go on a credit binge. I believe that hard inquiries appear for six months, so if you apply for a bunch of cards your credit score may fall for six months and then recover.

Flyertalk is accepting contributions for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund in support of the earthquake and tsunami victims.

Red Cross contributions are tax deductible, and there are of course only a few days left in the calendar year to seek such deductions. What better cause?

Lots of rebates, and all your finance and tax software needs for $6.49, shipped. Note, though, that the Norton Anti-virus rebate is an upgrader’s rebate so the deal only works if you already have a version of a Norton, Symantec, or McAfee software product (which in my experience a large number of people do).

Borrowed from FatWallet.com:

# Amazon.com is carrying this TaxCut 2004 Deluxe for $24.50


# Search for “B0006466DA” to add TaxCut 2004 State to your shopping cart for $24.50


# Search for “B0002D1572″ to add Microsoft Money Standard 2005 to your shopping cart for $27.99


# Search for “B000646EGO” to add H&R Block DeductionPro 2004 to your shopping cart for $19.95


# Search for “B0002UCJV6″ to add Norton AntiVirus 2005 to your shopping cart for $46.99


# There is a $5 Mail-In Rebate on TaxCut Deluxe until 04/30/2005


# There is a $24.50 Mail-In Rebate on purchase of TaxCut Deluxe + State until 04/30/2005


# There is a $27.99 Mail-In Rebate (Page 1, Page 2) on purchase of TaxCut Deluxe + Money Standard until 04/30/2005


# There is a $19.95 Mail-In Rebate on purchase of TaxCut Deluxe + DeductionPro until 04/30/2005


# There is a $30 Mail-In Rebate on purchase of TaxCut Deluxe + Norton AntiVirus until 04/16/2005


# There is a $20 Upgrader’s Mail-In Rebate on AntiVirus until 12/31/2005


# There is a $10 Amazon.com Promotional Certificate offer on TaxCut Deluxe until 02/19/2005


# All the items are eligible for “Free! Super Saver Shipping” on orders over $25


# Your Final Price: $24.50 + $24.50 + $27.99 + $19.95 + $46.99 – $5 – $24.50 – $27.99 – $19.95 – $30 – $20 – $10 = $6.49 + Free Shipping

Free subscriptions to Stuff magazine and Field & Stream are available.

Oracle is offering a free $15 Starbucks gift card for completing a survey. It looks to have been originally targeted, so no guarantees whether the card will be delivered (but the survey is short).

Joel Widzer (whose book I reviewed over the summer) doesn’t like the changes to the Delta Skymiles program that I reported on last week.

He sees Delta as [c]aving to the protests of its stingiest customers and believes that the changes will “accelerat[e] Delta’s path toward bankruptcy.”

I usually start by giving an airline, or any company, the benefit of the doubt – concluding that they know a lot more about their business than I do as a simple armchair observer. Certainly they have more data at their disposal and knowledge of their specific circumstances. It’s hard to do that in the case of a company on the verge of bankruptcy with losses in the 10 figures.

But I could have made that same negative assumption about Delta before the announced changes so the simple argument that Delta is losing lots of money says little about their specific strategy.

And if there’s one part that they’re likely approaching wisely, it must be their frequent flyer program. That’s not confidence in their leadership, but in the outside judgment of American Express which recently pre-paid over half a billion dollars for frequent flyer miles.

There are several changes wrapped up in Delta’s 2005 elite program. One change is reducing the number of qualifying miles necessary for Platinum status from 100,000 to 75,000. This aligns the Skymiles program with partners Northwest and Continental. On the one hand this likely means more Platinums and greater competition for upgrades. On the other hand the alignment may be necessary if reciprocal upgrades (and hence additional value for the program) are to follow. Otherwise Continental 75,000 mile flyers would trump Delta 90,000 mile flyers on Delta aircraft. And travelers would have an incentive to participate in the OnePass or Worldperks programs over Skymiles — a disaster considering the value of the Skymiles program (as evidenced by American Express’ cash infusion).

Another change is to award full qualifying miles to the least expensive fares, as they used to and most US carriers continue to do. While Widzer believes this rewards less profitable customers as much as more profitable customers, the fact that other airlines didn’t universally follow suit put Delta at a competitive disadvantage.

Marginal passengers matter when marginal costs are low (as they are in air travel) and Delta likely believed they were losing passengers.

Furthermore, Widzer mistakenly believes there are profitable high-paying passengers and unprofitable low-paying passengers, and that these are different people.

The reality of business travel is that those passengers are often one and the same, especially as low fares are increasingly available at the last minute, not to mention that business travelers also travel on their own dime for leisure. So the person buying business class to Paris may also buy advance purchase coach to Rome, and that passenger was disadvantaged by the old Delta system.

Entirely separately, the Delta “MQM” system was complicated. Customers can’t be expected to adjust their behavior to fit a reward system if they can’t follow the system or understand its logic easily. And complicated systems breed not only resentment but customer service costs.

Finally, I predict that as Delta lowers the threshold required for Platinum and awards full qualifying mileage to low fares, the ranks of Platinums will swell — and Delta will react by offering an unpublished ‘higher level’ to their program specifically designed to cater to high revenue customers, much like United has done with the United Global Services (aka UGS) program. At United those customers are given priority over top-level elites and their upgrades clear earlier. You can’t earn the status based on mileage flown. Instead it is ‘by invitation only’ and United offers it to customers it deems highly profitable, either from their own flying or the travel they book or the large corporate contracts they sign. Delta will likely follow suit.

Delta’s move is a rational one, and in my estimation the changes aren’t done. However, the changes certainly will not spell the death knell for the airline. That is in the hands of Delta’s labor contracts.

Shame on Joel Widzer for chastising Delta for making possible precisely what he purports to tell readers of his book — how to travel in style inexpensively. Performative contradictions are simply poor form.

It’s still a long-shot, but United requested a bid from Independence Air to operate as a United Express carrier. This is precisely the move being pushed for by Independence Air’s largest shareholder.

The Washington Dulles-based low fare carrier has been losing buckets of money and warnings have been issued about a possible bankruptcy filing in January, a mere seven months after starting service as an independent carrier. FlyI used to operate as Atlantic Coast Airlines with most of their flying as the United Express carrier at Dulles and additional activity as a regional carrier for United at Chicago and for Delta at Boston (if I recall correctly, in this last case).

The problems they face are several-fold.

They decided to sell tickets directly to consumers, bypassing Global Distribution Systems. The model works well for an established carrier like Southwest, and saves on distribution costs. But for an unknown carrier, customers simply don’t know to check FlyI.com in addition to Expedia and Orbitz. It simply doesn’t occur to someone — especially outside of Washington, DC, based in the destination cities the airline serves. Furthermore, it doesn’t comport with the way that business travelers book tickets.

As a United Express carrier, they operated a plurality of all flights out of Dulles. They leased the planes and the gates themselves. So with this tremendous ongoing capital expense, they didn’t have the luxury of starting slowly and building routes. They began with hundreds of daily flights but without the customer base to support those flights. I was recently able to book a same-day return to Pittsburgh at $29 each way. Fares are that low because loads are so low, and loads remain low even at those prices.

A mixed strategy might work for the airline. They could operate as a regional carrier for a major airline with some of their planes, guaranteeing them income and utilization of much of their capital. That would buy time to develop markets without saturating those markets with their own planes. No doubt that would be a better strategy than burning all their cash in the next few months.

Developing…

Alaska Air made a $5.2 million accounting error in the third quarter related to its frequent flyer program.

They sold a bunch of bonus miles to their partners and booked the revenue. That turns out to have been the problem — because their accounting practices require them to book revenue when the miles are redeemed rather than sold.

That simple item may offer a window into the behavior of airlines offering award sales and alternative redemption options. In the case of award sales, customers are encouraged to book award flights they otherwise wouldn’t — allowing the airline to recognize revenue. In the case of alternative redemption options (such as magazines for miles or even points exchanges), the airline gets to book revenue even though it also has a cash cost. In this latter case the airline may not be fundamentally financially better off, at least from a cashflow perspective, but appears to be better off in their financial statements. In the strange world of FASB, this may be a case of accounting rules driving redemption options.

Hat tip to Chris Elliott.

Starting January 3rd, SWISS will begin charging a “Swiss Service Fee” for booking tickets in its home Swiss market – including tickets purchased online.

SWISS unveiled its new and more transparent 2005 Distribution Model to the travel sector back in June 2004. Under the new model, the price paid for any SWISS ticket will consist of two components, which will be shown separately on the ticket. The first of these will consist of the fare, all airport user fees and any other flight-related surcharges. The second will be the SWISS Service Fee. The new approach will enable customers to distinguish clearly between the price they pay for their journey by air and the service fee they are charged for the advisory, booking and ticket-issuing services provided by SWISS.

Maybe they should charge a higher fare for business class customers? After all, they get more service!

The idea that the fee is really for the service provided in booking the ticket, as distinguished from the fare for flying, is truly silly. They charge the fee for online bookings, but not for online booking of web specials. Clearly the service is being provided in both cases but online specials are the most price sensitive so they don’t apply the add-on.

I think I’ll open an auto repair shop and advertise brake specials, plus a separate cash register fee. Oh, and a separate fee for writing the work order.. Another one for calling up customers and detailing the problems with their car that they need fixed (plus an additional surcharge if I have to explain the problem a second time to the customer’s spouse). The idea that these are separate and distinguishable services that a customer is buying is absurd.

It’s simply a fare increase by another name.

But it’s particularly galling because while the Swiss website is simple, it’s (admittedly, my personal sample size is small here) pretty darn unreliable.

Happy Holidays from United Airlines. Turn on your speakers. I have an inexplicable affection for Rhapsody in Blue.

Overstock.com is offering 10% off through Monday night.

In response to several e-mail requests, I’m going to offer up a brief summary of the free electronics offers that are out there.

Gratis Internet has six free offers that I’m aware of:

• Free Game System.
  

• 
  Free designer handbag
  

• 
  Free photo iPod.
  

• 
  Free iPod.
  

• 
  Free flatscreen TV.
  

• 
  Free desktop computer

There are several other ‘free stuff’ offers out there on the internet. Several of them are scams. They promise you computers or cameras in exchange for ‘testing’ products. In the end they all require money and I don’t personally know of anyone that has received products.

Not so with the Gratis Internet offers. I’ve personally gotten an iPod, a television, and a computer and I haven’t spent any money.

The way it works is that you sign up. Then they make several offers to you — “yes/no” type questions — turn them all down, because they don’t get you your free product. They’re just an extra chance for Gratis Internet to make money.

Then you need to complete one of their marketing offers. There are plenty of free trial offers, like 30 days of AOL or a month of eFax. Gratis Internet makes money on each new customer they send over to these companies. The key for you is to choose an offer that is free and then cancel before the end of the promotion period.

Once you’ve completed an offer you need to refer other people to complete offers. You can send the email to all your friends and family and convince them to follow the same steps you’ve gone through. Remember that they can sign up with your link and it costs them nothing — they give up nothing by using your link (as opposed to finding the website directly) and it won’t cost anything for them to do a trial offer.

Each electronics offer requires a different number of completed referrals. The game system requires four, the iPod and handbag five, the TV eight, and the computer and photoiPod ten. Each completed referral earns money for Gratis Internet.

The essence of their offer is that there’s alot of money in referral marketing. By kicking back a large percentage of the money to users in the form of free electronics, they’re able to get tons of folks to participate.

So which offer to choose?

Ideally you want something that will not cost any money and will credit to your account right away.

Infone is the best and easiest when it’s available, because the offer credits instantly and since they only charge you after five uses you don’t even ever have to call to cancel service. I’ve used the offer several times — just with a different email address and credit card each time.

An AOL Free Trial and an eFax Free Trial are both good, easy choices. The offers credit in a few days and you have a month to cancel. They’re both reputable companies, so the process works well. Neither ships a product, so they don’t ask for shipping charges. You’re still out of pocket nothing, but you get credit towards your free electronics.

You can also apply for a credit card with no annual fee, such as the GM Mastercard. I haven’t done this because the last thing I need is another card. But it should work with no problem.

One item to stay away from is the Video Professor offer. I used that one and everything worked out fine in the end. But since they never shipped the product, I couldn’t return it for a shipping credit. They promised to reverse the $6.95 shipping charge but never did. And though they gave me a cancellation number, they tried to charge me anyway. I got both charges taken off my card by my Visa company. But Video Professor isn’t worth dealing with.

Any more questions? Ask away!

In response to several e-mail requests, I’m going to offer up a brief summary of the free electronics offers that are out there.

Gratis Internet has six free offers that I’m aware of:

• Free Game System.
  

• 
  Free designer handbag
  

• 
  Free photo iPod.
  

• 
  Free iPod.
  

• 
  Free flatscreen TV.
  

• 
  Free desktop computer

There are several other ‘free stuff’ offers out there on the internet. Several of them are scams. They promise you computers or cameras in exchange for ‘testing’ products. In the end they all require money and I don’t personally know of anyone that has received products.

Not so with the Gratis Internet offers. I’ve personally gotten an iPod, a television, and a computer and I haven’t spent any money.

The way it works is that you sign up. Then they make several offers to you — “yes/no” type questions — turn them all down, because they don’t get you your free product. They’re just an extra chance for Gratis Internet to make money.

Then you need to complete one of their marketing offers. There are plenty of free trial offers, like 30 days of AOL or a month of eFax. Gratis Internet makes money on each new customer they send over to these companies. The key for you is to choose an offer that is free and then cancel before the end of the promotion period.

Once you’ve completed an offer you need to refer other people to complete offers. You can send the email to all your friends and family and convince them to follow the same steps you’ve gone through. Remember that they can sign up with your link and it costs them nothing — they give up nothing by using your link (as opposed to finding the website directly) and it won’t cost anything for them to do a trial offer.

Each electronics offer requires a different number of completed referrals. The game system requires four, the iPod and handbag five, the TV eight, and the computer and photoiPod ten. Each completed referral earns money for Gratis Internet.

The essence of their offer is that there’s alot of money in referral marketing. By kicking back a large percentage of the money to users in the form of free electronics, they’re able to get tons of folks to participate.

So which offer to choose?

Ideally you want something that will not cost any money and will credit to your account right away.

Infone is the best and easiest when it’s available, because the offer credits instantly and since they only charge you after five uses you don’t even ever have to call to cancel service. I’ve used the offer several times — just with a different email address and credit card each time.

An AOL Free Trial and an eFax Free Trial are both good, easy choices. The offers credit in a few days and you have a month to cancel. They’re both reputable companies, so the process works well. Neither ships a product, so they don’t ask for shipping charges. You’re still out of pocket nothing, but you get credit towards your free electronics.

You can also apply for a credit card with no annual fee, such as the GM Mastercard. I haven’t done this because the last thing I need is another card. But it should work with no problem.

One item to stay away from is the Video Professor offer. I used that one and everything worked out fine in the end. But since they never shipped the product, I couldn’t return it for a shipping credit. They promised to reverse the $6.95 shipping charge but never did. And though they gave me a cancellation number, they tried to charge me anyway. I got both charges taken off my card by my Visa company. But Video Professor isn’t worth dealing with.

Any more questions? Ask away!

In response to several e-mail requests, I’m going to offer up a brief summary of the free electronics offers that are out there.

Gratis Internet has six free offers that I’m aware of:

• Free Game System.
  

• 
  Free designer handbag
  

• 
  Free photo iPod.
  

• 
  Free iPod.
  

• 
  Free flatscreen TV.
  

• 
  Free desktop computer

There are several other ‘free stuff’ offers out there on the internet. Several of them are scams. They promise you computers or cameras in exchange for ‘testing’ products. In the end they all require money and I don’t personally know of anyone that has received products.

Not so with the Gratis Internet offers. I’ve personally gotten an iPod, a television, and a computer and I haven’t spent any money.

The way it works is that you sign up. Then they make several offers to you — “yes/no” type questions — turn them all down, because they don’t get you your free product. They’re just an extra chance for Gratis Internet to make money.

Then you need to complete one of their marketing offers. There are plenty of free trial offers, like 30 days of AOL or a month of eFax. Gratis Internet makes money on each new customer they send over to these companies. The key for you is to choose an offer that is free and then cancel before the end of the promotion period.

Once you’ve completed an offer you need to refer other people to complete offers. You can send the email to all your friends and family and convince them to follow the same steps you’ve gone through. Remember that they can sign up with your link and it costs them nothing — they give up nothing by using your link (as opposed to finding the website directly) and it won’t cost anything for them to do a trial offer.

Each electronics offer requires a different number of completed referrals. The game system requires four, the iPod and handbag five, the TV eight, and the computer and photoiPod ten. Each completed referral earns money for Gratis Internet.

The essence of their offer is that there’s alot of money in referral marketing. By kicking back a large percentage of the money to users in the form of free electronics, they’re able to get tons of folks to participate.

So which offer to choose?

Ideally you want something that will not cost any money and will credit to your account right away.

Infone is the best and easiest when it’s available, because the offer credits instantly and since they only charge you after five uses you don’t even ever have to call to cancel service. I’ve used the offer several times — just with a different email address and credit card each time.

An AOL Free Trial and an eFax Free Trial are both good, easy choices. The offers credit in a few days and you have a month to cancel. They’re both reputable companies, so the process works well. Neither ships a product, so they don’t ask for shipping charges. You’re still out of pocket nothing, but you get credit towards your free electronics.

You can also apply for a credit card with no annual fee, such as the GM Mastercard. I haven’t done this because the last thing I need is another card. But it should work with no problem.

One item to stay away from is the Video Professor offer. I used that one and everything worked out fine in the end. But since they never shipped the product, I couldn’t return it for a shipping credit. They promised to reverse the $6.95 shipping charge but never did. And though they gave me a cancellation number, they tried to charge me anyway. I got both charges taken off my card by my Visa company. But Video Professor isn’t worth dealing with.

Any more questions? Ask away!

The Delta Amex is offering a 20.05% bonus on purchases in January, up to 10,000 bonus miles. Registration required.

You can also earn triple miles for Delta purchases of $265 or more from February 15 to March 15, 2005. Registration required.

These bonuses are in addition to double miles on retail purchases in February and the “always double miles” offered on certain purchases.

Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.