Now this is a great bonus offer.

Sure, for large dollar orders the US Airways holiday shopping promo (which makes the standard 20 miles per dollar from FTD 70 miles) is better. But then you have to use one of your 10 possible transactions under that promo.

For smaller orders, this United offer reigns supreme. A $30 order from FTD will earn 2400 miles. Worth it for the miles alone? Maybe not, since you have to pay delivery fees. But a darn bit better than buying miles directly from United, that’s for sure. Find the cheapest item on their website and order away.

Or just be sure to use this link for all of your holiday gift giving if you can get away with it.

I’ve explained previously how to use the US Airways holiday shopping promotion to buy miles at about 7/10ths of a cent (or less..) per mile, for instance here.

There’s no doubt been an uptick in purchase transactions over at TrackItBack as a result of all this. What do they think about the whole thing? They love it!

Their President writes to me, “[T]he main reason that people are making such transactions is to secure Dividend Miles. This is great and we’re pleased that we can provide them a conduit to do so.”

We’re pretty pleased as well, so thank you TrackItBack!

Priority Club is offering 500 points and a second night free at a new property in Shanghai for answering a few quick questions about what’s important to you in a hotel and how often you have traveled/will travel to Shanghai.

Terms and Conditions say the second night free is valid only for the first 500 respondents, but otherwise don’t seem to limit the offer in any way. They don’t say the survey is targeted, just that the offer expires December 31. And while these sorts of things are always “your mileage may vary,” I’ve found the Priority Club surveys in the past to be pretty good about posting points (after 6 to 8 weeks).

The deal was on the way anyway, in all likelihood, but certainly Wall Street journal coverage has to be the nail in the coffin.

There are plenty of reports that purchases of coins from the US mint no longer earn miles, at least via those credit cards where I’ve seen reports.

The Los Angeles Times covers the end of the deal.

Here’s their summary of the opportunity, which is pretty much accurate:

The trouble began in June 2008 when the U.S. Mint launched a “direct ship” program to sell dollar coins directly to the general public in hopes of increasing the use of the coins, which last longer than paper currency. Under the program, individuals could buy a maximum of 500 of each of five presidential dollar coins issued by the mint (Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson). But the mint set no limit on purchases of a sixth coin, which bears an image of Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition. The mint allowed people to buy the coins with credit cards and offered free shipping in the continental U.S.

Several savvy frequent fliers got the idea to buy the coins with credit cards to accumulate reward points and then pay off the credit card balance after depositing the coins at a bank. (Some banks charge to count coins; others offer the service free.)

Word spread about the scheme on Internet blogs, such as Flyertalk.com. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story last week, quoted a frequent flier who identified himself as Mr. Pickles and claimed he bought $800,000 in coins with his credit cards to jack up his rewards point total. He told the Journal that he pulled off the scheme by using several banks and numerous credit cards.

The mint took an interim step, as I’ve written about here in the past, of confronting those who they thought were ‘abusing’ the offer:

Since the program began, the mint recorded about 40,000 “direct ship” coin orders. Jurkowsky said the mint believes fewer than 1% of those orders may have been made to generate airline miles.

In the letter sent to the biggest coin buyers, the mint asked the cardholders to explain their unusually large purchases.

Jurkowsky said some of the people who responded to the letters had legitimate explanations, such as owners of coin-operated laundromats who need the coins to operate the washers and dryers.

But so far about 20 people who couldn’t explain the need for so many coins have been barred from ordering more coins, he said.

Unquestionably there were more than 400 orders placed for the purpose of earning miles. The mint’s “fewer than 1%” claim is clearly false, if their report of the number of total coin orders placed is true.

Finally,

The mint is now making a permanent fix to the problem, Jurkowsky said. In the future, credit card purchases will be recorded as cash advances rather than credit card purchases. Credit cards typically do not give reward points for cash advances.

But their analysis of who ‘paid’ for the deal is completely off the mark:

Industry insiders say the real losers in such schemes are not the airlines but the banks that buy the rewards points from the airlines and offer the rewards to cardholders to encourage them to spend on their cards.

Wrong.

Airlines got paid by the banks for the miles.

Banks got paid by the US government for the credit card merchant fees.

The airlines and banks were absolutely no worse off for these purchases than for any other.

The cost of the deal was borne by the Treasury (credit card merchant processing fees) and Mint (for the free shipping).

On the other hand, of course, the cost to manufacture a $1 coin plus shipping and merchant fees is less than $1. So we can all have arguments over whether the govenrment is actually worse off. But unquestionably the article is wrong to say the banks were made worse off through this deal.

I’m a liar.  I tell customer service agents the same lie, every time I call to make an award booking.  But I do it for their benefit, to make them feel at ease.  What’s more it saves them time, which I imagine helps their performance ratings.  So I feel like I’m doing it for a good reason.  But I’m still a liar.

Here’s what I’m talking about: before I ever call an airline to try to book an award, I do my research.  I figure out what exact award seats should be available, I find the seats and precise routing that I want.  And then I call to ask for those seats.

But that makes agents a bit uncomfortable, for one of several reasons.

(1) You know more infomration than they do.  It’s their job, it’s what they do all day, it’s unsettling to have a customer telling them how to do their business.

(2) They’re afraid you’re asking them to do something wrong.  What you want may not be readily apparent on their screen.  Some agents believe they’re only supposed to enter an origin and destination city and book what the computer offers them.  The computers, though, aren’t very good (or tather their programming usually isn’t) and plenty of available options won’t come up on their own.  You need to get the agent to work segment-by-segment, and feel comfortable doing so.

(3) It’s too complicated, or they are skeptical.  How could you possibly know what’s available?  It’s not worth explaining that you used the All Nippon Airways website to find Star Alliance seats, that you used the Qantas (or BA or…) website to find oneworld seats.  The agents may respond, “Well that doesn’t mean the seats are available, each airline gives different award seats to different programs.”  Which — in 95% of cases — just isn’t true.

So what do I tell them?  I explain that “I was on the phone a little bit earlier and an agent did some great work for me, she found some seats with award availability.  I do have the specific flights that worked, I just didn’t reserve them yet because I needed to check with my wife/neighbor/dog first.”

There you have it.  A little lie.  I checked availability myself, but I tell them the information I have came from one of their colleagues.  They can beleive it, and they can believe it’s ok for them to search for the same seats.  After all, they have social proof.

Makes the calls go a bit more smoothly. But I do feel a little dirty.

A little birdie tells me that the 100,000 mile offer for a new British Airways Visa will end today.

It’s an incredible promo, which I’ve described how to leverage (family accounts, two cards and $32k in spend, will get you 480,000 miles worth of travel.)

But if you’ve been on the fence, ACT NOW before the offer disappears.

Now, I’m hoping that the link stays around for awhile. Sometimes even after offers ‘expire’ they still ‘work’. But if you’ve even considered getting the card you really should act today, though I hope my source turns out to be wrong (though there’s no reason why he should be).

Update:: Most of the links are dead. This application still shows the bonus (thanks, Flyertalk!). If you apply, be sure to print out the page showing the bonus in case you have to followup to get the points.

As a followup to my last post on the shopping promo where you can buy miles for $0.007 apiece, I thought I’d update my miles posting progress.

Gaiam, a Dividend Miles Mall member not separately listed on the promo page, posted for me this morning and was listed as “SHOPPING MALL, GAIAM”

My Bose purchase posted as “SHOPPING MALL, BOSE” — although I’m a little bit concerned that this won’t count towards the promo (95% that it will, but I’m paranoid) because the promo page highlights only “1,500 bonus miles when you buy the new QC15 headphones” rather than all miles counting towards the promo. Still, since all shopping partners count, this should as well. Later in the promo I may make some extra purchases just in case.

My Sears $5 gift card (free shipping) posted as well, simply as “DIVIDEND MILES SHOPPING MALL” rather than as Sears. Again, I’m going to be watching how other partners post — if another merchant posts as Dividend Miles Mall rather than by name, my fear is that the US Airways computers don’t treat them as unique merchants. Sure, I can fight for it and presumably win, but I’d rather make sure everything works smoothly on their own. So long after Track-It-Back miles have posted, but before the end of the promo period, I’ll make some extra purchases from other merchants just in case.

These three partners posted overnight last night with the dates I made the original purchases.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting on the points for my Restaurant.com gift certificate purchased via ThanksAgain and the points for my Omaha Steaks $5 gift certificate as well.

Promo code SHARE currently takes 80% off Restaurant.com gift certificates, making the $25 dining certificates that ‘normally’ (well, full price, but there’s always a discount code) cost $10 only $2. You can purchase Restaurant.com gift certificates via ThanksAgain (which you’ll click on via the holiday shopping promo page, of course) to chalk up a merchant towards the 250% bonus level. So another cheap merchant.

One idea being discused in the Flyertalk thread on the bonus is donating your TrackItBack purchases to a non-profit in order to take a tax deduction. As long as you’re itemizing your deductions, and depending on your marginal tax rate, if you can make it work that should reduce your cost basis to about half a penny a mile.

One Mile at a Time notes that the partnership between Delta and Singapore Airlines will end May 15.

It’s been likely for awhile that this would go away. It dates back to Singpaore taking a 5% stake in Delta in 1989, divested ten years later. But the partnership continued for a decade past that. And in practice what it meant was the ability to redeem Delta miles on Singapore (and vice versa, but what Kris Flyer members would have wanted to?).

Singpaore Airlines awards were the one great redemption option available with Delta Skymiles. It was the only true first class redemption available, and a good one at that. A couple of years back Delta started collecting hefty fuel surcharges on the awards, but that didn’t bother me — the ability to use Skymiles for Singapore first class was much better than any alternative use of the miles. And for some reason I’ve never entirely understood, Delta seemed to have access to more inventory than other Singapore partners. While premium class award inventory for Star Alliance partners has pretty much dried up departing the US on Singapore, Delta has still been able to secure seats.

Folks still have five months to make this special use of their Delta miles. Act fast..

Several weeks ago I stayed at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, a grand old property that I gave somewhat mixed reviews to.

I had a nice suite upgrade, and the room had one of my all-time favorite bathrooms as a result of one of my absolute favorite showers ever (large shower room with three separate shower heads — two on opposite walls and one overhead).

There were some real service failures and slips, though, and I concluded at the time that the hotel was much much better at service recovery than actual service. The valet dinged my car door, my room didn’t do much to keep out the noise from my neighbors above, and service in the restaurant was slow — in fact twice we were forgotten for 30 minutes at a time during the same meal.

Everyone was tremendously apologetic and friendly. And that was the end of my review.

I got a call from the Assistant General Manager of the hotel the day after I checked out. It came out of the blue and really surprised me. My blog review of the property had been forwarded to her, and she was reaching out. She asked me questions about the stay, was very concerned about everything that happened, and insisted that I give the hotel another try.

First off, the hotel sent me a check to reimburse the cost to fix the ding in my door (it wasn’t major: $175 took care of it). Second, my visit to the hotel had been a one-night stay. The Assistant GM sent me a letter offering me a complimentary future one-night stay and complimentary dinner.

She couldn’t have been nicer, more genuinely concerned, and she followed up. So for now I still have to say better at service recovery than anything else — but serious A+ marks in service recovery. And I will indeed take them up on the free night at some point and report back on how my next stay goes.

The US Airways Dividend Miles holiday shopping promotion (discussed here and here) is amazing.

It’s one of the best shopping promos I have ever seen. It offers the opportunity to buy miles at 7/10ths of a penny apiece using purchases from TrackItBack (which normally gives 40 miles per dollar but if you reach the 250% bonus level it earns 140 miles per dollar).

There have been some concerns, though, about whether you really earn 250% as bonus miles on top of the regular miles earned for shopping, for your first ten shopping transactions as long as you have transactions with five different merchants. There have been concerns about whether all of the merchants in the US Airways Dividend Miles mall count as separate partners for qualifying towards the 250% bonus or not. Essentially, the promotion seems too good to be true and some people don’t trust US Airways to honor what would seem to be on offer.

I’m all-in on this one, it’s seemed pretty clear to me from the start. But I’m even more confident now than before.

Someone whom I much trust reached out to US Airways (real folks at the mileage program, not the phone reps) to get clarification. And they gave me permission to relay what they learned:

For every different partner that Dividend Miles members shop that are listed on the promotion landing page (usairways.com/bigbonus) during the promotion period (11/23 – 12/30), members will be eligible for a bonus. The bonus is calculated on the number of DIFFERENT partners they shop with, up to 250% bonus on what the partner lists as their mileage offer.

For example: If you were to shop just at Bose during the promotion period, your bonus would be 50% more of their 1,500 offer, so 2,250 total miles. If you were shop at Bose, FTD and Macy’s, you be eligible for a 150% bonus on their offers.

To ensure that we have all mileage postings from our partners, we will run the process to post all bonus miles due to our members on March 1, 2010. What ever level of bonus that is due to members will be applied to the FIRST 10 transactions (If you shopped at iTunes 3 times, that counts as 3 transactions), based on the partner’s mileage posting timestamp, of transactions that occurred during the promotion period.

Also, each Dividend Miles Shopping Mall merchant WILL count as a different transaction, and are eligible for increasing a bonus level.

Basically, they learned this promotion will work exactly as it says it will work!

Make (4) partner transactions and TrackItBack and then you have 5 partner transactions. You’ll earn a 250% mileage bonus on top of the miles you normally earn from those merchants. Bingo. Time to go wild on this one, folks!

Brussels Airlines officially joined Star Alliance today.

Why care?

New to the network are more connections from Brussels Airport, which has now become a Star Alliance hub. These include four destinations in Africa which are currently not being served by other Star Alliance member carrier: Bujumbura, Burundi; Conakry, Guinea; Kigali, Ruanda and Monrovia, Liberia.

In fact, I’ve already used them to make an award booking (through my premium service): two passengers in business class from the U.S. to Kigali, Rwanda, Continental from Newark to Brussels and on to Kigali on Brussels Airlines. Their return flight from Kigali makes a one-hour stop in Entebbe.

Expert Flyer users, note that their award search tool is wrong as of today — if you use Expert Flyer to search award inventory, it will pull up “Z” class which used to be award business. Now that they’ve joined Star Alliance they have standardized their business class awards to come from the “I” bucket as with all other Star carriers.

You can still use Expert Flyer to search Brussels Airlines awards, you just have to specify the fare bucket as I for business class rather than checking the business class award box.

(Note that Brussels Airlines award inventory does not, at this point, show up on the All Nippon Airways website or the Continental website.)

Gotta love more options!!

Update: as noted in the comments, Brussels Airlines award availability is now showing up on the All Nippon Airways award search site (and thus also using the KVS Tool).

Update2: In the comments Expert Flyer notes that they’ve gone ahead and corrected the award classes for Brussels Airlines.  And indeed, I should have managed to reach out to them to let them know, rather than just writing about this on the blog.  Sorry, guys!

The holiday season sometimes brings so much joy that all my hopes, at least for award booking, seem possible. And with a New Year, there’s an unwritten future. So I dare to dream. And I’ll share with you, my dear readers, the content of my five wishes as we close out 2009 and usher in 2010.

1. An end to United Starnet Blocking

I genuinely believe that United Mileage Plus offers the best top-tier elite level. But their award redemption is truly sub-par. They block award seats that their partners are making available, something that no other Star Alliance airline does. Their award chart isn’t cheap relative to the competition, in many cases it is more expensive than say the US Airways chart or the Air Canada chart. Both of those airlines let you book any seat that Star Alliance partner airlines are making available. Same is true for Continental, whose award chart is competitive with United’s (and Continental makes many of their Star partners bookable online!). And All Nippon Airways and Asiana both have interesting award charts for shorter distances.

United could have a truly great frequent flyer redemption program. Instead they offer a dishonest program, where agents tell customers that their partners just aren’t making seats available, aren’t making them available to United, or aren’t operating a given flight on a particular day — to such absurd ends, I’ve been told “Thai Airways doesn’t fly to Bangkok that day” and “Lufthansa doesn’t fly to Frankfurt.”

My dream is that United would behave just like every other Star Alliance airline, letting members book the award seats that Star Alliance partners offer.

Now, Star blocking comes and goes — United manages blocking to prevent spending too much money on partner awards, and depending on how their projections are going they loosen and tighten blocking accordingly. So there are times when awards are bookable, and times when they’re not. I just wish I knew when calling United what I could book. If they’d make the inventory they’re letting members book be searchable online (and some Star carriers like ANA, Air Canada, and Continental do make partner awards bookable online to various extents) I could deal with blocking because I could search for the flights that United will book and phone calls would be much shorter and less frustrating. But I know this is not an IT priority for United.

I’ll just hold out hope that the blocking practice isn’t sustainable. It’s my number one wish for the holidays and New Year.

(For more discussion of Starnet blocking see here, here, here, and here, and for a long-shot hope of United being boxed into dropping blocking, here.)

2. That American and British Airways miles could be used for each others’ transatlantic flights between the US and London.

Oneworld isn’t nearly as big as Star Alliance, and there aren’t as many options for international partner award redemption. The two biggest transatlantic carriers, American and British Airways, won’t let you book each others’ flights with their miles. Ostensibly this began as a sop to anti-trust concerns, that they couldn’t codeshare to Heathrow because of concerns about monopolizing the Heathrow market. It’s never been clear that award redemption restrictions had anything to do with this concern, and the airlines have simply left it in place for years and haven’t meaningfully worked to change it.

British Airways offers pretty good award inventory from the US to Europe in premium classes, but I can’t use my American miles to redeem for it. There’s the workaround of flying from Canada or the Carribean to London, but that adds extra flying. My wish is for this restriction on award redemption to finally come to an end.

3. That Delta would bring back award holds.

Delta miles are hard enough to use as it is. Their award inventory is tight. Their website is broken for award redemption, the web prices available seats at higher prices than inventory requires. Sure there’s the workaround of the old Northwest website, that still works for the most part, but it will go away soon.

Delta won’t let you hold awards when you call reservations anymore, but the website isn’t viable and it’s so tough to construct awards that sometimes it takes more than a single call to get it right. The technology and inventory make premium class international award bookings so hard, that Delta could go far to make it a little less stressful by simply returning the ability to put an award on hold. You make some progress on the phone, and then return to keep working on it later. That’s a pain to customers as it is, but it at least helps the process along — a process that Delta impedes in the first place.

4. That US Airways, Continental, and Air Canada don’t change a thing.

Sometimes you feel like things are just too good. At least I do. And paranoid that I am, I figure when that’s the case it cannot possibly last. Right now US Airways, Continental, and Air Canada are almost too generous with award bookings.

Air Canada more than all the others. They offer a great award chart, 80,000 miles for business class to much of Europe and 100,000 for first (some destinations are higher). It’s 120,000 miles for first class from the US to South Asia, as far South as Singapore (Malaysia and Indonesia are higher). So their awards in most cases are cheap.

What’s more, they don’t block partner awards.

And their award routing rules are incredibly generous. While limiting you to 10 segments on an award (perfectly generous), they permit you to transit either the Atlantic or the Pacific on an award redemption to Asia, or cross one ocean in each direction. In other words, you can book a ’round-the-world’ trip for a basic award redemption. And rather than offering only a single stopover or open jaw a la US Airways or United, they offer two stopovers or a stopover and an open jaw.

Air Canada Aeroplan’s rules are just too good. And they’re an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner, points post instantly. So you can ring Aeroplan, have them set up your award, and while they wait on the phone you can go online and transfer points into Aeroplan from American Express — isntantly. I just hope this value lasts awhile.

Continental has historically been a holiday scrooge for award redemption, inventory on their own flights was difficult to obtain. And they were a member of Skyteam, the least generous alliance for premium class international award redemption.

But then they joined Star Alliance. They introduced a competitive award chart. With no Starnet blocking. They made many of their partners bookable online. And I’ve found their agents very easy to work with on the phone, generally helpful, and not to persnickety about routings (though they don’t officially allow routing to Asia via the Atlantic – yet – many folks have had success doing so as long as they don’t add a second destination in Asia with an intra-Asia segment). They’re also an Amex transfer partner with points posting instantly, and they’ll put awards on a 24 hour hold without points in the account.

Finally, US Airways will be a surprise member of this list for many. But they offer Star Alliance award redemption without blocking, they very rarely enforce any sort of routing rules (if someone tries, just hang up and call back). They even waive their telephone booking fee on Star Alliance awards, because those can’t be booked on the US Airways website. They’ll put awards on a 3-day hold without points in the account, and their miles are so easy to get — for example, the current 100% bonus on purchased miles and the 250% holiday shopping bonus. I had great fears that all of their printing of cheap miles, combined with planned changes to the award chart for flights on their own metal, would lead to changes in Star Alliance awards ending the party. But they’ve announced their award chart changes and they really aren’t so bad. So we hold onto the US Airways redemption values for awhile.

5. Alaska Airlines mixed partner awards.

Alaska offers an interesting, valuable program — even for folks not living in Seattle or Alaska. They partner with Delta and they partner with American (as well many Skyteam members and oneworld members). Basically they partner with anyone outside of United and Star. So if you’re not a regular American or Delta flyer, you can credit your travels on both carriers to one frequent flyer account — Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. And you can redeem on much of oneworld and Skyteam.

The one drawback is that you can’t mix partners. You can’t fly Seattle to Dallas on American to pick up a British Airways award flight from Dallas. You can’t fly Delta from Atlanta to Los Angeles to pick up a Korean flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Mixing and matching of partners would be a huge boon to award redemption, and reportedly something that Alaska is “working on.” I have no knowledge of likelihood or timetable, but it makes my list of hopes and dreams for the New Year.

Those are the big improvements in frequent flyer programs I’d like to see, all relatively minor changes that would make programs much more valuable. I think they’re all within the world of the possible. What are your similarly-constrainted wishes?

Lucky points to Burger King’s new promo where they will send a $1 card to someone for $1.

The card lets them know you almost care.

The true brilliance in the offer is keeping the dollar value so low as to make it not at all worthwhile to churn. Sadly it’s no replacement for dollar coins, Amex travelers checks, savings bonds, or prepaid debit cards.

As Lucky says,

you might be limited to 99 cards and might have to enter your address each time, but if you don’t value your time and are looking for all of 99 miles, this is the deal for you.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the Outlets to Go power strip.

I hate that hotels, older hotels in particular, never seem to have enough power outlets. And the ones they do have are completely taken up by the lamps by the bedside. Or the lamp on the desk taking up the only outlet there. And between my laptop, cell phone, iPod, and wireless router I do have power needs. I’ve even considered carrying power strips along with me when I travel, but never did. …

This item is small enough for travel, though, and designed for compactness. The power cord wraps right around the small power strip and plugs into itself. The outlets are well spaced so that they’re all usable, and it has a USB plug-in as well.

The only complaint everyone seems to have about this device is the bright blue indicator light showing the device is on. Yes, it’s too bright, but really didn’t bother me a bit.

From the comments, the product seemed to resonate with several of you as well — some folks have their own preferred solution, but the need for a product to conveniently make more outlets available, in a hotel room or at an airport, is pretty universal.

Well, Monster (the company that makes the Outlets to Go product) saw my review and liked it, and they’ve offered to give three away to my readers. (This may not be as exciting as the $300 Marriott gift card that Lucky recently gave away, but the product is useful and for three of you, free.)

We’ll run this contest until noon eastern time on Wednesday, December 16th. You can enter simply by replying in the comments to this post. Of course you need to include a valid email address in your profile when replying so that Monster can contact you for your shipping address.

I’ll use an online random number generator to select the 3 numbers that correspond to comment numbers in the post, and those will be the winners.  You can post as often as you like in the comments to this thread, and each comment represents a unique entry. Good luck!

In addition to the systemwide upgrade announcement, Continental also came out with the news that they’re introducing a new top tier status above Platinum, Presidential Platinum.

They’ll have upgrade priority above platinums, clear their upgrades 144 hours before departure, and their reciprocal upgrade benefits on United will have them prioritized above United Premier Executives (but behind United 1Ks).

Presidential Platinum members will receive a fee waiver for the Presidential Plus Mastercard that comes with lounge membership and additional bonus miles for flying. (Members outside the lower 48 and Alaska aren’t eligible, so they get 25,000 bonus miles.)

Qualification is revenue-based, and the criteria is currently $30,000 in spend in a calendar year.

Furthermore, Continental announced a new lifetime status benefit — 4 million flown miles nets lifetime Presidential Platinum status.

CO Insider posted the news on Flyertalk.

United’s 100,000 mile flyers earn six systemwide upgrades, upgrades which can confirm an international upgrade at booking (or whenever the seats become avilable) from most fares. (United 1K flyers also get 8 confirmed domestic upgrades per year.)

American’s top tier flyers get 8 international upgrades per year valid on any fare.

Continental is a bit stingier — 4 confirmed upgrades per year valid intenrationally (as well as domestically) and good on any fare without co-pay. So while fewer instruments than United, there’s no fare requirement (perhaps a sign that United might do away with the minimum fare rules on their systemwides?).

Each systemwide upgrade on Continental will be valid one-way on Continental metal (including Continental Micronesia and Copa). They’re transferrable, and are confirmed out of R inventory (F inventory on Copa). Finally, once credited to your account the systemwides will expire at the end of the following Elite year. So upgrades earned in 2010 will expire in February 2012.

According to Dan’s Deals, anyway. Not checking this one out myself, I’m not a “Geryhound’s Upscale Subsidiary” Kinda Guy.

Use promo code: GETAWAY

-Free ticket promo valid for travel between 01/06-03/20.

The cheapest Megabus tickets are for midweek travel bought a few weeks in advance.

Here are details from the press release I received earlier today by email:

Megabus.com, the first city-to-city express bus service offering fares as low as $1, today joined NYC & Company, the City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization, to announce that it is offering 100,000 free seats for travel between January 6 and March 20, 2010. Customers can begin booking today.

Forty thousand of the 100,000 seats are designated for travel to New York, the nation’s largest city. The remaining seats are reserved for travel on megabus.com’s other routes serving the Northeast and Midwest. Travelers can book their free seats with the promo code “GETAWAY.”

According to Upgrade:Travel Better, promo code 9702533697 will take 5% off of bookings at Continental.com.

At the bottom of the Scott McCartney piece I linked to below, there’s an interesting add-on: Hyatt is fully aware of, and supports, the practice of booking hotel rooms just for the purpose of accumulating Faster Free Nights credits.

Hyatt Hotels Corp. currently offers its Gold Passport program members a free night for every two nights at one of the chain’s properties through Jan. 31. The free nights come with no blackout dates but have to be used by March 31. Charles Witt, a facilities planner in Washington, D.C., stopped by a suburban Hyatt Place hotel on his way home from work several times this fall, swiped his credit card to buy a $50 room and went home, never opening the door to the hotel room.

For every $100 he spent, he got a free night at any Hyatt. He booked three free nights at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo over New Year’s — rooms that would have cost him $600 a night.

“Once you start on this road, it’s very hard to get off,” says Mr. Witt.

Hyatt says the promotion is meant to engender loyalty, and most customers use it more traditionally, collecting free nights for regular stays. But the company welcomes people so passionate about its hotels that they’ll go to elaborate lengths to stay at Hyatt.

“We don’t discourage that,” says Jeff Zidell, vice president of Hyatt’s Gold Passport program. “There are those extremists in whatever business you’re in who do what they can to get the most out of it.”

I love it, and Hyatt really gets it: the company welcomes people so passionate about its hotels that they’ll go to elaborate lengths to stay at Hyatt.

Scott McCartney covers Presidential Dollar Coins.

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

I’ve covered details on buying coins from the US Mint for loads of miles, such as here, here, and here.

Flyertalk’s MrPickles certainly deserves his 15 minutes in the Journal.

The coin program was a popular play on FlyerTalk.com, an online community where frequent travelers and mileage mavens share travel tips and profitable mileage plays. One FlyerTalker, identified by his online moniker, Mr. Pickles, claims to have bought $800,000 in coins. He posted pictures of the loot on FlyerTalk.

He says his largest single deposit was $70,000 in $1 coins. He used several banks and numerous credit cards. He earned enough miles to put him over two million total at AMR Corp.’s American Airlines, giving him lifetime platinum-elite status — early availability of upgrades for life and other perks on American and its partners around the world. He also pumped miles into his account at UAL Corp.’s United Airlines and points into his Starwood Preferred Guest program account.

A spokesman for the Mint says it has no record of anyone purchasing that many coins, but orders could have been shipped to different names and addresses.

Frugal Travel Guy this morning says about this story, “I don’t think this will help us in the future, but then again, it is the US Government.”

The US Mint deal has hardly been a secret, much dicussed on Flyertalk (the main thread in the MilesBuzz forum has over half a million views) and Fatwallet, and the Mint has sent letters indicating they’re well aware of the practice. But media scrutiny brings a bit of unwanted attention. The best of the deal is no doubt in the past.

Of course there will be more in the future. Savings bonds, prepaid debit cards, there will be new opportunities to turn credit card spend into cash for the miles just as there have been in the past…

(HT: Tonia)