Wheaties bookmarks for March 8th through March 15th
Good reading for March 8th through March 15th:
- Getting Out of a 2-Year Cellphone Contract Alive - New York Times - There’s some good advice here, but I don’t recommend cellswapper — they’ve been spamming some of the sites I frequent for weeks now, and I don’t give business to people like that. The Consumerist and GetHuman sections are particularly good.
- Electric Orange Account Information Page - ING Direct’s checking accounts are now available to everyone.
- Paperless checking: new to online banking - Bankrate’s interesting review of ING Direct’s new online checking account. This is definitely worth watching.
- Some banks cancel complex card billing - Yahoo! News - The credit card industry is facing questions from Congress in the U.S. Here’s an article about some of the short-term effects. I wonder what the long-term will look like — is this a real change or just a tactic to fend off building criticism?
- Best Airlines For Actually Booking And Using Reward Points - Consumerist - This is a helpful review of which airlines’ frequent flier programs actually create usable flight bonuses for you. Bummer that Southwest and JetBlue aren’t included.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Not much use for you American residents but Air New Zealand has the easiest to redeem points. Instead of points you earn dollars and these can be used on any flight and any seat.
March 16th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Regarding your comment that you’re bummed that Southwest and JetBlue weren’t included in Consumerist’s list… if you put away $25 for each one-way trip you flew on SW or JB (which is a fraction of what you saved by flying either of those airlines), you’d have enough money for a trip in no time. You have to ask yourself: Is it REALLY worth all the extra hassle to fly USAir or Northwest every week or every month, just to earn the hassle of flying with them AGAIN, but for free?
March 16th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Ron, I agree. I think the value of all of these programs is pretty much notional, anyways. They essentially serve to track your usage of an airline and to allow the airline to give you spiffs if and when they want to. I’m mostly fine with that, as long as I keep my expectation that these are occasional and mostly random perks, not money in the bank.