ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LIKE!!

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Can we have a report on your beer run.

Hi thanks for the question. I must admit that I did not keep notes but off the top of my head a few aspects were:

A new favourite:
It was great to be able to try so many new beers and many from countries that I had never been to including Columbia.

I had never had any Polish or Czech beers before and I found these in the main to be quite good.

Zywiec (Polish) was a particular favourite that I bought a few repeats of. Crips and light in flavour and ina slightly larger bottle (500ml) it was a beer that my wife particularly liked and we would often share a glass from it each.

Others:

If you enjoy dark beers then the Czech Kozel is well worth a try.

Quite a cheap beer was a German Pils Beer Oettinger. This too became a favourite. In part as it was quite cheap (though more than Aussie Beers) an in part because I enjoyed it's flavour.

Another cheapie witha light flavour was from El Salvador was Cerveza Cantina.

The Scottish Schiehallion (500ml) is certainly worth a try as well.

Naturally I revisted a lot of USA beers, Bud and the like. But one new to my tastebuds was the Michelob Ultra. It was quite different, almost sweet but a nice beer none the less.

From further north came the Candian Moosehead which also went in to the buy again category.


Relived Travel

In travel many things link in the experience. Apart from sights and sounds taste and smell are central to our memories.

I know that for example that whenever I drink Russian Caravan Tea it always instantly transport me back to my Treks in Nepal and the shared laughter of sitting around joking with the porters, or Didis, while sipping hot black, but smokey flavoured tea.


For this reason it was great to reprise my travel memories by grabbing familar friends such as Chang, Singha and the like. Past good times came flooding back with each sip.

 

[laffer]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

How did AMEX decide who did and who did not get a postcard?

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

How did AMEX decide who did and who did not get a postcard?

Well according to Amex:
American Express, Bonuspoints FAQ

SECTION 1: ELIGIBILITY
Who is eligible to take part in the Promotion?
Selected Cardmembers who received an invitation in the mail are eligible to take part in the Promotion. Also eligible are those people who didn’t receive the invitation, but heard about it and enrolled prior to 20 September.

Registration is limited to one enrolment per eligible Cardmember.
Why was the offer made to some Cardmembers and not others?
This year we have made a significant effort to increase the number of businesses where American Express Cards are welcomed. The purpose of the offer was to encourage Cardmembers to spend with these businesses.

Cardmembers were selected based on:

• Where they live – in areas where we had signed the most businesses
• How often they use their Card – the offer was structured based on a Cardmembers current and likely use of their Card.

It is common practice for American Express and other organisations to target offers at specific customers.

 

[lovestotravel]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Great report

As your name was my inspiration my boni points also follows your lead

My tally all paid up and close enough to accurate is 1.3 Million points :mrgreen:

Thanks for the help via private message as well throughout this promo

Much like you all the time while shopping I just pictured myself flying in business class for free :mrgreen:

 

[Rick93]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Amex never ceases to amaze...

As some of you know, from another thread, I had a few Amex cards, but no longer.

Prior to my cards going, I wrote to Amex, to query the selection process for this promo.

I got the printed response the other day.

Amex wrote to me, saying that, the card holders who were selected for this promo were targeted, due to their geographical location, in relation to new merchants, who had recently commenced accepting Amex cards.

So, by this account, it wasn't how much you usually spend, or how little. It wasn't how you spent on your card - large transactions, or lots of smaller ones. It was 'where' you were, and where 'new' merchants were located.

It would be interesting to see a list of suburbs, where card holders DID get the invite to participate.....

( .... and of course, a big congrats on the success of all card holders who extracted every last Reward Point they were entitled to from Amex )

regards,
GORDO

 

[js]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Thanks for the detailed report lovetravellingoz. Makes for quite a yarn.

Shopping like this can certainly be dreary but it was good to see a re-cap of your highlights as well as the RTW beer sampling.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Thanks for the help via private message as well throughout this promo

It was my pleasure. Glad to read that you gaineda million too.

 

[medhead]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

I found the pudding guy info, interesting. Thanks for the links to remind myself about this bloke.

It got me thinking. His original challenge involved buying about $3000 of pudding at 25 cents a pop. If he did that under this promo that is 12000 potential transactions for 12 Million points! :shock: (ignoring the bill spliting issues). I think that tells us how generous this promo was.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

I found the pudding guy info, interesting. Thanks for the links to remind myself about this bloke.

It got me thinking. His original challenge involved buying about $3000 of pudding at 25 cents a pop. If he did that under this promo that is 12000 potential transactions for 12 Million points! :shock: (ignoring the bill spliting issues). I think that tells us how generous this promo was.

True...but also remember that he did not have to buy each of those Puddings as a seperate tx!!!!!!

He started buying them a few at a time...but ended up buying them by the pallete load.

Still his constraint was finding Puddings to buy....as well asa deadline to lodge the forms by.

Our constraints were in addition to times was having to do seperate tx....and to also ensure that each tx would be deemed "legitmate".

 

[medhead]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

True...but also remember that he did not have to buy each of those Puddings as a seperate tx!!!!!!

He started buying them a few at a time...but ended up buying them by the pallete load.

Still his constraint was finding Puddings to buy....as well asa deadline to lodge the forms by.

Our constraints were in addition to times was having to do seperate tx....and to also ensure that each tx would be deemed "legitmate".

Yeah, certainly the pudding guy didn't face the same constraints. I'm still struggling with the comparison. But I do think it gives some indication of how good this promo was.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Yeah, certainly the pudding guy didn't face the same constraints. I'm still struggling with the comparison. But I do think it gives some indication of how good this promo was.

Indeed...

Also worth noting that if Amex had not brought in their "revised" T&C that it would have been even more generous.


ie No reason why you could not have on-line whipped up say 1000 tx per day.
That would be 1 million points per day.

Say a 100 million all up. At a cent per point that would have cost Amex $million for just me

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: ALMOST THREE MILLION POINTS by a RTW BEER TASTING , READING NEWSPAPERS AND THE LI

Looks like the more recent promos are all locked up more tightly....

Though at least there are still some Point Run opportunities to be had.

Still I never expect to be fortunate enough to get another such large opportunity.....but then again one never knows as The Pudding Guy did manage to land a second opportunity to earn a second million point run.


As mentioned at the start of this thread The Pudding Guy inspired me to become a more diligent Point Runner. I have for two decades collected points and particularly as I used to be a frequent (paid) flyer and travelled a lot and erant a healthy amount per year bya combination of flying, credit cards, hotels etc...but I never really worked it though was certainly a keen collector. I am not sure what I averaged back then and it was up and down somewhat....say 80K to 200K ina good year. FlyBuys was also reasonable back then and erant me 3 Melboune to Adelaide Flights before being devalued to such an extent that it is now insignificant.


So today out of interest I have just had a quick look at my post-Pudding Guy efforts.

I read about him (and then went off and read about other promos and Point Runners) in July 2006. So a light bulb went off in my head an an addiction started. One of the things I did was to start tracking my points.

So adding it all up now I can see that since July 2006 I have earnt 3.55 Million points in about 2 years, 7 months. This with only a small earn from flights (say 50K) and less credit card spend that I used to do in past years (I in a previous career used to charge quitea lot to a work card, but now work spend is very small and so most cc spend is now from personal spend). Card spend in this period would have been under $100K per year.

So that is about 0.7 million from point running not counting the latest 2.8 million and 0.05 million from actual flying.

These days I keep my points for long haul international redemptions. Though pre-xmas I could not resist picking up two Nokia N95 phones for only 10K each ina "mistake" Citibank Rewards listing.

In that period waived CC fees have in the main been the norm. So about the only dollars I have put up was ths the $125 fee in the recent Earth Promo to gain 20K up front and temporary eran rate of 3.0. So nota bad cost-benefit ratio