Yesterday, the Sheraton Madison was offering 3,000 SPG points for “liking” them on Facebook and sharing it with your friends on your Facebook wall. This was posted on FlyerTalk and MilePoint and One Mile At At a Time and The Points Guy blogged about it too.
2,475 People Clicked The Facebook “Like” Button For The Sheraton Madison
In case you don’t use Facebook and are wondering, “liking” something on Facebook is officially defined as to “give positive feedback and connect with things you care about.“ You do this by clicking on the “like” button (the thumbs-up image) in Facebook.
The terms and conditions for this promotion indicated that the offer was valid only in June and only open to Wisconsin residents. It turns out that a few people were successful in liking the Sheraton Madison, but the deal was pulled very quickly.
On Wednesday, the Four Points in Chicago was offering 1,000 SPG points for liking them on Facebook and spamming sharing with your friends. This offer died in a few hours
And about a week before that, the Westin Charlotte was offering 1,000 SPG points for anyone who posted a travel picture on Facebook and got 50 likes. Folks on FlyerTalk uploaded pictures and included “ft” in the caption so that others could vote for their picture and everyone would get the miles!
As expected, the Westin Charlotte pulled the promotion early and Lucky complained (rightly so, in my opinion) that the Westin Charlotte was taking the low road by changing the terms of the deal.
My Dilemma
I knew about these promotions either through FlyerTalk, MilePoint or other bloggers, but I didn’t post them on Million Mile Secrets. Nor did I *gasp* participate in them myself!
I didn’t think that these promotions would last long enough to provide value to readers, because the sponsors would pull the promotion once they realized that their promotions were unknowingly lucrative to others.
If you had signed-up for the promotion, you would have had to follow-up to get your promised points (if you got them at all). Or you would have been frustrated and angry when the promotion was pulled sooner than expected.
It turns out that you would have got some points if you had got into the promo early.
What should I do?
But perhaps I should have posted about these promotions, and let you the reader, decide whether to take part or not.
Should I be verifying that each deal works before posting on the blog, or should I just be sharing information about mile and point earning opportunities – even if some of those turn out to be false? Or potentially harmful to you? And let you decide if you want to take part or not?
For example, I know of an offer to earn 100 free AAdvantage miles by signing up for daily emails from a shopping website.
But I haven’t posted about it because:
- I didn’t receive any confirmation that I would earn 100 AA miles when I signed-up
- The company is not listed as an official American Airlines partner and
- Perhaps most worryingly, the domain name for the company was registered just a few months ago.
All these little discrepancies make me suspicious of the legitimacy of the offer.
It is okay if I submitted my email address to a spammers list, but I don’t want to take a chance with your email address!
On the other hand, I could be completely wrong (I often am!) about this, and could be preventing you from earning an extra 100 American Airline miles.
So what should I do? Share every bit of information that I find? Or verify it and perform a reasonable amount of diligence before posting so that you read about only the surefire ways to have Big Travel with Small Money?
* If you liked this post, why don’t you sign-up to receive free blog posts in your email (only 1 email per day!) or in a RSS reader …because then you’ll never miss another of my dilemmas!
I have earned and redeemed millions of airline miles and hotel points to travel the world for free. Now I'm blogging to help more people do the same! 
Hi Daraius,
good question, and thanks for asking. The service you provide by sorting the good deals from the muck is what keeps me coming back to your blog. I appreciate the time you put into verifying that promotions are legitimate and worthwhile. That said, when a deal is questionable but particularly lucrative, you should consider posting and letting your readers decide for themselves.
There’s so many miles for nothing promotions going on that it’s hard to differentiate. I’ve signed up for four in the past month, including the one you’re blogging about, and I’m wondering myself how many of them will result in actual points. I tend to click through and provide whatever information is requested, and if I get the points its a nice. Maybe you could write a post about recognizing the difference between legitimate offers and red herrings?
How thoughtful of you to ask!
I really appreciate those postings, even if the offer may not work, as long as you say outright why you’re unsure or that you don’t think the deal with last. I suspect that most people that read blogs like this read a lot of them, so if it’s covered in another big one like The Points Guy or Frugal Travel Guy I might skip it. But personally I would happily sign up to be spammed for the possibility of 100 miles so please share
…after subscribing to comments for this post I got an email whose subject was “Please confirm your subscription to Sharing Potentially Dead-End Offers”
I think your readers do appreciate the work you do to verify the offers you do post. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t post the short-lived or iffy offers, but it does sometimes cause more frustration than it’s worth. I didn’t post about them for two reasons: since I am coming from the perspective of a busy parent of a mini munchkin, I don’t think many other busy parents have time to mess with some of these deals. Also just a practical reason that I usually don’t have the time and ability to get posts up with that sort of turn around during the work day. Yesterdays deal was dead within in hour or so of being widely promoted…..I think I missed it by about 5 minutes, annoying. That’s just not enough time. If you have the ability to be that quick and timely and you want to consider sharing even though it might cause some disappointment well, it’s a hard call.
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Your approach is absolutely right. Too many times in media, people rush to be the first without verifying whether there is truth behind the story. I appreciate your due diligence – but I might feel different if it was for 50,000 points rather than 1,000!
I agree with several of the posts above. With these deals they often have to be posted at the front end of the deal in order to get in on them. This paired with the fact that we (bloggers) typically have to do the deal ourselves to make sure it is legit and feasible. That is where we provide a good service (blogging) because we vet the good from the bad, and make sure it is not only worth our time, but worth the time of the readers.
By the time we actually take part in the promotion, and then blog about it, within that time frame things could have drastically changed with the terms once it catches on.
Personally, I appreciate knowing someone has already gone through the process of verifying a promotion including the ins and outs sometimes buried in the Terms and Conditions. Inevitably, promotions can bring up a lot of questions from the readers (just look at any of the FT, FW, etc. forums), and if we can include that in our posts, it becomes more valuable to the readers.
In addition, I could care less whether the promotion is for 100 or 100,000 miles/points. Every little bit helps, and I always enjoy seeing all the different and sometimes innovative ways companies use to promote their services.
@Peter – Perhaps that is the best solution! A quick description of the offer together with a note that I haven’t any personal experience with the deal.
@Kay – Thanks for the post suggestion! There is no way to be certain that an offer will result in points or miles, but there are red herrings (intended use, no strong internal control to prevent it from being misused, amateurish web design, etc.) that suggest something could go wrong.
@emily- I’m leaning towards your approach – a description together with my reservations.
Ha! How’s that for truth in advertising?!
@Mommy Points – I could be quick to post, but it would still cause frustration if you couldn’t get in or if the terms changed later. You’re right – it is a tough call!
@Steve Schwartz – Thanks! It is hard to decide where to draw the line. I’d do a lot of things for 50,000 points.
@InACents – I agree. You need to get in quick to be successful, but you also want to know if it worked for others as well!
I’ve been “burned” twice recently on credit card offers that other bloggers posted about, only to find out that I could not qualify because the offers were targeted.
In yet a 3rd case, one blogger suggested a way to get the BA 100K credit card offer *even if you had already had it before* and I tried his technique (which was to get another BA FF#). Total disaster, because BA was too smart and caught me.
So, please, don’t post unless you know it works. Or at the very least, disclaim, disclaim!
Maybe you could add a second page of posts for the unverified offers. Then we, the readers, could decide if we want to subscribe to that set of posts too. By making it known to the subscribers upfront that the “page six” offers are iffy and all about speed you could write short simple posts and not need to put the awesome thought and detail you do for your normal posts. Easier for you and reader’s choice, a win win in my book.
Either way, keep up the good work! I love the blog.
I think you did the right thing by not posting these offers and will appreciate if you continue with same practice in the future. Thanks!
I agree with Harold’s suggestion above. No need for you to spend a lot of time on these. I am personally frustrated with these “offers” myself and am tired of getting hoodwinked into participating in FB contests and then the points never materialize. This is really giving me a negative impression of Starwood at the moment.
Darius
I think you should post them.* but come up with a catchy phrase in a particular font and color that you use every time something like this comes along. Always use that heading, do a quick little blurb about it with YMMV. You really never know how long these things will last or what time each reader happens to be checking your blog when they do. I personally want to know about everyone of them, and then make the decision of whether to do it or not. I agree with the other reader that most of us are constantly checking ALL known websites with airline/hotel point related info.
ps I like it that you have outlined a lot of the more “hidden” secrets that takes us months and months of searching in order to find. Keep up the good work!
Darius
I like the information regarding points or miles earned by a simple click such as liking a hotel. I’ve been wondering how I was going to earn the additional 15ooo Points with SPG to receive the Bonus award that came with the card issuance . I don’t belong to FaceBook but would join with minimal personal information to qualify for such points. As an aside, I wonder if there is a way to earn points when making payment on my children’s overly large–out of control credit card bills? Thanks for all the helpful tips.
I’m not sure what you are worried about, Darius. Most of us have participated in enough promotions to realize and accept that any promotion may be of limited time, and may be pulled at any point by the company. I can think of several recent examples of companies retracting/expiring deals early: 1) the Chase Sapphire Preferred extra 50K points 2) Spafinder 40 miles/$ , and the examples you posted here. I doubt that any of your readers would be angry with you, rather than the company, when it’s the company that is retracting the offer.
You seem like a good man, and your readers trust your gut instincts when you filter through all the offers you encounter on FT, FW, or other travel blogs and decide what to post here. (p.s. I hope the outcry in response to the Amzn payments post didn’t cause this second-guessing regarding what you repost from other sites??)
Hi Darius,
It sounds like most folks that have commented, like to be made aware of all offers. I disagree.
One of the things I value most about you, is your experience, and your “gut intuition”. I trust your gut, on the risk/reward payoff of a deal. If you think a deal is worthy, and it passes your criteria, based on your valuable experience, I think you should share it. If not, please don’t. Don’t just share it and disclaim it. That just wastes my time.
I could waste hours slogging through FT threads, if I was looking for every potential offer. There are other blogs for that. I value you, for your ability to filter out the chaff, save me time, and just bring the good stuff.
Let other blogs be crap-o-ramas of already expired or sketchy deals. I appreciate you, because most of your posts are valuable to me, and don’t waste my time.
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@Ed - Chase has become very strict in allowing you to collect the sign-up bonus only once per card. If I do mention questionable deals, I’ll be sure to disclaim.
@Harold – I like the idea of not wasting too much time writing about the questionable deals and concentrating on other topics instead!
@Ofer – If I do write about them, I’ll be sure to keep it short and warn about the potential pitfalls!
@SH – I agree – I won’t spend too much time on them, if at all.
@worldtraveller2 – Is “Potentially Dead-End Deal” catchy enough?! I like your idea about keeping it short and simple.
@david – You can’t earn points for making payments on a credit card. But you could add your children to your new credit cards as additional users, so all their charges would appear on your credit card and you would earn the points. Depending on how much they charge, this could be a VERY expensive way to earn points!
@Jade – You can be rest assured that the Amazon Payments discussion, will NOT cause me to censor my postings. I’ll mention all lucrative mile and point earning opportunities on the blog. The issue for me is whether I want to waste reader’s time with deals which may not work.
@Chris - I appreciate your candor! If I do post about potential dead-end deals, I’ll try to keep it short and mention it upfront so you don’t have to wade through it if you don’t want to.
I think you should only share the best and most lucrative offers which mostly have to do with credit card applications and minimum spending techniques. I am personally dredding getting spammed by AA for getting my email “appraised” and now I wish I had given AA a fake email address. I think my time would be better utilized waiting for the next big 75K/150AA score instead of getting 3K or 100 miles or 1000 SPG points as described on Lucky’s blog. I also unliked the hotels after I realized that they were not giving me any points. BTW one thing I found on Lucky’s blog is super good award inventory on AA from a BOS CDG routing on AA metal throughout the summer. Makes sense to connect in BOS as a final North American Gateway if one wants to get to Europe.
@mike - Thanks for sharing! We should have set up separate email accounts for this type of promotion, though I just let mine go to a separate folder. Thanks for the tip on the BOS – CDG availability!