The 10 Miles & Points Deals of the Decade

Hi Rick. Great post as always! Wow your closing paragraphs really got me thinking about possible avenues of MS. Ugh it frustrates me that similar possibilities probably do exist right now that rival these deals. I just don’t know about them..

like okay the new methods are all probably online since we don’t see all the bloggers spending all their time at Walmart doing MO’s. So my best guess is these avenues probably have nothing to do with the travel industry, but are a part of other sectors that people wouldn’t think would be ripe for MS. I also have a feeling it does involve a fee but the scale and ease is so good that the fee is worth it. Plastiq comes to mind. Am I getting colder or hotter? Haha

You did mention a shopping portal that didn’t refund the rewards when you returned an item, I’m thinking it might have to do with the timing of the return ie. credit card purchase protection outlasts or return policy outlast how long the portal tracks the item for a return. I’ve got to be getting closer..

Aloha!
Todd

A more recent deal to highlight: Iberia promotion in 2018 where you could book any flight and earn 10k Avios. People ended up booking flights between MAD-PMI for ~$15 USD each. Enjoyed a MEX-MAD return flight in Bus class for super cheap.

How about the Mexican Hat Dance?

Thanks Ricky. Making us miss the good old days… I did not know there was a green card in Canada!

You forgot two significant deals:

1) Garuda Indonesia’s 90% discount for award tickets.
You could book GA’s Jakarta-London/Amsterdam first class flights for 19000 miles one-way.
GA’s first class soft product is the best in the world, so this was an insane way of experiencing it.
Shoe service anyone?

2) GOL Smiles’ mileage sale currency conversion error.
This is not a well-known one, but Brazil’s GOL Smiles program had a currency conversion error for the miles they were selling. (GOL Smiles’ is like Lifemiles where you buy miles and use them for award flights.)
Basically you could buy 1 mile for 0.001 USD or less, which meant you could fly international first class products like Etihad’s First Class Apartments on the AUH-SYD route for just a couple of hundred dollars.
I kicked myself for not buying literally millions of miles when this happened.