IHG REWARDS BLOGGER FOR BEING HONEST: Check out the latest post from Miles For Family. It’s kind of long story, and it may help you to read the earlier post that sets up this whole thing, but here’s the bottom line:
I called and explained to the agent what happened. She put me on hold to talk to a supervisor and told me they would let me keep 200,000 extra points as a courtesy. I value that amount at 1,000 dollars. Thank you, IHG, you are the best! So now I have a boatload of IHG points and made an amazing redemption with my Choice points as well. Oh, and I didn’t have to compromise my ethics, which is another plus!
Kudos all around on this one!
EVERY BOOK ABOUT AFRICA HAS THE SAME DAMN PICTURE: Courtesy of Quartz:
Last week, Africa Is a Country, a blog that documents and skewers Western misconceptions of Africa, ran a fascinating story about book design. It posted a collage of 36 covers of books that were either set in Africa or written by African writers. The texts of the books were as diverse as the geography they covered: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique. They were written in wildly divergent styles, by writers that included several Nobel Prize winners. Yet all of books’ covers featured an acacia tree, an orange sunset over the veld, or both.
“In short,” the post said, “the covers of most novels ‘about Africa’ seem to have been designed by someone whose principal idea of the continent comes from The Lion King.”
ANOTHER COOL PIC FROM QUARTZ: Thanks to TBB for alerting me to this one, which shows the relationship between airline competition and fare prices. I’m sure the story is more complicated than the graph suggests, but there’s certainly something to this.
WHY CHOOSE A HOTEL *OR* A PLANE?: This hotel in the Costa Rican jungle may be of interest to a few of you…
TINY HOUSE UPDATE: A couple built this tiny house for $33,000–not bad!
What about rewards generated from ineligible purchases? 😉
I’m sure the trend in that airfare graph is right, but I’m suspicious of the numbers. 14 airlines flying one domestic route? Seems extremely unlikely to me.
Nick, thanks for linking! I like how you started out: It’s kind of a long story. 🙂 I’m afraid, IHG exec will see it, and all the publicity will result in me losing the points. Better burn them all. I feel kind of weird though, almost as if I was showcasing my honesty. Anyway, thanks again for your support!
Are there even 14 airlines left?
Exactly my point. Even international routes with 14 carriers seems unlikely to me (I’m not sure I could even name 14 carriers), but domestic seems impossible
Do you think they could possibly be counting the regional carriers, flying under the name of a major? So, instead of Delta, USAirways, AA, United, you have those, plus delta connection, endeavor air, mesaba, american eagle, air wisconsin, etc…? Sometimes it seems like there are millions of those little carriers.