Delta Hates Their Customers, But You Can Earn Tons of Points With GoBank

by Gary Leff

More big news out today in frequent flyer-world:

  • Expertflyer, a pay service I subscribe to, has been forced by Delta to stop displaying upgrade inventory on the site. An educated consumer is Skymiles’ worst customer.

  • Some customers may again sign up for GoBank, an account with a robust bill pay feature that you can load with gift cards at Walmart.

  • Hyatt has a targeted promotion out for up to 50,000 bonus points. I wasn’t targeted, lots of Diamond members I know were. More nights, more points – while 5 nights earns 5000 points, 20 nights through November 30 earns a total of 50,000. The bad news: I’d guess this won’t stack with — and thus could take the place of — a fall promotion.

  • How much does a union drive up hotel costs?

  • I’ve heard of refusing housekeeping in exchange for bonus points, but this is ridiculous. (HT: Alan H.)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. If there is a study of union vs. non-union hotels, that makes me wonder if there is a database of such hotels. I’d be interested in being able to factor my preference on this matter into my booking decisions, and I’d also be happy to see customers with the opposite preference do the same.

  2. Discussing the costs of union anything seems to be a common hot button. But sure count me in. I’m all for underpaying people in the race to the bottom. Let’s see how cheap we can get people to work. SMH. I’m union and a business owner. My employees are mostly union (their choice in my state as it’s right to work) and they are paid well. Turns out hiring pros in my field of work pays as my profits have been consistently up. Growing as well.

  3. Thanks Gary, really enjoy your web digest series and there are a lot of useful information, not just fillers!

  5. Expert Flyer drops down another notch in what it offers. Too bad to see a good product like that fade away bit by bit.

  6. Graydon – are you all for paying semi-skilled transportation dept. workers more than highly skilled workers make elsewhere and having them go to strip clubs on company time?

    Because I’m not.

  7. This study on unionized hotels is meaningless. If hotel operators could get more from guests based upon the market they would just charge them more and pocket the profit. There are few reasons for hotels, particularly in this market to cut rates.

  8. Actually, if you look at how much money they’ve poured into their aircraft and in-flight products, as well as their employees, I think that a more accurate conclusion is that Delta loves their customers. And they were just rated as the nation’s top airline. Removing upgrade inventory visibility for a small subset of passengers is insignificant.

  9. The union hotels comparison is probably not as useful as it seems, since unionized hotels correlate with large, expensive metro areas. So basically what that’s saying is that hotels in large expensive metro areas are more expensive than hotels in suburban and rural areas. Well, duh.

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