Travel Is Free Podcast – Episode 1: How The Game Has Changed

Announcing the Travel Is Free podcast! Weekly and available here and on the major podcasting platform.

Available on:

• travelisfree.com – just listen below
• Apple Podcast
• Google Play
• Google Podcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher

This is an idea I’ve had for years and now felt like the right time.

Plus, I asked my friend Dave (aka BikeGuy), who’s been in the miles and points game long before even I, to co-host with me.

In the episode Dave shares how I nonchalantly asked him to co-host and how he simply said yes… But in truth, I’d been thinking about it for a long time, and Dave is not only a good friend but he adds two things:

1) He’s also a curious person and I think the two of us with weekly guests could be conducive to great conversation…
and 2) He’s a true miles & points pro. Some of the “deals” he’s gotten into (and who knows how many things he can share) are above me. I’ll just say, high risk and high reward. Which is to say, he has lots of experience and deal-knowledge… and lots of stories.

Stitcher.

In this episode

In fact, I figured this first episode would be just the two of us talking. Honestly, my original motivation was that I didn’t want our first time recording to mess up if we’re interviewing someone.

In this episode we discuss:

• Best promotions from the “glory days”… and abusing them
• How the miles & points community has changed
• Dave’s Timeshare deal vacation
• PuddingGuy buying thousands of dollars of pudding for miles
• Dave buys tons of cheese for miles
• Talking about the blogosphere

Conclusion

If you have comments or listen on a platform we’re not on yet, please let me know.

We’re going to be doing this weekly, interviewing/talking with interesting people about travel, miles/points, and life and we want to do the best job possible.

Sorry this isn’t on Apple yet (although, blame Apple), but I’ll keep trying. This is kind of a test run with just the two of us, and I hope to have this all resolved by next week when we post our first guest interview.

Song credit: “Human” by Kagu (here)

Transcript

Drew Macomber
All right, this is the first ever Travel Is Free Podcast, which is with myself drew Macomber.

I write all of Travel Is Free. So you might already know who I am and I’m with Dave homie AK Dave homie. AK is also known as bike guy, or at least, you know, it used to be back in the day on meetups, you would use your flyer talk name. Do you remember that? Dave?

Dave H
I do remember that.

Drew Macomber
Do you ever do you ever go by BikeGuy anymore?

Dave H
I will say no, I’m actually BikeGuy in a couple of their forums but not really active on flyer talk other than to post once a year when I’m going to host an event in Ann Arbor. Right?

Drew Macomber
So Dave hosting it and Arbor do actually. So this is kind of my this kind of leads into the theme of this

podcasts are what I figured we could do, which is how the game has changed. And Dave, I’ll just say that we can do that, and how our travel style has changed how,

like how we collect frequent flyer miles, but also I think, like how the community has changed. But anyways, but I’ll just set it up that Dave and I were, we’re going to co host this travelers free podcast, and we’re going to interview other people and friends, and hopefully it’s interesting, but for for the first episode, we wanted to just do it with the two of us because, you know, if we did something wrong, we could record it without any guilt or rerecord it. So, anyway, so that’s

that’s our little introduction for Dave, you can you can share how it really got started. But this is this is how the two of us are we’re going to operate kind of interviewing other people are just having conversations with other people.

Dave H
And the thing is, even though I’ve been doing this longer than you have there were plenty of super golden years way before I got involved. So there’s even quite an iteration that occurred even before I jumped into the scene which is probably 2004 2005 and there was plenty going on before then. So I even missed a lot even though I do have a dozen years or so or 15 years or so where I was active.

Drew Macomber
But don’t you think like, everyone always says that because since I have joined it’s always dying. Someone is always telling me I think I’m going to get out of this because it’s dying. And then like, I don’t know they’re still hundred thousand point cards. They’re still low. It people were saying that before Bluebird because the US Mint had died. So if you if you I joined after the $1 coin thing, you’re like, man, I just missed the boat. But then you could still sign up for as many city American airline cards as you want, you could still sign up for as many Alaska Bank of America cards as you want. It was crazy. I mean, so many crazy things happened. But already at that point, people were like we missed the boat. You know what I mean?

Dave H
Oh, absolutely. And I, I kind of feel like I missed the boat on some stuff that happened before 2005

Drew Macomber
That’s insane.

Dave H
Right? And at the same time, though, there’s plenty that’s always going on. And maybe you don’t have the intense volume that you used to have and in many different things to pick from. But there is plenty always going on in my mind as well.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the world is always about to end until like soon as something dies, then the whole the whole internet blows up like it’s done. I mean, I even think the Marriott thing is hilarious. Mary I the new rewards program is it like has been a disaster but like

it’s not it’s not it’s not like it was so lucrative before that if you stayed. It wasn’t like back in the days when you had what was that Hyatt promotion? The faster free nights where you got a free night at any Hyatt in any right,

Dave H
right? Right. It was stay to get one free, which is insane. So you would pick the two cheapest nights in a hotel that you could find and II case we would stay at the my wife and I would stay at the Grand Hyatt Hawaii because that’s where we had our honeymoon. And we really enjoyed that property to this day. And yeah, you would just stay and then if you really want to do annihilate that particular promo, what you would do is when you signed up for a new account, they would have their basically you could double dip on the tonight stay. So you would might have been going to get this wrong, I think but might have been like stay three nights on a brand new account and you get one night free. Right? And then you would sign up for the state to free at the same time. You basically you stay three days, three nights and you get two nights free. I do remember that it was amazing.

Drew Macomber
But that’s kind of that’s actually kind of what I did with the IHG free nights. You know how I got those? I did like 14 nights in Bora Bora. I don’t know if you remember this. But they do. But I did a promotion where you got to. I think it was two free nights after you completed your stay. And they had all these requirements. But you could figure out it’s like stay at two different brands or three different brands say three different nights stay two weekends. And you could easily figure out how to complete the promotion

in in three nights. And I just created a bunch of accounts. And

I in here’s the crazy thing is there was there were a bunch Do you remember the four digit code on it? Did you ever do that? You could go to flyer talk and type in like a four digit code that gave you 1000 points on your next stay, you know, I’m talking about?

Dave H
I actually not only do I know what you’re talking about, but when I went to, I remember, I think doing that for the first time, maybe like the original Chicago seminars, and I ended up with like, 25,000 points,

Drew Macomber
right,

Dave H
which was five, three nights at a 5000 night savings program. Like this is incredible.

Drew Macomber
So, I don’t know if you know this, but a friend and I, we wrote a script, that before stay, it would run every number between 1000 and 9999. They were only so when we would check into a hotel especially for the first time, there were times where we got 40,000 points, and a status. I’ve a screenshot before any of the promotion kicked in to get the two free nights. So it was it was insane. So we would just create a new account.

Run the scripts. So that would give us 40,000 points, complete the promotion after three nights. And that that was one stay by the way. So it would kind of trim.

Yeah, so it could be like 40,000 for the first night, maybe 20,000 for the second and 30,000 just from the promo codes from the script. And then we’ve got the two free nights.

From the from the promotion, the I think it was called accelerate then. But anyway, so like, yeah, so I would say that strategy of signing up for a new account. Obviously don’t need a script with the highest example. Right. But that that was insanely lucrative. And I had a guy staying at a cheap Eastern European hotel for me for $30 a night.

And so I was earning, I don’t know, 100,000 points. And two free nights for for under $100. It was crazy.

Dave H
No on a on a similar vein, when I had a friend that actually was that talked to a hotel outside of Orlando and asked them when they’re slow season was. And they said it was actually in September when everybody goes back to school. So he said I would like to do a phantom stay. And the guy said, that’s fine, because we weren’t going to be getting any. But he stayed on he went for that. And so he was staying 3030 3040

nights in a row at 35 bucks a night. And then he was actually in a hotel could keep the room if that if that was the agreement. Exactly. So they showed that they were occupied, but they didn’t have to clean it. They didn’t have to do anything. So he got all the state credits in. It was very beautiful for him.

Drew Macomber
Dude, I remember that being a thing on flyer talk, where I was like what hotel, they would elude you it was just like the, the fuel dumps, people would say they would have a nickname for the islands they were flying between or whenever I would say I found a hotel in Florida that let me it’s like, oh my goodness, how many hundreds of hotels are in Florida.

So and that was kind of a secretive thing.

Dave H
Right? And well, and this guy actually used it to become royal ambassador. So he triggered it for you know, he needed to 60 nights and three or four Intercontinental Hotel stays. So he was using it. And then the crazy, the really crazy thing about that whole royal ambassador, well, there’s two kind of crazy things about it is first,

they would check to see how many at about 11 months out, they would check to see how many stays you had. So if you did them all in a huge bunch, you got credit for the stage you did 11 or 11 and a half months before, again. So you didn’t actually have to stay 60 days a year, you could stay like 30 states sprinkled throughout the year, then 30 stays in one sitting to trigger it. And then the next year those 30 states would still count. Right? So you only have to do about half the states per year and then do like a one month fan of state thing in Orlando, whatever.

Drew Macomber
Right? So yeah, see that that wouldn’t be lucrative anymore. Like I don’t believe loyalty with it like hotel. I mean, you definitely can’t run the script anymore. But you know, what else I think has changed is the community. And that’s what I was talking about with the flyer talk handle, besides the fact flyer talk is useless. I mean, it’s just an unusable website. I just tweeted about the infinite scroll. Like you can scroll for two hours and not get to the top if they landed you on page 200. That’s it’s the worst website ever. But besides that, I felt like it was a very small community, like everyone knew everyone. Oh, and do you know, do you know how? You know the first time I saw you? I don’t know if we met then? I don’t think so. It was it was in Chicago seminars. And I was like, Who’s this goofball? With a Hawaiian shirt?

Dave H
That’s a very nice Hawaiian shirt.

Drew Macomber
And it could have been, you know, it could Seth in that Hawaiian shirt.

But that’s my point is at any point in time back then you could say, you know, bike guy, or you know, Seth, Seth Miller Wandering Aramean, if they said no, you just say the guy in the Hawaiian shirt and everyone would know what you’re talking about now. It’s just it’s too big of a thing for everyone to go to an event and the events don’t seem to be the thing they used to be. Am I wrong? No, I still remember I. When Chicago seminar started, it was all flyer talk advertising. And I still remember the first time I went up to an attendee, probably seven or eight years in and asked them how long they had been on fire talk. And they said, What’s flyer talk? And that’s what I knew things had changed dramatically. They started

Dave H
like, how did you hear about this guy read some blog? Is that show up? Okay.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, I mean, that that is definitely like, you could name all the blogs to at that point in time. You can name all the sites, right. And, and it even seems like the number of tricks. It’s like, everyone there was doing the coins. Nowadays. It’s like you and I, there’s like, you and I aren’t doing the same things. I bet. Pro You know what? I mean? Are you messing?

Dave H
I’m right now. No, I haven’t. But you

Drew Macomber
work a little bit. You work on pretty hardcore last time. I saw you. Yes. You’re like, you’re like, I need to stop by this. We couldn’t even drive anywhere without you. We did not like the store. Yes. Yeah. But anyways, but yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s changed a lot in and just how people interact, and just the there were like, five blogs. Now there’s like 5000. I don’t know exactly how many there are. But there has to be a ton. But also, do you read blogs much?

I read a cup. You’re like me,

Dave H
I like me. Yeah, I’m there. I don’t know a lot of different things going on in my life. Now. I’m still. If something fantastic happens. I’d like to be I’d like to participate. But I do have a bunch of other interest as well going on. So it makes it

Drew Macomber
Yeah, but I’m the same way. But it’s impossible to keep track of everything nowadays. It really is. It?

I mean, people do. But I’ve you know, I’ve never

I’ve never been one to try to know everything. And it’s kind of funny. I remember I spoke at an event. And there was like a q amp a thing. And they were like, Well, what do you think of delta, whatever. And I’m like, I know nothing about that. I’ve never flown Delta, I don’t have any Delta miles. And they’re like, Well, what do you think is this and I’m like, I know nothing about that.

And like I always shocked people. And like, they would think I would know a lot because I know a lot about you night is stopovers. Right, then I talked for two minutes now, like this guy doesn’t know anything. If they were to if they were to ask me specific questions, you know what I mean? Well, I just can’t I don’t even try to know everything. It’s impossible.

Dave H
And I think I think that when people look at the information, it’s almost like what works for them. So I mean, I have a family with three kids. So I need a place for five people. I’m not looking. Sometimes I’m looking at hotel rooms, but quite honestly, unless I can get to in a connected room. I’m kind of not interested when I’m going on vacation. So right now,

Drew Macomber
Airbnb is now

Dave H
I stay in Airbnb. I stay in timeshares. So yeah, we went we just went down to Florida for spring break. ended up doing the

Drew Macomber
timeshare thing. And are you allowed to talk about that? If you are?

Dave H
Am I still doing the timeshare thing? Yeah, do you do you gave us

Okay, so but but you know, the way that we did, the way that I did this last one

is actually the way that a lot of people that want to get a really fantastic value can do it in the timeshare community. And that is there was a guy advertising on red leak, which is a timeshare rental or sales program, right? And my daughter on a Tuesday or Wednesday goes we have next week off, are we going on vacation? And I said, Well, I’m not doing anything right now. We can certainly go on vacation. But nobody asked to go on vacation. So I wasn’t going to force anybody to go any place. They didn’t want to go and she goes, Well, I would like to go someplace warm where I can lie on the beach. And you drove down. There we are. Yeah, that was some mistake. We won’t do that again.

But we said I said okay, so we’re going to go basically, when you look at the weather, if you wanted it to be 80 degrees, and you wanted to be on a large body of water, it was going to be golf side because the Atlantic side was too chilly that week. And so Saturday at four or 5pm. I tell a buddy, I’m looking, he finds a guy that has a timeshare that the stay starts 34 hours later, whatever it is the next night you had to check in. Nobody’s checking into a I forget what he wanted, like a couple thousand dollars for this time share. And I’m like, I’ll give you like, how about 1200 for the week really nice, really fancy Hyatt property, lazy rivers, all sorts of stuff. Fantastic. And he’s like, I think I’ll take it. Yeah.

Drew Macomber
Right. This is not going to get anyone else.

Dave H
Exactly. So if you’re not picky on where you’re going, and you have a last minute thing, you can absolutely get fantastic deals on incredible time shares.

Drew Macomber
So yeah, just quick I because I want to understand this. So red week. It’s kind of like, you know, correct look, Craigslist for

timeshares, where you can say, Hey, I have this thing I can’t use is that correct? Where they’re just posting? So?

Dave H
Yes, red week is Craigslist for timeshares. And a lot of people are there to sell their timeshare I bought this week for whatever $35,000 willing to sell it for 20,000 or something. But then there’s a rental market there as well. Well, the thing is when so let’s say my particular week, there was maybe four or five people that listed their week, and bought a bunch of them got purchased for $3,000 a week or whatever. And I mean, it’s it’s, you know, you’re getting a really nice two bedroom, really nice property, meticulously maintained full kitchen, so you don’t have to eat out all the time. So people will will drop three grand no problem well, as they get purchased, the people can mark them sold. So you can see kind of what the market is what was available and what’s gone now. While you when you have 24 hours left, and the guys like I’m you know, I’m willing to a great deal or whatever. And that’s what we did.

Drew Macomber
Yeah. And that’s kind of like what you said about Airbnb, you said you message last minute, and you’re like, Hey, you don’t have anyone in here. Why not give me a 50% discount and you messaged 10 people? Am I saying that? Right?

Dave H
Yeah, yeah, roughly. Yeah. Yeah, just to be safe. It probably be more like 15 if somebody was going to do something like that, if you’re being aggressive as 50%. Right, right. And just

right, exactly. And people are like, yeah, I’m going to get no money for it. It’s going to be you know, spoilage kind of like an empty airline seat flying out, you can get 30 bucks, you can get nothing and, and I mean, and that’s you know, that’s another interesting story about spoilage is frontiers, one of the few airlines that does not raise the price through the roof for the last minute seat, my wife refused to drive down, she was the only one in the family with enough sense to not want to drive past Tampa and Florida from Michigan. And Tuesday morning, when I went to kayak and said, I just wonder, I know, it’s a waste of my time to figure out how much it would cost for a direct flight from Detroit into Fort Myers. But let’s just see in frontier popped up at I think, was $34 or something like that.

Drew Macomber
So it’s amazing.

Dave H
I’m like, I had no idea frontier did this last minute, we’re going to I don’t know if it was discount, or at least definitely not raised the price. So frontier

Drew Macomber
frontier seems to be one to I like frontier. And it’s the only airline I have status on, although that now has a promotion.

Yeah, I mean, they had like $20 flights to New Orleans from Austin. So we we flew there a couple times. And yeah, I mean, it’s awesome. Because we can on certain weekends, we can Airbnb, our apartment, which is in downtown Austin. And have you seen our new place? I haven’t. Okay, well, you need to come visit. But anyways, there was.

Yeah, so we could rent it out for like $300. And I mean, mainly in spring and fall, and then go to New Orleans and the hotels were super cheap. I mean, I think their peak season is now like spring, and maybe fall I don’t know. So their hotel prices can be crazy. But it’s, I mean, for $20 a person each way. So we’re spending 80 bucks, which is less than our cleaning fee. Wow. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s awesome. But um, frontier seems to be the only and not the only one. But they seem to be the only one I fly. That doesn’t raise their prices last minute is right. Unless Unless they’re sold out. It’s like Southwest in the legacy airlines, they will significantly raise their prices last minute Southwest starts like two weeks out. But frontier. If they are under sold, they will drop the prices, which is pretty awesome.

Dave H
Well, and and the most amazing thing to me is so they had they had several seats. I called my wife I asked did she want one? This is like 1011 in the morning. She said yes. When I went back to book it, it was gone. So I was unable to book and then I will and then I double checked at like three o’clock like just curious. And another seat popped up. And it was literally 57 or $58 all in with tax for like down there. So I booked her at 330. In the afternoon I called her and said, I’m going to have my mom swing by to pick you up and take you to the airport you have under an hour to pack go. Right was bought the ticket less than an hour later, she’s getting taken to the airport. And less than three hours later. She’s on an airplane that’s flying to Florida.

Drew Macomber
So that’s awesome. Yeah, but you want one thing I’ve noticed. And I guess you were already using kayak, but maybe there’s a few other websites. Like you know how there’s

like for hotels, maybe it’s like a MoMA. I don’t know, there’s like not the main ones or I don’t know what their business model is. Maybe they buy up a bunch of hotel rooms, and then they sell them at a discount or like when the when the price raises, they can stay the same. But anyways, I’m on kayak, I’ve noticed that the price will go up last minute like I missed my seat where the hotel will go up. And I can check kayak and it will find one of these crappy websites that has bad customer ratings. And built in they’ll still have the old price. I’ve just seen that a lot. And maybe like, if you check.

I don’t know Skyscanner, what would be another one. Like Mondo that’s like the big European one, I think. But anyways, though, they’ll they’ll have some website, somewhere that has that same ticket, and sometimes you click through and it’s gone. But anyways, that’s just that’s just a tip.

Dave H
Right now. I’m curious what websites you use. I’m pretty much just kind of kayak and I’ll play around with some other stuff. But

Drew Macomber
did I love Skyscanner? Do you okay? Yeah, I love like Google flights, the Explorer has the same feature been Skyscanner, it needs to be in a list view, but I can type in Austin, and then I can type in everywhere. And any date or Austin to anywhere or Austin to somewhere in the United States. So I’m going to anywhere in the United States, and it will list them in order of price. So I’ll say the $20 tickets available on May.

Or or you can search any month. But anyway, so I like that on. But

and I don’t know for hotels, and mostly, I mostly just chase promotions. But yeah. But so I wanted so this is I have one request that we dig into. And this is partly selfish, because I have a throwback Thursday post coming up. And I wanted and you’re going to be my source for that for the next year, by the way.

So so I need these stories from you. Every once in a while. So

Dave H
I to anybody listening. You have to love drew surprising you at times we’re going to get into other stories later drew surprising me with questions, texts, whatever you like, what is that? I didn’t know this was the way this was done. But okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, I tricked you into into doing this. You agreed? You want to say how you ended up doing this podcast?

Dave H
I can. I can. So I hadn’t talked to drew in two weeks, I get a text from drew I don’t know, we and a half ago that says, I’m starting a podcast. Would you like to co host? And I text back? Okay.

I would think would talk about this. But drew doesn’t kind of, I don’t know, call or pick up on that hit and then he just text. Okay, what’s your address? I’m sending you a microphone. So I tell him my address, and then he texts. I’ve ordered the microphone, by the way, you have to promise to return it. If you quit the podcast. I go. Okay. So that was kind of the state of the podcast. Hey, we’re going to talk anyways, so we might as well just record and that’s what I figured. Sounds true. But actually, there was some time. I surprised you. Oh, maybe from Ann Arbor. I was like,

Drew Macomber
but one of them. You were like, where are you going after this? And I’m like, Oh, I don’t think it’s like the next day. I’m supposed to be out of your house.

Dave H
But that was definitely a surprise. So yeah, dang here forever.

Drew Macomber
just met probably. We are

Dave H
Yes, we did. So that was interesting. So just so people, just some some backstory on that. So I happen to organize this thing called the Ann Arbor Art Fair do so a do is a gathering and event. And most of the time, it’s just social people get together, they drink some beers, they walk around, they do whatever. And I’m like, Oh, I want to make it educational. So a long time ago, about 15 years ago, we decided I decided to set up this thing, then I wrote fair do, which I did. And then I wanted to invite in speakers that I thought were really educated on different travel hacking techniques and have them present to an audience, whoever wanted to show could show up. So I always invite the guests because I don’t pay anybody. I don’t pay any travel. I don’t do anything. I don’t collect any money for it. It’s just all kind of Here it is. If you want to show up, you show up. So because I don’t collect any money, I can’t help with any of the travel. I do always offer that people can stay in my house. And sometimes people take me up on that. And sometimes they don’t want anyway drew and Carrie showed up at my house and everything was awesome. And we had a really fun weekend. Really good time. Well, anyway, the event kind of runs through Sunday noon ish, or maybe a little bit after that. So anyway, Sunday night, we come back to the house, we have dinner. And in the past, everybody has always kind of left after dinner. And so I we had dinner and I’m trying to be you know, calm about it and cool about it. And I go drew When are you planning on leaving? And he goes, I really don’t know. It was definitely was I wasn’t

Drew Macomber
planning to leave the next day was just how that’s just how I plan?

Dave H
Well, and I know, ahead. And that is another completely fascinating aspect of you that I totally want to get into I don’t know if it’s good to have it added into this episode. But definitely another episode of some of the showing up in the planning. You do a lot of times when you show up. But anyway, yeah. So it was a and and drew did I guarantee drew did not say I am planning on leaving tomorrow. It was I don’t know, very pregnant pause. And then the next day, I’m kind of calling him from work. But it was a week is this too? And this is the homeless? No, no.

Drew Macomber
He’s, I knew I was leaving the next day.

Dave H
I did. I absolutely did not know you are leaving the next day. And then I remember back and forth with you the next day and you say, Oh, I have a friend in Detroit that’s going to drive to Cleveland or something. And then

Drew Macomber
No, no, she she lived in the same town as Kerry

family. And that’s what we were going to go next. I just didn’t know if I was going to rent a car. And she happened to be driving that route. We ended up renting a car anyways, because I don’t think she ended up it’s like the time with timing was different. Right? Well, yeah. Anyways, I don’t like to plan ahead. causes stress.

Dave H
causes stress when so expecting to leave Sunday say, I have no idea. Leave me and definitely don’t say the next day. So yeah, we had different stress causes.

Drew Macomber
And now we’re now we’ve been friends for you know, who knows how many years? Yeah, it’s been quite a while now.

Dave H
But yeah, but one then I mean, the whole thing was then even that day, I remember. We were texting back and forth. I was at work. And you texted this woman’s gonna come by and pick us up. And I go, okay. And then I come home from work. And as I’m walking in the house, you’re like, Hey, can you take us to get a rental car? Like That wasn’t the plan hour ago. So that’s just even more of the very last second Change of plans thing and, and one

Drew Macomber
of the reasons you got rid of me that day?

Dave H
Well, anyway, it’s one of the reasons I love you and Gary because it just it’s really exciting. When you’re around you have no idea what’s gonna happen next.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, we should. You should do a vacation with us drew and Carrie style. I should. It’s like the it’s like the opposite of being with Stephen Stephen Krasinski, rapid travel Ty, right. He’s like, he’s playing down to the minute. He saw I saw his itinerary for Egypt. You know, we stayed in Egypt 47 nights. And he was there for like 24 hours and saw more of any women all over. But he literally rented or hired a taxi driver to just shuttle them around the country. And he would like sleep in the back of the taxi while he was driving. And then he’d show up to some site. And that taxi driver would sleep in the back or something. Like it was it was an insane 24 hours where they just covered all of Egypt. It was insane. You should you should look that up. And we’ll ask him about it sometime. Yeah, he’s

Dave H
very thorough.

Drew Macomber
He’s very thorough. But anyways, so what I want to ask you about is the cheese story. So and I’m going to be hazy on the details of the backstory. But there was the pudding thing was a pudding thing before that people know of the pudding. Right? There wasn’t a movie or something. Why does everyone know about that?

Well just just went viral, I think.

Dave H
Well, I mean,

in my mind, it was kind of the brilliance and the depth that the pudding guy went to, to become the pudding guy. So the pudding guy, actually that was his name, right? That was his flyer talk name and I have met him and he has been in Chicago seminars and he has told me the story and I actually ran into him in LA at the Freddie’s probably 13 or 14 years ago. Really nice guy really nice guy.

And but basically, the reason he’s the putting guy in somebody else’s into putting guy is he had more, he had less adversity to risk. So I mean, there’s there’s always risk when you say, are they really going down? Or this? And should I buy $1,000 worth of putting, or should I buy 3000? And he said, there were several other people that bought $1,000 worth of putting, but he bought like 3000 or 3500, or something like that. It might have been more, I can’t remember, but it was a lot, right. Whatever it was, it was an incredible amount. And basically, it’s like if they don’t give him the miles, he just bought $3,000 worth of politik. And that’s about all he has,

Drew Macomber
you know, it’s not like you’re going to save it for a rainy day. It’s not like buying grocery gift cards.

Dave H
Exactly. You’re not going just going bad. Exactly. You’re going to be putting for a long time in a hurry. And so he buys the pudding. And then he realizes he has to cut out these UPC symbols to get credit,

Drew Macomber
yeah, the labels.

Dave H
And then in what I consider a stroke of brilliance, he calls like the local food bank and says, I am willing to donate $3,000 worth of putting if you’re willing to cut out the UPC symbols for me.

Drew Macomber
But you skip, you skipped an important step got like 500 miles or something per putting cup, or I can’t remember what it was, well, was it American airline miles, it was American,

Dave H
I believe it was American airline miles, and you got, I think it was maybe 500. But the thing is, it was a healthy choice thing. And healthy choice was selling rights TV dinners, and they wanted you to spend four or $5 on the TV dinner. And he found this putting Healthy Choice putting thing for like 25 or 30 cents a cop. And that’s what they label what it just said a healthy choice. UPC it didn’t say it has to be from a frozen dinner or from a prepared dinner. Right? And that’s when the light bulb went off for him. So that and so.

Right, he knew he could get the miles for hundredths of a cent on the dollar. If they agree,

Drew Macomber
that counted towards your lifetime status back then it did. It did. But and so you and so was the chief promotion basically the same thing. It was like PR, what was the brand? Me?

Dave H
Okay, but so me is a cheese based in Switzerland. And basically, their promotion was, you can get 500 we will it’s the Switzerland coming into play, like you have to like ship these Maryland or something you have to call. But Switzerland? Well, here’s the reason Switzerland comes into play. Switzerland comes into play because these guys were not big in the United States. And somebody decided that if they gave away airline miles, that a lot more people in the United States would buy the cheese be exposed to it, and they would want to buy a lot more in the future.

Drew Macomber
Right.

Dave H
So they’ll continue. So the cheese, you would get a 500 mile certificate in each very small wrapped piece of cheese. And if I remember the cheese was like, I want to say it was like

$2 apiece, something like that. So basically, you’re buying your miles at four tenths of a cent per mile and getting a free hunk of cheese. So, you know, I’m like, this is pretty cool. I think I’ll go out to the store. I go out to the store. There’s like eight pieces of cheese. I’m like, Oh, this is pretty cool. I just got 4000 miles for very cheap price. And I go back to the thread where somebody had posted on fire talk and I’m looking around. And one of the guys kind of posted cryptically, I am going to buy a large amount of cheese. If you are interested in partaking in this purchase, private message me

Drew Macomber
Like do you want to split it?

Dave H
Right. So I private messaged him and he had found the course he did. Of course I did. Because it was cool. It was fun. So I and so he had found the distributor where they received the cheese from Switzerland. And he had arranged to buy a $5,000 block of cheese.

Drew Macomber
Like a pallet.

Dave H
Dude, this is more than a pallet. This is like multiple pallets. So I literally so I decided I was in for 1000. So I was I would not have been the putting guy or the cheese guy.

I would have been like, and one. It’s one of the guys there was four of us that went in one guy did $2,000 worth. I did $1,000 worth. And a couple in two other people did $1,000 worth and kind of wired this guy some money. And less than a week later there was

Drew Macomber
you know the guy? No, but this is he This is a stranger on fire talk and you wired him $1,000

Dave H
this is so I mean, and the thing is, it’s like so one of the things that it was a super huge deal on fire talk that the site that nobody goes to anymore. One of the things that was a big deal was how many posts you had. And basically it said this guy’s been around a while and this guy’s trustworthy. And you can always click the What are these? What’s this other guy posting in? So the thing is, you had a community and you had a reputation in that community. So if this guy, I mean this guy, this is his car.

Drew Macomber
Turns out that guy spends a lot of time in the Nigerian scam subreddit.

Dave H
And if he was, I would have been, he would have had my thousand dollars. But basically, you know, here’s all the information, it’s all legit that it whatever. And basically that and it’s he spends a lot of time in here. And you know, my recourse would have been to go online and say he took out some dogs because I was stupid enough to claim I wanted a pallet of cheese myself. So bottom line is I sent him the money. About five days later there. And I actually I waited on our bathroom scale. There was 88 pounds of cheese on my front porch when I got home from work.

Drew Macomber
That is crazy. And you don’t it all melted.

Dave H
No, it was like wrapped in wrapped it had that that wax coating and then you have to peel it off.

Drew Macomber
Yeah. So that. So how much did you how many miles Did you get out of it?

Dave H
I’m thinking it was a couple hundred thousand. I forget. No, it’s been a long time

Drew Macomber
and back then back then you could fly like business class. You’re up on

way less miles than you can now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that’s in the ward availability was great. That’s one big thing that’s changed?

Dave H
Well, well, I think that’s the thing. Like when I used to fly to Hawaii, it’s like if you had a you know, I was I was a Northwest flyer before Delta flyer before it became Delta. But I mean, I’m like, even if you had silver status, so it’s like wide open everything. So it’s like I’m picking I want to fly Detroit to Minneapolis, because I know from Minneapolis to Honolulu, there’s an internationally configured a 330. And I’m going to have killer seats. And I’m going to have video on demand, which was a big thing back then. I mean, you’re just and it’s all super cheap. So I mean, it’s 35,000 round trip and I you know, I need five seats on a Saturday. I need to come back on a Saturday dun dun Mr. Home. Yeah, no problem. So yeah, so it’s so you had it. So what do you do with all the cheese? You ate it all? So I actually, I actually due to my charitable, charitable nature, I donated it to a local charity mainly so I could write off that thousand dollars that I had

Drew Macomber
used to help feel like putting guy conditional donation.

Dave H
No, because I wanted to make make sure that I got all the all the forms out myself. So I actually I did, there was like a carton that it was in a new unwrap it and then that the thing was in there. So I had a huge, huge, huge stack of $500 certificates might have been 200. Right? or excuse me, 500 miles certificates. That might have been 250 miles certificates. Whatever it was the math made sense, it was a really good deal is definitely well under one cent per mile at the time,

Drew Macomber
I remember you saying something like you, you told your wife to pick out as much cheese as she wanted, because otherwise it wasn’t going to get donated.

Dave H
And I did and she said, I really don’t want any just get like one or two of these tiny little wheels, like literally the size of a half dollar and silver dollar. She said

Drew Macomber
part of the story I always read Oh

Dave H
my gosh. And so I pick out like these two, I donate everything else. And about three or four days later, she opens the cheese and she starts eating She goes, this is really good. It’s too bad. You didn’t keep more of this.

Drew Macomber
you could had a lifetime’s

Dave H
at least a year or two supply, I mean that stuff it was it didn’t look like it was going to go bad anytime soon. With that fixed so

Drew Macomber
then then why you then you mail them in? And then they send you well, that one How do you get they just deposited the miles because it’s a while ago, that was

Dave H
that was a very, very, very stressful part. So from the time that I bought it, they realized that they were getting hammered. And another person that we may end up interviewing that doesn’t write a blog, and I will leave his name out right now decided to call the company headquarters and say, I would like $25,000 where the cheese but Tell you what, you can keep the cheese just send me those forms.

Which kind of tipped the hand of everybody else. So it’s like, okay, that’s a good way to blow up a deal. So from so when I say you actually you were supposed to go to a website and type

Drew Macomber
he just wanted he didn’t want to have to appeal $25,000 with a cheese exact but he but the thing is, is he is missing out on the $25,000 tax write off by not wanting the cheese. Right?

Dave H
Right.

Drew Macomber
and it would have been less especially

Dave H
right. But that happened, right. But the way the way you had to redeem the miles is you had to go to their This is all coming back to me now. You had to go to their website, and you had to type in your certificate code, and then type in your American Airlines number and it would transfer over. Well, when they realized what a horrible mistake they made, and how the miles were going to cost them more than the cheese and everybody was buying it solely for the miles they changed the website. So when you went to the same one that you had just gone to a couple days before and check it out. They changed

it you type in a code you will get a free pen knife that says me cheese on the handles limit one per household

Drew Macomber
thousand dollars of cheese and you go to the you go to read, go to repeat it and that is what I see.

Drew Macomber
You can get a pin knife or you could get 1000 of them.

Dave H
Oh, I couldn’t get 1000 because it was one per household. I have to distribute them every family that I know and it’s still have several hundred leftover

Drew Macomber
which you don’t need which

Dave H
right and I don’t need and I don’t I wouldn’t have spent a penny on a pen nice. It was a small pen I did wasn’t even like a decent bed night. So anyway, I call the guy I call me cheese’s headquarters and and I still remember I felt so bad for the guy. And I said Look, I said I bought a lot of cheese. You guys had a

Drew Macomber
lot.

Dave H
Jeez. So and I said, you guys,

Drew Macomber
you didn’t buy this for your family?

Dave H
Well, and the thing is I had so in the way I had this guy’s number because I remember I’m like there’s no way they’re going to honor this. So I actually I didn’t want to tip them off and say the amount but I called I had called this guy before I put in the thousand dollars. And I had said, Look, I’m just wondering if I submit more than one. Are you still going to honor it? Oh, yeah, well honor everything I said. So it’s, it’s truly unlimited. No matter how many I give you.

Drew Macomber
I am going he’s thinking like 100 or right or like

Dave H
25 like some fool is going to buy 25 pieces of our cheese for these miles and he’s price my man this promotions working great. He’s telling everybody. I said so it’s any amount that I give you. I will get these miles and he said, Absolutely. And I said, Okay, and so when they changed it to the penknife, I already had the guy’s name and number. And so I called him back. I said, Dude, we had a deal. Come on, I don’t need one penknife per household. I just spent a lot of money on cheese. And he goes, tell you what, put them all in. And I said, and I can’t even type in anything anymore because it’s dependent life. And he said, put them all in and change the website, right? And the website was already changed. So he said, Tell you what, put them in an envelope. I will honor the promotion. I told you I was going to honor it. It is going to be honored for you.

Drew Macomber
So I sent them in and then then he like pretends once you got rid of the labels and you pretend to get lost in the mail.

Dave H
No, I got all the miles and and I felt so bad for the guy. I still remember the end of the conversation was me saying to him, I’m really sorry that your promotion isn’t going the way you expected it to. And he’s like, thank you.

Dave H
the poor guy on the phone. You’re like I’m sorry, you’re losing your job. As soon as this is over. You know? It’s like he just cost this company massive amounts of money.

Drew Macomber
How big do you think that was? Other people on fire talk? We’re blowing that up. What year is this? This? This is before my time? Yeah,

Dave H
this is 12 years ago. I don’t know I I mean, if we typed in any cheese and fire talk, we probably ought to be able to pull it up like right now. I might do that. Yeah, yeah. Is that thread is in there.

Drew Macomber
Do you have any photos? Probably none. I hope there’s someone that I actually

Dave H
have. I actually fully document the process took a video of me opening the cheese like, but no, yeah, yeah, nowhere that they still have… I have no idea where that is. I

Drew Macomber
please tell me you still… would have to convert it from like VHS.

Dave H
converted from eight-millimeter film. Exactly. It was not a video camera. But where it is? I don’t know. And if I ever converted anything, I certainly wouldn’t convert. I mean, dude, this was like an overnight process open this GC did not open $1,000 where the cheese in like, half an hour an hour. I mean, I remember I’m up. Its pitch black. It’s getting really late. Like past midnight. I started like eight at night. Just opening opening opening opening opening?

Drew Macomber
Yeah, yeah, that was the that was the best part about the putting guy that was him going to like the homeless shelter or whatever. And then there’s like, a bucket brigade of people peeling the labels to, for him to get the miles. And he gets the tax write off. But it should, should just had your kids do it.

Dave H
That the benefit of having kids, that’s what my wife claims that she claims that the reason I have kids is when I need something, pick up that remote over there, do this do that, you know, you just bought

in one of my, you know, one of my children. When I did ask this child to do something, he responded with what am I the family servant, which did not go over? Well?

Drew Macomber
Well, if it they get a allowance or something they gotta earn it by peeling cheese. Exactly.

Dave H
Shocking.

Drew Macomber
Now, is there any benefit to having kids in the miles game? Because you can’t like really create an account and maximize promotions? I know this is a backwards way of thinking. But I’m just curious. Is there any time you’ve been able to double up on a promotion? With your kids? I have to be a team. You really you have?

Dave H
Yeah, I’m not sure.

Drew Macomber
Yeah,

Dave H
I have. But

Drew Macomber
you can share.

Dave H 
I can say I can say

Drew Macomber
it’s dead. It’s it’s dead anyways, probably whatever it is. Well, that’s the funny thing. Look at there are a lot of people who are really secretive. And then I’m like, dude, I guarantee you, if we go to interview some of our friends, I’ll be like, dude, you should share that story. Because it’s dead, dead dead. And they’re gonna be like, Nah, that’s too. It’s too cold. I have some stories that I would not want to share. Because I could get other people like I would not share them on the blog. Because they involve other people. Right? Right. And I would not want to get those people banned. Like, I don’t have status or whatever. So I don’t care. But someone else might care a lot.

Dave H
Right. Exactly. Exactly. So

Drew Macomber
yeah. But anyways, well, um,

yeah, we’ve already been talking 15 minutes. Can you believe that?

Dave H
It’s quite a it’s quite a long time. I didn’t expect it to go that fast.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, so yeah, we can do another one just to do let’s, we’re not that bad. We’ll see.

Dave H
No, actually we are.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, but any other ways to sign off any other major ways that you think man, the game has changed? a ton. I said the community? It was personal. Everyone knew everyone. Everyone knew each other’s flyer talk handle, you might not even know their real name, right? I don’t know marathon man’s real name.

Does he have a real name? I think he does. Yes.

Dave H
I prefer not tonight. No, the, the the Walmart’s in Massachusetts know his name because he’s on it. Let him buy anything here.

Drew Macomber
But any other way? It’s changed real like, man. I think. Like I said, blogging is changed mainly because there were five people, or 10 or 20. And now there’s 20,000. It seems

Dave H
I think the other big thing is you use Well, when you had the you know, probably this in my mind the first you know, the first blog was Gary laughs and then you had Rick, at

Drew Macomber
the points guy, and then you had frugal traveler,

Dave H
travel guy and then

Ben shopping mileage, those were like the first three in my mind. Yeah, for sure. Those were the ones I meant it kind of expanded from there. I mean, but but it was a very slow start for those guys, because there weren’t the affiliate links. So I mean, a lot of that like, like Gary just like to document stuff and put stuff out there. So there was not a financial reason for him to do that, other than he was having a good time, in my opinion. I don’t know whether there was anything else going on. But I don’t think there was and Rick was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. So I mean, he’s just like, I just want to help people. I still remember. Still really good friends with Rick. And I still remember one time I was talking to him. And he’s, he, I’m like, how are things going? He goes, I’m kind of a little frustrated, or whatever. And I said, Why? And he said, because people are emailing me for advice on the blog. And it’s taking me more than 24 hours to respond to their emails. And I’m, you know, I just said, I want to be responding to everybody within 24 hours. I’m like, I thought that was fast meeting. And really,

Rick is a good guy. He really is. And And

the thing is, and he’s like, I’m like, dude, you’re not getting any money for this. Don’t worry about if you exceed 24 hours, he’s like, no, I that just, that’s my standard. I want to be 24. And it was seriously bothering him. That he could not help these people that are just writing in that he has no idea who they are.

Drew Macomber
Yeah. And you if you have any traffic, you get a lot of email. Right. And I can’t I can’t imagine what Gary or Ben, you know, actually, I emailed Rick, early on, I think I emailed Gary, and they reply, and and those people have millions and millions of people reading their site, right. It’s pretty crazy. And I think

it’s kind of interesting. You say that, because they did, they did blog a long time with no benefit. I mean, Gary posts about this recently, where he made like, who remember you got a $50 check. And he gave it to Randy, who hosted boarding or he’s like, Hey, you know, here you go. This, this should help cover the costs. Right. But I mean, but but it’s kind of indicative of there’s, there’s a lot of people, there are a lot of blogs that start once you get once money starts coming in. But those guys, I think, I think they’re just, they’re better. Ben is a better writer. They’re both extremely knowledgeable.

And we’ve definitely, I mean, Gary knows every Gary lives in Austin as well. If I meet up with him,

I could be like, man, there is a super secretive thing I found out about and he’ll be like, Oh, yeah, you could have done it this way. Like, he’ll have known about it for five years. But anyways, but yeah, I think it’s, it’s indicative of their personality that they’re doing this because, like, they love they love what they do. And that’s why they’re still doing it.

Dave H
Right. I remember one thread, or excuse me, one blog post that Gary had, that he very slightly alluded to something else that was going on. And if you were in the know, at the time, you could tell that it was there. But if you weren’t, if you didn’t know about this deal, there was no way you could, you could even recognize does

Drew Macomber
that he still does that all the time where he’s real, just make a small reference well, and the thing is, like a small reference to some hack, and it will go completely over your head, unless you know about right.

Dave H
And there was a guy, one of the if, if there’s ever anything out there like that, but Gary has the one of the really interesting things is to start to read the comments. So I started to read the comments, because I could see this. And I could see where you know, I’m just kind of curious to see what’s going to happen. And this guy posts, I can’t believe, you know, you finally find out something decent. And you have to blow it up or something like that. And, and Gary’s response was, you know, actually, this was subtle enough that No, nobody would have known about it. And by the way, I know, and he just did like one word. I list of just one word. And it was like the 10 hottest deals that were going on that were like, totally silent.

The guy was like, I think I’ll just be quiet.

Dave H
No, Gary didn’t find out about one thing and finally have to blow it up. Right? He knew everything that was going on. And he still does,

Drew Macomber
how he knows. I think I think people email me do deals because he has a lot of trust. But he knows he knows about everything, right? I would say like I said, I’m not going to try to know everything about everything. He already does know everything about everything he has that matter how he stays up on it. Well, he has the he has the

Dave H
network. And I mean, the thing is, if people are calling you and you have the network, and they’re like, by the way, I’ll explain it to you because I trust you and you’ve been a longtime source. I I can see that.

Right, just whether you have the bandwidth to process all those deals in your head and keep them all straight.

Drew Macomber
Yeah, yeah, he’s I mean, obviously he’s a smart guy, right. So right. Anyways.

Yeah, how

Dave H
do we sign off of this thing, Dave? I was the one that said we should have had a an initial introduction like song jingle thingy and something to end it up. So.

And you kind of ignored that text.

You’re outta Yeah. I said, you know, why do we need to do this in the next couple days? And to? Why don’t we come up with Oh, but you can. You can do that in post

Drew Macomber
production. You can add a song. Alright, cue the song.

Thanks, everyone, for listening. We’re going to do this every week. And we’re going to have some interesting guests on every week. And we don’t know who you know, we do have a few people. And, and,

you know, I might go with the sneak attack, you know, and or in an arbor. I’m just gonna say Greg frequent miler. Hey, come in this room, and then we’ll shut the door and then just start recording. That’s

Dave H
right. Just lock it and see it opens in an hour. You can answer the questions or not. Right.

Drew Macomber
Anyways, thanks for joining us, and thanks for listening. And you should we’ll try to get this to all the major podcasting platforms so you can subscribe there.