Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
At 5 this morning I received a message from my son saying he was sick. He had been spending the night at a friend’s house because my wife had to leave very early this morning for a business trip, and I’ve been away for the weekend for frequent flyer fun. The plan was for my son to go with his friend to school, but now we’re on to plan B. I jumped on an early flight to go get him. So, now I’m typing this with my laptop crammed on my lap while the passenger in front of me reclines peacefully.
On Saturday I posted a teaser claiming I had found a perfect Perpetual Point Machine (PPM). I didn’t post details at that time partly because I’m evil, but mostly because my weekend was full with activities which were virtually non stop until now. When I get home I plan to take a nap and then, if my son is doing OK, I’ll write up the first in a series of posts about the new discovery. As a habit I write most posts the day before publication. I schedule them to publish at 6:15 a.m. EST, but the automated feeds, tweets, etc. often don’t go out until about 7.
If you haven’t already seen them, I recommend you take a look at the comments from my teaser post. The dialog ranges from exasperation to excitement, and proceeds to a debate about whether or not I should tell at all. The whole thing is a lot more interesting than anything I’ve ever written, so thank you all for adding great content to this site!
Lowering Expectations
Tomorrow’s post won’t be described as a Perpetual Point Machine. Instead, I will be highlighting a great way to maximize point earnings. Instead of a radical new discovery, I’ll describe an important, but incremental improvement over ideas I’ve published before. I’ll follow up later in the week with a discussion of how to turn the new approach into a PPM. We can then happily debate whether or not it meets the definition of “perfect”. Honestly, I think we’ll land somewhere closer to “really good”, but we’ll see.
Should I tell?
I discovered this a couple of weeks ago and have been struggling since then with the question of whether to tell. The fear is that when people get too greedy, the deal will be killed. After testing things out to make sure it all works, I then consulted with a number of people with more experience than me. The general consensus has been that I should tell all. Here’s why:
- The deal leverages publicly available offers. There is not a single piece of this scheme that is anything like a mistake fare.
- The deal is based on a new product that will be advertised more and more going forward. This isn’t rocket science. Everyone playing our game will know about this sooner or later.
- There are built-in limits to the deal. While the average person can probably squeeze out about 20K points per month, it would be extremely difficult to do more than that. And, if you try to do more, it is likely that you will get shut down, but the deal will go on for others.
- Finally, yes, of course I hope to draw in new readers. If this deal eventually dies, more will follow in the future. While some discoveries come from the Frequent Miler Laboratory, most come from reader tips. With more readers, I expect to see more tips and the game will go on.
I want to thank everyone I confided in to help me reach this decision. I spent many sleepless nights agonizing over this question, but I finally slept well on Saturday night after reaching a decision. For those of you agonizing over the wait, please accept my apologies. As I said early, I am most certainly evil and so will milk this for all it’s worth 
.
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Who is hs?
After the segway next up will be a hoveround wheelchair!
You do know that HS has already beat you too it right? I saw her update earlier on MilePoint. I like the way you guys think!
-BS
HS is… well… think first name, last name initials, not the blog itself. Figuring it was almost as fun as searching for the PPM. I just got lucky with it.
Segway Scooter. Hah! This will completely change the way we look at earning miles. That’s awesome!
I like all the rest am getting this feeling deep in my stomach! I really do think this is cruel and unusual punishment. I really hope this is understandable, attainable, sustainable, reliable, reputable, accessible, and not too detectable!!!!
Oh, I may have figured it out. I’ve spent some time on the web tonight based on the above clues, and I think I know what everyone is talking about. If I’m right, the new product is not from Chase.
Wow, I’m having so much fun reading these comments it almost makes me want to put off the reveal another day…
Or, I can reveal it right now: It’s a Segway Scooter!
As to the comments and guesses above, I can only say that I agree completely with Kathy in comment #15.
But seriously, tomorrow’s morning post will give you the basics of what you need to know. I’ll follow up with a number of related posts including, perhaps, a doomsday counter. I like that idea. I’m also curious about who in the world HS is. Maybe we can play that game next.
Someone tell us already!
@jamba would tend to agree. Again if it’s the same one we all seem to be thinking. My concern would be a potential affect on other business we might have with this company.
Jo – After it is posted on here, can you post the original site? I am just always interested to check out other blog sites.
Thanks
OK, I’m in the minority here, but the fun part will be seeing how long this lasts. I’d like to have an office pool to see when it gets shut down, and the winner gets a few SWUs. The community is buzzing right now, thereby, guaranteeing that this will spread like wildfire. I, and many others expect an early closure to this scheme, therefor if you want points you may need to pile on fast.
As always, I personally advocate for not disclosing it. 250,000 mile will be too much temptation to resist, and people will pile on quickly expecting an early closure.
By reading the hints, I suspect it involves the chase bold credit card, giftcards from an office store, and someway to liquidate these cards. I predict chase will see the spike in points they’re giving out, and quickly end the program.
Personally I’m more curious how this will end. Will it last as long as the mint, or will it close as fast as the post office scheme.
Game on, this blogger already said he plans on posting the scheme tomorrow. On your marks, get set, ready…
“subject to change without notice”.
This post might not necesscarily kill the ppm, but it will DEFINITELY bring a lot of unwanted (negative) attention from a certain card issuer….then it will kill it.
A masterful play sir…you are going to tell everyone the secret…after the break.
I think I figured it out am already executing the plan! I hope I’m right for fun’s sake.