As we’re now officially into the winter season, you might be interested to know that you can ski for free if you fly Alaska Airlines to the right destination. If you’re an American Airlines elite member, hopefully you didn’t give away your account information freely. Credit card fraud may be on the rise and getting more sophisticated. Those stores and more in this Frequent Miler week in review around the web.
Alaska Airlines’ Free Ski Season Is Here Again
If you’re flying Alaska Airlines to a ski destination this winter, you might be able to score free lift tickets. The rules vary — some resorts only give you a ticket your day of arrival, some day of departure, and some for other days during your trip. See this post from No Mas Coach for the details on how to ski for free.
If You Got a Year-End Email From American Airlines I Hope You Didn’t Share It to Social Media
Ugh. I guess this is reason #7,694 why I am glad I don’t chase airline elite status: I don’t have to worry about American encouraging me to post my frequent flyer account number and email address. If you got the email from AA and shared it early on, you’d better check this post from View from the Wing and then check your AA account to make sure someone hasn’t gone and spent your hard-earned miles. Side note: check your rental car contract before you drive away. I was given the wrong contract once. If I hadn’t noticed, someone else probably would have driven off with my United account number, home address, phone number, email address, and driver’s license number. That would have been plenty of info to spend down what was a hefty balance at the time.
My Second Case Of Credit Card Fraud This Month (And It’s Sort Of Creepy)
In a continuation of the theme on data breaches, Lucky at One Mile at a Time shares a credit card fraud post that I’m afraid will likely become a more common story in light of things like the Equifax hack, the Marriott breach, and others like it. Maybe it’s a coincidence that the fraudulent charges happened near his hometown, but I wouldn’t be shocked if organized crime hasn’t taken some time to plan out how to use all that info gleaned from these breaches. This is a good reminder to keep an eye on your statements/charges and to lock down your digital kingdom.
25 Best Wyndham Redemptions!
Extreme Hotel Deals regularly publishes terrific hotel deals around the world (I recommend following them on Twitter if you don’t do that already). In this post, they highlight 25 of the best Wyndham redemptions, including some properties they include large suites for standard redemption. Wyndham is a program that doesn’t get a ton of press but can sometimes yield terrific value. I’ve personally been putting some spend on my Wyndham card as of late looking to build up points for a specific redemption next year, but if I had more points I might toss one of these properties on my list.
Closing out my American Express Schwab Platinum Card
Unlike other versions of the Amex Platinum card, Chuck at Doctor of Credit reports that you can not downgrade a Schwab Platinum to a Green card — or anything else for that matter — meaning that you only have 30 days from when the fee hits to decide whether or not you’d like to keep the card (otherwise you’re on the hook for the full annual fee and then might as well keep it open). He’s got a good list of to-dos before closing this one out as well as a reminder that December is the ideal time to open a Platinum card (or any of the Amex cards that offer a calendar-year credit).
That’s it for this week around the web. Check back soon for this week’s last chance deals.
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