Working The System

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Working The System was Originally Posted on June 26, 2014 by

I have been known to “work the system”; taking advantage of situations which further my goals.

For example, I learned about getting bumped on airline flights. If you are not familiar with the process here it is:

Airlines want you to fly. They advertise it in magazines, on TV and so on. However, once they get your money, they would prefer that you never show up, thus having another seat to sell. They prove this by overselling seats on a plane and then, if everyone shows up, they are required to get rid of some people until they are at 100% capacity. That process is called DENIED BOARDING. The airline will ask for volunteers to take a later flight and will compensate them at a some fee. That fee could be a couple hundred dollars. If no one volunteers, the airline will just choose someone and kick them off. It could be you, your family and baby, etc. They used to be required to pay you a stipend but that appears to have been increased of late. Still, they randomly choose people and those people may miss getting on a boat for a cruise and too bad for them.

So others, like me, leave extra time to be able to take advantage of a full flight and ask not to go. At that prospect the airlines salivate. I once had a gate agent call my party her best friends when all 4 of us gave up our tickets. We were flying Atlanta to Honolulu in coach. The Atlanta to Los Angeles flight was not full, but when we got to LAX for a short lay-over, I got off and asked the agent if she was looking for any volunteers. That is when the said salivation started. It appears that a Hawaii-based school band was dropped early from competition and she needed quite a few seats to get them all home early. Our round trip tickets were $350 and we were offered $400 if we would stay in Los Angeles overnight in free hotel rooms. Because my elderly Mom was fling with us, I asked if she could go 1st class to Honolulu in the morning instead of the $400.  The agent said she had upgraded us to first on that leg already but that if we wanted, she would upgrade us the rest of the trip instead of the $400. We accepted.

I have played carefully at casinos and worked the system to get free meals and rooms without being a big roller.

When I go to the hospital on Oahu, my medical provider flys me at their expense. I log in and add my frequent flier number to the ticket so I get miles for the trip.

I recently wanted to get my Mom a few frequent flier miles in here account to keep existing miles from timing out. The airline website has a list of shopping partners so I went there and chose Office Max. I would get 2 miles per dollar spent, but any miles would keep her account active. I decided on a $6 memory stick and choose to pick it up at the local store in Kona. I get a memory stick for a decent price and Mom gets 12 miles in her account. I paid for it with my Amex from Costsco which means I’ll get a few extra cents back at the end of the year (it’s a cashback card). So 2 days later when I go to Office Max, they say that they were out of the 8gb memory sticks so they gave me a 16gb one in place of it. Extra Bonus! Mom gets miles, I get money and an upgrade!

When shopping I often wait until checkout, then look at places like RETAILMENOT.COM for a coupon.

When shopping for ink for my HP printer, I get a discount, being a previous employee. Rather than going directly to their siste, I go through MYPOINTS, a site where I read emails and get money back. By using their site to shop the HP site I get points towards rewards. Those rewards add up and the last reward I took was paying for Restaurant.Com coupons which are discounts off meals. I pay for the ink with my Amex card and pay for the meal with my Amex, thus essentially quadruple dipping. It makes my head spin.