DansDeals.com

I’m in Toronto until Tuesday, so updates may be sporadic until then.

Check out www.dansdeals.com/forums to talk about anything under the sun: Deals,  miles, tech stuff, credit cards, or the even what to do in dozens of cities worldwide, you can find more about it there!

I just wanted to give a big mazal tov to Eli Webster who got married tonight to Chana Samet in Toronto.

Eli singlehandedly created the awesome Dansdeals Forums where some 800 members have made nearly 17,000 posts in 1,800 topics and is a wealth of information and help.

It was even via the forum where I learned about the new LAN chart which allows you to use Starpoints for insanely low rates for short-haul flights to places like Canada, which I eventually used to get some tickets for Eli’s family to Toronto!

He has also helped me out on many occasions with the technical side of Dansdeals.com, even while getting ready for his marriage.

May you guys have a binyan adei ad, an everlasting home with only the best…thanks for all the great work, Eli!

I think I’ve had my fill of traveling a little while.

Over the past 2 months we dear wife and I have been in NY 3 times, in Toronto for a wedding, in LA for a year-end mileage run, on 3 Hawaiian Islands, went home to Cleveland for 3 days to move across the street into a beautiful new apartment, went to Pittsburgh for the weekend to buy furniture at cut-rate prices for the new place, and are now in Kansas visiting the in-laws.  Oh yeah, it’s supposed to be -13° here tonight and -30° with the wind chill-Hawaii is definitely the right place to be just about now.
Once I get home I’ll have to open up some more credit cards to get the mileage signup bonuses to pay for all that

Finally we get home on Monday and have no travel planned for a whole month! It is definitely tons of fun traveling in style when it’s all on the credit card companies dime (or mile in this case), but even with all the amazing upgrades (lie-flat airplane beds, 4 room oceanfront suites, caddy’s and camaro’s) it’ll be nice to just be home!
I guess that means I’m no Ryan Bingham. Although 10 million AA miles would also be nice.

I’d like to wish a hearty Mazal Tov to my dear younger brother (#2 of 6 boys!) Dovid Eleff (Cleveland) on his engagement to Rochel Boyarski (Montreal).
Their L’chaim engagement party will be this Saturday night at 8:30pm at Chovivei Torah, 885 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY.
Mazal Tov!

Good thing I was able to get BusinessFirst award tickets nonstop from Honolulu to Newark for tonight…

Reuven Mandel from University Heights, OH! You’ve just won 6 free nights at any Hyatt in the world!

There were a total of 243 total raffle entries (and it seemed like most of you waited until the last possible night to enter) and the winning number (53) was picked via random.org’s random number generator after each entrant was pre-assigned specific raffle numbers ranging from 0 to 242 according to how many raffle entries they had.

The person who had the most total raffle entries was Ronny Freund of Cleveland Heights, OH with 14 total raffle entries and for that he automatically gets 1 free night at any Hyatt in the world!

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Rankings by raffle entries:
1. New York
2. New Jersey
3. Ohio
4. California
5. Florida
6. Canada
7. Israel
8. Australia
9. Pennsylvania
10. Connecticut
11. Illinois
12.  Colorado
13. Minnesota

Raffle entries were awarded 1 per card application, and 3 more entries for card approvals. 6 people had at least 10 raffle entries, but only 1 of those people had any actual card approvals…I think next time I’ll have to rethink how to set it up better!

Related Posts:
4th Anniversary Post Linky
3rd Anniversary Post Linky
2nd Anniversary Post Linky
1st Anniversary Post Linky

It seems hard to believe, but this site is now 5 years old! Seems like just yesterday when I was down in Brazil and decided to stay connected by starting a little blog for friends and family and now some 10,000 people a day come to check it out!

And yes, together with the site’s birthday comes my own…I’ve now been around for quarter of a century!  Best thing about turning 25? Cheaper car rentals!

It’s a been a great year, and a fun challenge to keep the site updated while flying across the world…A month at 4 Hawaiian Islands (I’ve been a hopeless Hawaii addict ever since the $87 inclusive deal of 2006), 2 weeks in Israel, 3 trips to LA, 2 to KC, 6 to NYC, Toronto, a free trip to Vegas at the beautiful Wynn and Encore…wow that’s a lot of miles burned!  I’ve also enjoyed sharing some of my own thoughts on each place via the “Trip Notes” posts.  (I’ll tag the end of this post with “trip notes” so you can click on it and read other trip notes postings.)

People ask me why I like traveling so much…it’s quite simple!  I fly everywhere for free with my miles.  Most of my flights are in First class and trust me, flying in a lie-flat bed to Israel makes you just wish the flight was longer!  When I travel I carry around enough “wallet candy” to make sure that I never have to wait in a line and that I always have access to an airport lounge.  My rental cars are Infiniti’s, Camaro’s and Caddy’s for the price of compact cars.  I get upgraded to fabulous suites that I didn’t pay a cent for.  What could be better?  I hope that by following the site religiously and participating in the dansdeals forums that you too can have as much fun as I have doing this!  It’s really not so hard…just start by churning some credit cards!

Anyway there have been a ton of incredible deals this past year.  My favorites have been the US mint coins (hauling in a quarter million in coins is great exercise!) and all of the Hyatt deals, free top-tier diamond status, a free Hyatt night that came with the diamond status (which also counted towards faster free nights), and then the stay twice at any Hyatt and get 14,000 miles+6,000 points+1 free night in any Hyatt.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with the  350K miles and 22 faster free nights that I got from that promo!

But there were lots of other amazing deals over the past year…let’s hear what your favorite was!

P.S. Stay tuned for the winners of the Dansdeals.com 5th Anniversary promotion…the raffle will take place by 11/30!

Just grabbing a bite to eat at the Continental President’s Club in LGA (for all its problems it has the best cereal selection of any club I’ve been to) after my 3rd flight leg out of 16 (!) until the end of the year and will be in NYC for the weekend and then in Toronto until Wednesday.  Updates may be sporadic especially while north of the border.

I was the apparently the only elite flyer on the flight who paid for coach as I got the only elite upgrade on the flight and no other elites were on the upgrade standby list and the flight went out with empty first class seats.  Gotta love the transparency that Continental offers via their PDA site! Incidentally (for those of you now checking out my seat assignment on the PDA site) 1B is truly a great first class seat on the 737-500 series. It’s a bulkhead but it has a great cutout for your feet and hand luggage.

Another cool service that I just learned about 3 minutes ago: faxzero.com I’ve always wondered how to print things at the club and this is the answer-fax it for free to the self-service fax machine!

Update: There’s been a ton of comments made on older deals referenced to in this post that nobody will ever read…
Feel free to ask/comment on any of these deals right here in this post or better yet, take the discussions to dansdeals.com/forums where the discussion won’t die when the deal falls off of the front page.

Ever wonder which deals I actually do myself in a given month? Here’s a roundup for October:

-Deposited $60,000 of US Mint dollar coins. It looks like this is the end of the deal as the no-limit Native American coins appear to no longer be available. (Total coins deposited to date? 250,000!!!)

-Opened the new AMEX Premier Rewards Gold Card for the 15,000 MR Points Signup bonus.

-Churned 3 more AA cards for about 100,000 miles. (Total AA miles from churning to date: 2,250,000)

-My wife and I accumulated 44 stays at Hyatt hotels during October.  The total cost was $2,750 for 325,000 miles and hotel points, top-tier Diamond status with confirmed suite upgrades until 2011, and 22 free nights at any Hyatt hotel or resort in the world.

-My wife and I both opened up Chase checking accounts to get 50,000 Continental miles.

-I was able to order $120 in Borders GC’s for just $60 after $20 in instant savings and 40% off…unfortunately by the time I confirmed that the order went through and went to make a post about it Borders no longer allowing the 40% off coupon to work on the $60 GC package.

-Picked up a free after rebate LCD mount.

-Hopefully I’ll be getting a free ticket from Virgin America thanks to all 10 of my “Golden Tickets” being used…we’ll see if it really comes…

-Picked up to 2 tickets to visit the in-laws in Kansas City thanks to Continental matching Southwest’s $25-$100 zone sale.

-Got a Canon battery for just a quarter with free shipping.

-Got a $25 Piperlime GC for ordering a $10 pair of flip flops after a 20% off coupon.

-Opened a Key account to get $275 cash.

-Tried to get some Dippin Dots at BJ’s for just $1.79 after a coupon, but they were sold out of the parve Rainbow Ice flavor.

-Picked up 5 Paul Fredrick monogrammed shirts for just $19/each plus shipped.

-My wife and I both got Windows 7 Ultimate Edition for free!

-Got a few codes for free Hardcover Photo Books from Shutterfly, already made a few incredible looking books!

-Picked up some AA miles and extended the lives of my entire family’s AA miles thanks to Bose. and 700 Continental miles as well.

-Got a bunch of free Banana clothing from their 15th anniversary bash including a couple of $100 winners (sometimes it pays to be signed up for spam in all of your email accounts!)

-Helped my Aunt and Uncle book 2 Continental reward tickets to go to Israel right when the rates went down from 90K to 75K with the switch to Star Alliance.

Now I just need to find a good place to burn some Hyatt nights! Any suggestions? Park Hyatt Sydney ($1,200/room value), Park Hyatt Buenos Aires ($600/room value), Grand Hyatt Kauai ($400/room  value)? Any other suggestions for the best bang for the buck?

Do I have too much time on my hands? Which deals did you do this month? Anyone else go crazy at Hyatt?

Many people have noticed that the site has been loading extremely slowly over the past month.  This was mostly due to increased traffic (which is always a good problem to have!) which was causing my previous host, Bluehost, to slow down or even not allow the loading of dansdeals.com.  This was also due to a new throttling process that Bluehost instituted for high-traffic websites, and because of it I can no longer recommend using them as a webhost.

Eli, the creator of the Dansdeals Forums has single-handedly done all of the legwork moving the website onto a faster host that he recommended, 1and1.com. The tests that I’ve run show that the site is now loading up to 90% faster than it used to-Thanks Eli!

Please post a comment if you encounter any bugs or problems.

I’ve just completed a complete database overhaul due to this scary news.com article that I’ve been delaying and dreading for over a year and a half while ignoring 13 (!) new versions in the interim.

It took me a good 6 hours to manually complete, but I believe that I’ve finally hammered out most of the bugs.  If you do encounter any issues please post them here.

The good news is that it seems that WordPress has finally included the ability to automatically upgrade to newer versions, so I hope that this will be my last manual install.  Don’t forget to backup your database and make a copy of your content folder if you’re upgrading your own blog to the latest version of WordPress so that you don’t lose your data while avoiding falling victim to the worm making the rounds!

Back in March I was caught on camera in Cleveland doing 31mph in what is normally a 35mph zone at 3:24pm.
Problem being that the city claimed that this was a 20mph school zone at the time and therefore levied a $200 fine against me.

More interestingly was that I discovered that the intersection where I was photographed was not even one of the intersections with a red light/speeding camera. The picture was taken by an unoccupied vehicle that is parked in various spots.

I didn’t recall seeing the school lights flashing at the time so I went back to the scene and indeed the school lights were not flashing.

So I took a picture of the non-flashing lights, printed it out, and asked for a hearing.

Also working in my favor, we have a good family friend who’s a great lawyer, Fred Bolotin, who came to my hearing and helped me win the case with a whole bunch of Ohio revised code legalese that I’ll probably never understand.

Apparently the school speed limit is applicable even when the lights aren’t flashing, but as Fred pointed out, there was no sign besides for the lights indicating it was a school zone, the school got out at 3:00pm, and there were no kids around. The case was dismissed.

Thanks for the help, Fred!

Care to share how you got out (or didn’t get out) of a camera ticket? Hit the comments!

This is the trip that never ends…My return flight home out of LGA this evening is now 5 hours delayed and counting…

Stickied until 06/09, scroll down for new posts:

Let’s see…I’m driving to Pittsburgh today (05/27) where I’ll spend the Shavuos holiday among relatives.  From there I’ll fly to Los Angeles via Houston on Sunday (05/31) for a cousin’s wedding. I fly back to Pittsburgh via Cleveland on Wednesday night (06/03) before driving home to Cleveland sometime on Thursday (06/04) and then flying from Akron to NYC for my brother-in-law’s engagement party the following Sunday (06/07), before returning home Tuesday night (06/09).

At least there are double elite qualifying miles through 06/15!

Yes, updates may be sporadic at times over the next 2 weeks…Should I write trip reports like I did for Las Vegas and Detroit? (Yes, I know many of you requested a Hawaii trip report…it’ll come one of these days!)

I spent the day today with my dear wife at the Cavs-Pistons game at the Palace of Auburn Hills where the Cavs finished their 1st round playoff sweep of the Detroit Pistons. (12 more wins to go for Cleveland’s first championship in 45 years!)

The coolest part?

The place was packed full of excited Cavs fans! Cavs’ play by play announcer Joe Tait even said that in his 39 years of calling basketball that he had never seen an opponent’s arena so full of fans of the visiting team! The “Lets Go Cavs” and “MVP” cheers easily drowned out any “Lets go Dee-troit” attempts… According to ESPN Joe Tait even joked that “It’s great to be in Cleveland” and the Pistons’ Antonio McDyess said about the Cavs turnout and chants that “It was just embarrassing.” How awesome is that???

The mood after the game all around the arena was breathtakingly celebratory, it’s truly hard to describe the scene, but it was basically a road game with ecstatic Cleveland fans and Ohio license plates everywhere you looked.

It was well worth the 3 hour weekend drive to experience.

Even Sarah’s Deli, a sweet little Detroit kosher restaurant, had at least 4 tables full of Cavs fans by the time I got there. If you find yourself there, ask for a Bubba Burger with Pastrami (A burger with 3 slices of hamburger buns and excellent breaded onions with bbq sauce) together with their famous ranch dressing, it’s truly outstanding.

I’ll be back in Cleveland tomorrow evening, but do any readers have any good Detroit tips for the daytime? Any good kosher groceries to pick up in Canada in case we take the bridge to Windsor? Post ‘em now!

Update: Flying home to Cleveland tonight!

Originally posted on 04/06:
I’m in Overland Park, Kansas for the Passover holiday, updates may be sporadic over the next 2 weeks while I’m on the road…

Update from the (new and quite nice) LAS Presidents club: No need to worry, We both received complimentary upgrades
C’mon did you really think I wouldn’t be able to pull it off?

Originally posted on 03/15:

I fly tonight with my wife to Vegas where we’ll partake in 2 free nights at the luxirous Wynn resort and a free night at the new Encore resort, all courtesy of AMEX. Then we drive to LA to go to the wedding of one of her good friends.  In LA we’ll burn 4,000 Starpoints at the newly lowered category 2 Westin LAX, where I will have the first chance to test out my new Starwood Platinum status (Thanks Gabi!).

While checking in for my 4 hour, 50 minute flight I noticed that Continental upgraded me to first class. As I only hold bottom-tier Silver status, they only upgrade me.  Although there are still a number of first class seats available, companion upgrades are available solely for mid and top tier elites.

On our month-long Cleveland-Houston-Honolulu, Oahu-Lihue, Kauai-Kahalui, Maui-Hilo, Hawaii-Kona, Hawaii-Honolulu, Oahu-Los Angeles-Newark-Cleveland trip I had used 140,000 miles for BusinessFirst seats, but I have never used miles for a US48 trip and didn’t plan to start now.

At any rate, we’re now stuck with 1 first class seat and 1 coach seat…so what would you do?

Just landed back home in Ctown-what an amazing and crazy month it’s been!!!

Thanks for hanging in there, updates will be back to normal before you know it!

Post stickied: Please scroll down for new posts.

I’m headed off with my beautiful and sweet wife Mimi to Hawaii (via Houston of course-the 3 story President’s Club there is a “must-do!”) where we’ll hit all 4 of its’ major islands (Oahu, then Kauai, Maui, and finally the Big Island) and then come back to Cleveland with stopovers in LA and NYC. (Gotta get the bast bang for the buck out of the mileage tickets!)

Posting may be sporadic for the next month or so, but thanks for hanging in there and keep checking back because it will be updated!

Stay tuned for a report on Continental’s BusinessFirst service to Hawaii…

Update: To the 37 of you that emailed me about getting this room for another night. This was a one-time offer for the night of December 22nd only. There’s no purpose at asking it for other nights, if I have it for other nights I will be sure to post it!
Also, major LOL for the emailer who writes that he called the hotel’s front desk asking to get the free hotel offer for a different night but they didn’t know what he was talking about…that made my day!

Originally posted on 12/22:

Please email me if you would like to spend tonight in the Hyatt Place Cleveland, courtesy of Dansdeals.com!

If you haven’t been to a Hyatt Place before they are actually quite nice.  In each room there is the Hyatt Grand Bed and a nice sized sofa-sleeper separated from the bedroom by a half-wall.  There is a 42″ LCD HDTV, a small kitchen area, and best of all, free Wi-Fi!  The complimentary breakfast has a nice selection of individual sized cereal boxes and other goodies including some great new teas that I’ve discovered, like Tazo Passion (Yum!).

At any rate, if you’d like a room for tonight on the house please email me at: and we’ll figure out how to rendezvous.

The Hyatt Place Cleveland, which has a complementary “Stay Fit” fitness center and pool, is located in Independence, near the intersection of I-480 and I-77.

I’m right now in Pittsburgh for a couple of days and will be on the road for the majority of the next 6 weeks…I’ll keep on posting, but it may get sporadic at times.

For the curious, here are the flights that my wife and I have booked so far over that period of time…

Somewhere along the line that does qualify as a honeymoon, albeit in my own bizarre way…

Luckily we’re confirmed in first class on every flight that has first-class seating!!! Continental’s BusinessFirst service to Hawaii is said to be the best…we’ll see and report back if it was worth the extra miles!

Related Posts:
3rd Anniversary Post Linky
2nd Anniversary Post Linky
1st Anniversary Post Linky

Today is the 4th anniversary of this site, which for me means that I just turned 24 years old!

It’s been a heck of year, I’m still amazed that between racking some 50,000 elite qualifying miles (I was a 23 year old single religious jew living in Cleveland…why do you think I racked up so many flying miles?), getting married (!), and finishing up my MBA (I graduate in December!) that I’ve found the time to keep up the site.  And hey-we’re coming up on 2.5 million hits!  Here’s hoping that I can keep it going!

So, any votes for your favorite deal of the year?

The big day is THIS SUNDAY! Feel free to peruse our wedding website where you can sign our guest book, see photos, or even vote where we should take a honeymoon (or you can check out our registry ) at www.MimiAndDaniel.com

The 28° temperature recorded on Tuesday in Overland Park, KS gave me the chills, but hopefully this weekend’s forecast pans out as predicted!!!

13 days left ’till my big day in KC…but be sure to keep checking back for intermittent updates over the next few weeks!

I apologize for the light updates-I’ve been on the road for an 8-state marathon tour since last week and won’t be home until the beginning of next week.

Updates will continue to be sporadic, but be sure to stay tuned!

NEW YORK, August 12-PRNewswire-FirstCall-I’m thrilled to announce the latest corporate merger between entities in Cleveland, Ohio and Overland Park, Kansas. I am known by some (i.e. Rabbi Chaikin and others) as the “Sprinter Rebbe,” so this merger seemed apropos as the world headquarters of Sprint Corp. is in Overland Park.

After 23 years of searching I’m ecstatic to announce that I’ve found the most priceless deal ever: My engagement to Mimi Goldberg of Overland Park, KS! I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome anyone with a Starwood AMEX (just kidding!) that would like to share a L’chaim in honor of the latest Dansdeals merger. G-d willing we will be at Beis Levi Yitzchak this Wednesday night starting at 8:30pm. The address is 556 Crown Street, Brooklyn, NY 11213. The entrance is from the side, on Albany Avenue between Crown and Montgomery Streets.

Mazal Tov! Mazal Tov!

Daniel Eleff, CtownChosson (formerly known as Ctownbochur. )

CONTACT:
Wish us a mazal tov (or contact us for any Dansdeals.com advertising/barter opportunities!) at: mimianddaniel@dansdeals.com

HT: Berel and Chanie Sosover!

I’m going to be in Pittsburgh for the weekend and probably won’t be updating the site until Sunday night or so…

5 more promo entrants and there will be a 3rd Jetblue ticket being given away on Monday!

I flew out of LAX early this morning on Continental attempting to get to Chicago via Houston in order to go to my cousin’s wedding on Sunday.

Yesterday I noticed on Continental’s mobile site that my departure flight had been downgraded to a much smaller aircraft and I had also lost my seating assignments. Luckily I was able to still grab a good seat.

At the Continental President’s club I was told that due to the equipment downgrade I could volunteer my seat and receive a $300 voucher, a hotel room, and a confirmed first class seat if I would fly out the next morning. If it wasn’t a Friday I would’ve probably done it, but being that it was I passed on the offer.

With a scheduled 1:45 layover at Houston I went into Continental’s 3-story club in terminal E, where I learned that my flight to Chicago was canceled. All nonstop flights into Chicago were booked solid until Friday evening, but despite an obnoxious agent I still managed to finagle my way onto a Continental flight to Detroit from where I’d be able to take a Northwest flight to get me to Chicago by noon.

So, after 4 airports and 4 airport clubs visited (Including my first time in the stunning Northwest Worldclub in Detroit where I grabbed a quick yet luxurious and refreshing shower) all on the same day, I’m finally in Chicago.

My luggage? Only G-d knows where that is now!

-Posted from the shared Continental/Northwest club in Chicago.

I’d like to wish a hearty Mazal Tov to my dear brother Dovid who will receive his Smicha (rabbinical ordination) from Rabbi Dovid Schochet tonight in Los Angeles at Rabbi Dovid Schmukler’s Kollel Tiferes Menachem smicha program located in YOEC. (And this is not only because you provided me a good excuse to rack up some more miles and upgrades with the transcontinental flight )

Also congratulations to brother #3, JJ, (watch out guys, there are 6 of us boys in the Eleff family!) on graduating from high school tonight in Pittsburgh.

May you guys have the best of luck in all of your endeavors and go from strength to strength!

Wishing everyone a joyous and meaningful holiday.
Next scheduled update: 06/11

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jh0M17_DMQ[/youtube]

Update: There have been over 1,300 posts made on dansdeals.com/forums in just a week, great job guys!

Post stickied: Scroll down for new posts.

Call me skeptical, but I didn’t think it would work.

Sure, 2 discussion posts each yielded hundreds of great comments, but the last time (some 2 years ago) I tried replacing comments with a forum it was a rather miserable failure.

However Eli decided that he had enough of the long discussion posts and created dansdeals.com/forums

Major kudos to “Eli” (and also to “WhYME”) for working out the technical aspects of the forums.

The forum had its soft launch just a few days ago and it’s already impressively active with topics and posts!

The purpose of the forum is not to replace dansdeals.com or the comments on dansdeals.com, they will continue as normal. Rather the purpose is to better facilitate the discussion of all miscellaneous topics that aren’t dealt with properly on dansdeals.com.

Registration isn’t required to read the forums, however it is required in order to add your own thoughts.

Forums aren’t for everyone, but they definitely help facilitating discussion in an orderly fashion.

Comments on deals posted here will continue as normal, but if you have a miscellaneous question unrelated to a deal please post it in the forums in order to get the best response.

www.dansdeals.com/forums

Consumerist.com is a great website/blog filled with pro-consumer tips and stories. After they ran a story on Thursday about Delta’s retroactive baggage fee I let them know that according to Delta’s contract of carriage you have the right to demand a refund due to the rule change.

Their current top headline is “Delta’s Retroactive Baggage Fee Entitles Travelers To A Full Refund,” with a link back to the 2nd checked bag fee roundup that I wrote back on April 23rd.

So I’d like to give a special welcome to any consumerist.com readers who have found their way over to DansDeals.com!

Along with practical advice, credit card tips, mileage promotion scoops, and travel information you’ll find some of the best deals, free stuff, and price mistakes available on the web right here at DansDeals.com.

Ask any question that you may have (well, almost any question!) and either I or one of the many helpful commenters will try to help you out.

Sign up to be a member of our facebook group (it’s free!) and you’ll be the first to know about any truly incredible deals!