Question for Microbob about travel gift certificate

[nation]

Hey MB,

Your pm box is full [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I thought I would post my pm to you here so others can respond too.

I'm thinking of using my FPPs for the travel gift certificate. My parents travel a ton, so they would be happy to buy it from me.

I was a little worried though to see that you would hesitate to use it again. Will I have a lot of trouble if I want to book my parents a trip to Vegas in May? What problems did you run across?

I read that I have to make the reservations for them on the site, so I'm assuming I have no worries about them using the actual certificate. Basically, they would want flight and hotel booked for several days. I am getting the $2500 one.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

nation

[MicroBob]

are you sure you're going to spend $2500?

You don't get to keep the remaining balance so you have to call or e-mail them first, find out the cost of the trip, then order the travel-card, then wait 3 or 4 days to get it, then book the trip by which time the price may have changed.


This is what happened to me.
My trip was around $2k. So I couldn't effectively use the $2500 card because I would be losing too much value.

And there was no way I could purchase the card/s before I found out if I needed only $2k or $2500.

Then I got the cards for $2k, and the price had changed. Cost about $200 more for one of our flights and I had to screw around again changing days on this to save a couple bucks all because they weren't able to reserve the flight for me when \until I got the card/s.


This kind of inconvenience and hassle and delay was why I would hesitate. It was just annoying.
It was like a 5 or 6 day deal of different e-mails and phone-calls to first get quotes of some prices, then get the card, then figure out what parts of the trip to change when the price changes by the time you are actually able to purchase the damn trip.


I'm just used to being able to go onto expedia or orbitz or hotels.com or whatever and setting it all up and being set.


So my trip was $2200 or something like that instead of $2k and I had to charge $200 onto my CC.
And somehow this meant they had to mail me the paper ticket for my flight only just because it was on my CC and not on the travel-certificate.
So my GF was booked electronically whereas I had a paper-ticket which I thought was kind of strange.


The lady at e-platinum was very nice and professional.
And the price we got was still comprable to what I could get myself online at orbitz or wherever.
But it took like 10 e-mails and 4 or 5 phone-calls before it was all finalized which I found to be more hassle than should have been necessary for a relatively simple trip.

[nation]

MB,

Hm. I'm not sure if this is going to work.

See, here's the thing. I have no problems if the trip ends up being more than the cost of the cards I get. I also have no problems shooting out the emails or phone calls to get this set up.

I've been playing a ton of live poker recently, only have 53k vpps, and don't know when I'll hit supernova to get the $1500 bonus. Not to mention, I have to clear it, and I get more value anyways out of the $2500 travel certificate.

What did most of the money go towards? Airfare and hotel? I guess I need to get details from my parents on their trip so I can get approximate costs from the travel agent to see which one to get. Did you contact eplatinum directly for all of that stuff (before you got the gift certificate)?

Also, when you got the card, did you just email eplatinum and they used some code? Or what was the deal there?

[MicroBob]

I just checked.
It took 11 different e-mails from the travel-agent over an 8 day stretch to finalize everything.

It was mostly simple stuff of just receiving one quote, asking about changing the flight within our trip to something else, her getting back to me to see if the new one would be okay, me saying, "yes, that looks good to me." etc etc etc.

I know I also talked on the phone with them 3 or 4 times.

Again, they were competent and professional throughout the whole thing. It just seemed a bit cumbersome but that was mostly because I didn't have the cards at first, then the price changed, then we had to look for a different flight within our trip, etc.


I don't completely advise against using them.
I may even use them again myself sometime.

They seemed fine and I'm sure will be fine for you too.
I wouldn't even classify what happened with my trip as being a 'problem'.
Just kind of annoying that I wasn't able to actually book it when it was still cheaper.

[MicroBob]

I talked with e-platinum and they gave me the quote for my trip.

Yes, you get some number code from PokerStars and give it to them. It's pretty straight-forward.

My trip was flight only. No hotel.

We went to Lima, Peru. And from Lima we went on a side trip to Cuzco, Peru (Machu Pichu lost incan city in the Andes).

It was the trip from Lima to Cuzco that went up significantly while I was waiting for the card number from Stars.


Memphis to Lima round-trip was roughly $900 each (2 persons).
Lima to Cuzco was about $250 each. Was originally quoted $150, then it had moved up to $350 by the time I tried to order as one of the flights must have filled up or something.
So I switched days of our trip within the trip to get it down to $250.


I assume things are fine for hotel booking through them too but we didn't do any of this through them.

[MicroBob]

I think most travel-agency type places should have special packages and other stuff available.

You could try calling or e-mailing them and saying you are looking for a fun Vegas package for your parents for 6 days or something and see if they have any recommendations.

Also, 53k FPP's ain't a lot.
So you obviously have a ways to go before you would be able to buy the $2500 travel-card.

Another option would be to just buy a $1k travel-card since you almost have that many FPP's anyway, and then pay the rest of the trip in cash.
You lose a little FPP value compared with the $2500 card if you go that route of course.

But I'm thinking you might be pushing it to try to get $2500 in stuff for your parents on this trip unless you fly them in first-class or get them a nice suite or something.

Otherwise, I would expect $400 flight each perhaps.
And maybe $200 night hotel X 6 nights.
And maybe $50 car-rental X 6 days.
Even that would only get you to $2300.

Maybe I'm not thinking of something else you can get for this.

[nation]

It might work after all then. Mostly because if I booked now (before I lost platinum) it would save them money anyways as they wouldnt book until next month. Also, they really wouldnt care if the quoted price ended up being a little more as a few days passed, because it still would be earlier than if they booked it.

I anticipate if I do it, it'll be a bit easier for me. Flight + hotel 5 nights is about 1k/person (at a nice place). They will be fine with that, and I really don't lose that much value by going with two 1ks over one $2500 card. It's still significantly more than the 1500 cash bonus.

[MicroBob]

well, you can't book NOW because you don't have enough FPP's yet.

But I imagine this will work out fine for you.

And I do think you'll probably end up only needing 2 of the $1k cards (yes, still better than points-for-cash bonus).

[nation]

haha i meant i had only 53k vpps so far for the year. i have 202k fpps.

[MicroBob]

aha.

in that case, BUY AWAY.
VEGAS BABY!!