The $50 Paypal rebate on Northwest is back

by Grant Martin on

Earlier last year I posted an article about a new promotion between Northwest Airlines and Paypal, where if you pay for your ticket with Paypal you get a 50$ rebate after a few weeks. It worked pretty well, I flew a couple of routes and I got my money back long ago.

It looks like they’re running the promo again, maybe to stir up more interest in Paypal’s payment engine. The promo website says that you must book before March 27th and fly between April 1 and June 14. Easy enough.

And now some words for all of you afraid to use Paypal: It’s not that difficult. You don’t need to sign up for any crazy service (imagine my arms waving wildly in the sky), jump through any hoops or sell your soul to the devil. At the end of the booking process, you select Paypal as an option, click through a few links and drop your credit card number in. The rebate will be stored in an online account which you can directly deposit into your personal bank account or have sent to you in a check.

Still concerned? Let me know. I’ll book your ticket using Paypal, send you a check for twenty bucks and spend the other thirty dollars on sandwiches. Delicious, delicious sandwiches.

Travel Alert! $50 off Expedia coupon code

by Grant Martin on

[Edit — this deal has expired! Congrats to those who got in!]

Tooling around for hotels in Japan (I still haven’t found anything, Firestone) this morning, I stumbled upon a mistake discount code good for Expedia.com

Code ELITEPLUS50 takes 50$ off per night for what appears to be any hotel room in the database over 50$. I’ve been pandering around all morning pricing out various rooms over various periods. For starters, my girlfriend is leaving town early Monday morning next week, so I booked a hotel room for under 10$ near the airport so we can wake up as late as possible.

Hotels in Chicago, Tokyo and everywhere else I looked seem to work as well.

It crossed my mind that I could enroll in one of those hotel rewards jobbers and try too book a month straight of 4$ hotel rooms. Show up the first day, get the key and let the points roll in. After a month or so, show back up and check out.

But I suppose that would be unethical, wouldn’t it?

So if you do make use of this coupon code, try to keep it under control. I have a feeling once Expedia gets around to finding out their error that the code won’t last more than a couple of hours anyway. Happy booking.

Any of you East or West Coasters want to go to El Salvador?

by Grant Martin on

Delta just launched a fare sale from Washington, New York and San Francisco to the Central American capitol of El Salvador, San Salvador. For just over two hundred bucks, you can get away from the torrential rains of the early spring for a long weekend on the Pacific.

Sounds great huh? The best part is that El Salvador hasn’t really gotten up to speed on the whole tourist thing yet. With the whole civil war back in the eighties and a perennially slow economy, you’re going to find a fair amount of peace and quiet, free from the spring break crowd and throngs of cruise-bound tourists. It could be that perfect long weekend away from the office and your statistical analysis software that you’ve been fighting with.

Use a flex search on Kayak or Delta.com to find availability. Minimum stay is three days (so you’ll have to take off Monday) and availability only seems to go through late May early June. Be patient an flexible and you’ll find something — I just brought up several dates in sample bookings. Your total price should be about 231$.

Check out the Lonely Planet guide to the country if you want some inspiration, although take it with a grain of salt. LP could make Somalia look rustic, off the beaten path and hip.

An ode to supply and demand

by Grant Martin on

For the past week or so I’ve been desperately trying to get the heck out of Ann Arbor both this weekend and for the weekend of the 29th. Something about being in this cold state (that’s a noun and an adjective), makes me go crazy after being in town for more than two consecutive weekends.

As I write this from my kitchen table on this snowy Michigan Saturday morning, I blame the airlines for my dilemma. Running a series of flex searches on Kayak and NWA.com over the week, I discovered a secret sale to Germany, of sorts, where I could get from here to Düsseldorf, Germany for about 390$. That’s a pretty good, although not a phenomenal price for the four thousand mile journey.

But its only good for Easter weekend.

Leaving the prior and following weekends on the same flights yields the prices of 2,192$ and 939$ respectively.

The problem is that nobody wants to go to Europe for Easter; most of our families are in The States and we won’t be traveling that far to see them. So with the decreased demand and the same supply, airlines are forced to drop prices over that weekend.

It makes you wonder how much money they’re making on the 390$ flight and if they are profiting, how much they’re gouging on the others. It sort of makes you angry.

Low fare alert! Get to Shanghai next month for under $600!

by Grant Martin on

Wow, I haven’t seen prices to Shanghai this low in a while. Apparently, sales on Delta’s new route to China have been sluggish, so perhaps this is a secret sale to get things kick started. Or maybe someone fat fingered the price feed, but either way, this is a great price.

Availability seems to be from a variety of cities centered around Atlanta, with the lowest prices ringing in at about 580$. Travel can be assorted times in April and the price seems to go up pretty quickly once May rolls around. You can use a flex search on either Kayak or straight on Delta’s website to find the lowest price compared to the best availability.

In case you’re considering jumping on this, don’t forget that you have to get a visa before you go to China, usually in person at the Chinese consulate. This takes time, money and more priority mail envelopes than you think. But for the experience of seeing China’s Gateway to the West this is definitely worth it.