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Vomik posted:If you don't miss at least 2 flights a year you're arriving too early. isn't the whole point of arriving early is so that this doesn't happen? idk i've been doing this for about five years now and have only had a few close shaves now- i've literally never missed a flight. isn't that a good thing?
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Nov 19, 2018 02:50
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Rex-Goliath posted:isn't the whole point of arriving early is so that this doesn't happen?  I’ve been at this for 3.5yrs and the only flights I’ve missed are connections. I have a good job that allows me to leave sites and fly whenever I want, so I guess that’s why? For instance, I booked 2 days at 2 sites last week, one in Omaha, NE and the other in Fresno, CA. Tuesday I did my full day, 9-4, Wednesday I did 9-2 and left the site for a short drive to the airport for my flight at 4. Thursday I did my full day 9-4 and Friday I did 9-11 and left for the short drive to the airport for my flight at 1. I’m never in a position where I have to stay somewhere until 5pm or whatever.
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Nov 19, 2018 03:17
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Vomik posted:aren't casual fliers the ones who show up early? Man I don’t feel such a dumbass anymore for missing my flights. But it really depends on the airport. Chilling out at a free lounge is a good reason to arrive early. Some airports are just so bad that you don’t want to arrive early.
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Nov 19, 2018 08:58
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Idk wtf but I spent 2.5 hours in line in Marrakech waiting to get my passport glanced at and stamped ugh
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Nov 19, 2018 11:03
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I rented a car in Dallas and drove the google maps suggested route which took me on a road that charged a toll of $4 to drive 5 miles through the airport. The company is paying for it, but I thought Orlando was lousy with tolls, jeez I literally drove out of the parking deck, got a ticket, drove past the airport and then had to pay the $4 toll. e: this is my first time in Dallas - I’ve never seen anything like that before in all the cities I’ve been to
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Nov 20, 2018 05:39
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Cacafuego posted:I rented a car in Dallas and drove the google maps suggested route which took me on a road that charged a toll of $4 to drive 5 miles through the airport. The company is paying for it, but I thought Orlando was lousy with tolls, jeez Texas went on a huge road privatization/toll road leasing spree in the early 2000s. It kept taxes low, the state government funded, and all they had to do was sign over control of a bunch of highways on 40-100 year contracts. Have fun with the rental car company fees on top of that toll! If you put expenses on a personal card, don't forget to keep an eye on your statements, because they can hit way after the rest of the rental charges. When I go to Dallas I just tell google maps to avoid toll roads entirely. It's usually not that much more time and it avoids so much fiddly expense report bullshit that it's worth the detours.
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Nov 20, 2018 06:16
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Space Gopher posted:Texas went on a huge road privatization/toll road leasing spree in the early 2000s. It kept taxes low, the state government funded, and all they had to do was sign over control of a bunch of highways on 40-100 year contracts. It must suck to live in a State with tolls but I'm pretty much in the same boat. All my tolls usually don't hit my card until a week or two later.
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Nov 20, 2018 06:50
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iirc when they originally hooked up the highways to DFW, going through the airport was way faster than taking the normal interchanges so they put a toll on anyone going through in less than 8 minutes. It was free between 8-30m. I think they recently raised the prices bc TX is open toll and no one notices anymore. When I was living there I always noticed the higher number of car breakdowns on 75 (free) vs the Tollway (also on the fancy side of town)...
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Nov 20, 2018 18:48
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I prefer toll roads at home because I can trade money for time, but they can be annoying when I’m traveling for sure.
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Nov 20, 2018 19:15
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Your company won’t reimburse tolls?
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Nov 20, 2018 22:19
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sellouts posted:Your company won’t reimburse tolls? The challenge is that they usually hit like a week or two after you return the rental, are layered with admin fees, and you never get a receipt for it. So it's a sneaky way to have a balance leftover on your card if you don't remember to check for it.
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Nov 20, 2018 23:17
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I have used tolls before on company travel. Let me rephrase Your company won’t let you reimburse what is likely between 20 and 60 dollars from tolls, even if you were forced to pay cash?
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Nov 20, 2018 23:27
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Mine would make me sign an affadavit saying this was a real expense and a receipt was not available and probably delay the entire reimbursement by at least a week. But I could still do it. So if I can do it, I refuse to believe someone else couldn't. It's still a pain in the rear end though.
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Nov 20, 2018 23:46
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sellouts posted:I have used tolls before on company travel. Let me rephrase Oh I get paid back, it just goes on our small biz's card. I am just unsure whether going through that toll gate cost me $1 or $2 + a $25 admin fee or something!
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Nov 21, 2018 00:08
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psydude posted:The challenge is that they usually hit like a week or two after you return the rental, are layered with admin fees, and you never get a receipt for it. So it's a sneaky way to have a balance leftover on your card if you don't remember to check for it. If you're using National (and I assume other rental cars have a similar set up) you can go here: https://www.htallc.com/en/tollpass/invoice/search?agency=nationalcar and have it give you receipts. For cash tolls, I just use the affidavit thing in Concur. I just check a box saying I don't have a receipt for it if it's over $15. Under $15 they don't care unless you develop a habit of doing that on lots of expense reports. And for the tolls, I just generally file a second expense report for them.
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Nov 21, 2018 00:16
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sellouts posted:I have used tolls before on company travel. Let me rephrase The problem isn't "I can't expense this," it's, "there is a bunch of annoying bureaucratic bullshit around everything related to electronic tolls in rental cars." In Dallas, like most places in the US, there's no cash option.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:51
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I don’t need any a receipt for anything under $75. That’s the sole reason I’m never leaving my current employer.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:52
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My employer just paid over $1000 to send me to Dallas for about 6 hours and I paid the tolls, which they’ll reimburse me for. I don’t care about paying for them and I’m getting reimbursed, I was just surprised that Dallas had those tolls. I know several fellow employees that live in the Dallas that could have done this visit, but sure, I’ll book a flight 3 days out for $800  I don’t know about everyone else that travels, but I love my job, despite the crazy travel. They pay me insanely well for the amount of work that I do.
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Nov 21, 2018 04:16
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I’m not a peasant anymore and went from barely making Delta Silver to potentially hitting Gold (card spend what’s up). Am I understanding Delta rollover correctly if I end up with 44K for the year that I keep the 44K minus 25K next year and start again as Silver to get Gold?
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Nov 21, 2018 04:58
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movax posted:I’m not a peasant anymore and went from barely making Delta Silver to potentially hitting Gold (card spend what’s up). Am I understanding Delta rollover correctly if I end up with 44K for the year that I keep the 44K minus 25K next year and start again as Silver to get Gold?
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Nov 21, 2018 06:25
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movax posted:I’m not a peasant anymore and went from barely making Delta Silver to potentially hitting Gold (card spend what’s up). Am I understanding Delta rollover correctly if I end up with 44K for the year that I keep the 44K minus 25K next year and start again as Silver to get Gold? Anything above silver will roll, so next year you'll be silver and start off 2019 with 19k miles. However, you start over qualifying for 2020. So the 19k miles that roll over mean you only need 6k to make silver again, and then another 25k after that to hit gold.
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Nov 21, 2018 18:44
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Last time flying United this year, figured I would try to get at least one upgrade out of elite Silver status since I have never gotten a comp upgrade at UA. After checking in, I noticed that I wasn't on the CPU (comp upgrade) list anymore. I called in to fix it. Figured it would take 5 minutes max on the phone with their elite phone line. NOPE - 55 minutes. Good riddance UA.
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Nov 21, 2018 19:51
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Mandalay posted:Last time flying United this year, figured I would try to get at least one upgrade out of elite Silver status since I have never gotten a comp upgrade at UA. You probably already figured this out but Silver "Elite" status on United is barely one step up from the unwashed masses. Any status below top-tier generally doesn't mean poo poo on the US Big 3. You might get some free bags to check, and higher up be able to book premium economy for free as well, but that is about it. And even then, in the end what you paid for your ticket is the ultimate criteria. Loyalty doesn't count for much. Your chances these days of getting any comp upgrade on UA as a Silver are about 0. I don't even get upgraded all that often as a 1k unless I am on a non-hub route.
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Nov 21, 2018 19:57
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Barcelona airport is nice and clean and everything was easily marked a displayed. Idk if I just never notice cause I usually rent a car when traveling but they have a cool stand with a lady who speaks like 5 languages that's a giant tablet that let's you put in an address and it give you a taxi cost. Was loving dope and a nice change from aggressively negotiating taxi fares in africa via google translate or both parties 3rd/4th language.
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Nov 21, 2018 20:08
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Ixian posted:You probably already figured this out but Silver "Elite" status on United is barely one step up from the unwashed masses. True, I did get Economy Plus on UA at checkin. Thanksgiving is a casual flier time so I thought that upgrades might be possible on our undersold flight. I'm AA EXP, so I'm familiar with being disappointed with upgrades. Just tried to save a few bucks with this flight today on United.
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Nov 21, 2018 20:13
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Flying from Dallas to anywhere domestic is a good way to guarantee that you'll never be upgraded on American as EXP.
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Nov 21, 2018 20:39
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psydude posted:Flying from Dallas to anywhere domestic is a good way to guarantee that you'll never be upgraded on American as EXP. I’ve missed 2-3 upgrades total going to/from New Orleans from DFW. EXP Plat Pro and Plat. It doesn’t have many elites. Eagle is usually a guaranteed upgrade. Also Charlotte is just more than 1k iirc so it’s pretty easy for that.
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Nov 21, 2018 20:47
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Mandalay posted:True, I did get Economy Plus on UA at checkin. Thanksgiving is a casual flier time so I thought that upgrades might be possible on our undersold flight. Lot of those casual flyers are business flyers with status thinking to themselves "finally, all that poo poo I put up with traveling for work is gonna pay off, watch my family and I sail past these poor fucks getting dirt thrown on them" ....and even they usually end up disappointed. I'm not upset by it - the airlines have made it perfectly clear, if you pay more, you get more, whether you choose to fly with them every time or not. I've flown Delta once in the past 5 years, for example, last year, zero status, and when I did it was in business and I guarantee they treated me nicer than probably the highest status person on the plane who got upgraded (or didn't). These days status just gets you what not even a decade or so ago you got for free with most airlines - check in bags, slightly more legroom, and not getting treated like a complete piece of poo poo, instead just a slightly smelly one.
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Nov 22, 2018 01:19
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Lote posted:I’ve missed 2-3 upgrades total going to/from New Orleans from DFW. EXP Plat Pro and Plat. It doesn’t have many elites. Eagle is usually a guaranteed upgrade. Also Charlotte is just more than 1k iirc so it’s pretty easy for that. TO Dallas from a spoke airport is never bad. It's FROM Dallas that really sucks.
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Nov 22, 2018 01:55
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Ixian posted:You probably already figured this out but Silver "Elite" status on United is barely one step up from the unwashed masses. I just learned this today, Silver on Delta is basically meaningless compared to having the AmEx. Sadness.
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Nov 22, 2018 02:12
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movax posted:I just learned this today, Silver on Delta is basically meaningless compared to having the AmEx. Sadness. One of the benefits of flying out of PIT is that I haven't not been upgraded to first class a single flight this year. It's great
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Nov 22, 2018 03:40
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I've been doing a combination of MPLS, IAH, ATL, IAD, ORD and DFW. I'm only hitting Delta Gold this year but I usually hit my grades the most out of Chicago for some unexpected reason and straight to first class.
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Nov 22, 2018 04:27
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27 people on the upgrade list from dfw to cdg. How are people upgrading from economy to premium? Is that a lower mileage cost?
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Nov 22, 2018 09:09
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sellouts posted:27 people on the upgrade list from dfw to cdg. I don’t think you can upgrade with miles from economy to premium economy?
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Nov 22, 2018 13:03
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Ixian posted:Lot of those casual flyers are business flyers with status thinking to themselves "finally, all that poo poo I put up with traveling for work is gonna pay off, watch my family and I sail past these poor fucks getting dirt thrown on them" ....and even they usually end up disappointed. Maybe it’s because my points all go to BA so I never get upgraded on AA (well, once this year randomly) but as long as airline status means I can board earlier and wait in the nice lounge that’s fine with me. One more trip left this year, DCA>JFK>>MXP>AUH then back again, a mix of AA and Etihad business. Should get me to BA Gold which I can enjoy for two months before my year resets and I go down to Silver.
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Nov 22, 2018 15:48
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psydude posted:Flying from Dallas to anywhere domestic is a good way to guarantee that you'll never be upgraded on American as EXP. I have a good record of upgrades from DFW as an EXP, but I never fly in the morning, all my flights through there are typically late afternoon/evening.
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Nov 22, 2018 16:13
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Cacafuego posted:I don’t think you can upgrade with miles from economy to premium economy? Might be something that you can request at the gate. As of right now AA treats premium economy as a full-fare economy ticket when it comes to upgrades (you don't have to pay the copay, just the points). I think that's changing for next year. TIL recently: if you spend enough money flying on American they'll begin to waive change fees and upgrade copays.
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Nov 22, 2018 16:45
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psydude posted:Might be something that you can request at the gate. As of right now AA treats premium economy as a full-fare economy ticket when it comes to upgrades (you don't have to pay the copay, just the points). I think that's changing for next year. Do you have that in writing? I can’t find proof of it anywhere. And yeah I thought it was weird like 12-16 got cleared but I was the only one who did to business.
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Nov 22, 2018 17:14
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Ixian posted:These days status just gets you what not even a decade or so ago you got for free with most airlines - check in bags, slightly more legroom, and not getting treated like a complete piece of poo poo, instead just a slightly smelly one. Maybe I still have PTSD from United, but flying Delta domestic as Platinum gets me upgraded 99% of the time and they treat me great. I've even been upgraded to first on flights to Mexico and stuff where you get real food on real plates with metal silverware. I nearly cried.
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Nov 22, 2018 17:21
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psydude posted:Might be something that you can request at the gate. As of right now AA treats premium economy as a full-fare economy ticket when it comes to upgrades (you don't have to pay the copay, just the points). I think that's changing for next year. Wait what? My Prem Econ -> Bus upgrade to HKG still cost me 350 out of pocket?
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Nov 22, 2018 17:53
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