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People who are travel addicts like myself are constantly finding ways for other people to foot their travel bill. That might include setting up a travel blog and going on lots of junkets, or finding every possible way on How To Earn Frequent Flyer Points. A new term called ‘Travel Hacking‘ has come about because of this obsession.

Travel Hacking - How To Earn Frequent Flyer Points

Basically, why should you pay for your own airfares and hotels when you can drastically reduce or eliminate the cost of travel?

Chris Guillebeau has a guide out on how to rack up as many miles as possible. He’s done all sorts of silly stuff to earn frequent flyer miles – like organise a hair loss consultation – even though he has a full head of hair and his scalp doesn’t show any sign of him resembling Homer Simpson any time soon.

How To Earn Frequent Flyer Points and Miles – The Innovative and Funny Way

But there are other innovative (and let’s face it, funny) ways on How To Earn Frequent Flyer Points which are a bit left field. It’s all about identifying the opportunity that comes up and going for it! That is, until the entity concerned realises they have been taken for a ride and then decides to close the loop hole! And once you’ve racked them up, you can blow them on all sorts of things besides flights, like plastic surgery!

Here we go! Let’s check out some frequent flyer entrepreneurs!

1. Thousands of one cent transactions

Recently, I came across a story in Australia where one guy only spent $70 to earn 380,000 frequent flyer points. That’s because his credit card company offered a short term offer of 100 bonus points for each transaction recorded on the credit card. However, the bank’s problem was that there was no minimum spend required to gain these 100 bonus points.

So this innovative bloke goes rampant on his road toll top up card and proceeds to charge $0.01 transactions on his credit card – 7000 times! The bank noticed this and didn’t redeem all of his transactions, but he racked up enough to earn enough frequent flyer miles for three return trips to Europe from Australia. Not bad I think!

But all good things come to an end, and the bank ended up closing this loophole so no-one else could take advantage of it. But it pays to keep an eye out for the odd bonus offer from your credit card company to see if it’s worth racking up lots of low value transactions!

2. Pay For All Business Expenses on Your Credit Card

I’ve actually done this before quite a few times. Some of your corporate functions can be easy points rackers, especially if they cost a few grand each and you have a few of them a year. As an example, if your company has a staff social function, feel free to pay it on your credit card and have it reimbursed later. You should do it, even if you need to tolerate some business terminology wankwords!

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One personal example that I racked up points on was a social function at a bowling alley. I paid for all of the food and booze and had the money reimbursed into my account the next week. However, the only problem was that I felt a bit shady when submitting the claim form with the receipt, as the establishment had itemised every single drink in chronological order.

You could easily track the events of the night even if you weren’t there. The the night started of with a few beers, and then ended up with dozens of c%*& sucking cowboys being charged to the bill. But hey, I was reimbursed for it, so no problems there!

This is a strategy used by small business owners who run any large business purchases through points-earning personal credit cards. Why not I say?

3. Literally Bet Your House on so-called ‘Safe Bets’

Australians are a nation of gamblers. We like blowing our money on all sorts of bets – from the horses, to the doggies, cockroach racing to a mind boggling number of sporting bet options. This has caused a social problem in Australia for many people who are looking to get rich with one bet. But one very savvy Australian frequent flyer point addict discovered a clever system of racking up points via gambling, with very, very ‘low risk’ bets.

This guy used a credit card with a high credit limit to buy $30,000 dollars worth of credit in a betting account. He then redrew on his home loan to pay off the credit card and dumped more money into the betting account until his account balance was up to around a crazy 200 grand ($200,000). He stopped here for only one reason – he’d maxed out his home loan and couldn’t redraw any more!). These transactions were counted as actual purchases which rack up points and also qualified for the credit card interest-free period, instead of being classified as a cash advance.

He then found extremely low-risk bets to place the money on – bets which were basically ‘even money’, which didn’t pay very much if you won. For example, on the night before the 2010 Australian Federal election, he put $200,000 on the Prime Minister retaining her seat which paid $1.01 for every $1 bet. It came off, so this ‘safe bet’ created 132,000 Frequent Flyer points (along with an additional $2,000 in winnings, or ‘profit’). So therefore, since he had won the bet and made a bit extra, he could withdraw his funds from the betting account to dump back into his home loan again! And then do it all over again. Rinse and repeat!

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He ended up generating 550,000 points in just over 2 years just from this particular method. But if you are going to use this strategy, choose your bets wisely!

4. Literally Buy A Truckload of Pudding

The “pudding guy” (real name David Philips) racked up a truckload of points by buying heaps of chocolate pudding and became famous for doing it. He managed to score a colossal 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles by buying 12,150 individual servings of chocolate pudding. Sounds like a lot of pudding, but it was worth it in the long run. While his pudding purchases cost him just over US$3,000 his million-mile haul was the equivalent of over 20 return tickets from the United States to Australia. Pretty cool return on investment me thinks!

It pays to notice changes in your surroundings. David spotted a supermarket promotion on “Healthy Choice” products: 500 free bonus miles for every 10 products purchased plus another 500 bonus points if the products were purchased and claimed within that month. He then looked everywhere for the cheapest Healthy Choice product possible. Firstly, a TV meal costing US$2. Then a can of soup for 90c. He went crazy and started to fill his trolley with soup when he realised the return on his investment.

But he went completely berzerk when he went to another store to buy even more soup, when he noted small plastic tubs of individual-serve chocolate pudding that were on sale as part of the flyer miles promotion for just 25c each.Therefore, each frequent flyer point had an effective attainment cost of only 0.0025c, because he could buy 10 tubs at 25c each ($2.50) to claim 1,000 free miles.

Hence, he bought out the whole store’s supply of chocolate puddings, visited more grocery stores in the area and cleared them out as well. He also managed to sweet talk a store manager to order him three palettes, or 60 more cases of the individual serve puddings. He eventually stockpiled 12,150 serves of the stuff. Probably enough to feed some African nations and make a dent in ending world hunger!

But his time management calculations weren’t great – he realised he wouldn’t have enough time to peel off all the labels and fill in the redemption forms before the bonus points deadline expired. But this is where his lateral thinking went into overdrive. He asked the Salvation Army staff to help him and peel off the labels and fill in the forms in exchange for donating the chocolate pudding tubs for the needy. That is a win win situation in my books! Rack up points while feeding people dessert! But it gets better! Because all of these puddings were classed as a donation, this was eligible as a tax deduction which refunded him over $800 in his tax refund! So he even got the government in on the act! Let the taxman help you!

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Healthy Choice initially didn’t want to honour the points promotion David submitted and claimed they hand’t received the redemption forms. But David had proof of registered delivery (there’s nothing like a paper trail to document things), so this wouldn’t stand up in court! Talk about egg on your face..if it was egg pudding..

I’m not exactly sure if he actually ate any of the pudding he purchased, but hey, if he had any left over he could probably sell it on the plane whilst he redeems his points if he really wanted to and make a profit on all of the money he invested! There’s nothing like making the system work for you! And he probably saved a chocolate pudding factory from closing down in the process!

Other Frequent Flyer Point earning strategies.

What about you – what other innovative (and possible funny) techniques have you used to rack up frequent flyer points?

Share with the world and get one back on the banks!

You might find more travel hacks at The Lazy Traveler’s Handbook: Use Frequent Flyer Miles to Travel the World FOR FREE.

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