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News Roundup
This is a roundup of news that I have come across during the day. Here you can read about bots have been winning T-Mobile Tuesdays giveaway contests, some new details on how the Chase Sapphire Reserve $300 credit works, American Airlines asks for $2,500 to take care of 52 hidden city ticketing cases, Southwest reports ‘modest’ improvement in travel demand and turns down government loan, and BofA customers finds an extra $2.45 billion in his account.
Bots have been winning T-Mobile Tuesdays giveaway contests
In July, astute Reddit users noticed an odd pattern among the recent winners of T-Mobile’s “T-Mobile Tuesdays” sweepstakes. A disproportionate number of the public winners were located in the tiny township of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. One user noted that since the start of the program in 2018, there had been 24 Chadds Ford winners out of 3,700 total residents. In contrast, they counted 14 New York winners out of 8.3 million residents, 25 Los Angeles winners out of 4 million residents, and 22 Chicago winners out of 2.7 million residents.
Chase Sapphire Reserve: Do You Earn Points On The $300 Grocery/Gas Credit?
Apparently, your first $300 in travel purchases will not earn points if you used up the credit on grocery/gas since the system is coded not to reward points on the first $300 of travel purchase. But looks like Chase will manually credit the $300 in travel purchases, if you contact them.
American Airlines Cracking Down On Hidden City Ticketing?
A FlyerTalk member has shared a letter he received from American’s corporate security department. This person is an American AAdvantage Executive Platinum member, has lifetime status, and currently has 600,000 redeemable AAdvantage miles. It would appear that the member was engaged in quite a bit of hidden city ticketing, as the airline identified at least 52 cases of this. The airline is “only” asking for $2,500 to take care of the issue.
Southwest reports ‘modest’ improvement in travel demand, turns down government loan
Southwest Airlines reported “modest” improvements in passenger demand this month as vacationers booked last-minute trips despite the coronavirus pandemic. The company is also turning down a $2.8 billion government loan, saying it can get financing elsewhere. Southwest and other airlines last month reached agreements for portions of the $25 billion in loans for struggling U.S. airlines in the CARES Act in March. Southwest raised $15.4 billion — $13.2 billion in debt and $2.2 billion in a stock sale — and received $3.3 billion in government payroll support.
Bank of America Customer Opens Mobile App and Finds an Extra $2.45 Billion
Days after Citigroup Inc. made headlines for accidentally sending $900 million to a group of lenders, a Bank of America Corp. customer in Massachusetts opened his account to find an even bigger cash infusion: $2.45 billion. But the money was never really there.
