Of bargains...

Fucking Avis. I had a reservation with them for my 3 day upcoming trip to Seattle, when I noticed that for some reason (presumably idiocy) I had only booked the car for two days. When I went to change the reservation, they tried to charge me $150 including taxes for 3 days. Are you shitting me? Fuck that.

So, I try HotWire. I enter in my information, dates, etc. Final cost: $75. That sounds like a lot less than $150. So, I buy it. Now, the way that HotWire works is that you don't know who you're contracting with until you buy. Guess who the company turned out to be once I bought? Avis. Fuckers. Why couldn't your dumb asses just give me the reasonable rate out of the gate?

I realized this was part of an imminent change in my purchasing habit. When you're on a corporate expense account, you generally don't care who you buy from or how much it costs so long as it's covered by the company. Mostly you care about the accrual of rewards programs. So, at Microsoft, I used United and Avis almost exclusively. I racked up a fuck-ton of miles on United, and I got a discount on Avis and a member of Avis Preferred, which allowed me to go straight to my car.

But, I've realized that the reward programs aren't actually worth it when you're paying with your own money. United, I've noticed, is consistently higher priced than other airlines. From New York to San Francisco, they are consistently $200 more expensive than others (and incidentally, most corporate travel policies allow you to choose any flight within $200 of the lowest fare...coincidence?). So you know what? Fuck 'em. Sure, it's nice to have the miles to use for upgrading and such, but the money you save by taking the lowest-cost flights, car rentals, etc. more than makes up for the miles you don't accrue. Hell, in the New York case, just not taking that one flight is enough to pay for another ticket! Fuckers.

So, I'm officially becoming a bargain hunter. I cancelled my Mileage Plus Visa last December as I realized, far too late for my own comfort, that a $50-$80 annual fee doesn't even come close to being worth the miles accrued, even if I buy everything with my card. Instead, I got a Fidelity MasterCard with 1.75% cash back that goes into my Fidelity Core account, which then begins to earn interest. Much better deal. And as of my last few trips, I take whichever airline is cheapest. Sure, I may pay more to take a non-stop, but I'm not taking United just because they're United any more. It will hurt me to go from being Premier Executive ("1P" in the flyertalk lingo) to being a General Member peon (not even Premier/2P!), but I'll save money.

P.S. I'm a grad student in just over two weeks. Somebody buy me dinner.