I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking on the advanced topic of Close In Award Availability at PointsU in Toronto on October 22nd, 2017.
PointsU is the first points conference by Canadians for Canadians and a wide variety of topics will be covered. The conference is suitable for beginners into Travel Hacking, grizzled veterans and anyone in between.
If you are in the Toronto area, I would highly encourage you to come check it out. In fact, if you are into Travel Hacking at all, you should make the trip to Toronto … trust me, it’s worth it. I have been in the travel hacking game for 15 years and the information I gleamed from the first PointsU session in Vancouver was like condensing 5 years of learnings into one fun and very affordable day.
Today marks the first in a series of posts that I am calling “How I Hack”. The goal of this series is to provide some insight into how I approach Travel Hacking. I will cover the tools I use, the tricks I used and the methodology of how I find great travel deals. Today I am covering the ride sharing services of Uber and Lyft. As I add articles, I will link them at the top of each article so you can have a full understanding of my methods.
As a Canadian that travels to the US, I always use a local SIM card for my phone and data usage because our regular roaming plans in Canada are exorbitant.
I currently use the OnePlus3 which boasts a dual-SIM tray that allows me to use 2 SIM cards at once. In the first slot is my regular Canadian SIM and in the second slot sits a Roam Mobility SIM card. Now Roam Mobility has been my go to for quite some time because of its ease of use. All you need to do is buy a SIM card at any one of the retailers listed below (usually $9.95) or online ($9.95 or less depending on the promotion).
As you can see, you can pick up the SIM card almost anywhere in Canada … I mean there’s a 7-11 or a PetroCanada in almost every town I’ve ever been to.
With this SIM card, you now can subscribe to a plan with Roam. You can either choose Text+Data for $2.95/day, Talk+Text for $3.95 or Talk+Text+Data for $4.95. I go with the full meal deal (Talk+Text+Data) because it’s simple, covers everything off and comes with 500MB of 4G LTE data per day! That’s a LOT of high speed data at a very reasonable price. If you want more information on the available plans, check out the site here.
So how does this all tie in to heavily discounted Uber and Lyft rides? Well, both Uber and Lyft are in their infancy phase and desperate to attract new riders so there are a lot of free ride promotions. All you have to do is download their app, confirm your phone via text message and enter a promo code for a free ride.
For the Uber promo code, I simply check their promo page at https://www.uber.com/promo/ and for Lyft, you can check a site like RideShareOwl. When I signed up for Lyft, I accidentally signed up with a promo code for $5 off each my first 10 rides and while that is generous for those that use ride sharing a lot, it didn’t fit my needs so I emailed Lyft and asked them if I could use another promo code. They came back and said “of course … would you like to use a $50 or $60 off your first ride coupon?” …. ummmmm … $60? The response and response time was excellent with Lyft so I would encourage you to reach out if you have any issues.
Now how does Uber and Lyft ensure that only new riders get to use this promo code? Well they do it through your cell phone number. Both Uber and Lyft store the user’s phone number in their database in order to associate a person to an account. That’s where Roam comes into play. You see, with every SIM you purchase, you have a new phone number assigned to you. Because this gets into the ethical gray area, I’ll leave it at that. For those that want free/cheap Uber and Lyft rides, you just need to use your noggin a little.
On my recent trip to Disneyland, my daughter and I flew into the John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Orange County and took an Uber to our hotel and the ride was less than $22, the amount of the promo code I had, so the ride was free. On our return to the John Wayne Airport, I used Lyft and had a discount code for $60 off your first ride and suffice it to say, the trip was free as well.
My rides would have totaled $37.16 USD for our transfers to and from SNA but instead through just a small effort, it only cost us $9.95 CAD. Obviously with the $60 Lyft credit, we could have travelled a lot further and extracted even more value so keep this little trick in mind the next time you travel to a destination where Uber and Lyft are available. You should also remember that this trick can be leveraged for other ride sharing programs … I just find comfort in using fairly well established companies such as Uber and Lyft.
I’ll start off by saying that I am a HUGE fan of Disney. Since my daughter was born, we have been to Disneyland, Disney World, Disneyland Hong Kong, Disneyland Paris, Aulani and two Disney Cruises. That being said, one of the hardest pills to swallow is the big upfront cost of Disney. There’s no two ways about it … Disney is expensive but for good reason. I won’t hash out the pros and cons of Disney here but I will share with you the Canadian Deal of the Year for Disney.
I should preface this deal by saying that Disney NEVER goes on sale … okay not never but very very rarely. That’s why this deal is so good.
From now until February 28th, Canadians will enjoy a 25% discount on Disney World passes as long as they are 4 days or longer.
Now keep in mind, these prices are in USD so essentially, Disney has eliminated the currency difference between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar. In my opinion, this is a very generous offer because … and here’s the best part … the vouchers do not expire. So if you are planning a trip to Disney World in the next few years, it might be a good deal for you. Obviously I have no idea what currency will do in the future but if you believe that the Canadian dollar will trade at a 25% discount (I do) then this is a good deal.
In 2008, Air Canada introduced Fuel Surcharge into base fares for North American travel and for other travel outside of North America, it used the term carrier surcharge. Both are known in the industry simply as “YQ”. If you look at the taxes for your next flight and see a charge for YQ, that’s what it’s for.
Air Canada’s spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick once told CBC that “these charges are collected by airlines to partially offset certain volatile, unpredictable or fluctuating operating costs and fees, and certain fare premiums linked to peak travel periods.”
To me, YQ is a lazy excuse to have the consumer pay for the ineptness of a management group that cannot properly run a business but what’s worse is that there is very little oversight to the collection of these fees so essentially the consumer is expected to trust airlines to properly determine the correct amount to charge.
While I have no way to prove it, airlines are simply using this fee to prop up their bottom line.
Let’s be clear, YQ is charged by airlines and NOT AIMIA, the owners/operators of Aeroplan. Aeroplan simply passes on YQ and has no discretion in the matter. If the airline charges it, they pass it onto you when you book your reward flight.
Now there are a lot of sites out there that claim they have a comprehensive list of airlines that charge fuel surcharge but often the list is not complete and more often than not, the list has not been updated for years.
Things change. Airlines join alliances, governments ban fuel surcharge and airlines drop YQ so you probably want to rely on list that is up to date and tested.
Methodology
You will notice that in the master YQ table I list information that is important to those searching for award travel, namely, the IATA code for the airline, the airline’s home country, the hubs of that airline and the route I used to search to determine if YQ is charged or not.
I searched each airline using Aeroplan.com and plugged in the routes noted in the table. Now keep in mind that YQ makes up a portion of the total taxes and fees that you will pay but the YQ is something you can be control. Taxes not so much.
For example, if you to London on any airline, you would still pay exorbitant airport fees regardless of what airline you flew but that’s on the UK and Heathrow … not the airline. Keep this in mind when you search for a reward flight.
Below is an example of a flight on Air Canada from Toronto to London return. Notice that the Carrier Surcharge ($366.00) is high but so is the UK Air Passenger Duty ($127.40) and the UK Domestic/International Air Travel Security Charge ($72.70)
This is simply to say that while YQ is HUGELY important, it is only part of the equation. It now becomes incumbent on you, the user, to understand which airports and countries are conducive to low taxes and fees.
YQ Chart
So without further adieu, below is a list of ALL the airlines in the Star Alliance and whether they charge YQ or not (click on the chart for an Excel copy of the chart):
What you will notice in the above table is that of the 27 airlines in the Star Alliance, only 5 charge YQ. Now the amount of YQ isn’t what is important here because that changes based on the route (and sometimes the class of service) … what is important is that you have a LOT of choices when it comes to airlines to fly if you want to save money on fuel/carrier surcharges.
Now the problem that most Canadians have is that Air Canada is the Canadian carrier for the Star Alliance so how do you escape the YQ charges? The answer is positioning.
Say for example you want to fly to Europe. Well, you can either fly on of the European carriers that don’t charge YQ like Brussels, Scandinavian, Swiss or Turkish (if you live in one of the cities in Canada these airlines service) or you can position to the United States using United, an airline that services the US and does not charge YQ. So perhaps you could fly Calgary-Houston on United and Houston-Istanbul on Turkish or some other combination. The key here is to use carriers that don’t charge YQ.
Now for those in the know, you will see some carriers that I list as ones that do not charge YQ when in fact they do … it’s just that their home countries have banned the collection of fuel surcharge (All Nippon Airways, Asiana, Avianca) but keep in mind this can change at the whim of a government.
I will do my best to keep this table updated so you can have one reliable source for this type of information.
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