Dining for Miles

Can you confirm the double-dip with Open Table points? My one successful dine with UA was at an Open Table restaurant that did not give OT points at the time that I dined if booked directly through OT. So although I got the UA miles, I have no first-hand experience with getting both. I thought it was either UA miles or OT Points, but not both.

and that used to be a big issue & still is to some extent. If they were great, they prob wouldn't have to be on dining rewards.

That said, I had read somewhere that dining rewards was making an effort to recruit more 'name' or 'gourmet' restaurants to the list. They've succeeded to a certian extent IMO, so I use them when it fits into my dining schedule.

When one combines opentable with dining rewards, it is a nice earn towards future dining/flying.

The quality has improved at a lot of places. I also find newer places are often on the list. So they're trying harder than some of the well established places.

It's true that many of the choices in the rewards network aren't exactly top-notch. However, I've discovered some really, really good places because of the program. A couple of my favorite places are in the program and I wonder if I'd have found them otherwise.

We have just a couple of places here that are good (in our opinion) and participate in both OT and dining rewards. Also have had no trouble double dipping, one place even does 1k tables (OT) on weeknights plus rewards network!

Thanks so much!

I miss the double miles promotions they had last year. Getting 10 miles/$ was amazing and definitely shifted some of my dining habits. I loved their excuse that not enough people were taking advantage of the program to keep it going...what a load.

I've found that this applies more to ethnic restaurants than 'American'.

agreed, I just discovered a very good Middle Eastern place near our home that I never knew existed.

I can't -- it seems that whenever I use OT it doesn't award points anyway. Wherever I read about the united miles opportunity (probably a FT post, but I can't recall), the poster claimed that a double dip was possible. The terms (on both the UA site and on OT) are worded as "may not", so there's no answer to be had there.

So, for a 1000 point OT reservation, I'd probably skip united until someone acheives hard proof. But for a 100 point (or no point, of course) reservation, I value the UA miles more than the OT points myself, so wouldn't really worry about it.

I'll certainly update this post if I ever find myself with both from one reservation.

My company gave us the same load of crap regarding the education benefit.

Hi all.

Just wanted to point out I'm putting together a page of links to your favorite idine restaurant reviews.

Please put the reviews in the appropriate section of the Destination Travel forum and send me a link to your review via conversation.

The page is here.

http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/idine-favorite-restaurants.6579/

Not to quibble, but getting 10 miles/$ was very good. Back in the day (before they reduced the maximum miles/$ from 10 to 5), getting 20 miles/$ from double miles...now that was amazing!

agreed !! I find myself stating 'back in the day' or something similar quite frequently lately, was back in the day really that good?

Yes, I tried a Middle Eastern place just for the miles, I never would have gone otherwise, and I was shocked at how good it was. I am getting out of my comfort zone a bit for the miles at times.

My mind recalls the 10-20 miles per dollar a lot more easily than it does the chasing every 3rd transaction for not posting. Back in the day was good. But it might not have been better.

anyone know if you can get the open table through Priority Club?

If you're talking about the Priority Club dining program, that should work in combination with Open Table the same way the airline dining programs give you the opportunity to double up. But if you're talking about dining reservations via the PC Shopping Mall, like the United Shopping Mall dining reservations, I see no sign of that as an option.

Just revisiting this thread and an FYI, since all of these programs are run by the same rewards network people, it looks like you can't have the same card registered on multiple programs and double/triple/quadruple dip...

So for example you can sign up with AA Dining, SouthWest Dining and US Airways with a different username, even if you use the same email address. But when you register your card with any of them, it will automatically remove it from any other programs that you're registered with.

The only options are to choose which program you need to keep alive (or you want to earn miles with) and register the card there prior to dining. I'm fairly sure you can use virtual credit card numbers if your bank supports it, but I haven't tested it as of yet.

I'm not sure how virtual card numbers would work. The restaurant needs to swipe your card and the Rewards Network matches the swiped card with the one registered in your account.

Yeah that doesn't make much sense now that I think about it... unless you order online/over the phone and give them the virtual number.

But even then, you couldn't get credit from more than one program at a time, since the card number wouldn't match.

Damnit.

Has anyone noticed that not all of the restaurants are the same from program to program? It is really weird. I've mostly noticed it with Southwest. There is a Qdoba in Valpo, IN that is in the AA dining program but not Southwest. And it's not just on a certain day it doesn't have rewards, it just really doesn't show up. In general the list of places that show up for Southwest is slightly smaller than the other lists.

Another weird thing, I downloaded the rewards network android app, and you can sign in for your program on the app to see if each place is giving rewards that day. They don't have AA as a choice to sign-in, so I had to do Southwest and then I'm not getting all of the options since Southwest has a slightly smaller list.

I noticed that too. I'm the on AA, UA, and DL programs. The lists of restaurants in the different programs vary slightly. AA doesn't show up on my Blackberry app either.

I didn't realize that. Now I wonder if one of the restaurants I use is still on US but off WN's list.

So they are different in those programs as well??? That is so annoying, I don't understand why they are different! AA and Southwest are the main ones I use and AA seems to have a bigger list, so that is really frustrating that I can't look them up on the app. I'm sure I'm missing out on some places if I go through Southwest on the app. Blah!

With the Android app, has anyone had issues with the GPS staying on and draining battery? I was going to download it, but the reviews were mixed and people weren't happy about the GPS staying on or something.