Ian Fernando » Ramblings

Vote For Me! Lethal Velocity Blogger Contest

Ian — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:05:30 +0000

This is a self promo post ask you for your help to get me some good votes in. This contest started on January 15th and I am now trying to climb to the top. In the past AffiliateWire has sent top affiliates to Bahamas to swim with the Sharks. So now they are opening it to bloggers as well and I want to get up there and win.

Also here is a video of the adventure they did last year:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Three winners will test their mettle in this year’s radically fast, wickedly cool Live Dangerously supercar challenge. That is on their website, so I want to try to be 1 of 3 to win. All you have to do is click on the image below and find my name. Just ignore all the other names. I am the 5th one down, so it should be easy for you to find. Hit the radio dial on the left side of my name and then scroll to the bottom and click on Vote, again avoiding all the other names you see.

Just click the image below… thanks!

>> Vote for Me Here <<

SOPA, Washing the Internet with Government SOAP

Ian — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:55:26 +0000

First, watch this video below about what SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is about. It is about 21 minutes but has a lot of good information. I was not that all interested in SOPA because I thought it was just about piracy sites. I was wrong. When I saw this video it put a lot of things into perspective. It even goes into advertising, social, and the full extent of the internet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is SOPA?

The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney-General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws. The Attorney-General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.

source

It seems the government has to put their nose into everything. The biggest in our industry are the Affiliate Tax, FTC Guidelines, affiliate network government suits, etc. There has been a lot of government related issues that has happened in such a short time. Now SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one which affects the internet as a whole and not just advertising.

First and foremost search companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing will eventually start to filter search engine results. Full websites with credibility will start to disappear, news sites, comedy sites, gossip sites, etc will just be pulled off the internet. If there is any complaint about a company or brand – it can be added to the government blacklist.

Most importantly it will kill social media as we know it. If you use the Facebook “Like” it can lead into trouble. I know I leverage the “Like” button to hide content on my fan pages and even content sites. This will eventually be filtered as information about the user is being passed on to their users, ‘an endorsement’. You may remember a recent article where there was a lawsuit against Facebook about their new ad platform – Sponsored Stories. A user wanted compensation for a story he liked, because information was passed about him ‘representing’ a company.

When you tweet or share a link via the internet you are essentially given free advertising to a company or brand. If you shared a photo of the next dress you want to buy on Facebook that link can be filtered out. Your thoughts no longer matter, tweeting and status updates will not matter. The social internet will not matter, the government wants to control what you are saying on the internet.

That means no more bad reviews of a company or a product. Hmmm what TV do I want to buy… Samsung or ChinaView?

The internet will stop being social, when it was just evolving. Essentially the government is allowing the abortion of the internet. Cleaning the internet is going to be hard to police, but sites like Youtube and Facebook so far have done a great job and complied with a lot of the big brands, especially when it came to shows and music.

But what if everything started to disappear slowly? What will the internet be? What will it become? The internet was born out of the desire to know more information, then to be entertained, then to connect with everyone! SOPA will stop this intertwine of wires and will only allow you to see what the government wants you to see. If they do create a list of black listed sites, then internet entrepreneurs income can essentially drop dramatically. Creating sites base on recommendations, affiliate marketing itself will literally die.

The DMCA also then proves to be useless and pointless. If the government is going to tell Google what to show, then the purpose of relevant content to users or Google business model will be no more. Advertising will be strictly controlled and how we also advertised will also be written in a manual in which we have to cater to.

Essentially this act will harm the internet as a whole. The internet started as a way to voice one thoughts. It grew and became our entertainment playground, then it grew more allowing social interactions to be possible. If you like your current internet the way it is, educate yourself more about what SOPA is, look into PIPA (Protect IP Act) as well and voice your thoughts or sign the petition below.

Read the Stop Online Piracy Act

Sign the Petition, Get More Info

Government always trying to get their hands in every cookie jar they can. Don’t Support SOPA! Sign the Petition!

Social Media Has No Place in Advertising. Honestly.

Ian — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:09:49 +0000

I was going through my Flipboard app on my iPad and found an article from my twitter feed about Google+ as an extension in Adword ads. I was reading the article and it says you can activate social extensions on these ads. First of all ads are ads, they are a direct response advertorial. The image below you will see Google+ buttons on these ads when you are logged into Google.

Honestly, I can only see this working as an influential factor and not an action to be taken prior to a click. Also, this becomes a factor for us marketers we have to consider. Instead of a direct click the end user may click on the button rather than the ad? It is a distraction!

I wanted to see how others felt about this and so I posted the article to my twitter and Facebook page. It looks like some people share my same thoughts as well.

I do not understand why some people think social media plays a role in advertising, it doesn’t. Direct response is not social media. Just from my statement and from Gene’s response – Ads are Ads. Why would you click like, retweet, or even google+ and advertorial? There is even a company which thinks the end user will actually save these ads to their portfolio for later viewing, AdKeeper – really?

The purpose of marketing or advertising is to get the end user to click and take an action whether if they are buying an item or filling out a form. I can not see a person Google+’ing an Adwords ad. What is the point, really? Is Google trying to replicate Facebook Ad Likes?

From another view, it can show user influence. If the site has received prior social shares, then it may help but adding it directly to an ad proves useless in my opinion. Also the audience of Google+ users isn’t huge. For Google to incorporate such action is just trying to compete with Facebook social likes.

Social Media as a whole is not meant to be for a direct response industry such as affiliate marketing. It is meant for just branding and social interaction. Why would a person decide to like an ad? We have already tolerated banners so much they are blind to us, hence banner blindness. So the purpose of a social button being added on a banner or any type of paid media doesn’t really make sense.

To advertisers, by setting up social buttons on your ads, it just will create a new barrier or a new deterrent to the end user. Your goal is to get the person viewing your ad to click and then to convert. Not to share an ad. Does that even sound right? Facebook has done a good job with their platform because it is within their services. More and more users are utilizing Facebook pages to create landing pages, a community but not a direct response campaign. Two different things.

I will agree that social media is good for influence and viral traffic. Incorporating it with ads, definitely does not work. Again would you like an ad? retweet an email submit page? or Google+ a male enhancement product? Probably not. Marketers that think social media should be use in all aspects, I believe do not know marketing in general. They are just going by the trend and what is becoming popular.

The internet is becoming more social but it does not change how direct advertising works. A direct response campaign is just that, allowing the end user to take an immediate action and not share a new lost weight pill they have found so interesting.

What are your thoughts on social media and direct ad campaigns? Even the addition of adding Google+ to Adwords?

Ninja Traffic Stealer – Pre Sale Video, Thoughts?

Ian — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:42:27 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am coming out with a new product and I want to know your thoughts on my sales pitch video. I know I am not a great actor or even the best person when it comes to speaking proper English. So I want to know your thoughts on this video. The product has an awesome name to it and it has the word traffic in it, so it will be an amazing product.

I just want to know your thoughts about it and just leave your feedback in the comments section below.

I hope you enjoyed that mini and hopefully comedic video. The video is basically joking about the issues with these fake products and false claims about making money with just the push of a button. Again these guys are not marketers at all. They are people who understand sales copy and are basically sales men. Most even do not do any of the work, they collect on the income they make on products, why do you think they keep coming out with a new one every other month. Not a real business.

But there are legit people who do make a living selling information, Eben Pagen the authority when it comes to information products. The best part about him is he has several information products in multiple niches. These Clickbank guys just have 1 – the MMO space (make money online). Why?

Simple, they can’t market out of that niche because they do not have the list of other marketers to push for them. List jerkin is a bad business strategy. As I stated time and time again, take these guys out of the MMO space and tell them to push a dating campaign, tell them to understand Adwords, tell them to do a media buy – they can’t. These so called marketers are dependent on the list jerkin strategy.

There are legit programs out there such as Marketing Oracles. This is my coaching platform in which I partnered up with 2 other online marketers. They too also believe the nonsense of all these hyped up products. Most of these guys don’t even support their products after 2 months! Make sure you watch out for these hype products and look pass it.

… enough rambling about that topic. Last post I promise.

Clickbank Scam Gurus, Not Real Marketers

Ian — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:38:27 +0000

Buy My Shit, Yo!

I saw this website by my buddy Ran Aroussi, a very good friend of mine and one I consider to be very helpful when I have any questions. This small mini site talks about the issues that is happening in the internet marketing industry niche. The MMO (make money online) space is getting filled with crap.

Last year it was product launch after product launch, now it seems to be crappier products with just big launches. I know some of these guys and its pretty pathetic to know they only care about the 6 figures they make. They truly do not even care about the customer user base. They truly do not understand having a business.

For example, these product guys in the MMO space suck at marketing, watch my video rant here. If you take these guys out and tell them to launch a dating campaign or product – drrrrrr ahhh whhaaaa? They can’t! They are dependant on their network of list swapers and knee huggers….

Before I go any further… take a look at what my buddy Ran has to say: Buy My Shit, Yo!

But you have legit marketers that have a real business and care about their user base. For example, Adam Horwitz came out with Mobile Monopoly a year back. He made a killing and then reinvested it into Local Mobile Monopoly – video review. Adam created a business, he didn’t create product after product of shitty things. He knows what he is talking about and leverages his knowledge to teach others. His new product has support and amazing tools! In fact he has two businesses in Local Mobile Monopoly (info training and YepText)

There are legit launches and products out there, the problem is the MMO niche has a lot of circle jerking. If they step out of that circle jerking, they are lost and in essence do not have a business. They call this circle jerking JV…

BTW (digressing) …a Joint Venture is a venture you go with a potential partner or partner. Not list swapping. idiots.

Another video I did watch a while back is Omar Martin, I have seen him around the web – but not any of his products. I know he helped with the launch of Easy Video Player for Josh Bartlet but other than that I rarely see his work. He also rants about issues with crappy products out there.

Watch Omar Martin Talk and go Crazy

There is a lot of legit products out there, the problem is they do not have enough resources to launch their products properly. For example I came out with several products in the past and I launched and promoted my own products – I don’t need a “Auto Push Button System” that can bring me a “Tornado Tsunami Flood of Traffic”, I can do that myself. Ask these Clickbank merchants to promote their own product without the circle jerkin…. drrrrrr ahhh whhaaaa?

One last post think it is necessary to read is Barman’s break down of a recent launch that got shutdown. He talks about a Haley Milano (fake person) and how she stopped being a stripper and started making money with a push button software. Read Barmans Post here. He literally dissects this sales letter and exposes it for what it truly means.

Another case that is bothering me, the fact Clickbank allows this kind of mess in their network. It is killing their name and I bet BBB is watching them from complaints because of shady products. Maybe even the FTC…?

The affiliate industry gets a lot of attention because of greedy people in the past. What about greedy merchants on Clickbank? I hear no noise about them at all. They are the ones who will probably kill the IM industry. Fake testimonials, fake screenshots, rental cars and rental homes for their launch videos. Gosh.

With this crap coming along, there are sites that are starting to popup to go against this garbage. Sites such as Ran Aroussi, Omar Martin and others who are willing to take the time to make sure beginners and marketers are not scammed by cars they rent to just pretend they are rich. Sites such as:

These sites go against that “guru” overnight success stuff. Marketing online takes work. Look at this blog – you can see how and where I started to where I am now. There is growth and I didn’t do it overnight with a software that made me $18,232 in just 3 days. I took the time to learn and understand and fail at the business. I networked with many, joined conferences, and participated in local marketing events.

I didn’t just buy a system from an EX Google Facebook CEO, I did the work! If you are still stuck on how to start, I suggests start in the affiliate marketing space, it is the only space in which you can rapidly learn the business in just a couple weeks. The affiliate space is also the only space which can diversify yourself into other aspects of the internet space.

Here are legit places to learn how to make money online:

These 2 communities a lone I think are valuable. They have a community of users and they cater to them. They didn’t have a big launch, but they have a great community and they care about them enough to make sure they are well on their way to making money online. It is these types of community and products/services which Clickbank should allow.

Affiliate Managers, Please Don’t Tell Me What to Promote

Ian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:52:28 +0000

I wanted to post this last week when it happened, I was just thinking if it would be a good post. Well anyways, I decided to just post this. There are times when your affiliate managers are your best friends and I am very close to many of them. But when people move and shift, you get a new affiliate manager. They do not know you are or what your status is.

Anyways, I was talking to one of my go to networks and apparently I have a new affiliate manager. So I pinged her and gave her an introduction. I went ahead and asked for an offer that was in a particular niche, it was for mobile traffic.

My new affiliate manager that handled my account told me why I am looking for that offer, I should be pushing diet, biz ops, and penny auctions. Now she didn’t even bother looking or asking, she just cut me and told me I should be pushing the more popular offers.

… kinda ticked me off.

[image credit]

I pinged another person at that network, she was my AM prior but she moved on up in the corporate ladder and the AM I had after her left for another job. S anyways, I pinged her and told her what I was looking for. She got to me telling me they had these offers and maybe expecting more later on in the month. Now that is what I was looking for.

I told her that my other AM wasn’t up to par and apparently do not know my style when it came to their network. No problem, but my question was simple – do you have this offer. I didn’t appreciate the interruption and saying I need to push the more popular items. Really didn’t like being told what I had to do.

Affiliate managers are important but the publisher are also equally important because we are the ones pushing the traffic. Telling us what to promote is ok when asking the questions “What is a good offer to promote now?” In my situation, I already knew what I wanted and what type of offer I was looking for. I just wanted to know if a network had the offer and if not if they can get it for me.

The fact my new Affiliate manager told me to promote the more popular offers bothered me because she didn’t even bother looking to see if the offer I wanted was available. If she catered her response differently I wouldn’t have been so annoyed. The fact she totally ignored my requests and told me why definitely bothered me.

With that in mind, affiliate managers are a resource to us affiliates and I go to them for some help and some exclusivity to an offer. That said, affiliates are an asset to an affiliate network, we are the ones providing and pushing the traffic to the advertiser. They need our traffic and most important the quality.

The fact I was told why am I looking for such offer and I need to be pushing diet and the other popular offers was really unattractive. The worst part is this situation will be remembered, bad for the network and the affiliate manager who I was talking to. Affiliate managers represents the network, treating affiliates as if they are just the ones to push traffic is not justifiable. A relationship needs to be set. It is important to work with the affiliate and not just tell him to push traffic and run an offer.

Remember only 7% of affiliates (I know its probably less) that signed up to your network is the network.

Don’t Upgrade Your Facebook Fan Pages

Ian — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:35:46 +0000

… rambling and hungry… not a good mix.

So this kinda of ticked me off. I use Facebook Fan Pages a lot for landing pages and obviously for my websites. I just upgraded and man I am in pain because it ruined my landing pages using the FBML App. The FBML App allows me to utilize HTML and CSS in a customized tabbed box. It also allowed me to create a facebook gateway, meaning I get to tell the end user to LIKE the page before getting a download. Incentivizing the traffic.

Now, I think they did away of that option. Allowing you to specifically show what “tab” to show when a new person arrives to the fan page. This was helpful because instead of showing the wall, I get to show a custom design or landing page to the end user. It provided an instant landing page, very helpful to all marketers branding and creating online recognition.

Since I just upgraded, everything is broken, not broken but only showing parts of images. My landing pages are usually full graphics, now with the upgrade the width of the Facebook Fan Pages are now 495 from the original 525, it sucks.

The new fan page designs are mocking the new profile upgrades we all received in the past, having the images at the top and the wall feed, etc. I do not know why Facebook is doing it this way as it isn’t a personal profile, it is a fan page. I may understand fan pages for public figures but what about websites? It doesn’t make sense to create a Fan Page similar to a profile.

Some other distinctions I found is you can log in as your fan page, since you are the admin you technically can switch who you want to be, pointless I think. Another interesting part is I share a link on Twitter about how to target facebook tabs.

So now this sucks for any company using Fan Pages as a landing page. Now Fan Page contest won’t be productive, branding will not be as powerful, capturing leads will not be doable, just a lot of down sides for marketers.

The best part about the Facebook fan pages is using it as a gateway and a upfront poster to incoming traffic. Directing traffic to the fan page wall will not help in any companies branding at all. Maybe I couldn’t find the option to show specific tabs to non “likers”, but couldn’t find it and I thought it was the most powerful part of a fan page. In any case my fan page landing pages are useless, now time to adopt.

BTW March 11th, no more FBML it will be all iframes…

On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible. Lastly, we want to be clear that our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML, such as the tags that support social plugins.

source

FBML was the best part as well for all companies and businesses, it allowed to do so much. I wonder how companies like Lujure adjust to this change, since their services was all based on providing custom FBML tabs to companies.

Why Do Clickbank Info Marketers Suck So Much at Marketing?

Ian — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:02:02 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a rambling…

I consistently get tons of email and skype request from info marketers asking me to promote their products. The problem is I have a very well respected list and I want to keep it that way. So I try not to push garbage to my list, as I do not want to be consistently pitched to myself.

The reason for this post is because it is sad to see in the “Make Money Online”

But there are some I respect a lot and I look up to, for example Joel Comm is one of the first person I followed when I started in the online world and his view points are very similar to mine. When it came to internet marketing he also noticed a trend that has been happening and the reason for this post.

He realized that it is becoming a trend, “Launch Coaches” are rapidly growing and launching just make money online products. I personally hate these launches, though I have my own launch – its not hype and its all strategy and experience I show. I don’t do a car salesman pitch and I market my own product instead of depending on people!

That shows that I can actually market my products and others!

The terrible truth about these MMO Guys

They honestly can’t market anything else. This is one of the reason why I love affiliate marketing, we take any niche and profit. We can scale and this product launch guys can’t. It is a known fact! Out of the many Clickbank Info marketers out there that sells make money online products, they personally do not do their tactic because they made so much money on their launch – they just relax.

These guys are strictly sales man and they are good at it, they can sell water to a fish already living in it. That is how good they are. These guys also do not even create their own product, they find users who need to launch a product and put their name on it. Branding themselves and ofcourse the other user.

Also, if you take these guys out of their comfort zone, they are not able to market anything else except to gullible users in teh MMO space. The reason is because they are dependent on their networks list. If they step out of that network of MMO guys who will mail for their launch, they are clueless on what to do.

Put these guys in a dating niche, green niche, a outdoor sports niche, they won’t do it. The reason is because they know their own marketing strategy will not work. These Clickbank info guys strategies is all about getting on their knees and doing whatever it takes, probably even taking it at the same time.

Even product launch guys will not do it because their network is in the MMO space only. Pathetic. They can’t launch a product outside the MMO because their launch is dependent on their MMO network. Sad.

Last reason I hate these Clickbank guys is because they do not care about their end user base, they whore out their list and then grow another list from a new launch, whore it out and then grow it again. It is a cycle of list whoring. Theses guys create products because it is easy in the MMO niche. The sad part is they don’t care about their end user. They whore out their list out so much just so they can be in good terms with someone that has a bigger list.

Once that list has been dried out, they launch another product and get a new set of users to whore out.

But there are some people in the space I do appreciate, they create 1-2 products and cater their products around their members and end users. They have a business! These Clickbank marketers are real marketers and want to see other users succeed online, they make money off their end users but they are giving a lot back by just showing them the right way to make money online.

Product launches are cool but not caring at all for the end user and promising overnight success just bothers me. The reason I have this rambling is because I am annoyed at some of the end users who ask me to promote their products but when I do talk to them, they can’t even tell me a viable strategy to their product.

… don’t always believe the hype. Just rambling along…

4,400+ Clicks Randomly Redirected Themselves to No Where.

Ian — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:07:34 +0000

One of the biggest issues I have with affiliate marketing especially in the CPA/CPL space is the constant expiration of offers. These offers expire whenever they want because the network decided to remove the advertiser due to multiple reasons. Some networks will even keep an advertiser on hold, depending on the situation and just pause the offer.

In the past I complained about this because it is a nuisance, you do not get notification of dead offers from some networks. You may get an email but how long before you actually see the email? It may be too late and profits are lost.

In the last 24 hours (as of this post date), it has happened to me. A dead affiliate link started to redirect to an offer wall. The worst part about this is the redirect happened late last night and without an email notification. Some networks leave the link to its own dead page, while others leave it to an offer wall.

An offer wall is just a collection of active affiliate offers on one page in attempt to save your click from the dead link. The question is does it really help the affiliate? These offers are random offers with the same category or just random offers.

Below is a screen shot of the last 24 hours, actually about 8 hours since I started this campaign last night. I received 1,429 clicks to an offer wall. So I click on the offer wall link to see what offers showed up >> Campaign Does Not Exist. In attempt to save my click, no offer wall even shows up!

First column is Impressions and the second is Clicks.

One of the other worst things I see here my traffic started going to Australian offers, when my target market is US. So this can be 2 things, because some networks recognizes IP locations and redirect the traffic base on the traffics geo location. So either the ad network I am advertising on has poor traffic quality or an issue with redirects on the network end.

Around 4400 clicks were sent to Australian offers for some odd reason. So I am not sure what happened here, I am going to be talking to my rep about this. Talk about going to an old network I use to run with and experiencing poor results.

So what does this tell me? Tells me that an offer can go down within 8 hours or redirect for some reason. This isn’t the first time dead affiliate links went to where ever they wanted.

Expect an update later today.

Holiday Flight Delays, the Pain and How to Deal with It

Ian — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:08:43 +0000

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I know I enjoyed my Christmas spending time with my family down in North Carolina. I flew down the 22nd and my scheduled flight back to Jersey is the 27th. This Christmas it decided to be a White Christmas in both Charlotte and New Jersey.

I was ready and all packed to head to the airport when I received an email notification saying flight my flight is cancelled. I check my flight status app on my iphone and it verified it is cancelled. The airport I am landing in is closed! This sucks. I then called to re verify and to see if I can get my flight scheduled to the next available flight.

… the earliest is the 31st at 6am!

Any flight delays or cancellations are a pain in itself. It aggravates yous and throws your mood off. I know it did for me, but luckily I wasn’t at the airport when this happened. Orbitz notifications prompted me and I avoided any issues at the airport.

So how did I really deal with this situation? Simple I acted calm and basically called Orbitz to help me with my situation. I was calm about the flight cancellation as it was not their fault. They can not control the weather or the 3 feet of snow New Jersey received. So there is really no side to blame.

I acted calm and just asked about my flight and to see if there was a way I can get an earlier flight out of Charlotte, NC. Orbitz took the initiative to call continental and see if there were any flights available. Again, the earliest was the 31st. The lady on the phone was super helpful and she explained due to the airport closing, this is the earliest available flight.

She also told me to call to see if any one has cancelled as some flights may open due to consistent changes especially with the expected delays and cancellations. I decided to accept the new flight change and I will also be contacting Orbitz later and tomorrow to see if there are any available earlier seats.

So how do I deal with these rapid changes and not frustrate myself even more? Simple, I stay calm. Everyone hates being delayed especially if you are on time and prominent about your schedule. I personally don’t like meeting with people who are late, it puts a bad impression on that specific person. So when I feel I am on a single track and I get shifted off for no apparent reason, I become frustrated.

One, I stay calm throughout the whole change of cancellations and delays. I do not let that take me over and change my mood. The weather is the weather, we have no control over what is falling from the sky. Here are some things to note when I am on the road and my flights are delayed/cancelled.

Get Flight Status Apps such as Kayak Flight – enter your flight info and it will provide you with the status of your flight.
Get eMail notifications 3 hours prior to your flight, this is an option with Orbitz.

If your flight is delayed/cancelled:

Stay Calm and Don’t Blame Anyone
Figure out what is the best option base on your situation. Are you are the airport or about to leave to the airport.
Treat the person you are talking to with respect
If on the phone don’t act tough because you are not having a physical face to face conversation
Remember the agent you are currently speaking to is the only person who can help you with your situation right now.
See if you can get a flight to any other closer airports

These are just some tips I came up with when having a conversation with an Orbitz agent. When I tried calling Continental direct, their lines were either busy or had a default voice message stating they have high call volume. No answer from a person. The interesting part is when Orbitz called directly to Continental they got through. I think they may have a direct line to another support team. Anyways, I am glad they called on my behalf and tried to find a resolution for me.

The holidays is a great time to spend with family but when you have unexpected delays such as flight cancellations and delays, it can get aggravating. The goal is to stay calm and work with the person you are working with. There is no point in trying to get what you want since the situation is out of your control. Asking the right questions is the only way to get your issue resolved in a timely respectable manner.

For me I am still in Charlotte writing this blog post, eagerly waiting to head back home to Jersey.