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If you own a Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express, the odds are good that you book frequent flights with Delta. After all, you earn free miles with every purchase that you make with these cards. The SkyMiles cards are typical American Express products: They offer generous rewards programs and several perks.

When it comes to redeeming the points you earn with these cards, though, there’s a problem. And it’s not the fault of American Express.

You can blame this one on Delta. Search frequent flier forums across the Internet and you’ll read the same verdict: Delta’s Award Redemption Calendar is nearly impossible to use.

If you want to see just how frustrating the center is for users, just visit this thread at the flyertalk forum. In it,

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Consumer confidence is up … but spending intentions remain flat, says the latest Discover U.S. Spending Monitor. The Monitor is a poll of 8,200 consumers which tracks confidence and spending intentions on a daily basis, with results released monthly.

The poll shows the highest level of consumer confidence (rated at 93.1) since November 2007. Yet, that’s not as optimistic as it looks at first glance. Only 10 % of consumers rate the economy as “good” or “excellent,” and more than half (51%) still rate it as “poor.” Thirty-seven percent of consumers polled say the economy is “fair,” a 3-point increase from last month.

Optimism Highest Amongst Middle Income Consumers

It’s the middle class, says the report, who are driving the optimistic statistics. Thirty-two percent of

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Tags: Confidence, Consumer Confidence, Spending Monitor

You may or may not be familiar with the term ‘card blocking’ but it is a pretty common practice that vendors use to ensure they are going to get paid. Card blocking is essentially the act of ‘holding’ an amount of money on a consumer’s credit or debit card as a precaution. In other words, the consumer physically has $100 in their account but a company has placed a hold on that amount, meaning the consumer can not use it.

Who Issues Card Blocks?

Any company can place a block on a credit card or a debit card during a purchase transaction. It depend

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Tags: Blocking, Card Blocking