Traverse City Record-Eagle

Life

March 31, 2008

'Frugal Guy' finds the deals

By CYMBRE FOSTER

Rick Ingersoll and his wife Katy are going to Greece for 10 days for the incredibly low price of $337.50.

No wonder he calls himself the Frugal Travel Guy.

Ingersoll finds travel deals like this all the time and shares them with readers at the blog he began last October.

Finding travel bargains has become a full-time hobby for this retiree who wants others to take advantage of the tricks he has picked up over the years.

"I just decided to start spreading the word," he said. "My true intent is to teach people how to do this themselves. There is also nothing more fun that taking someone somewhere they have never been before for a price they can't believe," said Ingersoll, who has taken friends to Hawaii and Scotland for a song.

Ingersoll's expertise in finding excursions for a steal began after he retired from his mortgage business in Traverse City. While he was looking for something else to "catch his fancy," he started learning about frequent flyer miles.

"It just kept growing and growing and I began reading about more," said the traveler who, when he's not navigating the world, divides his time between homes in Traverse City and South Carolina.

At any given time, Ingersoll is paying attention to 10-12 airline programs, eight or nine hotel programs and four or five car rental programs.

It's not only the bargains that bring a smile to his face, but the thrill of the hunt that Ingersoll enjoys.

"It is a rush of sorts when a deal is "in play" and people are trying to learn the rules, check their schedules, figure out how to maximize the mistake, with stopovers or open jaws, double checking refundability and getting it all done before the "plug is pulled and the deal is over." It could last for hours or minutes or a couple days, but a mistake fare or great fare war really gets the juices flowing …" he writes on his blog.

Ingersoll has learned savvy tricks like how to transfer frequent flyer points from one program to another, how to use currency conversion to his advantage and ways to keep an eye out for the most recent mistake fares or fare wars.

"The mistake fares or "fat finger fares" have been a real boon to us," he explained. These might include a flight for $120 when it should have been $1,200 or other accidental entries.

The most recent posting on his blog was letting readers know about a round-trip flight from Flint to Tampa or Orlando, Florida in May for just $71.

"It looks like they forgot the first one," he tells readers.

"With these you'll sometimes see that they should have typed in another zero or for instance we flew round trip to Iceland for $64 because they loaded the taxes but forgot to load the fare," he said. He and Katy recently flew to New Zealand for $1,200 instead of $12,000 because of a dropped zero.

Typically, the mistake fares are honored unless the price is so ridiculously low the business will lose money, like when the Japan Hilton accidentally offered rooms for $2 a night.

"They had college kids booking rooms for the entire summer and in that case they had to offer a voucher instead, he said.

Ingersoll's readers are from around the world and range from millionaires to college students who all want to travel on the cheap.

"I've had readers from Africa and South America, all over, but basically I'm U.S. based, I'm not looking for deals in Europe," he said.

Ingersoll also meets with other like-minded bargain hunters who gather in various locations around the country to share ideas.

"One guy taught me how to fly Continental for free," said Ingersoll.

Visit Ingersoll's blog at http://frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com.

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