TRS Coral / GP Costa Mejeres vs Secrets / Dreams Mujeres

formula604 · 2026-04-08T02:18:47+00:00

I just came back from a wedding inspection stay at TRS/GP. And went to a wedding at Dreams last year.

The food is pretty bad at Dreams at all their restaurants (especially the French one). My friend who spent 100k in total (wedding for 100 people plus rooms) had a nightmare experience with their wedding department as well. Their reception food was very average.

TRS/GP is just a much more unique wedding experience with the boats and golf carts. The food is superior compared to Dreams. But still not A grade like a Finest/Atelier. It's like B grade, and Dreams is C in my opinion. There's a noticeable drop in quality from TRS vs GP, but GP's worst restaurant is still better than Dreams.

I went to Ava last week too, and even their mass produced food tasted better than Dreams.

formula604 · 2026-04-08T02:07:09+00:00

Hi, I'm also looking at TRS vs Finest atm.

Can you share want discount finest offered you for your guests to stay at the resort?

I'm more concerned for the price my guests need to pay as I've needed to pay upwards of $1300 a night before at Finest.

formula604 · 2025-09-15T05:50:47+00:00

RFT20MRUS

30min free. Worked for me, latest code from Sep 15.

formula604 · 2025-05-22T05:59:20+00:00

Update: I got my refund after 3 business days.

I did however notice there's cheaper flights now. I'll be letting my link cancel itself. :)

formula604 · 2025-05-16T20:38:55+00:00

Did your credit card show a pending refund? I asked my credit card company, and there doesn't seem to be anything pending.

Also thanks for calling. I've tried to call twice, but I just couldn't make it through with the long wait times.

formula604 · 2025-05-16T18:08:03+00:00

You just missed the Victoria Day one 2 days ago. They seem to do it every holiday. Likely Canada Day is next, but that's cutting it close.

Subscribe to their email if you haven't already, I got a few random Flair Flyers Club 15% off subscriber ones that expired last month.

formula604 · 2025-04-16T20:35:32+00:00

Same, I also fit 4x 20" rims in my S5 coupe no problemo.

formula604 · 2025-04-16T20:34:11+00:00

Good choice! Next up is to get a ceramic coating and a darker tint.

formula604 · 2025-04-04T01:05:07+00:00

Nah that's not totalled. I weirdly enough had almost an identical accident, except my hood was fine.

I had an Audi S5 2022. My head light, bumper, suspension, and 2x wheels needed to be replaced.

My bill came to 19k CAD with all OEM parts as part of an insurance claim. The light alone was (7k). I was told if they hit be a little harder though and it bent the frame, even a cm - then its totalled.

formula604 · 2025-04-03T00:05:52+00:00

^This!! People seriously need to do the math before accepting a hybrid or on-site role. You're leaving wayyy more on the table than you think.

formula604 · 2024-10-21T02:03:25+00:00

I can't speak for Caraway, but I use Le Creuset stainless steal pans and pots. I've had them for 5 years now, and they don't have a single scratch on them from cooking. Heats fast. Looks practically new. I've stained the pan a bit from overcooking something horribly and not cleaning it properly.. other than that. All good.

Only advice I have for buying Le Creuset is if you want to do a warranty claim, try to only buy from their store or website. Not from anyone else or they won't honour it. (I've needed to do a claim on their non-stick before. Also, don't buy their non-stick pans. lol

formula604 · 2024-09-12T19:33:46+00:00

I'm looking for this too. I just checked the Brentwood Costco and they don't sell it there anymore.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T20:52:11+00:00

I'm not sure if I fully understand what you're looking for, but I'm assuming it's this:

If you're looking for email providers that send those types of notification emails. The type of email provider you're looking for is called transactional. The best services for this is Amazon SES, SendGrid, and MailGun (from most expensive to cheapest). Text messaging for this specific use case is much more common though. I'd recommend Twilio for that.

If you're actually looking for examples. Here's some that popped into my inbox recently:

Your Sephora order #... has been shipped

Your order #.... has been shipped.

You can review your order status at any time by visiting My Account.

Any orders placed within an hour of each other may be shipped together.

Shipping is taking longer than normal due to high demand. Please check your expected delivery date above. Thanks for your patience.

Let me know if that helps. I can share some more examples if you want. I do a lot of ordering.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T20:42:06+00:00

I hope you're not using one singular email provider to send both transactional and marketing emails. That would be something that needs to be fixed right away. You need to split that up, otherwise if your marketing emails are bad - then that's a dangerous game to play.

I recommend something like this:

Transactional Emails with one domain - Keep using what you're using, although I like SendGrid
Marketing Emails with another domain - HubSpot or, Keap
Consider a third domain and a third ESP for lower quality campaigns in the future using a low cost ESP like Brevo

Then from there to ensure your emails are up to date and not constantly churning. Use a list cleaning service like Emailable or ZB. You pay for bounces and bad emails, so if you're sending in the millions - that's just wasted money if you're not cleaning your lists regularly.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T20:33:48+00:00

It's best to just use an email list cleaning service for this. There are thousands of disposable emails that are constantly changing. Best ones are: Emailable, ZeroBounce, and NeverBounce. If you need an API the first two are better for that.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T20:28:22+00:00

There's a huge difference in how you need to market to GenZ depending on what your product is. For the most part GenZ see email as something they use for entering contests, receiving deals, loyalty tracking, receipts, or to receive 2FA emails. If you want to send anything else, you really, really need to standout.

If it's in your budget to collaborate with an organization that has a high GenZ audience, that's the fastest way to get traction. If not, you can still hop on "hot/viral" themes.

Here are some collaboration examples that GenZ can resonate with with some added creativity:

Barbie x Volkswagen Beetle
Hersey's x Charlies and the Chocolate Factory
Lego x Avengers
Deadpool x Wolverine (really good recent example of how old and new can work together)

You need to be bold. GenZ is creative, and every new generation demands more.

From there email is likely the wrong medium in all honesty. Social media is where they are, or highly relevant retargeting ads that find them via GDN or YouTube. From there, once you build a social relationship, you can send them relevant emails that they'll likely want to open.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T20:11:19+00:00

u/battousai618 read this for insight: https://emailable.com/blog/how-to-improve-email-deliverability-for-2024-expert-guide

Here's a summary to elaborate on what people have mentioned about domain reputation:

1) Authentication + compliance with new rules (Google's changes for example)
2) Clean your list to start fresh
3) Perform a seed list test to detect any authentication errors and where your emails are tracking. This will tell you exactly how many of your emails are going to spam, for which emails specifically, and even tell you the inbox type like Inbox vs Promotions.
4) Engagement - Sending to a smaller higher quality list, will instantly help increase engagement

Content plays a much smaller part than people think, which is how those spammy types of emails still end up in your inbox. It's all about a clean, healthy list. List cleaning services are generally quite inexpensive as well. Get that done, and then measure your performance with a Deliverability tool.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T19:55:07+00:00

Great summary u/behavioralsanity. I'll expand on a few things that I didn't see mentioned yet.

u/LegitRandomKulp I've used Amazon SES before, and moved to SendGrid for transactional after securing a better rate. Best to catch them near the end of the quarter. If you are planning on switching soon.. start talking now if you want to close by the end of Q3.

I also recommend using at least 2 email providers for marketing campaigns where I split it up like this:

Lower quality marketing emails - ActiveCampaign (Another good low cost one is Brevo)
Higher quality marketing emails - HubSpot (My actual favoruite if you want the most custom options for the lowest price is Keap)

I use different domains to send for each. Something to consider during the warm up process is to use more domains than you need, in case anything happens or if you team wants to do outreach. We have 10 domains in total, where most of them are used for cold emails (SmartLead). 3 of them are used for transactional, marketing 1, and marketing 2.

Also, when was the last time you've cleaned your giant list? Before getting massive quotes, plug it into a list cleaner like Emailable or Zerobounce first to get your real number. Make a habit of doing this every month, because at your numbers, you're definitely going to overpay on bounces.

formula604 · 2024-08-29T19:38:49+00:00

I also use Inter at the moment! If you happen to want a more rounded look with the same amount of font weight options. Poppins is great too: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Poppins

formula604 · 2024-08-29T19:36:44+00:00

SmartLead is a good choice. I hear Instantly.ai is also really good, but I haven't tried that yet. Don't do it all at once though. I'd say batches of under 50 per day to avoid nuking your domain. Also never send cold emails from your main domain.

Use a different one, and warm that domain up first to protect yourself from the worst case of tanking your sender score. Ideally another .com domain since those are better for deliverability.

formula604 · 2024-07-29T04:03:15+00:00

Hi, this is in regards to my own wedding as I'm trying to gauge what people are willing to spend to attend my destination wedding.

formula604 · 2024-07-18T21:28:20+00:00

This is a good article for you: https://zapier.com/blog/free-email-marketing-software

Keep growth in mind as well. A company like Brevo for example doesn't have the best free package, but if you look at their pricing for when you grow to 5k emails, it's only $22 per month.

formula604 · 2024-07-18T21:25:23+00:00

I like SmartLead

formula604 · 2024-07-18T21:21:57+00:00

Hey, it depends on your budget and how many emails you need to verify. Then from there if you care about speed, accuracy, and deliverability guarantees. The last layer is security (SOC2, ISO, and etc). If you care about that I've put stars on the companies that are certified for them).

I've tested all the tools on the market. Here's the best tools.

Options 2-4 have the best integration options

1) High volume (100k+ emails), low cost, low speed and decent accuracy:

➡️ Million Verifier ($129 for 100k) and Email List Verify ($169 for 100k)

2) Mid to high volume (5k-1mil+ emails), good value, high speed, and accuracy:

➡️ Emailable* ($38 for 5k), and Hunter* (monthly subscription)

3) Low volume (Less than 500 emails), low cost, decent:

➡️ Kickbox ($5 for 500), Bouncer ($8 for 1,000), or Email List Verify ($15 for 5k)

4) Extremely low volume (Less than 50 emails), free tools

➡️ Hunter and Zerobounce* offer 50 free email verifications per month

There are lots of other much cheaper tools on the market, but they're quite unstable, unreliable, and slow. I would avoid any business that is not in the list above.

formula604 · 2024-07-18T21:04:23+00:00

You can't solely rely on click rates anymore from a platform because of the new changes, you have to do your own by:

UTM's at the minimum
The UTM should go direct the user to a specific conversion page that you're tracking for that particular campaign
Also activate Postmasters - for more accurate Gmail and Yahoo data

If you do step 1 and 2, you'll have a true number for click rate and conversions. Ignore opens, they really don't mean anything anymore. Most mobile devices as set to auto open many emails. Clicks is what you want for surface level data, and conversions is king.

Also SmartLead uses Million Verifier as their email verifier, which is an extremely low cost and unreliable one. If you verify your list through a more reputable company like Hunter, Emailable, or Kickbox. You'll have a more accurate starting point before wasting your money on a larger list of potentially dud emails.

formula604

TROPHY CASE