Frequent Miler on the Air - 5 game-changing points & miles updates | Coffee Break Ep77 | 11-11-25

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

A bunch of game-changing news came up last week, right after we recorded our Coffee Break episode (which we'd recorded a day earlier than usual). We'll cover those changes in today's Coffee Break episode.(00:56) - Rumor: 200K Chase Sapphire Reserve® in-branch offer for some customers(02:49) - Rakuten portal now lets you earn Bilt points (03:44) - You can learn more about the friend referral bonus here.(05:35) - New Hyatt card coming(09:36) - Hilton to add elite tier above Diamond (Diamond Reserve) and Milestone Rewards(15:52) - Visa and Mastercard reportedly nearing a settlement, allowing merchants to stop accepting rewards cardsVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Today's coffee break, five game-changing points and miles updates. last week when we recorded our show, we recorded a day early, and boy, did we regret that because a bunch of game-changing news piled in that day and early the next morning. Most of those things would have been easy for us to add to our show had we recorded at our

normal time. We didn't, and so we're missing a lot of big news from last week's show. And what we're going to do today is cover those things, plus a few more things that trickled in over the weekend in today's coffee break. All right. So let's get right into it because we've got a lot to do and I don't want to have to give any refunds. So we got to squeeze this into 20 minutes.

So let's start out with a rumor, a juicy rumor out that there will be a 200,000 point welcome offer coming on the Chase Sapphire Reserve in Branch for some customers. So the rumor is that it'll be 200,000 points after $10,000 in purchases in the first three months, but that you'll have to go in branch and they'll have to check and see if you're eligible for the offer. So clearly not everybody is going to be eligible. And it's going to take a little time to figure that out. What do you think about this? Excited, not excited, worth it. Would you go to the branch to check? I mean, that's an absolute monster offer. Now, it sounds like the same as the business Sapphire Reserve, which is a 200,000 point offer as we're recording this. But that one

requires a huge amount of spend. This requires $10,000 spend versus I think it's $30,000 with the business card. So that's a monster offer. 200,000 points is absolutely bonkers, a good offer. So that's exciting. I think it is worth if you have a branch near you or maybe a banker you can call to ask about this, it's probably worth doing to find out. To me, what this really shows is what we suspected earlier that Chase is probably not doing as well with the launch of the Saffir reserve card as they thought.

Now, clearly not. So the rumor is this is going to start November 16th. And so starting on November 16th, you'll either want to watch for data points online because surely people will start reporting what happens when they try to go after this and get an idea as to how widely targeted it is. But I agree with Greg. It's worth five minutes, 10 minutes, even if it's a half an hour, you've got to spend in the branch waiting to speak to somebody.

It's probably worth that time investment for the $200,000. Not probably. It's definitely, to me, it would definitely be worth the 30 minutes. Yeah, for sure. Now, whether I could get my wife to go in Branch to ask about it, I don't know. That's so sure. All right. Next up, the Racketon shopping portal is now letting you earn built points instead of cashback or

Amex points. And so the way it's going to work is at least for the next six months, every penny earn becomes, if you choose to earn built points, every penny earn through the Racketon and shopping portal will become one built point. So $1 is like $100 built points. After six months, though, they're saying that you'll need elite status with built to keep that one-to-one ratio. Unfortunately, the points earned from this relationship do not contribute

towards your built elite status, so that won't be the way out of that. And finally, I do want to remind people, if you just go to built and and sign up for if you're not already a member of rackettin's portal if you sign up through built they're offering a $25 or $2,500 built point bonus but there's a there's a 5,000 point bonus available right now through a friend referral and so if you don't have a friend with with rackettin we'll have a link in the show notes to to get to our referrals and we'd appreciate that because we'll also earn 5K points from each person who signs up through us. Anyway, so that's what's going on.

What do you think, Nick? Yeah, well, just to tag one more thing on top of that, and if you have a second household member who also wants to take advantage of this, you should definitely refer them because you'll get 5,000 points when they sign up, and they'll get 5,000 points. So like Greg said, definitely don't do it through the built app, go through a friend referral to sign up for Rakuten and if you're new, if you're new to Rakuten.

What do I think about this? Well, I mean, I think that I switched my earning preference to built. So clearly that says what I think about it, at least for now, unfortunately, six months from now, when it changes, I'm going to feel a lot differently because I don't yet have built elite status. I don't know whether I'll pursue built elite status. And if I don't have built elite status, then I'm not excited at all about what they're saying is going to be essentially half the transfer ratio, so to speak. So for a dollar worth of cash back, you'll only get 50 built points. And at that point, I would hopefully switch back to earning MX membership rewards points if I don't have built elite status. That said, this does make me more interested in built elite status.

And I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on the new cards when they launch on February 7th because I could see built elite status being worth pursuing between the better transfer bonuses and Racketon. Whereas I hadn't been particularly interested in it before, this might be enough of a carrot to make me actually go after it. Yeah, I can't wait to see what happens with all of that. because, as you said, it definitely might make build elite status worth chasing again. Next up, we have the new Hyatt card coming. So Hyatt plans to expand its portfolio and offer a new credit card. They're saying that Hyatt and Chase are going to launch something new to kind of complement its current co-branded cards.

Right now, they have one consumer card and one business card. That stands in stark contrast to other chains. Hilton's got three consumer cards and a business card. Marriott's got, I can't even count how many consumer cards and a business card. IHG has at least three different consumer cards, I think, right? If you're not even counting the old no longer available one and a business card. So, I mean, Hyatt has been behind, essentially. And so it's not a big surprise to me to see them finally do this.

This has been rumored for years. It's great to finally hear that it's happening. But do we know anything about when or what it's going to be like? We don't know anything. I mean, a lot of people have assumed that it's going to be a new premium card, you know, a more expensive card with higher-end benefits, but there was nothing in the announcement to even say that. I mean, it theoretically could be a fee-free card with no benefits at all. But I agree with the, you know, general wisdom that it's probably going to be

a premium card. It's probably going to have a big annual fee. It's probably going to have some level of coupons to make up for that annual fee. I'm hopeful, but not particularly optimistic that it's going to be great. And that comes from being like, when the business card was unveiled, I had really high hopes for what it would look like. And I found it disappointing. I kind of feeling like the same thing's going to happen here, but we'll see. So I have a question that I think is on the minds of some Hyatt loyalists out there, some Hyatt folks who are big fans. Are you worried about what all of this means for the future of Hyatt?

Because we've got Chase now throwing out these potential 200,000 points Sapphire Reserve bonuses that could end up getting transferred to Hyatt, creating an influx of Hyatt points. You got Racketon now partnering with Bilt, which again, that's another opportunity to potentially earn Hyatt points since you can transfer from Bill to Hyatt. And now a new Hyatt premium card coming out, do you think this is going to dilute the value of your Hyatt points, is going to make it harder to book awards? Is it going to delete elite status? Are you concerned? Are you nervous? I'm not worried about the elite status benefits because those those can be honored kind of regardless of how many elites there are other than like the free upgrade at check-in, but things like, you know, free breakfast, free parking. Those are things that can be honored no matter how many high-level elites are at a particular hotel at once. Do I think it might encourage Hyatt to raise point prices? Yeah, I mean, that's certainly possible.

I mean, it's something that's been happening over the years anyway in terms of, in two ways. One, they keep adding new categories, so hotels go into higher levels. And they move hotels that previously were like category three to category four to category five and so on. And that raises the price. They did have, I can't remember if it was this announcement or a different one, they did specifically mention that Hyatt is proud of having fixed award charts. So that's good news because it means that they, if they're proud of that and want to, you know, say how they have that unlike the others, that means that will probably stick around. That doesn't mean, though, that we can guarantee that that Hyatt House down the street is going to be anything less than a category eight next year. Oh, let's hope not. Let's hope not.

All right. And if it happens, you have Greg the Frequent Miler to blame for predicting that one. No, I'm just kidding. All right. All right. So that's the new Hyatt card, but Hyatt's not the only hotel chain out with some rumored news that we don't know a lot about yet. Yeah. So Hilton, so U.S. credit card guide unveiled that Hilton had some coding on their site, like behind the scenes on their site, that showed that there's a new elite tier, apparently called Diamond Reserve that they're preparing for, as well as milestones. rewards. So they're going to, they're going to have more. They already have minor milestone

rewards, but there's more of that apparently coming. And the requirements for reaching the lesser elite tiers, silver, gold, diamond will be decreasing. So all of that is, all of those specifics are unconfirmed, but what has been confirmed is that something like that is happening. So I love this that Hilton posted on social media a very cute picture saying, yep, you caught us. Hilton honors is up to something. And then they went on to quote a few different sources like U.S. credit card guide that had headlines about this. I love that they did that. I don't like they didn't quote frequent miler, but we'll have to forgive them for that.

we'll have to forget. Hopefully they'll quote us another time. Yeah, but I thought that that was actually a really good way to deal with this if this wasn't intentional. You know, if leaking it was not an intentional thing, if it was an accident, which I guess we should assume that it was probably accidental that this happened. What a masterclass and how to handle that. I mean, that was a great way to handle it to confirm, yeah, something's coming, but you're not going to share any more details and then share some of the blog headlines showing that you're paying attention that, you know, you saw this. You knew it was out. there. And rather than the typical, you know, marketing statement that says, oh, we don't have any plans at this time, they just admitted to it and built excitement probably, right? I mean, like, I don't know. I think that was a great way to handle that. What do you think, though, a lot of people are concerned that this means a devaluation of their gold and diamond status that, you know, many of us have gold or diamond from our credit cards. There's various credit cards that offer those level tiers. Do you think that's true? Is this going to devalue those elite levels?

Yeah, I'd be worried. I am. I mean, you know, Hilton has devalued pretty repeatedly over the years. They got a big bump when they added SLAH initially, and we were very excited about that. And then they've just continued to devalue their points towards those properties and many others repeatedly over and over again. So there are still some gems here and there, but overall, Hilton points have just become less valuable. and the status is so easy to get, you know, I think there's a good reason to be nervous. On the flip side, they've been doing okay with it as it is for years and years.

Maybe they'll just add some meaningful elite benefits to the Diamond Reserve Tier. I mean, that would be nice. I'd like to see it that way that they keep the meaningless benefits for Golden Diamond that have been there forever and just add some meaningful ones for the people who actually stay at Hilton. Yeah, and that's the case. That's why I'm actually kind of hopeful about this that because gold and diamond's status have so few benefits, so few tangible benefits. I mean, yes, you get some kind of food benefit starting at gold status, and that's good.

And that's really good. As long as that continues for gold, then that won't have devalued the gold status. Although I could imagine that going away and being pushed only to Diamond tier. But anyway, and then Diamond just adds really guaranteed lounge access. And there's so many, there's so few hotels where that even makes any difference that that's, it's not meaningless, but it has less value because of that. So it's possible that your elite benefits at the gold and diamond tier won't change. What will change is if you have the Hilton Aspire card, which gives you diamond status, you'll no longer be able to say, look at me, I have top tier status. Right, right.

Well, you know, as much as I don't want anything to get devalued for gold and diamond status, it does to me make sense that Hilden has to devise a way to actually incentivize people to stay at their hotels because as things stand right now, as much as I like the fact that you can easily get status, there's no benefit to using it frequently, right? So like, you know, because there are no meaningful milestone rewards right now. So, you know, if you add some things like sweet upgrades or, you know, whatever, club access awards for gold members or whatever it might be, if you come up with some stuff to add there that means something to somebody or the guest of honor awards, like what Hyatt

has, then there's a reason to use your status to stay. Instead, as things stand, they don't have that yet. So I think it makes sense for them to create a way to incentivize people to choose to stay at Hilton. I just hope it doesn't come at the cost of those of us who have long enjoyed our golden diamond status. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the hit. I think the milestone rewards thing is really important. And how they roll that out is going to make a huge difference to whether this is a winning thing for Hilton and for their members or not. You know, I think when Hyatt rolled out their milestone rewards, that was, you know, 99% of it was really good for, I think, for both. Because as you said, it encourages not just like before you had to get all

the way to 60 nights to get like meaningful benefits. And now it's like, you know, starting at 20 or 30 nights, you start getting meaningful benefits. And then every 10 you get some more. And I'm seeing other programs, you know, copy that model. Even choice privileges is talking about doing something like that. And so will Hilton do it right like Hyatt did? I don't know. They might. I mean, I have to say clearly Hilton's paying attention. I think that they've made that clear over the past few years. They've been in touch with many, many of us in their rewards community. And so they've, I think they've been proactive in building relationships. And then, you know, quoting all these blogs on their, their Instagram feed shows to me that they're paying attention. So they,

they clearly know what they need to do, whether or not they do it. We'll see. Yeah. All right. Last but not least, visa and MasterCard are reportedly nearing a settlement, allowing merchants to choose which types of Visa or which types of MasterCard they want to accept or not accept or the ability to institute fees. The Wall Street Journal had a big article on this, and so we covered it as well. What do you make of all of this? Are rewards credit cards going to be dead? Are we going to be out of a job next year, Greg? I don't think so. So I was thinking about this this morning that, you know, merchants have always had the ability to turn away people from using Amex cards. And many of them used to. But more and more, we're seeing merchants, at least

in the U.S. accepting Amex, and I, you know, I think that merchants are realizing if they just don't take popular cards, they're going to be losing customers. I mean, you know, there are going to be customers who are like, but this is my card, or that are so sort of involved in the rewards program or trying to earn their welcome bonus, whatever it is, that they're going to be disgusted by the idea that they can't use it at that merchant and we'll walk away. And so I think, that, you know, we'll see some of that, but I just, I, it seems like it'd be too messy for them to be like, little by little saying, we accept this, but not that. Like, I don't even know how that would work. I do worry that we're going to see more and more extra surcharges. If you use a rewards card, we're going to charge you an extra 2% or 3% or whatever. Yeah, and that'll be a bummer if we see it, and I personally, when I see places like that, I often think to myself, well, I have 100% surcharge on my returning business. when you charge a fee for me to pay the way I want to pay. Don't make it inconvenient for me to

pay for whatever it is that I'm buying. I don't know. It annoys me personally. But anyway, we'll see what happens. I think you're totally right. I think it's kind of short-sighted because I think, you know, obviously the Visa Infinite cards cost more, or not obviously, perhaps, but it costs more oftentimes to process a transaction on that than on a Visa signature or Visa Platinum or whatever it may be. But I think it'd be short-sighted to start turning away those customers that have the more premium cards that are, you know, theoretically going to be spending more money at your business. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. I'm mildly nervous, but not that nervous because like you said, I just don't really see this being widely implemented

anyway. Yeah. And too many people are invested in the rewards ecosystem for it to just go away. Somehow, I think it'll be safe. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. Travel has changed a lot since my father wrote Europe on $5 a day, but our mission hasn't. I'm Pauline Fromer of the Fromer Travel Guides, and on the Fromer's Travel Show, I share practical advice, meaningful stories, and conversations with some

of the most trusted names in the industry. If you're looking for ways to travel smarter and bring the world closer, I've got you covered. New episodes weekly at voyescape.com.