Frequent Miler on the Air - AA shutdowns, Greg's son's credit cards, and an unfortunate glitch

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

This week, Greg and Nick discuss the current waves of American Airlines AAdvantage account shutdowns, whether or not churners are responsible for devaluations, and why Greg is helping his son become a miles millionaire before a technical glitch leaves us short of this week's full intended discussion.

Welcome to Frequent Miler On The Air with Greg and Nick. This week, we're going to talk about American Airlines shutting down accounts. What's going on there? And college student credit card churning. Is it a good thing? Bad thing? What am I doing with my son's credit cards? And finally, manufacturing Hyatt globalist status. Does it really make sense? Those are our topics for this

week. But first, as always, we're doing a reader feedback segment. Everybody's favorite segment of the podcast, right? Where we get the reader feedback and get the honest reaction, unprepared, honest, unprepared reaction. So nothing canned here. This week, I am going to give the piece of reader feedback to Greg, and he has no idea which piece of reader feedback I'm going to give him. We're just going to get his honest, off-the-cuff response. Yeah, this is exciting. Normally, I'm the one to dig up the reader feedback, and we wait to see how Nick responds, but this time it's up to me. Let's see. Live response from Greg. So this week, our reader feedback comes from a post about the

shutdowns that we're going to be talking about. There've been some shutdowns. Actually, over the past year, there've been a number of different things that have happened, changes in the system that have been mostly attempting to thwart the type of behavior that either banks or loyalty programs don't like. And so, Ryan comments on the AA shutdown post to say, sounds good to me. Get rid of the people who abuse the system. These people are the ones who cause mileage devaluations. What do you think, Greg? Should we be getting rid of the people who gain the system and gain a lot of miles and points and fly for free all the time? I mean, people like you and me, right? Do we cause the mileage devaluations? Wow, wow.

So this is getting into, it's a little hard to answer that fully without us first talking about what these shutdowns are all about. Should we jump into that? Then I'll give the reaction to that. Well, maybe we could, but then I feel like you get a little time to think about it. So you know what? So here's what the reaction to that. Well, maybe we could, but then I feel like you get a little time to think about it.

So, you know what? So, here's what we'll do. We should. You're right. We'll talk about that. But before we do, let me ask you, in general, not necessarily specific to this, in general, do you think that people that are earning outsized value, earning huge numbers of miles and points, whether, not necessarily specifically through the AA issue

that we'll talk about, but in general, are those of us who are collecting lots of miles causing devaluations in the programs? Yeah. I actually think we probably are. So, I think what's happening is if you look at the fact that Americans tend to have tons of miles to spend, and so we see that reflected in some weird ways, like British Airways, when they changed the mileage requirements for the shortest flights to give an exception to flights that are into or out of the U.S., they made it a higher minimum amount. And I think that kind of thing happens

because we are so flush with miles here. And so, I mean, I don't know if it's, I wouldn't say it's necessarily the people who are skirting the system to get lots of miles. I think it's more that the system overall in the U.S. because of the way credit cards are so rewarding to the credit card companies. So they are throwing miles and points at us. And as a result, Americans, much more than most people in other countries, are flush with miles. And the result then is devaluations, especially of routes from to America, I think.

Yeah, interesting. All right. What about you? Do you agree, disagree? You know, you made a great argument. I think you persuaded me to believe it anyway. So yeah, I don't know as though I had a firm opinion on that one way or another. But I think that that does make a lot of sense. We do see those devaluations often. They seem very North

American centric. And when you look at award charts in general, I would say that most of the sweetest of sweet spots are not to and from the United States. And that's probably not an accident because like you said, we do get a lot of miles and points here. So I don't know if it's one subset. Like you said, I don't think it's necessarily even the people who are earning the most miles. It's rather just volume overall. Exactly. All of the people earning the miles.

So yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So all right. So that segues us into speaking of earning lots of miles. Yeah. There is a segment of people who us into speaking of earning lots of miles. Yeah.

There is a segment of people who've been earning lots and lots of miles, and that seems to have caused a little bit of a reaction, a negative one at that. And some people are getting their accounts shut down. So, what have you seen? What do you think about it? So, first of all, what we're talking about is American Airlines specifically shutting down people's loyalty accounts and also shutting down any award flights that they had booked, right? Yeah, that's what we've been seeing. People have had award tickets canceled. And so, you have to imagine there are some people traveling right now, some of whom might not know that this is even happening because they just might not have noticed yet. And some accounts have been locked. It sounds like there's been a second wave now in

the last day or two of more accounts being locked from people who were earning numbers of miles beyond what was probably intended by skirting the system a little bit and trying to find ways to earn more miles. And so, yeah, they've had accounts locked and shut down and award tickets canceled out. Let's just back up a little bit, though, first to say one of the things that was happening over the last, I think, probably two years maybe, maybe longer, was that American Airlines and Citibank

were making available these flyers that had codes on them that would let you sign up for the American Airlines credit card and get the 60,000 or 70,000 points or even 75,000, I think at times and, and skirt the rules about it being, I can't remember what the current rule is, 48 months to 24, 24 24 with that one and so a lot of people were doing that over and over there was a a way to you could buy those codes on reddit and other places and and just keep doing it and so at least the first wave it seemed like those shutdowns were people who had done that. But now the second wave, what's the theory about what kind of behavior led to these shutdowns?

You know, I think that the second wave of shutdowns has thrown a lot of the previous theories out. It sounds like people aren't really sure exactly what's leading to it. There's speculation, yes, that it was the mailers, because they were both physical and electronic mailers. There were people who surely were signing up with other household members and using codes that belong to other people. And so I think that nobody knows for sure. There was another loophole for a long time. I don't know if it still exists. So maybe I'll leave that one out of this. Another loophole that enabled you to sign up for one card and do a product change and then sign up again. Uh, and so that there were a couple of things that were happening.

And I think that there isn't a firm consensus as to which of those it is. I think initially my sense was that the people who were shut down were people that American was suspecting of having sold the miles because I think some people aren't so many that they couldn't possibly use them all and sold a lot of them. And that activity does tend to draw negative attention from airline programs. It certainly wouldn't be unprecedented for an airline to shut down people that they think are selling or bartering the miles. But am I right to say that not everyone shut down has sold miles, or at least they haven't admitted to doing it if they did?

Right, exactly. And it seems like it's widespread enough that I believe that probably not everybody was selling miles that's been caught up in the shutdowns at this point. However, I haven't yet seen a comment from someone who said, oh my goodness, my account is locked and I have no idea why. So I don't think that it's happening to people who don't expect it. So if you've opened one or two credit cards in the last couple of years or something like that people who don't expect it. So, you know, if you've opened one or two credit cards in the last couple of years or something like that, I don't think you had anything to worry about. And that's something you need to be shaking your boots over. I think the people who are concerned know that they should be concerned because they know they

probably did something that intentionally skirted the rules about how many credit cards you could sign up for and get bonuses, right? Right. And I don't even necessarily have a firm opinion at this point, one way or another, as to whether that's okay or not okay, and who's at fault there. And in terms of, you know, the bank obviously allowed it, and the airline obviously provided them. It starts to get a little complex there. So, this is what I wanted to get into with your reader comment. I have thought a bit about this. And saying, yay, these people who are skirting the rules got shut down, I can understand that sentiment. And what I think American Airlines, the first entity they should be going after is Citibank.

Citibank did not protect American Airlines' product. Interest here at all, yeah. They had rules, and they left the floodgates wide open. And it couldn't have taken them long to see what was happening, but they didn't shut them down for ages. It took forever for them to address the openly the people who skirted the rules are should be in the clear i i think i think it makes sense if you knowingly skirted rules and you get caught that i think that's okay that there's some kind of repercussion i think it's unfortunate that they're taking it to the extremes Everyone's upset about it. But I personally don't see that as a terrible thing for American Airlines to do. Again, what I think is terrible

is maybe to the extent they're doing it with shutting down the flights. What about you? Well, you know, especially on short notice's it's tough i i do feel for the the folks and and and like you said i think if you're skirting the rules then you know you're skirting the rules and you know you're accepting some level of risk right i mean i think that in a lot of the things we do you know we accept some level of risk so even just getting in your car and driving you know down to the mall or something every day we accept some level of risk and so i i don't necessarily uh feel bad in the sense that like, you know, obviously something like this could happen. On the flip side, I do somewhat feel for people who have flights booked for the holidays in the

next couple of days or the next week here that now might not have a flight to get to where they're going. You know, obviously, I think that if they had had it to do over again, they probably wouldn't have taken that risk, at least on those flights that mattered to them. For sure. So I definitely feel for them somewhat in that sense. Let me ask you this, though. There was some discussion amongst people. Do people need to be worried about being sued by American Airlines for the value?

Because the terms of the program do say that if you abuse the system that they could come after you do you think that people who earned massive numbers of miles should like start to think about how they're going to respond to corporate security because it does seem that by the way for people who aren't familiar with it yet and haven't read about it that generally what's happening is people are locked out of their accounts when they try to contact american airlines they're told that corporate security will contact them. American Airlines' official line that they're towing here is saying, honesty is the best policy. Be honest about what you're doing, and that'll give you the best shot. I don't know if that's true or not. I do know that in the past, when I've read about people

being shut down for one reason or another by the airlines, that it does seem that people who are honest had a better shot of getting their accounts reinstated anyway. So I think that there's perhaps some wisdom to that. On the flip side, I did see at least one person that said, you know, I don't want my life ruined over this. I don't want to take away my miles or cancel my tickets. Okay. But you know, do I need to speak to a lawyer before I talk to corporate security? Yeah. I don't have any knowledge to share that would help in that answer that question but at first i was going to say oh it's unlikely but you think about what some some of the airlines have done about suing people who have skirted the rules for like lounge access you remember that guy who's booking yeah flights and canceling them and just in order

to spend all his time in lounges so we have seen or or people wasn't there a united case where or what maybe was liftonza where someone was thons i think liftonza where someone was doing the hidden city ticketing yep and they came after them, to maybe make a statement, basically, to scare others. So, it could be, you know, they could do something like that. I could imagine that world. I did, on the flip side, see a comment that made some sense to me and said, probably, many readers probably read the story a few months back about the man with the unlimited air pass.

It was controversial as to whether he was abusing the system or not. His daughter, Caroline Rothstein, had written the piece about his story and what he had done. And kind of, I think, was a pretty decently balanced piece, anyway, of showing both sides of the coin. But at any rate, by Americans' measurement, he cost them massive amounts of money over the course of like 20 or 30 years. And they didn't sue him. They shut down and uh and and they didn't sue him they shut down his his air pass but so that's good yeah so yeah so that's probably a good sign right right and i agree with that one thing i do want to point out for people who say oh they were doing something wrong they should have expected this this is the first time i can remember an airline punishing the people who did something against rules with credit cards so normally the risk you're you're accepting is the possibility

that your credit card accounts will get shut down right and in an extreme case usually you only lose your points when it's the bank points but you could almost imagine a case where city shuts down your American Airlines cards and somehow tries to pull back claw back the American Airlines miles but nobody expected it to come from the American Airlines side of things right right and that that is a good point something that I noted when I wrote the post initially. That's what really jumped out at me when I first read the story was, I just, I haven't heard of the loyalty program itself shutting people down for that type of activity. So, that's a first and an interesting example anyway, something that I think moving forward,

people will think about. But I can definitely see why some people didn't anticipate that and probably didn't think that those booked tickets had any cause to be concerned about tickets that were already ticketed because that type of thing hadn't happened before. So an interesting story that we'll continue to monitor. Like I said, there was a second wave of shutdowns or account locks anyway. There's some private discussion going on around the internet. So if you're involved and you think you've caused to be concerned, I encourage you to do some reading around the internet, try and connect with other

folks in the same boat so you can figure out what the path is going forward. But for now, that's as much as we know about it. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I think you told me there's a private Reddit thread now about this. I know that if I had been doing the churning of these American Airlines cards, which I hadn't been doing. Me either. I would certainly try to get into that private Reddit group so that I could stay on top of what's happening. And so I'd recommend if you're in that boat, try to get in there. Right. And we have a link to the Reddit discussion in our post about this. And, uh, and, and from there, you'll easily find the link to the private Reddit group, which the last I read, uh, it sounds like it was kind of slow going and adding people to it because there's some sort of a limit as to how many people they can add to a private Reddit group

per hour. But, but I think there's somebody who's written code to be able to slowly add people to the group to be able to add the maximum number of folks. So, it sounds like there's quite a few people with a skin in the game, so to speak, with an interest in the outcome. So, I would certainly encourage the same. I'm not in that boat, but I would want to know what's happening with other people and how things are turning out. Let me ask you something. This has been asked to me in the past, but why not? Why are you not in that same situation? A lot of people found it super easy to just keep picking up those codes and applying over and over and over. And it was easy, easy miles. Why didn't you do it? Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't have a great defense as to why my defense as to why

it's just that there are, we all have, we all, we all create that line in a different place. And this is something that Greg has talked about lots of times when he, when he speaks at different conferences and things that we all kind of create our own little moral line, if you will. And it's not that I think my line is the right line. It's just where I draw the line. And so I didn't feel like that fit in with what I was comfortable doing, number one. And number two, I've been in the fortunate position where I've been able to generate enough miles for me to enjoy my travels for the last few years.

I've done a lot of traveling. I've had a great time and I haven't had trouble having the miles that I've needed for a trip yet. So I haven't been in the situation where I felt like I needed to amass 2 million miles all at once because I'm able to consistently generate them at enough of a clip that I just don't need to do that. I don't think anyway. I don't know. What about you? What's been your answer? Yeah. I had a few reasons why I didn't do it. So one was for the personal cards, I was on a path towards trying to get under 524. never log into that. And so I just find it awkward to deal with city business cards because I forget to log in and then, you know, I might forget to cancel the card the next year and things like

that. And so it's just purely like it's outside of my routine. And so I didn't want to do that. But more than either of those, I had been sitting on between my wife and I, I don't know, something like 800,000 American Airlines miles for a long time. So years and years ago, I had gotten excited by posts by like Lucky and Gary of View From The Wing about how you could buy U.S. Airways miles for about 1.1 or 1.2 cents each. And so, you know, and they would write about all the amazing things you could do with those miles. And so I bought a whole bunch through that type of thing. And I also earned a lot also from credit cards as well. But I just never had much opportunity to use the miles and so i was sitting on a lot of miles and and it was like why would i do even even though it's easy why would i do much to collect

more when i haven't found good uses for them now recently we've talked about i found a great use with eddie hot apartments but and and there are plenty of great uses for American Airlines miles. It's just that my travel situation hadn't lined up with those great uses. And so I'm all for grabbing the easy-to-get, low-hanging fruit, but not when my stomach is full, my basket's full.

And the baskets of a few other folks are full too. Yeah, that's the thing. And I think you make a good point in the sense that it also hasn't matched up with my travel for the last couple of years very much because I've been traveling with a baby and Americans lap infant policies to add 10% of the revenue fare. And so that's expensive. You're booking award tickets and doing that. So I didn't have much use for them the last couple of years either. Now, you could certainly make the argument that I should have been preparing for next year when he requires his own ticket. But we've got some miles and points ready for that too. So yeah, it hasn't lined up with my travel patterns the last couple of years either. I used a lot of

American miles a few years back, but not as many of these last two years either. So I was kind of in the same boat. No sense in continuing to hold massive amounts of miles that I can't use for years and years. So that hasn't been my play either. But for the folks who have, I know that there have been plenty of good uses. So if it fit your travel patterns, I can certainly understand the appeal of easy, you know, low-hanging fruit. Right, right. So, speaking of easy low-hanging fruit, or easy your low-hanging fruit anyway, your son recently picked some low-hanging fruit,

it seems, or at least it's going to be low-hanging with your help, your assistance. Right. So, you got a son in college and he just picked up another 195,000 points and miles. So, tell us about that. Now, and when I say tell us about that, I also want to talk about why he's doing that and whether or not that's a good thing. There were some readers who commented and didn't think he should be doing that. But tell us about what he opened and why. Let's start there. Sure, sure. Okay. So the hardest decision in one way was he got a promotional offer for a second business platinum card. He had opened a business platinum card last December when it was the last chance to get in on the $450 fee before it went up to $595. And by opening in December,

we've been able to collect the $200 airline incidental fees three, well, two times so far on the card. And we'll be able to collect it again in January before he cancels the card after the annual fee posts. So we'll wait till the annual fee posts, make sure we've collected $200, don't pass go, and then cancel the card. Then he gets this mailer at an amazing time for a business platinum card. Early December, we could again collect $200 three times before paying a second annual fee. And the welcome bonus offer was not amazing. It was $75,000 after $20,000 spend in three months, not even a six-month deal, three months. So it's not by any stretch of the imagination an amazing offer, but what is special about it is to get an opportunity

to get a welcome bonus on that card when you've already had it before. So this offer was explicitly for your second business platinum card. Not even just when you've had it before, like even while you currently have it. While you currently have it, they're encouraging you to get a second one second which i found very interesting my wife received one of those mailers too and i found that particularly interesting because in the recent amex shutdown phase there was there was some speculation that having two of the same card was was potentially a problem and then i found And then I found it very funny to see all of a sudden that right after that speculation,

it happened, Amex was like, oh no, no, please open a second of the same card. Special offer for you. I wonder if the look at multiples of the same card is limited to personal cards. I don't know. I don't know. We really don't know anything

about that particular risk factor. No. I am a little nervous, though. I was nervous about opening a second one knowing that we were going to cancel his first one. That there might be the whole thing of, why would you sign up for a second one if you didn't want this one? Which the answer seems obvious, to earn the bonus. If you're going to offer it, of course, why wouldn't you? But that answer might not.

I mean, honestly, I always think in those cases you should be honest. And they are holding the big bonus in front of you. And if you can get it good um the also the his uh tuition lined up nicely so we were able to log on to plastic and pay his tuition with his new business platinum card i didn't know for sure how much credit since it's a charge card i don't know if they if they did explicitly say anywhere how much sort of credit he's allowed in any given time they didn't i didn't notice it but it went through no problem and so that so we're we're very close to finishing his required 20k spend on that card already that's that's incredible

that's yeah yeah with an expense you were going to pay anyway with the expense we're going to pay anyway and we will pay it back out of a withdrawal from his 529 account smart so yeah it it that all works very nicely hopefully there'll be no repercussions about shutting, about closing his card in January. That's his first one. So, so there's that. And the other one that he was targeted for was one of those Delta cards. He, he had get, he had received an email offering the, it was actually, I went back and looked, it was actually the platinum card, the 80K offer for the personal platinum card. And as I said in my post, I forwarded that to you and you had written a quick deal. You might have already been working on that quick deal.

I don't know. But one of the things you pointed out in that quick deal was that you can scroll down and see other offers, including the business card offers. I hadn't noticed that you know i only noticed that to be honest because i checked to see if i was targeted and i wasn't targeted for the personal i had the you know low garbagey personal offers so i just continued scrolling down and i was like oh but look i've got these business offers at the bottom so that's really where that came from it's just like and your business offers were good yeah the business offers were the 80k offers but but personal with the garbagey ones. So anyway, so yeah.

So I scrolled down and saw that the really good business offers were there, 70K for the gold card, 80K for the platinum and the reserve. And the gold, I figure on all, there are six Delta cards that have potentially big bonuses right the gold platinum and reserve and the consumer and business version of each of those so by amex rules you've once in a lifetime and so he has for however long can get six of those cards and get bonuses on them. And so the ideal thing is to sign up when the bonus is at its highest. And I don't remember ever seeing the gold or the others available for 70k or 80k. So I was most interested in the business one over the personal one so that it doesn't add to his 524 count. It doesn't show up as a new account on his credit report. Other than the potential for a hard inquiry, there's literally no impact on his credit report

at all. In the case of Amex, they usually don't do a hard inquiry and they didn't in this case. So there was absolutely no impact at all, positive or negative, by doing that. So that was a really easy decision. The only hard decision for me, really, is whether he should sign up for the Platinum card in January before the offer runs out. And I'm thinking probably yes. In order to sneak in there before the annual fee increases, right? Well, also the offer expires like january 20th or 21st or something like that right right around the same time yeah yeah so i mean that

does seem like it'd probably be a smart play for him so pick up again one of those top bonuses because that that's definitely the key if you're going to sign up for the delta cards and you definitely want to apply for the delta cards when the offer is at its highest since you aren't going to get another chance to do that again so since they fluctuate you want to apply for the Delta cards when the offer is at its highest, since you aren't going to get another chance to do that again. So since they fluctuate, you want to watch for those increased offers. So all right. So he's got some easy Delta miles coming now then, thanks to that. He's got some easy points coming from paying tuition on the new business platinum card.

And then there's a third card he opened, right? Yes. He opened the World of hyatt card i what what i'm trying to do with his his account is get him set up over time with all of the must have chase cards i posted about what which chase cards i consider must have the idea being once you're over if you're signing up for lots of cards, once you're over 524, meaning you've signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months, you will not get approved for more chase cards unless you have that little diamond thing that's just for you offer. So there are exceptions. So there's a number of cards that I think are sort of essential for him to long-term have in his toolbox. The Hyatt card is one that I think he will start to get value from, or we as a family anyway,

will start to get value from in the near term. Because when we travel with him, we often get him, now that he's older, get him his own room. This way, the annual certificate, that'll be a one night anyway in his own room. And of course, the points for the not in any hurry to collect all the must-have chase cards. So we really ought to be watching for special enhanced bonuses on these cards when we get them for him. So there was a United Mileage Plus card, bigger offer available, whereas we went for the standard Hyatt offer. And so if I were to do it again, I'd reverse the two, but it's not like it's a huge loss. I don't think that the United offer will come around again, I'm sure. And so he'll pick it up then. Yeah, yeah.

Just wait for the next time for it to come around. So it's all right. So you explained very well how the Delta Gold business card really does no good, no harm, because it's not going to show up anywhere. Same with the business platinum. Same with the business platinum. Yeah. So not going to do any good or harm, not going to show up anywhere. The Hyatt card, though, of course, will. And there were at least a few readers who commented saying, why are you doing all of this with him? Why are you helping him open all these cards? Isn't this going to ruin his credit long term? Isn't he going to have a hard time getting a car loan or a mortgage or whatever else because

of all of this? And shouldn't he have to just do it on his own? So what do you think? Let's tease apart. I think there's two legitimate questions here. One is, are we hurting his credit by doing this? And the fact of the matter is, if you do it right, you're actually helping. So we're helping his credit by, again, the business cards don't do any harm or help, but the consumer cards will, right off the bat, are going to add to his utilization ratio or improve his utilization ratio as long as he doesn't keep spending up to the max. So the utilization ratio, that's a significant part of your credit score, is how much credit do you use each month divided by how much credit you have available to you. What you want is a small answer to that division. And so to get a small result to that division, you want a high, a big denominator, a big amount of credit available to you. So he signed up for this Hyatt card. He, he added $5,900 in credit available to him.

And that's really significant because before this, he just had, uh, probably about 6,000 total. So we almost doubled. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's huge because that makes it much easier then to manage if you are using it for some regular spend and or meeting the minimum spending requirements and whatnot. It does make it much easier to keep that ratio low. Yeah. And so I fully expect by doing this, his credit score will go up with time like there should be a very temporary hit because of the one credit inquiry but i'm talking about five points or so probably that'll go away in a couple months and i don't mean the inquiry will go away but the the hit to the credit score will go away and the utilization ratio will be a longer-term help to his overall score.

Right, and it's worth noting that getting approved for that higher limit, there's the wisdom that's out there. If you research about this, that higher limits beget higher limits. When you open new cards, often new issuers, now you eventually get to a point where this isn't true, but when you're starting out anyway, often issuers, when they approve you for a new card, are going to try to approve you for something that's probably going to have a limit that's closer to that hyatt card than to whatever his highest limit was before should be interesting well we'll see i guess the delta card which he

hasn't gotten yet it's too soon to know with that one because it wouldn't have been affected by the hyatt card right exactly yeah you'll you'll have to look at the next personal application i would i would assume anyway and see what uh with a different issuer specifically i would say because chase is uh if you apply still with chase you're you're working on the same amount of maximum exposure anyway with chase you know but if you were to go for a city card or an amex personal or something like that i would i would bet $10 that the next one comes out to be around this, within 10%, I would guess, lower or could certainly be higher.

Yeah, yeah. So I addressed that question about the credit. Are we hurting his credit by doing this? The other question in there is, isn't it wrong of me to take over his finances so he doesn't learn himself how to deal with finances? And if that was the whole story, I would agree with that completely. But the truth is, with his first card, the Discover It student card, that was completely him. I had him sign up for the card. He has his own bank account. I showed him how to set up automatic payments to his credit card bill so that he pays in full every month.

And he manages both of those accounts. Whoa, I messed up. I accidentally hit the stop button on the record. So we lost the whole second half of our conversation. And even worse, I need to run to the airport now. So I can't finish this. Which is too bad because you're going to miss all of the stuff that we talked about, about how to manufacture high globalist status for like 20 bucks.

You'd be gone. Fortunately, it's just like lost in the ether now. So no one's ever going to know. All of the MS secrets of the world were all shared and we weren't recording. I couldn't believe what Greg said while you guys were not here. So everyone gets a break. We're ending early this week thanks to my screw up. But if people ever want to forgive us and check us out,

where should they go? Thefrequentmiler.com. So you can find us on thefrequentmiler.com on Facebook, you can join the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group to connect with other folks. You can find us on Twitter and all your favorite podcast formats. So you'll find us on all those Apple iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, etc, etc. Let us know if there are additional services that you'd like to be able to listen to us on. And please leave us your feedback and send us your messages. All right. Bye, everyone. Thank you very much.

Take care.