Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex changes the game | Ep 84 | 2-6-21

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

00:22 Giant Mailbag https://frequentmiler.com/a-trip-down-the-turkish-miles-smiles-rabbit-hole/ 4:52 What crazy thing....double header! 5:29 What crazy thing did Marriott do this week? Marriott launched a new promo, but many members have been unable to register. https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-launches-easy-elite-status-for-2021-and-cheaper-saver-awards/ For the tip about customizing payments to mix some paid and some award nights: https://frequentmiler.com/bet-didnt-know-maximizing-marriotts-5th-night-free-longer-stays/ 10:46 What crazy thing....did Delta do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/delta-one-way-flights-from-only-2000-skymiles-from-4500-for-transcontinental/ 14:19 Main Event: Amex changes the game https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-amex-cards-enhancements-for-2021-dining-wireless-and-spend-bonuses/ https://frequentmiler.com/hilton-cards-enhancements-for-2021-dining-wireless-and-spend-bonuses/ https://frequentmiler.com/delta-cards-enhancements-for-2021-dining-wireless-status-boost-and-delta-spend-bonuses/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-gold-10-uber-benefit-now-live/ https://frequentmiler.com/amexs-preemptive-retention-credits-mark-a-strategy-shift/ 37:36 Post Roast: Greg's turn https://frequentmiler.com/the-perfect-hyatt-mattress-run/ 41:14 Post Roast: Nick's turn https://frequentmiler.com/big-new-75k-offers-pick-5x-office-supply-or-1-5x-everywhere/ 48:47 Question of the Week: Can you double up on Hyatt elite night credits by cancelling the credit card and re-applying? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment! Go to https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to join our email list / follow us on social media. Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event amex changes the game they've changed the miles and points game or at least they're attempting to and i think in a pretty smart way so we'll talk all about that of course first we have the giant mailbag that's right drag it out let's see it all right here we go no you still have that time there it is i see i have the giant mailbag this thing goes with me everywhere as it should all right the mail today comes from john t okay this this was in response to your post about Turkish miles and smiles and frowns and whatnot. Always makes me nervous when you start with this is in response to your post. And then it was in response to my Turkish miles and smiles post, which didn't go as well as I'd hoped. So now I'm nervous. I don't remember, T. I, maybe I haven't seen that comment yet. Yeah. So, so just to remind listeners that this post was, was Nick

thought he had found a great loophole in the Turkish miles and smile system and then discovered that it wasn't really what he thought and then discovered another one, but that one also wasn't what he thought. And so it was, I thought it also wasn't what he thought. And so it was, I thought it was actually a very good story. And one of the early commenters was being a jerk about it. But you know, pretty much everybody in response down, downvoted him and or her. And so that was, that was fine. I thought it was a great post. But here's John T.

John T. says, sometimes I think I'd enjoy being a travel blogger. And then I read about how Lord knows how many hours went into fruitlessly deciphering a nonsensical award ticket pricing system. I think I'll continue to leave the blogging to the pros. Haha. Enjoyed the journey. Well, good. I'm glad you enjoyed it, John. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there are a lot of fruitless hours that go into things sometimes, but, and that's, you know, truthfully, that's why I continued to work on it because I said, you know what, I spent enough time on this already. And it's, it's kind of interesting because it shows where the thought process was and trying to find a loophole. And really I didn't highlight it in the post, but the fact that it's 7,500 miles each way to

Puerto Rico will be interesting to a segment of people. And then anyone who read between the lines beyond that would realize things like it's 7,500 points from Puerto Rico to Hawaii or 12,500 in business class, if you find that, which could be a great deal for the right person. Or somebody commented to know the Virgin Islands are 7,500 points each way, which is another thing that I figured people would kind of discover and see as they saw it. So it wasn't as much of a loss as I kind of made it out to be.

I also didn't make a big deal in the post about the fact that it's 35,000 miles one way in business class from much of the Caribbean to the Southern end of South America. So there are some positives to come out of that. Certainly not the positives that like, not the positives I got excited about initially when I was like, Oh, yeah, I got something big here. This is gonna be huge. It's gonna be even bigger than Hawaii. Oh, no, I just wasted two hours of my life on nothing. So yeah, and, and of course, you know, with those little tips that are

buried in there, if someone decides to take advantage of them, then they get to spend countless it is to like call or email and see if you could ticket it. And so I thought about that for, you know, about 30 seconds. And I was like, you know what, even if I get somebody on the, like what, what luck would I have to have to get somebody on the phone who could ticket it? And then would I really know that it's going to happen again and again for other people? Probably not. And most likely I'm just going to waste more time talking to someone that's not really going to confirm or deny anything because if they can't book it, that's really not going to tell me much because that's just going to tell me that they are the, you know, eight Turkish agents out of 10 that can't help you with anything. So,

so, so I thought it was kind of going to be more a waste of more time to even try initially. But then I realized, of course, my mistake, you can read more about it in the link that'll be in the show notes. But, but yeah, so fun times. I'm glad John enjoyed it. And a lot of a lot of people enjoyed it. I hope so. One, one, they say around. You know, it was fun. It was fun. You know, fun. That kind of thing, doing the searches and looking for that sweet spot is fun. and if you enjoy that kind of thing then i figure you might enjoy reading about it i know that there's a few readers out there who do so all right so i have a question for you oh what crazy thing oh nick and greg gonna do this week instead of mattress running the numbers instead of mattress running the numbers nick

and greg are gonna do a What Crazy Thing doubleheader. Doubleheader! Doubleheader! Everybody loves doubleheaders, right? Except for the baseball players who have to sit there for hours and hours on the bench watching the game. Yes, I'm sure that most people do. Yeah, I don't know if people like it or not, but people do love this segment. We know that because we love it, and we just assume everyone else does.

We must have the things because we love it and we just assume everyone else does right so so so what crazy thing did fill in the blank let's go with marriott marriott what crazy thing did marriott do this week so they they they released a new promotion this week but they got crazy with it what did they do that was crazy? Well, so they let us all know that this great new promo was available now for registration. And by implication of the way they reported it, it's available to everybody, every Marriott Bonvoy member. But when a lot of people tried to register, they got a screen saying, sorry, you're not eligible for this promotion. Every member except those, you know, like third of members, it seems have been totally unable to register. Right, right. Now, to be clear, if that's you, it's not that we were wrong when saying that

you're eligible. It's that Marriott has messed up and or it might be like there's theories like maybe you're registered to earn airline miles instead of points. And you've got to switch switch how that is or whatever. But anyway, contact Marriott and get get yourself registered because it's a good promo. Double elite nights and double points per stays of two nights or more. So, yeah. And you always want to register because you never know what's going to happen. You know, you never know, even if you don't think you're going to stay anywhere, you never know when something pops up that you didn't expect. And you know, the, the, the awful feeling is when you get to the point where you're like,

oh yeah, I can make a mattress run towards high globalist because I'm actually going to be traveling now to something that i have to travel for and you're like uh-oh registration closed january 15th i mean we've had quite a few people who've reached out after the fact and been like oh man i didn't register and you know now i have this stay coming up and there's just not much you can do in that case because you can ask hyatt if they'll register register you for it but i don't think i've heard any positive data points yet of people who try to register after the fact so So same thing here, register for it now, hit the link. And if you can't register for it, then pester Marriott until they get you registered

for it because you should be able to. The link just might not work for whatever reason. I mean, Marriott is infamous for having terrible IT, like their app, their website. It constantly is messed up. I mean, and it just hasn't changed in all these years. And so. No, and there are some good things in that because like the ability to customize payments. So if you're doing one of these mattress runs so that you can just book one reservation that includes both paid nights and points nights.

I mean, that's something cool that's lasted for years and years that I kind of I'm surprised they haven't taken out just because it's so user friendly. Why would Marriott have that? Well, actually it's, it's not as, have you ever gone to the final like checkout screen in doing that? Maybe not.

I don't know. Anyway, the thing is I had to sort of handhold someone on our insiders group just yesterday with this because she was saying it just wasn't working. And so I went to recreate it and I made what presumably is exactly the same mistake she did, which is when you go to customize and you change, we're talking about when you're booking an awards day with Marriott, let's say you're booking three nights and you want two of them to be points and one to be paid.

In your search results, you hit customize payments or something like that, and you change one of the nights to a paid night. If you then press select, like, okay, I'm done. Select, let's go to the next screen. It forgets everything you just did. You have to press something like um preview oh that's all i've ever clicked there's like a button that's like preview which made me think it was just like a optional button you know okay here you'll get to see what what it might look like but it actually is required to press that button yeah i was i was like i mean

i think i've gone to the next page it went to the part where you select certificates or whatever. Is there another page? I was, I was questioning myself for a second, but yeah, I have hit that preview button. I know. So that one's, that one's kind of unique in Marriott world in that I don't think it's a bug. I think it's just a little unintuitive for at least some people, maybe not for you. No, I'm just maybe just lucky for me that I happened to click the right place. That's for sure. I mean, but but nice that that's there because you can also make certificates with paid nights or award nights. And so something that may be nice there is being able to use your suite night upgrades on a stay that includes certificates, which is something that Hyatt won't let you do. So that's absolutely true. That's a nice little benefit for Marriott. So that's hung around. But yeah, definitely, you're right.

The IT in general with Marriott stinks. The thing that kills me over and over is the word availability, especially when you're trying to do the flexible dates. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it decides, oh, I've done more than two or three searches. So I'm just going to show you no availability for months on end, no matter what. Even though it's there. It's there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. True, true story. Okay. So Marriott unveiled a promotion, told everybody, hey, register now.

And then they were like, except for you. So if you got that message, don't give up. That's what we're talking about. Exactly. Exactly. You're eligible.'re talking about. Exactly. You're eligible. All right. All right.

So what crazy thing did Delta do this week? Delta. Hello. Waking up here, Delta. Welcome back. You're surprising us. Welcome back. What crazy thing?

Delta decided, hey, let's put flights on sale and sell some of them for 2,000 miles one way. 2,000. 2,000. I mean, that's like what? 20 cents worth of Delta SkyPay calls, right? That's like nothing. Yeah. 2,000 SkyMiles one way and then Transcons for 4,500 miles. And not only will we put that on sale, but we won't tell anybody about it. We'll just keep that quiet. Right. This isn and I. This isn't a new thing for Delta. Like they've been doing these kind of secret SkyMiles sales at random times. And I just don't understand it.

What's the point of a sale if you're not going to let people know about it? It doesn't make any sense at all. Right. The word promotion is to promote your product, right? Yeah. That's the whole idea, right? So, yeah, but they didn't email anything, no notice. They just randomly tossed stuff on sale. And if you're Steven Pepper and you're out there searching, you may stumble on it and find something great.

And that's, you know, I don't get it either. It doesn't make any sense to me. And to be clear, we're not talking about flights that some of them are, but you know, that are so cheap that it makes sense for them to charge only 2000 miles. Like Steven was saying flights, these are short flights that were like $50 or 2000 miles. That's two and a half cents per mile value, which is excellent for Delta miles. And so it's actually a really good deal in certain circumstances. Steven's post shows that not everywhere is it a great deal. But still, yeah, it's great that they're doing those sales.

Yeah, I don't understand. I don't understand why they wouldn't want to advertise and get a little bit of credit for running a great sale that enables members to get awesome value out of their points. Because they've got to be aware that their points have kind of been the laughingstock of the blogosphere for years here right and these are great opportunities for them to be like no guys the joke's on you our points are valuable look at this you can get a flight much much more cheaply on your delta miles than you can on your united or american airlines i mean i haven't seen a flight for 2 000 miles ever right except maybe southwest yeah southwest southwest um yeah that's it but yeah it's uh uh oh and jet blue we shouldn't forget some of those that that is right yeah okay and you know probably spirit spirit 2500 miles i think that's where it starts right that's their bottom so actually delta undercut undercut the bottom award price undercut spirit come on that's news delta

out of that yeah i i can't help but think that they've got different departments so they have like the sky miles department that comes up with these promotions and then tells the marketing department who decides no our customers will be much more interested to hear that you could get like three X miles buying one 800 flowers or something, you know, that does seem to be the decision, the type of decision that they like to make, I guess. Right. Right. Yeah. Crazy, crazy stuff. So, all right, Delta, you made it. Congratulations. You're into what crazy thing. And if you have Delta, Delta sky miles, take a look. Yeah., it's a positive crazy thing. Positive in that it's good for us that it's there. Right, right. Okay.

All right. So then we're eliminating Mattress running the numbers because we just did the double header and we don't want to take up too much time here. So we're going to get right into the main event next, right? That's right. It's main event time. Amex changes the game.

So the game, it has been the miles and points game I'm talking about. The big part of it has been you sign up for cards for the big sign-up bonuses. Over the course of the year that you have the card, you eke out as much value as you can, and then at the end of the year, you either cancel the card or downgrade it to a no-fee card, but you generally don't keep the card around. Now, Amex has been changing that game. You want to kind of summarize what's happening here?

Yeah. So Amex set out with a whole bunch of new credits. And this is really the second time around they've done this because they added a bunch of pandemic credits last year, which, you know, were very pandemic-y. They fit the, you know, the pandemic times. So they added things like, you know, wireless credits on the Platinum card and shipping credits on the business Platinum, et cetera, streaming credits, so on and so forth last year. And this year, they came out with new ones. And this time around, they did it on a bunch of the co-branded cards. So, for example, the Marriott Bonvoy business card is getting a $15 a month wireless services credit. Now I say that you have to have had the card open as of January 1st, 2021. So this is targeting existing cardholders,

not new cardholders, because hey, they're giving the new cardholders a new signup bonus. They don't need to dangle something else. But for those people who are existing cardholders, they want to hang on to those folks. So a $15 a month wireless credit for the rest of the year, that's 11 months at $15 a month, they're going to give you $165 in wireless service credits on a card that only costs $125 a year. It comes with a free night certificate. Like that's amazing. You're going to come out $40 a ahead by keeping the card if you don't value the certificate at all so of course you're going to keep it and that's totally different than the way things have been they did similar things on the hilton cards the aspire card gets a 20

a month dining credit surpasses i believe 10 and the no fee hilton card is five if i remember correctly the delta cards got similar credits for dining. I think is that what it is, Greg? You're the Delta card guy. Yeah. The reserve got 20. The platinum got 15. The gold got 10.

The blue didn't get anything. That was kind of a surprise. Surprising, but it doesn't cost anything. So I guess they weren't looking to incentivize you to keep it. They figure that being free is enough reason to keep that card, I guess. But so, I mean, those are all good deals. You know, when you look at the Aspire card, the Aspire card already comes with $500 in statement credits each year on a card that only costs 450 bucks. And it comes with a free weekend night. That's good. Any like at any Hilton basically. And then now you got 10 or $20 a month for 11 months. That's another $220 back on a card that again,

only costs $450 a year. So you're talking about what $720 in credits and a free night certificate for 450 bucks. I mean, if you value those airline fee and resort credits at anywhere, moderately approaching the face value and you value the dining credit, because most of us dine out or pick food up, delivery, restaurant pickup, that sort of thing, then it's just such an easy win to keep the card. And that's what I think I found particularly interesting because in the past, like you said, you would open a card, look to double and triple dip and get as much stuff as you can and then close it. And in this case, they're making it very hard to even consider closing any of those

cards. I mean, why would you? You're going to come out well ahead if you keep those things. Right, right. And you know what? I know some people are probably listening to this thinking, Greg and Nick, come on, this is just their response to COVID. They're not changing the game long term. They're just changing it temporarily. But think about what's happening with some of their other cards.

I'm going to give the Amex Gold as an example. When they totally changed the benefits for that card a couple years ago, they added this $10 monthly food credit. It's food-ish. I don't know. It's like a selection of things, including Grubhub, where you could get $10 back. And so that was kind of, in my mind, the start or one of the first things where they

said, instead of these benefits that are like all in one shot, we're going to dribble them out monthly. And that's continued. So just recently, now, instead of getting the annual $100 airline fee credit that we were getting on the gold card, Now you get $10 monthly Uber credit. Same thing, it dribbles out. So in total over a course of a year, you've got $240 of credits. You may or may not value them anywhere near the full face value,

but some people do. Some people use those things regularly are getting back $240 a year. And for a $250 card that also has some great features like 4x grocery and 4x dining, that's not bad, right? Right. No, not at all. I mean, if you live in an area where you are regularly using those services, that card, again, has gone from being something that you might evaluate, I don't know, is it worth paying $250 for, to like a no-brainer for a lot of people. And I'm not one of those people because I don't have those services where

I live, but I can recognize that anybody who lives in a major city or even a moderately medium-sized city can probably easily get just about the face value out of those credits. And, so like that is the card. I'd say a no brainer, 4X dining, 4X grocery and up to 25,000 a year. It also takes away the triple dip threat that used to sort of encourage signing up and canceling. So the old plan was you sign up in December for the card, you use up the calendar year, $100 airline fee credit in December for the card, use up the calendar year $100 airline fee credit

in December, and then you use it up again January through December, then use it up again in January of the year after that, and cancel before having to commit to that second annual fee. So for one annual fee, you're getting $300 back plus all the other benefits of the card for a year. That used to be the play. But now I'm looking at that card saying, no, I think you Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe you get it just for the signup bonus. But if you're getting enough value monthly from it, you just keep it. And if you're not, and you don't. And it's, it just takes away that aspect

of the game, right? It does, which is disappointing for me, because I like that aspect. I mean, that's the aspect of the game where you eke value out of stuff that, you know, you can feel like you're winning when you walk away. And this feels less like a win. Although, again, I mean, I think that the card probably makes sense for a lot of people, but it's obviously less of a, you know, sort of a gamey win, you know, when you can't do that anymore. And, you know, when people, a lot of people have said that they wish that Amex would make the airline fee credits more flexible on, say, the Platinum cards or the Aspire card. And my feeling on that has been, I hope they just leave those alone because I use them as it is. And, you know, and if you pay attention to our, what still works page or MX airline fee credits, what still works. And there's plenty of stuff in there that works. And so

I'm happy to have that and be able to have those as calendar year benefits. I don't really want them all to get replaced with these monthly dribs and drabs of Uber credits. But for a lot of people, I know that that's good for me. It's not because I don't get to use those every month. And I'd rather be able to have those big chunks. But you know, it's a give or take where you might stand on which is more beneficial for you. But I would not be surprised to see more things move in this direction, because it does make it very easy to keep the card hard to consider canceling it. And I think fewer people will probably call and ask for a retention credit because they'll feel like the cards a win. I don't really need to. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Also, you know, as a cardholder, I hate like not being able to just kind of use up all the credits all at once and make sure I'm getting maximum value. On the other hand, I think it just makes sense from MX's point of view that they, you know, yes, they benefit from breakage where people don't use the full credits. One advantage is I think customers will

be less upset when they miss a month or two during the year than if they missed a credit altogether because they were waiting to do it all at once or something. I'm sure they have tons of breakage on the airline fee credits where people don't do that every year. Right. And plenty of people calling to complain about that, about the fact they haven't been able to use it, blah every year. Right. And plenty of people calling to complain about that, about the fact they haven't been able to use it, blah, blah, blah. And this kind of obviates all of that because you give people something

that they can use and they can use it a little bit here and a little bit there. And like you said, I think that that's a really great point that if somebody misses one or two of those, they're probably not going to cry too much. Whereas if they miss the entire airline fee credit, they're going to be like, well, I got robbed here. I didn't get enough

value back. So that is a smart play for them, which is very different because again, as I was saying before, typically you would, if you wanted to be convinced to keep a card, you might call in for a retention credit. But now we've seen Amex offering those types of credits upfront. They added the PayPal credit to the Amex platinum card this year, the $30 a month PayPal credit. But now we've seen Amex offering those types of credits up front. They added the PayPal credit to the Amex Platinum card this year, the $30 a month PayPal credit. They had a bunch of those credits last year. We saw Barclays do something very similar a couple of months ago when they had these spending offers. Spend $3,000 and get 60,000 points. That was available on a whole bunch of different cards. You had to have registered and done your spend already. It ended January 31st. But the thing that I find most interesting

about the Barclays promo is that it was like three months long and it required X amount of spend in three months. And then the terms say that the points will post six to eight weeks after the promotion has ended. And to this point, as far as I know, nobody has gotten the spending bonus on that yet. I certainly haven't.

Yeah, so I think Barclays strategy on that is probably going to be to wait that out the full six to eight weeks to award it in order to make sure that the maximum number of people have already paid their renewal fee and kept the card. I mean, that's the idea behind offering that kind of bonus. I have to imagine is to get people to renew the card. So, so they offered that sort of like a preemptive retention credit because nobody's going to cancel while they're waiting for their 60,000 points. Right. So that was, I think, a smart play. So that was, I think, something else that also plays into this. So I think we're going to seeizing cards or, or changing up benefits that they're going to, they're going to be looking to more of these monthly type of credits. And again, we've talked about the pros and cons of that, but do you think other, other you know, big players

like chase or city will follow along in any way. I think if Citi does it, it's not because they're following. They just decided to do it. I don't think that they're responsive enough to do that as a response. I think they will accidentally copy it, if anything. Chase, I don't know. You know, Chase did add the Peloton credit that could be used monthly. They had the Instacart thing with monthly credits for a little bit last year.

They haven't added like a full year long. I guess the Peloton credit could last over the course of a year if you wanted it to, but we're close to the year anyway. I think like 10 months. Instacart was just a one-time credit. It was like during this time period, you could get back a certain amount. It was during a time period, but during that time period, you could either get, I think, well, because you could have bought the monthly membership and gotten the money back each month for like three months or something, however long that was.

So you could have your choice between the annual or the monthly and getting the money back. So at any rate, I think it's not impossible that we'll see something because the Peloton credit is one of those types of things that you can use slowly. They added the DoorDash credit on the Sapphire Reserve last year and this year. So it's not a monthly thing, which, you know, I like it the way it is. I'd rather be able to use it all at once. So I hope they're not listening right now. If you are, it's like unplug your headphones, like put it on mute for a second, but I could see them doing something like that monthly. I mean, that would probably be smart. Do I think they will? I mean, they haven't shown much indication that they will.

So I'm hopeful that they'll keep it annual credits. I don't know. Do you think Chase is going to copy here? No, I think Chase is sort of marching to their own beat. And they've got, I don't know whether it's a plan or they that you know they do things that are that are interesting and and you know um yeah they've been doing like the peloton credits like you said but but um i don't know i'm waiting to see what they do with the pay yourself back feature i still think that's exciting but it's all going

to depend on are they going to keep useful categories in april and think that's exciting but it's all going to depend on are they going to keep useful categories in april and that that's not really a monthly thing at all that's just a as you spend uh you're getting the ability to you know to cash out your points which is which is convenient well now let me interrupt you here they did though add a monthly grocery spending category on the sapphire preferred and sapphire reserve right up to a thousand dollars spend 3x on each of those cards i believe or 2x maybe on the sapphire preferred and 3x on the sapphire reserve it's up to a thousand bucks i don't spend and and then you also had those temporary spending credit or spending bonuses rather they keep doing on other

cards i think it's grocery right now for uh the ritz and the marriott and the ihg and hyatt and southwest and stuff like that so they're all kind of opt in and get 5x in the select categories uh each month for up to i think on those cards it's 1500 spend so they seem to be doing that that might be a different strategy of like let's offer a temporary category bonus on X dollars and spend each month, cap it so that people can't go too crazy with it. But at the same time, try to get your card to be the one that's in their wallet when they go to the grocery store. Is that a smart strategy? Do you think that they will continue with that? Or is that just temporary pandemic going to be done in April? I mean, I think a little both. I think it's a smart strategy for their objective,

which is to get people using their cards in front of a wallet, finding ways for them to get, feel like they're getting value from their card during the pandemic. I think it's different from what Amex's objective appears to be, which appears, as you wrote about, it appears to be that they are sort of proactively offering retention offers. They're basically saying, you've had the card for, you know, since January 1st, or there were other offers for the Platinum cards that were like, you've had the card since November 1st. And so we're going to give you this little kicker every month for a while. And I think that's great. And I think it does, on the Amex side, I think it does have the effect of making you think twice before canceling the card.

Because you know, oh, wow, I'm not going to be able to get $20 a month for the rest of the year or $15 a month, whatever it is with, um, with chase. I don't know. I don't know that five X or three X is enough of an incentive to say, you know, if, if I had decided personally, if I decided to cancel a card and I was like, Oh, but I'll be missing out on five X a grocery for, for a few months, that wouldn't stop me. No, no, it wouldn't stop me either. And I think that's an interesting difference in the strategy that Chase's strategy seems to be to get their card top of wallet and Amex's strategy seems to be to get their card to stay in your wallet, whether or not it's at the top to keep it in there at least.

And so that is an interesting difference in strategy. Do you think we'll see anybody else go in one direction or the other? Somebody asked me, what about U.S. Bank? Do you see U. see u.s bank doing anything here i mean i know they're not a major player you got the altitude reserve maybe flex perks do you think they'll do anything i mean they haven't really done much they haven't made any noise they don't they don't seem to be very aggressive with their with their cards you know so some little things come out now and then but um now you know i i thought they were they were investing big time when the altitude reserve first came out but

then they kind of just forgot about it i mean it's still there but you know nothing new as of interest has happened along their those lines no i mean i think i think uh amex and chase are really continuing to be the interesting players here. And you could categorize it as like Chase is playing offense and Amex is playing defense. Yeah, that's really true. I think you could characterize it that way. And, you know, don't count Barclays out because I don't know if they'll do anything like that again. But I mean, they offered basically sign up bonuses to people to entice them to keep the card basically proactively without anybody asking for it. So I don't know what Barclays got up their sleeve because I didn't see that.

I don't think anybody saw that coming. Right, right, right. I don't know what they're going to do. I think there's too little information there to kind of figure out a strategy that they've got going, except to sort of say, generally, Barclays has been known for when you get near your annual fee, if they want to keep you, they send you, like, in the past, an offer to earn, like, let's say 15,000 miles for a reasonable amount of spend. You know, I've seen that in the past with their Wyndham cards and with, I don't know, various of their, of their cards.

And, and so to me, it almost felt like all they did was crank up the dial. They said, Oh, pandemic, we've got to do something more than that rather than it being like a change in strategy on their part.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think you're not wrong that does seem to be what they did with that one yeah so i i mean i guess we'll see what they all do next i've been interested in seeing what amex does with retention offers as we move forward now that

they've added these credits because like i said i almost feel silly in asking for a retention offer on some of these cards now because they're just so obviously a win, but they have been pretty good about retention offers in recent months. I mean, we keep hearing every now and then from somebody who got a $500 statement credit for keeping the platinum card open or 50,000 membership rewards points sometimes,

20 or 30,000 membership rewards points for keeping the gold card open. I just chatted about the business platinum a couple of weeks ago and got a $300 statement credit when the annual fee posted. So that dropped the annual fee in half effectively. And with the benefits that worked out to be good enough for me, same with the everyday preferred, the annual fee just posted on that. So I chatted again and they tried to talk up the fact that it earns a category bonus on gas and grocery. And I said,

well, I mean, that doesn't make sense, except we've got the platinum card that offers 10x right now on gas and grocery. And if we didn't, we've got the gold card for 4x on grocery. So it really, you know, the everyday preferred doesn't make a lot of sense. But they said, OK, well, how about 15,000 points? We'll give you 15,000 points to keep it open. And I said, OK, well, absolutely. $95 for 15,000 points. Good it open. And I said, okay, well, absolutely. $95 for 15,000 points. Good deal to me.

I'll keep it. But I'd be curious to see what happens with these Marriott Bonvoy and Amex Aspire cards. Yeah. People look to get a retention credit. Are they going to get anything? I mean, I don't know. Do you think Amex is still going to give people a retention credit on top of these things? I don't know.

I haven't heard of big retention offers on those cards. Have you? Not big ones, no. Even in the past. So my guess is maybe things are going to be business as usual with that. But we'll have to wait and see. People get them every now and then. But yeah, my wife tried on her Aspire when that came up for renewal the last time it came up and didn't get anything on that. But I had seen some positive reports of offers on that and and same thing with the bonvoy cards if you take a look through flyer talk has some great threads on the retention offers the track what people are getting so you know just take a look and see what people are getting so be interesting to see what happens with that yeah but it definitely is an interesting

strategy and i i think that amex is doing well at making it hard to an interesting strategy. And I think that Amex is doing well at making it hard to get rid of their cards. I think that- Yeah, yeah. So the new game, just to sort of wrap up the big picture here, the new game that Amex seems to be ushering in, and it'll be that way,

especially if other carriers sort of follow along, is that the game will be to get these cards and learn how to eke out every bit of value from them. follow along is that the game will be to get these cards and, and learn how to eke out every bit of value from them. Cause there's unquestionably ways of, of getting more value back, much more value back than the amount you're paying annually in annual fees, but you've got to stay on top of it. So that's a different game than the whole sign up and cancel,

sign up and cancel type of thing. That is, that is a different game and it whole sign up and cancel, sign up and cancel type of thing. That is a different game. And it requires some organization. I've been trying to work on that system to get organized, to make sure that we use all of the credits. And my wife has been bugging me about that because she says, I have no idea what credits we have each month. She's like, I can't keep track of it. I can't remember it. How can you come up with a way so that I know what we have left to use too? Because then you know, then she can focus on that somewhat too, and make sure we get some of those used, which would be helpful because it's a lot to track at this point for one person,

unless you have a pretty good system. Now, speaking of tracking and taking advantage of those things, are there any easy ways to get these credits? So wireless services, I don't know, to my knowledge, you'd have to use that on some sort of a cell provider. And which cell providers that works with varies a little bit. But generally speaking, you could probably use it with your major carriers, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. The problem is with some carriers, you'll lose your auto pay discount if you pay any of it with a credit card. With T-Mobile, I keep my auto pay discount so I can can just pay 15 in my t-mobile bill and pay that off and you know what i do is in between when the the bill cuts before the statement comes out then i pay the 15 towards the end of the

month because my my t-mobile bill cuts towards the end of the month so i pay that 15 in between so it comes out as a credit on the next bill. I do that because I'm not sure if maybe I'll still get wireless phone insurance when I pay the rest of the bill. Ah, gotcha. Okay. Because that way you're still paying the full bill with your other card. Got it. That makes sense. Yeah, no, I've just been paying my AT&T bill. As soon as the bill comes out, I've just been paying the 15 plus 15. So, you know, I have four cards in the family. So 15 plus 15 plus 15 plus 15.

So $60 worth. And then there's some leftover that I leave on the auto pay, right? Right. Yeah. No, I mean, I think we'll be posting more about different tips for using all these credits. And so I think we can leave it for next week's post. Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. So then I guess that brings us then to the post-roast, right? Or do you have more on that?

No. Let's roast away. All right. Okay. You got a roast ready for me? I have something ready. Okay. You have something ready. So if you want me to go first, I'll do my something. Well, yes. All right.

Let's see what happens. So what I'm doing today. All right. Nick's nervous. It's like, what can be worse than a roast? He's like, I have something. He didn't say I have a poster. He was like, I have something. Uh-oh. That's nervous. It's like, what can be worse than a roast? He's like, I have something. He didn't say I have a post-roast. I have something.

Uh-oh. That's right. Because I actually have something you're going to love. I know you love Confession Time. I do love, you know what's really funny about this? My post-roast is also Confession Time. No way. Totally is.

Oh, that's too funny. That is hilarious. All right right you're first though you're first i love confession time can you believe we get paid to do this i know it's crazy john t is somewhere jealous right now he's like i wish i could be yeah actually now that i think about this this podcast doesn't pay us anything well no 20 bucks or so the last month right. A couple dollars. Don't spend it all on one. Anyway, all right. I'm going to do my confession first then.

So confession time, ladies and gentlemen. All right. I wrote a post about the perfect Hyatt mattress run, which wasn't really a mattress run at all, but it was where I stayed at a vacation rental at Wild Dunes Resort for a week. And in the post, I talked about how I had two Amex offers for spend $300 at Hyatt, get $60 back. So I had applied. So I used those credits for $600 worth of my stay, let the rest of it go against my Hyatt card for the 4X rewards or whatever it is. So, you know, in order to, in order to apply the two $300 charges,

I had gone into the office and, you know, had them run the, run the two cards. And today, the day we're recording this, I got onto Amex to see, did those credits pay? And on my wife's account, yep, we got the credit. On mine, no, no credit. What's going on here? So I looked into my loaded Amex offers to make sure it was there. And wait, it wasn't there. there and i was like did i forget to add it so you know i looked at the unloaded offers no it's not there then i looked at another card it was on another card i paid with the wrong card so yeah three hundred dollars for nothing oh man 60 down the drain yeah yeah i think i might still have a chance to use it though so well that's good stay tuned on that that's good that's good well and

you enjoyed your vacation so you got your very much dead so really all i lost was earning you know let's say i i do manage to get the 60. Then all I really lost was earning the four extra rewards on the Hyatt card instead of one X on the card that I did use. Not a not a huge, huge loss. Not the end of the world. Not the end. But you see, everybody makes these mistakes sometimes, even people who write about it for a living. That's right. So.

So, all right. Well, I'm glad that you'll at least have a chance to be able to use it. I don't need to add any more flames to that roast. I think you took your hits there. So I'll let you have that. All right. My turn for confession time, which luckily is really confession about how I almost messed up, but saved it. Oh, okay. So it was very close. So we opened an ink cash card when, because the, of course the, the, the welcome bonus on the ink cash and ink business unlimited cards are ridiculous right now. 75,000 ultimate rewards points after what is it? $7,500 spend in the first three months. So terrific offers best we've ever seen on those cards. So we had opened it and we'd opened a number of cards, my household in short succession there because we got an Alaska card because the Alaska bonus was big and we got the platinum card going on because of that.

And then we got this card and something else. So there were quite a few going on and I've been working at the different spending bonuses. to thinking just like two days ago two days before we we recorded this i was like you know have i hit the spending bonus yet on that ain't cash card i was like i wonder i must have more time right like it's not over yet i'm not i'm not sure that i've gotten the 75 000 points so i logged in and thankfully chase has a tracker for this because i thought i was going to have to go back through and add up all the transactions right that's a new thing they have Chase has a tracker for this because I thought I was going to have to go back through and add up all the transactions. Right. That's a new thing they have. They have a tracker for this.

Yeah. So I went to the ultimate rewards panel and I clicked to see where the rewards tracker was. And sure enough, I saw that I was $1,400 short, $1,419 short. And I had like nine days to go before it was going to run out, before my time was up. Oh, man. Yeah. So thankfully, I caught that with nine days to go before it was going to run out before my time. Oh, man. So thankfully, I caught that with nine days to go because I was very if I hadn't thought about it that day, I don't know what I have thought about it in that nine day window before I had to spend fourteen hundred dollars.

And luckily for me, I had a bill due the next day that was fourteen hundred dollars and change. So it was like perfect timing. So I was, you know, click, do it. And then two days later, you know,400 and change. So it was like perfect timing. So I was able to click, do it. And then two days later, you know, here we are. And it says, you're getting this up. Congratulations. You're getting the bonus on the next statement when you log in and look at the dashboard. And I was like, whew, that was close. And that bill was set to auto pay on a different card that would have gone on the premium rewards card because it was an unbonused purchase.

So usually I would use that for the 2.625% cash back, but because we have Bank of America platinum rewards, but I was happy to sacrifice a little bit of cash back in order to make sure that I hit the spending bonus. I was like, whew, sweating on that one. That's a very small price to pay for that. Right. So let me guess. So you don't use Travel Freely, I'm guessing. No, and that's why I should be using it. So yeah, Travel Freely will email you a few times as the window for meeting your spend is getting nearer if you haven't checked the box on the app

saying you've earned the the reward um it doesn't you know it doesn't uh somehow track your spend which would be sort of a nice addition but um you know for me that's that's how i make sure i've done it in time as i get those emails and like oh Oh wait, you know, either, either it reminds me that I haven't done it or it reminds me that I haven't gone into trial freely to tick the box saying, saying this is complete. Well, yeah. I mean, I figured that this one would be really easy because Staples had a lot of those fee free promotions and you can buy a thousand dollars worth of cards, you know, at a pop and normally in a normal world,

I'll go and hit up a few stores that are relatively close to each other by a bunch. So I figured for sure, oh, this will be easy. We'll wipe this out in a couple of days when they run one of these fee free promotions, except I haven't been going anywhere. I've been at home. So I haven't been going places where they've had those when they've been available. It just hasn't lined up with me being anywhere near a store. And I'm not taking extra trips out to go manufacture and spend right now. So I just totally kind of forgot about it out to go manufacture and spend right now. So I,

I just totally kind of forgot about it and flaked out and almost missed it. So convenient that they have the tracker though, because the Alaska card was a longer offer. It was like a six month spending window for the full bonus. And so I know I'm still within that six months, but now I got to go back and add up all the transactions. Cause I realized I haven't hit the extra bonus on that either. I think it required $8,000 in spend and it must be just a little bit short, but I got to go back and add up all the transactions because I realized I haven't hit the extra bonus on that either. I think it required $8,000 in spend and it must be just a little bit short. But I got to go back and add up all the transactions and figure out how much I've spent so that I know exactly how much I still have to do. And lucky you, the Lasting Cards Bank of America, which has the worst website ever.

The worst ever. So it's not going to be easy to do. It's going to take time and effort it's not going to be easy to do i'm an effort and it's gonna be annoying it's part of the reason i haven't done it as of the moment when we're talking about this but yeah man it's a good reminder that you got to stay organized in this game because you know i have a friend who is not at all into miles and points and actually he introduced me to the person who eventually introduced me to frequent milers so uh so this this intermediate friend of mine is not a miles and points guy but our mutual friend who likes points had convinced him to sign

up for the sapphire preferred years ago okay and the story in our circle of friends is he missed that welcome bonus by like 200 spend and like he didn't pay attention he just yeah you know using his card whenever he wanted to use his card you didn't pay attention. You just, you know, using his card whenever he wanted to use his card and didn't pay attention to how much he spent, never earned the bonus on the card. So didn't get it. And it's kind of like a running joke. And then here I am, look at me, I'm about to be the running joke. This is the 75,000 points signup offer on the ink signed up and didn't get it. Oh man, that would have been horrible. I had to turn in my blogger card john t would have been very disappointed that's right turn it in i'm glad i'm glad you didn't have to turn it in no no i didn't no i didn't did you have any trouble getting approved for the card or did it no just automatic yeah it took a few days took a few days

yeah uh but then then it was automatic and went through so that was that was the nice part so no no human intervention necessary there the limit limit was very low. So just shifted around some limit from another card to make it a little bit more usable. That was a big deal. That was super easy. So, and it didn't need to be a sky high limit. I just needed enough to be able to play with a little bit. So, so that was good. And, and now, you know, we're all set with that. One thing that is kind of nice is that Chase did send an email at some point and say, hey, you're on your way. Here's how much you've spent.

Somewhere in the middle, they sent an email. I wish they'd send one a little bit closer to the end, too, so I wouldn't miss that. But they did send one at some point to let you know about the progress. And, you know, that's something that I wish more banks would do. I've been doing a bank account bonus game, too, quite a bit. And I got to give Santander credit because Santander sends you an email 30 days before the time is up on a checking account bonus. And they'll tell you, Hey, you got 30 more days. And this is how much you got to get it, you know, for a direct deposit or whatever it might be, whatever the requirement is in order to get your bonus from us. Don't

forget your bonus kind of a thing. And nobody else does that. That's really great. Yeah. That's awesome. Cause it gives you the exact date when it's going to be evaluated and how much you need to do and what your bonus is. And it's like, nobody gives you that much information in email. So I appreciate that. I wish more banks would do it. Yeah. I kind of expect like city to take it up and they would like about 15 days after it's too

late, send you a tracker saying, this is how much you spent. This is how close you came. Exactly. They'd be like, you know what? We're going to get on Frequent Vialer. What crazy thing this week? Watch. They absolutely would. All right. Well, so we roasted ourselves. We each roasted ourselves this week. Kind of funny that that's how it worked out. We did. That is funny. We don't talk about these things in advance. So, you know, you never know what's going to happen. That's just how it worked out. All right. So let's move on then to the question of the week.

The question of the week came in and our frequent miler insiders group. And I thought that the tail end of this question was particularly interesting. And I thought maybe you'd know the answer. So Stanley and our frequent miler insiders group asked about the world of Hyatt credit card. Stanley asks, I have the world. I've had the world of Hyatt credit card for over two years and I've received my five qualifying nights for 2021. When I cancel, do they claw back my five nights? So that's the easy part of the question to answer. Do they claw back the five nights? No, no, they don't get the claw back to five nights a year. Once you get the five nights, that's it. Right. They're in your Hyatt account, not in your Chase account. And that's how points and late nights work. Yeah.

And people ask that all the time. Do I lose? People are new to the game. Do I lose my American Airlines miles if I cancel the card? No. Once they're in American Airlines, they're in American Airlines. That's it. Like, you know, the city doesn't have anything to do with those anymore kind of a thing.

So same thing with all of the various co-branded cards. Once the points are there, they're typically safe unless you've done something really naughty that's right or at least they think is all right but the second part of the question i thought was really interesting stanley said if i cancel the card in march and then reapply will i get five more qualifying nights uh hard so he's had it more than two years so he got the bonus more than two years ago so he's eligible to get a bonus on the world of hyatt card again he's got to cancel the one he's got though because you can't have one now and then get it you know get another one if you already have it open so he's got the right idea he's got to cancel the one he's got now if he wants to get a welcome bonus on the card again. But will he get five additional knights? how well is this connection between chase and Hyatt coded such that they

somehow recognize that the Knights had already been deposited from chase and, and so on. My guess is it's not that good. And I think he will get another five nights. I think that's a really interesting idea. I was impressed. I saw that and I was like, Ooh,

Stanley, that's, that's an interesting idea. I think it is. It is probably would work Stanley. So probably would. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I didn't know the answer either, but I don't have any experience with it, but I read it and I was like, Hmm. Yeah. Whereas, whereas let me just proactively say, I don't think that would work with Marriott. I don't think, I think Marriott's done quite a lot to make sure you don't get more than the 15

nights for a consumer and 15 nights for a business card. So I don't think it would work there. But with Hyatt, I bet it would. I bet it would, yeah. So hopefully he'll report back if he does this and let us know. Hopefully, hopefully. And other people who are out there thinking about canceling their Hyatt card and trying again, that could be an incentive because it might get you a little bit closer, especially this year. You know, like that probably isn't a great play most years.

I mean, it's going to get you five nights. So get you a little bit closer, I guess. But this year, with such an abbreviated path to globalist status as it is, if you can get that leg up, get the extra nights, that's... How many times do you have to cancel and reapply to get globalist status this year with no stays at all? Great question. cancel and reapply to get globalist status this year with no stays at all great question but probably more times than you would be able to right right because you'll be over the 524 limit all right well my friends that's that's that so that wraps today's show so it's it's a wrap it's a wrap if you've enjoyed what you've been hearing and you'd like to get our posts in your email each day or each week, et cetera, you can sign up for our email list at frequentmiler.com

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