Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex clawback theory & Hyatt's awesome promo | Ep54 | 7-11-20

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

Subscribe, like, & comment. Links to more info in the timestamps below. thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe 2:43 Reader Feedback....or rather storytime with Greg. https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ventana-big-sur-hyatt-bottom-line-review-awesome/ 13:10 What crazy thing has Citi done this week? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/5x-restaurants-with-chase-sapphire-reserve/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/covid-credit-card-enhancements-ultimate-guide/#Gas 21:18 Mattress Running: Hyatt's awesome new promo looks very good theoretically. Is it really that good? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/on-my-mind-hyatts-awesome-promo/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-offering-up-to-25-points-rebate-on-award-nights-free-parking-dining-bonus-points/ 32:49 Is it worth getting the Hyatt credit card if you already have some Hyatt travel plans during the promo window? Note: The extra 10 elite nights from the credit card are available if you are approved by 8/31/20 31:51 Is it worth mattress running a Category 1 hotel if you're seeking Hyatt elite status? 41:36 Amex clawbacks: What happened and Greg's key theory about Amex's relationship with MS https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/amex-going-clawback-happy-for-grocery-store-spend/ 49:33 Picking points 51:04 Is it ever worth using a 2x everywhere card if you have a 2.62% back card? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/why-2x-everywhere-cards-arent-in-my-wallet/ 58:16 Nick wrote a post about picking one transfer partner from each program for all of your points. Greg picks at Nick's picks. https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/pick-a-single-transfer-partner-from-each-program/ 1:07:02 Nick picks back at Greg's Membership Rewards pick 1:12:41 Does purchase protection move the needle? Do you use this info? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/pick-a-single-transfer-partner-from-each-program/ 1:20:58 Question of the Week: Thank You points were shared with me and used to book a flight that is now canceled. What happens on the refund?

Frequent miler on the air begins now. How's it going, Nick? Great, great. Things are good. How about you, Greg? How are things in Michigan, India or Michigan land or what do you call it? Michigan land's good. I get an email once a month from Google Maps because I enabled this location and follow

feature and it shows me where I've been in the past month. And finally, it showed some activity because of my trip up north. Getting an email showing that I've been to like two places in Ann Arbor was, you know, that's funny you mentioned that because I got that too. And it was really creepy because last week I Googled a restaurant to see if it was open or what the hours were or something like that. And I found that it closed a few years ago, but Google let me know that I was last there four years ago. It knows. Yeah. You know where I am. They're following. Absolutely. So today's main event is going to be about Amex Club X. You know all about that.

But I'm actually, that's a, that's a cool topic, but I'm kind of excited that we're also going to introduce a new segment. So we're going to do a new regular segment that we need a name for, but the topic is mattress running, right? It's, it's the idea is we're going to look at a, a recent or new hotel promotion and say is this mattress one run worthy meaning is it worth going to that hotel checking in just for the either the points you earn or the elite Knights or whatever it is that that the promo helps with right sure so looking forward to that and maybe readers can suggest names you know uh chat with us either through youtube or email or whatever forum you uh you usually contact us with uh or contact us as a link on

on our website and let us know if you have a good idea yeah if you have a good name for that segment that that would be cool right yeah it was just running for miles or uh you know frequent matches running or i don't know you have to come up with something better than that obviously exactly it has to be something right something better than nick or i can possibly come up with and then you win what do they win i think that's a good question honor right bragging honor and bragging rights that's right yes they get a mention on the show there you go which you know like potential advertisers would pay like millions probably for that honor millions of tenths of a cent

maybe not that much but yeah somewhere in that range maybe okay so so that brings us to feedback time. Reader feedback, our favorite segment. I always like to hear what you have to say. Favorite segment, which I'm not going to do. I have the sole judgment here of what to do for feedback time. You do. Sometimes I decide, meh, I'm not going to do feedback.

Now, sometimes in the past what I've done instead is confession time. Everybody's favorite. Which is always popular, but I don't have a confession to give. No confession either. Okay. Instead, I've got a story. Oh, a story time. It relates to the Mattress Run segment, so that's why I'm going to tell the story.

Well, my son loves story time, so maybe I'll toss on the podcast for him this weekend. There you go. Once upon a time. I'll tell it like this. Okay. Sounds good. So, all right. Once upon a time, I wanted to book another stay at my favorite Hyatt in the world, the Ventana Big Sur. And it just so happened that there was a temporary, I think, bug in the system that let us book suites online with points because that's not normally something you can do with points. So I grabbed a – You can normally – to interrupt, you can normally book suites with points, but not usually online.

Yes, exactly, exactly. So it's not like I got away with something that I couldn't have done easily through the Hyatt concierge on Twitter or some other means like calling, but it was nice and convenient to be able to book a suite online for the near the end of August. Okay. So then Then, a while later, I've been plugging away at one of the Hyatt promotions, which was the earn three elite nights per $5,000 spend instead of the usual two elite nights per $5,000 spend. That's on the newer World of Hyatt credit card, not the old one, right? That's a good point. On the World of Hy credit card. And it was for, I think the months of May and June spend during those months, got that perk. And I was plugging away at that because I had determined, decided I was going to go for a globalist status this year. Of course,

I had decided that before all this stuff happened, but. But once you commit, you can't go back. I'm committed, right? Exactly. So, so anyway was progressing, moving up, getting more and more nights on there. And I hit the 50 nights where you get the milestone benefit of two sweet upgrade awards. Okay. So I was like, Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if instead of spending the 48,000 points per night for my Hyatt stay, I could spend the standard room rate of 30,000 points a night and apply my suite upgrade. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be nice? I mean, that would in an ideal world, that would be one, you get 18,000 points a night back. Is that what you're telling me? That's, that was the goal, right? Right. Right. I mean, of course, the problem is, there's a wrinkle. The problem is that standard rooms booked for

awards were not available during my stay. In fact, before anyone tries, standard room awards are not available through end of schedule as far as I know. And I know this because lots of readers have reached out to me saying, how in the world do you find awards in this hotel because they never seem to be available? Well, that's true because it's a very small property and it's a very desirable property. People like Frequent Miler and One Mile at a Time have written about how great of a property it is. And so a lot of people have jumped on and booked it up. So, of course, it's very hard to get those standard rooms. The good news for you, if you're looking and you have a lot of high up points, is that suite nights aren't that hard to grab. And they're not that hard because they've stopped being available online.

And so a lot of people just don't even bother when they can't find those awards online. So if you call Hyatt or contact Hyatt Concierge through Twitter, they should be able to tell you whether any suite night awards are available. Suite nights will cost 48,000 points a night. Premium suite night will cost 60,000 points per night, which is a lot of points, but it's also a outrageously fantastic property. Like if you could afford that many points, it's actually, I'd say well worth it. I mean, well, and, and, and now it's like all inclusive, right? And now it's all inclusive, right. Which happened between the time when I booked and and now so yeah so it got better like the value of it got better right um including

what the standard rates are like right right those standard rates are like 1500 bucks a night 1600 bucks a night plus tax now right exactly exactly before you were looking at more like uh 850 to a thousand or more um so it definitely went up by quite a bit, and yet the point rate hasn't gone up. So anyway, so I couldn't book. I couldn't do what I wanted by myself. I couldn't book a standard room and then apply a suite upgrade in order to pay only 30,000 points instead of 48.

So what I did, I reached out to the Hyatt concierge Twitter team, told them what I wanted to do. And they explained exactly what I just said. Well, the way to do it is book a standard room, but there aren't any available. So I said, could you reach out to the hotel? And could you ask them if they could make a standard room available just for this purpose because the end result will be I'll be in the same I'll be booked into the same suite I'm already booked in and so they don't really have to open up any room availability they just sort of have to do it in the computer just for this purpose and And the answer was, well, we don't usually do that, but we'll give it a try. We're happy to give it a try and we'll let you know. And probably about

a day later, boom. And I got a big credit of points in my account. 18,000 points a day back. Back, yeah. And it's exactly what I wanted. You know, I have the suite, confirmed suite, using one of those two suite upgrades I got. So if you think about how valuable suite upgrades are, this is an example where, I mean, it was a four-night stay. It could have been up to, I think it's six nights. I don't know.

I don't remember off the top of my head. Seven nights. Seven nights that they could be up to. But anyway, I'll take 18,000 times four, you know, every day of the week. And that's just for one of those sweet upgrades. Right, right. That's a month of one of those sweet upgrades. And then, obviously, we're going to get into this later,

but now you stand to get another 25% back potentially, right? Exactly. So I read Stephen's post about this very carefully. So the new promo says, Hyatt cardholders get 25% back for stays that end by October 8th, I think it is. And it implied that you had to book it between now and then, um, which I can't really do.

Like, I don't want to risk trying this whole process again, but he went further into the terms and conditions and found that like, they were counting the time when you check out as sort of like the time at which the points are used as opposed to the time you booked it as the time the points are used. And so he believes, and I believe his logic, that my existing reservation will work. And he says that previous promotions like this, existing reservations have worked. So I think he's right. And so that's great. I mean, that's like icing on the cake. I was like, holy cow, I'm getting another, you know, whatever, 25% of 30,000 per night. 7,500 points back, right? Another 7,500 per night times four. So you're looking at, you know, another 30,000 back, right? That's a 90,000 points for four nights in a suite. It's all inclusive at a property that

goes for $1,500 or $1,600 a night. I mean, that's not a bad deal. You've done well, Greg. It's not a bad deal at all. So this is one of those things that we decided not to write about because we don't want the Hyatt Twitter team getting bombarded with these kind of requests and and and everything but but if you have any sweet night awards you know it's something to keep in keep in mind as a as something that might work obviously it wouldn't necessarily work and it's up to the property being willing to do this one-off thing. So there's like two people that have to be willing to work for you, right? The Hyatt team and the property. And you have to have Suite Night Awards.

So that combination, maybe there's not that many listeners that have that combination. I don't know. But as a general rule, trying to find Hyatt award availability, this trick of booking suites instead of standard rooms is a really good trick to know. And now we know there's at least a potential way to go back to the standard room rate, which is just incredible. Right. And you know, is it going to continue to work on this specific property forever? Who knows? You know, like Greg said, part of the reason we

didn't write about it is that they didn't get, you know, a thousand of these requests all at once and then shut that down. But, you know, if you have another property you're staying at, it's worth taking a swing at that. And it's another good reminder that you get 0% of the things you don't ask for. And, you know, really it didn't take Greg anything to ask. And it was just a message on Twitter and worst they were going to say is no, they can't do that.. And of course they were going to say is no, they can't do that. And then the best that they were going to say was 80,000 points for you. So,

uh, you know, pretty nice outcome to get that 80,000 points. It's worth asking. That was worth an ask. I mean, especially when you look at it, you say right now that's $1,200 worth of points.

You cash out at the grocery store for asking a question on Twitter. I mean, we're all right. So that's, so that's feedback time. Okay. The non feedback feedback time. And that brings us to our next regular segment. It does. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? What has Citi done this week, Greg? And this segment is brought to you by First National Bank of Omaha.

No, I'm just kidding. It's not, but we should probably have a different bank sponsor every week for the, what crazy did he do this week? I would love that. We should, hey, let's start just making up bank names. Right. There you go. This week's segment is brought to you by Fifth Second Bank. You know what? This week, we have to, instead of making fun of Citi, I think we have to make fun of Chase.

And a little bit ourselves. Because last week, when we were doing our routine making fun of Citi Bank, we were making fun of, again, how they waited forever to let readers know about their promotions. And like, I think when we stopped recording, maybe, or maybe it was the next day, we learned about how, and oh, wait, let me back up. I specifically use Chase as an example of like, Banku did it right. Like they not only send out the information. Yeah, they have it together. They email their customers.

They have a webpage that shows all these promotions. Phone reps know what's going on. They've got it down. We told Citi, you need to like take a page from Chase and see what's going on. Boy, do we feel dumb at that. Or at least I do. Fair enough. Because while we were chatting about that, Chase was busy giving cardholders 5X at restaurants with their Sapphire Reserve and 3X

with their Sapphire Preferred, both of which are not regular earning amounts, both of which were not advertised anywhere as promotions and appears to have been, I guess, a bug because they stopped doing it, right? Right. So, you know, kind of came and went in the night without any kind of a message or note or anything. And so it does seem that it must have been a glitch because it did take it right back away. We thought initially maybe it got lumped in with the gas station deal somehow and had a shared the $1,500 cap with the gas station deal. Maybe somebody flipped a switch wrong. I mean, you know, the computer side of things.

But as it turned out, we had at least one reader who reported spending more than $1,500 at restaurants in the first few days of the month and got the 5x on the entire spend. So it doesn't even seem that it was capped, but they did cut it off pretty quickly. So Chase is the one doing the crazy thing this week in giving everybody an unadvertised and probably unintended five exit restaurants. Do you think they'll claw those points back? Cause it does seem like it must've been a glitch. Do you think they'll claw them back?

Yeah. As you're asking that I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember what Chase has done in the past with things like this, but I can't really remember a situation where they accidentally gave people more points. I'd be inclined to think they'll just let it go rather than... I think that Chase is more likely

to err on the side of keeping their customers happy. I think you're right. So we'll see. Yeah, I'm sure we'll hear. We'll hear one way or another. I don't have any of those 5X, you know, earnings in order to test it myself. Do you? No, no, I don't.

I haven't been using the Sapphire Reserve at restaurants because I still haven't quite used up my Aspire credits. So, or maybe I have now, but it was over the weekend I ate and I saw that that entire charge came off. So I must have something left still on that. So, so no, I haven't pulled out the Sapphire reserve yet at a restaurant. I was intending to pull it out at gas stations in the relatively near future here to, in my case, to buy gift to college gift cards at a gas station chain in upstate New York. But now I'm not so confident that that's what I'm going to do because of

course, Marriott's going to be out here with a promotion to earn a gas station. At least we think. Starting on the 15th. Another crazy thing that Chase has done is they sent that information out to all the bloggers with a link for people to register that doesn't work. That's true. Chase, did you hire someone from Citi? Did you hire the Citi IT team? I mean, I'm sure they were cheaper, but come on now, Chase. Cost savings measures here. Yeah, that situation's been bad. I mean, so Stephen got the first announcement, I think it was like on Sunday,

and he immediately, he tried to register his card, so it didn't work. So he said, well, let's wait to publish this instead of confusing people because it's still over a week away that it goes live. And so I thought that was a good call. And then, but some people published it anyway, and I guess didn't realize that it was broken.

And then Marriott made another push of like PR emails and everything. Right. So we assumed, oh, maybe it's live now. And we tested it. Nope, still wasn't working. It's live, like there's a website. We have emails from both Marriott and Chase on that.

That's right, that's right. From both PR teams pr teams yeah it didn't work well yeah yeah well at least you did i mean marriott marriott's reps don't like me anymore they won't they won't email me no matter what they're like that guy he's you know too much trouble i think i think there was one too many negatives i don't know i don't know what I did. He keeps asking questions. We keep answering them. They just cut Greg off. But for some reason, they send me the info still. Yeah, that's true.

They're probably like, if he asks one more question about that Ritz card. Whatever Ritz card is. He's out of here. You're out of here. Go home, Greg. No more emails. But we had an impact because the Marriott PR announcement about this promotion, the 10X gas and restaurants, right? Right.

Actually listed the Ritz card as an eligible card, which in the past, they never bothered to mention Ritz. That was for you, Greg. It was for us, yeah. I said, you know what, we're not going to email him. And even if he hears about it, we're not going to get an email from him. Right.

Cut you right off by putting the Ritz card in there. Yeah. So hopefully that will work because I'm pretty excited about that, especially because I was intending to buy some gift to college cards anyway. And 10X, I'll take the 10X. I'll take the 5X on the Sapphire Reserve for my actual gas for the next few months too. But either way, Sapphire Reserve, I haven't pulled it out at a restaurant lately, and I'm not sure when I will again because only 3X just doesn't seem very good right now.

Right. And if anyone hasn't noticed that we have a COVID credit card enhancements guide on the site, it's already been updated with this 10X promotion. So you can see side by side what the reasonable redemption values of 10X Marriott compared to 5x Chase compared to whatever else. So that's really helpful because I know a lot of people have that question. Is 10x Marriott better than 5x, you know, Ultimate Rewards? It's a very valid question. What do you think? I mean, I know that we're kind of getting off on a tangent here now with what crazy thing did Citi do and kind of getting into a topic to talk about, but I think it's worth asking that question. What do you think? Is it worth spending on the Marriott card at 10 X?

Cause I obviously just indicated that I plan to do it. What do you think? Is that a bad decision? No, I don't think it's a bad decision. I think, I think that the, the, you know, the value is roughly in the, in the same ballpark 10 XX Marriott versus 5X Ultimate Rewards. I don't think I would have a strong preference one way or another of those two. I'll tell you why I have a strong preference.

The cap on the Marriott cards is $3,500, and I have the old Marriott card that ordinarily only earns one point per dollar, and it gets an Elite Knight for every 3,000. So I'm going to pick up an Elite Knight also on the way. So I figure between the Elite Knight and the 10,000 points, or 35,000 points because the cap is 3,500. And that's an amount that pretty much follows with what we were intending to toss in the college savings account, at least, to start. So 35,000 points and an elite night, I'll take it.

Yeah, no, and not only that, I think from reading the announcement that we should be able to register multiple, if we have multiple Chase Marriott cards, I think you could register them each. And so you should have a 3,500 cap on each one, which most people aren't going to have more than one Sapphire Reserve card. So, you know, for at least some of us this means a lot more capacity of a great return on gas station spend and if you have a place that sells gift cards so much the better and uh as we'll get into soon after after our mattress run segment um one of the nice things about it being chase cards is chase has not been uh clawing back these kind of bonuses the way that amex has done so right we'll get back there okay so first so first we should slide forward into the mattress run segment

so whatever it is you guys are going to call the mattress run segment, ladies and gentlemen, here it is frequent milers mattress running, or the better name that you're going to come up with for next week. So mattress running this week, we got to talk about the Hyatt promo. So you wrote a post all about this Hyatt promo. Is it worth mattress running or in status? Does it move the needle on booking Hyatt awards? Does it mean that now is the time to apply for Hyatt cards? So tell us about the promo. Tell us what you think. Sure. Yeah. So people so this one is is kind of interesting because they it's not exclusively to Hyatt card holders. If you don't have the Hyatt card, you still get a 15% rebate on awards, and you get free parking at any Hyatt where you can charge the parking to the hotel. Which by the way, is huge in some places for those of you who

may not think about it right away. And of course, I doubt New York City is going to be a hot tourist destination right now. But man, exactly. You know, that's a place where that benefit has come in valuable for me as a globalist in the past, and would certainly in a normal world be valuable here because you know, like 70 or 80 bucks a night to park, especially if you drive an SUV and charge that to the room, that can be a great value in cities where parking is expensive. So that's right, right. Maybe it's worth I don't know how much parking at airports are at like JFK, but you know, maybe it's worth like booking a Hyatt somewhere that's accessible to JFK. Right. And with points, cause you'll get a rebate on that and then you'll get free parking and just

leave your car there instead of yourself. I mean, you'd have to see. Maybe it's worthwhile. You've got to be paying for it every night, you know, in points, a little stretch. But not necessarily. I don't think there's any Category 1 Hyatts anywhere near JFK. No, not really. Anyways, so the other aspect,

if you have the World of Hyatt card, you're getting a 25 rebate and this is on on any awards that end by october 8th i believe yeah and the start date on that is july 15th is that right i can't remember what the start date is the check post for it the link's going to be in the description there you go so uh one of the really interesting things about this to me is that it's not just a rebate on awards days. So you get a rebate on other things like what they call find experiences and their dining and spa and other awards and a few other things. But I was intrigued because I remember when they revamped these dining and spa and dining and more awards. If you spent $1,000 at a Hyatt property and you want to redeem points for that,

it was something like, I wish I could remember off the top of my head, but I want to say 64,000 points, something 60 something thousand points. And it worked out to a value of a little over one and a half cents per point, about 1.54. Which is not bad. Which is not bad at all.

You know, just like we're willing to use ultimate rewards for that much value, I'm certainly willing to apply Hyatt points for that much value if I can get it. I mean, you can kind of turn your hotel stay into an all-inclusive by just charging stuff to the room and then using points to erase it at the end. Exactly. Exactly. So now it means if you have the 25 25% rebate you're getting you know

some of those 60 some thousand points back and it works out the math works out to over two cents per point value so suddenly it goes from right suddenly goes from a not bad to that's actually really good for high and yeah I mean that's great points yeah yeah now you can do better with uh the value for booking an award at a at a property that we're caught like the ventana big sir ventana big sir is a great example but i mean there's lots of mid-range ones or or low-end ones that are also will give you much better than two cents value, especially now with this rebate. Sure.

But the average value of Hyatt stays tends to be about one and a half cents per point. And so you have a very similar dynamic here that whether you're using the, the points and this, and this 25% rebate for, for nights or for these other things, you're still getting about $0.02 per point value on average. Again, the room rate is just going to depend on how much did the room cost

and how many points is it as to what you're really going to get. But that's why I say on average you'll get that. So I was kind of excited, sort of theoretically excited about this idea of like, wow, yeah, I could turn a, like you said, I could turn a regular stay into an all-inclusive stay. Or I could have a dining and spa day at a nice Hyatt. You don't even have to be in state. You don't have to stay there to use it. So if my wife and i wanted to go have like a luxury all day you know meals and spa and everything but then like reality hit as i

thought about this so it sounded really exciting but then like well so first of all this is like covid time right i mean i'm not that of that i am aware right yeah oh you noticed yeah i have noticed that yes thank you for bringing us back to reality with right so so i mean like if i was really gonna do something like what i just said you wouldn't want to be wearing a mask no I mean it would in in pre-covid world I'd be talking about like having a like maybe a stay in New York City for a weekend and going to plays and and and taking time to do spa and like a great dinner at the if there was a you know the park hide or wherever probably has a nice restaurant there and they probably have a nice spa I I'm guessing, I don't know,

or Chicago or DC or somewhere like it's somewhere that I'm just not going to go to right now. Right. And I'm not going to go to before October 8th, you know? So, so the reality sunk in, it's like, there's just no way I'm going to be spending a thousand dollars in one shot at a Hyatt. Like, I mean, that's, that's why they're offering it right now. that's why they're offering it right now. Try to entice you to do that, but they know that I assume that not many people are going to do it. Um, but that doesn't mean I won't be willing to book more stays. Like, so, you know, I've, I've thought about things like, wow, I've really wanted to go to a Miraval property. Those are also mostly all-inclusive, but they're crazy expensive with Hyatt points.

So there's something like $48,000 or $45,000 for one person per night, and you add $20,000 for the other person. So with this deal though, it brings it down into something somewhat manageable and not as great of a deal as the Ventana, but not, you know, not an order of magnitude different. Right. And so, so yeah, so that, I find that pretty darn interesting. But I, you know, the closest, I'm still not interested, excited about flying. And we are going to fly out to California for Ventana visit. But, you know, I'd rather drive on other trips. And the closest one is that one in, I think it's in Massachusetts.

It is, yeah. That brand new one, it opens July 15th. Very close to a Simon Mall, by the way. It is. It's like an 11-hour drive for me. And maybe, maybe, maybe, I don't know. Yeah, it's less than two hours for me. But I'm still, like you said, I don't know. I'm still in COVID time where I'm like,

do I really want to spend that many points on a vacation that it should be relaxing? I don't know if it's going to feel as relaxing. So I don't know if I really want to blow that many points on a vacation where I'm going to be half thinking the whole time, did that massage therapist just cough? I don't really want that. So I don't think I'm going to probably take advantage of this one at all. Definitely kind of intrigued, especially, you know, the 15%, even for non-cardholders, 15% back is still pretty darn good. It is. It really is. That's not a bad

deal. And if you can stack that, maybe I haven't even looked at stacking this, but I would assume you can stack it with the points you can get for booking one of the new properties on the list of new properties. I haven't checked to see what's on that list lately, but I've checked a bunch of times before and there's been lots of different properties where you can get 500 points a night or something like that back. Add that on top of this. There's also a promo going on where you get 2,500 your first stay oh if you have any kind of elite status at least on your first stay and then um then you get a free one get something else on on oh you get extra points on on future stays so it doesn't help with this because you won't get

any points on award stays and that's how effective the marketing promotions are right now that even people who write about these promotions are saying hey Hey, you get something back. And the second one, I don't know what it is. I think they got a promo going. They're giving you a point. I mean, that's how excited we all are. I feel like it's right. Right points for these days. So I think that it sounds really intriguing. And when I started reading the post you were writing, I was like oh wow that's awesome two cents a point that's pretty good especially if you got a lot of Hyatt points

on hand turn your stay into an all inclusive blah blah blah but then like you said I was like well I'm not flying anywhere and there's not a Hyatt that I'm particularly excited about going to drive wise the Miraval would be the only one maybe and that's probably not the cards so so yeah I don't think I'm going to do only one maybe, and that's just probably not in the cards.

So yeah, I don't think I'm going to do this one, but I think that if somebody is planning to stay at a Hyatt during that time, and surely there are some people who are going to take vacations this summer. I know people have been doing it. Then, you know, it certainly can be worthwhile. So if you are someone who is already looking at, maybe you already have a reservation at Ventana Big Star or one of these other Hyatt resorts in the US that are higher end places that are costing, you know, 25 or 30 or 40,000 points a night or something like that. Is it worth getting the Hyatt credit card for that extra 10% back? Because if you don't have

the card, you get 15% back. If you do have the card, you get 25% back. Is it worth going after the Hyatt card for the difference? Yeah, well, you know, the Hyatt card's, I think, a good card to get in general. I mean, obviously, you have to be under Chase's 524 rule. So you have to have not signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months in order to be eligible to get it, and it will take up a slot. So if you're trying to get under 524, if you get approved, that's going to add one to your count, and so that could be a problem. But in general, I think it's a solid card to get in general. And now what it means is exactly as you put it, that only if you already have plans

for an award stay with hyatt does it mean the card is then giving you even more points than the welcome bonus right so if you have if you have um no it's 10 000 more it's 10 percent more back than you'd get without having the card. So the math is actually pretty easy with this one. If you have 200,000 points of award stays planned, you're going to get 20,000 points back that you wouldn't have gotten without the credit card. And so it could very well be worth it.

The FAQ for the Hyatt promotion says, yes, you can get the card even after the promotion begins, but then the wording makes it sound like you have to register for the promotion after getting the card. I, that might've just been poorly worded you know, how they wrote that answer. But if you think you might be getting the card,

I'd say just hold off on registering for the promotion until you get the card just to be safe. And, uh, for everybody else, don't forget to register because it is one where you're not going to get the rebate if you don't register. And you got to register by like September 1st or something like that. The deadline is before the promotion ends. So you want to make sure that you,

if you're not planning to get the card and new, you want to make sure that you, if you're not planning to get the card and new, you want to make sure you register as soon as you can. I think it always makes sense to register for promotions like this. As soon as they come out, even if you don't think you're going to use it because you never know when you're going to get stuck somewhere overnight and you have to get a hotel and you might as well get all the points back again. So right. Right. Or you,

you realize that you're going to have a stay after the registration period is over. Yep. And yeah, then after the registration period is over. Yep. And yeah, then that's too bad. Yep. Yep. So definitely make sure you do that. Yeah. So we didn't really talk about what this segment is supposed to be all about, which is, is it worth mattress running? So if you're going for elite status with Hyatt, does this promotion make it worthwhile to check into a Category 1 hotel? It's normally 5,000 points.

With the 25% rebate, it becomes 3,750 points per night. Should you take advantage of that and get your nights that way? I mean, I guess it depends on how many nights you're going to be short by the end of the year. You know, it's one of those things. Yes, that's much cheaper than paying 5,000. So if you're going to otherwise pay 5,000 points a night at the end of the year, then yeah, I guess you should. If you're not sure where you're going to be, well, then maybe I'd book some of those 5,000 point nights towards like the end of the promotion early October to use up just in case. But you know, would it get me to go out there and mattress run just to get status? That depends on how many nights you're going to be

short of status. And I wanted to mention, by the way, that they finally did send an email on this because I had heard about this via the affiliate channels or whatever, but I hadn't actually seen something from Hyatt, but I have seen a few emails now that if you sign up for channels or whatever, but I hadn't actually seen something from Hyatt, but I have seen a few emails now that if you sign up for that card now, and I can't remember when the end date is on this, but you do get 10 elite nights this year. So I was curious about that. How long that that's for the whole year that you think,

well, anyway, look at our website. Hopefully we'll update that on the, uh, put it right on the card page, right? We should, we should. Yep. So, so that can get you a little bit closer. I don't, I mean, you're already there, so you don't need any extra nights, right?

I don't need it. But you know, so speaking in general, I actually think that most people, so the scenario was you're getting 25% back. So that suggests that you already have the card. Right. And if you already have the world of Hyatt card, I actually think you're better the world of hyatt card i actually think you're better off manufacturing spend on that card and getting the so every every five thousand dollar spend gets you two nights um uh you know if if for some reason you're you're uh

you just don't have any ability to manufacture spend, then, then yes. I mean, you're right. If you're, if you're close to getting the level of status you want, and ideally that level of status is globalist because that's, that's the biggest jump in value, right? If you're close to getting globalist, yeah, I mean, it's certainly cheaper to get extra nights through this promotion than not, but I think that manufacturing it through the credit card spend is even cheaper. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, especially if you look

at options, like even Simon, which is relatively expensive, you're buying online, you're talking $4 a card with the promo right now, like $3 a card, right? And then you take the $10 fee and say, if you're buying five of them at a time, it's going to cost you $6 a card times five to $30 in costs up front. And then whatever your liquidation cost is, let's say it costs you another $2 per thousand, maybe $40 will cost you to manufacture that much spend and get two elite nights. So in that case, I don't think it's worth spending the points to mattress run. But if you want to ease up your manufacturer spending, if you don't have as much of it available to you right now, it might be worth a couple of nights to get to globalist.

Or even I think, you know, explorist gets a bad rap because there's not a lot of benefits there. And I'm not gonna argue that there's a lot. if I were only two nights short of Explorist for instance I'd probably not just run that at a category one take my two back out I think so I think so um but and don't don't forget though that one of the reasons I'm not too too excited is that next year they're supposed to be introducing the off peak and peak pricing. And so then if you have a category one hotel near you, which is sort of a requirement to do this anyway,

then you could probably find off peak nights to book at 3,500 per night. Of course, that's not relevant to this year if you're seeking seeking status for this year so that you'll have it at the beginning of next year. But if you can wait, that might be a better way to go. Now, what if Hyatt were to get crazy and say, okay, we're going to give double elite night credits. Then would it be worth mattress running if they said, yeah,

elite night credits for this window and it overlaps with this promo. So you get two elite nights. Right. That's not an unrealistic scenario either. I don't think. I don't think so. I mean, I think probably if it were to happen, my thought is it would probably happen with higher end brands.

Like they've done that before with Andaz. Double elite qualifying nights just for that brand. So I don't necessarily know the category one Hyatts are going to qualify, but let's imagine a world where they do. Would it then be worth mattress running to you? Or would you still say, no, manufacturer spent? I mean, I'd have to do the math, but I think probably, you know,

that's where it gets to where the ease of just like spending points that you hopefully have already would outweigh, in my mind, the annoying process of the manufacturing spend. Excuse me. And the cost. So if they double up on elite nights, then they start to, if they sweeten the pot a little bit, sweeten the deal, kind of spice things up,

then maybe you'd take that for a mattress run. Right, right. So there's lots of ifs and buts and blah blah blah but but i think for this segment we just have to say no is this steel mattress run worthy we're saying no no no all right so that out of the way then that brings us i think to the main event this week main event the amex clawbacks that's sound of Amex clawing those points right back from people. So Amex has not really been very MS friendly this last year and change. And a lot of people think you can't MS at all on Amex cards,

which hasn't been the case, but unfortunately got a lot of people into trouble recently. So what are they clawing back and why? Right. So it appears to be that what they're clawing back are points earned during this bonus promotion of grocery spend. So there are a bunch of Amex cards that have been earning extra points for grocery.

The most exciting of which has been the hilton cards that earn 12 points per dollar uh and get you uh also towards lifetime status and and whatnot but also delta cards and marriott cards have all had bonuses on grocery spend and people have been seeing even when they first saw those points appear when they logged in, later they saw them pulled out. So I have a kind of a theory about Amex and their relationship with manufactured spend. And I think you might be onto something with this theory. Because you know ahead of time even before I say it. I do. Well, because you shared it with me, so I know what the theory is. I did. I did. i think this is a pretty because you know ahead of time even before i say it i do well well because you shared it with me so i know what the dead i did

i think it's a good theory i'm gonna we'll let we'll let our listeners decide if this is a good theory or not so uh if you think it's a good theory uh give us five stars in uh whatever your podcast platform is should you leave a review if you think it's a bad theory all the good stuff right if you think it's a bad theory. All the good stuff. Right. If you think it's a bad theory, just don't review us and we'll take that into account. No, no, no. If you think it's a bad theory,

give us five stars for bad theories and a positive review for doing a great job with bad theories. There's no need not to review there. Okay, you're right. It's still five stars. So here's my theory. That Amex has a sort of unofficial

policy that it's actually okay to manufacture or spend with their cards as long as there's no bonus earnings going on and so i mean no welcome bonus from a new credit card no promotion bonus no Delta MQMs from big spend and so on right so I think there's there's exceptions where they haven't yet applied that approach like I think they still have been giving people with Hilton cards the free night after however much spent, $15,000 spend on certain cards, that kind of thing. But if this theory is true, then that might be next on the chopping block. Whereas the Forex spend at grocery stores that you get with the Amex Gold card might be safe because that's a standard benefit of the card and it's capped at the

$25,000 spend. So you can't really abuse it like crazy. So that's my theory that they're not going to claw back Amex Gold 4X or, you know, every Blue Business Plus 2X, you know, those things that are standard. But I think the next thing that'll be on the chopping block are the things like free nights that up until now we've been earning. Now, I know that there were at least a dozen listeners who just cursed your name for making a prediction because they know your prediction track record is finished. And they say, oh, Greg, why did you have to say that after i capped out the 25k on the gold card oh oh you know what i think i think my my bad prediction streak was pre-covid

it was i mean i think i've done so so i've been i've been saying since covid right now just to bring up a recent example i've been saying're going to see these big hotel promos. We're finally now seeing them, right? Right, we are. And yeah, it took a little while, but it's happening. And so, no, I think I got over that curse. I think you did. I think you did.

I think you did. Yeah, and I think you're right. I think this theory makes a lot of sense because we have seen that pretty consistently out of Amex, that if you're working on a new welcome bonus or an authorized user bonus or that sort of thing, any kind of an extra bonus that they're adding, throwing your way, they definitely don't seem to like to see any kind of gift card purchases mixed in there. But if you're just doing everyday spend or everyday manufacturer spending at 1x or at whatever the normal bonus categories are when they're capped.

I haven't really heard of any issues with that kind of activity. They've been okay with it. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's true. And if I had easy liquidation available to me in the post-COVID world, I would be happy to put that theory to the test right away.

I'm gonna try to put that theory to the test anyway in the relatively near future as I get some of my liquidation options back. But at this point, I think that that's probably a good theory. I would probably still feel safe. I do still feel safe using the gold card and I will still use the gold card at grocery stores

for all of my related grocery spent. But yeah, I'm glad. I actually was regretting that I hadn't gone a little harder with the Hilton 12X. And then I started to hear people weren't getting the points on their statements at all. And I suddenly didn't feel as bad that I hadn't gone harder on the Hilton card.

And then I started to hear that points were posting, or at least that's what I thought. And then, of course, things turned again and people started getting those points taken away or or people never got them awarded at all so anyway you slice it yeah that it really stinks and i think it's kind of unfair you know if you're going to offer the the bonus category then i don't know cap it then right cap and they did cap it with the marriott card and they still clawed back points yeah yeah i think i think that's i agree with you cap cap it and and don't enforce these things you know it's just yeah i mean cap it or whatever you think is a reasonable amount of money for people

to spend and yeah and then chop it off there and whether they spend that on groceries or they spend it on whatever else they want to spend at the grocery store that they can use their credit card to buy i i think that that uh that ought to ought to be okay but of course they didn't ask so so amex should should look at what chase does because they have their act together and they cap all these promotions they do and they don't claw the points at the risk of uh having to eat our words again next week. So, you know, I just tossed up a softball for Chase to put out a uncapped promo and then to claw everything back. So the net result is not great, but... No, I don't like that.

I don't like that net result at all. Somebody asked us just the other day on the live broadcast about how much they can spend safely on a card that earns a bonus category is the Chase Inc. cash card. Of course, it has that cap. And we said that, you know, what we've said before is that when the issuer sets a limit, that usually means that that's a safe amount to do, that they expect you to spend that much. And that's why they've limited it at that amount.

And they seem to be comfortable with that. So that means it's safe so that seems reasonable to me but like we said apparently that wasn't the case with the marriott cards this time around i'm still willing to put my money where my mouth is and give it a shot on the mx gold card because i i think that that'll be okay yeah yeah time will tell time will tell we'll find out because because we're never going to get a written confirmation of this theory. It's just going to be based on data points of our own and others. So, yeah. So that was the main event. I guess the next thing, I don't know if this will be a regular segment,

but I'm kind of playing with this as an idea that a segment is where we, it's us picking on each other's posts of the week right like picking something from a post and saying i don't think you were right or or what really that that was insane um so so we need a name for this too we need a name for yeah i don't i i guess we'll we're gonna have to either get some reader feedback or we're gonna have to you know go to our uh creative director and see if they have any creative solutions. That's right. What are we paying her the big bucks for if not to come up with names for things? Catchy names. Catchy Instagrammable names.

I think that our listeners are going to come up with better names than our creative director will. Oh, wow. Not that i don't trust her creative director no it's the other way around it's the other way around i think i think she's going to come up with great names but i think our listeners are i do too super creative there and and and they're going to come up with even better stuff so i'm really excited yeah very good Very good. I can't wait to hear. So, boy, we're giving them a lot of homework here. But anyway. You've got to work hard if you want to listen to our show.

You've got to pay your dues somehow. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Do you want to start? Well, so, you know, the first one that we have down here, I don't know if I actually feel like I'm picking on you with it, but I have a question that I thought about as I read your post. You wrote about

why you don't have a 2x everywhere card in your wallet, because of course you get the Bank of America premium rewards, the platinum honors, the 2.62% back everywhere. And so if you were to use a 2x card instead of earning 2.62% cash back, as we've written about before, you're effectively paying 1.31 cents per point. So that's kind of a high price to pay, especially if you have lots and lots and lots of points already in City Thank You or Amex Membership Rewards, et cetera.

It seems like a high price to pay. It's too much. And that's what you said in the post. And if you want to read more about that. It wasn't just especially because it was because I have a lot of points in those other programs already. Okay. That's what you said. That was the premise of the post. That was the premise of the post. Yes. All right. So this is the part where you're picking on me. This is the part where I'm picking on you a little bit. But is that not still true if you had zero points? So if you had no city, thank you points, or you had no Amex membership rewards points, you used them all, you gave them

away, you transferred them, you lost them, you got whatever it is. And you had the opportunity to buy those points from starting from zero. Would you pay 1.31 cents each to buy a hundred thousand city points or a million Amex points? I mean, would you pay 1.31 cents per point for those? Okay. So, so you're, you, you framed in a certain way, but, but the point is the question is, does it ever make sense for someone to use a 2X card if they have the option of getting 2.62 thank you i'm sorry that i didn't that i didn't i didn't say it that way but yes that's what i'm asking and but you asked in a way that that makes it harder to say yes because when when you when you wrote this idea to me of what

we would talk about you know you sort of framed it that second way more of like should you use a 2x card if you don't have points and my answer was going to be yes let's move on to the next topic and and and the reason the answer was yes is because uh it's the only way you're going to get to having enough points for those uh big outsized awards that you're going to want someday and so so if you want to get that ANA round trip business class to wherever for a very reasonable amount of points, first of all, you'd read one of the next posts to see what those options are. Like you could go all around the world for as low as, what is it?

115,000. Yeah. I mean, 115,000. I think you'd probably even do it a little bit less depending on how, you know, it might be more if you have more'd probably even do it a little bit less, depending on how, you know, what your distance is. Theoretically possible to do less. Yeah, yeah. It might be more if you have more segment, or if you go a little more distance. I think I showed like six stops around a lot of the world for $115,000.

For $115,000, which is cheaper than most programs, and this is business class. Business class. Cheaper than most programs would charge to go to Europe and back from the U.S. in business class. So that's just one example of many that ANA has. And I'm picking picking ANA cause they have a plethora of good deals, right? Right. Okay. So, so from that point of view, my answer is yes. But when you frame it differently, I shouldn't have a different answer right but the way you

framed it was like would you buy would you buy these tons of points you're starting from zero if you were offered uh by all these points they only cost 1.31 cents would you buy them and um i mean these are not 100,000 miles these are these are transferable points we're talking about buying so say by 100 somebody says hey I'll sell you 100,000 city points for $1,300 you got zero city points you spend 1,300 bucks on that you know that's that's harder isn't it so like I mean the other part of the assumption I think is that you don't have like awards in mind that immediately, right? Like obviously if you have in mind, you'd be like, well, yeah, obviously I'll do that because that's going to be way cheaper than buying the

tickets or any other way of buying miles. That's hard. And you know, I think I probably, from that point of view, I'd probably be willing to invest. And this also assuming you've got like that amount of view, I'd probably be willing to invest. And this also assuming you've got like that amount of money, kind of easily accessible, over and above what you need for everyday stuff. I think I might be willing to do that with membership rewards, but I think I'd have a harder time doing that with Citi. I mean, I hear you. I hear what you're saying. And there's definitely part of me that says, yeah, if I had none, I guess I would what you're saying and there's definitely part of me that says yeah if I had none I guess I would do that but then there's the other part of me that says well I don't know

that those 2x cards are as hot as they sound I'm not saying you can't earn any other points I mean you can still earn points from welcome bonuses or from category bonuses that are higher than 2x but but would I am I willing to pay 1.31 cents each for points day to day? I don't know if it matters how many points you already have. That seems kind of high to me to pay per point. I mean, yes, like you said, if you get an award to book tomorrow and it's going to save you money, of course you'd spend the 1.31 cents to save you over what you're going to pay. But on a day to day spending kind of a scenario where you got to decide decide, okay, I've got to go to the mechanic today. I've got to pay a bill.

It's not going to trigger any bonus categories. I've got to spend $1,000 to get new whatever it is at the mechanic. Am I going to use the card that gets 2.62% cash back or two points per dollar? You're looking at giving up cash in order to earn those points. I don't know if it ever makes sense to use the 2X cards. All right, but, but, okay. In order to get the 2.62% everywhere, you have to have $100,000 in investments

with either Merrill Edge or Bank of America, right? Right. And so we can kind of assume that most people who have that card and the 2.62% earnings with that card have a fair amount of disposable income. And so the, the excitement of, you know, getting cash back might be less, you think, quite? Quite a bit less than the excitement of the big win. And the big win is when you book that first class Etihad trip or whatever it is, right? All right. Okay. All right. I'll give you that. Sure. So it feels more fun. And I mean, I'm with you. I'll use my points for things that are worth way more than what the cash back would buy. I just think that when you look at it that way,

it starts to make me wonder. I don't know, does that card, if you can access it, does it make the 2X cards kind of obsolete for you? I certainly wouldn't tell someone who has decided that they would rather keep the cash than buy the points. Because again, effectively you're buying the points by using that instead of the cash back card. I wouldn't fault somebody who decides

that the cash is more valuable to them. Sure. Not a bad decision. Agreed. Agreed. It's just not as much fun. All right. Right, right, right, right.

That sort of answers that. All right. So my turn. So you posted a answer to a question that was asked in our Ask Us Anything segment, which was, uh, I've got city points that, that I think my account might,

might get shut down. I need to transfer all my points to an airline program. Which one, if I could, if you could only do one, which would it be? And, and you,

you said about answering that question, not just for city, but in case anyone was in that position with Amex and chase. And, uh, to make it more fun fun you didn't allow for the possibility of sprinkling points around different programs it was like you put them all in one basket one basket eggs in one basket even though like we might tell people if you have that not to do that you might want to put some here and some there but it would right right over complicate the question of course so all right well I wasn't looking to make the argument that there's a lot of good transfer partners. We all know that.

But if you're going to pick one, somebody's like, all right, one. Which one? Right. Exactly. Totally fair. That's what I said. Okay. So for Chase, I totally agree with you.

You said, if I'm remembering right, you said Hyatt would be a good choice, but as long as we could cash out for 1.5 cents each with cash, you'd take that. And as long as that's an easy option, any other option means you're buying those points for 1.5 cents each. Which is more expensive than what we were just talking about. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, so just go back to that previous conversation and say whether you would ever buy any of those for 1.5. So that we're in agreement, right?

Right. For City, you said Air France. I did, which was not what anybody was expecting. That shocked me. No, no, I did not expect that. Well, the reason I didn't expect it is, you know, part of this whole premise is that, I'll give you that, and where it's easy to keep the points alive for a long period of time. And Air France is not that.

So it's not as hard as ANA or Singapore, which are both impossible but you have to actually either have the air france credit card which okay it's probably not that hard to get it but it's also not that great of a card right um or you have to uh actually credit a flight to air france so you have to do that so it could be a delta flight i'll give you that it's not that hard to do maybe but you gotta do that like every two years, right? Every two years, yeah. Yeah, once every two, I mean, you know. Do you need that headache?

Do I need that headache? Not necessarily, but what I gain in choosing Air France over everybody else, I think makes it worthwhile. So no, I mean, right now I don't book a paid Delta flight once every two years. I mean, maybe I booked a paid flight to go see you in Michigan at some point, maybe, possibly. Even then, I think it was an award. I'm pretty sure I booked it as an award.

So I don't think I booked a paid Delta ticket since like 1986 when I was, I didn't pay for it. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not a paid Delta ticket kind of guy. So it's definitely not my normal routine. However, on the flip side, would I be willing to put up with a paid Delta flight, especially if I can find a cheap option and use Chase Ultimate Rewards points for it once every two years in order to keep those points alive for a while? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd have the points valid for at least two years from today. And then all I got to do is one cheap flight one way and accredited to Air France in order to, to be able to keep them alive. Not convenient. All for the benefit of getting a points in a program. That's like, okay.

It's okay. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. So my other, my other, my other options with city are a bunch of options that I don't know if they're going to be around much longer. You know what I mean? i hope they all are and i think that all of these airlines are going to make it but i am like 99 and a half percent sure that france is not going to allow air france to collapse i gotta think it's a pride thing of nothing else right i mean they're not going to let air for sure so sure so that's gonna be around and i kind of like the fact that they have variable pricing. Now, that's an odd sentence to say out loud, because, of course, any other time you would have ever had me talking about this, I would have said, oh, variable pricing kind of stinks

because you can't get great value. But now, given the fact the cash prices are really low, I'm at least hopeful that when demand is low, that maybe we're going to see some great deals. We see some good promo awards now and then. So I know there's a good chance that I'll get at least decent value out of the points. Maybe not amazing, but much better than if I transfer them to Avianca

and Avianca goes out of business. Now, please, the six readers who are listening to, or the six listeners listening to this who are going to be like, oh my goodness, Avianca's going out of business. I don't think they're going out of business. I don't really think they're gonna. But at the same time,

I don't know that they're going to make it. Who knows what it's going to be like six months from now. I'm very confident Air're going out of business. I don't really think they're gonna. But at the same time, I don't know that they're gonna make it. Who knows what it's gonna be like six months from now. I'm very confident Air France will make it through. So I don't think the points will become worthless anytime soon. So I get that security. I can definitely book Delta flights with it. I'm not a big Delta person myself,

but they certainly fly everywhere in the US. So they could be useful for domestic flights. If I end up doing mostly domestic travel, there'll be a fair enough price anyway using Air France to book Delta flights. Hawaii, again, it's not a Turkish, but it's not a horrible value flying to Hawaii using Air France Flying Blue. And if Europe opens back up

and someday says we're welcome to go again, then I might be able to pick up a promo award and get there for 30 or 40 or 50,000 points one way. And that's, again, a fair value. Yes, there's going to be some surcharges, but a relatively fair value. So I feel like it's a compromise. It's not going to be the sweet spot that Virgin Atlantic is going to give me. It's not going to be like the Turkish miles to smile 7,500 point thing.

But if Virgin Atlantic and Turkish fail, Air France is still going to be there all right all right and who was your Amex transfer I really wanted to say ANA but I couldn't because of because of the hard expiration policy that that makes that kind of tough and no other way to top off the account so Avios is what I said because then oh, then I would still have Chase as a potential to transfer to Avios and I can use their shopping portal to earn more Avios and keep them alive. And of course you have Marriott. Yeah. Avios service data to keep alive. Yeah. So that seemed like a decent option because again,

they have a decent award chart. Not great. Iberia has a nice sweet spot though. 34,000 off peak business class to, uh, to class to Spain from a few cities in the U.S. So they got at least one good sweet spot there, premium economy, economy not bad either. And then your short haul is within the United States. And it just so happens that here on the East Coast, there's a lot of options with American, where I can get round trip for about 17,000 points with Iberia. Or if I'm flying direct, which I do fly to Chicago a couple times a year usually,

it's like 7,500 points with British Airways and cancelable up to 24 hours in advance. Seems like a good amount of convenience. Again, not the best award chart ever, not bad. 10% of the mileage fee for lap infants if you're booking through British Airways. So that's attractive for me because I'm going to have a lap infant for the next two years. So there were enough reasons for Avios to, again, just like Air France, they're not my favorite transfer partner. I'm not saying that if I could only have one Amex transfer partner forever and ever, Avios would be it. But if I had to transfer out all of my points today, mid-pandemic, Avios would be it. But what did you pick what did you pick for membership rewards you you you confused me because you you didn't so i commented i commented on your post and i said i would i would do city to virgin atlantic and that's because i fly delta a lot and i have great

prices on that primarily as long as they're easy to keep business and they don't get alive i'm pretty sure well anyway who knows about devaluation with any of the programs well right but but. But, but with Virgin, you've got like a different award chart with each partner. And I mean, who knows what those partnerships are? I feel like Virgin Atlantic is a questionable call right now. Do you? Okay. All right. Well, you know what? Worst case, I'll spend another week on Necro. All right. All right. So Virgin Atlantic. so then the um i wonder if they're they're probably not open over this uh pandemic i'm guessing i mean i haven't really paid i would ask you that you would ask me yeah and i don't know richard hasn't reached out to me hasn't hasn't let you know um so then for membership rewards i can't remember i think i remember what you said

go ahead you don't you said aeroplane you said aeroplane did i not say that i might do the 1.25 you did you did say i think i said i think i said i would do 1.25 but if that wasn't an option i'm thinking aeroplane so aeroplane is easy to keep alive. Works on all Star Alliance carriers. You're right. They don't have the best award chart, but they have a good-ish. I mean, there's some decent prices, I guess. They're not, you know, yeah, not incredible. But it's definitely a gamble.

And sometimes I like to gamble with points. I'm not like a gambler with money, but with sometimes i like to gamble with points i'm not like i'm not like a gambler with money but with points i like to gamble and and and there's sort of an interesting thing happening which i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna hop on that in a second go ahead yeah no please do they're supposed to have a brand new program by the end of the year i kind of doubt they're gonna stick to that but but at some point they're gonna have a brand new program and it's like a box of chocolates, right? You don't know what you're going to get. But what we do know is they've recently added two partners for booking awards.

And Etihad being a pretty exciting partner to add. So they're going in a very positive direction about adding more partners. And it makes me feel like maybe some of their promises for how good the new program was going to be, maybe some of them are true. Maybe they're really out to create a program that's going to get a lot of good press and have a lot of happy customers. That's what I'm kind of rolling the dice on when I say airplane. I mean, that's not necessarily a bad strategy because they did debut the partnership with Etihad recently, and they announced just this week the partnership with Azul, the Brazilian

airline Azul. And in the email where they let us know about that, they made it clear that this is one of more announcements like it to come. So it sounds like they're going to have some more partnerships coming. I have no idea what those are going to be, but it does sound like they have something else up their sleeves. So I think you could be right there. However, let me back up. You said you're not really a gambler with money, but you gamble with points. Now, I'd say you're a pretty bad gambler if you're picking Aeroplan. Yeah. All right.

Because, okay, 55,000 points each way business class to Europe or like 80,000 points each way to Australia, let's say. So if you're going to gamble, why not gamble with ANA? I mean, the gamble with ANA is- Well, we already talked about that. The gamble is you got to use them within three years. The points are going to disappear before I get to use them. You're not going to get to use them in the next three years? If you're going to be a gambler, come on now. You're not willing to gamble that you're going to travel somewhere,

served by a Star Alliance airline in the next three years? I know, you already lost that gamble once, but you lost it half because of the- Well, not only that. So, I'm sitting on all those ANA points that I already have that i've got to spend yeah so now now i'd just add more so so now i'd have to not only travel that much but double or so i mean then you'd be forced to book one of those round the world trips right you'd finally be forced to go ahead and two or three right you'd i mean you'd have to you'd lock yourself in so i mean you give yourself three more years. Okay, so you've gone almost three years without booking a Star Alliance award via ANA, which just kind of blows my mind

when you look at the fact that it's 88k round trip to Europe, 105k round trip off peak to Australia, 105k round trip versus the 160 that Aeroplan would charge you, right? So 105k round trip off peak there, 75k round trip off-peak to Japan. I mean, we've written about these things before. And so if you have not found a way to use that in the past three years, what are the chances you're gonna go three more years without being able to use any of those sweet spots?

I think there's a good chance that you'll be able to use one of those in the next three years. If you're gonna gamble, gamble with ANA. Come on now, Aeroplan just isn't that competitive. You're gonna pay the same fuel surcharges either way, basically. Maybe even a little bit less on ANA these days. I think ANA. If you're going to gamble, ANA.

Aeroplane? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you might be right. The new program could be awesome, and I could be eating my words. Well, there's also... I think that there's just a good chance that two and a half years from now, I'd be writing a post about like, what the heck do I do with all these ANA miles?

And I don't want to be in that position again. I mean, that could be, but so here's the other thing that I kind of, this makes me think to go along with it, that if we're collecting points in this miles and points hobby without the confidence that we're going to use them within the next three years, then it's definitely time to follow your post and go to cash back, right? If you're not sure you're going to use them in the next three years, you should be earning cash back and invest. Well, you know, the other thing I didn't, I didn't write a lot about in that post because it was just sort of overkill about that topic. But I think a lot of people in this means it's going to be quite a while before I tap any of the transferable points. Because it's like, I've got hundreds of thousands of

United, hundreds of thousands of life miles, and so on and so on. So anyway, yeah. So okay. All right. So we picked on each other a little bit there. So one more real quick before we move on from picking on each other's posts. You wrote a post this week about purchase protection, about extended warranty and price protection and return protection and which cards actually still offer any of those things and what the limits are. And, you know, I looked at the post and I thought to myself, do you ever use this? Like, do you ever use any of those? Did you have to look it all up? Does that move the needle? Does that make you decide, okay, you know what? I'm going to put it on this card because of the purchase protection

or extended warranty or blah, blah, blah. Do you ever think about that when you buy something? Let's just be a little more blunt. What you're saying is I just wasted a whole day of work and promised people to do more work to add more cards, information into there because it's irrelevant. No, no, no. I mean, it's not irrelevant. I'm just curious. I think some people will use that.

I think that it will be valued because people asked us about it, right? I mean, we, that was part of the reason. People ask us about it fairly regularly. The other thing is this came up for me personally, last time I bought a cell phone. So here we go. That's what I was waiting for. So buying, buying a cell phone so here we go that's what i was waiting for the person so buying buying a cell phone it's a big expensive uh purchase and you know i sort of like

vaguely know oh there's cards that have cell phone protection so you think oh maybe i should use one of those so you look into it and say oh no they protect the card no, they protect the card. I mean, they protect the phone if you use it to pay the monthly bill. You don't have to use them to buy the phone. What you want from a credit card when buying the phone is an extended warranty, is damage protection, those kinds of things that I listed in this post, right? And so it was painful to try to find that information about which cards offered what. So I, I, I think it's awesome to have it all in one place now. Now I only have a small selection of cards so far, but I, I picked out ones very purposely that are popular cards. So, uh, people who have the Sapphire reserve or the Amex Gold or Amex Platinum or City Premier can go there

and look and see, you know, what they offer right now. And so you'll, so I was surprised, like, so I sort of generally remembered that City had cut out all their, all of their protections, but, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of their cards still have the extended warranty. And it's a very good one. Two years from the date that the manufactured warranty ends, whereas most are just a year. So maybe I can get the microphone replaced that died on me before I switched to a new microphone today. Because I bought that one on a city card just over a year ago. So maybe I've got an extended one.

It might be covered depending on which city card you use. Right. Amex, some of the Amex cards, not all of them. I had to update my post. Not only offer, I think they all offer theft and damage protection for like 90 days. Some of them, platinum card and gold card, for example. And all those $4 and $50 cards as well, uh, offer, um, loss protection as well for the first 90 days. So you just lose it. Uh,

they'll, they'll cover that. Um, and that's, that's a benefit that actually, I will admit that I put a purchase on a platinum card, a business platinum card specifically for that, because, uh, I was going to South Africa a couple of years ago. I wrote a post. I think the title of it was a buy to rent, something about getting a travel gear without remorse, buyers remorse, that kind of thing. And I had bought an expensive lens for my camera to go on a safari and I bought it with a business platinum because of the loss protection and the accidental damage protection. Cause I thought if this gets taken out of my check bag perhaps,

or I actually, I don't know if we would have covered that, but, but if it gets dropped, robbed, blah, blah, blah,

then I've got some protection for 90 days. Right. Right. And then there's a return protection where if you buy something and, and the store won't accept the return, I don't know how common that is, but you know, I know certain types of items sellers aren't happy to, to accept back. And so that gives you more time to return

it. A number of cards offer that not as many as the first two. And then you had already written a post near the end of last year about all the cards. Well, you had updated your post near the end of last year, the cards that offer the price protection, where you buy it and then the price drops and they give you the difference. Last year, almost all the major issuers dropped that feature, but there's still quite a few cards, including some popular cards, like the number of Capital One cards. I'm trying to think.

Oh, the United Business card. Some sort of like random cards that still offer it. So I just took the information from your post, put it in a nice little table, and made that more accessible as well. And one of the only cards so far that provide all four of those protections is the fee-free Rakuten Visa. Which ups the ante a little bit on that card, huh? It does, it does. So, you know, I had lost interest in the card when it...

This card keeps coming up over and over, doesn't it? Right, it know, I had lost interest in the card when it, this card keeps coming up over and over. Right, it does, yeah. When they stopped giving us 3X going through their portal to buy gift cards from giftcards.com and giftcardmall, kind of doesn't matter anymore now that. Right, now that you can't buy very many of those gift cards anyway, yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So, but, you know, if you're actually buying things, which is what we're talking about here,

and if you could buy them through the portal, then you're still getting 3X membership rewards if you have your account set up right for that by using that card on top of whatever the portal offers. So you're probably earning at least 5X membership rewards, probably more than that per dollar and you're getting all these protections they're not like the top of the line for each of these like you know it might offer a little bit less like one that stood out to me the warrant manufacturer's warranty

it doesn't offer 12 months extra what it offers is it doubles it up to 12 months extra so if you have a three-month manufacturer warranty you just get a total of six months. I see, I see. But on the flip side, if you have a three-year manufacturer warranty, then does it give you the fourth year? Does it give you like 12 extra months? It'll give you the fourth year.

The fourth year, yeah. Yeah, that's what I thought. And by the way, the Ritz card also is one to add to that because the Ritz card shares the same protections as the Sapphire Reserve, so it still has return protection

and whatever the other ones were that were on there on the Sapphire Reserve card. So that's one to add the next round. But my question kind of stands. I think all of that information is good. And I definitely agree that having it all in one place is super useful now for anybody who's at that point where you're trying to make a purchase and you're like, wait a second, which card is going to give me this? The return protection, by the way, is one that I definitely think about sometimes when I'm buying something and I know there's no returns. There are definitely times where I have accepted a worse payout, like on my Ritz card, to know that I have the security to be able to return it if it doesn't work out. Same thing as with like buying airfare, right? Like sometimes

we accept the lower return in the rewards because we want to get that little bit of extra protection. But my question stands, does that happen for you? And you did mention an example with the cell phone. So apparently, yes. Yeah. So I think like, so for example, I think I bought the cell phone with a platinum card, I think, because I had looked up enough to know that it offered what I can't remember which of those four protections I was looking up, but you know, it had one of them and a good amount of it more than the others. So I took that. But,

but now having this chart, it'll be so much easier when I have to make a decision like that. That's the only example I can think of. Well, it's a good example. It's a good example. So if you have an expensive purchase like that coming up and you want to kind of compare that,

it's definitely supposed to see the link will be in the description it'll be in the uh the description whether this is on youtube or on a podcast platform depending on how you're checking out the show this week so be able to check that out and bookmark it so you can come back to it later there you go so i think that brings us to our final segment of the day the question of the week and so question of the week this week comes from our frequent miler insiders group it comes from jared in our frequent miler insiders group and the question is our facebook group yes thank you frequent miler insiders facebook group so if

you're on facebook and you're not part of our group you can just type in the search box frequent miler insiders and click to join you have to answer a question that's just to verify that you're a human and not a robot it's a a really tough question. Right, right. Where in the world do you want to go? Which, all jokes aside, may be harder to answer today than it was six or eight months ago. So if you can name a place that plausibly sounds like a real place, we'll probably let you in. Probably let you in. Yeah. It's not a trick question, right? Sometimes people get extra creative. I feel like they think that we need to be like impressed with the location. That's true. Yeah. I'm like, you could have said, you know, wherever. I don't

want to. Right. Exactly. The person who's in New York City got in just like you did. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So it doesn't have to be anything. But you join the group because then you can ask and answer questions in the group and get help from other people. And so that's why I wanted to highlight one of the questions that came from there this week. Yeah, because this question actually was from a almost a couple of weeks ago now, I think, and there's been an update to it. And so I didn't know the answer right off the top of my head. I know what my advice would be. So I'm curious what your advice would be. And then we'll go with what the update has been. So Jared asked, thank you points question. What happens if thank you points were shared with me, those points were used to book a flight and that flight got canceled or refunded. The travel center is saying I'm going to receive my original form of

payment. So I assume I'll get thank you points, but are they going to expire in 90 days or something? Now for those unfamiliar, you can share thank you points, but are they going to expire in 90 days or something? Now for those unfamiliar, you can share thank you points between people. Like I could send thank you points to Greg and Greg could use them to book whatever he wants. But when you share points like that, they expire early, 60 days or 90 days or whatever it is. They expire quickly.

And so Greg has to use them to book something right away. And the question here is the points got shared, the flight got booked, but then the flight got canceled because hello COVID. And so now what happens? Do they get it? Wow. So I mean, all right. So what should happen should be that you should get, either you should get points back. Well, it has to be you. You should get the points back that were used to pay for it, and they shouldn't be expiring. Like, that would be the right thing for a company to do.

Right. And when we say the right thing, we mean the customer-friendly thing, the good thing, the good human thing. But this is Citibank. This is Citibank. This is Citibank. And so what I expect to happen is that the points had an expiration date when they were first transferred over.

And so what I expect to happen would be, let's, let's say the 60 days or 90 days, whatever it is, are already out. Already up. Right. Those points were transferred in February.

60, 90 days has been up for a while now. Right. It wasn't until like next week and now the flight is canceled. Right. So what I expect, what I expect city to do is put those expired. Thank you points back into his account,

but they're expired. So they're gone. That's what I expect city to do. And so far, that's exactly what's happened. So far, that's it. Exactly.

Nice. A small piece of the points back but missing the large chunk of the points that oh wait it's some correspond well because of course they they took so i i think the number was 65 000 points so they used 65 000 points to book and let's say 40 000 of those points uh came from somebody else okay all. So it wasn't all from the other person. Exactly. Exactly. So they've so far gotten back the part that was their points to begin with, but it seems like those points that had gotten shared immediately expired because they were past their expiration date as far as. Right. I mean, the other right thing to do would be to

send the points all the way back to the original person who shared them. But there's so many complications in that. I wouldn't want them to actually try that because points could have come from multiple sources. The original share could have canceled their city accounts. You know, there's so many reasons that that doesn't make sense, but yeah,

hopefully he's calling them. Yeah. He needs to call and try to get that resolved. Another reader chimed in meanwhile, to say that resolved. Another reader chimed in, meanwhile, to say that they had a similar situation where they booked a play or two in their household and they booked a hotel. They shared points over and booked a hotel

and then had to cancel it because of the whole COVID thing. And they said that when the points came back in, they indeed did come back in, but they showed an expiration date, like a coming expiration date. And so they cashed them all in for gift cards, not wanting to chance that the points were going to expire quickly. So they were able to do that. Now they said that they had transferred December 24th and then the booking got canceled March 22nd. So December, I mean, that was like two days,

like they would have expired in two days. So, days. So they were probably within two days of the 90 before they expired, I assume. So basically, long story short, is I think they're doing exactly what we would expect Citi to do in expiring those points, which absolutely stinks. I would definitely, definitely, Jared and anybody else who's in this kind of situation, definitely call Citi and plead your case and ask for some resolution on that. And if they don't ask for a supervisor and see what they can do for you, because that seems really poor. Oh, yeah, that's really poor. I mean, and the truth is, there might not have been anyone who,

there's probably not no one who designed it that way. It's just not something that comes up enough for them to have fixed yet. I mean, now it probably does come up a lot, but in the past, it probably didn't. And there's a chance that it's happened enough now that maybe they have a means of reversing it if you call in. And sometimes that's the case with things like this, where they'll be able to see, oh, yeah, this is what happened. We can fix that. But they haven't actually done anything with the IT system to change it because it's not

a long-term change. It's the kind of thing that's going to affect people for a few months here. And after that, it's going to be such a rare issue. But let's be real for a second. What's the chance of anyone on the phone understanding the problem? Oh, I mean like 8% maybe. So you're going to have to call probably at least 10 times to have an 80% chance of getting this fixed. Yeah, this is painful.

Yeah, it is. This is going to be painful. It is. I recommend calling late at night because late at night, A, you're going to get less competition from people trying to call in. The phones won't be as jammed.

I've gotten through faster to a human late at night. I also recommend always calling the number on the back of the most premium card that you have with the bank. So if you have a prestige card, use that. If you have a thank you premier and that's the most premium, use that. Don't call using whatever, like your rewards plus card or whatever else, because you'll oftentimes get routed to a higher agent or whatever if you have one of

the more premium cards. And also if you call late at night, sometimes you get a rep that's not even based in the United States. And I tend to find in general with most companies, those reps tend to be more generous. So it might be worth trying. Okay. So that's very interesting because I would have suggested the opposite. You would have suggested 9 a.m. to get the most experience in your senior people, right? Exactly. Well, during the workday is when you have the people who have earned the right to have normal hours, right? So hopefully they're more experienced and can figure out what to do here but you're right they might also be just have been in the job for a long long time that doesn't mean they know anything well and you might be on hold for two hours to get to them so i guess it's hard to say there's pros and cons there right pros and cons so best of luck to you jared and anybody else in

that situation because that really stinks so that my friends let's sing the goodbye song all right thank you guys very much for being out here with us today. Listening along. If you'd like to find out more about what we've been talking about today, or you want to get email updates in the future, you want to go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. That's the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. You're watching this on YouTube. Please hit that subscribe button down below. Give us a like, give us a comment. If you're listening to this in podcast format, give us a like, give us a comment, give us a review, et cetera, et cetera.

Thank you guys very much. We will see you guys soon. Take care. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye.