Frequent Miler on the Air - An award travel save, Turkish changing the game, and more

Episode Date: August 3, 2019

What do you do when your positioning flight gets canceled hours before you are due to fly 15 hours away on an award ticket? Why are the changes to Amex airline fee reimbursements a total non-issue? Which niche credit card might Greg open thanks to Simon Malls? Should we increase the Reasonable Redemption Value of ThankYou points because of Turkish Miles & Smiles? See us debate those topics and more.

And now it's Friday. It's Friday. How's it going? Oh, it's going well. How's it going for you? It's been a good week. It's been a good week. Thank goodness it's finally Friday, huh?

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I know you've been crazy busy the last couple of days with all the... You've put out about a thousand quick deals, it seems like. You know, the first of the month, there's always a ton of new stuff happening. So that always happens. And then there was just a ton of new stuff happening. So that always happens. And then there was just a lot of other stuff, too. So, yeah, I mean, there's some really exciting stuff over the last day. Some really awesome deals.

What are you most excited about? You know, personally, I'm probably most excited about the transfer bonus to British Airways just because the timing is good. But just for some things that I need to book. So 40 percent. I mean mean that's just it's amazing I couldn't believe the last time they ran 40% and I know they did it targeted for like a week last month I think some people had 40 or 50% but the last time they actually did 40 was last year at some point and Why I'm hot about whether or not to transfer last time around and this time. I don't think I'm gonna have an hot

I'm gonna take advantage of it. There just some decent spot I mean I know obvious gets a bad rap it's not particularly good for travel to Europe unless you find the availability on Iberia but for Asia it actually makes some of the flights from the west coast pretty reasonable especially premium economy premium economy Japan Airlines looks pretty nice and and it's not that unreasonable from the west coast and then when you add in the fact you know for me anyway if i were to do a trip this year um a lap infant is 10 of the obvious so that's much better than 10 of the cash price so so i think yeah i mean the turkish one, too. If you're going to Istanbul, like, next month.

I don't know. That's not in my plans. But if you are, I mean, that looks pretty cool. So what's the cost to go to Istanbul again? 31,500 miles one way in business class. I mean, one way in business. So, okay. From Atlanta to Istanbul is what it is.

So it's very niche. You have to be able to position in Atlanta easily or in Atlanta. And I honestly don't know what the fuel charge charges are. I think they're about 250 bucks, but I'm not totally positive. I didn't call the check. So, but 30% off. And then from there, they have 30% off on a number of routes too. I think you can get from, if I remember correctly, I think you can get from there to Kathmandu

and Nepal for like another 15 or 17 in economy and like 20 something one or something like that in business. So, yeah, 50,000 one way if you can get to Nepal, 50 and change. That's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. No, I wouldn't mind going to Istanbul, too. I mean, that sounds like a great deal. Right.

You know, maybe not as good of a deal as going business class to Hawaii for 12.5, but... Hard to beat that. Hard to beat that. You know, we know award availability is terrible on United for business, but what about Turkish for going to Istanbul? You know, award availability didn't look good at either. Although I looked on United for partner availability. I'm not sure if they have expanded availability for their own members or not. So again, I didn't call the check on their roots so the availability to Istanbul looked really poor the availability on the way back from Istanbul wasn't like you know typical stuff midweek you're not gonna

get like the Friday or Sunday flight that you're you're hoping for probably but the midweek availability is pretty good for multiple seats so again that's on the way back which is I don't know some people would prefer to fly business to Europe to sleep in the night flight. On the flip side, if you want to enjoy Turkish's lounge and stuff like that, then you'd want to fly it back from Europe. So it might be a good strategy to do it that way. But yeah, and for those who don't know, I mean, Turkish, their lounge in Istanbul is known as one of the best business class lounges in the world. So if not the best, so, you know, it might be worth arranging your schedule so that you do get to experience it. You know, if you could, if you could, it seems like it'd be.

You know, you mentioned United not having great availability. And of course they don't. But I shared a tip in Frequent My Learn Insiders Week because there's a ton of Polaris availability, especially from San Francisco to Newark, like this month. If you can travel in August on a weekday, there were tons of flights with two seats available in the real Polaris seats, not just labeled Polaris, but the actual United Polaris seats. And some days even had two flights with more than two seats in Polaris. Right. And so that's going across the country,

lie flat seats for, again, $12.5K, right? And $5.60. You know what's crazy is that because of the Hawaii deal, like going across the country for $12.55 doesn't sound as amazing as it should. But it really is, if you put it in perspective, 12.5 is like the standard for economy. Yet you found a way that we can do it in business class. And you're saying the awards are wide open for that particular route. Pretty decently available.

Going from the West Coast to the East. Going from the East Coast back to the West Coast, not as good. I mean, there's some days, but not nearly as many as coming from West East. But still, I mean, my goodness, if you were going to fly economy class for 12,500 miles anyway, why not fly Polaris one way and fly economy the other, you know? Yeah, yeah yeah exactly so so oh hey i i know this wasn't on our agenda but i just thought it'd be worth um telling the story uh about what happened to steven last night oh my goodness that's a good yeah so last night steven emails nick and i and says, I need help. Apparently he was trying to fly from Norfolk, Virginia to New York to catch a cafe Pacific flight to Hong Kong, which, which then he had another flight from there to get to Bali.

And all he, the leg from Norfolk to New York was canceled. All the American Airlines flights were canceled. Um, and, uh, so, you know, we, we did it online trying to figure out, is there some, is there something that he could, he could do to get there? And most of the other flights, uh, were all full or, uh, or massively delayed as well. And, um, that's, I mean, at that point he was, I think he was thinking he was going to have to get there a day and um that's i mean at that point he was i think he was thinking he was going to have to get there a day late and that's going to you know be a pain with your hotel reservations and everything else you get there a day late so i think he was about to accept the fact that he wasn't going to make it right right right and you know what made the difference uh is

i've been using um uh flightconnections.com flightconnections.com all the time to see where are all the routes that different airlines fly. I jumped on to see what are all the cafe routes from the US. There are several from New York

and there's one from Newark. I knew that Newark is more convenient for me and I didn't even realize there was a flight from Newark. I knew that Newark is more convenient for me and I didn't even realize there was a flight from Newark. I didn't know it either until flight connections told me. But I found one from DC and it was going out not last night, but like two in the morning this morning. So essentially last night and, uh, I emailed that to Steven and he was able to get it changed to that flight. And, and they actually, um,

rented a car and drove over there and got on their flight in time. So that was great. And, um, that was huge. That was huge. I know Steven thanked you on Facebook and he thanked you over email. Uh, but I think that was really huge for Stephen because, I mean, that was really going to throw a big wrench in his plans for his trip. Right. If he hadn't been able to go last night, he would have not been able to go on his original flight to Bali. So they had to push that back.

And who knows what kind of situation that would have been. Right. Whether there were seats available or whatever. Even seats available to get to Bali the next day. That was a big save. Flight connections, apparently well worthwhile. How did you do it? How did you search to figure out the routes to the United States?

Literally just put in Cathay Pacific. There's a drop down for airlines and you start typing and it auto completes. That's it. It just shows the map, shows all the and super easy yep super that's helpful actually i've been looking for some stuff lately that and you've talked about flight connections a couple of times seeing you speak and i've used it some but i haven't used it a ton and actually i'm thinking

of some situations where that'd be helpful for me too so yeah that's a great tip yeah it's what a great app now i did i did go from there over to Google flights to see you know What time the actual flights were but right right and then yet there has to have been seats on it, of course But you know American was able to make it all happen for him. So that was great big save there So that was that was the best news probably of the week So going from the best news to probably the worst news of the week, or at least of the last couple of weeks anyway, Amex has axed the easy way to cash out your fee credits on platinum cards and the Aspire card and the gold card,

because it used to be that you could pick an airline and buy gift cards for that airline. It varied a little bit from airline to airline as far as what denomination and how you had to buy them, But now the gift cards aren't working. Right. Right. And that sucks. It sucks for many people. It doesn't affect me.

Except in one particular way, which is when I have friends with a platinum card who are not into the hobby and don't know all the little tricks. No. not into the hobby and don't don't know all the little tricks no i i tend to tell them the gift card trick because it's like what a waste of value right using their airline fee credits at all which which often happens you know i have plenty of i know plenty of people who have business uh or have platinum cards and don't end up using those fee credits at all which is a crime i mean that's crazy i could before i could just easily and with the CSR, of course, no problem. You just get your fee credit when you spend anything on an airline. I think US Bank is super simple like that. The Ritz card, it's easy to cash them out. I can't buy gift cards anymore. I'm done with the platinum card. It's over. It's gone. Done, right? So as you

know, as you know, and as I've told readers today in my post, it's actually very easy under certain circumstances to get cash back, which is better than gift cards from those fee credits. The trick is you need to be able to book award tickets and be able to cancel them for free if you decide later you don't want them. And so the thing is I have high level delta status that gives me the ability to make changes to awards and cancel them and get the miles redeposited for free. There's no penalty for doing that. So what I do is I book awards all the time for me,

my family, and I use, when I'm doing that, I use the cards that offer airline fee credits, not just the Amex Platinum, but there's a number of other cards that do that as well. But with Amex, I specify Delta as my preferred airline. And that way, when they see these fees, which are the award, the taxes basically on the awards, those look like airline fees, which they are. I think that's a perfectly legitimate reimbursement. And I get refunded. So the credit goes to my statement. And then if later I realize,

oh, I'm not actually going to take that flight and I cancel it, Delta refunds the money for those taxes as well as any miles I spent. But, you know, Amex has already paid me. It doesn't come back out or anything like that. So it works great for me. People with Southwest. I was going to say that's great if you spend a million dollars a year on your Delta cards in order to get status. But what about everyone else?

What about people who don't have status? Yeah. So the only one I know of that you could do is Southwest. So everybody can use Southwest points to book awards and cancel and redeposit those awards for free. Now, most Southwest awards are only $5.60 per direction in fees. So you'd have to do a lot of those to add up to your $200. But when you fly Southwest out of the country, like to Mexico or to Caribbean islands or to Costa Rica, I think you'll find higher fees. And in those cases, it can be easier to quickly add up to the $200. $100 in the Amex Gold case. Right, right. And truth be told, I cut up the platinum card here for dramatic effect. But I used Southwest the last couple of years, and I haven't bought gift cards either because I didn't

have to. I bought gift cards maybe on one of my cards with incidental credits last year just to test to make sure it was still working. But I've used incidental credits on Southwest for other cards because I book speculative awards all the time with Southwest because there's no penalty not to. So I mean, it has nothing to do with using up phase. It's just with Southwest, it's more expensive when you book closer to the date of the flight. So I'm always trying to book stuff far in advance. And I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work out. That's just the nature of the beast. And if you want to get the best deals on Southwest, that's how you do it.

When I'm booking two people round trip, that's what? It's 10, 11, 6, 23-ish dollars round trip. So what? You need to book 10 Southwest flights a year to use up the credits, not even 10, nine-ish to use up the credits. And I mean, I probably actually fly nine or 10 times a year on Southwest.

And that's not including all speculative bookings I make. So it's really, really simple. I don't think there's much to it there. So that's, I think, like you said, I think it's a legitimate use. I don't book flights just for the heck of it. I book flights that I'm going to use and whether or not I use them in the end. I mean, it varies depending on everybody else's schedule. So you agree it's not that big of a deal if you know how to get around it.

It really isn't a big deal. You see people talking about the sky falling and i'm like the sky is not falling i didn't want to buy a delta gift card because then i have to use that on delta i'd much rather just have the cash back uh exactly nothing against delta it's just that i don't run into that many situations where i use them i sat on an American Airlines gift card for a couple of years because you can't use them to pay the award taxes on award flights. You can only use them for flights. And truthfully, I just don't fly that many paid flights because I'm usually using miles and points. Right, right. Of course, now you're going to be using Turkish miles all the time. Right, right. I will never pay for another flight again and probably never book another

Southwest. My credits are going to languish since I can't use them for gift cards anymore. Maybe I'll figure out a way around it. Yeah. What do we do when if Amex figures out a way to make the award fees not, you know, not get reimbursed? Right. Well, first, the point you made today, I think was very valid. I don't think they have that much incentive to make those fees not count. I mean, it seems like you said, it seems pretty close to the intended use of the credit, even though award fees aren't necessarily one of the, you know, one of the types of fees that they list as being eligible for the credit. It seems like they ought to be, right? I totally think that. But just like, let's hypothetically say that somehow they,

for some reason, they decide they don't like us using it for award fees. They figure out a way to get rid of them. This is just a mental exercise here. Right. I'm not kidding. One of the things that was occurring to me is suppose there was an airline where you could book flights, actual paid flights, and have those reimbursed, like cancel and reimburse for free. And what if on those paid flights you pay for seat assignments and things like that, right? Yeah. Um, so, uh, so maybe, uh,

you know, if someone's very wealthy and buys a refundable tickets, that probably would work. I would guess. Um, another thing that occurs to me, if I remember, right.

Jet blue mosaic status gives you the ability to cancel paid flights for free, I think. It might, I'm not sure. We can check that afterwards. And you can manufacture that status. And you can manufacture that status if you can do a lot of spend quickly.

Where would you do a lot of spend quickly right now? What am I getting to? I mean, I may buy some gift cards somewhere. Can you get large gift cards anywhere? So we got a very nice email the other day. Right. From Simon Wall Corporate saying that the $1,000 gift card promo has been extended to the end of August.

And I looked at the timestamp on receiving that email and the timestamp when you sent out the post about that extension, it was about 10 minutes. I don't know, it's not wasting any time, right? We got to let everybody know. I mean, that's some big news. You've got another 26 days or 27 days to out there and spend $10,000 a day if you don't have a history built up. And you have enough time to build up a history so you can do $25K a day in these $1,000 cards that are just so easy to get rid of for the most part. If you live in a place anyway where liquidation is easy, that makes the liquidation process

faster, easier, less uncomfortable for people who are comfortable trying to split tender on cards and whatnot. And I mean, literally, you could manufacture mosaic status in like a couple of days. You seriously could. You could get the card and manufacture it. I wouldn't suggest you get the card and do that this month. But theoretically, anyway, we're playing theoretical games here. You could get it and manufacture Mosaic status in like, you know,

the first week of having the card. Yeah. So remind me who issues that one. Barclays. It's Barclays, yeah. And I think it's about 40K that you need to spend to get mosaic status. I think 50, 15.

Yeah. Maybe it's 50. Yeah. And I don't know as though I would go out and do that just so I could refund tickets. No, no. I mean,

I would only do that if, if you fly JetBlue, a lot can actually benefit from it. It's just right. A little side benefit maybe is, is do something like that. Right. Right. Right. Um, I, it's kind right a little side benefit maybe is do something like that right right um i it's kind of interesting to look at what cards have like these big spend bonuses or some reason of spending a lot to get to get extra benefits right when we're in this situation

we took we already talk a lot about like what cards just give you the most rewards and you know probably the bank of america if you have the uh premium honors um platinum honors status then you're getting 2.62 percent back everywhere hard to beat uh hard to beat that for um for long-term uh benefits right other cards have shorter term things like discover it first year discover miles sorry first year three percent and others like you might get city bank might give you a uh 2x on everything um for some amount of time if there's a yeah but um but there's a lot of cards that have certain perks if you spend a lot on them as a standard thing so there's cards that give you a companion ticket if you spend twenty thousand

thirty thousand dollars depending what card we're looking at there's um the southwest cards i mean it's not really a perk of of that much spend but you're getting companion pass qualifying miles when you spend on the card. So if you're getting close to your companion pass, that might be worth doing. Certainly. We talked about JetBlue. The CMB Visa Infinite card, the Crystal Visa Infinite card, you get lounge membership. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. I think you have 50,000.

50 is what I thought. And you could then pay for a lounge membership and it'll, and get it reimbursed. That's nice. That's nice. I mean, just a free lounge membership for going and spending the money at Simon that you were going to spend any day because you know, it's just a really simple manufactured spending deal. So right, right. Yeah. So yeah, so you know, maybe because you're gonna be spending all this time flying United, thanks to the Turkish miles, right, you might you might want a United membership,

especially since you're only going to find availability for the most part in economy class anyway. And unless you're flying the premium trans cons, you're not going to get lounge access on domestic tickets anyway. So you may as well, you know, spend your money on the CNB card and buy yourself a United Lounge membership. So is that what you're doing? Have you made it to the mall? What card or cards have you used? I have made it to the mall. So far, I've used my, uh, Bank of America, uh, premium rewards. Uh, I used my Virgin Atlantic card, which is also issued by Bank of America. So I was a little nervous about that. Like I'm running too hard on Bank of America cards.

I don't know if they look across them or not. Yeah. Um, but I like that play because you earn what? One and a half miles per dollar spent on the Virgin. You earn one and a half, uh, plus on the Virgin. You earn one and a half plus you get tier credits towards status. Plus they have different levels at which you get bonus points with a certain amount of spend. They also have a new thing for new card members where you get a companion

award ticket thingy. It's, it's very, it's really hard to describe because it does multiple things under very specific circumstances. So whether it's actually worth anything to anyone, I don't know. But what I don't know and wasn't able to get answered by calling them was, do I, as an existing cardholder, get this benefit of I spend $30,000 and get this companion ticket and flash upgrade thingy. I thought that if I remember correctly, I thought that that was addressed somewhere and it was in our post about it. If I remember correctly, I could be wrong because I didn't look at this today. I didn't have it on my mind.

But I thought that we were able to confirm that it was for existing card members. But maybe I'm wrong about that. So it's worth looking into for sure because because if yeah it might have some uses and if you're going to be spending the money on the virgin atlantic card anyway then you know you might as well see if you can get that benefit too yeah i'm going to tell you another card that i'm thinking of uh-huh uh i don't have it at the moment but i'm thinking it's going to surprise you. Well, my next question was going to be, are you thinking about opening any new cards? Because I mean, I am.

And I think I think that people ought to be. So what I've been looking at is like this opens up if you have a way to liquidate these cards. Obviously, you have to you have to be able to do that but it it makes it a lot easier to do those sign up bonuses that have a large spend right right unfortunately what is the best sign us sign up bonus with the big spend that's out right now well this is the amex business platinum card i think you're gonna spend i think 20k to get 100 points um and that won't work at simon the am so forget amex cards when you're looking at um even at home when you're looking at simon spin um no do you want to guess what this is a total oddball card i will give you a hint it has a um it right now it has a higher offer than usual i think it's

matching the highest we've ever seen for this card wow so i i and i remember writing about one that just hit a new high the other day recently but i can't even recall off the top of my head what it is so no that's. That's how unexpected this card is that it's on my radar. Clearly, because I can't even predict. Like I said, I think maybe I wrote about this recently because it's ringing a bell that I did write about

something with an increased bonus. Here's another hint. Bank of America again. Bank of America again. Again. That might be dangerous right so you're looking at yeah i'm looking at amtrak all right you know that is funny because we didn't talk about this beforehand and yesterday my wife said to me and and i should i should preface this with my wife doesn't read the blog every day she stays up on miles the plane she likes to do the manufactured

spending but she doesn't really follow offers and yesterday she said to me should i get the amtrak card where did that even come from why the amtrak card okay so um if you spend twenty thousand dollars in a year on the amtrak card you get the ability to convert the points one to three to choice, right? Choice. Now, as you know, you can buy choice points for what? 0.75 cents each, I think. Right. Yeah. Right. I think 0.75 cents each as long as you have $10,000 to start. Yeah. So each Amtrak. So if we just say that's the value of choice points, it's 0.75. If we're willing to buy them, then they're worth that much. They're usually worth more when you redeem them. But since you could always buy them at 0.75, you can't consider the value you're getting in the credit card spend is more than that because you could otherwise get a cash back card and buy the buy the point right but but so if you're getting 3x that's 2.25 percent right yeah it is if you've got to use

for the choice points it is anyway I mean so if you get the signup bonus on that you do your 20k spend, you're at what, like 60 K Amtrak points, right? I don't know if there were any usable bonus categories on that, apart from Amtrak or there? Uh, no, I don't think so. Well, there might be restaurant or travel or something, but nothing that you're actually going to use that card on. Right, right. So you end up with 60 K. then you you end up with that many choice points is that like well you can only isn't there a limit as to how many you can transfer though there is if i remember right i think it's i think you can only do 25k a year um so that would give you 75k

choice but i think it's calendar year and so the way it works i i think is like once you reach this threshold you can do the i think you could do the transfer twice because you can um do it before the end of this calendar year and then do it again in january or february or whenever as long as within 12 months of when you met the threshold or something like i'm not sure but right um enough use for choice points to make that worthwhile no way it's just it seems like they no way no but i'm gonna open it do the spend and get the points why not no i shouldn't have said no way like that i mean i mean choice has a lot of niche uh high value awards and and as you found uh with with the the one um what was the name of the hotel napa valley i think is what it's called okay so it doesn't have a fancy name

but no yeah collection property but it looks fantastic um and i i've regularly come across choice properties that have very good solid value even even if they're not like, you know, as amazing as, as what you're talking about, but you know, over 1 cent per point value. And so, um, and so it's good, but it's more, uh, for me, it's more about, it's fun to me to, to, um, one, the earning Amtrak points for the purpose of getting choice points, and two, like having to spend a certain amount to be able to unlock this capability. It's like a game. And so I like that about that whole strategy.

Will I actually do it? I don't know. I haven't decided. It's an interesting idea. I thought about it for being able to convert some to choice. My wife actually brought it up because we were looking at train tickets for something. My first reaction was, when do we ever travel by train? Because I didn't think,

and I'm sure she probably didn't know about converting them from Amtrak to choice. She was literally thinking about a train trip, but I was like, okay, that's going to be like 10,000 of the points. What are we going to do with the rest of them? I knew if you spend 20, you can convert them to choice. And I like that play because like you said, there are times with choice where you can get pretty good value.

Certainly in Scandinavia, it gets talked about all the time because of the properties where you can get free breakfast and free dinner. But even in the United States, you found that Cambria Suites a few years ago by LAX. It's way more now, but it was a great value at the time. And you find things like that now and then and sometimes on a road trip what difference does it make whether I met the you know the clarion or the you know Hilton Garden Inn or whatever other mid-range you know limit service type place there is and there are times like that when choice points do come in handy now and then yeah they do they do so yeah so that's that's one of the things on my mind what about you? Are you thinking of signing up for any cards to take advantage of?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've got the Premier on mine, the City Premier, which we probably should have added to the collection a long time ago. So we haven't done it, but I think I'm leaning towards the City Premier anyway. 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first three months.

I know the affiliate offer expired on that just recently, but there's still a working link on our offers page to that 60K offer. So that's out there. That's on my mind. It seems like a great deal to be, especially now with this Turkish thing. I mean, I think that that's part of what's pushing me there. Like that's just very, very easy. And I say very easy. We'll come back to that whether or not it's easy in a second, I guess. But easy to get good value in general. I've had good success so far with trying to book things via Turkish. So 7,500 miles each way within the United States. I know we've been talking about the flights to Hawaii, which are an amazing value. Or if you can get to Alaska for 7,500 in economy or

five upfront, I mean, it's probably worth flying upfront for another 5,000 miles just for the free bags. Right. I mean, right. Yeah. Free bags. Even if you're just in a recliner seat, who cares? Would you save in, in, in a free bag fees for you? Probably, probably worthwhile. But anyway, you know, it's very easy, I think, within the United States to get amazing value out of that, even on smaller trips, because I'm located near a small market airport, I fly to small market airports quite a bit, where flights are expensive. So being able to fly for 7,500 miles and pick a random place, like, you know, I told you, I think I said, like El Paso, or if I fly to Fargo, or to Fargo or someplace that I've just always wanted to see but haven't been like that, it becomes really easy because United Ability is pretty good.

So city thank you points are becoming more valuable to me. So I'm thinking about that. I haven't actually decided. I'm going to go to the mall tomorrow, and I haven't actually decided which cards we're going to use for this round. But that's probably the next card, I think, to add to the collection. Also, we've been seriously lacking on this altitude reserve for quite a while. So I kind of want to add the altitude reserve,

but as you know, the US Bank was known for shutting people down in the beginning for buying goods with that. So if I open that card, I'm not going to probably use it at Simon's. Right, right. So I don't think I'll get much out of that, but that's going to probably use it at Simon's. Right, right. So I don't think I'll get much out of that, but that's probably the next card on the docket apart from this.

And being able to meet the spend super easy on the Premier with Simon means that it'll be easy to put all of our expenses on the Altitude Reserve if need be. And what about the Bank of America Premium Rewards card? Are you not looking at that? You know, we just haven't thought about moving the money over to America we haven't seriously thought about moving the money over to Bank of America to give the Platinum honors we've thought about it and talked about it but we haven't actually done anything to do that we have a bunch of our retirement stuff at

a different bank and so we'd have to convert that over and move it over and it's taking a backseat but really're right, that's probably a conversation we need to have. And it's changed our financial advisors. So maybe it's as good a time as any for us to get out of where we are and move stuff over to Bank of America to do that. So that probably should be on the docket, especially I've argued quite a bit lately that cashback should be on your radar, because there are lots of times when you can buy miles cheaply. We just saw Bianca offer them from 1.35 cents each. Choice said 0.75 cents each. So if you'd be earning 2.62% cashback, then you're looking at... That's 2x everywhere for life miles when they're on sale

like that or close to it anyway. Close to it anyway, yeah. Although I say that, and I'm not quite as excited about that because I am excited still about Venture Miles. I just can't get enough Venture Miles right now because last month they were posting right away as I made purchases at Simon and other places to my Capital One account, that is, my Capital One Miles, And then it was almost one to one, transferring them to Avianca Life miles. So I was getting almost one to almost two miles per dollar on the venture card last. Right, right. So I'm interested in replenishing there because I don't know what the next one's going to be. But it seems to me like Capital One is going to keep running these signup bonuses, or maybe these transfer bonuses. Are you interested in a venture card? Or a Spartan Miles card?

Yeah. I mean, I've tried. But Capital One won't approve me for anything. I mean, I haven't tried a real low-end card. Maybe I should. Maybe I should do one just so that I get in the door and maybe they'll like me better after that. I don't know. I haven't heard any tricks

for getting around Capital One's tough approval process. That's true. That's true. Yeah, they are tough on people who are good at using rewards and cards. They're not so tough if you're just getting started. Of course, if you're just getting started, you want to start with Chase cards. But once you get that down and get Capital One towards the beginning, I guess, is the moral of the story. It just, you know, really, we just dumb luck happened to have started

with Capital One cards and not gotten rid of them. So it's great that they've become valuable. And now word on the street is they may even have a premium card coming. Yeah, yeah. So that's, the details though are disappointing to me. I agree with you on that. So, I mean, I have a full post about it coming out on Monday.

But the preview is that what Caroline Lupini wrote on Travel with Grants blog was that while it's going to offer 10x for hotels, which the other venture cards already do. Right. going to offer 10x for hotels which the other venture cards already do right um and it's going to offer um 4x for restaurants 5x for flights booked through capital one it's only going to offer 1x for all other spend that doesn't make a lot of sense no it doesn't so i i hope she's wrong. Well, you know, I hope she's wrong. But I also, I actually really think it's very, very likely that they floated some information out that's close to what they're thinking of just to get reaction from the public and see what people say about it. And because they're talking about q2 next year so they have almost a year from now um not quite but almost to uh to make changes if if uh if people react negatively so so my post uh for monday is fairly negative

i'm trying to help out capital one by giving them some constructive feedback on that card it's So my post for Monday is fairly negative. I'm trying to help out Capital One by giving them some constructive feedback on that card. That's worthwhile. I think it's worthwhile to give them that constructive feedback because, my goodness, have they amped up the trend of the Spark Miles cards and made them worlds better than they used to be, right? So they seem to be open to feedback. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it can't hurt. And I do believe that at least some of them do read Frequent Milers.

And if you're watching Capital One. Do better. Do better. All you need to do, well, two things. You have to do 2X on the everywhere else on that card. You have to do 2x on the everywhere else on that card. You have to. The other thing, you need to have at least 4x for travel in general when we're not going through your portal. Do those two things, and we're going to love the new card.

You know what? I'll give you one other adjustment that they could make that would make it a game changer that I think would make it different. What's that? Supposedly 10X is going to be if you book through the Capital One portal. Now, booking through the Capital One portal worked like one of those very few situations where you do get elite credit and hotel points and things like that. If it worked like a regular travel agency, then that would make a difference. And apparently Amex is able to make that work with fine hotels and resorts somehow. If you could actually earn hotel stuff booking through their portal, then, then, okay, give me the 10X

because right now you can get 10X at hotels.com, but the disadvantage there is that you're not gonna get hotel points, you're not gonna get elite credit, and in many cases you may not get elite benefits. And really all I want out of that is the elite benefits. I wanna know I'm gonna get breakfast and late checkout if I need it. cases you may not get elite benefits and really all i want out of that is the elite benefits i want i want to know i'm going to get breakfast and late check out if i need it so i'm not very

likely to book through your portal capital one unless you can make sure i'm going to get that stuff right right i i agree that would be great that'd be a game changer i can't see them i can't see employing being able to do that um with with like a world of hotels. Like Amex, it took them a while to roll out how much they have, which is not anywhere near all the hotels out there. So I think there must be special arrangements in some way to make that happen. There could be. They have so many different brands under there. I don't know.

I think they're probably taking less commission is really what it comes down to. Could be. Could be. But, okay. I know we're going long here and I, but before we, before we wrap up, the other thing we have to talk about is I mentioned the premier card and how city thank you points are becoming more and more valuable to me because oh my goodness, you know, the 7,500 points each day is amazing. 12, five in business is amazing. When I look at things like, you know, little simple flights that I need that are two, three,

$400 one way that I could book for 7,500 points now, last minute, no close in booking fee, no fuel surcharges. City thank you points are like, hello, much more valuable now than they ever were before. And so I look at that and I say, okay, well, most of our airline miles are valued based on the cost of the domestic economy class ticket. If you haven't seen how we value our airline miles, short version of that story is that we take the average cost of a domestic economy class ticket and compare that to the cost in miles of an award ticket. And so basically all airlines end up with the same value.

And the reason for that, of course, is because that's what most people use their miles for. Not necessarily most of our listeners, but most people who redeem miles are redeeming them for economy, domestic economy class tickets. So I look at Turkish now and I say, well, shouldn't we then take that 15,000 miles round trip and be like, wow, I mean, Turkish miles and smiles are super valuable. We should increase the reasonable redemption value of city thank you points because now it's reasonable. You can get at least a couple of hundred bucks out of 7,500 points, right? Yeah. I mean, I, I totally get the logic behind it. I'm not ready to change our reasonable redemption value for CityPoint for this purpose. And there's a few reasons why.

One, and probably the biggest piece of it, is that this is very likely not going to last long term. We don't know what's going to happen, for when united goes to um variable pricing variable word pricing uh which they're gonna be doing pretty soon um and we're already seeing you know in a variety of ways on different routes now yeah uh and so we don't always end with that but we also don't want know what's going to happen when um turkish suddenly sees know, all of these, that they're paying for all of these award flights with this tiny number of miles. At some point, someone might realize, you know,

this is not the best deal for them. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the economics of it are for them. I don't know how much they pay United. I can imagine someone at United is like, wow, we are suddenly selling tons of economy class awards to Hawaii. What's going on?

I was actually thinking that you need to just kind of hang out in Hawaii at the airport. I agree. But you're not at the beach. You're at the airport. And then greet all the Frequent Milo readers. I should.

They would be thanking you like crazy. I'll be happy to do that. There's only flights 20 hours out of the day. I'll be happy to do that. I'll head right over tomorrow because I could because United has that much availability. Except I'd say that now and some people are not finding it so easy, right? So we've been getting some reports from readers that haven't been able to book even though they have itineraries that look like they should be bookable and have been working on it and working with a few readers and

getting their example itineraries and trying to work out why it is that sometimes people are having trouble. The agents aren't seeing seats available that I think should be. And do you have a working theory at this point? My best theory, which I still haven't, I haven't made rock solid. My best theory that there might be a minimum connection time because the first several reports and the one failure that I had issue that the only, or I should say the only common thread that I saw was that there was a connection of less than an hour. And then apparently there wasn't, you know, the agent said there wasn't availability. Now it's kind of a weak theory because I haven't yet had a chance to test

enough itineraries to make sure that that's it. Number one, number two, it's kind of a weak theory because everybody has the same experience. We were all told that the first flight wasn't available. And so I don't know as though that makes a lot of sense because they're searching segment by segment, right? They're not seeing the first segment available. So it's a somewhat weak theory, but that's the best theory I have so far. One theory that you floated was maybe they can't see United Express tickets for some reason, except I think I debunked that in one of the searches that I was able to find something with United Express that, that they said we could take it. So,

so still working on it. I don't know. Yeah. All right. I'm sure you're going to figure it out. One more thing about why I don't want to change the reason where redemption value is more to do with, so I had made a decision at one point let's go back to in time for this example to when chase transferred to Amtrak as one of their transfer partners right mm-hmm and then Amtrak changed their their rewards to where the points were worth about 2.9 cents towards most train travel. At that point, so for a period of time, Chase was transferring one-to-one, points were worth 2.9.

Did that mean that Chase points were worth 2.9 each? And I really struggled with that question because it's like, well, you reasonably could redeem them for that. Yes, you can. But, but, you know, then I was like, well, but is that the, that's not anywhere near the sort of normal use of them. And, and so I, you know, I eventually sort of just, even though I never came up with a sort of unifying theory that made me feel better about it, I just finally decided since that's not the most common use or even close to a common use for ChasePoints, I think it's okay to sort of say there are things like that that are way more value, just as there are even with any programs, like with United. I mean, you know, you can transfer United, maybe you normally only get one point, whatever sense value, but, you know, there are those awards where you could get way enhanced value. So I look at it that way. And so with Citi, yes, if you do the transfers to Turkish and you use them for domestic U.S. flights or within North America flights, you know, within those sweet spots, yes, you're getting way outsized value. But I still think that the norm for using Citi points is not necessarily that.

So that's kind of my roundabout logic for why I'm not willing to change the city points for this Turkish deal. Yeah, I mean, and I can understand that hesitation. And the Amtrak example, I think, is a good example of where, yes, obviously, you can easily get that much value. But is it reasonable to expect that most people are going to redeem their points for Amtrak? Probably not. So that really didn't enhance the value of chase points beyond the norm. Although I might argue that Turkish does do that with city points, because that's a much wider use case than others. And when you look at flights to Europe are 45,000 in business class, one and two, I mean, it becomes a super duper sweet spot. Right, I don't disagree.

For people in the know, it's fantastic. For the average- Absolutely true. City rewards customer, it's not even a known thing, right? Right, right. So- It's not like, you know, you're able to just get online

and book stuff easily and simply. In fact, if you don't have miles in your account, you can't even see what the fuel surcharges are, even for the awards that they do show online. So it's definitely not the most user-friendly program in the world. I'm super excited about it right now, and it's terrific for me and for all the people out there who are able to take advantage of it. And I will say, when I mention that, it pops into my mind immediately. Enjoy the ride while it lasts because Because A, like you said, I think that it's one of those things

that's going to have a limited lifespan. And I don't think it's going to have a limited lifespan just because we posted about it. I think that somebody was going to find this and the lifespan was going to be limited. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to jump on it once they figured it out. And number two, like you said, United is about to go variable price. I don't know for sure, but I have to imagine that safer availability is going to become much harder to come by when they go variable pricing, similar to the way it did with Delta. And maybe Turkish will be that rare situation where they see a lot more availability like Atlantic does when you know, when you're looking to book Delta, except you don't have an easy way to search that online. So what you're going to have to call a Turkish agent each time to do it.

This thing is a deal that's like, I feel like it's living on a borrowed time as it is. So get in while the getting's good. Yeah, for sure. That's great advice. Definitely great advice. One thing totally unrelated. I just want to say before we get off the call,

Grant from Travel with Grant announced on his blog that he got married. And I want to say congratulations if you're listening, Grant. That's fantastic. And go to his blog and read the story about how it all came from a shopping portal bonus. That's why he's married today. The shopping portal bonus that I might add, Greg broke the story on. So one might argue that Greg is responsible for the ultimate lifetime happiness in Grant's life. You're welcome, Grant. And with that, we'll bid adieu. Very good.

Well, thank you very much. Pleasure being here. Always a pleasure having you and anybody who's out there listening. And remember that if you're watching this live, you can also download it via podcast. So those links are all going to be in the Week in Review post tomorrow morning.

So that's Saturday morning. And so if you're watching this live and you just jumped at the end, don't worry. You can obviously watch the video later, but also you can download it on all of the various podcast formats. You belong on radio, man. That was really good. All right. Take care.

Bye. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.