Frequent Miler on the Air - Analyzing deals from Aeroplan, Amex, & Spa Week | Frequent Miler on the Air | Ep46

Episode Date: May 9, 2020

See http://thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe for more from FM. Greg and Nick discuss: -Aeroplan mileage sale: Crazy deal, or crazy customers? Is Greg getting even crazier? -Amex's different strategy for our northern neighbors: what they've got that we don't and whether or not we think they'll do something similar in the US -Spa Week deal: I said this deal stinks and if you didn't click through to the post you might have missed Greg's comment about why it could be great. With Mother's Day around the corner, this could be worth pursuing All that and more. Timestamps: 00:23 Reader feedback 4:01 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? ("Expiring" points after a product change - that won't really expire) 10:02 What crazy thing did Hilton do this week? 13:39 Aeroplan promotion: Points on sale May 7-13 18:40 Did Greg buy miles? Is he thinking about it? Should anybody buy? Why or why not? 23:52 Why were so many people buyers? Has our hobby gone mad? 25:13 We're always buying miles by giving up cash back to accept points. 26:51 Greg is going to transfer to Air Canada for elite status. Why?? 31:55 Greg makes a prediction. We all know how he's doing with predictions this year. 32:26 Amex throws Canada a bone. What's with that? It's not Canadian Express. Will they increase redemption value stateside as well? 40:38 A deal that stinks...but doesn't. This is why you should click through and read the comments. 48:23: Question of the Week: Which card for groceries in August?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. We have several interesting topics this week, as we, I think, almost always do, right? I think so. I like to think they're always interesting. Yeah, at least readers tell us that. They interest us. They interest us, and actually, they interest most people who care to give us feedback about the show. Which is good. That's good. That matters. Which is a good intro to reader feedback time, reader feedback time. All right, let's find out what are the readers saying? Greg, let us know. Okay. So periodically I look on my iPhone at the podcasts and see what

new reviews are on there for our podcast for this one, frequent millar on there. And while we get great reviews, like most people just click the five stars and are on their way, which is great. We thank you. Thank you for that, yeah. But a few people leave messages, but it's been a while. So it had been a few months since we've gotten a new one.

But we did. We just got a new one. Nice, that's exciting. And this one is from... It's good. This one's from rtg 1029 okay rtg says great job thank you and then goes on to give us lots of accolades okay but i'm not gonna read them all because it's a little bit long okay um but and then goes on to say my wife and I love to travel

and your information allows us to travel more and at less expense through those credit card rewards programs. Can't wait for this COVID-19 stuff to be over so we can start traveling again. In the meantime, we'll just keep building travel currency. Thank you and keep up the good work.

Well, thank you, RTG, whatever the numbers were i can't remember 10 29 10 29 there of course 10 29 okay so rtg 10 29 thank you yeah i'm glad to hear that you've been able to do some traveling i mean i think that that's the thing this game has made travel different for me too and that's why i enjoy writing about it because i've been able to travel a lot more than i ever imagined i would have been able to before I found this. I certainly wouldn't be as well traveled as I am if not for this. So, yeah, it's awesome.

I'm glad to hear that it's working for you to keep keep picking up those points. And I think RTG has the right approach, which is while right now is not great for travel. It is good for picking up new points and miles. Now I sort of hesitated with the good, not great. I mean, there are some opportunities that are harder to get than usual, like some business cards are harder to get approved for, and it's harder to, you know, go to stores where stores are required to do certain activities that to generate points. But, but there are things that are better than usual, like all those grocery bonuses and things that we've seen in the past couple weeks,

all of a sudden show up on a bunch of our cards. Sure. And the pause in travel is kind of helpful for those of us who kind of compulsively want to redeem because it gives us a chance to build back up. If you've been redeeming a lot of points, it kind of gives you a while to just kick back and relax and save up those points. Because I know there's probably at least a few people out there who, you know, get enough points for a business class flight, and they're like, okay, I want to go somewhere and they go. And you know, now you got enough time to save up and wait for that first class redemption or something like that, maybe. So it's a good time to build up your balance, probably, you know, I guess, it depends on what kind of miles it is that you're earning.

But if you're earning transferable currencies, you're probably pretty safe from any devaluations or any particular programs folding. So I'm still collecting points. And I'm kind of excited about the grocery bonuses. It's nice to get really good return at the grocery store. I mean, I already kind of was with the Amex Gold card, but now I feel like most of the cards in my wallet

are kind of fun to pull out at the grocery store. Right. It's sort of an embarrassment of riches and it's hard to know which things do I, which cards do I bring along here? And you need to think through your strategy of what are you trying to accomplish? You sure do. So speaking of strategy, we know that each week over the last few weeks, we've been talking about the strategy that befuddles us the most in that Citi strategy. So I have to ask the question for the next segment. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Yes. So this isn't really a new thing that Citi has done, but it's something we heard about this week and last week from readers

which is something that happened to me back i think it was december um so we've been telling people for a while now you know okay if you don't want your city prestige 495 card anymore fine but i'm not sure i have that price, right. But anyway, whatever it costs. Okay, good. That's fine. But don't cancel it. Because if you cancel it, you're going to lose all your points. And it doesn't matter if you've pulled your points together with your other thank you cards, you'll still lose those points that were pinned sort of secretly under the covers to that prestige card, the ones under the covers to that prestige card, the ones that were earned on that prestige card. And so what we've always said is just downgrade

to a no fee card. That's the way to keep those points alive. So... And specifically the no fee card, let's be clear on that. The no fee, like the rewards plus or the thank you preferred, not the double cash, as we've said a number of times recently. Thank you. Right. The double cash is not a native thank you card. And so you will still lose your points if you if you product change to the double cash card. But the rewards plus card is the best one to product change to because it has some really cool features as well. Anyway, so people follow our recommendation, as I did in December. And what happens, you log into your thank you account shortly after, like, let's say the day after two

days after calling to product change. And what do you see, but all those points that were earned on your prestige card show up as expiring soon. And so then you have a mild heart attack, freak out a little bit. I called Citi and said, what's the deal? The rep I got said that that's just something that happens during the transition period when you're between products as your product changing and it will automatically sort of go back to normal which is no expiration date once the process is done and I was nervous about that because as you and I know, call center reps are rarely right about anything. And I don't mean that to disparage them. It's just our experience. Right. And so I had a hard time believing it, but at the same time, I didn't really

see I had any recourse. You know, I didn't really want to dump all those points, but, you know, at least I had the call log so i could call and complain if they went away but but she was right uh in a week or so whenever it was the i would i logged in and it was back to normal points showed no expiring so that was interesting that was weird fast forward several months we're starting to hear the same story from readers that um same exact thing the difference is what they're hearing from the reps about why it's happening it's a little bit different story they're being given that doesn't surprise me at all you know i don't think anyone knows why it happens. It's just that it does happen, but it seems to correct itself. So hopefully, if that happens to you, hopefully this helps you get a handle on, you know,

or feel better about it when you see that it looks like your points are about to expire. But I still recommend before you product change, go into your thank you account, take a screenshot of your point balance beforehand. And then once the product change, after your product change call, go in and take another screenshot showing the expiry. And then, you know, look at it again about a week or two later. And if it's not back to where it was before, you at least have a record showing, here's what it was then, here's what it is now. And you could bring that to Citi and say, what's the deal, guys?

So that's what Citi, the crazy thing Citi has been doing for quite a while. Part of that craziness is that it takes them so long to fulfill a product change it does yeah it takes a while it takes like six seven eight weeks something like it depends on the i think it varies a little bit but yeah it takes quite a while to get that finalized so you see both accounts in your online account for a while and yeah it isn't completely done yet. It's such a slow process. I don't know why, but nor do any of the phone reps.

And I think that it's worth repeating that point that phone reps are often wrong and often they just don't know any better than you and I, and they might have a guess that they think is probably right. So that's what they tell you. But, you know, who knows? They don't, I'm sure they don't know. We don't really know why it does that. We got some guesses on the IT end, I guess. But I'm sure that there's probably one IT person maybe that understands why it happens that way.

And you're not likely to get through to that person on the phone. So trust us, it's probably not going to really expire. Right. They aren't really going to expire. They haven't yet. Do your homework or screenshots. Right. Always a good idea to take lots of screenshots.

And that's also worth repeating because we run into that sometimes where people say, oh, you know, I applied under an offer that said A and then they said B. And, you know, now here I am and I don't have any proof of what I did. So always keep screenshots of what you've done. Yeah. Hey, just for this week, I just remembered this and I'm going to introduce a what crazy thing Hilton did this week. This won't be a permanent feature, I don't think. Probably not. That's up to Hilton, really. Right, right. It's out of our hands, guys. That's right. But so far, what crazy thing did Hilton do this week?

All right. This is a bit of a story. So you remember that probably more than a year ago, my Hilton account was hacked. I do. Twice. I lost all my points. And that at the end of that whole thing, Hilton helped me so much that they practically tripled my point balance. I do recall that. Yes. I recall that whole saga. And if you,

if you missed it, then you should go on the frequent miler.com and go to that little search box. And I probably type Hilton hacked and it'll probably pop right up for you. So that's the last post I remember about this. So you can read all about how Greg got hacked and how he found it and how they fixed it and how they re hacked it, which is the craziest part. The fact that they were able to hack again. Right. I mean, and, and, you know, it was just a, it was a phone hack. It was, it was, they were calling up and, and impersonating me or something. Anyway, that doesn't matter. So the week before this, so about, uh, almost two weeks ago, I posted a article about Virgin Atlantic. And I said, the reason I wasn't interested, or one of the reasons I wasn't interested in moving my Virgin Atlantic points

to Hilton points is that I had nearly a million Hilton points thanks to that crazy tripling situation. And in there, I wrote, hey, Hilton, if you want to take these extra points back, you can. And Hilton was listening because Hilton reads every word that we write. I mean, they didn't admit that, but about a week after that, I got an email. Hey, you remember how you know, the email was, was was fairly generic but basically it said that there was a merge issue which i believe um and they had found that there were too many points in my account and they had adjusted it and now i have the amount of points i should have which is totally fine but how crazy is that from a timing point of view right i mean that was it was quite a while

ago how how long ago was it that you know i'll have to look that up i don't know it's quite a while yeah i had to been more than a year right it might be close to two years i don't know yeah but crazy stuff yeah that is crazy somebody was reading i think you know i know you probably do but yeah no no no no but but uh and you told them they could take them back i told them so that was the crazy thing greg did this right what crazy thing did greg do he tapped he tapped that bear again because i think you had already mentioned it in the previous i had i had mentioned it you know few years ago or whenever that was. Right, exactly. But apparently you decided to poke that bear one too many times.

And they were like, all right, you got to stop rubbing it in our face, Greg. We were going to let you have a nice vacation, but you got to wave it around. And we'll take it. Yeah, that was a mistake. So hopefully that helps them get some points off their bucks and helps a little bit in this whole COVID thing. There you go. Maybe they can show it around and add the rest of your points to a sign up bonus or something. There you go.

So, all right. Speaking of points and adding points and that sort of thing, this week we saw an interesting promotion come up from Aeroplan. So first time I really remember Aeroplan offering points on a widespread basis anyway, for sale. So Aeroplan offered their points for sale, or they are currently offering their points for sale from May 7 to May 13. So you have a few more days after this post to buy if you're interested. So they did this in in several different, like tranches, several different amounts. So the first 10 million that were sold were sold at one cent per point. And then the next, I don't know,

100 million or something like that were sold at essentially 1.1 cents per point. These are all with bonuses. So I'm just giving you the numbers as to what they come out to. And then after those sold out, the rest of them are available for 1.3 cents per mile. So that's the current going price now because of course they sold out of the cheapest of the cheap, but kind of cool how they handled it because they had a system meltdown. And so not a lot of people were able to get through even forget about being able to purchase. And so they actually bumped some people up who had bought at the lowest level and gave them more points so that was a pretty cool way to handle things in the sense that some of the people who bought again this was like

first thing on may 7th are actually gonna end up getting more points than than they thought that they thought they were buying yeah exactly now that was that was actually points.com that crashed wasn't it yeah it was and even though it wasn't their own site, they were taking responsibility for it, which is so cool. Yeah. And actually offered the people that were affected by all that extra points. Yeah, which is amazing. We don't ever see loyalty programs do that kind of thing. And anytime there's an insane sale on points like that, and I say insane, we'll talk about whether or not it's really insane.

But when there's a really good deal on points, I mean, you expect the website to crash in that kind of case. I feel like if you don't expect that you're being unrealistic, because there's going to be lots and lots of people looking at this. So I wasn't at all surprised. I was trying to get through. I wasn't going to buy them. Actually, I was just helping to clog up the system. So nobody else could, but that intentionally, I was I wanted to be able to take some screenshots and see it, but I couldn't get through either. And so people that were in that situation, but still decided to buy at the 1.3 cents before noon Eastern time on the day it went live, they're bumping them up to essentially give them the extra points to get 1.1 cent per mile. So I can't think of a time a loyalty program has had a response quite that generous. I thought it was great of Arrow Plan to do.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's so interesting to me because, you know, in past years around the same time, there has been the, what are they called? Oh, daily getaways where various programs basically sell points at a discount. Not all the daily getaway deals are like that, but a lot of them are where they sell points at a discount. And the ones that we're excited about are just like this. You have to be on there right as they go on sale or else you're going to miss out. And, you know, that makes sense most of the time. But this time it happened during a time when nobody's traveling. And not only that, there are big unknowns about what's going to happen with own the mileage program.

They bought it back. They're going to unveil, supposedly at the end of this year, brand new program. And so all your aeroplan miles will become Air Canada something or other miles. I'm assuming it'll be a new name. And we don't know what the award charts or anything are going to look like. And so people are buying right now when they can't travel for something that has a completely unknown value. What's going on?

So is that the crazy part? Was the price crazy or were the people buying crazy? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think the whole situation is crazy. So yeah, the price was crazy low for airline miles, especially miles that are pretty good. Right, I mean, I can't think of an airline that has sold their miles at one cent each

anytime in recent memory directly. You know, there've been indirect opportunities to buy miles by, you know, subscribing to a magazine or, you know, some foreign site or that sort of thing. But I can't think of an airline that has directly sold miles at one cents a mile or at 1.1 cents a mile, or even I don't think at 1.3 cents, which is the going price now. I mean, usually it's a big deal when LifeMiles puts their miles on sale at like 1.35 cents. People buy LifeMiles when they're at 1.45 cents. And i can't think of another airline that's

sold any cheaper than the 1.3 cent value that they're selling them at right now i can't i don't think of anything anyway i don't know maybe you do but it's a it's a darn good price yeah compared to what most airlines would sell points at so so it was a very low price. Did you buy? Did you want to buy? Are you considering buying? Should anybody think about buying these or is it just crazy because we don't know what the program's going to hold? Yeah, I did not buy.

I don't think that, you know, in most cases, I don't think it's a good idea to buy miles at all unless you have a specific use for them. I don't have a specific near-term use, so I'm not a buyer. Now, of course, with though that's crazy low, with Air Canada was not low enough to make me say, ooh, I have to get in on that. And it's probably just as well because there's no way I would have gotten in at the one cent. But I might have gotten in at 1.1, especially with what happened.

Which still is a terrific price. And when you look at Aeroplan's chart right now, that made for some really good values, 55,000 points one way to much of Western Europe. Now, Air Canada does add fuel surcharges for a lot of airlines. So it's not quite as good as it sounds, although there's a number of airlines that you could fly that would have no fuel surcharges or quite low fuel surcharges. So for 550, or maybe just over $600 worth of miles at one cent each or 1.1 cents each, plus a little bit in taxes, you could theoretically have a one way business class flight to Europe. So I say theoretically, and really my hang up with this sale. And the reason I didn't buy and I'm probably not going to buy anything is because I just don't

know what the Star Alliance schedules are going to look like. If I felt confident right now in booking a trip for next March, for instance, on Star Alliance, I took a look just the other day to see what availability looks like. And availability is like wide open on Star Alliance carriers in March to Europe, at least out of New York. That's where I was searching. And I was seeing, I mean, a lot of Polish and Lufthansa and Austrian. And I mean, I saw tons of business class availability and different Star Alliance carriers. But I don't know for sure that they're going to fly those schedules next year because I don't know what the demand is going to look like come March.

So I feel like there's at least a decent chance that things might change. And then I got to accept, you know, flying on some other carrier or maybe deal with canceling with airplane and how they're going to handle the expiration of the miles and blah, blah, blah. So it didn't seem like a buy to me right now. But I could see if you felt more confident in flying in January, February, March, or going to the Christmas markets in December or something like that, it might have made a lot of sense. And it still might at 1.3 cents each. If you think that that's going to work i don't know i i'm not

confident enough yeah also i don't know at 1.3 something um you might be better off with life miles which you can often buy around that you know yeah that's true i'll say it just really depends on where you're going, what the prices are. Life miles, the prices are kind of random. Or there's some element of mystery to how they price things. And so sometimes it's much better. I think that Air Canada still allows you to do a stopover. I think one stopover on a round trip award, if I'm not mistaken. So it might make sense if you're booking a round trip award if I'm not mistaken. So it might make sense if you're booking round trip. And then if you're going to buy enough miles to book round trip, then you would also get Air

Canada Elite status if you buy those miles now, because right now, if you transfer over miles, they're going to count towards Elite status in the sense that if you have transfer over 50,000 points from say Amex membership rewards to Aeroplan, you would get Aeroplan elite status or Air Canada elite status, the first level, the prestige 25k. If you buy the miles, only 50% of the miles count towards that. So you'd have to buy more than 100,000 miles in order to if you're starting from scratch in order to get the 50,000 that you need to pick up that status to get the 50,000 credit for the 50,000 miles towards elite status, I suppose is what I'm saying. So if you're going to buy enough for a round trip flight to Europe, then okay, you'd end up with also their prestige 25k elite status, maybe the two together

makes it better to buy the aeroplan miles than to buy life miles. But but that's a maybe and it's a stretch. And I guess right now i'd be happier to wait for life miles to throw the miles on sale again and then maybe i'll have a better idea of whether or not i'm going to travel by then so i guess if you might value the elite status maybe it's still worth going after them maybe maybe maybe also the the other sort of confound and all that is if you have Citi Thank You Points, if, you know, by buying Air Canada miles, you're kind of locking yourself into using that currency versus getting even lower award price by using Turkish. Because Citi Thank You Points transferred to Turkish and Turkish has some amazing award prices. So also true. You know, there's a lot of trade offs. And so again, I just go back to, I'm not a buyer unless I have a plan. So why were so many people buyers? I mean, they sold 10 million of these at one cent each. And

then I maybe I'm wrong, but I have the number 100 million in mind, I thought was the next level or something crazy like that so i mean they sold a lot of miles anyway you slice it at those prices so and in fact they said and i don't know but the way they said it leads me to believe that they're going to release more information on this they said it was one of the biggest sales that points.com had ever seen in terms of volume traffic. So yeah, and I could see that it could be a draw because they were so cheap. But I don't know, is that is that not crazy? I mean, are people in our hobby just nuts to buy these miles? Like wondering that? What does it say about the hobby? Gary left a view from the wing had a post I think it was yesterday about looking

at what happened there and saying, to him, that was like great news for the hobby. It's saying, you know, people are still engaged. This means, and for travel, because it means people are still looking forward to travel, like, obviously, because why else would you buy these miles? Right. But there is another view, which is there's just a lot of addict, you know, crazy addicted people in this hobby that make irrational choices, which is another possibility. It is another possibility. I mean, that certainly did seem like a somewhat irrational choice. Although I made the argument on Twitter today with somebody, Andy at Lazy Travelers Handbook, he wrote a post today that I'll include him we can review around

the web this weekend, where he basically said that he thought that it was a bad idea to have bought into these miles. But what stuck out at me was he had a line in his post where he said basically that he doesn't ever believe in buying miles, like he won't ever buy them. And my response to that was that you're always buying the miles because you're always giving up the cash back in order to earn something. So if you're accepting two points per dollar on the Blue Business Plus, that's costing you at least two cents, right? Because you could be earning cash back on the Citi Double Cash, for instance. And if you have better cash back options, even more. So you're already paying a penny a point every time you choose to pick up a membership rewards point on the Blue Business Plus,

for instance. And you're paying less if you got the gold and you're at the grocery store, you know, you're paying more if you're using the Freedom Unlimited. So, you know, you're kind of always paying in the sense that you're giving up the opportunity for cash. So all of us are a little irrational right now in the sense that we're all continuing to pick up these imaginary currencies over cash back in at least some instances. So I don't necessarily think it was quite as far fetched to buy the points at one cent each. for for the sake of buying it's more so for the sake of i don't know what travel is going to look like i'm also a little bit nervous now at how many they sold and what that's going to mean for star alliance availability next year so well okay and well that's a good point um the oh shoot i lost my train of thought. Oh, sorry. The, um, I'll move on to the next part of this, which is that the, you mentioned before

you can transfer points in to, you can transfer 50,000 points in from like membership rewards, for example, and those would become Air Canada miles, and you'd get elite status from it. Mm-hmm. And I am planning to do that. Yeah, so tell me more about why, because I feel like that's a little crazy too, because I look at that and I say, Totally crazy.

Why do I want to lock in my membership rewards to a program that I don't know the future of with availability that I don't know what that's going to look like without a plan in mind. I mean, if you're right, we're going to buy them. Why are you going to transfer? Okay. So this actually reminds me what I was going to say before is that even though we are making irrational choices all the time, or I shouldn't say irrational, even though we're buying points all the time by using our cards, our points earning credit cards instead of our cash back credit cards, a lot of us are earning transferable points, which I think is a lot saner than a individual airline program's miles or points because there's so many potential potential uh high value uses for those points and um so

when you go to transfer your points to a particular program you're essentially buying that program's points with your uh transferable currency. Right. Yeah. You're basically, so I just, I was not a buyer of Air Canada miles, but I am because I'm going to, I'm going to buy 50,000 of them with my membership rewards points. Well,

and when you said you were thinking of doing that was you wouldn't pay one cent each to keep your membership rewards points. Cause that, that was my thought. Like I i would if i were going to transfer in then why not buy at least some of them and keep those membership rewards points and membership rewards for a penny each then i can keep those flexible i mean you're you're paying yeah uh well a lot i mean you have to you'd have to buy a hundred thousand of the Air Canada miles versus transferring 50,000. So it just seemed like a lower bar to me. What I'm buying, in my mind, what I'm really buying is not just the miles, but the elite status. And the only reason I'm doing that, you know, you asked,

is that crazy? Yes, it's crazy. And one of the things when you have large balances of points in a lot of different programs, you could do crazy things just for the fun of it. And so why would I be interested in Air Canada elite status right now? I'm not right now. But you're interested in maybe what it might be like. I'm interested in what happens when Air Canada unveils their new rewards program. And I'm interested in seeing what they do to incentivize people to participate

or increase participation, stay loyal to this new program. And my guess is that there might be some extra incentives for those that already showed loyalty by having elite status. And so it might put me in position for some fun benefits that I have no idea what they would be. But again, I have large point balances, so I could do crazy things like that and just put myself in position to do to in case something good comes up well you know and I've been tempted I'm kind of giving you a hard time but I've been tempted by it for the fact that maybe I'll be able to match to something else down the road if I were to pick up Air Canada elite status and I'm more tempted with Air Canada

Aeroplan than I would be with I don't, some other random Star Alliance program. Because in my case, I'm expecting a baby this fall. And Air Canada has historically had a great deal for lap infants on award tickets where you pay $100 in business class or $125 in first class, or you could do 10,000 miles, 12,500 miles, respectively, whether it's one way or round trip. And that's one of the best deals hands down for travel with a lap infant, which I'm looking at being a possibility for the next two years, you know, come this September. So since they have had that, if I want to cross my fingers and hope that they continue to keep that up in the new program, then I am very likely to book an award ticket with Air Canada at some point in the next two years. So that's the one reason why I was tempted to buy and I'm tempted to transfer. And I haven't made a definitive

decision. I'm kind of sitting on the fence, but because I'm in that position. So if you're in that position where you're expecting a child at some point and you want to travel with a lap infant, Air Canada has had a great program for that. So it might be an excuse that's going to tip the balance and convince me to do it because I also have a good number of membership rewards points. So, and I'm not burning them right now. So I'm tempted, but I'm not, I'm not as, not as confident as Greg that I'm definitely going to do it. All right. My prediction is that you're not going to do it. Okay. And that what's going to happen is the new program is going to raise rates on lap infants Fence. And I'm going to feel vindicated. But make them completely free for anyone with elite stuff. So I'll feel vindicated for a second and then scroll the rest of the announcement and be like, man, Greg got it right again.

I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that too. But okay. Or I hope it does happen if you do go for it. If I do it. Anyway, we'll see. We'll see. You know what?

Since we're talking so much about Canada, we should jump into our other Canadian topic. We should. Which is that American Express Canada has introduced some benefits for the Canadian cardholders. And one of the most interesting ones to me is the fact that their platinum cardholders get to redeem their points at two cents per point. So they're doubling the redemption value when you use them to buy things, so they have a few programs. I think Amazon might be one where you can normally use your points to pay for things at Amazon at one cent per point. Again, that's Amex Canada. Amex Canada, yeah.

But now, if you have the Platinum card, you would get two cents value per point. And that's fantastic. It is. It is. And it's two Canadian cents. But that's still, it's like 1.43 US cents per point. I mean, that's well over any of your options for cashing out any kind of currency really here in the US, right? I mean, that's, you can't.

For straight up cashing out. Yeah. And, and that's, you know, and that, that's adjusting for the exchange rate, which if you're Canadian, you're already just living life with that current. And so it's just straight up two cents for you. So for, yeah, for us it makes us a little bit less jealous because of the exchange rate, I guess, but it, for us, it makes us a little bit less jealous because of the exchange rate, I guess. But, you know, this whole thing has made me think about...

Moving to Canada? I mean, you're close. You're in Michigan. You're close. I've been long thinking about moving to the Canadian Hawaiian island. I see. So that's not what you're about to say. You haven't been planning on letting him move to Canada. Okay. earnings for like us-based card holders like for grocery stores specifically for example but they haven't done anything that i can think of to make it easier to redeem points because the

best value for redeeming all of these points is for travel rewards and they haven't done anything to say you know what during these times what why not why haven't they made like why hasn't chase said you could redeem for door dash at two cents per point or amex uh you know amex kit will let me do grubhub with points at a terrible value. Why not increase that value to one and a half cents per point or something to give us something so we could say, hey, we're getting good value for our points even during this time when we can't travel. Let's go. Yeah. I mean, what's up with that?

American Express is offering the best possible cash out value for their points to Canadians. Come on. Come on, American Express. What's up with America? You on, American Express. What's up with America? You're not Canadian Express. Right. Right. Let somebody over there create Canadian Express. You know what I'm saying? Come on. Throw us a bone here. Why do you think that is? It's really an interesting dynamic. I think you make a great point there in the sense that all of the focus here has been on earning greater earning and and mx did do a

pretty good job i guess in terms of adding some benefits where you'd get some money back on the platinum cards this year but there certainly hasn't been anyone that's made points easier to redeem and in fact in some cases they become a little bit harder to redeem in the sense that you can't use points now for gift cards from some of the loyalty programs. Capital One's functionality for that went down for a little while and then came back, although it doesn't have all of the original partners yet available for gift card redemption. So it hasn't gotten any easier to redeem points. You're right. decides that was a good idea in Canada and does it here too. But my instinct tells me that's not going to happen, that they've made very different plays in how to keep customers happy in Canada versus here.

And for whatever reason, they chose the route they did here, which we're very happy with a lot of the things Amex has rolled out on the earning side and the rebates that they're offering now. But this one thing, I mean, they haven't done anything for travel rewards. Now, Hilton did with their Amex credit cards, the free nights. They made those easier to redeem by making them any day nights instead of weekend nights, which is great. And making the new ones valid for two years, the ones that are issued between May 1st and December 31st of this year valid for two years. So you'd be able to put two together from a single credit card for a weekend away or something like that, or a couple of days away down the road. So yeah, that definitely was a big improvement. And you know, we talked to the other day when we did our frequent miler live YouTube session, which we've been doing on Thursdays at four, when we talked about Schwab briefly, I think somebody asked during the Frequent Miler Live

this week, do we think that they're going to take away the ability if you have the Schwab Platinum to cash out points? If you're not familiar, the Schwab Platinum card, which is an Amex Platinum, but it's issued in conjunction with Schwab anyway, that card allows you to cash out your membership rewards points at a value of 1.25 cents per point into your Schwab brokerage account, which then, of course, you cash out. But that functionality has kind of come and gone a little bit over the last few weeks. It's kind of broken and not worked and then come back and then broken. And so some people have been nervous.

Oh, is it going to go away? And we said the other day, I don't think so. The fact that they keep bringing it back after it breaks tells me it's just something that's not quite fixed yet. And they keep trying to fix it and not quite finding the solution. And this is something I pointed to that makes me more confident that they're going to keep that functionality. Because my goodness, not just for Schwab platinum holders, but all Amex platinum holders in Canada can now redeem for more cash value than Americans can. So, yeah, they obviously not upset with that, but maybe they just don't give away

as big bonuses in Canada or as big category bonuses on things. So they're not so concerned about paying for it. I don't know. Plus, I mean, Amex, for all kinds of legal reasons, wouldn't take away a advertised benefit like that without giving you,

I think about a year's notice or so, or I'm not sure exactly how long it would be. But so yeah, I don't see that happening at all. They do follow a different strategy in different places. If you follow any of the foreign blogs at boarding area, for instance, you'll definitely see promotions from like Amex in Singapore.

And it's the shutter whale, I think is one of the boarding boarding area blogs that's based in Singapore that writes about some of those Amex promotions. And then Live From a Lounge writes out of India. And I think they often cover some of those Amex Platinum things. I think I just saw today maybe Amex in India is offering two points per dollar on all purchases on the Platinum card. You know, I think around the world, a lot of places they're offering that. And I don't know why that didn't come here, but yeah. So different strategies in different places. I don't know.

You know, if you have the ability to pick up cards in Canada, though, and you have some of those cards in your wallet, I guess it's a good time to be able to cash out there because that's a decent value for cash out so i like to use my points for travel and all but that was a pretty terrific change for them so anything more on that greg uh no i think that's that topic so speaking of getting good value i wrote this week about a deal that i said was not a good deal i said that it was a pretty crappy deal. Right in the headline, you said that. Right, right, right, right in the headline. I was like, yeah, this is a bad deal. Because I saw it,

I got it in my email. And I was like, ooh, that's great. I'm gonna buy that. And then I read the fine print. And I was like, you almost got me, you almost got me, but you didn't. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna write about this, because some people will be able to get an okay deal. But I don't want anybody to get taken advantage of because they saw the email like I did and didn't read the fine print. It was like anti clickbait. It was like, Hey, everyone, here's a deal that stinks. Don't even bother. Right. So if you got that email in your inbox, you probably saw the headline and you were like, okay, well he says it stinks right in the headline. So why would I even click on this? Right. Or maybe you read it and you're like, okay, well, he says it stinks right in the headline. So why would I even click on this? Right? Or maybe you read it and you were like, oh, yeah, Nick's right. The deal stinks. But if you didn't click through to the site, then you'd miss the fact that Greg

commented on that post. And I've often said before that we send out the entire content of the post for those who are instant email subscribers. So if you are on the instant email alert list, then you get the entire contents of the post. And so you are on the instant email alert list, then you get the entire contents of the post. And so you may just read that email and think, okay, I got everything there was to get. But if you didn't click through, then you missed Greg's key point, which makes that deal much better than I realized it was and now has made it such that I might buy it. And if you're listening to this on Saturday, when it publishes, you have about 24 hours before Mother's Day to take advantage of this too, if you want to for mom. So here's the deal. And then I'll let Greg explain why it was better than I thought it was. So the deal is

spa, what spa week.com is selling spa and wellness gift cards. And so if you buy a $75 gift card, they're going to give you a $75 bonus card. So it's essentially like getting $150 worth of credit for 75 bucks. But here's the thing. The bonus card expires on August 1st, 2020. So that's a nice way of making it sound like it's valid until August, but it really means it's valid through the end of July. And so I looked at that and I said, well, that gives you like two months, just over two months to be able to use the $75 bonus card here in New York. I don't think spas

are open right now. I don't know when they're going to be open. And certainly in some other states that may be the case. And then when they do open, there may be so many people fighting for appointments that it might be hard to get a time when you want to be able to go in the next two months. So, so I thought that's kind of a garbagey deal, because there's a good chance of breakage there, you're not going to get used out of that $75 bonus card. And then, you know, just locked up $75 into a spa and wellness gift card. And I said, Yeah, that that stinks. That seemed like a really poor way to handle it to me. Not a great deal. But I was wrong.

You're wrong if others are in the sort of good position I'm in, which is that a spa where I often go to get massages near me, they will let me buy their gift cards with spa and wellness gift cards. And so I've done this a number of times before, where I take advantage of these deals, get those bonus gift cards, go in person to their location, and I buy their gift cards. Now, someone wrote in response to my comment, but aren't they closed? So how are you going to do that? Well, luckily, they emailed just the other day, my local spa saying, hey, we're doing a promotion, a bonus $20 for every $200. So we're going to have one person at the location, just selling gift cards. That's all she's there for uh you could also buy them online um with paypal but i don't think i can use the spa and wellness online so i would have to go to to use it but of course you have until august 1st so even if they're closed right now maybe by august 1st i would think your local right well that's not a slam dunk necessarily depending on where you live of course yeah um so yeah so so here's a you'd have to know

that your spa would accept these spa and wellness gift cards and would let you buy their gift cards to make this work but the but the point is so uh you can stack these deals you can you can buy the spa and wellness gift cards by first going through a portal. So get some extra portal rewards. And then you get this, you know, $150 worth of gift cards for $75. And then you go, then, you know, if I could work it out to get $200 worth, that's where it gets a little tricky because of the $75 limit. But, you know, let's just say I stack two deals to get $200 worth. Then, um, I go, I go and I get come home with $220 worth of, uh, of gift cards that are good indefinitely at that one place. So yeah, it's a great deal. Um, I haven't done it myself yet. And that's mainly because I've been doing this.

The Spa and Wellness Spa Week thing, ever since I bought one of them, they email me every single week, multiple times with deals that are similar. It's not usually where the bonus gift card is matching the first one, but it's usually like 75% of it or something like, like it's a big bonus. And so I've been doing this whenever my local spa has a sale on gift cards. And so I don't need more right now. And that's why,

that's why I'm not necessarily jumping on it. But yeah, if all those things align for you, it's actually a really good deal. Yeah, and really, as things begin to open back up, there's a decent shot that your local spa probably, or maybe even as they continue to be closed, there's a decent shot that your spa

is gonna run some sort of a promotion to get people back in the door. So it's not all that far-fetched to think that there may be many spas offering some sort of a gift card deal. So yeah, if they will let you use the spa week gift card to buy their gift card, which is certainly an if. I'm not sure that everybody will let you do that.

But if they do, then it could be a great deal. And so again, my point here in wanting to highlight this today is that that's something that I would have missed because I don't have that opportunity. And actually, I shouldn't have missed it because I think Greg's told me before that he's done that. And I should have remembered that, but I don't have that opportunity. And actually, I shouldn't have missed it. Because I think Greg's told me before that he's done that. And I should have remembered that, but I didn't. And so you might not have remembered that either. Because I think he's probably mentioned it in a post before. You might not have remembered that either. And if you didn't click through to the

site to see the comments, then you might have missed that. So comments can be gold sometimes. Because we all forget things like that now and then. And so that's why it's good to have a team approach and let Greg come in and sweep things up and tell you why it's actually a really good deal. Potentially for some folks, I'm still not gonna buy but you only got a couple of days to buy it that 75 plus 75 deal. I think it expires May 10. If I remember correctly, so so if you're listening to this too far down the road, sorry, you missed out. But you can keep that in mind for the next time you see a similar promotion like this, that you might be able to stack like that.

And not only this one, but any other kind of similar deal, because there are other types of those spa gift cards, aren't there? There's like, I think there's another one that I've seen before. Yeah, there's another one that I, I've used. I just, I can't think of the name of it. I can't think of the name of it right now either. But yeah. So when you see deals on those, that's something to keep in mind.

You may be able to- Spotfinder is the other. Spotfinder, there you go. I knew there was another one. I couldn't think of what it was called. Yeah, and I've done the exact same thing with them. Yep, and I actually think I also did the same thing with Spotfinder at one point.

So good tip there. All right, so that I think brings me to the question of the week, right? I think so. Okay, so question of the week comes from Lisa. And so I'm trying to pull it up. So if you see me on the video and I'm not looking at the camera, that's why. All right. So Lisa had thrown this out for our frequent miler live, and we didn't answer it on frequent miler live, but I thought it was a great question. So she says, hi guys, I'm excited that the CSR is offering 5X on grocery spend during May and June. Side note from me, if you're not aware, CSR is offering 5X on up to $1,500 spend in May

and $1,500 spend in June. CSR is the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Thank you. Yes. So she's excited about that. She said, I don't have any other cards that regularly credit for grocery, but I do have a Chase Marriott Bonvoy card that'll pick up 6x on this category. She says in July, but actually what she meant to say is through July, May through

July. So I'd like to pick up another card to continue earning in this category come August, grocery category. I only have the ultimate reward or I only have ultimate rewards points, and I'm ready to diversify. Should I aim for an Amex gold or a city premier hoping to get to Hawaii, Bali and South Africa in the next five years? Not sure which currency will serve me for this. So essentially, if I were to boil down her question, she says, hey, I'm getting these bonuses at grocery stores now and I kind of like it. But come August, those temporary bonuses are going to be gone. Which card should I pick up for grocery spend starting in August? Right. And she knows enough to mention two of the cards that bonus groceries and earn

transferable points currencies. So the Amex gold card, we've written tons about that over the last, I don't know when they changed it, about a year ago or more, because it earns four points per dollar at grocery stores up to $25,000. Yep. And those are Amex membership rewards points, which are fantastic because they have tons of airline transfer partners that are very valuable. City Premier is the other one she mentioned which is a much much cheaper card it only costs 95 a year the gold is 295 250 okay um and and uh but it in it is starting in august i think it's August 8th, maybe. It's going to start earning three points per dollar at grocery stores. The City Premier.

The City Premier, along with gas stations, which it does today, and restaurants, which is new because right now it only does two exit restaurants. So it's actually going to be a very, very strong earner. So, oh, that, so, you know, she's clearly into this game enough to know what the top options are, what would come to our minds first, if, if she hadn't mentioned which ones. And so I think that my normal caveats of saying, well, if you don't really know how to use rewards programs, you might be better with cashback or something. I'm not going to say that here. I think she knows what to do with these points. And so she's just saying which way should she go? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, do you go $250 a year for the MX Golden, 4X Grocer and then also 4X restaurants, I guess is the other add on there. Or do you go City Premier because you get 3X and you also pick up some other now she didn't mention gas and that sort of thing. But I think that is a pretty valuable category to have. And actually, I just added a data point for Doctor of Credits payments workshop this morning because I found that BJ's wholesale, which is a wholesale store, the gas station there, I got three X on my city premier, whereas wholesale stores don't always code as gas. So I was pretty happy with that. So that's, I think, a potential benefit behind the premier. But it also somewhat depends on where you want to go, right? So she said that she wants to go to Hawaii, Bali, and South Africa in the next few years. So maybe that should play into, I don't know. So I guess the question here becomes, A, let's forget about where she wants to go for a second. Which is better, do you think, for groceries?

Because a lot of us are spending more on groceries now and might be for the foreseeable future. I've heard that school might not even restart in the fall here in New York State. So I don't know whether or not that'll be the case, but I've certainly heard rumblings of it not starting up. So people may be home more and eating more groceries. So which one, the Amex Gold or the City Premier? And then maybe does it make a difference where you want to go? That's a good way to do it. So let me say first, I think without talking about where she wants to go, I'm going to lead her towards the Amex Gold. And it's not just because it has 4x versus the Premier's 3x. It's also because if you want to also earn points in this new to you currency through signup bonuses,

Citi doesn't have much going on. You sign up for the premier, you get your 60K, and then there's not really anything more you can do until some number of years are up, right? With Amex, there's like 400 different, I'm exaggerating a little bit, cards that earn membership rewards points. And a lot of them have pretty nice signup bonuses. So you can actually earn a lot of points just by signing up for several Amex cards,

refer your spouse to one, get extra points that way. There's a lot of point earning opportunities. You can build up your balance really quickly. And they offer Amex offers that sometimes will add extra points per dollar at other stores or extra points when you spend a certain amount at other stores. There's a lot of opportunities to beef up membership rewards balances much more quickly. Right. And some of them don't even affect your 524 balance, you know, because you can sign up

for their business cards and get a lot of points that way as well. So, yeah. So again, without talking about where she wants to go, that would be my answer. And now if you add in those locations, does that change? I'm getting a sensing agreement from you about the first part.

You are, yeah. Yeah, I love the city premiere and I think it's a great hotspot for Hawaii. If you are planning a trip to Hawaii specifically, picking up that card and getting the bonus and being able to earn three points per dollar as long as Turkish is charging the price as they are for United flights. I mean, I think it's great for its specific purpose, but no, Greg is right. You can earn tons more.

If you're looking to diversify, you're at the point where you're like, okay, I've only got ultimate rewards and I got to diversify. Amex is your answer because you have much more ability to diversify for a longer period of time through many more methods. Citi, it's just going to be the grocery store and just one sign up bonus and that's it. You're going to be done basically. Whereas with Amex, you're going to get a whole bunch of other possibilities. And if down the road you decide, you know, okay, I don't really want to keep paying $250 a year because I'm not spending so much on groceries anymore, then you can pick up a no fee card and still keep those points alive very easily. And still be able to transfer them to partners also, whereas with city,

if you downgraded to a no fee card, you wouldn't be able to transfer them to partners anymore. So yeah, I think Amex is the next logical step. I think city is, is step three, after you've, you know, beefed up your Amex balance. So I actually don't even think that it matters where she wants to go very much in this case. Yeah. I mean, the hesitation there was obviously the Hawaii part of that because we know that Turkish has an unbelievable award price for flights on United Airlines to Hawaii, and you can only get turkish miles by transferring from citibank none of the other transferable points give us that so there is

that she's going to spend more on her uh trips to hawaii but probably not more on those other trips because she's got ana as a as an option for going to africa and i can't remember what the others were but bali was the other one yeah and ANA is also going to give you great potential value to get to Asia. You've also got Asia miles, Cathay Pacific is a transfer partner, Aeroplan, which could potentially be a good deal. We don't know what their new program is going to look like gives you access to a wider range of transfer partners. I love the membership rewards transfer partners. And as much as I love Turkish Miles and Smiles, if I was choosing a new program to get into

after Ultimate Rewards, it would certainly be membership rewards, be my next pick for you, Lisa. So I think that that just makes a lot of sense. It'll give you plenty of options to be able to cherry pick those ideal redemptions. So, yeah. So this is good.

It's not every day that we not only agree, but have just a crystal clear answer. That's a good note to go out on, I think. All right, it is. So if you guys have been enjoying what you're listening to, if you're new and you haven't been following along and or you just want to read a little bit more about some of the topics we talked about today, you're going to want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. That's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe, which you'll see above I'm pointing. You can't see it, I guess, if you're listening. But when I said that, I think I said something that indicated you'd see it. And if you're on YouTube, of course, you'll see it.

If you're on the podcast forum, you won't. But subscribe so you can find out what we're talking about, see all the posts, get into our Facebook group and all that jazz. So thank you guys very much. Thank you, Greg. Always a pleasure having you you here and we'll see you guys next week it's been fun as always see everybody next week