Frequent Miler on the Air - Battle of the 100K Offers

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

Amex, Chase, and Capital One each are offering 100,000 point credit card offers. All three are terrific offers, but which is best? Greg and Nick debate this topic and more... 0:0:18 Confession Time with Greg 0:03:18 What crazy thing did... Nick do this week? 0:05:45 Mattress running the numbers: Stacking IHG deals 0:11:19 Main Event: Battle of the 100K Offers! Amex Platinum vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred vs Capital One Venture 1:00:25 Question of the Week: How to get Turkish Miles & Smiles to reply to emails?

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event battle of the 100k offers it's on it's on like donkey gun we're talking chase verse mx verse capital one first of course we have the giant mailbag but i'm using my prerogative to not read giant mail. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. So you get small mail this week? I mean, like microfeesh or something? But what's your favorite?

What's your favorite alternative to giant mail? I do very strongly enjoy confession time. So I'm hoping. Confession time, ladies and gentlemen. Nice. Nice. Very good. Okay.

All right. So my favorite irregular gentlemen. Very good. Okay. All right. So my favorite irregular segment is confession time. Yeah. Last week, I think it was last week, maybe two weeks ago. I don't know. I erroneously said, I thought that Sinesta had bought Red Roof Inn. And I was like, why? Why would they do that?

You're like, I doubt that. Well, you were right. They didn't buy Red Roof and they bought Red Lion Hotel. Oh, Red Roof's cousin. I see. Who knew they were different? Who knew? I didn't know there were two Red related hotel chains. They come from the same family.

And so, so, you know, sorry about- Radisson Red is another cousin. Everyone I worried about, you know, everyone I, you know, I said, be careful about earning those, those roofie points. Well, that's a whole nother confession. It turns out they're not roofies. They're called ready rewards. You're ready rewards as far as I know are actually safe. Good taste one out there. Yeah. know are actually safe good taste one out there yeah because nesta has not not bought uh red roof

in and red roof and at some point in their history made the very wise decision not to call the rewards program roofies okay you can't tell me it wasn't floated at a meeting but thankfully they shut that down floated out the door. Right out the door. Right out the door. Okay. So, so they did not buy Red Roof Inn. They bought Red Lion. And so all of the Red Lions out there that I've never ever seen are now Sonesta's presumably

or soon to be. Or will be soon. Yeah. So, so that's like, you know, those high end hotels like Knights Inn. Oh,

that's a Red Lion. Okay. Yeah, I think so. I don't know. Now I'll probably do have to do confession next week and say no that wasn't it i'm i'm like 89 sure that you you mattress run a mattress ran a windham promotion at a night's end in detroit so i'm pretty sure but i could have sworn i saw

that that was maybe they flipped maybe they flipped maybe i don't know i i just need to keep my mouth shut it's just a problem when doing a podcast. Oh boy. I need one of those people that like whispers in your ear, like correct things. Yeah. You need the voice. Or maybe, maybe those like little Google earbud things will get better. I'll be able to do that in the future.

Just correct you right away. Maybe just change the sounds coming out of my mouth so that it's, I say things correctly. We'll get there someday. Occasionally like an ad for Google will sneak out unbidden. All right. Well, now that we've confessed our sins here, it's time to move on to what crazy thing did Nick do this week? Me? So Nick... I have no idea what this is for the record. I literally had no idea what crazy thing happened this week. On the week that Chase decided to come out with their 100K offer, which is, of course, going to be big news

and mean lots of work for the team, Nick decides to take vacation for the whole week. Hey, you know, what can I say? Timing is everything, Greg. Well-timed, well-timed. Of course, Nick comes back from vacation to the whole week. Hey, you know, what can I say? Timing is everything, Greg. Well-timed, well-timed. Of course, Nick comes back from vacation to do these shows. So thank you for that, Nick. We appreciate that.

No problem at all. No problem at all. I'm enjoying a beautiful view as we talk about this of the Smoky Mountains. So I've got like this office. We have an Airbnb, beautiful, beautiful house outside of Asheville, North Carolina this week. And it's just the office has this magical view of the mountains.

So perfect little place to be doing the podcast from this week. Oh, awesome. But this is not your Vacasa vacation rental, is it? It is not. No, that's coming up actually soon, but not yet. So yeah, this week first we were in Asheville for a bit. We did some camping earlier this week and reconfirmed that we are not campers. It's just not a thing for us.

So actually, we did glamping. Our friends camped and we did the glamping experience. And even that wasn't? No. You know, I don't want to pay $130 a night to stay in a tent, Greg. I mean, I want to like. I understand that. Forget about that.

Come on now. It doesn't make any sense. We're like, you know, holes in the floor, I understand that. Forget about that. Doesn't make any sense. We like, you know, holes in the floor and bears walking by people seeing bears every day. I like, you know, nice bears are nice and all. I don't, I don't want them near my tent at night. So I'm probably a hotel guy from here on out. There you go. Well, you know, it's good that you're a points and miles guy then because you can use your

points to stay at hotels for free or cheaply. So exactly. That's good news. So it just happens that we're both not camper. I think I've told my, my camping story before on the show. So I won't. Yeah. Yeah. But it was, it was cut short. You know, it was like 50 something, 50 something at night. So I wake up like at 50 something degrees in a tent and I'm like, why did I spend $130 to freeze when I could stay at a hotel for a few points? You know, like there's, there's a nice Hyatt place in a tent. And I'm like, why did I spend $130 to freeze when I could stay at a hotel for a few points? You know, like there's, there's a nice Hyatt place in Asheville.

I hear that's 12,000 points a night that I'm pretty sure has heat and electricity. It probably does. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all right. All right. Enough about that. All right. So crazy thing. I took vacation at just the right or wrong time, depending on your perspective. Right, right. All right. So it's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. And this week, Nick's going to talk about how we can stack IHG deals to death so that you get so many rewards from staying at an IHG property that you can't afford not to stay at IHG, right? Something like that. We'll see. Greg is going to decide whether or not you can afford to miss this promotion. I'll stack it up for you. So there are a whole bunch of different stacking IHG promos going right now.

And so I'm going to pretend as I explain them that you're going to make $100 stay at like a Holiday Inn or something because that'll make it easier to play out the example. So a few different stacking things. First up, and just first, because this is the order I haven't written down in, there is a chase offer for 15% back on IHG stays up to, I don't know, $46 back or something. So you make your $100 stay, you pay with a card that has that chase offer link, you get 15 bucks back, you're 85 bucks out of pocket. If you go through a

shopping portal, I think right now Top Cash Back is still offering 6% back for IHG. So there's another $6 in your pocket. So you're down to $79 net after you've gone through the portal and used your Chase offer. Now there is a targeted IHG offer right now. And my offer for IHG, which is like the poorest version of the offer out there, if you have the targeted offer, is 5,000 IHG points for a single stay. So you get 5,000 points for making that single stay. Then there was also a Simply Miles offer that just got renewed. So it came out again. You need to sync it up. You need to sync that Simply Miles offer to a MasterCard. And good news here is that the IHG credit card is indeed a MasterCard. So you can sync that Simply Miles offer to a MasterCard. And good news here is that the IHG credit card is indeed a MasterCard. So you can sync that up with Simply Miles and you can get

yourself, I think, a total of 1,875 American Airlines miles because there are two different stacking IHG offers. There's one for 1,100 American Airlines miles at any IHG property when you spend $100 or more. And there's another one for a bunch of the mid-tier brands that's 875 points for a Holiday Inn's Day or a Holiday Inn Express Day or Candlewood, whatever they are. So 1875 is what I had down there, which actually, as I say this, I'm realizing I think was really 1975. I think I wrote it wrong. But at any rate, just under 2, 2000 American Airlines miles, right, then you pay with your IHG Premier card and ordinarily you'd earn 10x points. But right now,

there isn't one of those spending offers that Chase has out that's good for 14x with the IHG Premier card at IHG properties. So 14x on your $100 stay, that's another 1,400 IHG points on top of the 5,000 you earn with the targeted promotion. So you're up to 6,400 IHG points there, about 2,000 American Airlines miles. And then as a platinum member on a paid stay, you're going to earn 15X at most of the brands like Holiday Inn, for instance. So you get another 1,500 IHG points. So when all is said and done, I think you'll end up with about $21 cash back on your $100 stay, 7,500 IHG points, and just under 2000 American Airlines miles. What do you think? Wow. This on $100 stays? $100 stays is my theoretical. Yeah. $21 back, 7,500 IHG points, 2,000 American Airlines miles, no, 7,900 IHG points. So about 8,000 IHG points, about 2,000 American Airlines miles, $21.

All right. So let's do some rough estimates here. So let's say the AA miles are worth about $25. Sure. Add that to the $15. We're getting back from something or other. You mentioned Chase. Yes. And now you're at 40 and another six back from top cash back.

You're at 46 back. Let's make it a 10 because they off there's often like 10% IHG rewards. So if you wait a couple of days, I'm sure that'll show up. So, so we're, we're at $50 back on a hundred dollars stay. And so now we're getting how many? Just under 8,000. Let's call it 8,000 IHG points. 8,000 IHG points. If they were each worth,

if you're willing to buy them for half a cent each, then that's 40 bucks. So we're at about 90 bucks value back. We're not quite there. Not quite there. It's so close. So close. You're a close IHG.

We almost got there. Oh boy. But I mean, that's a darn good rebate on a paid stay. It is. I mean, I feel like the math would work out better on a, on a cheaper stay.

I know some of these were, some of these numbers were based on a hundred dollars stay, but some of them. Yeah. I did that for easy math. Yeah. The, the, the American airlines offers required a hundred dollars stay. Oh, okay. The rest of those offers didn't. So you wouldn't get the American airlines miles without a hundred dollars. That's pretty significant. Yeah. That is a big piece of it. So, and it makes for easy math, but the key here is if you've got

an IHG stay coming up or you need a one night stay and it can be at an IHG property, that's a dumb thing. Or if you're trying to decide whether to spend 130 bucks on a tent or- Or $100 on an IHG property, which is widely available in the area at the time. Then, you know, yeah. And you're playing multiplayer mode

so you can book back-to-back nights and two different people's names. And yeah, of course. Of course. why would you spend $130 on the tent? Who would do that? Obviously you wouldn't until, until IHG starts renting out tents. I certainly wouldn't again. That's for sure. That was enough. Enough there. Okay. So then that I think brings us to the main event. Yes, main event, battle of the 100K offers. So the big news, obviously, this week is Chase Sapphire Preferred, 100,000 points for signing up and spending $4,000. We haven't seen this since almost exactly four years ago.

Four years and about five months ago, the Sapphire Reserve offer ended. The famous offer when Chase first debuted the Sapphire Reserve, that's a more expensive card, made a splash with 100,000 point offer because at the time, 100,000 point offers were extremely scarce. And so that made a huge splash. Everybody jumped on board the Sapphire Reserve train back then. Now it's been over four years since we've seen that from Chase in the Sapphire brand. Now they're out on the Sapphire Preferred. That's their $95 card, 100,000 points. It's awesome, but they're not the only hundred thousand point game in town these days we we've talked before a number of times on the show that offers them and getting better and better and better and a hundred thousand is becoming like like that's like the new standard

right well i i wouldn't say standard but it's sort of like the maybe it's the standard high bar now right like yeah like it used to be we'd get excited when we saw 70 000 or something like that now we're excited because we see uh 100 000 but it's still not you know um unheard of because everyone's a lot of people are doing it so um let's talk about the other contenders real quick we've talked a million times on the show about the MX Platinum 100K offer. 100,000 points after, what is it? $5,000 spend, I think. And they throw in 10 points per dollar earning for six months at grocery stores and gas stations. That's amazing, right? I mean, that's an incredible offer. We've talked about it a offer, but that's on a $550 card. Big difference.

Big difference. But if we go back to the $95 card arena, we've got Capital One. And they have their 100,000 point offer for the venture card. That requires a lot of spend. You've got to be a heavy spender. $20,000 spend. And you get like, what, a year to do it or something? I think so, yeah.

The first 50,000 points are on 3,000 spend and that has to be done in the first three months. Then you can have the rest of the year to meet the 20,000 spend. So you get a long time to meet the 20K, but you do have to commit a lot of spend to that card. Right, right. So before we talk about particulars, just off the top of your head, which offer do have to commit a lot of spend to that card. Right, right. So before we talk about

particulars, just off the top of your head, which offer do you think is best? I mean, the platinum card offer is just so unprecedented. I think that for most people, the platinum card offer, especially now, if you haven't gotten it still, which if you haven't gotten it, I think you're kind of crazy. And if you're that crazy though, and you've missed it somehow, I think heading into summer, that's an even better offer now because you got times when people are going to be taking road trips. They're going to be spending on gas, obviously groceries, you can have your barbecues. And maybe now that people are getting together and things like that, again, you might be

buying some more groceries to invite people over and have a meal or something like that. So I think that the potential on the platinum card offer is so big that I think that that's still the best offer. However, it's only the best offer if you're willing to maximize the use of transfer partners or you're willing to open the Schwab platinum down the road. So you're talking about at least two years of $550 annual fees, and that's kind of hefty. So if you can't make use of the other benefits, and you're not willing to maximize transfer partners, and you don't really want to spend $1,100, I think the Sapphire Preferred is a really, really strong contender. So it's tough. I feel like the Platinum card is still the best, but I don't think that chase could have possibly done any better on the Sapphire preferred. I think it's a monster

offer still. And if you're eligible for it, you're kind of crazy not to go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here and try to argue for the venture as being the best offer. Just? Okay. All right. I'm looking forward to that. I want to mix things up here a little bit because the other two are certainly the ones that seem like the best offers and are obvious, right? Okay. Here it goes. I'm looking forward to that. Get the popcorn ready, kids. I've got to figure out my game plan here. No, we've talked before about how the venture is great for those who really just want one card or maybe two cards. And I think for a lot of people who are in that camp, that $20,000 spend requirement is not really a big deal. Because people who, you know, maybe this isn't great for students, for example, who are probably not going to spend $20,000 in a year, but,

but most, you know, working adults probably spend more than that over a year and on their credit card. And so I think a lot of people would see that as like, well, I'm going to be putting that much spend on the card anyway. So I'm going to get that a hundred thousand points without really any effort. And, um, and so it's all good. Plus all that spend earns good rewards in itself. You're getting two X everywhere. So you're, you're really going to end up with 140,000 points at the end of that 20,000 spend. Whereas if that same person signed up for the Sapphire preferred spends 20,000, then some of that spend would be in two X categories of travel and dining, but a lot of it would probably be in one X categories. And, um, so they would end up with something less than 140,000 points at the end of that spend time.

And then this person who signed up for the venture now has a very good solid card for all around spend. And if they want to going forward, juice up their earnings even more, as we've talked about, they could add on the saver card in order to get 3X grocery. And depending on which version of the saver, they get either 3 or 4X dining and entertainment. And then they could even move those points over to the venture if they want to transfer to transfer partners and all that. So I do think there are people for which the Capital One offer is best. All that said. I'm going to argue with that.

I'm going to argue before you go all that said. So I think that it's a niche, like a slice of the segment that you just mentioned that it's best for. Not even the full segment that you're kind of aiming at there. So I think the only people that it's best for are the people who not only want to have one card, but want to have one card that they're going to keep for years and years and years and put all of their spend on. Because long-term, yes, that's going to be the better card

to put all your spend on. But in one year's time, if you put that full $20,000 spend on the Sapphire Preferred instead, right? And let's say you did it all at one X. You didn't do a penny of it in travel or dining, which would seem kind of crazy to open a travel and dining card and not spend anything on that. But hey, let's say you spent $20,000 somehow without anything on travel and dining.

You'd end up with $120,000 ultimate rewards points. Now, if you cash those out via Chase, pay yourself back on groceries or home improvement as you can through the end of September. That's fifteen hundred dollars because you get one point two five. Right. Yeah. That's per point. That's fifteen hundred dollars in cold, hard cash you can get through Chase, whereas the best you're going to do with Capital One after that twenty thousand000 spend is $1,400 in travel purchases erased. So it's not even cash back. It's not cash in the bank.

So with Chase, you'll end up with an extra $100 at the end of the year if you don't spend a penny in a bonus category. So I think that the Sapphire Preferred actually makes more sense for most of those people, even if you only want one card and you want to put $20,000 on it. The only group that it makes more sense to go for the Ventures, if you only want one card and you want to put $20,000 on it, the only group that it makes more sense to go for the venture is if you want that one card to be your long-term, this is it. This is going to be my main card. Because long-term, you'll probably earn better with the venture card because you'll earn 2x on so many purchases. Okay.

I totally agree with your logic there. Totally agree. Good. there totally great um now between the sapphire and the amex platinum um i think the sapphire is by far the more customer friendly card for for those who don't know how to you know sort of game the system with rewards points right um because it's so easy to get good value or at least a minimum of one cent per point value if you just want to cash out straight up with Chase, whereas Amex makes that very hard. That's true. That's true. They do. They make it very difficult to get that base of points. And I saw this week that there was a rumor that they may even remove the 1.25 percent or 1.25 cents cash

out from the schwab platinum i didn't follow up on reading more about that but i saw that rumor floated out there on twitter so yeah i don't know what to make of that all that happened is the um on the splash screen for the schwab offer they they took out you know talking about that but there's a lot of things they don't talk about on the splash screen. So I don't make a lot of that. Take those things away and put them back all the time. The marketable, it's what they want to market.

So, okay, all right. So then I don't make much of that. So that hopefully will stick around. But if you just have the plain Jane vanilla platinum, then yeah, there's no easy way to cash out your points. I mean, there are probably some convoluted things you can do, but not an easy, simple cash out that'll work for most. Right. And then as you talked about, I mean, if you want to get more with a hundred thousand points on this chase card, you could easily just take out a thousand dollars.

But as you talked about, you could easily instead do the pay yourself back feature in order to take out essentially $1,250 or keep the points for a year, upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve and cash out those exact same points for $1,500. Or if someone else in your household has a Sapphire Reserve, just move those points to them and have them cash out for that amount. So there's a lot of opportunities there too. Even if all you want is cash, it's a monster offer. It is. I mean, that's a lot of money. That's a big, big, big offer. That's an amount of money that will, for most people, make a difference and pop their eyes out and say, you know what? That'll cover a significant chunk of whatever it might be, this summer's vacation, the mortgage, this thing I really want, whatever it might be, it'll probably be a significant piece of something that matters. So yeah, I mean,

that's a lot of money. But now you talked about transferring to another household member. I've been on vacation this week, so I haven't been following things very closely. What's up with that? I mean, is it still easy to transfer to a household member? I mean, I saw some murkiness there. What's going on? Okay. So, so what happens is when you go online to move your points from your own account to a family member's account, if you haven't already set them up in your account as like a target to move your points to, Chase no longer lets you set them up online as a target. You have to call or I would guess secure messaging might work as well to ask to have this other person's card added as a

destination for what chase calls online combining points. So that's when you're moving your points to another card. But so it's, it's, it's not gone. It's it. And it's still, once it's set up, it's the exact same process as before, which is very easy. You just click on combined points and move the points. Does it worry you that it might go away? The fact that, I mean, why would they take it away online? I don't know why they would take it away online, but I don't know. I would be surprised if they take away that capability altogether. I don't understand

why they would want to. I mean, I tend to agree, but I also don't understand why they would want to. I mean, I tend to agree, but I also don't understand why they would take away the feature to do it online. I would be surprised at that. In fact, I am. So I don't know. And I sincerely meant that I haven't followed it because I had no cell service in my yurt in the woods. You're allowed to be on vacation. Even if you weren't in a yurt. No reception there. 130 bucks a night for no salary. What? Are you kidding me? You're getting away from it all. Come on. Right, right, right. People pay a lot more to get away from it. Yeah, they do. They do. You're right. All right. So I think we're agreed that the Sapphire offer is really strong because yeah, you have a lot of different options.

Obviously transfer partners are huge. You know, if you, you aren't yet familiar with chase transfer partners, you should get familiar with them because we're talking about bottom lines, right? You know, bottom line you could cash out the points for those amounts or use them for travel at those amounts, but you can clearly do much better by exercising the transfer partnership.

Oh, absolutely. And let me just give a simple example. I've talked before about the Alila Ventana Big Sur that I love. It's an all-inclusive now in Big Sur, California. Hyatt charges 30,000 points per night, or room rates start at about $1,500 a night. So you could transfer 90,000 of your chase points to Hyatt, book three nights that would have cost you $4,500 in cash. Plus, if you were paying cash, you would have had to pay resort fees and other taxes on top. So the $1,500 is just really a starting point. Yeah, so it's at least $5,000,

probably well more than that, that it would have cost you in cash. But instead, by transferring to Hyatt, $90,000 of those points, you still have some points left over. You wouldn't have to pay any cash for that stay at all, which is just incredible. And that's just one example. And of course, not all examples are that sort of tremendous, but that gives you an

idea of what's possible. But even if you're staying at a 5,000 point a night high at place somewhere, that's still easily going to cost you $100 a night in cash versus 5,000 points. So you could stay 20 nights like that off of a 100,000 point offer and easily get more value than what we're talking about in cash. So easy to get more than $2,000 worth of value if you just put a little effort into transfer partners. But then once we mentioned that, then we have to go back to say, okay, well, but what about these other 100K offers? Because the potential value, I would argue, of Amex membership rewards points or Capital One points can exceed the value of Chase points unless you're using Hyatt. I mean,

Hyatt, if you're going to stay at the Ventana Big Sur, I mean, that type of example is an amazing outlier example. But I think generally for comparing apples to apples, I feel like the opportunities abound with Amex and Capital One in ways they don't with Chase. Let's round out the lodging scenario first before we go on to others. Because Capital One has a very strong option there, obviously, and you're about to take advantage of it. where most rewards are 15,000 points per night, including vacation rentals at properties that could cost up to $350 per night. And when you book that way, you're not paying cleaning fees and other taxes. So you're actually getting more value than, let's use easier math and just say $300 a night. So your starting point is 2 cents per point value, but it goes up from there because of all

the cleaning fees and things that you're not paying. Um, so you could stay, uh, how many nights with that, with that, uh, a hundred thousand point offer, you know, uh, I mean, five, six, six to be 90,000. Right. So six, at least then, well, once you've done the spend, then you're at, you know, 10 nights. Right. I mean, more than that, more than 10 nights, because 10 nights would be 115,000 capital one points, right? 10 nights would be 150,000 points. So you're just short short of so let's call it nine nine nights um that you know nine times three hundred is so that's twenty seven hundred dollars before paying cleaning fees and all those things yeah yeah yeah and with the fees and stuff based on the stay that i'm

making probably about forty two hundred for like, if you're booking anywhere near the $350 mark with Wyndham. So more than $4,000 anyway. So we're in that same roughly order of magnitude of the Ventana Big Sur example we gave. Right. And that's with a vacation rental property. Well, yeah, with Capital One's lodging partner, you know, we're not even talking about the airline partners yet. You get that much value out of a vacation rental potentially. So, I mean, that, that, that's pretty strong. Right. And then, you know, with, with Amex, you're not going to probably, I don't know, can you do as well with Amex?

So, so with Amex, you've, you've got your, your one to two ratio for transferring to Hilton. Um, but they often have transfer bonuses of one to 2.8 roughly. Um, so, so your a hundred thousand points would become, um, 280,000 points. So that's about three nights at a top tier, like a sort of Conrad Bora Bora type of thing. Right. Right. Right. So what are you offsetting? I don't know, $900 a night, a thousand nights, around a thousand a night. Yeah. Or so. So you're talking about three nights of that, right? So it's about $3,000 worth. If you're actually able to get yourself, really though, I would make the three nights stay just for the record. You would want to earn enough points to do four.

So you get the fifth night for free, but whatever. So 3,000-ish after you've done the spend. So it's not as good. And we're kind of reaching for examples here more than we would with the other two. Because usually with Amex transfers, yeah, you're not going to get that kind of wildly outsized value. That's just not the focus there. Right. Right. So unlikely

to get that with their lodging partners anyway. So I think from a lodging perspective, if that's what you're looking to cover, then either the Chase offer, the 100K offer in order to take advantage of Hyatt or the Capital One offer in order to take advantage of Wyndham Vacation Rentals, Vacasa Vacation Rentals through Wyndham. Rather, those I think are definitely stronger. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So flipping over to flights, I think we should sort of ignore or acknowledge that they all have some transfer partners in common. I can't remember off the top of my head what they are. There's a bunch. There's a bunch. I mean, there's Air France and there's, you know, so Flying Blue would be one that they all have in common. Singapore, I think they all have in common, although Capital One's got the poor ratio for Singapore. They all have Emirates. There you go. So in most of those examples, there are ways to get far outsized value by transferring to those partners and booking. Usually it's premium cabins in order

to get those far outsized values with those partners. Um, so now let's talk about their unique, uh, airline partners and where the, where the sweet spots are and who's got the upper hand. All right. So, I mean, chase is probably pretty easy to start with because their unique airline partners are Southwest airlines and United. So Southwest, the big advantage there had long been that you could freely cancel awards without any sort of a fee and get the points redeposited immediately. That's not so much of an advantage anymore since you can pretty much do that with everybody. So Southwest is a transfer partner really would only make sense to top off for

an award. Maybe how about United? Yeah. I mean, United doesn't have the best award prices anymore. They used to have great award prices. If you really know what you're doing, you could take advantage of their excursionist perk feature of their award bookings, where you can get sort of a free one-way as part of a round-trip award. But, you know, overall, it's not that great, but it does have that same strength that you just mentioned about Southwest compared to most foreign programs have not made cancellations and changes free. I mean, they might be cheap to do, but they mostly haven't made them free, whereas U.S.-based programs have. United has some restrictions, like it has to be more than 30 days out to make changes for free or no, I can't remember the details. Anyway, you could go to our post to see the

details, but it's actually easy to work around those restrictions and get changes and redeposits for free. So I think that's a pretty strong feature of United. And so, if I was to book a Star Alliance flight, and I was pretty sure I was likely to make changes to it, I'd be very happy to use United to do that, but otherwise there are better options. Yeah, I agree. I think the excursionist perk is the big strength, but it requires obviously quite a bit of knowledge and then quite a bit of planning and a little bit of luck for it to work out right. So it's one of those things that, you know, it can be good, and if you fly United a lot for work and you're earning a lot of United miles, it might make sense in order to, again, top off for the right awards. But not wildly exciting as a transfer partner. Can we agree on that?

It's not a wildly exciting transfer partner. It's good. I mean, it's solid, but it's not wildly exciting. Right. Yep. Right. But by contrast, Amex and Capital One both have some wildly exciting transfer partners. So where do you want to start?

What do you like? They do. Well, let's start with Turkish. All right. So Capital One's got Turkish, Miles and Smiles. Now it's not at a one-to-one rate. It's at a two to 1.5 rate. So every dollar you spend, you're earning the equivalent of one and a half Turkish Airlines, Miles and Smiles. Miles, we can all cross our fingers and hope for a transfer bonus at some point. Come on one right now the transfer bonuses are a thing again this week um so miles and smiles great transfer partner for united flights if you want to fly domestically and you can find saver awards 7500 points each way economy 12.5 business and then also a great award chart for other parts of the world if you want to travel

to europe 45k one way in business middle east 49k one way in business india 52.5k one way in business. Middle East, 49K one way in business. India, 52.5K one way in business. Africa, much of Africa, 49,000 one way in business. I mean, those are all prices that are well below United, for instance, or most other Star Alliance programs. Yeah, no, exactly. And it's notable that you're allowed to book one ways that cheaply because we're going to be talking about ANA soon, which does not allow that. Right. And the downside of course is that you will pay fuel surcharges on the airlines that, that charge them. They will pass those on. So,

so that won't necessarily make them your best option for certain partners, though is if you stick with the partners where fuel surcharges are low or non-existent, then you can enjoy some of those really incredible sweet spots. So there are some, some solid ones there with Turkish. They're a great partner, but of course, because of the two to 1.5 ratio, not quite as exciting because your a hundred thousand point offer, then we'll get you what? 75,000, right? Yeah.

10 one-way trips to Hawaii. I mean, that's not bad. That's not bad, right? Or five round-trip tickets to Hawaii, which, I mean, in normal times... I don't think the other two programs would get you that, even with one-to-one transfers to other programs. Right, no.

That's pretty darn good. Agreed. So you've got a family of five, you're looking to fly an economy to Hawaii, the Capital One offer is it. Right, especially if you're flying from the East Coast or Midwest, because there are some good deals from the West Coast to Hawaii, the Capital One offer is it. Right. Especially if you're flying from the East Coast or Midwest, because there are some good deals from the West Coast to Hawaii with other programs. True story. Okay. So Turkish was one of the great strengths of Capital One that neither

of the other two have. What else? Should we talk about something else, Capital Warner? Should we run over to ANA? Let's go to ANA. So Amex has ANA. And ANA has an incredible award chart for Star Alliance awards and for booking awards on their own medal. They do require, as we said earlier, round trip bookings. So that's a negative because you might not, you know, it might not meet your needs. Like you might not be able to find award space for the return or what have you. The other negative, which is same with Turkish, is they will pass along fuel surcharges, which other Star Alliance programs, United does not, Avianca Life Miles does not, and Air Canada, Aeroplan. None of those three pass along fuel surcharges, but Turkish and ANA do. But ANA has some spectacular deals like, what is it? 104,000 points round trip business class anywhere in Africa, including South Africa from the

US. That's incredible. That 100,000 point offer on the platinum card could get you a round trip business class ticket to South Africa. I mean, that would be very expensive if you're paying in cash. Right, right. What are some other examples? I think it's what, 88,000 round trip to Europe?

88,000 round trip to Europe, yeah. In business class, if you travel to Japan in low season, it's 75,000 round trip in business class. That's on ANA itself? On ANA itself, yeah. And their partners, it's only 90,000. So it's not even that 45K each way in business class to Asia. I mean, that's terrific. And flying their partners would mean flying probably United, which has no fuel surcharges. So nothing to worry about there. Or I don't know, maybe Asiana. And I don't recall whether or not they have fuel surcharges. I don't believe EVA does. So I think your other partners flying to that part of the world will be reasonable as well. So that's pretty terrific. And by the way, low season, if you're going to fly an ANA itself, usually includes the

Cherry Blossom Festival, which just blows my mind. Like that time of year is included in the low season. Right, right. And I hear flying ANA is not a bad experience. Not at all. I like ANA, you know, and their old business class, some people, I feel like it's a love it or hate it. Some people don't like it so much. I loved it. And their new product, their new business class and first class, if you know, if that's your thing, look terrific. So if you can actually find availability on those amazing. So yeah, I mean, ANA has got a number of different sweet spots, Australia also, I think 120K round trip, if I remember correctly. That could be on ANA.

I can't remember whether that's the partner price or not off the top of my head. But again, lots and lots of really good opportunities. They also partner with Etihad. So if Etihad ever flies their A380 again, which is looking pretty doubtful, but if they ever did, you would have potentially some uses to be able to fly in the apartments, which you've flown and look pretty amazing. Oh, they were spectacular. No point in rubbing it in though, since they're not flying. Not flying now and probably not again. So yeah, so ANA has got some terrific things, but of course, if you don't want to pay the fuel surcharges,

then they also have Aeroplan as a transfer partner. So Amex has Aeroplan also and Aeroplan doesn't pass on the fuel surcharges. Of course, Capital One also has Aeroplan as a transfer partner. So Amex has Aeroplan also, and Aeroplan doesn't pass on the fuel surcharges. Of course, Capital One also has Aeroplan as a transfer partner, but at the 2 to 1.5 ratio. So you're going to get more bang for your buck with the Platinum card offer if you're transferring to Aeroplan. Chase is also going to get Aeroplan sometime soon-ish, we believe. It should be sometime this year. Right. So then in that case, Aeroplan will be more of an advantage for both Amex and Chase

since they have the one-to-one transfer partners. Now, another one-to-one transfer partner that two programs share is LifeMiles. Amex and Capital One both share LifeMiles, both have them at one-to-one. And LifeMiles is another program that's very strong. And obviously here they share them. So there's not a lot to be said in terms of an advantage for

Amex or Capital One, but rather to say that both programs have that strength over Chase. True. Right. Yeah. True story. And as we've talked about, there are ways of getting a lot more, a lot of value out of LifeMiles. They have some unique ways of pricing awards where they have, for some reason, some awards just price lower than others. Like we don't know why. And then there's cases where we do know why, which is their mixed cabin pricing, where they have a zone based award chart.

So like flights to Europe costs a certain amount. And if, if you're, um, if you have a long leg in economy and another leg in like the overseas, like let's say in, um, business class, they will sort of average out those two and, and make the award cheaper. So you can get some pretty inexpensive awards through them. And so that's pretty nice. And- Similarly, Asia Miles, both programs share that as a one-to-one transfer partner and the same sort of thing going on there in terms of mixed cabins, right? And being able to take advantage of some incredible mixed cabin values. So that's another one that's quite strong. And Qantas is another one that they both share that's got limited uses, but in some cases for Emirates business or first class, Qantas can be good. For LL, I know they have been in the past,

but although I don't know if that's still the case or not. Perhaps it is. I haven't monitored that situation. But at any rate, in those cases where both Amex and Capital One share one-to-one transfer partners, I said a moment ago that there's not really an advantage for one or the other, but there is. I guess I should have said. Of course, the Capital One Venture card is going to earn two of those miles for every dollar spent, whereas the Amex Platinum card on most purchases is only going to earn one. So good point. Those awards faster.

So in terms of 100K offers, there's not an advantage for one or the other. But in terms of ongoing spend, the Venture Card will be much stronger for those one-to-one transfer partners they share, like Aeroplan and Qantas and Asia Miles. Right, right, right. All right. Quick, quick rapid quiz here. Right. Right. Right. All right. Quick, quick, rapid quiz here.

Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to describe a person and you, you tell me which of the three cards they should get. Okay. All right. And, and no cheating by saying,

Oh, they should get all three, which is a legitimate answer, but not for this game. All right. This person is a travel hacker. They love to find the best possible deals they can with points and miles. They love flying premium cabins around the world. What should they do? business class to Europe. That's another great transfer partner, obvious, potentially for either Amex. Well, actually, any of the three, they all share that. So yes, definitely that travel hacker person, Amex Platinum, hands down, that's my answer. Agree. Okay. Next one, we've already talked about the person who just wants one card forever and

ever, and they want to have a strong amount of spend, and maybe they're going to spend some time internationally as well, and so they don't want foreign transaction fees. It's got to be the Capital One Venture card since it's got no foreign transaction fees and it has that good return for ongoing spend. Right. And it has the plus of being a Visa card unlike the Amex,

which is more accepted worldwide. Okay. And how about the person you know nothing at all about? There's someone who says to you, someone on a bus says to you, I'm about to get off the bus. Which card should I get? It's funny you bring that person up because we're visiting with friends this week. And so this morning, one of my friends was saying, hey, what are you going to be talking about on the podcast today? They have no idea about this miles and points game or frequent miler, that sort of

thing. I said, what are you going to talk about? I said, well, it's kind of stuff that might not appeal to you or might not be interesting because we kind of dig deep into these things. But for example, today we're going to talk about these 100,000 point offers and talk about which one is the best because there's several of them out. And her husband said, oh, should we get one of those? And they are exactly in that category that you just mentioned. And for sure, it would be the Sapphire Preferred. That would be the solution in that case. It's the best option for sort of the widest variety of people, I'd say, without knowing their backgrounds. And it certainly isn't a bad one for either of the first two people we talked about either.

Right, right. It's very easy, very, very easy to get good value. And also something that's particularly nice about the Sapphire Preferred offer is the $95 annual fee because $550 for anybody who doesn't follow credit cards and isn't used to spending $550 a year on a credit card is something that's probably going to be a barrier to entry, right? They're going to say, wait, $550, right? Even if you explain to them that they're going to get more long-term, that just seems like an amount of money that people will question and say, that sounds like a lot for a credit card.

Well, and of course there's rumors that it's going up to 695 soon. So that's actually an argument. A counter argument is like, if, if you have any interest at all, you should do it now because the rumor is that in July they're going to introduce a new card. They're going to change up the card. It's not a new card, but we'll change up the card and increase the fee to 695 for new applicants after that. We don't know for sure that'll happen, but if it does, you'll be pretty happy that you got in at 550 for one full year, and then you could cancel when the 695 annual fee hits next year.

Now, there should have been a fourth category of person, and that's somebody who spends a lot of money on groceries and on gas, right, or any really significant amount and is going to be spending primarily in those categories. Then I think the Amex Platinum offer really starts to shine because 10X for six months and up to 15,000 spend, somebody who's going to spend anywhere near that. I mean, if you're going to spend 10,000 at 10X, that's 100,000 points. That's a signup bonus by itself, not counting the original signup bonus. That's incredible, right? And that's not 10,000 on top of the 5,000 spending offer. You could do that 5,000 spending offer

entirely on grocery and gas earning 10X. And so then you're looking at 5,000 spending offer entirely on grocery and gas earning 10 X. And so then you're looking at 150,000 point offer. And all of a sudden that $550 annual fee is easily mitigated by the points you're going to earn in the first six months. No, no question about it. No question about it at all. So, um, so it, it, it's, it's a fantastic offer and, and yeah, people who are spending a lot in that, what should they do after though? So the six months are up and you tend to spend a lot on groceries and gas. I mean, then do you say, oh, go look over at the city premier card because that gives you 3X in those categories. Yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe if you're not new to the game, if you've had cards for a while, then yes.

And the reason I say that is because Capital One tends to be a harder approval for people who have a lot of credit cards and a lot of experience opening new cards and things. But if you're in that camp where you don't know what you're going to spend or which card you're going to use on groceries and gas next, I'm going to assume that you're not a serial credit card opener. And in that case, you might actually consider going the Capital One route and getting the Saver One card that has no annual fee, earning 3% gas and grocery. And then from there, converting it down the road. I thought it's dining and grocery.

Dining and grocery. Excuse me. You're right. Not gas. Dining and grocery. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the, the major contenders are like, and the other, the other one that I would think people would be interested in is the Amex gold, which is also that's Forex dining and grocery. I can't think off the top of my head, like a good one that, that combines grocery and gas besides the premier, but I'd still say you might, you might prefer it. If you had jumped in on the platinum thing, then you're building up your Amex membership reward stash. You might want to keep on that train,

get the Amex gold card, get Forex, dining, and grocery. That's long-term. Grocery is capped at 20K a year. 25K, sorry. And then maybe pick up another card if you spend a lot on gas, a different card that bonuses that highly. Right. Yeah. That's a good point. And there are other cards that bonus gas at the premier. I struggle on because cities transfer partners

comparatively are just looking worse and worse now that you have access to the same partners from other programs. So, and city's just been trimming back benefits on the card. So the premier of the 60K offer is certainly far from being a bad offer. And 3X dining, grocery, and gas on one card is pretty good. I agree with you. If you're going to be very limited, I'd stay in the same ecosystem. Instead of 3x rewards, get basically 3% back for those types of purchases for most types of travel, gas, dining, and grocery. So again, if you're a cashback cash back program, which can also be used when you're ready to book those flights. So why using Turkish miles, you could use the points and transfer to Turkish. So it's, it's still a very strong program, regardless of what we kind of said before about having some preferences for the others. Good point. Good point. All right. So battle of the a hundred K

offers. If you have to pick one, Greg, I know you got different ones for different people. We just talked about all that, but if you were in position right now to get one of them, which, which one would you get first? What do you think? Still, you stick with the platinum, you go with the Sapphire preferred cause it's only around a while now. Uh, Sapphire preferred. I mean, there are only so many chances to get 100,000. Absolutely, right. Well, so, ouch. So let's pretend.

So I already know, like, my wife has tried signing up for the Platinum 100K offer, but she kept getting the pop-up saying she's already had the card. My son keeps trying to apply for it. He gets the pop-up saying, we don't like you. I already have the offer, so I'm not eligible. But if we pretend that one or both of them was eligible for the platinum card, would I pick that over the Sapphire 100K?

Ooh. Would I pick that over the Sapphire 100K? That's tough. It's very tough because there are 100,000 point offers that come and go on the Platinum card. Sometimes there are targeted 100,000 point offers. The 10X gas and grocery is the major add-on component, but then you also have the pressure of that annual fee is likely to increase. Exactly. Jason does this 100K thing once every four years, Greg. Plus the platinum is a little bit more of a pain because in order to sort of justify that annual

fee, you got to figure out how to use all those credits they give you. And so there's a little bit of added headache. You already have enough headache on that front. I'm going to cheat. I'm going to have my wife get the platinum and my son get the Sapphire. There you go. Why stop at one? I mean, it's like Pringles, right? You can't have just one. That's right. You can't stop. I mean, it's definitely, these are incredible offers. And so I think that we're trying to theoretically narrow it down to one, but I think realistically, I think Greg is right. Realistically, it's hard to miss either of these. Like if you can handle the annual fee on the platinum card, then I just don't see any reason

not to pay the $95 for the Sapphire Preferred with 100,000 points because you probably aren't going to get another opportunity to get that 100,000 point offer, especially when you also consider that you have to be under 524. So, you know, are they going to ever run the 100,000 point offer again? And are you going to be under 524 when they do it? I think if you're eligible for 100,000 ultimate rewards points, it's really hard to pass that up. So I think that that's, that's probably a getter for a lot of people out there. That's one to pick up. I still wouldn't advise anybody to miss the Platinum card if you can possibly add that. All right.

One more question for you is the Sapphire Preferred. A lot of people picked up the Sapphire Reserve when it was a 100K offer. And as you know, if you've gotten the bonus for the Sapphire Reserve when it was a $100K offer. And as you know, if you've gotten the bonus for the Sapphire Reserve or Preferred in the last 48 months, you can't sign up and get a bonus for either card now. However, for everyone, I believe, who got the $100K offer, I think it's been just over 48 months. So would you, are you going to, um, cancel or downgrade a Sapphire card that you have now, um, to a, like a freedom, let's say, uh, so that you, so that you're allowed

to sign up for the Sapphire preferred offer. Yeah, that's a really good question. And you know, it's a good question. It just made me think of something as I'll talk about in a second. But so would I? Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense to do. You know, I think that there's no good reason not to. Now, a couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, we get the question all the time. Is it 48 months since you signed up for the card or 48 months since you got the bonus? And we do say it that way every time, because it is 48 months since you got the bonus. Doesn't matter when you got approved for the card. It's the day you got the bonus that counts. So 48 months from that day, which is harder to track if you haven't been keeping track of things, but that's the day you need to be concerned about now.

And in general, in general, the offers were like like you had to spend this much in three months. So it's a pretty good bet that if you know when you signed up, add three months, then add 48 months. If you're past that, there's a good bet that you got the bonus. Within that time frame. Yeah. Right. Good bet. Exactly. Yeah. So there's very little risk in doing what you're talking about in downgrading the Sapphire Reserve to say a Freedom Card and then applying new for the Sapphire Preferred. The difficulty is in the timing and figuring out exactly how long after you've downgraded, you have to wait until you apply for the Sapphire Preferred because the

system will still recognize you potentially as having a Sapphire card for some undefined amount of time. We don't know exactly how long it is. I always tell people I would wait at least a week after downgrading before applying new. If you can wait two or three weeks, great. I don't know, do we know how long this Sapphire Preferred offer is gonna be around for yet?

We do not, no idea. I mean, typically these things last longer than two or three weeks. So I would probably gamble on downgrading and hoping that it's going to last two or three weeks. And I would wait the two or three weeks to apply for the Sapphire preferred because worst case scenario, you upgrade back to the Sapphire reserve. Again, Chase is pretty easy about product changes. Is there a chance that they won't allow it? Like what if you get denied for the Sapphire and then you go to, to upgrade? Is there a chance you're going to say no, I guess there is a, I mean, there has to be a chance because you have to ask for it and anything you've asked for is not a guarantee, but I haven't

heard of any kind of widespread issues with people upgrading or downgrading Chase cards, I can't think of a time I've even heard somebody say they weren't able to. I mean, imagine that it's probably possible. I mean, you're not going to be able to in the first year of a no fee card, upgrade to a card with annual fee. That's a card act thing about issuers not increasing your fee during the first year. But anybody who's eligible for a product change, I don't think I've ever heard of Chase saying no. Have you? No, I haven't. I haven't heard of that.

It just seems theoretically possible. It seems theoretically possible. I don't think people would be a little bit worried about that. Yeah, I can understand it too. But I think it's probably a very unlikely scenario that that would happen. But I guess maybe there's a reason. I wouldn't be too worried about it, I guess, is what'm going to say. I mean, would you, would you be worried about it? I, I mean, just sort of vaguely, if it was important to me to, to, you know, keep the

Sapphire, um, then I'm, you know, I might be a little bit worried, but I think I'd be more worried. I, you know, I think it'd be more worried about the sort of, if I was someone who often cycled my limit on chase cards and did other things that could get you in trouble of getting all your chase cards canceled, I'd be worried about doing anything here just to get eyes on the account and maybe have all that stuff reviewed. So that's something I'd be a little nervous about. But now if you use the card pretty much as intended, even if you have a freedom card and each quarter max out to 1500, I don't think that's an issue. The 5X earnings, I mean, each quarter. Yeah, I don't think that's an issue. Um, the, the five X earnings, I mean, each quarter. Um, yeah, I don't think that's an issue either. And I've, I've done multiple product changes in a single week before, like I'm the same. I've changed more than once in a single week. And so I know that that could be done and it wasn't an issue for me to do that. So I, I wouldn't probably

be too concerned about it thinking that I could upgrade back to the Sapphire Reserve again pretty soon and it probably won't be an issue. So I wouldn't be all that worried about it personally. The other thing though that you reminded me of when you mentioned that was, and this is, I'm only going to say this because I'm sure that if I've forgotten, there are other people who have forgotten. So you asked, okay, when that six months is up on the platinum card, then what's next for grocery? And I'm sure that there are some people that are in that situation now because that 100K offer launched in November. And so there are some people who've recently run out. And so if you're like me and you're in that boat, don't forget that the freedom card offer

that you signed up for last August, if you signed up during the last August, is 5X at grocery stores for the first 12 months on up to $12,000 spend. And you may not have maxed that out yet, like I have not, and totally forgot about. That needs to become the grocery card. So thank you for the reminder on that, Craig, indirectly. Actually, that's a really good point. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have forgotten that.

All right. Um, I guess we're going to skip post-roast this week because you've been on vacation, right? That's a good guess. Cause I've not only been on vacation, but without cell service until last night. So, uh, so yes, no, there's, there's no roast for me this week and you can't roast me because I haven't posted it. You didn't post anything. Yeah. So I'll let you go on. So we're going to move right into the question of the week. And the question of the week this week is one, I hope I'm not repeating. I hope I haven't gotten this similar question before. I can't recall, but it's come up a number of times in the last two weeks. So, so even if I am, at least there's a large segment of people that aren't aware of the answer. So somebody sent me an email and said, Nick, since you're the Turkish miles

to Hawaii expert, I figured I'd ask whether I'm spinning my wheels unnecessarily here trying to get this award. Wants to fly on a specific flight on a specific day. Saver award shows up on United, Aeroplan, Singapore, and LifeMiles, but not on the Turkish website and not with the two Turkish phone agents that they talked to and the ticket offices aren't responding to the reader's emails. So he says, do I just suck it up and pay 17,500 Singapore miles? That, of course, would typically be the second best bet from the East Coast of the United States. And so he's asking, what should I do? Should I just give up here because the two phone agents I talked to didn't see it? I don't see it on the Turkish website. And I emailed a couple of ticket offices and they didn't write back to me. So now what do I do? Well, I have the answer for you, Brian. And for those out there, I shouldn't say the answer.

I have an answer that hopefully will help you. I sort of hinted at this in a post and I can't remember whether or not I've talked about it on the show, but what I have found success with over the last year here, and when I say over the last year, I've only made a couple of bookings. So I haven't done this a ton of times, but it's trying foreign ticket offices because Turkish has ticket offices all over the world. So what I have done is just copied and pasted the same email to a whole bunch of ticket offices, figuring worst case scenario, three of those ticket offices are going to put a hold on the same flight. And I'm only going to call and take it one of them. So it doesn't really matter. No, no, no, no. Great

idea. Okay. And, and the list of ticket offices is online on Turkish's website. If you just Google Turkish airlines ticket office, you're going to come up with the website where there's a little dropdown and you can pick the country and the city and they've got the phone number and the email address for the ticket offices. I've never found a ticket office that answers the phone. So I don't think the phone numbers are going to do you any good, but there's an email address for each and every one of them. And so just spam out the same email to a bunch of ticket offices. And you'll get some that'll tell you, we can't do that. You need to contact a ticket office in the United States or some that have forwarded my request to the New York office or Boston office or whatever it might be in the United States or some that have forwarded my request to the New York office or

Boston office or whatever it might be in the US. And then of course that office never responds, but all you need is one to actually do the job. That's all you're looking for. Why copy and paste? Why not just send one email out to all of them? BCC everybody. I suppose you could do that. I don't see why not. Yeah. Maybe that's even better. Once you've done that once and you've got that whole list of them in your email, you could copy and paste that next time you need to book one. Now the secret's out. Now the secret's out. Nobody's going to respond to those anymore. Oh boy.

Hopefully not. But the reason I haven't told people which office or which offices I booked through is because I have no idea whether they're going to respond to your email. It's very hit or miss with Turkish Airlines. And in the beginning, Boston was the one that was responding to everybody. And because everybody knew that, Boston stopped responding to anybody because they got all the requests. I can tell you who works the last time I emailed, but they may not once I tell everybody that specific office. So better to have the technique of scattershot. It's not because Lizzie from the Boston office now works for a vacation. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe Lizzie got a new job. That's what it is. So,

so yeah. So anyway, that's the best I can tell you, Brian, that's what I would try. And that's what I would try. If you're trying to ticket a Turkish ticket, that would be the best strategy for you. If it doesn't show up on the website or the phone agents don't see it. Great answer. This was a very easy, uh, you know, question of the week for me this week. I guess I should have given you an opportunity to answer, but I had the answer. I didn't know the answer. So that was good. There you go. All right. Well, if you've enjoyed this week's show and you'd like to get on our email list, you need to go to frequent mililer.com slash subscribe to join our email list.

And you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and join our Facebook group, The Frequent Miler Insiders. And so thank you guys very much for being here with us today. And we look forward to seeing you again next week. All right. Bye, everybody.