Frequent Miler on the Air - Best hotel programs, Alaska quirks, the EVA experience and more | Ask Us Anything Ep73 | 3-5-25

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

What do we think are the best hotel programs for outsized value? Have we noticed some of the same Alaska Airlines quirks that our listeners have? What have our experiences with the EVA Air program been (if any)? We answered these questions and more on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on March 5th, 2025. 00:40 - What's the most meaningful miles and points trip you've had? 03:16 - Inspired by Nick’s “falling in love with Alaska” post… Let’s play a miles themed version of the old FMK game (the acronym will make sense in a moment, Carrie!) We’ll call it lust, marry, kill rather than the original name. Between Alaska, Aeroplan, and Avios, which is your torrid love affair, which would you settle down with, which ends up left behind? 05:47 - What’s the teams thoughts on how long this Amex to Hawaii to Alaska gravy train will last? 10:56 - Were any of the frequent milers effected by the recent Amex shutdowns? 12:55 - Any tips to reduce/avoid parking fees at airports? I live far enough away that Uber or shuttles are just as much(or more), so is there anything I'm not thinking of? 17:15 - ​​Which airlines offer lie flat seats from the eastern half of the USA to Hawaii with at least some availability via points at a reasonable cost? 19:21 - ​​I don't have any business spend so I'm hesitant to apply for business cards and use it for personal expenses. Is it legal/allowed to put personal spend on business cards? 21:28 ​​Is the 15% Delta Amex discount a real discount or Delta increased the redemption rate before the discount is applied. Their miles seem to be $.012/mile after the 15%. Is their miles really that bad? 24:01 - hey everyone! have any of you ever booked an award flight with EVA? so many quirks to that program but 75-80k to Asia is a good deal. Would love to hear any if your experiences if you have. Thanks! 28:29 - what's up with Alaska's phantom award availability? I've noticed this especially with AA, award space will show in Alaska, sometimes other partners, then Alaska won't ticket. And on Alaska - have you noticed Alaska semi-dynamically pricing AA routes? IE award chart says route should be 7.5k but all routes instead price at 10k or 12.5k? 33:50 - ​​if I took a retention offer to keep amex gold. Will amex take back points if I take an upgrade to platinum offer? 34:31 - ​​I received an offer for the Caesars no annual fee card. with 5000 spend in three months giving me diamond status. Am I crazy for wanting to get it for the free parking, no resorts fee, and food credit 37:45 - When checking if a layover will offer enough time, how can I know in advance if I may be forced to pickup + recheck my bags? Either with a single or multiple carriers? 38:56 - I'm trying to potentially book a Maldives trip with Hilton FNC but I'd like to connect there in style on Qatar and/or Emirates. Considering free night certificates only last a year and flights often are best booked a year out, how would you navigate a trip where flights and hotels might both be high demand options or timelines 44:25 - Which hotel rewards program would you say lately offers the highest probability for outside value? To me, it’s not close I believe Hilton shines in this respect. 51:45 - Have you ever gotten weird looks from the clerk while buying gift cards? 55:03 - ​​I found lots of availability at a SLH thru Hilton. Four nights bookable, but when I went to 5 nights, availability vanished. Is the hotel playing games to avoid 5th night free? Any workaround ideas

Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the frequent Mylar team answers your questions live. We are live. So we are. Cool. Well, we had a question that actually came in on our post on our Ask Us Anything post, and I noticed it, so I figured I'd bring it up and see maybe if Greg has some idea for this reader. So Matt said a question. What's the most meaningful? Oh, no, no, no, I take that back. Let me back up. That was not the one that I thought. Oh, no, that was not the one that I was looking for. Well, you know what? I'm going to ask it anyway now. What's the most meaningful award redemption or trip or with award redemptions that you've had?

For example, I saw a vlog from Points and Miles influencer who did most of their honeymoon on Points and Miles. Or perhaps you booked a trip on Points and Miles, met someone who had a considerable impact on your life. So who's had a meaningful Miles and points trip? That wasn't the one I meant to start with, but that's all right. I like it. Now you've got to pick somebody to answer.

Who is a really good answer versus a kind of just toe-hump answer? I'm sure we all have meaningful. Lots of meaning there. Well, I think the thing, what's tough is bringing the honeymoon example into it. When I got married, I did a round the world trip, but that was pre points and miles. And I think a lot of us when we kind of got married or graduated or I mean, we're old, frankly. And so it's sort of like, you know, well, I had this really meaningful trip when I got a nap. It was so good. Like I had, and it wasn't like a 20

minute nap. It was like a 30 minute nap. It was so good. Like I had, and it wasn't like a 20 minute nap. It was like a 30 minute nap. It was really good. It was really funny Tim that you say that because my honeymoon was with my wife's airline miles. We flew to Boston in order to drive up the coast to Maine. Oh yeah. And so yeah, I guess that probably counts. It's not the most memorable as far as like I don't remember anything at all about the actual flight because it was just American

Airlines economy, I'm sure. But of course the trip was amazing. You remember the company. Did you guys? Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, yeah. It was some girl that I met. I don't know. Did you, and you guys, if I remember correctly, you kind of like stayed in B&Bs along the coast, right? Like it was kind of that. We did, yeah. The, the, um, end point was near Bar Harbor. There was a B&B right on the ocean, right outside of like the entrance or one of the

entrances to Acadia National Park. And it was just spectacular. That was, we still like think really finally back on that trip, but it's no longer a BNB. So we can't, we'd be surprising someone if we, if we went into that house now. We know which bedroom we were in. We just want to go check it out and see what it looks like now.

Is that cool? See if there's still a bottle of port on the cell. We know which bedroom we're in. We just want to go check it out and see what it looks like. See if there's still a bottle of port on the cell. Mm. So we do have questions coming in. This first one I'm asking because I'm just so curious about what this acronym means. Inspired by Nick's falling in love with Alaska Post, let's play a Miles themed version of the old FMK game. The acronym will make sense in a moment, Kerry.

But it doesn't yet. Somebody Google it. I'm going to send it to Greg. So I'm assuming that they were going to write something more to explain that, no? Oh, um, Flirt Mary Kill. Uh, oh yeah, yeah, we'll call it Lust Mary Kill rather than the original name between Alaska, Aeroplan, and Avios. Which is your torrid love affair? Which would you settle down with and which ends up left behind? All right, what were the three options again? I mean, love affair.

No, no, the three airline programs. Okay. Alaska, Aeroplan, and Avios, all A's. Alaska, Aeroplan, and Avios, all A's. I would leave Avios behind and, ah, oh boy, I'm gonna go with loving Alaska. Yeah. That was hesitant though. That's not the type of commitment

Alaska is looking for. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I, you know, I, the problem is, is, is that it's like, it's leaving us in one world land versus, and their partners, which they have a lot of partners, but, um, Aeroplan has the advantage of being in Star Alliance. So, you know, a lot bigger a lot bigger tool to play in, and then they also have tons of partners. And so, yeah, I'd like them both for those reasons.

And if it had to do with who their partners are, I'd probably want to go with Aeroplan, but with how their program works, I prefer things about Alaska Mileage Plan. Anyone else have anything vastly different? Aeroplan has so many, has had, and has so many partners, you wonder how important you would be. Hmm, you might be kind of jealous.

Unless anyone has something vastly different than that, then we'll move on to the next question. All right, this one for Nick. What's the team's thought, but I'm just going to focus on you, on how long this Amex to Hawaii Alaska gravy train will last? I don't know, but I'm obviously really excited about it. I wrote today about some redemptions I made just over the last few days with Alaska mileage plan. And, and those were all, almost all points that, uh, that I had transferred over from Annex membership awards. I just said almost because I did have some existing Hawaiian and Alaska

miles, not a ton though. I had speculatively transferred over some a couple of months ago because I just have this lingering fear that they're going to cut off transfers to Hawaiian at some point without any warning. And so, you know, I've been kind of keeping some in there and, and now I went and I used a whole bunch. I had to transfer more in and so now I'm asking myself, should I, should I transfer some more in and the answer is probably yes, because there are some, some good sweet spots still. Now with Greg's answer a second ago, Aeroplan would be the program I'd be settling down

with over the long haul because of the number of partnerships. So there's almost guaranteed to be something to get me where it is I'd like to go with Aeroplan. But there are some really good spots, especially for an East Coast flyer. I feel like somebody who likes to go to Europe. There's just so many good spots with Alaska right now. So I don't know how long it's going to last. But if you have a lot of points, then you might as well move some

over probably. And we don't generally recommend people speculating more points, but if you've got tons of points and you know you're not going to use them all anytime soon, I think you would probably not regret the fact that you moved some to Hawaiian for Alaska, but you probably will regret the fact that you didn't if you don't, I think. And I feel like there had been like vague allusions to the fact that they'd be updating the new loyalty program this summer and so there's probably not much more than a few months and so yeah but who knows how soon before that they'll cut it off so yeah. Yeah and my perspective on it is that I've got years to earn back the membership rewards

points. You know, that that ability is not going away anytime soon. I'm not going to have a great way to earn Alaska miles in the foreseeable future after this is done. So I probably might as well move over a bunch more. I just talked myself into it. Thanks. I'm going to keep a recording of you saying that. Okay. Let me give you a hypothetical. So let's say that you annually, and let's, I'm going to do a little bit on the high end, but not the super high end. I know some people earn way more than this. Some people do less, but let's say annually you earn around 200,000 membership reward points and you currently have a stash of 525,742 points.

Okay, all right. How many of those 527,742 points would you be thinking that you wanna move to Alaska if you knew that it was going to end next week? Well, actually, so you'd be moving into Hawaiian and since you can only move- I mean, well, to Hawaiian and then on to Alaska. Well, since you can only move from Hawaiian to Alaska

in increments of 50, I would definitely not move that last 42. That would be a bad move because then you'd be stuck like I am with like 29 Hawaiian miles or whatever it is. Uh, how much of that, you know, that I think rather than talking about it in terms of how many points you earn each year, I would be more curious in how many points you earn each year, I would be more curious in how many points you redeem each year. And so, you know, if like, for instance, for me, most of my 2025 travel at this point is

already booked. And so I don't, I'm not going to need anything for a trip until sometime next year at this point. And so, you know, if I'm in that boat with that mileage balance, I wouldn't hesitate probably to move over three or 400,000 if I haven't yet planned travel for this year and I have some goals for this year, but then it might make a difference, I guess,

if I don't think Alaska is going to fit in with that. But I think I wouldn't hesitate to send over half, especially if you're earning 200,000 a year, I wouldn't hesitate to send over half at this point. But it also depends somewhat on the number of passengers. I have a family of four, so I need four seats. If you're a lone wolf, you only need one seat. Maybe you don't need as many. Although, like I said, years ago, some of you may remember the simply miles thing with American Airlines, where it was possible to buy American Airlines miles for a ridiculously low price. And some

people went, I mean, I went in for a few thousand dollars worth, Greg did, some people went in for like 20 or 30,000 or more. And I regret not going harder because I've basically used all of those miles and and they've become more and more valuable to me over time. And now I have fewer ways to earn them in that kind of quantity. And I don't want to feel that way about this. So I think I want to move over a lot. I'd probably be willing more like I said, three, four, maybe I'd move it all over if I didn't need any more points this year. Didn't one of you predict in your annual predictions that there will be a significant Alaska transfer option someday?

I don't remember. I feel like Steven predicted that. Well, if it's wrong, let's give it to Steven. All right, next question is for Tim and kind of everyone. Were any of the frequent milers affected by the recent Amex shutdowns? No. All right.

So just to sort of, well, and just to sort of kind of for some context for some, for people that don't know, last week, Amex over, it seemed like it was really mainly over one day. It was like kind of over a couple days, but really mainly over one day, shut down, when by shut down meaning closed people's accounts without their assent and with the necessity to transfer all their points out if they could by midnight of that same day or else they lose all their points. So all their credit cards were shut and if they didn't transfer their points out by the end of the day, which some people could, some people couldn't, they were done. It sounds like, from what I understand, and I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds, but it sounds like primarily this was based on people who were really

trying to maximize to pretty significant degrees the 4x categories on the Amex personal gold as well as the there's a resi offer that's been going around that some people get where you can get like what is it a year or six months or a year of 15x on dining and so some people were putting massive amounts on dining. And it seems like that was a bit of a that was a sore spot for Amex that left a sour taste in their mouth. No pun intended. Actually pun intended. And so that seems to be primarily there's all sorts of other stuff that's come up, but

it seems to be primarily that but none of us on the team were affected unless one of our player 2s have been keeping a secret from us. Or just haven't noticed yet. All right, Steven, this question is for you. Any tips to reduce or avoid parking fees at airports? I live far enough away that Uber or shuttles are just as much or more, so is there anything I'm not thinking of?" In terms of reducing fees, there are certain things, like doing long-term parking, checking things like ParkWiz or Spot Hero. Sometimes you

might be able to find cheaper opportunities that way. Sometimes hotels will have some kind of fairly cheap room rate where you can pay for your room and then you get say like a week's worth of parking added on there, so depending on how long you're going away for, then that might be an option. If you know the area somewhat well and it's like fairly trustworthy and not too shady, you could always just scope out the general area near the airport see if there's some kind of residential street where you can just park for free and then grab an uber from there to the airport because then you might just be looking at a like five or ten dollar uber ride rather than however much it is

from your home. We haven't really had to use airport parking too much and so I'm I'm probably not as well placed to talk about this as someone like Nick might be because he sometimes parks. Although I guess you do one-way car rental so maybe that's another option is to do one-way car rental but those can often end up being fairly expensive because they're one-way rather than round trips so yeah you just have to price out all these different options and don't fail to check any like discount codes you might have any like company you work for spouse works for affiliations you have because sometimes those codes for uh for car rental companies remove the one-way fee and then it's not so expensive to uh to have a one-way rental so it's worth checking and sometimes they can be used for leisure purposes, not only business purposes.

So again, it's gonna vary person to person, but we typically rent one way on each end of the trip when it's a long trip. If it's a short trip, then all the things that Stephen said, really spot hero, park whiz. And don't forget, you could use your national free day if you have such a thing or one-way rental. So you can use that to get one way.

So if you have two of them, then you can do your round trip to the airport. And check your Amex offers as well, because I sometimes see, I can't remember what companies they are, but they'll often be Amex offers giving some kind of statement credit when you spend like maybe like 30 bucks back where you can spend 150 on airport parking with a certain company so That can help you reduce the cost plus you can often find them on a shopping portal So then that'll and you may be five or ten percent cash back which can help reduce the cost to You know and one one last thing that I would add into that Along with one-way car rental depending on how long you're staying is that if you're flying out of the same airport all the time

sometimes car rental like oftentimes airports part of a big chunk of the cost of your airport parking is local taxes and fees that the airport is adding on to that transaction or the local municipalities adding onto that transaction oftentimes and not always, but oftentimes, that's based on per transaction. So by buying a lot of parking days at one time, you're only paying those fees on one transaction

for 30 days, say, as opposed to one day. So for instance, every year I will, in January, the place that I park at every time near SeaTac runs a sale where I can get 120 days of parking for about a thousand bucks. So it ends up being right around eight bucks a day, including all the, now if I were to, even though that place is normally like $16 a day, if I were to just get it for one day with the parking charge, it would end up being close to $28, $29 because a lot of the same fees are added to that one day of transaction as are added to my 120-day

transaction. So sometimes you can find good parking places that will do those kinds of deals and that can make it fairly affordable especially if you're doing like three or four day trips. If you're doing 20-day trips, 10 day trips, the one way car rental is really useful, but for like a two day trip or a three day trip or a four day trip or whatever, it could be nice to have some cheap nights to fall back on. All right. Great.

Greg, which airlines offer lie flat seats from the eastern half of the USA to Hawaii with at least some availability via points at a reasonable cost. Hmm. I think I'll turn this one over to Nick. He's probably looked at this more than me. Well, I'm gonna turn that one over to chance and luck. like reliable flatbed business class for a good deal on points is like non existent to Hawaii as far as I know that reliable thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. You gotta get one. The only ones I know like they're off hand. The only ones that I know that have live flat availability would be Hawaiian depending on what you consider, I think American flies

them out of DFW or out of Dallas Fort Worth to Hawaii. Well Delta Delta seasonally flies out of JFK and Detroit. So those are the three that I know of. But in terms of like availability, United United has some United has some Yeah, they do. They have some from Newark and Chicago. They never have any. Neither does Delta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, availability. All right. So I think we listed all of them. Zero. There's zero. I guess the other thing as well is it depends on if you're just looking for nonstop flights or if you're, okay, stopping somewhere along the way, because if you're okay stopping somewhere along the way because if you're okay like flying from the east coast to say LAX or something like that then you might have a much better chance of finding a reasonably priced life-lab bed on American

going from New York to LAX then you might then you would do trying to get all the way to Hawaii all in one shot whether or not that's worth adding on a stop for those purposes is another matter. But yeah, that's kind of one way where you would be able to get at least, I guess, half the distance in a life flatbed. All right. Who did I ask that to? Greg? Yeah. Nick. I don't have any business spend. So I'm hesitant to apply for business cards and use it for personal expenses. Is it legal slash allowed to put personal spend on business cards? You have two different questions there. There's to my knowledge, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to say to my knowledge,

which I feel relatively confident about, I don't there's no law about what you can and can't use your credit card for. And in my experience, I have never had a bank person ask me whether a purchase was for business or personal use. And I've made a lot of purchases on a lot of cards. So, and some things that, I think people often are, they're like, oh, well, but this will obviously be a personal purchase. And I don't think that's obvious at all because there's all sorts of businesses that have different types of things.

And I also, again, just don't think I've ever had a human being expressed that they care about that. Now that said, the surely, I'm not going to say surely probably in the, the card agreement somewhere, it says that you should use the card only for business purchases. And you know, that's one of those things that there's a speed limit sign on the highway that says you should never go over 65 miles per hour. And I try to drive safely, but do I always stay under the speed limit?

I mean, like, there are probably times when my foot has gotten heavy. So, you know, but some people are gonna be under the limit all the time and that's good. I don't like, I don't hold anything against somebody who drives safely, of course. So it's kind of a similar situation where it's really a personal choice, I think,

as to what you wanna do in terms of the purchases you make. I don't worry about it at all. I use the card that offers the best return on the purchase that I'm making. Do you also care the tags off of like pillows and mattresses? You know, I might be that kind of wild child out there. Not supposed to do that either. Yeah.

Don't say that when it's recorded because you know the consequences for that. None of us do that. None of us do that. It'd be severe. Alright, Tim. Is the 15% Delta Amex discount a real discount or Delta increased the redemption rate before the discount is applied?

Their miles seem to be about 12 cents per mile after the 15%. Are their miles really that bad? So if they were 12 cents per mile, they would be awesome. I think they actually might mean 0.012 cents, so 1.2 cents. Oh yes, there is a zero in there, my bad. But if anybody does know a 12 cent per mile Delta Redemption, send it to mailbag. my bed. But if you, if anybody does know a 12 cent per mile Delta redemption, send it to mailbag. No, it's a real discount. I mean, and Greg, Greg would be the one that uses this the most because he's Greg, the frequent Delta miler. But as far as I know, I mean, I, as far as do you, well, and Greg, what do you think? I guess? Yeah, well, so the thing is when they first rolled it out, I mean, I did an analysis and like,

the cents per mile that you're getting for like your average flights before the discount hadn't changed much before and after applying the, I mean, before and after they added that feature. So that meant it was a true discount because you were actually getting better. You were getting more like, so before that you were getting like 1.2 or 1.3 cents

per mile with the discount at that time, you're getting more like a 1.4 or 1.5 with the discount factored in. That has changed over time to where like the, we're more and more seeing the value of Redemption's being closer and closer to, you know, just a little bit over one cent per mile. And so, you know, whether or not it's a real discount

from the way it's asked is kind of irrelevant now that, yes, miles have become less valuable. And so if you want them to be a tiny bit more valuable than they'd be without it, you need one of the credit cards that give you that 15% discount. Because yes, it absolutely you need one of the credit cards that give you that 15% discount. Because yes, it absolutely reduces the price of the awards if you're going to book them with DeltaMiles. So if you have DeltaMiles, ever booked an award flight with EVA? So many quirks to that program, but 75 to 80,000 to Asia is a good deal.

Would love to hear any of your experiences if you have. So we'll start with Stephen. So I have my own business class from, what are we, I think it was Bangkok to Taiwan, then Taiwan back to the US on EVA and it was a fantastic experience definitely one of the best business class experiences I've had however that was booked with United mileage plus miles so I've never actually booked anything with EVA's own program. I have heard that it's like a little bit convoluted I can't remember who it was that I was chatting to but I feel like at some point in the last like six or twelve months I was chatting to somebody

who had done a bit more research into it and had been booking some awards through Eva and they were a big fan of it. I can't remember for the life of me who that was so it definitely seems like it's worthwhile if you're going to be traveling to the US, sorry to Asia and Eva flies the routes that you want to go because it's definitely one of the best ways to get to Asia. Yeah, actually I have booked quite a few. I've flown Eva and I've flown, or it's actually, so it seems really unintuitive to me because the way they actually pronounce it, if you're in Taiwan and you're at an EVA air lounge, they will pronounce it as EVA, which to me seems bizarre. So I always still pronounce it EVA, but they actually say it. It's a missed opportunity

for something so pronounceable. Oh my gosh, totally right. So it's marvelous. And the great part about the big thing that is, so Mileage Lands, which is EVA's rewards program. So even when I say EVA, I get caught up. It's like, what's great about it is the amount of availability that they have for their own customers is orders of magnitude more than any partner gets. It is convoluted in the sense that effectively what you need to do, and I keep meaning to write a post about this, but what you need to do is you actually have to create effectively

like a flyer or companion profile in your mileage lands account in order to be able to search for the amount of tickets that you want to search for. So for instance, Nick would need to set up four different traveler profiles, add those profiles to it, and then he'd be able to search for it. And that little step, which is why I haven't done it is not intuitive. And it keeps a lot of people out of it. But it's it's rare. And what's great for me, like we're actually flying EVA in about two weeks here going to Taiwan, is they have a non-stop flight from Seattle and there's probably, it's rare that I don't get on and just look for whatever day I'm looking for. And they don't have

two to four seats available on that day. The amount of availability at least from the west coast is incredible. And what's even better is there are one-to-one transfer partner of Citi. And so if you have a Citi Rewards Plus card, you get 10% off of your up to 100,000 points of transfers to EVA every year. So effectively, that 75,000 point ticket or mile ticket comes down to 67,500 because you get the rebate back to, or I shouldn't say discount, it's a rebate, the rebate back to Rewards Plus. So anyway, but to distill that all down, the big thing is just that it's availability. And right now for anybody that's trying to look for

business class availability to especially East Asia, Japan, Shanghai, Malaysia, Philippines, it's rough. But EVA just for their own customers, for their own rewards programs, really makes a lot of tickets available. So that kind of answers my confusion as to who it was that I was chatting to. I'm pretty sure it was Tim. I was gonna say, I hope it was one of us.

Mystery solved. It's tough when you don't have a face to look at to remind you. Cool, very nice. Like this video if you want Tim to write a post about all that. So don't forget to like that video and also follow us. And if you don't want him to write a post about it, like it too. Yes both ways.

Just like only likes. Also follow us so that you get notifications when we do these. Alright, Greg. What's up with Alaska's Phantom Award availability? I've noticed this especially with AA. Award space will show in Alaska, sometimes other partners, then Alaska won't ticket. Have you noticed that? I have not personally noticed it. I've seen a couple of readers comment about this problem, but it's never happened to me when I've found a word space

that I've actually wanted to book. I've been able to book it and haven't had an issue. Have any of you guys encountered this? No. I mean, it's complained about a lot right now, especially with AA, but yeah, I haven't seen, I've never had a book. Yeah. So it's hard for us to comment on it

when we haven't experienced it. So we're not saying it's not real. Obviously, if a lot of people are complaining about it, it must be real, but I don't know, you know, what more to say or how to solve it. The one thing I might mention, I don't know how widespread the complaints are. So maybe this isn't very relevant,

but I did just book a bunch of Finnair tickets on through Alaska just within the last couple of days. And there were four seats available on all the flights I wanted and I needed five seats. But I went ahead and booked the four because it's so far in advance, I figured hopefully I'll find a fifth between now and then. And I set award alerts and whatnot.

But when I booked the four seats, it still showed up in inventory. Like I went back immediately to search again to see if Finnair have it set up to offer one more after those go kind of a thing. And it kept showing four seats available for like probably the next hour. And I did try to ticket one more

and it errored out every time. So I wonder if they're just slow in removing stuff that's gone and maybe people are running into that but I don't know if there are widespread complaints that probably isn't it but anecdotally it could be that tickets just were booked and their search tool is not removing them quickly enough. There is a part B to this question that the questioner added, which I'm going to give to you, Nick. On Alaska, have you noticed Alaska semi-dynamically pricing AA routes?

For example, a word chart says route should be seven and a half thousand, but all routes instead price at 10,000 or 12,500. No. This person has just sleuthed a bunch of things that we'd never noticed before. So let me just quickly say there could be a couple reasons about it. So first of all, there isn't Alaska dynamically priced. It's not in the same way that we think about dynamic pricing, but there's not one award price. They will show multiple award prices depending on kind of what the quote unquote fair bucket is that their partner is providing them. So if they have saver award availability, that's where the starting net prices happen.

But for instance, you'll see a ton of Starlux availability to Asia, that'll be 300,000 miles. And the ticket is available. So if you want it, it's great, but you'll look at the chart and say, wait, this should be 75,000. Why is it 300,000? Well, because Starlux is effectively making more space available at a higher price. Now, I don't think that's what's happening here. My guess is, and the 10K I think is weird but so Alaska prices on cumulative distance as opposed to point-to-point distance so for instance if you're flying from Seattle to LAX a and I don't actually know the miles on this right now but like like a nonstop flight to LAX could potentially price at a different level than the flight that goes through Las Vegas or that connects

through Las Vegas because it's going to add the miles of those two segments together and then apply that combined routing to the price. So if I remember correctly, and this is like right off the top of my head, I think that it goes from 1400 to 1401. I think that's the switch at 14701 to 1400 miles. It's 7500 miles. But when you get to 1401 miles, it goes up to 12.5. So that could be. Also the other thing that's a quirk about Alaska is so if you have, it might show you

a route that's available, but it's going to price usually what I've seen the entire route based on what the highest fare bucket available for that route is. So if you say, so for instance, like if you say, okay, hey, there's this saver ticket from New York to LAX, I'm going to add a short flight to that to get to that saver ticket. If that short flight is of a higher fare bucket, usually the whole itinerary will then price to that fare.

However, I don't think given that it's 12,500 that you're seeing, I don't think that's the issue. What I'm wondering is if it might be because there's connecting flights in there that are making the cumulative distance longer. And I may be wrong because there's still all sorts of weird stuff that's happening with some of Alaska's pricing as they're kind of doing this multi-partner stuff and so forth. Just might be weird. All right, Tim. If I took a retention offer to keep Amex Gold,

will Amex take back points if I take an upgrade to Platinum Offer? Does that make sense? Yes. No. They won't. Yeah, as far as I'm aware of, the only time that you would ever be at risk of a clawback is if you were to cancel a downgrade within 12 months

of receiving the points on that upgrade offer, or a retention offer, rather, to the Amex Gold. Okay. Great. Thanks. Now, Stephen, actually I feel like this is going to be a nick, but we'll see. I received an offer for the Caesar's No Annual Fee Card with 5,000 spend in three months giving me diamond status. Am I crazy for wanting to get it for free parking, no resource fees and food credit? Not necessarily. I mean, if you're gonna end up getting decent value from the card, even though it doesn't necessarily

come with like a cashback bonus, or like a miles bonus or something like that. If having the card will end up getting you all of those benefits off the back of having Diamond status and then if you're going to parlay that into getting some free cruisers and things like that, it could absolutely be worth it. I would just sit down, work out okay how much are you going to be doing this? If you're only taking one trip to Vegas or maybe two trips to Vegas this year, is it going to be worth it? Because I don't think that the diamond benefit on the card is an ongoing benefit, I think it's like a limited time promotion that's coming

as effectively a sign-up bonus on the card. So it kind of depends on how much you're going to make use of it in the next 12 months or however long the diamond status will last for. And then the other thing to take into account, are you trying to stay below 524 to get chase cards? Because this is going to be a personal card, it's going to add onto your 524 count. If you're so far over that, then it doesn't really matter and you have capability of spending 5,000 bucks without any issue, without it affecting your ability to welcome off for bonuses on other cards, absolutely

go for it. If you're only going to get say like a couple of hundred bucks worth of value from it though, it's probably not going to be worth it. Right though to just do the math on what you actually will do. I want to throw it over to Nick, because I think he got this offer as well. And did you get this offer? Like I did. Yeah. Yeah. There was, uh, the offer I got was only good until March 1st.

So I don't know if this is the same or there's a new offer. Uh, yeah. And I did consider it for a hot minute. Um, but ultimately I decided $5,000 spend in general will get you a welcome bonus that's worth at least $500 on most credit cards right most decent premium credit cards and then some offers that are worth a thousand dollars or more so was I gonna get five hundred to a thousand dollars or more in benefit out of the card for spending my five thousand bucks I didn't think so and so

the answer for me was no. But you know, if you're going to get if you're going to go to Las Vegas for a long period of time or numerous times, the resort fees certainly can add up if you're a poker player, for instance, during the World Series of Poker, people were talking about how you can skip to the top of the cash game list if you have a diamond card. And so that might be valuable to you. So I think there's situations where it might be valuable. I probably wouldn't be willing to put $5,000 spend on it to get a basically a $100, normally it's like a $100 signup bonus.

I mean, if you're only gonna get a hundred or $200 out of it, that's not worth enough to me. All right, Greg, when checking if the layover will offer enough time, how can I know in advance if I may be forced to pick up and recheck my bags, either with a single or multiple carriers? All right. So I guess this must be talking about international travel. The return back to the US is easier because you almost always have to, if you have a connection in the US, you'll almost always have to pick up your bags. But going the other way, it's going to vary based on situation.

So I mean, I hate to be flipping about it, but Google, I mean, that's what I would do. I'd look for like who has flown into CDG airport on this carrier and out on this other one and find out what the situation is with that. And if you're looking at flights back to the US, you're going to have to recheck your bags at your kind of point of contact coming back into the US too. So that would definitely be a given. All right. Good to know. Nick, I'm trying to potentially book Maldives trip with Hilton

free nights cert, but I'd like to connect there in style and Qatar and our Emirates considering free night certificates only last a year and flights often are best booked a year out, how would you navigate a trip where flights and hotels might both be high demand options or timelines? You know, I think that that just it really depends on how much flexibility you have. And you know, that is tough to thread the needle on that. Though I don't always find that the only availability that exists is when the schedule opens kind of a thing. I find availability all the time by being persistent,

using search tools, using award alerts, et cetera. I mean, I wrote about the things I booked with Alaska this morning or published that this morning. And that was just over the last few days, we made a decision and said, okay, we want to go back to the Santa Claus Holiday Village in Ravinegemi. We want to do a couple of Christmas markets. And literally in a few hours, one day, I searched around until I found flights that worked for five people and I found business class for five people to get to Europe and from Europe and around Europe and and so it's not the those things are impossible now I don't think there's a good solution. I think free night certificates, that's the danger with counting on a free night certificate that you might not find flights.

And so are you willing to fly in economy class? Are you only willing to fly if you're gonna fly in business class? And is there a backup plan then if you can't find that? Because there's just no guarantee. I don't think there's any solid answer to that question. You're taking a chance, you're rolling the dice and some people are very willing to roll dice. I'll roll dice all day long, just about, but not everybody does. So you have to ask yourself how flexible you are and how willing you are to roll the dice on that and what

your backup plan is. If you can't get them all day of trip together, where are you going to use the certificates? And if you can't answer that that question maybe that's not the right offer for you. And I actually did this exact trip last year because it was our 20th anniversary we went to the Maldives and flew on Qatar. I will say I have like depending on what time of year you're going using your Hilton three-night certificates may not be as hard as you might think it is because we went in August because that's when our anniversary is and that tends to be somewhat rainy season. The weather really wasn't bad while we were there until the day we actually left. But yeah there was a whole ton of award availability throughout the lead up to that. I hadn't been too sure what it would be like and

so I booked as soon as I possibly could so we ended up doing eight nights there. I booked three nights with certificates initially and then five nights using points and then I earned as many three-night certificates early in the year as I could and so then we had like five by the time I think February came around so about six months before our stay, it might have been March, and then I was able to book five nights in a row using our three night certificates and then cancelled that points stay and to get a refund of that and so we managed to get eight nights in a row in an overwater villa at the combat Maldives so that wasn't an issue there was a whole ton of availability at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives as well and that's one that's like very highly rated and Hilton's added I think it's like half a dozen properties in the

Maldives via SLH this last year. One of them had been including seaplane transfers I think that might have been, I think they may have nixed the C3C plane transfers but I'm not 100% sure on that. But yeah, you have a lot more options for your certificates now with Hilton and so I would have fewer concerns about being able to redeem those for a longer stay and more, yeah, just kind of like concentrate more on the flights that you want to get there. So you said you landed the hotel side of things like six months in advance. When did you nail down the flights? Well the hotel I booked a year in advance and then I just updated it about six months before the flights. I think we nailed down like 11 or

yeah something like 11 months beforehand. However, we then completely changed our plans and ended up flying to the UK because my nephew and his partner had a baby and so we wanted to go visit them on our way to the Maldives. So it was only like a month or two before our trip we cancelled our flights and then ended up rebooking flights from the UK to the Maldives. We ended up doing like a premium award where it costs like double the amount to book with Qatar and so it was a ridiculous number of miles but that meant that we had like guaranteed availability. So that's something else as well is that Qatar, if you're willing to completely splurge, they do

make a lot more availability for awards if you're willing to completely splurge, they do make a lot more availability for awards if you're willing to pay like twice the amount. And so for two people, that does end up getting very expensive because it's not cheap initially, but yeah, that's an option too. Yeah. Great. Cool.

I can't remember who we left off with, so I'm gonna go with Tim. Let's see. Which hotel rewards program would you say lately offers the highest probability for outside value? Then this person has their own answer, but I don't wanna bias you with it yet. So what do you think?

You know, that is a, to my mind, hugely variable question. And the reason why is because it kind of depends on what, if you're saying, like, do I have the highest probability, so if I book 10 stays, what are the odds that I'll have seven of those 10 stays be outsized value as opposed to average value versus what are the programs that I can get the highest amount of outsized value from. So if their points are worth one cent, can I get eight cents? Are there opportunities to get eight cents?

And so I'm not sure exactly which way you meant that. And I think depending on the program, it depends a lot on how you travel. Is it international or domestic? Domestically, to me, there's no question it's Hyatt, most likely. Domestic Hyatt, especially Hyatt branded properties, there's a ton of opportunity. I mean, I could count on, you know, I would take my fingers or my hands and my feet and run out of fingers and toes to count how many times I've gotten 8, 10 cents per value because I have a high up place. I got a high place for 8,000 points during a football game weekend or something like that.

The other programs to me domestically, like if you're using, for instance, Hilton just for domestic Hilton Redemptions, you're going to have a pretty hard time, I think, getting much above half a cent per point value. Now on the flip side, if you're traveling internationally and using Hilton Points for small luxury and hotels properties or free night certificates for those, you can get insane value. That's multiple times that kind of half a cent average that we tend to have Hilton that.

So, I mean, like people talk about, I hear people all the time talk about how Marriott has such terrible point values. And then a lot of times when I talk about, well, they're talking about, well, it's in New York and Hawaii, or in Hawaii. And New York and Hawaii are terrible places to use Marriott points oftentimes because they tend to have really bad value. Now, when I'm traveling internationally, I oftentimes get one to one and a half cent per point values on Marriott Redemptions. So I think all of programs kind of their their kind of strong suits in terms of where the outside value outside value can be found. But just the most common one would be domestic. And if it's just US domestic redemptions in own branded properties, I would say I easily. But and Tim, just to follow on. I agree with that but so for international high-end luxury Are you saying Hilton or probably tell me for outsize or Citibank?

Or Citibank, oh because of oh, that's a good question. Well for outside confused That's a good question. Well, for outside- I'm confused. Here's the deal. Greg and I are going past because I'm going to write a post actually that's going to ... I have this post in mind that's going to talk about that Citi points are actually comparable to Chase points when it comes to lodging value. Now even though Chase redeems to Hyatt and that's because Citi has the opportunity to

transfer to choice at one to two, to preferred hotels, to leading hotels of the world and to Wyndham, all of which can be value. Now, in terms of outsized value, if you were to go for like high-end Hilton, I think, and that's the question. If you're talking about like, because a lot of those things tend to be to me,

and I'd like to hear your perspective on this as well. A lot of those things tend to be to me and I and I'd like to hear your perspective on this as well. A lot of those programs to me that the high end tends to be sort of limited that you know there's a very good floor and median but that high end tends to be limited whereas Hilton the high end is sort of you know I mean there's some places that you know I mean you can get triple quadruple what what your average Hilton value would be. Right. Yeah. But in terms of the average, maybe city points.

So that's hard to say. Right. It's hard to say. Yeah. No, at the, at that high end, I agree. I think Hilton with SLH is, is blowing everything else out of the water, but it's just kind of funny to me that city can even be in that conversation now because of their one to four transfers to preferred hotels and one to two to choice. I also have a slight differentiation with Hyatt and Hilton.

So I agree with everything that Tim had said before. However, if you're booking with free night certificates, I'd go with Hilton all the way. If you're just talking about points, I'd go with Hyatt all the way. So SLH properties are fantastic value if you're using talking about points I'd go and buy it all the way. So SLH properties, a fantastic value if you're using free night certificates. I'd have a much harder time dropping 100, 150,000 points on some of these, like Hilton points that is, on some of the SLH properties just because that is a large chunk of points that you're either, like you can rack them up like fairly easily in different ways, either

on Hilton cards at 6x or 7x or via like transfers from Amex during transfer bonuses or by buying them and things like that. But that's still a large, large number of points. And if you're wanting to spend several nights, then that's a huge amount. Whereas with Hyatt, it feels like it's easier to rack up ultimate rewards that transfer to Hyatt for a long first stage that will be much longer in that respect. So yeah, points Hyatt, certificates Hilton is where I've landed personally on that. Nick, you're the only one who hasn't chimed in. No, I think Tim's totally right. I agreed 100% with what he was saying,

domestic, international. The only thing I'll add is that even though I, when they were talking about choice a second ago, I was like, come on Hilton, obviously. I will say that, or they were talking about city rather, I will say that I just redeemed choice points the other day and it was 20,000 points a night, which would be 10,000 city points

for a hotel where the nightly rate was 540 euro a night I think. And it's not, it's a hotel I've stayed at before, it's not a place I would pay 540 euro a night to stay at but it's a location and a time of year when I'm really happy to be using 20,000 choice points a night and I did not transfer them from city, I bought them from choice, but it cost me a hundred they were on sale recently and cost me $140 to buy 20,000 points. So I was paying 140 bucks for a room that was, you know going for 540.

So there certainly are opportunities to get really good value out of those other programs, but yeah, high, high end Hilton International Hyatt Domestic easy. So we have Hilton Hyatt Choice and then some other city city. If you haven't dug into GHA. Alright, Stephen, this one just amuses me. Have you ever gotten weird looks from the clerk while buying gift cards? Not really, just because I haven't done like a whole ton of in-person gift card buying. So despite running a gift card website for like six years before. I didn't buy anywhere near as many gift cards as a lot of other people in the game do and so a lot of my buying had been online and things like that. So

yeah, I haven't really had many funny looks and I try to stay under the radars much as possible with something like that just because I mean I guess it hasn't been too bad for me for the last seven years because we've never been in the same place for more than a week at a time, but before when we were in the same place and I would be buying like Visa gift cards at the grocery store or something like that, I would try and do self-checkout so that would be less of an issue because if you do get chatting to cashiers then I have a fairly obvious voice and so I feel like that would draw more attention to myself if they like repeatedly like see me there but a lot of the time you could just kind of explain what you're doing and then you're like okay well I'm just earning doing this to earn the points and things like that and it's they could like for the most part they'll end up being fine you'll always get some kind of cashier who's like decides that they don't like that kind of activity even though it's completely legal. But yeah, I've never really had any issues with cash is giving me looks. Innocent sounding British

accent. The person though that I want to ask is Nick because I feel like Nick if anybody's going to get caught out, it's going to be Nick and his cadre. That seedy looking fedora. Well, and like all the trench coat wearing, you know, like gift card mafia that he has work in Eastern or Western New York. No, well, you're probably right because anytime we go through like passport control, they always give me the extra grilling, right? So so you would you would think that? No, I mean, Stephen's right.

Most of the time, I've just explained. When somebody expresses curiosity and asks, I'll explain to them what we're doing, that I'm trying to earn points on my credit card so that we can travel and explain that we travel. And sometimes they'll ask some more questions and I'll give them some more answers. And honesty is probably the best policy there

because either you're going to encounter somebody who's gonna be skeptical and telling them what you're doing is not going to make them more skeptical they're still gonna be skeptical and give you a hard time either way or somebody's just gonna legitimately be intrigued and most people working in that kind of a job are probably rooting for somebody to beat the system so you know if you're you're telling them that you're beating the system I don't think that most of them are gonna be as skeptical as you would think so I've been surprised over the years it at I don't think that most of them are going to be as skeptical as you would think so I've been surprised over the years it

I don't know the good attitude that I've encountered more often than not now again Like I said, you're gonna get somebody now and then that's gonna give you a hard time just because they're grumpy or whatever else But or they want to be the employee of the month stopping you from laundering money, but more often than not I've gotten Positive response just from being honest. You've probably got a side eye more frequently from hotel managers having to send you gift cards that you've left behind than anything else. It's only happened once or twice. All right, this one is for Greg, unless it's already been asked in World War One. I found lots of availability at SLH through Hilton.

Four nights bookable, but when I went to five nights, availability vanished. Is the hotel playing games to avoid fifth night free? Any workaround ideas? That's the one I was looking for at the beginning. It is, yeah. No, very unlikely that they're doing that on purpose, because I don't think that Hilton is going to pay them

any less for a fifth night than they would for the first four nights. The SLH hotels have nothing to do with that fifth night free benefit that's something paid for by Hilton as far as I understand it. So what I do think might be happening in your case is that the way room availability works with SLH hotels, my understanding is that it's a bit different from how it works with Hilton hotels. So with Hilton hotels, you have like,

if there's a standard room available, it has to be available at a standard point price. With SLH hotels, they can decide upfront how many of the rooms are considered available for standard room awards, and that might not be all of the rooms they have of a certain type, right? So they might have, you know, what you would think is that base room type, they might have 10 of them, but they might have only assigned five that are available at any given time for points at the standard room rate. So when you're trying to expand from

four to five, just the chance of, you know, even if you're seeing that standard room is available for five nights in a row, that doesn't mean that there are standard from the point of view of available for points rooms available for all five nights. So I think it's probably just a chance thing that there happens to be more bookings of that room type during that time at one end or the other of the five nights you're looking at well, it would effectively be the same thing like if you write Greg if you have like a

King room available for two nights a standard King room and then a standard double queen room available And then you try to combine that for five nights It wouldn't show you the ability because those are different even though they're both. Yeah, very right, right Very similar it could be that as well, right? Because some places might have standard room defined as two different room types, but they're not going to combine them into one reservation. Same thing will happen at Hilton properties sometimes. Yeah, that one would. Yeah, that one. Something that might be worth doing is either calling Hilton or doing an online chat. You can actually chat with an online agent on the Hilton website

and just see if there's anything that they can do on their end. I've no idea if there is, but sometimes agents will have more ability to be able to put through a booking than you might be able to on their website. So that's worth a try if you're just drawing a blank on that. Just make sure that they end up charging you the correct amount because it might be that they end up doing a booking of four nights and then a booking of one night or something like that and charging you for five nights separately effectively rather than you getting a fifth night free. But it's worth a try if you've got a spare 10 minutes or something just to call or chat with them.

And if you are checking their math, doesn't Hilton do the like, it's not actually the fifth night free, it's more like a 20% off of the total. I forget. I think it is the fifth night. Hilton does really weird things. They display it as the fifth night free, but I've never quite done the math behind that. I feel like, I can't remember, I think it was like frequent flyer book or something like that did some kind of post about

where they did some research into that. But whenever I've- Shoot, how are we gonna check your math? I've always seen it listed as like four nights at say like 50,000 points a night and then one night at zero. So I think that's the way it works. All right, you heard it here.

I'm pretty sure that Nick once wrote a post like about Hilton's funny math. Actually, yeah, I just summarized this. That's the only reason I know it. Yeah. I summarized something where you referenced it. I'm pretty sure they do the, but I'm not gonna be able to find it now in this.

Yeah, no, it's called Hilton's Funny Math, Save Points by Extending a Stay. Anyway, yeah, I's called Hilton's Funny Math Save Points by extending a stay. Anyway, yeah. I have written about it, I can't remember it's been so long. Since I've actually booked a five-minute stay. Wow, I'm really proud if I remembered that correctly, and not as proud if I didn't. That's all for now, but don't forget,

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