Frequent Miler on the Air - Booking travel despite (or thanks to) COVID 19

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

Greg and Nick discuss: -Is this a good time to book future travel? We obviously don't know when "safe" will be, but maybe this is a good time to book for the future? -Is it ethical to take advantage of the current no change fee policies? More: -Should we cancel or downgrade annual fee credit cards? We can't travel now, we don't know when we'll be able to travel again. When is it time to cut the cord on expensive credit cards with benefits we can't use? -How should people handle the travel industry's customer service collapse? Many people are reporting huge wait times, finger pointing (e.g. "call the airline" no "call the OTA"), wrong information. Please subscribe! http://thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe Timestamps (thanks to Screaming Lincolns on Youtube): 3:15 Is it really free? (Hotel Free Night) 5:13 Free Nights vs Award Flights w/Fuel Surcharges 10:50 Points/Miles Great Value Discussion 13:31 Main Topic: When to book travel? 15:56 June 1st??? 18:18 British Airways Refund Trick [Hat Tip to Gary Leff at View From The Wing] 22:23 Spend all miles now??? 23:00 Ethical Issue: Change Waivers 28:18 Where in the world would you like to be quarantined? 31:32 Greg's Travel Plans 34:06 Cust Svc/Changing Policies 39:09 Southwest's Travel Funds Extension 41:12 Credit Card Downgrades [Hat Tip to Grant Thomas at Travel With Grant] 43:30 Downgrade Strategy 53:41 What's in your wallet, NOW??? 58:42 Nick's Morphosis :) 1:00:35 F-Bomb Averted :( 1:03:35 Question of the Week: Extending United Airlines Voucher 

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. How are you doing, Nick? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Greg? Doing good, despite the whole coronavirus thing doing well. I am wondering, though, whether anybody is out there listening. And the reason I'm saying that is a lot of people have come to me and said they love our podcast and our video but almost all of them said they they watch or listen while working out at the gym right or on their commute to work which neither of those things are happening right now right right so this is going to be the law we should just title this one the lost episode right so some number of people are listening to this whenever the whole thing is

over, which we don't know when that'll be June, August, 2021, you know, hopefully it'll be over. And so for those of you, you know, welcome to the past. This is a sort of like a time capsule episode. And for those of you who did join us now during the coronavirus outbreak, thank you for joining us. Hopefully it provides a few minutes of levity in this otherwise weird times. Right, right. Weird times, no doubt. I mean, weird times for most folks, you know,

because obviously a lot of people are getting used to being at home and, and the social distancing thing is, has been a, I know a challenge for a lot of people on my Facebook feed, a lot of friends and family, and, and, and I'm sure lots of people around the country, definitely getting used to this whole being home, not going out more than they need to not going out to restaurants and bars and things like that. So I'm sure that's a major adjustment for a lot of people, though, for me, it's less of an adjustment because I've been working from home for like a decade now. So it's, it's kind of the same for me in a lot of ways. But of course, it's strange feeling like you can't go somewhere. You know, I think that's, that's maybe the worst part for me so far is just almost like feeling trapped, even though I'm still doing the same stuff I did before. Right, right. Yeah, the hardest part for me is not having travel to do or to plan. You know, I can't even remember the last time I didn't have anything on the books, like, you know, where I'm leaving within a week or two,

or I'm planning something for next month or the month after that. Exactly, exactly. So, we're going to talk today about the main topic today is whether this is a good time to plan future travel. But first, your favorite segment is feedback time. So let's get to that. I think everybody likes to hear the feedback, right? You want to know what people are saying. What are people saying? What do the critics have to say? Have you gotten a lot of feedback about people liking Feedback Time?

No, not at all. No, I haven't either. I haven't heard anyone who comes up and says, I love your show, especially Feedback Time. Especially Feedback Time. No, nobody says that. Let's pretend that they did and keep doing it because we like it. We like it. And it's our podcast.

That's right. We can do whatever we want. Okay. All right. We can do whatever we want. Okay. All right. So this week, so earlier this week, I think it was, I posted, I finally got around to posting a review of the Kempton Seafire, which I went to in December. Oh, wow. And I did one of those bottom line reviews. So it turns out, even though the whole idea behind bottom line reviews was to make it easy to write them so that I could get them out quickly and everything.

I'm still finding it takes forever to do them, but at least it's less painful than it was to do these things. Anyway, I put out the Kimden Seafire review, and then Nick R. wrote, I'll be honest. Yeah, Nick R. wrote, I'll be honest, I haven't even read this review out of protest. You kind of remember this. I recognize this, this Nick R. character. Yeah, yeah. A reasonable guy. We all know and this Nick R character. Yeah, yeah. A reasonable guy. We all know and love Nick R.

He says, all right, I haven't even read this review out of protest. I don't care how many people tell me how much they love this place. I'm just not willing to accept the resort fees on a free night, in quotes, free night, awards day. There are just too many tropical beach paradise properties in the world without a resort fee or with one that is a third of what Kempton charges for me to be even mildly interested in using points and then also paying for this place. No thanks, IHG. All right. So- Nick Carr seems like a reasonable guy. So first of all, okay. So you wrote that in last weekend's week in review i did i did

that's why i was surprised that you went to the kimpton sea fire in december because i didn't read it so i didn't know that that's when you went so that was my first question did you really not read it or did you just say you weren't reading oh no i didn't i read i'm not gonna lie to readers come on now no i didn't okay all right all right that's fair uh then my question is uh did do you also not book award flights that have any fuel surcharges attached because a free flight shouldn't cost you anything right and? And how about do you not book resort hotels that require a boat or airplane transfer, like to the Maldives, for example,

because those are required fees? So what do you think? Good question. Very good zinger there. So the first part, do I book airline awards that have fuel surcharges? In general, no. Obviously, there may be something in there occasionally.

But no, I mean, I've never booked a British Airways award with fuel surcharges, never booked a Lufthansa award with their crazy fuel surcharges. So no, most of the awards that I've booked, it's just taxes. I'm not usually going to include fuel surcharges. So, when you flew ANA, aren't there some? I know they're not huge, but I'm pretty So if I look at last year's travel, if I go backwards kind of from the end backwards, I booked the Cathay Pacific Award back home through American Airlines. No fuel surcharge there. I booked the Singapore Award through Singapore Airlines.

No fuel surcharge there. I booked my flights around New Zealand for the 40K Challenge. That was all life miles. No fuel surcharge on that one. I booked my flights, let's see, to Japan through Virgin Atlantic, no fuel surcharge there. I booked my flight to Hawaii via- All right. If I look at last year, I don't think I flew a single flight last year with a fuel surcharge,

I don't think. So, no, you're with a fuel surcharge, I don't think. So, no, you're right. You make a good point that, in general, there are a lot of other ancillary fees. So, should I not just accept the IHG free night fee also? And my response to that would be that with the airline awards, I mean, you're making a good point. Yeah, I've definitely paid those fees before for an experience that I thought was worthwhile. So your point seems to transfer to the IHG free night. But for some reason, it bothers me more when a credit card offers a benefit that's a free

night, and then they charge you to use your free night. You know, with the miles, they're giving you a way to defer the cost of the fare, right? And to me, that is a little bit different than promising an annual free night. There's a lot of uses of the miles. And if I choose to accept one of the uses where I have to pay a fuel surcharge, I guess that's on me. But with a free night, when you're billing it as a free night and it's not free, that seems to me like not very genuine. Well, I mean, I still think that most airlines do advertise their awards as free. So I don't think there's a big difference there,

but anyway, um, I'm not, and I, you know, I don't want to encourage, uh, these kinds of resort fees.

I hate them just as much as you do. And, and I love the fact that Hilton and Hyatt, for example, don't charge,, that they don't charge resort fees. They, and they, and they don't charge fuel surcharges on awards days. But I think in, in this case, you're, you're kind of missing out on a potentially wonderful trip by just saying, no, I'm not willing to pay the $70 a day, which is very high, don't get me wrong, for resort fees. But it's arguably one of the best uses of IHD points and free nights if you have an uncapped free night. And so, you know, I think you're missing out. I think you make a good point here in that there's a very different perspective.

Because for me, I look at it, if you're going to use points at that property, you're talking 70,000 points, it's $350 a night worth of IHG points plus $70 worth of resort fee. You're looking at $420 that you're pouring into that place per night. And that's just not me. There's not a hotel on earth that I'll pay $420 a night to stay at. So it doesn't matter how nice it is. So all inclusive, whatever else, there's just no way I'm going to consider spending that much money per night. So I think that that's perhaps a difference. Now, does that mean I'm not going to spend 70,000 points at any IHG property? I mean, I don't think so. I don't think I have spent 70,000 points at an IHG property before.

Now, maybe I would. It's hard to say. I guess if I earn the points really cheaply and easily, maybe I would. But I guess that's part of the difference in how I value it. So when I look at the free night certificate, you're already paying the 50 or $85 for whatever. Then we're talking, once you pay the resort fee, you're paying like $120 for a free night. Of course, you know, it depends on how many nights you're staying as to how much of that annual, well, no, I guess, cause it's still the free night is still the 85 or $90 or whatever it is, the annual fee plus 70. If you were even able to use it at the

Kempton, which you can't anymore, but you would have been able to in the past on the $50 card. It's just, it's more than I'm willing to spend on a free night. Yeah. Anyway, this particular property usually goes for over a thousand dollars a night. Right. So it's a great value if you're willing to spend that much. Right.

It's one of those places where points and miles gives you great value. And not only that, even with the resort fee, I forgot to put this in the original version of it, but I corrected it. If you're paying cash for this hotel, the resort fee is not only the $75 a night. And the reason I said 70 earlier versus 75 now, if you have platinum status from the credit card, they take off $5. So it's either 75 or $70, their resort fee. But for cash stays, they also charge 10% of the cash rate on top of the $70. And so you're booking an award, you're saving a huge amount of money, huge amount of money. You sure are.

And I can't debate that at all. And for folks that are willing to spend that much, a lot of people are. I mean, certainly people do all the time. So if you're willing to spend that much, then yeah, it's a huge discount on this particular property. So I definitely don't dispute that, that it can be a great value on points. There's just lots of other places I'd go see tropical sunshine that would be much cheaper. So and that's, again, a difference of perspective.

And I'm not going to debate that either. And I also, I'd have a hard time arguing that it's necessarily worth over $1,000 a night. I mean, it was a great place, but that's a heck of a lot of money to spend. So, would you consider going back for the 70,000 points and paying the $70 resort fee? Did you like it enough to go back again? Yes, absolutely. Uh, if I have occasion, like, I don't think I would go to Grand Cayman just for this hotel, but, but it's also good enough that maybe I would, but, uh, certainly if I was going to Grand Cayman that this would be the first thing I would look at is, especially, do I already have enough points to cover this day? Because if I do, I would love to just, I would love to use

them there. I think that's a great use of the points that I have. Would I buy more points to do it? Yeah, actually, I probably would. It wouldn't be as much of a no-brainer as using existing points, but. Right. Well, and that's consistent. It's worth knowing. That's consistent with everything I've ever heard about this place. So, I meant it when I said that I don't care how many times I hear how great it is because I have heard again and again that this place is totally worth going to. So, I don't mean to say that it's not worth going to. Sure.

It absolutely is for anyone that I've known who's been there. I don't think I've heard anybody say they went to the Kimpton Seafire and were disappointed in their stay or their use of points. Right, right. Obviously, a good use of points. And so I'm sure a lot of readers enjoyed reading your review. I just wasn't one of them. All right. Shall we dive into our main topic?

I guess we should. Is it time? Is this a good time to book future travel? So, you know, both of us wrote some posts this week about booking awards, right? Right. And we have a lot of readers, or I don't know if a lot, we have some readers who anytime we write anything about booking travel there's some push back no matter how no matter how much we preface in our posts about you know the fact that we don't know when the the uh it'll be safe to travel again and and you can book now and change for free no

matter how much we preface with that kind of stuff, we get some pushback. And I understand that. There's a sense right now of we just need to get through the current crisis we're going through, right? And we need to do the right thing, which is not travel right now. And so, talking about travel might sound insensitive or even worse, might come across as encouraging travel to happen now, even though that's not what we wrote or intended. and feeling that way in terms of being concerned that we're promoting people doing something that's irresponsible. And I think we've tried to make it very clear that we're not, we're at home right now and going to be staying isolated as best we can. We're certainly not planning any flights right now. I don't have anything booked. I think Greg mentioned in today's post that he doesn't have any travel booked yet either. But at the same time, I mean, we're miles and points, guys. That's what we enjoy looking at.

And so while we're at home and while you're at home, maybe if you're listening to this, you might also be the kind of person who's interested in at least dreaming about a time when you can travel again. So part of the, I guess, the distraction of watching the constant news cycle right now is looking at, well, maybe I could go somewhere at some point in the future. And if we can book some stuff that's easily refundable, then maybe that's a good plan. But that kind of begs the question, when does it make sense to book for? You know, when can you hope to be able to travel again?

Should you be looking at booking now or should you just like close your eyes and say, okay, I'm not even going to think about travel right now because I don't want to be tempted to do it. I don't know what's the answer. Yeah. I mean, I think you shouldn't be looking at anything before June 1st. I mean, first of all, just because I'm using that date because a lot of airlines have already canceled all of their wide body flights up until then. And so there seems to be a general sense of, we know things aren't going to be better before that. Uh, if you book anything though, in the summer, you have to be prepared for the likelihood that you're going to have to

change it, um, or cancel it. That's my thinking. I mean, obviously, that could be true even later than the summer. But I think as we get later, the chance of us being past this and being free to travel summer must understand that, right? I mean, I certainly do when I'm looking at award availability, that if I were to book something for June, July, or August right now, it's up in the air. I don't have a crystal ball as to what the situation is going to be five months from now. And I think anybody who does is probably not sure either. They're kind of going by their best guess. And so, at this point, that's all we can do is guess and hope for the best. And of course, everybody hopes that we're past this sooner rather than later. So I do think though, if I were going to book something in the summer, I'd be booking it accepting the fact that it just may not be able to happen. And it may not be able to happen for a variety of reasons, a certainly because of guidelines, but be like you said, because the

flights might not be operating, the planes might not be operating. So, you know, if you're going to book something within that summer travel period, I think you just have to be accepting the fact that it's a gamble, you know, and, and really, it's not a bad gamble, because there are a lot of airlines out there with very low or no change or cancellation fees. And in fact, if the flights end up getting canceled, or travel bans continue, I would assume that most airlines are going to allow you to cancel those awards for free if they can't operate the flights. So, I don't know. Am I wrong about that? Am I wrong to assume that? No, I don't think you're wrong to assume that. Although you might be stuck with situations where what you have is credit with the airline rather than getting those fees back

to your credit card. And the taxes and fees that you'd, I think in some cases, so like Gary view from the wing published last night, I think it was a post about how with British airways, there's, there's a trick to getting back your,

your money, the fuel surcharges or whatever that you paid, the taxes and fees that you paid. There's a trick to it that the default path, you just get back, uh, the credit. And I don't, so I don't know how many airlines that's going to be true for, but it certainly that's what's happening. I think in most cases, not when they, um, maybe not when they cancel your flight, but in most cases where they've made waivers saying you can cancel or rebook for free, you're getting back credit on paid flights anyway, rather than cash back unless you manage to get an exception for your situation.

Right. So anyway, yeah. Go ahead. Uh, so, so anyway, so yeah, so, so booking now, I think what you could say is, uh, there's, there's less risk because, you know, you can move your, your trip with, you know, probably with no risk at all. Um, but whether you might want to just forget about it altogether, then there might be some risk of having money tied up, depending on which airline is with. Right. And I would avoid any airline that's going to charge high fuel charge charges because

for a number of reasons, A, I wouldn't want a chance that I get that money tied up with the airline, like Greg's saying. And B, because I mean, we're in very uncertain times right now. I imagine that the airlines will weather this storm and come out of it. But when I say the airlines, I mean, most of the major ones, but maybe not everybody will. We've already seen a small airline based in Minneapolis. I think Compass has announced that they're ceasing operations. And certainly there's been news about whether or not Norwegian is going to make it through. And I'm sure that every airline has got to be looking at this saying, how are we going to do it? They got a lot of people to pay and no revenue coming in.

So I think that Gary Leff made a great point when he wrote the other day saying that there will be airlines. There are going to be airports and airplanes sitting there and somebody, and airline executives who are experienced, somebody is going to make it happen. Even if major airlines were to go out of business, new airlines would pop up. So I think that there will be airlines in air travel, but it's hard to predict, you know, which airlines are in position to make it through. Right. There's probably, it's probably fairly safe to book with the big airlines just because, you know, I think if Delta or United or American were close to collapse, I think our country would step in and support them through that so that

they didn't fully collapse. I mean, we saw that happen with the financial industry. Right. I think that's a very likely to happen. And I think the same thing would happen in England with British Airways, for example. So the major ones, Air France, you know, I think are probably safe because the countries that they're in won't let them fully collapse, is my guess. But you never know. You never know. So anyway, so that's a good point that even if it seems like it's risk-free, there's still some risk. There's still some risk. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's also the risk, of course, obviously, as this continues on, we don't know what this is going to look like yet, you know, and there are a lot of different models predicting how long this could last and that kind of thing. And I think that, you know, a couple of months ago, predictions were very different than they are today. And, you know, even week by week, it seems like things have been changing. So it's very hard to know, is this all going to be past us? Or is this going to clear up

in two or three months? Is it going to be six months, a year, 18 months? Hard to know when we'll kind of come out of this. So I think there's at least some gamble, but I would feel relatively comfortable gambling with the points, less comfortable gambling with huge fuel surcharges. I wouldn't want to have hundreds or thousands of dollars tied up in fuel surcharges with no end in sight. But in terms of the miles and that kind of thing, I've read some people wondering what's going to happen if an airline goes out of business and your miles, do you need to spend

them all now? I saw somebody on Twitter, some financial person on Twitter saying, you know, use all of your miles now because they could be working tomorrow. And I think that that's, that's poor advice. I think that the mileage programs are where the airlines make their money. So I think that they certainly are going to continue those. And if the airlines survive, which I think you're absolutely right, that the major U S ones for sure are going are going to get through this, then those mileage programs are going to be intact. Your miles aren't likely to go away anytime soon. I agree. I agree. So do you think there's an ethical issue to taking advantage of the change waivers that airlines are offering? Is there an ethical issue to saying, oh, well then I can, I can book basically risk-free these trips I may or may not take,

but you know, they said I can book it. Anything booked in March is fully cancelable. So I'm going to, I'm going to just take advantage of that. What do you think? Do you feel okay about doing that or are there a part of you that thinks, you know? No, I'm looking forward to you arguing the other side of this. But no, I don't think there's an ethical issue at all. I think the airlines want you to do that. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the program is to incentivize people to book. And, you know, like I said before, these airlines have a lot of people to pay. There's a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of folks that, you know, obviously we see the pilots and the flight attendants, but my goodness, I can't fathom the number of people there are that are mechanics and

accountants and lawyers and people behind the scenes that do everyday kind of jobs in offices that work for these airlines that all have to get paid. And while the airlines sure have made a lot of money over the years, at the same time, constantly counting on lots more coming in. And when there's suddenly none coming in, I imagine it does create a bit of a hardship. So no, I think that they're looking to collect whatever they can while they can. And that's their way of incentivizing and giving you that flexibility. So no, I don't, I don't think there is an ethical issue with that. I think in fact, that's, you know, the airlines

are hoping you'll do that and that you'll actually fly some of those in the end. Now, if you're booking them all with no intention to fly them, I'd wonder why you're going to tie up all your money with an airline. That's not going to give it back anytime soon. So, I don't think there's a play there. What if I'm talking about award flights, not cash flights? So, booking award flights now, well, is there an ethical issue with booking the award flights now because you can change later on? I mean, again, they want you to book, right? I don't know. What's the ethical dilemma? I don't think I see enough. I don't know. I'm just kind of exploring this question of whether sort of tying up airline resources now, if you think you're unlikely to actually use it and you're just sort of booking

it just in case, which I've been known to do a lot of times in the past with Delta, because I have free changes thanks to my status. I often book flights. It's like, oh, I might fly that. I better grab it while the award's available. That's a good question. There's more of a dilemma in that. And I think it's actually multifaceted then. The dilemma there is, A, are you going to tie up airline resources when you have to call to cancel that later on when somebody with more important travel calls are you going to be wasting time and b are you going to be taking a seat from somebody who actually needs to travel on one of the limited flights that ends up being available because you know right now what is i

think i saw this morning in a post somewhere that americans got like three international routes i think london tokyo and there's like one more that I mean, I think it's another route to London or the only international flights in American right now. You know, so if you're like booking one of those few flights that are happening, which you shouldn't be booking probably for travel right now anyway, but if you end up booking something for three or four months from now, and that ends up being one of the three flights that they're actually operating at that time. You know, are you taking up a seat that somebody else could have had? I don't know. Maybe there is an ethical dilemma there. But when it comes to things like you posted about wide open awards, and so if you're booking one of the nine seats available on a flight to

Brussels in August, you know, I don't think that probably there's an ethical dilemma there. I don't think so. Do you disagree? Yeah. No, no, actually actually i wish i could argue i i can't think of a good argument the other way but it'd be fun if i told you you're an idiot and here's why people would enjoy that so i was kind of hopeful for it i just can't think of a good reason airlines are offering it because they want to sell it right i mean it's like anybody's selling anything they offer something for sale because they want to ultimately sell it and right now i think the airlines are offering it because they want to sell it, right? I mean, it's like anybody selling anything. They offer something for sale because they want to ultimately sell it. And right now, I think the airlines want to sell it more than any other time. So I feel like actually, I feel like we've gotten a little bit of pushback in some of

those posts, like you mentioned, from people that have the perspective that we shouldn't be booking anything right now. And I get where that's coming from. Again, like we said before, from a place of, you know, wanting to be responsible and wanting to be socially responsible for your conduct within the society as a whole, you know, in large part here. But I think that actually, to some extent, booking future travel is not really a bad thing because it's locking in some revenue for the airlines at a time when, man, they're all of a sudden looking at almost no revenue. And same for hotels and everything else. I just can't imagine the devastating impact it's had financially for them. So I would think that it's actually, you know, almost a more patriotic thing to be looking for ways to spend money than not. I mean, am I wrong?

No, I agree. I agree. I think that sounds good. If I have a good excuse to start booking travel again, even if it's way out into the future, I'll take it. There you go. There you go. I gave it to you. You know, and that's the thing. It's fun too. It's a fun distraction because most of us are used to constantly being in the planning mode of a trip. And right now, obviously, we aren't doing that. So, looking for a chance to be able to do that in the future is, I think, a great way to kind of take your mind off of the situation and imagine a different thing. I saw a post actually on Twitter this morning where somebody said, you know, if travel wasn't a problem, if you could travel to somewhere right now, where would you prefer to be quarantined other than being at home

right now? And so, people are posting all the different places that they've been that they'd love to go back to. Where would you pick? I saw that too. Yeah. You know, I couldn't come up with the answer. I was sitting there kind of racking my brain and then it dropped out of my mind and I didn't come up with an answer. Did you? Well, what jumped in my mind was Ventana Big Sur because I like that recent trip so much but as i thought about a little more i thought i don't know it's so secluded there that i think i'd rather be someplace that has more within walking distance

that you can go do and see no no the idea was if you had to be quarantined somewhere else if you could travel to that place to be quarantined where would you know it right so walking around seeing well quarantine doesn't mean doesn't necessarily mean being stuck in a room does it no not i mean if you're right so i mean yes if i was stuck in a room oh shoot i'd be very happy there especially if i could get that same suite i had at ventana i'll take it yeah well you know that's the thing the first things that came to mind were really nice hotel rooms i thought of the domes of alunda last year and that crazy upgrade i got to the two level suite but then i thought to myself but would i really want to be like stuck there uh because it was pretty small

and um and you know there wasn't much to do apart from look at the, the, the same kind of reaction as me. I guess Hawaii would be it. You know, if I, if I had to be quarantined somewhere, Kauai, uh, Grand Hyatt, Kauai, give me, give me that. I get out and walk around and rent a bike and, um, you know, enjoy some, some time by myself. So I think. Well, in this scenario, will the staff all be there and still serving? That's a good question.

Because if so, I'm going back to Necker Island. There's a winner. It's more fun to think about. Speaking of Necker Island, have you taken a look at availability for Necker Island down the road? I mean, I know you looked at premium cabin award availability in a post this week, but have you looked at anything like that?

No, I haven't looked at that at all. That's kind of interesting. I mean, they only open up, I think it's two or three rooms per celebration week for points. And whether those were already booked prior to all this happening or not, I don't know. Don't know. Yeah. But yeah.

You know, I think that brings me to perhaps where I do potentially see an ethical dilemma and that's in, you know, people trying to book things in the hopes of getting some compensation when they get canceled. And I don't have any hope for that right now at all. I feel like that's the, you know, if there's an ethical dilemma, I'd say it's in booking things, hoping to argue and get something out of it later on when places have to cancel. That's not reasonable to me because obviously, this is out of everybody's control right now. So, you know, we're just going to have to take it day by day and see what happens.

Yeah, for sure. So, are you actually thinking about booking any travel again? And if you are, when are you actually thinking about booking? Obviously, you may or may not be able to travel. We don't know yet when that'll be. Right, right. But are you looking at anything? Yeah, well, so we had a trip to England canceled.

And theoretically, we have Delta credit for the paid flights and i say theoretically because neither my wife nor i can actually find that credit on our delta uh logins and the and so you know i kind of want to call and say hey where to go but at the same time i don't want to tie up any phone lines. So I'm holding off on that this credit that we have to book that flight. Right. And even if we change our mind about the flight, now it's sort of fully cancelable because we get back credit either way. The same as we started with. And but, you know, but we don't have the credit. So it's, it's hard to do. And so I'm kind of waiting for, to hear that the phone lines have become less swamp, but, you know, I don't know when that'll be, you know, maybe with once people are back from being marooned everywhere they are. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's crazy times. I've been seeing some articles here and there about folks who are trapped in places abroad where they just can't get back home right now. And so,

I guess I feel very fortunate to not be in that situation, to have been in one of these rare times when I just wasn't doing much travel anyway. Because a lot of times, I could have been one of those people who are somewhere else and scrambling for a way back home. Thankfully, with miles and points, it probably made it a little bit easier for some of the people that were looking to get home quickly in terms of being able to find some sort of award tickets. But but as things started to shut down and travel bans started to be instituted, I think it's probably become quite difficult for some folks.

So so, yeah, I mean, it's hard right now to know when you can call and what to call about. Because like you said, if you don't have imminent travel, then it seems like it's not a good time to call. But, but at the same time, obviously, you have something that you want to be able to use. So it's tough. The customer service angle of this, I think, has been particularly challenging for a lot of people having to deal with a when to call and what to call about, because I've had people ask me about canceling upcoming travel that is scheduled in April, for instance, when should they call? Should they call now? Should they wait, etc. And then, obviously dealing with the customer service issues once you get

through because things have been changing so much. I mean, policies have changed like nine times. United's schedule change policy, I think has changed at least four or five times already this month. So I can't imagine it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you get an agent that is quoting the most recent schedule change policy or the two or three before that, that happened, you know, like 10 minutes ago. So, um, yeah, so tough. We're constantly hearing from people who are having, are having these customer service nightmares that they're going through because their flight is, you know, they try to cancel a flight and, and the airline tells them you book through an OTA, an online travel agency. So go to the OTA to cancel. And the OTA says, no, go to the airline to cancel. Things like that happen. People get wrong

information from customer service, as you're saying. There's just all kinds of issues going on, even beyond people being stranded, which is probably some of the worst of it. But, um, on the flip side, you have the companies that are bleeding money left and right. And, you know, what, what's the right thing to do to, to, um, you know, you could say, well, they need to fully staff up and have enough customer service to answer all the calls. But with no money coming in, that's a hard sell. And especially to their investors, right? It their business to do. You know, I feel bad for everybody in all parts of that situation, including people who are working customer service. That must be horrible. You know, wanting to help. I'm sure they all want to help you.

And when they tell you something that's wrong or, you know, they can't help you for whatever reason, you know, I believe that's what they believe. Whether or not it's or, you know, they can't help you for whatever reason. I, you know, I believe that's what they believe, whether or not it's true. Um, you know, they're, they're out there doing their best and trying, trying to help all these, all these customers get through this. And it's an impossible situation. We, we saw this, you know, every now and then with, with, uh, sort of smaller scale disasters, like when all the power went out in Atlanta, there were,

there was like all kinds of horror stories with trying to get through to Delta to get things fixed and people stranded everywhere, you know, for example. And so we have any number of, of stories of those kinds of things where we knew the travel industry was not ready for any kind of disaster but who pays for fixing that in advance nobody's nobody's going to do that and so right that's where we're at now we're in a very unfortunate situation and it's it's that those types of disasters on such a large scale now the fact that it's everything and everywhere and everybody you know all of a sudden you went from exactly you know having to put out a fire now and then to everything is on fire and trying to put that all out at once. And like you said,

it sounds like an easy solution, just beef up your customer service. But that's easier said than done. Like you said, when there's no money coming in, that's obviously difficult. And then number two, there are so many different aspects of airline customer service or hotel customer service in terms of the different types of problems people have that I imagine it takes some training for a customer service representative to know the answers to the questions. I mean, at the end of the day, we've all been in that situation where we probably knew more about a specific part of the airline's policy than the agent we were speaking to, right? I mean, we've all had that that experience before all the time and and not only that about training who knows if they're equipped to do online training right for new people coming on board right they'd have to do obviously right now right yeah so yeah probably all in endless endless issues right now with with all these things and so um tough time to be on either end of service yeah

yeah yeah so you know as far as um all right so there's nothing really we can do to as far as i can think of to help people who are in those situations or help that situation i'll add one piece to that be patient as yeah and you know i think that's the best piece of advice be patient especially if you have something that's not particularly pressing. A number of people, for instance, have been curious as to what IHG is doing about their IHG free night certificates. And we haven't heard anything yet, but I imagine that IHG will do something. I'm surprised that it's taken so long. But at the same time, I'm kind of not surprised Southwest just this week at the end of the week here announced that they are extending travel funds for people who had expiring travel funds. And they announced that if your funds already expired since March 1, or will expire up to May 31, they're going to be extended until June 30 of 2021. So like more than a year, a year and a few months. But they said, you know, you're going to need to be a little bit patient as their technology team works to implement that in the computer system to extend everybody's

stuff. And that's a key piece of this, that even when they make a decision behind closed doors somewhere that they're going to do something, it's not necessarily as easy as flipping a switch. You know, you have to make the decision, then you have to communicate that decision, then you have to get the tech people on board to be able to implement the decision, and then you got to get it out to all the people and get them all trained in what the decision is. So there's a lot of steps. So if it's not like imminent tomorrow, if your IHG certificate is expiring like a month from now,

you know, kick back, wait, I bet that they're going to come out with some sort of a solution. And there's not much else you're going to do with it anyway right now. Yeah. Well, I would say even if it's about to expire tomorrow, I would still just wait until all of this. Worst case, yes, you lost that certificate. But I think that's very unlikely. Once they have time to deal with these things again, I think if you... Worst case, even if they have no policy for extending it, I think if you call, talk to a supervisor, maybe even call back, eventually you'll get someone to help you

by giving you points or a new certificate or something. Right. So yeah, hold on. And that's exactly what I was saying earlier. That's why I'm not contacting Delta and I'm not going to do it anytime soon about the missing credits. I'll worry about that later.

I don't want to be part of the problem. Right. Good strategy to have. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that most of these airlines and hotels are working to try to do the best they can in terms of coming out with good solutions. So, so far we've seen fairly customer, customer friendly solutions rather from the ones that have actually been released. So I think we'll continue to see that trend. Right. Right. So is there something that people could be doing now on other fronts? Like, so I was reading Travel with Grant has, he wrote about downgrading his Ritz card to a cheaper Marriott card because it's a travel card and he's not gonna be traveling anytime soon.

Should we all be looking at that? Should we be looking at our credit cards and saying, maybe it's time to cancel or downgrade them? What do you think? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think that if you have an annual fee that's imminent, that's coming up right now, I think it's definitely something you have to consider in terms of downgrading, maybe not necessarily canceling, but maybe downgrading, because in some instances, that might be more advantageous. So, you know, for example, if you've got a Hilton Aspire card, and the annual fee is imminent, and you're saying, well, you know, I'm not going to be able to use the airline credit or the resort credit, and this free night certificate either, then you may consider downgrading that to the no fee Hilton

card, at least we've had that before, because it might give you the chance to upgrade again in the future and earn a bonus for upgrading. So that might not be a bad strategy. On the flip side, I feel like if you're if you're not like imminently seeing these fees coming up, then you know, I think it's time to relax and wait and see what happens because maybe two or three months from now, booking travel will become normal and usual again. Maybe we'll be looking at booking travel for the rest of 2020 or early 2021. I think it's early to make any rash decisions in terms of what you're going to get rid of if you're not under pressure to make the decision. Now, if you are under pressure to make the decision and if you're in that situation where your fees have just posted,

boy, I think it might make sense to downgrade and not necessarily cancel and get rid of the line altogether. You know, if you've got the Ritz card, for instance, and you want to downgrade it to the Marriott card. Okay. I mean, I guess I can see that perspective. You can probably upgrade it back to a Ritz card later on. But with Chase locking you out of most cards, thanks to 524, for a lot of folks anyway, you may not want to cancel it and lose your chance to have a card you can upgrade later on if things do go back to normal.

So I wouldn't necessarily be looking to cancel yet, but I don't know. What do you think? Do you disagree? Well, no, I agree. The question I have is on strategy. Maybe what we should be doing is, which a lot of people do every year anyway, is call and say, I want to cancel, but you have to be careful. Don't say those words when you're talking to a computer because some computers will just be like, okay, done. But if you talk to a person and say that, then there's a good chance that they'll offer you some sort of retention offer, maybe waive the annual fee, especially now. It seems to me, I mean, I haven't heard of this

like being a big thing. I don't know if you have. I have. In fact, yesterday, I read a data point in a Facebook group that somebody called for a retention offer on their Hilton Aspire card. And so that's a card that right now has a $450 annual fee with two $250 credits in the free night start. And they were offered a $300 statement credit, no spend required. Wow. That's nice. That's very nice. Yeah. So 300 bucks to the 150 now out of pocket for the free night certificate and the

potential to be able to use the resort credit and the airline credit, which, you know, keep in mind, you could use that resort credit prepaying for something for next year. So, you know, if you think you are going to travel in 2021, you may be able to prepay for something now and lock in the resort credit for this year. So that's a fantastic deal. So I did at least see that data points. Yeah. So that's what you should be doing before canceling or downgrading is say you want to cancel. Tell an agent that. I don't feel as bad about calling airline, I mean, credit card companies. I don't think they're in the same situation as the travel industry with customer service. Otherwise, I would be hesitant to suggest that right now. But they're probably somewhat business as usual, I would think, at least on the credit card side of things.

Right. They might be seeing a little less spending than usual, but in terms of customer service, I don't think their customer service is taxed any more than the normal right now. So I wouldn't feel bad about that either. And that's a great point that calling in for a retention offer, seeing if there's anything they can do in terms of, you know, incentivizing you to keep the card, you can tell me if you think you want to cancel the card.

I'm just wondering if there's any offers to entice you to keep it. I think that there's nothing wrong with doing that at all. And in fact, I have that on my list of things to do this week with a couple of cards where the fees did just post. So that would be, you're right, the first line of defense, so to speak, the first thing you ought to do, because you may get an offer that makes it well worth keeping that card. And obviously, they'd like to keep your business. So, if that's how they would like to be able to keep it, I think that giving them that opportunity to give you a reason to keep it is a good first step. Yeah. And so, hopefully, they're doing that more now because of the

current situation. And I would guess more a month from now. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Every week that this goes on, I think there's a higher chance that they'll have had time to group together, come up with a strategy. How do we keep our customers with these travel cards? And so. Right. And the time is so key right now, because obviously this is so unprecedented and it's moving quickly. And these types of decisions don't usually happen overnight and right exactly and yet changes are happening overnight every day things are changing right now and it just decisions don't happen that fast at these huge you know multinational companies right right all right here's a here's a hypothetical let's say you call to

uh cancel your aspire card and you're not offered a good retention offer that's a hypothetical so you decide you want to downgrade to the no fee hilton card rather than cancel but you've never had the no fee hilton card before in this scenario so if you downgrade to it you're giving up the chance of a new new sign up bonus for that card what do you do only if you downgrade to it you're giving up the chance of a new new sign up bonus for that card what do you only if you don't apply before you downgrade so so you want to apply new for that card is that what you'd suggest yeah yeah absolutely so the first step you would if you're in that scenario that greg pointed out there the first step would be apply for the no fee hilton card because hey it's not going to cost you anything. And you'll probably be able to hit the spending bonus on that because

I think it only requires $1,000 in the first three months, if I remember correctly. So probably most people will meet that with just general everyday needs, I would expect between now and three months from now. So I would definitely apply for that, earn the bonus. And after you've applied for it and successfully been approved, then downgrade your Aspire card and you can have two of the no fee cards. Okay, a variant on this scenario. You already have five Amex credit cards. What do you do? Oh, because you can't apply for the the new one then in that case so you'd be in a

situation where applying for the new one who would uh not work out you wouldn't you wouldn't get approved for it because you you mx has a limit of five credit cards not charge cards but credit cards uh so i mean i think and tell me if i'm wrong here i think the answer is i think the answer is you cancel your Aspire card and you sign up new for the no fee card. I mean, unless there's some reason, maybe if you have a lot of stuff on auto pay for the other one, you don't want to do that. But do you agree or disagree? Yeah, I agree. Or a potential strategy you might take is applying for the no fee card first, because I think we have heard a data point or two here or there of a person being approved for a sixth, right? So, it might...

Certainly, it's happened to me. Right, right. So, you might apply because then... And give it a try, yeah. Give it a try. And if you're not approved, then call and see if you can cancel the Aspire in order to successfully open the to successfully open the, the no fee. Right. Right. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So what do I do with my, my prestige card that is scheduled to renew here in like a month, I think so that I expect to post like about a month from now or a month from now, what do I do with that? Well, a while ago, about three minutes ago,

I heard Nick and Greg say, wait as long as you can before calling because chances are they'll have some sort of policy in place later. And so the timing works out perfect, I think. If you wait until that fee comes up and then call and say you're thinking of canceling, I think. If you wait until that fee comes up and then call and say you're thinking of canceling, I think there's a good chance they're going to be doing some big things to

try to keep, especially prestige customers. You would think anyway. Everything away from the card, right? So you'd think that at this point, they got to do what they can to keep those customers because I won't be the only person that's questioning whether or not to keep that card this year. So, no, not at all. A few of those phone calls. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they're going to offer something. So, I think the same kind of thing applies for other cards. Now, if you're looking at a card like the American Airlines executive card that the major benefit is Admirals Club access and almost all of the admirals clubs are closed now i think the one at jfk i think is the last man standing right uh i think or or no you know what i think

that's the last it's not like you're going to be going to one anyway if you're not traveling which you're not so exactly it doesn't matter exactly so a card like that i would probably cancel because you obviously can't use the key benefit right now and you can apply a new in the future at some point. So a card like that, I would probably be looking to cancel. If you can't possibly get any benefit out of the card right now, then I would think that's a cancel. How about the general airline cards? Like the United cards or American Airlines cards? I mean, I think the banks have to be scrambling for how are we going to keep all these customers, right?

So it's going to be interesting because once we – I'm predicting a sort of domino effect that one of the companies, maybe Chase tends to be more of a leader than others, at least in the past they have been in many ways. You know, so one of them will come out with like, I think, a general policy about these cards. Maybe it has to do with, you know, refunding half the annual fee or something like that, whatever it is, you know. And then I expect the other companies to follow suit, the other majors. So we could wait for that. Or if your annual fee is coming up, then definitely I think it's worth a call. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's especially the case with those airline cards, because for the most part, Delta cards aside, I guess, for the most part, the main benefit advantage of right now. So, I would think that they're going to have to do something. In most cases, you're only earning one mile per dollar and you're earning these a particular airline's mile. So it's not as valuable as getting a transferable points currency where you can use it for any number of things, including cash back or buying city thank you points or chase alternate awards or amex membership awards rather than delta miles or united miles or american airlines miles so uh

i hope that people aren't looking at it it's like well it's still worthwhile because i'm getting these valuable miles because you could be doing better right you could and and that's a good point that segues me into a question I have for you based on a post that I'm already kind of considering for next week, but now I'm kind of curious about your take on it. So I was asking myself, so what are the key cards to have in your wallet right now? In a time of social isolation when we're not going out to restaurants and probably most of us aren't buying a lot of gas or a lot of those spending categories that perhaps we've counted on in the past or your altitude reserve card that earns, you know, very well when you're using a mobile wallet in person. But right now,

you're probably not spending too much money in person. So what are the key cards to have? What do you think are the best cards to have in a time period where you're mostly stuck at home? Yeah. Wow. That's a really good question. I haven't really thought about it so i don't have an answer um just just yet but one of the funny things that popped into my mind when when you said that is i've always thought it was kind of a silly non-benefit that a lot of cards started offering uh discounts on streaming services or extra bonus points for streaming services because like the ten dollars a month you pay to Netflix. Okay, I'm getting 20 points instead of 10 points.

That is not making any difference in your life, believe me. But that's what popped my mind. It's like, well, those seem a little more valuable now that everybody's- A little bit more, right? Yeah. For Hulu and Netflix and everything else. Right.

I think that's an interesting thing to explore, right? Yeah. What cards do you have? Yeah, I mean, I think that cards at bonus groceries are still valuable because there's certainly, well, grocery stores are mostly open, but also people are either ordering for delivery or ordering to drive and pick up. So those are still valuable.

And restaurant bonuses are still valuable for, again, for delivery or same thing, or driving and picking up. So I think in those two ways, those are still good. I think ultimately, though, you probably probably what do you think i'm thinking now what you want are those ones that bonus online spend and so it's too late to get the at&t access more card which has 3x for online retailers but um there is there are some online options off the top of my head bank of america cash rewards has has a three percent online option up to 1500 spend per quarter i think uh and if you have premium honors platinum whatever rewards with them it becomes like something like 5.25 percent because of the

bonus so that's actually a great one for that. I don't know. What do you think? Are there, you've had more time to think about this? What did I miss? It popped into my mind a little earlier, a couple hours before we started recording this. So, well, one of the first that came to mind is the Rakuten Visa

because people are obviously spending money from home. And I know you've mentioned in the past that it's only one more membership reward point per dollar than you would earn if you were using, for example, the Blue Business Plus, but it is that one extra membership reward point. So that might be a valuable one to have right now for those types of purchases.

And Rakuten is right now offering a bonus on many of the types of things you might be ordering in terms of food delivery or magazines or online courses and that kind of thing. They're kind of bumping up the payback, the payout on those categories right now. So they may have the best cash back to begin with. So you may be going through them anyway. So I may as well get an extra membership rewards point. But then I started thinking about, I don't know. I mean, obviously the double cash is still a good card to have because no annual fee, 2% is your bottom line. So you know, you're going to get at least 2%. But that also made me consider the venture card. Well, is the venture card, perhaps a really good one to have because you're earning miles that hopefully will be useful in the future again, when we can travel again. But at the same time, you have kind of that floor value of 2%, except that 2% is tied to actually using it towards travel, right? But then on the flip side, well, if you're able to book refundable travel, you can cancel later on. And I don't know, is that the things that I've always liked about the, I'm sorry to interrupt you. One of the things that I've always liked about the venture, you know, compared to regular 2% cards like the double cash, used to be a regular 2% card, is that it had no foreign transaction fees. But right now, I don't think too many of us are worried about that right piece of it right so you know yeah so right now the racketing card the

city double cash um are really good options and the double cash especially because now you can convert the points to thank you points so if you want to eventually have miles in the future and it's one-to-one, unlike the venture, right? Good point. So venture, yes, you're getting two points per dollar, but when you transfer in the airlines, you're getting 1.5 airline miles for each two venture miles. So you have access to different transfer partners. So that may be more beneficial depending on which transfer partners you want to transfer to versus city. But you're right with the city double cash, you'd be earning two airline miles. Apart from

that, I think the Amex Gold is a clear keeper at the moment because between four points per dollar on groceries up to 25K per year, I think most of us are spending money on groceries. And then also that $10 a month credit for food delivery delivery which can also be used at box.com right that's right yeah so yeah no right so so the credits that come with cards like the amex gold um are are really valuable right now and maybe some people who looked at the sapphire reserve who already have it i wouldn't say go out and get it for this but if you already have it it maybe this is time to use up your doordash uh credit right right i used i used some of it this past weekend um so yeah i mean i'm definitely already uh on that because obviously you know you have to eat and uh i've actually been trying to avoid

any restaurant food for the most part, but I needed to one night. So I used the DoorDash credit. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and don't forget Amex Platinum cards that have the Uber credit. You could use that for Uber Eats. Right. So there's quite a few cards that you might be saying, well, why the heck do I have them now?

At least make use of the credits, if nothing else. else and then um and then wait and see if amex or whoever chase does anything good for us because they are theoretically travel cards and so hopefully they'll give us some kind of throw us a bone of some sort we'll see hopefully hopefully we can we can hope for the best there anyway i think there's a good chance that we'll see something good uh come out of this in terms of i think so those retention offers. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. So, okay. So I just want to let you know, cause you're probably not aware that we almost had an F-bomb moment about a minute ago, your side of the screen. So this will only make sense to people watching on video, not on podcasts, but your side of the screen turned almost completely green and had little

interesting pixely things happening for a while, but I could still hear you clearly. So that that's good. Yeah. And we didn't lose the, uh, squad cast, uh, recording as far as I know. So, so squad cast at least did not crap out the way it did the last couple weeks that we recorded. That's exciting. Well, and I'm recording my screen on this side too. So this week, maybe I'll be, I'm just going to say maybe, maybe I'll be able to splice them together. So you see my side, cause on my side, I didn't turn green.

So maybe I'll be able to splice those two together somehow and no guarantees, but we'll give it a shot. But, but I'm going to take that cue as a good time to move on to the question of the week, right? Oh yeah. Okay. I thought that's what we were doing. No, that wasn't, that wasn't the question. That was my, just my question. It wasn't even the question of the week. So, so you're going to get a bonus. We were just having a conversation. I thought we were doing the question of the week. No, that's not the question of the week. It just kind of segued me into a question, not the question. All right. Let's, let's get to the question of the week. No, that's not the question of the week. It just kind of segued me into a question, not the question. All right.

Let's get to the question. This better be good now. Well, no, now I'm feeling a little pressure because as soon as I said that, I was like, this probably is not as good of a question, but it's a question that I wanted to ask last week and didn't. And so I'm going to ask this week and it's going to make me feel a little bit like a slacker because I should have looked up the answer in the meantime. And I think that probably you're not going to

know the answer off the top of your head either, but I thought it was a good question. You have so little faith. I know the answer. Okay, good, good. What's the answer? All right. I'm not going to use the 42 joke. Okay. I'm going to wait and hear the question. I thought for sure that was coming. All right. So, the question of the week comes from my favorite frequent miler reader. My favorite frequent miler reader. I know you're not

supposed to have favorites, but I do. Can I say who I think it is? Who is it? Is it Cave Dweller? It is not. No, I'm... Don't get me wrong. We love Cave Dweller. I love you, Cave Dweller. I'm sorry. My wife is my favorite frequent miler reader. All right. Then I don't know who your favorite is. My wife, Greg. Come on now. man oh my wife she's a reader still well she is yes she reads is it because is it is it because you're you're a writer or it or despite that you're a writer on the blog that that's a that's a very good question i'll check in with her on that later on

i'm not really sure which is the better answer but uh It's a very good question. I'll have to check in with her on that later on. I'm not really sure which is the better answer, but we'll work it out later on. This is great because the feedback section was you, and now the question of the week is your wife. You would think we have no readers out there, but we do. So I apologize, guys, to have taken away your question of the week. But I thought it was a good question. So here's the question. Here's what it is. We have a United credit because last year I got bumped. So I got a bump voucher. So I get this bump voucher for like $1,500. And so she read one of our posts about how United is not charging any change fees right now. If you book a flight by March 31st,

they're not charging a change fee to change later on. So she said, well, does it make sense then? Because our credit is set to expire in the fall in October, I think. Does it make sense to book a United flight now? So that way, it'll be changeable for a year from now. Will it extend our credit beyond... Our credit was set to expire in October. Could we book a flight now for a year from now will it extend our credit beyond our credit was set to expire in october could we book a flight now for a year from now and then get like basically a year to change that for whenever it makes sense for us should we use it right now lock it in and get ourselves a little bit extra flexibility yeah well yes right uh why wouldn't you so so the the question is i think there's two questions there one will it work right will it work i guess that's the that's the good you do it right and so uh will

it work i i would i don't have the answer that i think i think it probably will i i mean i'd be i'd be kind of shocked if it didn't work because you did use it within the time period allotted and now you get a free change basically from the new one that should be a year. There's I think they'd have a hard time wiggling out of that. Yeah, I don't know. It seemed like a good, good plan. Initially, I was like, no, that won't work because it's going to expire. They won't let me change it. But then I was like, well, they would have to, wouldn't they?

So I thought to myself, well, I guess then the play for me is to wait until the very end of March to book anything. Because for all I know, they're going to extend that same policy into April or May. And so I'm not going to hurry and use it today. But at the end of the month, if I haven't heard anything by the 31st as to what their plan is for April, then I'll book something on March 31st for pretty far out on the schedule and hopefully be able to then extend my credit a little bit beyond where it would have expired. I think. Yeah. And get some flexibility out of being able to change it. So I'll book something that I think I'm going to fly and then be able to change it if I need to. Yeah.

No, exactly. I think that's great. I think it's going to work and then be able to change it if I need to. Yeah, no, exactly. I think that's great. I think it's going to work. Yeah, I do. Well, there you go. There you go. So for those of you who are sitting on vouchers or credits, now might be the time to book because you might be able to buy yourself a little bit of extra time and extra flexibility.

So I thought that was a good question and probably a good idea. Yes, yes. Good. Great idea. Nick's wife. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll let her know that you said that. And then she's going to tell me that she reads despite the fact that I'm an author. Although that was your post that she read. So there's some evidence she's reading, even when you're writing. Now and then. Okay.

Well, I guess that brings us to the goodbye song, huh? I think it does. I think it does. All right. Well, if you've been listening in. Without a single F-bomb. Without a single F-bomb. Just the threat of an F-bomb.

A near F-bomb. A near miss. So if you've been listening in and you're wondering where you can find out more about what we've been talking about, you want to go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. So that's T H E the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. And that way you can get on our email list, join our Facebook group and subscribe to be able to get the podcast here on

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