Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi Doubles Your Choice | Ep121 | 10-23-21

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

1:05 Giant Mailbag 2:56 What crazy thing . . .triple header! 3:15 What crazy thing . . . did Amex do recently? https://frequentmiler.com/waves-of-amex-shut-downs-this-week/ 4:53 What crazy thing . . . did Cardless do this week? 6:46 What crazy thing . . . did Amtrak do this week? 8:53 Mattress running the numbers: How to lock in the Marriott Amex Offer discount https://frequentmiler.com/50-back-on-200-with-new-marriott-amex-offer-targeted-enrollment-required/ 13:44 Main Event: Citi doubles your Choice https://frequentmiler.com/citi-adds-choice-privileges-to-thank-you-transfer-partners-better-than-11/ https://frequentmiler.com/the-worlds-best-preferred-hotels-bookable-with-choice-points/ 43:42 Question of the Week: Is $15K spend on a World of Hyatt credit card a no-brainer? Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? Time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, City doubles your choice. Double your pleasure, double your fun, double your choice points. Isn't that how the old ad went? That is a very old ad. I remember that from like when I was a wee little ute back in the day. Double choice, double choice, double choice.

I don't know. Maybe that was the more modern version that was like in the 80s or something. I mean, by now it should be like royalty free, right? Shouldn't City be able to kind of, you know, commandeer that? I think so. We'll go with your legal advice there for City. Why not? All right. Enough of that.

We're going to get all into the ins and outs of City allowing double transfers from City thank you points to choice privilege points and all the good things about that, all the bad things about that. But first, of course, we have our giant mail. Last week, we talked about the JetBlue card and how there was an offer to earn top tier status. There is an offer. There is an offer. You're right. Thank you for changing my tense. I'm recording anyway. All right. So yes, there is an offer on the JetBlue card to earn their top tier and only tier elite status, Mosaic, with $15,000 credit card spend. And last week I said that when you

earn Mosaic status, you get 15,000 bonus points. So spending $15,000 on the card is like getting at least 2X everywhere because of the $15,000 at least you'd get from the spend and then the $15,000 from Mosaic. I don't even know where this is going, but I'm going to say that I questioned whether or not that would work. Did I not? You did. You questioned it. And on YouTube, Scott Humphrey says you don't get the 15K bonus points for spending all the way to status. And so, of course, I look that up just to double check. Not that I doubt you, Scott.

Double check, double check. Oh, boy. Someone stop this man. Here's the official rules in JetBlue's own terms. 15,000 bonus points are only awarded to members who qualify for Mosaic by earning 15,000 base flight points or 12,000 base flight points plus flying 30 segments on JetBlue, blah, blah, blah. Spending 15K is not in that list. Okay. All right. So then, ladies and gentlemen, if you've learned anything this week, it's double check double check double check whatever it is so yeah no double points right right so so so luckily i i think it's time for what crazy thing and we've got not a double header hopefully we have a triple header a triple header

what yeah so what song do you have for that i i there is there's no triple header song i don't know so we're safe from that all right uh what what crazy thing did amex do last week or a week before that yeah so you know lots of people know but if you don't know then amex shut down a lot of accounts a lot of accounts they shut down, lots of people know, but if you don't know, then Amex shut down a lot of accounts, a lot of accounts. They shut down a lot of people completely. And it was all people who had a common thread, we think anyway, of having applied for a card through a specific business card representative, an employee of Amex who helps people open credit cards with special offers. And so it seems that anybody who ever opened a card through this one rep has gotten all of their American Express accounts shut down. Yeah. Yeah. So I

guess, I mean, I don't know the full details, but I guess some people were able to take some offers through him and turn them into many more offers than they should have been approved for something along those lines. Right. And so it makes sense that those people would get shut down, but we personally know people who signed up for one card a couple of years ago or whenever with this guy and they got all their Amex cards shut down. So that's, that's a mighty blow. And it doesn't seem like the punishment fits the crime there in the sense that, like you said, there are now plenty of reputable reports of people we know well that had only opened one, one card. Yeah, I mean, it's not like they did anything wrong in opening card. They went through a real business rep and, you know, just signed up.

An employee of American Express. Exactly. I mean, somebody that works for the company that helped them open the card. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that sucks. That was crazy.

All right. Let's move on to more fun stuff. Brighter times. Brighter times. So then what crazy thing did? Cardless do this week. So Cardless. So Cardless.

What's Cardless? They're the company that's crazy every week just because of their name. Because what does Cardless do? They make credit cards, like physical credit cards, but they're called Cardless. Right, right, right. Marketing genius on that one. But that's not what we're joking about right now. This week, last week, I guess, I have a Manchester United card from Cardless.

And I got an email from them about paying my bill. And I'm going to close reasonable. That doesn't seem reasonable. That's not crazy yet. I'm going to quote exactly. I wrote it down exactly. Part of this email.

They said, don't forget your online payment for your Manchester United by cardless card is due on December 31st, 1969. That's how old you are, Greg. Failure to make the minimum payment by the due date could result in negative reporting to the credit bureau. So I am in trouble. That's interesting.

I like it. I like it, cardless. You're going to toss them a little challenge here. You're not going to make it easy. I don't know where they got that. Forget about those three easy payments of 1999. We're going to toss them a little challenge here. You're not going to make it easy. Forget about those three easy payments of $19.99. We're going to make it one really hard payment. Right, right.

Can you imagine if I had any balance on there? It's almost 52 years that I'm late on this payment. I mean, the fees are going to add up on that. I guess, I mean, maybe that's their ruse. They could collect some fees. That's how they make their money. Yeah. So easy payments, hard payment, by the way, that wasn't my line.

I'm sure a few people recognize it. That's a comedian's line. But it fit. It fit. And I think it's very good. Very good. It's better than a commercial jingle. It is.

It is. Hey, hey, hey. All right. All right. All right. Let's move on to our third crazy thing. What crazy thing did Amtrak do this week? What did Amtrak do?

Well, Amtrak. So I took Amtrak last night, the night before we're recording this. So this week I took it. It is. It is pretty crazy, right? I don't ever take Amtrak. There's just not a reason for me usually. But this time there was.

It was, you know, 13 bucks for a five hour trip. I thought that was there was. It was $13 for a five-hour trip. I thought that was a great deal. I actually enjoy train travel. So it's not really crazy. It's calm. It's quiet. It's spacious. Not many people.

Anyway, that's not the crazy part. So I took the train, got there like two hours late. It got delayed. That stunk. I was starving. I didn't give any notice, by the way. They announced at 830 that the dining car was now closed with no prior notice. And we're not getting in for at least another hour and 15 minutes, like late, two hours late as it is. And I mean, come on. At that point, I was hungry.

I would have liked to have known five minutes before you close. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about. That's not the crazy thing. Well, the dining car employees apparently had gone home. Apparently, they were like, no, you know what? We're done. We're not going to be on this train another hour and a half. Forget that. Take my chances in the woods. All right.

So I took the train, got to where I was going and went to sleep for the night, got up, flew somewhere today. And on one of my flights, when I was on the Wi-Fi, I got an email from Amtrak. And the email from Amtrak was to do a pre-trip COVID check to make sure that I'm not sick and I'm safe to travel on Amtrak yesterday. Not as crazy as 1969, Greg, but it does seem a little late to check and see if I'm feeling OK. Right, right, right. I love it. Sorry, other passengers.

Yeah, no, I was fine. I was fine. Thank goodness I was fine. But kind of crazy. I'm trying. Their emails are even farther behind schedule than the trains. Crazy. Well, you know, all the

the shared train tracks and stuff to get your email through can make it takes a while. Thanks. Well, I'm trying. I get it. All stuff to get your email through can make it difficult. Right, it takes a while. It takes a while. I'm a trick. I get it. All right.

So I don't get it at all. I'm a trick. I'm just kidding. All right. So let's move on to mattress running the numbers. So mattress running the numbers this week. I think we had something with Marriott, right? What's going on?

Yeah, it's not really a mattress running analysis this week. What we have is a deal. And what it is, is that there's an Amex offer widely available right now to get $50 back on $200 of Marriott spend. Seems like a pretty good deal. That's a great deal. Because if you spend exactly $200, you're getting 25% back. And so that's better than usual. Marriott offers aren't all that unusual, but usually they're at 20%. And so 25%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, normally it'd be like 50 back on 250 or 40 back on 200. So 50 back. Do all the variations. I mean, I could, I could,

20% is how it comes out. No magic there. Double 10%. Right. Double. Another nice thing about it this time is that at least I'm seeing it on all of the Marriott cards in my household. And often it appears more on the other cards and not on the Marriott cards. So that's great because if your spend is at a Marriott, you're getting the Marriott 6X, you know, with your Marriott card and also getting the $50 back. So before we talk about spending in the Marriott, let me just ask another question that I'm sure somebody is thinking right now.

What happens if you have this Amex offer on the, the brilliant card that gives you $300 back at properties? Like do they stack? They should, they should. I believe they will. Okay. Yeah.

There's always some question of whether they might like try to claw back part of that rebate. Um, I don't think that would happen in this case, but I haven't heard of it happening. And there's been enough time. I'm pretty sure I've done this before and I haven't seen any clawbacks, but all right. Anyways, but anyway, that's not, that's not why it's on mattress. Right. It's on mattress during the numbers.

Cause it's a pretty good deal. 25% back. That's about as good as it gets. And, and we really just wanted to remind people of a little trick. I mean, it's pretty widely known, but not everybody knows it, which is basically, there are a lot, there are some Marriott hotels, Marriott hotels that sell Marriott gift cards. And if you buy the gift card at the front desk, it all codes correctly so that it would trigger the Amex offer. Of course, you have to pay with the Amex card where you registered the offer to,

but the point is it's not unusual for me to load up like three Amex cards, one on my account, one on my wife's, one of my son's, and go to a Marriott hotel that sells gift cards and say, I want $600 worth of gift cards and pay $200 on each, get in this case, 25% back, which is a great deal. Yeah. 150 bucks back. I mean, that's basically like for a free night somewhere probably. So I mean, that's a great deal. And Greg mentioned, he corrected himself from a lot of properties. He said some properties sell gift cards, but they should take it a step farther. Some properties sell gift cards and some employees at some properties that sell gift cards know how to sell the gift cards. So true story. Because we've definitely run into more than one before who was like, okay, I know we sell them,

but I don't know where they are. And then when they find them, they're like, okay, I don't know how to load it. And so, yeah, no, last time I was at a Marriott where I asked to buy gift cards, I knew they did sell them. Two different employees on two different days tried to help me to buy them and ended up, I had to wait until the third day when the, when the manager was there who could figure out how to actually do it. Marriott makes that really complex somehow. It seems that gift cards really seem to kick their when the manager was there who could figure out how to actually do it. Yeah. It makes that really complex somehow. It seems to be gift cards really seem to kick their butts,

whether it's buying them or redeeming them. It doesn't matter. So if you go to redeem them, by the way, if you haven't redeemed Marriott gift cards before, you need to give them a heads up. Like you got to tell them before, like don't,

don't bring it to checkout. Like you're trying to get to your flight and you're looking to just pay with your gift card and swipe. And it's going to come off the gift card. Like the way gift cards work in 2021, because it doesn't seem to be that way in Marriott. You've got to give them like an hour, two hours, half a day to figure it out. Yeah. It doesn't always take that long, but yeah, it's a good idea just to be sure.

You don't want to cut it too close. You don't want to cut it too close. You don't want to be in a hurry. Give them your gift card. Exactly. but yeah, buying it, you just go to the front desk and ask. And if they have them and it doesn't matter if you get a courtyard one, you can use that at like a St. Regis or whatever else. It doesn't matter what it's branded on the card. So wherever you find one, but, but don't go out driving around, call them first. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. Right. And then hopefully once you find one in your town that that sells or near your town that that sells them, hopefully you can become a regular as these things pop up, assuming you have enough Marriott spend to make it worthwhile.

OK. So then I think I think that brings us to a double. I know I won't even know. I'll stop. I'll stop. It is time for the main event. Right. The main event. City doubles your choice. Okay. So, City, we've said many times that unlike other transferable points currencies, City Thank You Points have no hotel partners.

You can't transfer City to any hotel programs. You couldn't. It was true. It was true for a very long time. We used to be telling the truth when we said that. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Citi can transfer to choice privileges, which in itself we would be unenthusiastic. Lukewarm. Lukewarm. Yeah, lukewarm. I mean, having transfer options is always better than nothing, but since there's a way to indirectly buy choice points for 0.8 of a cent each, when you transfer transferable points one-to-one to choice, it doesn't feel like a good deal. It feels like you're getting less than a penny per point value, even if you're redeeming those points for better than that value, because you could have bought them with cash for

that little. But now we've got this one to two thing. So that whole worrying about, oh, it's cheaper to buy goes out the window because you'd have to pay 1.6 cents per two choice points, basically, to do the same. That's a good value for city points. And when I last looked at the value of choice points in the US, just looking at averages, not trying to cherry pick good value awards or anything. I found that points were worth about seven tenths of a cent each. But that means that thank you points when used for choice are going to average about 1.4, which is pretty good. I mean, it's not bad. It doesn't make me wildly crazy and excited, but it certainly is a lot better than redeeming your points for one cent each or for gift cards or something like that. Again, one cent each or sometimes even less type of redemption you do.

So, I mean, it's a solid not bad redemption at 1.4 cents. At 1.4. At the average value. But let me get you more excited about this. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. So first of all, Choice doesn't have an award chart, but I was poking around all kinds of properties all over and things like New York City on New Year's Eve. And it seems like for the regular types of

properties, 30,000 points is their max. It seems like as far as I was finding. That sounds about right. That's about as I think I've ever seen them. Yeah. And that includes, that includes their like higher end ascend collection and their, I don't know what else, but so, you know,

that means that if you think of it as like the city from the city, thank you point of view, you're topping out at 15,000 points. That's dirt cheap to book any hotel, pretty much. I'm going to explain the pretty much part later, but almost any hotel in the Choice Collection, only 15,000 points a night. How can you not be excited about that? Because they're Choice hotels. I mean, if it's a nice place, fine. But I stayed at lots of choice properties for years. So I'm not against a Comfort Inn or a Clarion or whatever. I just don't get that excited about it. I mean, if I'm going to take 15,000 city points that I could transfer to Turkish Miles and Smiles and spend hours trying to book a round trip ticket to Hawaii,

I would rather have the round trip ticket to Hawaii probably than a night in the local Comfort Inn, right? Well, so but they have their Ascend collection. They've got those boutique things. There was that one in California you did. There's that was nice. The Hotel Napa or something. Yeah, the nice peacock in I did in Princeton, New Jersey.

I looked that up today. Now, here's the other thing to get excited about. Choice, when rooms are available at their regular properties for points, they don't seem to care which room you get for that many points. So if the hotel costs 30,000 points per night, they're going to charge you that much for a queen room in the corner with no view. And they're going to charge you that much for the king suite with the view and everything. And so there are times where that can create amazing value. The 0.7 I mentioned before, seven-tenths of a cent value, that was based on

the idea of the alternative would be booking the cheapest room in the hotel. But in reality, you're going to pick whatever the nicest room available is, right? So I looked at the Peacock Inn for a random date and I saw that one of the rooms that was listed there, they call it the penthouse suite. Same price as any other room. Yeah, that's crazy. Is that a set rule everywhere in choice? Because I feel like I've seen situations, I think, where they weren't all available, but I've definitely seen situations where all the rooms were. Like that Hotel Napa Valley that I stayed at also, we booked the two-bedroom hotel, Napa Valley that I stayed at. Also, we booked the two bedroom suite for the same price as a regular room.

So, uh, same kind of thing. It was just like, but what it's the same. It was 12,000 points at the time. I think it's more now, but, but so yeah,

I mean, the choice does have some oddities like that. They have some nice properties now and then, then they have the Cambria hotel in Boston. Then I stayed at last night. That was fine. I'm just glad that nobody's drug testing me today. and they have the Cambria Hotel in Boston that I stayed at last night. That was fine. I'm just glad that nobody's drug testing me today because I'm not sure that I would pass the way

that the scent was just going through the hotel. Oh my goodness. It was so, yeah. So a little perk they didn't even advertise for. Right, they did not advertise that one. So I mean, it was fine. So wait, wait, there's more. There's more.

All right. There's more. So blue green vacation rentals. So if you prefer to stay in nice condos and in resorty type areas, they have those vacation club type of things where they try to sell people on the timeshares. But when they have excess inventory that the timeshare people aren't staying and they rent these out through choice. And you could either pay cash or you can book these things for at most, as far as I could tell, 30,000 points per night.

This includes like three bedroom apartments. I mean, that's pretty nice. That's pretty good. And I've heard good things. I've heard good things about blue green vacations. Some people that have stayed there, I feel like they have some fans in the points blogosphere. People who say, oh, don't talk about it because it's a well-kept secret. But that does sound appealing.

I mean, think about this. If you could find a three-bedroom apartment in a place you want to be for 30,000 points a night, that's 15,000 thank you points per night, 5,000 points per bedroom. Yeah. And this is a heck of a deal. It does sound good. I don't know. Did you look at the cash rates? Is it, is it a good deal though? I mean, is it just a lot of space or is it a good deal compared to what these things actually cost? Yeah. I mean, so, so the, the cash rates I've been seeing, um, when I've been like poking around some of the nicer looking things tend to be you're getting over one cent per choice point value. That means over two cents value with your thank you points. One extreme thing I saw was about two cents per choice point value.

So you're looking at about four cents, you know, thank you point value. So there are, there are some of those extraordinary values out there. For those who know the choice program, you're, you're probably yelling at your speaker right now saying, but there's all these problems yet. We're going to get to that, but first I'm going through the good stuff. We haven't gotten to the bad stuff yet. it's all good it's all good for the first half of the show i mean that is pretty good so you know you got you got some of your nicer properties your son collection cambria stuff like that uh and free breakfast free hot breakfast i think i think it all of the i don't know i could be wrong about that but i'm pretty sure hot breakfast at all the properties at least it used to be that way. I don't know. It was like back when double your pleasure, double your fun, double my dumb was around.

I was like, that's when it was like free breakfast. So I don't know. It's been a while. It's been a minute. I don't know if that's true or not. I can't remember if I got free breakfast in Princeton, but anyway. Anyway. All right.

So you got your blue green vacation. Well, there's more. All right. Yeah. I'm not done. Talk to me. Choice has a partnership with preferred hotels and resorts. Preferred hotels and resorts are some seriously nice

properties. I'm not talking about like Princeton boutique nice, although there are those that level I'm talking about, like the types of hotels that show up in the best hotels in the world list, the really seriously nice ones. But not all preferred hotels are available through choice. There's a little more than half of the preferred hotels in the world are available through choice to book with points. Of those, I will admit some of the nicest of the nicest that I found out there were not available through Choice, but there's still some great ones. Like, I don't know if you know the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, if you've heard of that. But that's a sort of a well-known resort that is available, you know, to book with Choice points. And so there's some seriously nice places. They max out the point

price at 55,000 points per night, which before when choice points couldn't be gotten as easily as now with Citi, 55,000 seemed kind of steep to me. Like, so I didn't like, you know, when, when, cause you, if you'd look at it, if you'd say, oh, well, the property costs $500 a night, or I could spend 55,000 choice points and getting a little bit less than one cent per point values. And that's not that great, but now you're, you're looking at getting almost two cents per point. Thank you. Point value.

And suddenly it's really good. And you get to stay in some really luxurious places um so so i find that really exciting actually um all right then there's also all right there's also some a little less excited but there's there's uh all inclusives as well and they have a bunch of all-inclusive properties. Those appear to go up to 100,000 points per night, though, from what I was just looking at. So there, I'm not seeing value in that. When I looked at the point prices versus the cash prices, it was like, even starting with Citi, it didn't look that good in the few examples I found. It was hard to find examples though,

because most places are sold out in the near future, which gets us, I think, to some of the cons. I don't mind choice. I like having it as a backup because last night I stayed at a choice property in Boston because the Hyatt that I really wanted just wasn't available for a standard room. And I had some Marriott free night certificates, but I was like, it doesn't really matter where I stay tonight. And I got these choice points that I bought real cheap in daily getaways for half a cent each. Oh, this camera is 20,000 points, $100 worth of points. Okay, that's better than wasting a free night certificate. So I'll hang on to the free night certificate, hopefully for a slightly better use. So I usually look at them as a backup

program to book something at the last minute. Like when I haven't decided when I'm sitting at the train station, waiting for my delayed train and trying to decide where am I going to sleep tonight because I have a flight tomorrow. So that's when I typically like to use them. And it's not just because I like to use them that way. It's because that's kind of the way they're the most useful, right? Because you can't use them too far in advance. You can't use them to book most of their hotels more than 100 days in advance. I said most of because some of the preferred hotels through that partnership are bookable more than 100 days out. But even those, most of them are not bookable.

So it's a very strange situation, but that's like three months. You can book like three months. And I think that the biggest downside of that to me is, is with the blue green vacation rentals, because it's hard to find availability on, on those. And especially if, if you're wanting to book at a like, you know, holiday time or some other, like, you know, very popular time, people who are booking with cash or who, or who have, you know, timeshare, um, thingies will, will book up those places a year in advance and you're stuck. So it really is just like, ah, you have to get lucky. I think to, to find that opportunity. I find that really, really unfortunate.

Cause I think that would be such a nice way to spend your, your thank you points is with blue green vacations. If the location matches where you want to go. Yeah. I mean, I think you have to either be lucky or highly flexible, right. Where you're not like, okay, I definitely want to stay here at this time of year. It's more like, well, I can take off a week whenever, and I'll look three weeks from now, there's something that's available and I haven't been there before. Okay. Why not?

That's you'd have to probably do it that way with blue green. I would imagine because, you know, otherwise, like you said, any place that's popular is going to be booked up more than three months in advance. So, um, so that's, that's a definite downside. Now I don't typically find that to be a huge deal with hotels, you know, obviously if you want to be able to book a year in advance, that's an issue, but, but I don't typically find that it's that tough to find a hotel room three months in advance. And because choice often does make all of those various room types available, you just need the place to not be sold out. So, you know, as long as you're not going for the Super Bowl or something crazy like that, I feel like you can usually find one. I agree. For the regular hotels, that's true.

Another thing I found when poking around the all-inclusives is they don't seem to have that rule about any room is available. So I found plenty of examples where there were rooms available for cash, but nothing available for points, which tells me they are definitely limiting it more like other hotel chains do. It's not like, you know, it's not really a slam against choice in that case, but it does make, it does make it really hard with that hundred day thing. Yeah. So yeah. Cause someone, someone messaged me earlier today about like, you know, hoping that a certain property would become available and, you know, later, cause they're wanting to book in may and there's nothing they could do until a hundred days out. And that's, yeah, that's really unfortunate. Um, book someplace else. You book someplace else and hope that, uh, you know, that has a cancellation policy you can

live with and hope that this place opens up. You know, I often am booking backups. So, you know, that's something that if you don't usually do or you aren't used to doing, then that's something that is, you know, another tool to put in your belt that, okay, I'm going to book two or three places. And then you have to keep track of it, I guess, and make sure you remember to cancel whatever you have to cancel, but that way you continue to look for availability. Right. Yeah. No, that's a great thing to do. And something I would do too, I do do whenever I have those kind of unsure situations. So one last,

I guess, negative is that these preferred hotels that I'm really pumped about having access to at reasonable rates, they're not the easiest thing in the world to book. You just made that sound much easier than it sounded in the messages you typed in the moments after getting off the phone. I'm just going to say that it seemed like it was not that painless. Booking a preferred hotel through choice with choice points was one of the most painful times in my life. And you complained about emailing Turkish miles. Oh man. I spent hours on the phone and, uh, is this on, is this thing on? I suddenly had a, what I thought was a microphone issue, but it sounds like we're still going. Um, I spent hours on the phone trying to, you know, get these people to agree, first of all, that there was such a thing as booking a preferred hotel with choice points. The guy who was telling me,

oh, you can't book that. I'm going to have, I'm going to transfer you to Expedia. And I was just like, no, no. They hired that guy from Turkish Miles and Smiles. I think that was a hire away. Headhunter found that guy. They're like, oh, we got a place for you over here at Choice. Expedia, what? Yeah. And that guy would not transfer me to his supervisor, no matter what I said. I don't know if he gets demerits. if he does float someone up to the supervisor something something bad obviously happens to the first line people if they if they transfer you because he would not do it no matter what um the next guy was very very nice not that i mean the first guy i guess seemed nice it just didn't seem so nice when he would transfer me to his supervisor uh second guy was very nice

he had actually heard of this partnership and everything. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not get his computer to do anything useful about it. At one point, he sent me a link. He was like, I got it. He sent me a link through email. He said, click this and you'll be able to book it yourself. And I was really excited. I was like, oh, my God, I found, you know, I got a magic way in and this will be how like we'll book them in the future.

It was a link to the, to the site that shows you the point prices, the same one that I used in the first place. The reason you, the reason you knew there was a partnership because it's on there. That's why I'm calling you because it's there and it says to call you. Can't do it myself. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was really hard. I mean, I mean you know when when you're two hours in and wishing you're booking a uh Turkish award on United instead that it's really really hard no you said I mean so so is that worth it then I mean is that exciting yeah I mean like if you can't really book it it's gonna take you hours on the phone. Yeah. So here's what I think is going to happen. I think that my post about it, I think that

the value you get now, I mean, you only need 27,500 city points for the most expensive of these properties per night. That's an incredible deal. I think a lot of people are going to start doing this. And I think more and more reps will, through the process, learn how to handle it. So I'm predicting that in a couple months, it's not going to be so painful. We will see. Hopefully that's true. I mean, it certainly may well be true. So we can hope for the best on that. You know, I think I still need to look at this. Just like Turkish, isn't that what happened with Turkish? Well, yeah, right, right, right.

Much easier. It got too easy. That's the problem. They were like, oh, no, no, guys, take that button off. Take away the button. We don't want to book it online. You're crazy. Take that button out of there.

So, yeah. So hopefully it doesn't go the way of turkish smiles and smiles right choice if you're listening we were joking about the turkish thing it's not a suggestion it's a joke okay not a suggestion all right so so preferred hotels could be good gonna be a pain so you gotta you know like get yourself ready get yourself in that mental space to get on the phone and spend a couple of hours trying to book something and being told unreasonable, nonsensical answers like, I'm going to transfer you to Expedia to book your award with your choice points. Right. Right. You know, I guess the optimist in me says, well, maybe this value will last longer because it's so hard to do.

So if you got to really want it. Yeah. It sounds like you do. You know, I think that the thing that I'm mentally struggling with, and this is probably my own silliness, but is the Turkish thing though. Cause yeah, I mean, you're talking about 27,500 city points, like great deal. And I get why, because Hyatt properties top out at like 25, 30,000 for the most part. And I don't blink at paying 25,000 Hyatt points per night for a nice Hyatt, but like I'm struggling to think about transferring almost enough for two round trip tickets anywhere in the U S for one single night at a preferred. I mean, you're going to have to, you're gonna have to write me a really good review

of your fantastic preferred hotels day for me to want to give that up. I think that the thank you points for that. Yeah. See, I don't get that. Cause that sort of assumes that it's like a zero sum game where, where like, or it sort of assumes that if you don't spend it on hotels, you're going to, you're going to really spend all of your thank you points on United flights booked with Turkish. I mean, maybe, I mean, I don't know about you, but I've got many hundreds of thousands of thank you points. I know that's not typical for our listenership,

but in my case, like, you know, how many how many trips, how many flights could I go on before it became a problem that I booked a few a few nights with my. All right. All right. All right. Yeah, I mean, that's true. And if you're flashed with lots and lots of thank you points. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. I mean, that's true. And if you're flushed with lots and lots of thank you points, then yeah, that makes sense that we wouldn't value them the same way, but it's also the issue that you don't really value star Alliance flights all that much because you live in a Delta hub.

And so you're always looking for the non-stops to Europe and that kind of thing. Whereas I do value star Alliance flights a lot more because typically if I'm flying internationally, I fly to New York. And so I look at it, I'm like 45,000 points for a business class ticket to Europe, 49 to the Middle East. And so like every two nights, I'm looking at like a valuable number of points. Now, of course I say that. And like I said, I don't think about that so hard with Hyatt. I don't know why, I guess maybe because Hyatt, the ancillary benefits are also really good. Do you get anything at preferred hotels? Do you get

free breakfast or parking or any benefits? Is there any like elite status? Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I think a lot of them probably do offer breakfast, but it's just going to depend on whatever the hotel does as their standard thing. Yeah. So I'm curious. We'll have to see which properties come up and what great values people find. I'm excited to hear what readers find here and the properties that they review as they start to book something. So I'm sure that my hesitation here is me, but I'm sure there are a lot of readers that are in your shoes, actually, with lots of thank you points. They're like, oh, awesome. This is something pretty good

to do with thank you points. Right. Well, there's also, you know, I think there's a lot of, um, people who have thank you points, who their travel style is such that they'd, they'd rather use points for, um, lodging and certainly not the preferred hotels part of this, but the other stuff where you can maybe book like a suite for the same amount of points, or you could book multiple bedrooms for families traveling. I think that's huge. No, it is. And I value a suite.

So I can hear that. That makes some sense to me. And also hotel points in general are hard to collect in quantities that are meaningful or with good multipliers. And so here you look at the premier getting three points per dollar at the grocery store, restaurants and gas and stuff like that. And it's like six choice points per dollar. That's, that's not bad. So that that's pretty good, I guess. You know, I struggle also though, a little bit with the fact like you were talking before about redeeming for, you know, your choice points, using them and getting like one or two

cents per choice point in value, except you're and getting like one or two cents per choice point in value, except you're not really getting one or two cents in value, right? Because you're getting eight tenths of a cent per choice point, no matter what, because you could buy them at that price, right? So even if it doesn't matter what you redeem them for, because you could have bought them for eight tenths of a cent a piece, right? Wow. I feel like you're mixing up a couple of things there. So here's an example I gave somebody else recently, something totally different. I feel like you're mixing up a couple of things there. So here's an example I gave somebody else recently. It's something totally different. I said, so if a hotel costs $1,700, this hotel stay you want to stay, or it costs 100,000 points, right? Or you can buy the points for $800, right? If you were starting at zero, right? You had no

points, whatever else, how much are you going to pay for the hotel? You're not going to pay $1,700. You're going to buy $800 worth of points, right? I mean, so it's not, you're not getting $1,700 in value. I mean, you're getting $800 in value, right? Sure. I mean, it's a little more complicated because you have to start with some points

in order to do the trick to buy the money. But still, even given your thing, I mean, sure, you could say that the value of the thank you points is capped at 1.6 based on that logic. Which is not bad. But I mean, then you should be, I guess, arguing similar things when, like, if you're talking about a great deal with LifeMiles, because LifeMiles is so often, you know, purchasable at very low rates. It does kind of cap it out. And I, and I, I struggle sometimes with the idea of should I transfer to life miles and I have transferred to life miles, but I always feel a little bad about it. Cause I'm like, I could buy those

pretty cheaply. So do I really want to like redeem my points for that kind of value? I do think about it when I do it anyway. And, and so I, you know, I. And so I struggle with getting caught in that trap where I say those preferred hotels aren't worth $550. Those are $275 a night hotels because you could buy it. Well, not $275. I'm sorry. I was doing that based on half. So I should have been doing it based on. Right.

It's more like four something. Which is pretty nice, I guess. So it's still not a bad deal, I guess, for your 27,500 points, especially if there are nice places. But I struggle a little bit, though, with not wanting to overvalue because you can't buy the points. Right. But even if we go with your thing that's capped at 0.8, I mean, that means the city points are capped at 1.6, which is, I think, a very good value to redeem your point set. It is. I'm happy to do that.

It is. So I'm looking forward to all of the future bottom line reviews of all of the choice properties you're going to stay at because I know there's not going to be any more Hyatts in your future, no more Marriotts because you're going to get such great value with your thank you points. We'll see. I mean, there's a difference between me being excited about preferred hotels and actually ending up at many of them. I do have this one booking, which I really, really, really hope that I'm going to actually

be able to stay there because if I have to call 12 people in order to change it or cancel it. Good luck changing or canceling it. Oh, yeah. I do not want to do that. I think I'd rather call Turkish and see if they could cancel it for me. I mean, you might have about as good luck. You never know. They probably are about as likely to be able to do that as they are to book a United flight for you.

That's for sure. So. All right. So so this is I as much as I'm talking down, I'm trying to provide a little bit of devil's advocate here. But but I think overall, this is good good and and the nice thing is that even for those like roadside hotels where you need a night when you're driving somewhere this is great right because you're going to probably pay no more than 20 000 choice points for a night like that so yeah i mean many of them are 10 or 12 000 which is like you know like no city points right right how long did the transfer take though? It was instant from city. Yeah. There you go. So perfect. So then that's nice too, because then if you need something right now, which is probably the case, since you can't book more than a hundred days in advance,

then you can do that. That's right. It's good that it doesn't take a hundred days to transfer. Right. Right. That would be a bit of a bummer. So do you think that this will encourage choice? Do you think choice, there's any chance that choice will change that at some point here? The 100-day thing? The 100-day thing, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what would be their motivation.

Why would this encourage them to do that? I don't know. I mean, are they going to be happy that people are suddenly redeeming lots of choice points or, or buying lots of choice points effectively? Cause I mean, obviously city's paying them something for the points, right? So they'd be happy and be like, you know what? We can make a lot of money selling points to city. Maybe we should make this a little bit easier to book. You listening choice?

My guess is that the a hundred day thing is actually something that they tell the hotel owners. That is a good thing, right? That you're not going to lose any sales until it's getting closer to the time of stay. And that's when you're going to be worried about filling up the rooms anyway. So yeah. Speaking of that and the hotel owners and stuff, by the way, we always talk about this with choice, but if you're new to choice and haven't paid attention to it before, great value for choice points in Scandinavia. So that's something we've always talked about, but if you didn't know that you should, because a lot of properties in, first of all, Scandinavia can be very expensive to visit. Hotels are ridiculous.

And so you can get good value for choice points period, just for the cost of the room. But then there's also a number of those Nordic choice properties that offer free breakfast and free dinner, which again in Scandinavia can be a big money saver. Right. And didn't you say most of those are 16,000 points a night? Yeah, there's a whole lot of them are. So that's only 8,000 city points per night.

Yeah, that's amazing. In Scandinavia and get all your meals? Are you kidding me? Right, right. That's amazing. True, true. It is, it is. Even though you could buy them

for 8,000 cents a night. It's true. It's still amazing. Okay. Okay, All right. So then that, I think that brings us mostly to the end of. Yeah.

That's the end of the. Okay. All right. So then do you have a post-rose lined up? You know, I didn't do my homework. So. All right.

Okay. No post-rose this week, but I do have a question of the week. So the question of the week was, was intriguing to me. So JW sent this one in a few days ago via email and said, hi, I've been wondering this for a while. Why do you and Greg think spending $15,000 on the Hyatt card is a no brainer? I understand the benefits of 15,000 spend on the Hyatt card.

It'll give you an expiring free night Hyatt certificate up to category four worth up to 15,000 points and other 15,000 points from the spend and some elite night credits. He actually did the math wrong. It should be six elite night credits. Anything else I'm missing? Is it not better to buy $15,000 worth of fee-free visa gift cards at Staples or Office Mags with a Chase Inc card yielding five points per dollar. Doing so will yield you 75,000 non-expiring Chase points when transferred to Hyatt. That's worth five Category 4 nights and five Elite Night credits

when you stay versus the Hyatt card giving you maybe six Elite Nights and just the two free nights. Additionally, if you like to use some or all of the 75,000 points from the staple spend at a high category one, you could get up to 15 stays and 15 elite night credits. No doubt you and Greg have thought of this alternative is my,

my premise that you both consider the 15 K spent on the high card and no brainer, just wrong. It seems to me that spend on a chase ink card for staples gift cards usable anywhere is more rewarding and more flexible. What am I missing? Thank you for enlightening me. So what do you think? Yeah, I don't disagree with anything JW said. I mean, if you have the inclination, the ability to liquidate all those gift cards, you're close enough to the office supply stores that sell the gift cards when there's those free, free deals and you have a Chase Inc card, all those things line up and you

have to pick which way you're going to go with your $15,000 spend, then yeah, obviously that's a way better way to do it. I don't know. Obviously, that's a way better way to do it. I don't know. I don't know that I ever called it a no-brainer, but maybe I have it in context of a conversation. I remember it came up at some point that we said it was a no-brainer. But I thought GW's point was fair.

I feel like a lot of people that have the Hyatt card do consider it a no-brainer to spend the 15K and get the free night certificate, but it's really not, is it? No, I mean, right. So there's a lot of people that don't, though, do much manufactured spend buying gift cards and liquidating them, a lot of people. Right. So, you know, for them, especially if they're seeking high elite status, spending the 15,000 on the card gets you good value because you're not just getting those six elite nights and the 15,000 points, as you said, you're also after it's more like, so, so it's more like after 15,000, it's, it's, it's like a negative no brainer. Like it's a, it's a brainer, not a no brainer. Or, or really less than 15,000. Right. I mean, it's because it'd be right. Whether you spend anything on it below. Yeah. Yeah. It's really like an only $15,000 card, right? I mean, you could spend 5,000 for the two elite nights i guess but you know where we might have talked about as

no-brainers if you signed up new the the the welcome bonus is currently structured such that you have to spend fifteen thousand to maximize it and then plus you're also getting those other things we talked about so in that context it probably is a no-brainer. So in the average year though, is that, I mean... In the average year? No, I don't think it's a no-brainer. I think that the card is worth keeping without any spend at all because the annual free night certificate you get without any spend is worth more than the annual fee. And as long as you use it every year, you're going to get decent value from your card. So I think whether or not you're spending a lot on the card, 15,000 or more depends on a lot of factors. Not a no-brainer.

Right. And it's worth mentioning, I think too, that one of the examples that JW gave here was that you could use those points earned from your staples shenanigans for category one nights and end up with more elite nights. And that may be true if you have a category one where you can check in because, you know, we know that sometimes I know probably there's some people that have found ways to do it remotely, but for the most part, you have to check in in person at the hotel. So you got to have a category one near you. So, so there's some additional inconvenience there where you got to be there and it's got to have a category one near you. So, so there's some additional inconvenience there where you got to be there and it's got to fit into your schedule and not

get checked out early. And so there are some headaches there in terms of making that happen. So I can certainly see the appeal for somebody who's like, well, you know, I can't quite make it to 60 nights, but I want the 60 night Hyatt benefits. I want globalist status. And so I can put 15 K spend on this card, get a valuable free night's trip, get some decent points. And see that that's me. So I'm like, you know, oh, I could pay 2% to pay my taxes and just knock this all off all at once, whatever, you know, I'm lazy. I'd much rather do that than run out to the store back and forth and worry about liquidating the gift cards and then, you know, all the things that can go wrong along the way with that process.

I don't like doing all that. So if I'm getting better value than, you know, the fee, if I, if I've calculated that out and said, I'm going to pay a fee to generate that much spend, but it's worth it because I'm getting the points and getting the elite nights and getting the free night certificate. I'm happy to go that route. Yeah. You know, I can hear you there. I do do some of the, that shenanigans that you're talking about there, JW, but, um, but to me though, so here's the way I look at it, which is slightly different yet. I'm going to do that. I'm not going to not do that stuff. I'm going to, I'm going to do that. I'm, but I'm also going to spend the 15 K probably on the Hyatt card.

And the reason there is because like my legit spend will go on something like the Hyatt card or other kinds of MS that aren't at Staples will go on the Hyatt card in order to hit the spend on that. So it's not one or the other. I'm in the both categories. So there you go. There you go. That's it. That's all I got to say about that. That was our question of the week. So that,

I think that brings us to the end. The end. That's very sad. And is near. So thank you guys very much for being there with us or being here with us today. We always appreciate it. If you enjoyed what you've been hearing about today and you would like to get our posts in your email inbox,

you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again. that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on social media. We're on Instagram. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. Wherever you're listening or watching or whatever this show, make sure that you turn on notifications and you subscribe and like it and leave us a comment and all of those things that help the algorithm out so other people can discover this fine show as well, or just tell your friends. Thank you very much. And we'll see you guys next week.

Bye everybody.