Frequent Miler on the Air - Delta Devaluations and Sweet Spot Awards | Ep86 | 2-19-21

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

00:40 Giant Mailbag: "It's like a 21c hotel on steroids" 3:52 What crazy thing...did Nick's wife do this week? 10:07 Mattress running the numbers: Last call for a Hyatt mattress run https://frequentmiler.com/ludicrously-easy-path-to-hyatt-globalist-status-top-tier-status-for-2-years/ https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-cash-or-points-worksheet/ 16:50 Mattress running the numbers: Planning your Marriott mattress run https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-launches-easy-elite-status-for-2021-and-cheaper-saver-awards/ https://frequentmiler.com/official-word-marriott-mixed-paid-award-stays-will-earn-double-credit/ 22:20 Main Event: Delta devaluations and sweet spots https://frequentmiler.com/delta-miles-are-worth-less-on-my-mind/ Delta devaluation for partners to Europe: https://frequentmiler.com/ouch-big-delta-devaluation-on-partner-awards/ 40:12 Good uses of Delta miles: https://frequentmiler.com/best-uses-for-delta-miles/ 50:45 Post Roast: I spy with my little eye...missing updates from the SeatSpy post! https://frequentmiler.com/seatspy-an-awesome-tool-for-finding-ba-and-virgin-award-flights/ https://frequentmiler.com/lie-flat-to-hawaii-how-to-use-seatspy-to-find-saver-awards/ 55:58 Question of the Week: Does it make sense to get a VPN or Google Fi for a 4-month trip abroad? Follow us on social media, and join our Frequent Miler Insiders group, and join our email list at: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event delta devaluations and sweet spot awards are there sweet spots on delta well that's why we had to have two subjects here because if we just if we just made the show about delta sweet awards, it'd be our shortest show ever. I mean, should it be like the Delta's saccharine awards or, you know, sweet and low awards? It's like, I mean, are they sweet? Maybe a little salty. Salty, right.

We'll talk about it. Salty awards. We'll talk about those. Yeah. Of course, first we have the giant mailbag, which I, of course, have. So let's see what's in the giant mailbag today. You know, by the way, as you reach in there, I got to say,

I keep meaning to, to bring a piece of mail that got misdirected here for giant mailbag. And I keep forgetting it, but, but for the person who sent that piece of mail in it's just misplaced. It's here somewhere, but, but it will make its way in to the giant mailbag one of these days. Okay. All right. All right. All right.

So that's good to know. So I'll remind you maybe next show to find that piece of mail under your sofa cushion or wherever. Right. Okay. Okay. This mail comes from Pam, and she says, Don't know if you've been to the new JW Marriott by the Savannah River, but it's really something. Repurposed power plant on five acres and three separate hotels. Took six years for them to build

and several hours for me just to briefly check it all out. Between the art and artifacts, it's like a 21C property on steroids. Huge wow. Great use of any 50 K point free night certificate you need to use by August something for everybody in a new retail stretch of the river walk. So we've got that cool recommendation from Pam. So that's in Savannah. I take it in Savannah. Yeah. Savannah, Georgia by the, by the river. Interesting. I, you know, thank you. That Thank you. That's a good tip. I thought so too. And I assume Pam had read my post about my so-so stay in Savannah at a different Marriott property. And so this is a great suggestion.

If we go back, we'll want to. I'm sure we will at some point. I'd love to try out that JW. So that's really cool. It's a great point with 50 K certs expiring this August. And you know, in my case, I don't know, I'm looking at probably not traveling anywhere internationally before then. So, you know, looking for a decent spot to use them in the U S and I do spend a chunk of time in South Carolina visiting family usually each year. So there's a nice little hop from there.

So everybody will be hopefully vaccinated before those certificates are done. I might have to make a booking. That's a good tip. So if you're listening to this show and we publish it on Saturday and you're like, why can't I find any available nights? It's because I booked it after we recorded this, but before we published it. So just in case any of our readers don't know, Pam mentioned it is like a 21C property. Yeah, I don't know what that is. Oh, I was going to ask you to tell everyone what that

is. No, you're going to have to. I just Googled it and and what came up was um the 21c hotels are branded as like museum hotels so i presume they're they have artwork and maybe sculptures and stuff all over them i don't know um so i guess it has a lot of neat artwork and stuff like that sounds cool you'll find out soon i guess and report back hopefully before august so very good interesting cool thanks for the tip pam yep all right time now for what crazy thing did nick's wife do this week yeah really yeah putting her on blast here it's not city bank this week yeah i wish i wish city bank was in Newsweek this week, but but it wasn't enough. It was so close. Citibank, Citibank, you were within like an hour and a half of making it this week.

And then, well, you know, and I I only say what crazy thing did Nick's wife do this week because I know she won't listen to this. So that's the only reason I can get away with saying that. So you might want to whisper it because if someone's like playing this on the radio and the next car over or something, they're going to hear it. She's going to hear it. I mean, some other guy named Nick's wife probably did something. So, all right. What happened? So, you know, we haven't been doing a lot of manufactured spending because of the whole pandemic. And there's not a place to do it easily within our town. But my sister-in-law has been doing some shopping with Instacart, rather. So she's been going to grocery stores a bunch.

So she's taken Visa gift cards for us and converted them into money orders now and then. And so today, as we record this today, she dropped off a money order at our place so that we could deposit. So my wife took the money order and put it in her back pocket. And, you know, my wife is often doing a lot of the child care during the day because, you know, I'm working on frequent miler. And so she's got her hands full right now with a five month old and a three year old. And so things are a little crazy around the house, a lot of noise, a lot of commotion. And of course, all of a sudden, the five month old spits spits up all over her. I mean, like epic, epic purport. She calls me down from upstairs. Of course, my name come down. I'm like, oh, my goodness, like what a mess. And she said,

oh, I just spit up over there on the couch. And then now all over me, I guess he's full, blah, blah, blah. And we're getting a little bit of a laugh out of it. Right. Which was a little bit of a laugh. But then of course, obviously all those clothes had to go in the wash, including the pair of pants. Oh no. With the money order, the money order in the back pocket. So I'm minding my own business, got back to work. And you know, like 20 minutes later I hear Nick and you know, so I come running out like what's going on. Is there, we spit up on who this time or is there a child bleeding somewhere? Do I need to like fire up the car? What's going on?

And then she runs down to the washing machine and I find out what's going on. So she had just remembered it? Is that what happened? Yeah, it just popped into her head that she was like, oh my goodness, that was in my back pocket. And so, of course, it was then in a million pieces in the washing machine. So, yeah. So is your older son up to the task of putting all those pieces together and reassembling it. I did the best I could to fish for pieces in the water of the washing machine. And I just couldn't find a piece of paper with a number still on it. I was surprised at how quickly a money order can dissolve in the washing machine. You literally laundered the money.

Laundered the money order. Right. Exactly what every banker is worried we're doing. I was somewhat guilty of doing today. Everybody thinks I'm a money launderer, and today, well. Is that it? Is there any way to get a money order reissued? I mean, if there's somebody listening that knows something that I don't, please, I'm all ears. But I would think that if we had maybe the register receipt, maybe we'd be

a-okay. And thankfully, the register receipt was not in her pocket, but it was not in her pocket because her sister didn't give it to her. And I'm thinking her sister didn't give it to her because her sister isn't the most organized with receipts and probably doesn't still have it but uh but i i got my fingers yeah so good luck there yeah hopefully hopefully yeah because i mean that'll that'll wipe out some you know 5x office supply store spend for quite a while so luckily it wasn't a huge huge money order but you know good good hundred bucks so uh down right right right uh i almost feel feel worse for for your wife about just that feeling when you when you realize what you've done and she felt horrible she was so upset that's so bad for her because

you know of course there was part of me that was like ah and then there was the part of me i was like oh man don't worry it's not the end of the world. Mistakes happen. But a good reminder that, A, you've got to stay organized in this game. And B, separating those money orders and receipts is a good practice right off the bat. And we rarely do that, truth be told. We normally just separate them when we go to fill them out and cash them. But if we were in the habit of separating them and keeping them in different places, I would at least have the money order number information that I could probably

reach out to the money order company and get some sort of resolution. And of course, I don't have that now because we didn't do that. So if you're listening, keep that stuff in separate places. Before somebody puts the pants in the wash, keep that stuff in separate places. But yeah, I felt horrible for it. She felt so bad. I said, ah, you know, I'm not happy either who is, but at the end of the day, luckily, you know, we've gotten some bank account bonuses lately. I was, I was, you know, all on top of the world this week thinking that I was the big winner. If you read my posts about North one this week, they business banking account, cash management account, started giving away money to existing cardholders, got 50 bucks for updating my details and then a hundred dollar Amazon gift card for depositing

a hundred bucks. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm the big winner here. I just made $150 appear out of nowhere. And, you know, easy come, easy go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, the good news is I think it was worth $300 of your money for a good, uh, what crazy thing? Four, but that's okay who's counting two two hundred dollars oh 400 oh okay i said a few well yeah trying to minimize it all right anyway so so that's it so be careful out there kids all right all right don't spit up on your mom right right that's the lesson i learned nice right and my mom will be very happy to hear that. Well, okay. Very good, very good.

All right, so that brings us then to Mattress Running the Numbers. And so Mattress Running the Numbers this week, what we have to talk about is the clock is running down, right? So clock is running down. Last call for a Hyatt mattress run and time to get on planning your Marriott mattress run.

Am I right? Am I wrong? What do you think? Definitely right. So we've talked a million times about how this is the year to mattress run Hyatt between double elite nights, half the nights required to get to top tier elite status. Plus, you know, assuming you signed up for all these promos,

you're also getting either a bunch of points back as a rebate or you're earning a lot of extra points for your paid stay. This is one of those rare situations where it makes sense. It absolutely makes sense for many people, if not most people, to do some mattress running here. You have to check out. You have to check out by February 28th. So get that done right away and and a lot of people

have asked is it is it likely that hyatt will extend this promotion that can i agree it's not too likely that they'll extend it um that's not to say that they won't have they might have very valuable promos afterwards so that's still a possibility, but we don't think this promo will be, or the set of promos will be extended. Right. The other thing, Marriott. Okay.

Wait, before you go to Marriott, I got a question for you. Cause your question came in from a reader. I think just today about this Hyatt thing. And I thought this was a good question that some people may find themselves in position to consider in this next two weeks here before the end of the month or 12 days, whatever, to 10 days. I guess it is nine days, eight days. I can't remember whenever this publishes. There's not a lot of time left.

So Derek asked in our Frequent Miler Insiders group, I just achieved global status. I now have 36 nights. And that's a position that a lot of people might be in. If you had some nights from the credit card, whatever, you may have something a little over 30. But what Derek asks is, do you think it's worth a mattress run for seven nights in order to get the milestone 50 nights to earn the two sweet night awards? He said he planned to do them at a category one for 5,000 points a night and you can manufacture ultimate rewards points easily.

So my question for you is, if you've gotten to the 30 nights at this point, you know, one way or another, you're at 30, is it worth considering a mattress run to get yourself to 50 for the two Sweet Night Awards? And how many nights, like he asked about seven, but that's just an arbitrary number. How many nights are worth doing to get those global, youists, the Sweet Night Awards? Because the Sweet Night Awards, you get two of them at 50 and two of them at 60 nights. Yeah. Is it worth mattress running?

I mean, there's no set answer for that because Hyatt will let you book into suites with points or even upgrade to suites with points if you have a cash stay. And so, and the pricing for the upgrade or for the suite booked straight up depends on what category hotel you're in. And that was a long way of saying like, if you're going to end up, if, I mean, I wouldn't do it at all unless you're sure you're going to use those upgrade certificates. But even if you are going to use those upgrade certificates, if you're going to end up using them at like category one or two property, you're probably not coming out ahead by doing all this.

If you're going to use it for like a category six or seven property, you're probably coming out way ahead. And so I think you just have to sort of sit down and do the math and say, here's how I'm likely to use it. You know, the suite is worth this much to me and which way would be, I guess, cheaper to pay for a suite? And that number has to be no more than the amount that Hyatt would charge you, of course, but perhaps might be less because you may not be willing to pay that Hyatt suite price. But are you willing to pay 5,000 points a night extra if you're probably going to use it at a property that is 25,000 points per night? I would think most people would be willing to pay 5,000 points a night for

sure to get one of those suite upgrades. And so if you're going to use it for seven nights, and it's going to cost you seven nights right now times 5,000 points per night. Well, I mean, that's a pretty good deal. Then if you are pretty confident, you're going to use it that way. And you just have to determine where is that number 5,000 points a night, 10,000 points a night, how many points a night is a suite worth to you on whatever stage you're going to use them on? That's, that's your number that, okay, that's how many points I'm willing to fork out. And then is it worth forking out? And then the next thing is to go to that. That's a really good way to think about it. Go to that tool that Greg, that Greg created to determine whether you should be paying in cash or points. Because

when Derek said 5,000 points a night at a category one, my first thought was because he said that he can manufacture ultimate rewards points cheaply. I figured Derek probably is the type that has a Sapphire reserve then. So you can cash out points at one and a half cents each right now at the grocery store, right? So 5,000 points you could redeem for $75 worth of stuff at the grocery store, like, say, gift cards, right? So I would have to then look at how

much is the cash price of that room, Derek, because at a category one right now, you may well be looking at much less than $75 per night cash, cash out your points to the grocery store for Visa gift cards and use them to pay for this day, earn points on this day. Check Greg's post, Greg's got a post and I'll put it in the show notes for how to figure out whether you should be paying cash or you should be paying points. But particularly if you're manufacturing cheap ultimate rewards points and you have the Sapphire Reserve, consider whether you should cash out and pay for the stuff. Right. And part of the factor where so spreadsheet does take into account is if you have the Hyatt credit card and you pay with points, you're getting

25% of your points back versus 15% without the Hyatt card. Whereas if you pay with cash, you're going to get three X rewards regardless. So all that's taken into account and yeah, but that's right around the range, right? Like somewhere in the around $75 is where it becomes almost like you could do it either way. And then if it's cheaper than 75, you're probably better off paying cash. But that's going to vary, again,

based on whether you have the Hyatt card and different things. Right. So that's how you figure it out. Figure out how much suites are worth to you and then go from there, go backwards from there. All right. So that was half the mattress running the numbers, right? It was like, now's the time. You're in the time crunch. get it done with Hyatt.

But now, if you're done with Hyatt and or you're not a Hyatt person, but you are a Marriott person, it's time to get on the horse here because Marriott, you need to start booking now and you can start checking in at this point too, right? I mean, the promo's already on, double nights. Make sure you're enrolled in the Marriott promo

and you should be able to go into your app and find Marriott app and find the, your promotions and register if you're not already. And yeah, as long as you have a two night or longer stay and at least one of them is a paid night, then you'll get double elite nights and double points for that stay. So if you're one of the people that had elite status last year,

and so you got a bunch of points rolled over, then you're probably fairly close to a meaningful level of elite status this year. And so it could pay to mattress run. think it's i i think with marriott it's a lot more dependent on your specific situation whether it makes any sense much more so than the hyatt uh the hyatt deal because marriott's so dependent on sort of how many got rolled how many nights got rolled over from last year's whether it's worth it and um the attaining elite status is not like it's good, but it's not quite the, the big win, I think, as, as getting it with Hyatt. So just something to think about. And, and I, you know, I think a lot of people who are within the, you know, a lot of people are within about six nights from elite so that means only a single three nights day can get you let's say to platinum

status i wouldn't mattress run for less than like if you're close to gold i would not mattress run for gold it just doesn't give you enough benefits how about for titanium like is there a spot where it makes sense to mattress run for i saw somebody in frequent insiders talking about mattress running for titanium status and you know i i kind of thought to myself really i mean is this is worth mattress running for titanium i don't know what do you think right right i mean we've talked about this before that like if you're gonna fly united a reasonable number of times it could be totally worth it because that'll get you silver status and so that alone could easily pay

for what you're doing, right? For sure. After that, like a lot of it is kind of specialized. If you're going to be paying for a lot of Marriott stays, then you're going to earn a lot more points with titanium status. If you are going to be staying at Ritz Carlton properties, then your titanium will give you the chance

of a suite upgrade, whereas you won't get a sweet upgrade without it. Now, you still won't get free breakfast at Ritz. Right. You got a big room, just nothing to eat in it. That's right. And walking around that big room is going to make you hungry, so you're going to have to pay for breakfast. Yeah. And then there's my sort of exception hotel I bring up every now and then, the saint pancras hotel in london which which has a club lounge that they don't call a club lounge and they if you're not staying in the a certain section of the hotel you don't get access unless you have titanium status so um there are there are probably other places like that where titanium

gives you something even though it's not documented yeah. And also keep in mind that when you hit 75 nights, you get another choice benefit, which you can take a 40 K free night certificate. So if you're relatively close, it might be worth something to you to get the 40 K cert. If you have a good use for it. Um, you know, I wouldn't pay too many points for that, but, but something might be worth something. So, so there's a few benefits. All right. Okay. You, you, you convinced me that some people may want a mattress run for titanium status also. And then of course, you know, there's the hope that having higher status will be somewhat helpful for you down the road, because it certainly worked out for people this year that had high level status last year. Right. Because I mean, really, if you had titanium status from the year before last, that's I mean, like, I had that I made out like a fat rat,

basically, because last year, I got, you know, half the number of nights necessary for titanium status, and I made it and I got my titanium status extended. And so then this year, they gave me half the nights for titanium status again, even though I didn't earn it last year i just had it extended and so it's kind of working out i'm getting all these nights towards my lifetime gold status baby yeah yeah and and it this year's uh rollover put me over lifetime platinum yeah so all these all these nights that i did nothing to earn has got me to lifetime platinum, which is just craziness. But I love it because it means now the equation for me, you know, in future years of whether to mattress or Marriott is easy. Why would I? Because I would have to go all the way to 75 nights to get any meaningful additional benefit over what lifetime platinum is giving me. And that's way too far to go, I think,

to get United Silver status. Agreed. Agreed. All right. So get on it. You got until April. What is it? When does it end, Greg? The Marriott one ends April 27th. So I know with Hyatt, you have to be checked out on the last day of the promo.

With Marriott, I'm not sure if you have to be checked out or if that's like your last night and you could check out on the 28th. But I would I would try to be checked out by the 27th just in case or or or dig into the terms and conditions to see if it's written in there. Very good. All right, then. That brings us, my friends, to the main event. The main event, Delta devaluations and sweet spots or salty spots. Slightly sweet. Semi-sweet. Semi-sweet spots. I got some snow caps this week in honor of Delta right here. You know, semi-sweet chocolate thingies.

So there's, you know, that's for you, Delta. Semi-sweet. I was hoping it's for me no so sad all right so sorry delta devaluations and these swedish spots so so devaluations delta has been in the news recently because their points are becoming worth less and less you are yeah worth less but worth less and less because i mean they just jacked up partner awards right i mean like right took them to the roof right so what happened was it's more that that the partner awards caught up right so over the years delta has

been regularly jacking up their own award prices. And this is especially these international like business class awards where I'm mostly referring to. And, but a sort of workaround for a long time has been book with Delta miles book, a Delta partner like air France, Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air, you know, there are a lot of options. And those stayed sort of like what the old prices were. They were much, much lower than Delta prices and somewhat competitive with competing programs. Like, you know, so the price you would pay for a, for a partner business class award using Delta miles on one of Delta's partners was maybe a little bit more than, than other programs would charge for a similar award, but not a lot more, but now it's like double what others would charge. Right? I mean, roughly. Yeah, crazy prices. Do you remember any examples off the top of your head?

I think, what, 195,000 miles one way? I'm sorry. Yes, one way to Europe in business class, right? I mean, I think it was like something ridiculous like that. No, I don't think. I think for one way, it was more like 120,000. You're right. 195 is within 21 days on Virgin Atlantic.

120K one way. So we're talking more. You're right. 120K one way. More than double what Virgin Atlantic has long charged for a one-way Delta business class. I mean, you'd fly a round trip with virgin atlantic for less than what delta is going to charge you that's right one way yeah yeah here and then it was crazy i mean 165 180 to different parts of asia uh you know one way yeah out of your mind delta right i mean i look

at it and i'm like ana 75K round trip off peak to Japan, 90K round trip on partners to Japan, and Delta's gonna charge you like 150K one way or something ridiculous like that. With ANA, you can literally go around the world in business class for less than that. With eight stops, right? We're not just talking one itinerary where you got to keep flying for three days.

We're talking stops in eight cities. Right. Fewer miles than what Delta is going to charge you to get. Right, right, right. Just from the US to Asia. So this has been going on for years now. So ever since they, well, even before they eliminated their award chart, they regularly changed awards, made them more expensive. Every airline did that.

But then they eliminated award charts and kept creeping up their own prices. And one of the problems is because there's no award charts, you can't really usually say, you know, oh, this price has gone up. But what you can do is look across time and see that the lowest possible price for a certain destination is much higher than it used to be. And that's what people are doing and how they're finding out about this. And to jump in here for a second, what made this particularly egregious, in my opinion, is that they just did this back in october like mid pandemic they increased the price of these awards when nobody's traveling nobody's kind of paying attention they quietly increased the prices of awards in october and then we're talking just a

couple of months later in february they jacked him up again right it's not demand guys it's not demand that's causing that. It's, I think, the exact opposite. And kind of what I talked about when Marriott released their list of properties that were going up in price recently or going down in price, there were very few properties that were going up in price. And there were some going down, not nearly as many as some people thought there should be. But what I said at the time was that I was happy with what Marriott did because not much changed. And I thought they could have looked at this and said,

oh, this is an opportunity when nobody's really looking at these hotels anyway. We just jack the prices up and be future-proofed for when prices return to normal because nobody really cares right now anyway because they're not traveling. And I said I was glad that Marriott didn't do that. And that seems to be exactly what delta did here right i mean yeah you know wow but um you know from from delta's point of view what what they what they appear to have been been doing is trying to get to consistency so i i can understand why they would look at what was happening before and say, why should we reward our members for flying a different airline instead of us?

They should be the same price, which I agree with. But why not bring down the Delta price instead of bringing up the partner price? It would make a lot more sense during the pandemic, at least. But anyway, they did what they did. And, and what, what that made me confront is, is sort of the fact that we have to think of Delta Miles differently than how we do a lot of some other programs. So the sort of the, the game we play, right, is we, we try to get these points and miles for free or as cheap as possible. And then we try to find outsized value ways of using these, these points and miles and, and with things like Alaska miles,

Virgin Atlantic miles, American airlines, you know, a lot of different programs. There are incredible ways to use these points that give you like just tremendous, tremendous value. Delta has been chipping away at all of those, those options. is a dependable currency that seems to range from, for most uses, from a little above a penny per mile value to about 1.5 cents per mile with an average around 1.3. But then it's not unusual to find opportunities to get closer to like two cents per mile. That, that kind of range. Really? Very, very, very unusual. Well, at least when they're, let's get into that when we talk about. All right.

Good, good, good. Just giving you a hard time there. So, all right. So that's, I guess the, the bright side of Delta mouse that you, you, you you know pretty much you can get at least one cent per mile usually right i mean you're not usually well see i say that and i don't know i mean that's not always the case but i guess if you hunt at least a little bit for value and and with these devaluations there's still like at least one cent per mile in a lot of cases 120,000

miles one way to europe in business class. I mean, that's, you know, at one cent each, that'd be $1,200. And generally it's more than $1,200 to fly one way business class to Europe. So, so, you know, it's true in that case, even though the price seems absolutely ridiculous to me, I guess from that perspective of, I know I can always get decent value out of these miles. Maybe it's not horrible. I mean, it's not good. I mean, I think you have to think of it as being more like Southwest points where, you know, uh, you're going to get, you're going to get somewhere in with Southwest. You usually are going to get somewhere in the range of about 1.4 to 1.9 ish at the extreme. And so this is not that far out. It's a bit, bit bigger range, but, but the average is pretty close, I'd say. Yeah.

So, so I think that's the way to start thinking about it, unfortunately, which, which means that Delta doesn't play in that second part of the game that I said, you know, it's, it's yes yes if you could get the miles free or cheaply get them you know like there's a sign-up bonus for 80 000 delta miles go for it when there's a sign-up bonus for 45 000 wait for the for a better one to come out you know um but you know do do not spend on your Delta card unless it's like bonus categories where you're getting like three or four or five X because of some promotion. Do not spend to get one mile per dollar because if you think back where I said it looks like the average is about 1.3, that's a terrible return. Even like a stinky one and a half percent cash back card will get you better return than that and of course we know of of

there's many two percent cash back cards there's there's uh the double cash card that gives you two percent cash back or your choice of transferable points and then you could transfer to things like virgin atlantic and book that same delta award to Europe for 50,000 points one way and, and get tremendous value that way. So you can still play the game with other cards. It's a little harder to play that second part of the game with, with Delta. You know,

I think it's, it's worth making a point about this because when, when, when we announced this devaluation and we wrote about it, covered it anyway, this, this latest evaluation from Delta, somebody in the comments said something like, you know, when are you going to stop peddling Delta cards? And my first reaction was, do we peddle Delta cards?

I mean, I don't know if I've ever been like, get a Delta card now. You know, I've never never been that enthusiastic. I've never had one of the Delta cards. I mean, I just I stand at the end of the jet bridge with my jacket out and all the Delta cards lined up. Delta cards, come get them. Come get them. I mean, when the offer goes up, of course, we write about it, but I don't even think I've been particularly glowing in any of the posts I've written about them. However, that said, when I read that comment, I thought to myself, all right, well, first, I don't feel like we peddle them. But second, even if they're only worth a penny each, when you do see one of those 80,000 point offers, you're talking about at least $800 worth of flights.

I mean, that's a good return on a couple thousand dollars spend. So if you like to fly Delta, even if the points are only worth a penny each, that's pretty darn good. And I haven't really looked at it that way. I've looked at it, see, because I look at this game from the perspective that you were talking about a minute ago when you said, you know, I want to use 45,000 points and fly an absolute luxury. You know, I want to get the most I can out of the fewest number of points. And that's why Delta points haven't really appealed to me. But when I look at it from that perspective and I say $800 return on what sometimes, you know, three or four or $5,000 spend to get that many points sometimes on those offers,

that's a fantastic return. That's great. That beats any cashback return for the most, almost any cashback return on a cashback card with a new welcome bonus. So the delta cards still aren't necessarily bad. Like you said, when they have the increased offers, I mean, don't mess around with these 45 K offers. Do not do that. And don't believe in the airport when they say they have got the best offer, they don't. But you know, something interesting, it's, it's way too early for me to say this for certain, but, but it does match my view that of, of what I've seen in general in the past couple of years, which is we started a project to redo some of our reasonable redemption values to recalculate how much are different points worth. And as I was doing some of the sort of background work for that,

I was trying out our approach to it to look at AA miles and United miles and Delta miles. And part of the, part of our whole approach to this in general has been that it's kind of like impossible to say what points and miles are worth full stop because it totally depends on how you use them. And you can have a drastically different value depending on what you do with it. So we ended up simplifying and saying, all right, let's assume what people are going to do is use them for domestic US economy flights. And then we'll kind of come up with an average of how much they're worth for that purpose. And you didn't make that up. I mean, the airline programs frequently release statistics like that that show that the vast majority of miles are redeemed for domestic economy class tickets, which should be no surprise.

Exactly. Most Americans travel domestically. Right, right. And it sort of helps also to just keep in mind that that's sort of like a floor. And we did that on purpose to say, you know what, if points are worth one and a half cents each towards the domestic economy, they're probably worth even more for international and for these domestic U.S. flights. Like I was seeing some really bad value, like, you know, significantly less than a penny per mile value on some flights. Whereas with Delta, as I said before, I was seeing consistently over a penny. And so what that tells me is, you know, I think Delta's approach, while it sucks for those of us who are really into the, how can we eke out the

most value and get the most luxury flying for the least miles? Delta's terrible for that. But for the average person who's going to use it to, you know, go see grandma in Florida or whatever, it's looking better and better. at decent value and not be those people that accidentally use miles in a terrible way. Because it's awful, right? Seeing someone spend, it used to be all the airlines charged 25,000 miles round trip for a domestic US flight. And you'd see someone book a trip that would have cost like $100 round trip if they'd paid cash and spend 25,000 miles.

You're getting horrible value that way. And by airlines going to this dynamic pricing like Delta has and the other airlines have started to do, you're less likely to be like the sucker on that side, which is, I think, a positive. Right. And I've been the sucker on that. My first mileage redemption was an Interisland Hawaii flight with United Miles. And I paid, I don't know,

was the 7,500 or 10,000 United Miles or something like that. Plus a $75 close in ticketing fee for like a hundred dollar flight. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Oh my. I didn't know anything back then. What did I know? I was I was like oh I got these miles I can get something for free with them right call up find out alright great yeah how much do I pay

$75 I guess okay I guess I gotta pay it so I've been in that boat before so you're right with Delta Miles you're going to get acceptable value most of the time assuming that you are not earning those miles at one mile per dollar spent

on the credit cards. Right. I mean, your earning rate is a whole nother thing. And that you could definitely get, you're definitely losing out by earning one delta mile per dollar compared to some of the other alternatives we've talked about. Now, if you were instead earning one American Airlines mile per dollar and then using it for these domestic flights that are poor value, you're actually still better off on the Delta side. It's just both of them are suboptimal. Suboptimal compared to even just a simple, very simple cashback kind of a strategy to say nothing of transferable currencies. So yeah, so I think that's a key point. If you're earning the majority of your Delta miles from either welcome bonuses or from flying on Delta

because you fly for work and your employer is paying for it and you're picking up miles while you're flying, then you're going to get reasonable value. You're not going to get the amazing outsized value that you see bloggers talking about when they get their $0.29,000 per mile by flying in first class, enclosed suite with a butler and three bedrooms or whatever it might be. You're not going to get that out of your Delta miles, but you get fair value out of the miles that you didn't put too much effort into collecting. So, all right. I mean, I guess that's not as bad as it sounds. They've devalued, but not horribly so. So, where can you really get the best value for Delta miles? Yeah.

Is there a sweet spot? There are some. And let me first describe the most elusive sweet spot, which is Delta's flash sales that mid to late June, depending on where you're coming from. And in many of those cases with the flash sales, we're seeing two cents per mile or better value when compared to the like best Delta price. And, you know, and I argued a little bit with Greg that I wasn't super excited about that Lima deal. But really, the truth is, if you primarily travel on awards to these international destinations, you couldn't beat a deal like that. You know, there were some cities or 9000 points one way, Boston, Huntsville, Alabama, 9000 points one way to Lima. I don't know much about Huntsville. I was really, I saw a comment from somebody somewhere that mentioned

flying from HSV and I was just, just that morning I was like, HSV, where is that? And I had just Googled that airport code the morning of, and I was like, Oh, Huntsville. Interesting. So I just popped it in out of random because of the flight they had taken was like a Delta thing. So anyway, it was fresh in mind. I was like 9000 miles out of Huntsville. I don't know much about Huntsville Airport, but I wouldn't have expected it to be only 9000 miles to Lima because everybody charges a lot.

South America is a place where actually award tickets are absurdly expensive in a lot of programs. It's not a cheap place to go on an award flight. You can sometimes get really cheap cash tickets, but not particularly cheap on an award, 9,000 points each way. I mean, that's less than what you would expect to pay for an economy US ticket.

Yeah, yeah. So kind of cool. And like you said, I mean, sometimes perhaps more than two cents per mile against the Delta prices. So then, so, so then, so flash sales are something that you kind of have to get lucky or read a blog that's a, you know, that announces it. But, and,

and there's no way it's not luck, Greg, it's skill because you have a skill to sign up for frequent milers, email alerts, you're smart enough to subscribe. That's skill. That is skill. Right. But finding it on your own, that's a little bit of skill in noticing that it's a good deal. Like most people wouldn't even know, right? Like they're looking at it. They like, if you didn't know 11,000 or 9,000 was a great deal, you might look at it and say, oh, I'm going to think about that and then come back next week. And now it's 25,000 miles because the sale's over.

So that's unfortunate. That's the sort of elusive Delta sweet spot. Yeah. Another sort of area of sweet spots is partners that Delta forgot to devalue. Whoopsie. So far. You know, who knows when they'll get to it. But a couple that come to mind.

So one is WestJet. So WestJet is a Canadian operator. And they fly to a lot of U.S. cities. And Delta, I think they only have economy. And Delta seems to have the old award chart built in because every single award I found between the US and Canada on WestJet, 12,500 miles. And sometimes that's a bad deal.

They're not an expensive carrier. So sometimes 12,500 is not a good deal. But there are times, especially going to, you know, remotest parts of Canada where it's a great deal. I mean, it could be on the name, the South American carrier that Delta just took over. Latam. Latam awards to South America from North America using Delta miles, uh, economy seem to be fixed at 25 K one way, which right after us talking about nine K awards to Lima doesn't sound very exciting, but again, it's pretty good. There are times where the prices are very high and the, the alternate award prices are very high that that can be a very good award. I wanted to report what

the business award price is, but I couldn't find any LATAM business award availability through Delta. So I don't know whether that exists or not. So I don't know the price. My guess is it's a good price if it exists at all. So you have some odd partners like that. You also have some odd routes where Delta seems to have forgotten to devalue even its own awards. But those tend to be international routes not starting in the US or Canada. So that's sort of similar to the flash sales. You have to be lucky to be in a position where that's useful to you, I think. But if you're going to be flying a lot from, I don't know, Mexico to Europe or something, check out the award prices because there might still be good deals there.

Now to get to the last of the, oh, so what I characterize as a great deal with Delta is anytime you get two cents value or more. Okay. With other airlines, I might have a higher bar, but that's my bar with Delta. And the last great value I know of is. Magazines. Well, oh, yeah, there are magazines. Just kidding.

But this is close. Premium drinks in the Sky Club. Oh, there you go. I was on the right track. They have a fixed value. You get two cents per mile value when buying premium drinks. And this includes like top shelf bottle of Dom if you want to buy it. You get it for basically half price if you think of Skype miles as pennies. And sort of a cool side benefit is if you want to tip the server, they get cash, but you could pay in miles at that same rate. So literally, you want to give the server five bucks, only 250 SkyMiles, which, you know, with SkyMiles, that feels like nothing, right?

Right. I mean, that's a terrific deal for your SkyMiles right there. So you want to feel generous, give them 500 miles. Yeah, I mean, that's not bad. So I had, you know, in one SkyClub, I had the opportunity to try a scotch that I would have never paid for in a restaurant because a single scotch of this type was, I think it was like $36, but it was less than 2,000 sky miles. I was like, I'll splurge and try it out.

I decided I didn't actually like it any more than a $12 glass of scotch. But it was fun to find out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great deal potentially. And if you're going to be in a sky club for a while, at some point it could be a fun little redemption anyway to class up your trip. So I would, uh, I would consider that at 2 cents a mile. I feel like that's, that's pretty solid value for your Delta miles if you value those top shelf liquors and things like that. Right, right.

So some people have talked about if they arrive home to their home airport and have a Sky Club that sells these drinks, like actually buying a bottle of wine or champagne or whatever and asking them not to open it and then just take it home. So it's, it's kind of a way you could go shopping away in the sky club. And it may work. I, I, I tried that once and they shut me down. They said, no, really? Yeah. They wouldn't do it. But, but I, I know people who have done it successfully. So it certainly is a hit or miss thing. Okay. Worth a shot. Worth a shot. All right.

So I think that those are some decently decent sweet spots. So your sweet spots then are you got to get lucky and find a flash sale that nobody's written about yet. Or you got to be smart and subscribe to Frequent Milers so you find out about it when we find one. Right. Right. Or you go to the Sky Club. Well, or you find one of these these partners that delta forgot to devalue yeah so there's probably others there's probably others

besides those two that i mentioned but okay i mentioned i mentioned gold did you did you check on goal at all i did not check all right so here i'm gonna roast you didn't look up goal craig like how did you write about delta and forget about goal? The Brazilian airline that I think only flies to Miami, but they fly all around Brazil. Well, there you go. That's, I think I looked up goal when, when I was doing the Emirates partners, aren't they one of the Emirates partners? They were an Etihad partner, but maybe they're an Emirates partner. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't been to Brazil, so not at the top of my mind yet. So I was seven the last time I was there.

So, so that's why we haven't, we haven't done a deep dive. Maybe there needs to be a deep dive into goal and the goal smiles program or something like that. There's, it's got a smile in it. So, all right. So I'm probably not going to do that. Hashtag goals. Come on. That was your set you up. Okay. All right.

What do we have next? That's going to bring us, I think. So, that knocks us out of Delta. That wraps it right up. It's done. Delta's done. Nothing more to say about Delta. Post-roast. Post-roast time.

Yes. All right. I just roasted you. You didn't write about the whole. Okay. Good roast. That's my roast. That's it. Good roast. I'm devastated. You're hurt. I'm so hurt that I'm not going to roast you because I didn't actually prepare for it. Well, you know, I do have a, not really a roast,

but I was a little confused because, so when you wrote this week about Seat Spy, and Seat Spy you'd written about quite a long time ago, but you wrote about it again this week because Seat Spy was back in the news, so to speak, because they added american and united to see yeah yeah they did and and so i read the first post where you said they'd added american and united and i was looking for the section where you added a bunch of information about

american and united and i didn't see it like did like, did you add a bunch in there that I missed? Cause I was like looking at the top and then I was like, probably make a lot of sense to have in there. Wouldn't it? You know, I was, I was looking at it and I was like, okay, this old Virgin Atlantic and British airway search. I remember those. I was looking for the news, Greg. Right. Right. Well, you know, that's actually a good roast. I don't know why you sort of said it's not a roast. I think that's a totally legitimate roast. That push should have had information about it. In fact, it should have had information about the problems with how they do American Airlines right now, which is not ideal. It's not terrible. I mean better way better than nothing but it's not ideal but um the reason

reason reason is i ran out of time so i spent so much time the weekend before that working on the follow-up post that i put out which was which was using seed spy to find live flat awards to hawaii i spent like all weekend working on that and uh with the idea that then i would i would go and clean up that other post with the sort of general information and i just the other way around can i add it a little yeah they've added united and american wait for it guys it's coming it's coming later today so so let's copy and paste some of that live flight to hawaii stuff into the seed spy post because the original seed spy post, because there was some really good information in the live flight to Hawaii

post. It was great stuff. And that's what I was looking for in the first repub of the. Right. Right. I mean, I mean, you have to, it's pretty exciting to finally have a way to find the few United business class awards that exist in the world. Okay. Okay. I mean, that's, that's true. Well, you know that exist in the world. No kidding. No kidding. I mean, that's terrific.

Well, you know what? I don't know. No, I'm going to take that back. I'm not sure if it's a good thing because it means everybody can do it now, Craig. And I was enjoying it when I could use my Turkish miles to book stuff. And now I feel like competition is going to be high.

But I have some Turkish miles in my account. So ha guys, I'm ahead of you. Well, the nice thing is it's, you know, I highlighted Hawaii, but this will be useful. You've talked about how good, how cheap Turkish is for a lot of locations. And one of the negatives is that they pass along fuel surcharges, right? But with United, they don't because United doesn't have them. And so the ability to find international awards that United flies and then you could book super cheap with Turkish is pretty sweet or with ANA. I think if I do, we talked earlier this week, Nick and I, about the possibility of me using a bunch of ANA expiring miles I have to try to book a round the world ticket for my wife and I. And, and I think that SeedSpy is going to make it a lot

easier for me to, to figure out a good way to get off of the United States part of the planet without, without fuel surcharges. Cause you know, cause it's so easy now to find those United Awards. And then the rest of the world is not as hard. It's got a lot of great values, like you said. Obviously, of course, we've all talked about the 7.5K economy and 12.5K business class

in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, but less attention, I think, gets put on the fact that it's 45K one way to Europe and that's, I mean, gets put on the fact that it's 45K one-way to Europe. And that's, I mean, a lot better than Delta, guys. So 45K one-way in business class on United. And there's been- It's only 5K better than Virgin Atlantic flying Delta.

True, true. But it is 5K better. And United's got tons of availability. Now, Delta, it ebbs and flows. But United, for a while now, has had pretty good availability to Europe. I mean, obviously pandemic related, but but you can find United availability there. And then you got plenty of other good sweet spots,

Middle East for like 49 or something like that. Indian subcontinent, I think it's 52, five one way business class. So all pretty cheap prices. So there's definitely a lot of ways to get out there using Turkish miles or like you said, ANA, of course, ANA has got amazing value. So being able to find those and search for so much time at once, I mean, that is an awesome change. So yeah. It's great. And if, you know, if they would ever add Delta, at least just between the U S and. and Europe, so that we could easily find those Virgin Atlantic cheap awards, that would be awesome. Worth the price of admission. Yeah. Yeah.

No kidding. No kidding. All right. So post-race out of the way, I guess. That brings us to the question of the week. Yeah. The question of the week is a good one for travelers. And I think you did a little bit of work into this at some point.

So Amanda asks a question that hopefully we'll all be asking ourselves someday when we get to travel internationally again. Amanda asks, looking for advice on VPNs and Google Fi for that matter. I will be spending four months in Italy next summer and will need to access my various U.S. financial accounts during that time. Should I invest in a VPN? If so, any recommendations? Also, I saw the video on the guy getting locked out of his Google Fi while traveling extensively. Any other data points from you guys? And I thought this question was particularly good for you because you were talking about spending a bunch of time in Australia this year. You've talked about this round the world

business class trip potentially on ANA that came up earlier in the week with our Ask Us Anything. You just mentioned it again here. So what would you do? I mean, you got a lot of accounts to log into, right? I mean, a lot of different credit cards, a lot of different bills to pay, whatnot, business to run. What do you plan to do on your next long international trip or what do you recommend? Is there anything you can recommend for Amanda or people in that situation? Yeah. So it's been so long since I've logged into my VPN because I haven't been traveling that it took me a minute. I use something called private internet access VPN, I think it is. And the reason I think it's that is I think it's PIA, like I always think pain in the arse.

It's pretty cheap, but it seems to be very reliable and stable. So that's what I use. Yeah, I mean, I don't see any reason not to. VPNs aren't that expensive. And so if you're going to be spending a lot of time in another country, I think that's a good idea. And you can set the server to the US so that when you're logging into things,

it doesn't look like you're someone in a foreign country trying to steal money. And so, oh, the Google Fi, yeah. So Google Fi is a great option in general for having your regular phone service and data service when you're traveling all over the world. There's no additional charges for doing that. But yeah, as you said, there have been situations

where when people used it, you know, sort of like moved for a long period of time to another country google eventually cuts them off because that's not how it was intended to be used for it's supposed to be for when you're traveling and um would four months so i guess i it hadn't even occurred to me when i talked about doing you know going away, I think we would probably have been back in the U.S. after about two months and then maybe leave again for a while. And I think being back and using the phone back in the States probably would help the situation and kind of reset the clock is my guess. But no, I don't have any particular words of wisdom over whether four months is too long. Do you know anything about that? I don't necessarily know. No, I've seen some stories and

I've also had decent experiences, so hard to say one way or another. The interesting thing is that I think most travelers, most people in the travel community would enthusiastically recommend Google Fi saying you can get LTE speeds and you're not going to pay any more than what it costs you at home. You'll have your phone number. number forwarded somehow, then you should still be able to verify yourself for all of those banking logins and things, because that's going to be one of the issues you may run into is not being able to get the text message for two-factor authentication. If you don't have something like Google Fi, where you're able to get your US-based calls and text messages while you're abroad. So there's some big advantages to having it, but a big disadvantage is, yeah, I mean, if Google locks you out, that can really

be a pain in a lot of ways. For sure, yeah. I mean, it's like, that's a big issue. I remember that we had written a post, you wrote a post a couple of years ago, and it came from Tiffany at One Mile at a Time, because I think someone in her family got completely locked out of their Google accounts, which included the Google Pay system, which meant they couldn't pay the bill for the cell phone because they only take Google Pay. And they were locked out of all of their Google stops. Right. They didn't pay their bill. Yeah.

Yeah. It's crazy. If you get on Google's wrong side, you you realize how much you're uh relying on them you know i rely on them for everything google docs i mean you're exactly an issue if you have exactly right right i don't know if they cut off your phone though if it goes the other way if they cut off your phone whether they i don't think they'd cut off your other google services but uh but still if you're stuck anywhere without your phone, then as you said,

then you can't get your text messages for signing in for things. So how do you deal with that? I don't know. And I don't have a good solution for you on that. If you're going to be four months in the same place, then that may be iffy. It might just be

time to get yourself a local SIM card when you get there and maybe have Google Fi also, but not use it as your primary. Just pop the SIM card in once in a while and not use it for four straight months in the same place because a local SIM card is usually pretty cheap anyway. If you're going to be traveling around country to country and bouncing for a few months, well, then maybe you'll be fine with, I would expect you'll be fine with, I would expect you'd be fine with Google Fi anyway, in that type of a situation. So, and as far as VPN, I use ExpressVPN. When I use a VPN, I had kind of given up on using it because Google Fi had worked so well and I was able to hotspot off of it and log into stuff from a US-based IP address. So that was fine, just hotspotting

off of the Google Fi phone. So I stopped paying for ExpressVPN for a long time. Then I added it for somebody that can't remember why, but something that came in handy. So that's one I've used in a number of readers have said they've had good experiences with ExpressVPN. Also, there's like a Nord VPN or something like that, that a lot of people have also talked highly of. And these days there's also, you got to keep in mind a number of different phone services, you know, AT&T and T-Mobile and other companies have started to make it more affordable to use your regular phone service abroad. T-Mobile, I think it's $5 a day for like a full high speed pass. Now, if you're going to do four straight months abroad, that's not going to be attractive at like $150 a month. But if you're going away for a couple of

weeks, it might not be worth even signing up for Google Fi at that point. You can just pay your $5 a day for T-Mobile and get your regular speeds and so on and so forth. I think AT&T offers basically the same kind of idea, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one option would be to say like, sign up for Google Fi, but sort of use it. Don't port your number over. So the few times that you need your regular number, you still have your AT&T or T-Mobile or whatever and uh but you use for day-to-day around whatever country you're in you carry like you either have your sim in your primary phone your google five sim or you have a second phone that's your google five phone carry that around and you can use it for data you could use it a hotspot and everything and it just wouldn't have your

regular phone number attached to it. And that could be okay. Yeah, that might be a good solution. So there's a couple of ideas for you, Amanda, or anybody else in that kind of situation moving forward. We'll see what Greg does when he does his epic round the world journey. And I look forward to him writing all about it. I look forward to doing it. Now, if you look forward to hearing more about all of that kind of stuff, well, then you want to make sure that you're on our email list. So you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list.

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