Frequent Miler on the Air - Delta Diamond devalued, but not destroyed | Ep 70 | Oct 31 20

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

00:23 Mammoth Mailbag: FrequentMiler.com is ours! Some great swag can be yours. https://frequentmiler.com/frequentmiler-com-is-ours-celebrate-w-huge-swag-giveaway/ 8:23 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Chase targets the old Hyatt credit card with a spending offer not available on the new cards. Why?? https://frequentmiler.com/legacy-hyatt-card-offer-spend-4000-get-category-1-4-free-night-cert-spend-by-12-31-20/ 11:47 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is the offer for a Hyatt Cat 1-4 free night certificate for $4K spend a no-brainer? 20:22 Main Event: Delta Diamond Devalued, but not destroyed https://frequentmiler.com/is-delta-loyalty-still-worth-pursuing-on-my-mind/ https://frequentmiler.com/delta-torpedos-skymiles-value-for-partner-awards/ https://frequentmiler.com/delta-eliminates-domestic-change-fees-on-all-but-basic-economy-tickets https://frequentmiler.com/delta-status-match-challenge/ 43:42 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/planning-for-a-miles-points-afterlife/ 51:00 Question of the Week Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event delta diamond devalued but not destroyed we'll get into that after the giant mailbag and a few other standard uh topics that we cover every week so first weekly segment up then the mailbag, let's drag it right out here. That's right. So the mailbag is, is bigger than usual this week. It's always a giant mailbag.

As you know, this week it's really giant because the mail is coming from my post about frequent miler.com being mine, mine, all mine. That's right. It's a, mine, all mine. That's right. And it is a mammoth mailbag this week, right? Forget about giant.

It's the mammoth mailbag this week. That's right. That's right. But we're not going to read all of it. But anyway, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, so we have switched our domain. It was previously frequentmiler.boardingarea.com. But forget about that.

Toss that right out of your mouth. Forget all about that because it's now frequentmiler.com. It took me the past nine years or so to finally get my grubby hands on the frequentmiler.com domain name. And so we're very excited that we finally have, you know, a proper name for our site. We had thought about switching our domain to thefrequentmiler.com because I do own that as well, but never felt quite right. It's just going to roll off the fingertips the same way. Yeah. Also, you know, we just don't think of the site as the FrequentMiler. It's always been FrequentMiler.

And so having FrequentMiler.com, perfect. Anyway, so Kerry designed all kinds of awesome swag that has FrequentMiler.com written on it, right? Everything from socks to T-shirts to bottle openers to shot glasses. And so we're giving away swag 80 different uh winners will be back did you hear that 80 80 winners 80 winners everybody's a winner uh no no not everybody not everybody no of the carnival guy. Everybody's a winner. Everybody's a winner if they consider being able to type in frequentmiler.com and getting somewhere as a win.

Then everybody's a winner. Everybody's a winner because they get to enjoy great content at Frequent Miler, right? And now everybody's a winner because they get to type frequentmiler.com instead of frequentmiler.boardingarea.com. We're saving it from the doctor bills, the carpal tunnel, all the rest of that. Everybody's good. There you go. And so if you want to be also a swag winner,

what you have to do is go to our website, find the post where we're celebrating frequentmiler.com domain. It should be one of the featured articles. And then you need to leave a comment at the bottom of the post that has frequentmiler.com anywhere in the comment. So as we're talking right now, there's, I think there's close to 800 comments. So you have right now, if the comments don't grow, you have about one in 10 chance of winning. Right, right. Which I mean, isn't bad. You might have thought that with 80 prizes,

you'd have a pretty good chance of winning, right? And I mean, 10% is pretty good. It's not as strong as I would have thought. That's an amazing response. So that's great. I mean, it's great that people are excited about the domain. We're excited about it. I'm excited because I know that Greg's been wanting this since before I was here. And so it's exciting to see it come to fruition and to have that now. So, and how exciting is it that 800 people want some of our free swag, Greg? I mean, that's awesome. That's a lot of fun. So it is, it is.

And, you know, maybe it's credit goes to Carrie for designing some really cool looking swag. For sure. I know I want some of that stuff. So, I mean, I bought some, I'm not going to lie. So some really cool looking stuff. For sure. I know I want some of that stuff. I mean, I bought some. I'm not going to lie. Me too. It would be all frequent milered out. You see me in the airport, you're going to be like,

oh, that is definitely Nick. He's got the shirt, the luggage tag, and he's carrying a coffee mug. His own coffee mug in the airport. Who does that? Right, right. I was actually pretty excited. I find the face mask actually very comfortable. I think it's probably the most comfortable one I have. So that's great. So for the mailbag,

I pulled out some of the comments because a lot of people, instead of just writing frequentmiler.com by itself, also added additional comments. And there's so many good ones. I would love to include them all, but that would take forever. So I picked out, I think five different ones I thought I would share. And I'm just going to read them without, without naming who they're from. I'm looking forward to this. Cause I, I honestly, I haven't looked at many of the comments yet because they just, it grew so exponentially fast so quickly.

And I wasn't at home when the comments started coming in. And then I was like, Oh my goodness, I got to go. So I'm excited. I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it. Good, good, good. But, but let me, let me first say that a lot of them were like, I love frequent miler, the blog. Right. And, and I'm not reading any of those because i mean you know i'm kind of modest about that don't tell anybody but i am okay so here we go first one i've been a frequent milo reader since the bn before nick ah before nick those days yeah yeah so back next one so so some of these i'm just taking a snippet of the Ah, before Nick. Those days. Yeah. Yeah. So back in the day. Next one. So some of these, I'm just taking a snippet of the overall comment. All right.

Next one. I'm assuming us typing frequentmiler.com somehow helps with SEO. Gosh, I wish it did. I wish it did. Yeah. Maybe somehow it does. But no, I don't think it does. But it'd be cool if it does.

It would. Okay. Next one. Congrats on the new frequentmiler.com domain wonder how many readers you'll get now who happen to be truckers looking for a rewards program and i've joked about that so in the post i mentioned how uh the company that owned the domain until they finally let me buy it from them um they had the domain because they were planning to do a trucker they're a shipping company because they were planning to do a trucker. They're a shipping company and they're planning to do a rewards program for

the truckers called frequent miler. Ironically, there's still, they claim they're still planning to do that, but with frequent dash miler as a domain. And I think that's great because inevitably what will happen as a bunch, if they do roll that out, which I don't think they will, but if they do, there will be a bunch of truckers. I bet you anything that will end up on our website and hopefully they'll like it.

Yeah. I mean, fuel rewards. Hello. Right. Or just a white credit card is good for buying gas. I mean, how much money would you make that way? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Gas and dining. I mean, you're on the road all the time, reimbursable expenses. I mean, I would think that there certainly could be some good overlap there and probably an audience of people who aren't focusing a lot on rewards credit cards, but I probably should be. My goodness, with the amount of spend that they must put on cards over the course. Right, right. Although,

yeah, I don't know if they, now that I think i think about i don't know if they get to use their own credit cards or if they have like one in the truck to use you know for everything yeah so anyways we'll find out soon let's see uh next one living vicariously through the blog told my suitcases no travel this year they They keep asking. Now I'm dealing with emotional baggage. Right. And finally, ending on a very positive note, frequentmiler.com is the best thing to happen in 2020. Oh, wow. Well, you know that it feels nice to hear that. Thank you very much. It does. I mean, to be fair, 2020 didn't set a high bar. I was going to say it simultaneously makes me think that we didn't beat out very much.

But the one or two good things that might have happened that I don't know about, we beat those things. Right. So that's pretty good. Three cheers. Yeah. Right. Right. All right.

Time for our next segment. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? So the crazy thing that Citi did this week was lent their expertise to Chase because Chase actually did our crazy thing this week. Chase came out with a really interesting spending offer on the old Hyatt credit card. Not the new world of Hyatt credit card, the old Hyatt credit card, not the new world of Hyatt credit card, the old Hyatt credit card. So the one that, I don't know, the one that was $75 annual fee was available until a year or two ago. I don't remember when the new world of Hyatt card debuted, but the old legacy card,

you now have a spending offer on that card. I believe it starts November 1st, spend $4,000, get a free category one to four free night certificate. That's in addition to the category one to four that you get with 15K spend on the card, right? I don't think that card- I'm sorry, anniversary rather. In addition to the anniversary one, right. Yeah, what is going on here?

I can't think of any time where anything like this has happened before. So there's an old card that they've been trying to get people to switch from to the new one. And now they're actually incentivizing the cardholders who have the old card without providing an equal or better promotion for the new card holders. I just don't get it. I don't know. I don't get it at all. I mean,

the whole idea when you get rid of a product and introduce a new one, I mean, they consciously decided not to have two different high credit cards. Right. I mean, they decided to keep them, I guess, but at the same time not to continue offering to. And yeah, when? I mean, they decided to keep them, I guess, but at the same time, not to continue offering to. And yeah, when they do that, inevitably, they want you to get the newer one for whatever reason. I just don't understand. They're incentivizing the old one,

giving nothing to the new people, and really kind of giving a kick in the teeth to the people who have the world of Hyatt card, who have to spend 15,000 to get a free night. And now these people with the old Hyatt credit card only have to spend four grand to get a free night. I mean, that's almost like a welcome bonus. You know, when you look at it, four grand, you get a free category one to four night. Category one to four night could certainly be worth a couple hundred dollars. It's almost like a welcome bonus out of nowhere. Right, right. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm totally mystified by all that. And like, so did they, one, make a big mistake? And they meant to say, you know, whoever came up with the idea meant to tell the people implementing it, this is only for the credit card and and they're like okay the hyatt credit card yeah they write that down and then later on you know and

they're talking to the tech dealer like the hyatt credit card in the world the hyatt no i mean bob said the hyatt credit card yeah because they don't they don't really have a good way that you know officially the new one is called world of hyatt credit card and the old one is just the hyatt visa i think right so that's a mistake that certainly could have happened in a meeting right it's definitely good um but the good news is um besides them giving us a nice little juicy topic for uh crazy thing for the crazy thing it, is a great segue into our next topic. Mattress running the numbers. If you have the old Hyatt credit card, that $75 fee card, that's what it is. 75, right? I think so. Yeah. So if you've got the old Hyatt credit card,

the one that is no longer available for new applicants, do you spend $4,000 for a free certificate? Is it worth it? What do you spend $4,000 for a free night certificate? Is it worth it? What do you think? Yeah, definitely. No question, man. I mean, so the certificate is good for a whole year. So that's, that's pretty good. But it's only good for a year. It's only good for a year. So it's not, so actually let's back up. I mean, maybe it's not as good as I was thinking. So I think in a recent post, you kind of came up with a number that sort of the points equivalent of one of these certs, right? I think you said, what did you say, 9,000? No, I think I said I would value this one at 8,000 because,

so okay, category one to four, category four is 15,000 points per night. And the reason that I valued it at 8,000, that's category three. So that way I know, I felt like valuing there was fair for me because category, you know, because I figured that if I can't maximize it and use it at a category four for 15, I can probably use it at a category three for 12. And if neither, I'm not going to do worse than using it at a property that's 8,000 points a night. I mean, I feel like that's my worst case scenario. Most likely, I'll find an 8,000 point property.

So that's why I valued it there. I mean, now I guess I could have valued it based on category one at 5,000 points per night. But reasonably, I'm going to look for a better opportunity, I think, with that type of cert. So I said 8,000 points because also you have to consider the fact that it expires in a year. It doesn't. Right. Right. No, that's great. Let's go with 8,000 and that that's very convenient mathematically because if you have to spend 4,000 and what you're getting is basically 8,000 points or the equivalent, then you're getting an extra two X on your spend. Extra two points per dollar is a way to think of it. So for that $4,000 spend,

you're getting the equivalent of three points per dollar with that logic. Is it worth going out of your way for three points per dollar? Let me add one other thing. There are card specific bonuses going on right now for like grocery spend and Amazon spend, I think. Yeah. Starting November. If the Hyatt card qualifies for that, the old Hyatt card, could you get that new spend bonus on top of this? In which case, I think this would be, I don't know,

probably a no brainer for your grocery and Amazon spend, but yeah, I'm not sure anymore. Whether it is Forex is Forex enough to make it a no-brainer for your grocery and amazon spend but yeah i'm not sure anymore whether is 4x yeah it's 4x enough to make it a no-brainer three right because you're getting uh 3x i'm sorry you're right 3x so three i mean 3x higher points i don't know i don't think it's a no-brainer because there's so many chase cards now that are in 3x or better in those points on various different categories and categories so this would be for if had, I guess this would be like, if you have a category of spend that you're going to be spending on, that is not within a bonus category,

which is a big stretch because staples is fee free visa gift cards week after week after it was visa for two weeks and then MasterCard for a week. And now this coming week, it's going to be Visa cards again. So, I mean, if you have anything that you could split payment on, you could very easily. I mean, you buy $1,000 a day at Staples and those. So, if you have an in-cash card, you can walk out with 5,000 points every day of the week this coming week for no cost in terms of getting the card. So, yeah. Not only that so a bunch of people have plus three on their mx cards right now because they referred

someone during the promotional period so they've got three months of three extra points per dollar so if you have that on like your gold card for example you've got four points per dollar everywhere, everywhere, everywhere versus the equivalent of three here. Yeah. So no, no, I, I, I'm not convinced that it's worth it. Uh, you talked me out of it. I was, I thought, Oh yeah, probably for category one to four. But so the things that I don't like about it or that it expires in a year, and we obviously just don't know what travel is going to look like over the next year. There are some really great Hyatt properties that fit in that category one to four range. But I feel like when, if you look up a best of list, like a best category one to four Hyatt list,

I bet that most of the lists you're going to find are going to list properties that are not in the United States that are probably not going to be accessible for most of us for probably at least the first half of 2021 or at least the first quarter of 2021 anyway. So I feel like your time to use it's a little limited. It seems like an awesome deal, especially because everybody's always like, yeah, spend the 15,000 on the new world, the Hyatt credit card for the category one to four cert. So then of course, you'd spend four for the same thing, right? I'm not as bullish on the new world of Hyatt credit card and the free night certificate for the 15K spend as a lot of other people are. So maybe

that's part of it too. I'm a little bit biased in regards to that. I don't get as excited about a category one to four Hyatt cert as I do an uncapped Hilton cert. So at any rate, yeah, I'm going to say no. What do you think did yeah i um yeah um i talked myself out of it you know looking at it from a high level it seemed like what a great deal spend four thousand get a free night's shirt but um compared to some other good things that have been going on it's not that exciting it's not that i wouldn't necessarily do do it. It's just, it's not a no-brainer. It's not a no-brainer. I think if you're somebody who is able

to create a lot of spend, then yeah, I mean, of course you'd do it because if it's not really costing you anything in the sense that you're gonna still do a bunch of spend on your other cards, I mean, then why not, I guess. And certainly if you have a use in mind, especially if you have a 12,000 or or 15 000 point use in mind that you're you know reasonably confident you're going to get to or you know use or a couple of backup plans

it might be more worthwhile yeah yeah yeah although you know even with a lot of spend available like i wouldn't opt to do that instead of earning 4x on my amex gold yeah um but yeah if i had if i had a use in mind then i think the math would change and i didn't already have a free night circuit obviously right um the math would change a bit because then it would be like if i was planning to book a 15k night um then the math would be more like this is almost 4x extra because if it was like a 16k night right right uh it'd be 4x extra so a 5x everywhere and then that would change the math for me right right i think the other problem here though is that i i think i'm not alone in the fact that i am like drowning in free night certificates i know yeah so many free night searches i haven't been able to travel this

year so uh and i feel like there's a lot of other people who are probably in a similar boat there. So I'm also a little bit less excited about a free night certificate that expires in a year right now, just cause I got so many of them. I'm excited about the Hilton ones that are valid for two full years, because I feel like by 2022, you know, I gotta be able to travel places by then I would hope. And if not, then we've got then i've got bigger problems than my free night certificates i guess uh so i feel a little bit better about that but the ones that expire in a year i'm like i've already got a bunch of those i totally agree but so thankfully the the programs at least most of the programs keep bailing us out by pushing back the expiration dates and i think we're all waiting for IHG to push back theirs again.

What's up with that? I mean, I know that's not really mattress running, but what's up with IHG not doing anything? I don't know. It's, yeah, maybe they're waiting until like December 30th to say everyone with December 31st expiry dates are going to get those extended and hoping people will use them up before then or something.

I just don't think they care. I think they just, yeah. Yeah. They don't really get loyalty. Do they? No, they don't. Right. I mean, it doesn't matter. They just give you more points. They don't give you breakfast. They don't give you any guaranteed upgrade. They give you more points. So I think that their loyalty program is really designed for people who just want to get a lot of points for vacation and reimbursable stays and that kind of thing. And that's what they see as the driver is giving these opportunities for more points, not necessarily, you know, being loyal back and forth in the same kind of a way that Hyatt wants to make you loyal.

You know what? I think that is a really good transition for our main topic for the day. It is. It is. think that is a really good transition for our main topic for the day it is it is speaking of uh not valuing loyalty um so the topic name you came up with this one i love it uh delta diamond devalued but not destroyed everybody likes the alliteration there right it's fun it's fun i do say it again don't you delta diamond delta diamond devalued but not destroyed not destroyed i love it love it all right so what's going on with delta so delta totally totally destroyed their partner awards to europe and asia this week so we saw that they increased redemption rates astronomically. Some of them were maybe 20%, but in some cases like 40%. And we're talking ridiculous, ridiculous prices. They already didn't have good prices for partner awards to Europe. And now they have really horrible prices. Like the cheapest you're going to get for business class one way to Europe now with a partner via Delta SkyMiles is 95,000 miles, 95,000 one way in

business class. And you know, when you compare that to others, United, I thought was high at 70,000. American is 57,500. But then you start to look at the foreign programs, ANA charges 88,000 round trip on Star Alliance. Iberia charges $34,000 one way. So $95,000 as a minimum is crazy. And that's only if you book 60 days or more in advance of departure. If you're booking within 21 days of departure, in some cases, you're looking at 195,000 miles as the minimum price for a business class ticket to Europe. It's insane. Right, right. It is. Now there there's,

I can sort of ring out a potential bright spot of, in all of that. I'm looking forward to this. Got to bear with me a little bit here. So, so these numbers, these astronomical award price numbers remind me of what Delta's award prices have been on their own flights to Europe for a while now. And so I think what might be happening is they're saying, I don't know if it's for all partners or select partners, they're saying, why shouldn't they be the same price and so so the the one place where there might be a bright spot here is is where the one good thing that's happened with delta sky miles in the last i'd say four years

is that they they regularly have these sky miles like sales like so they have these award sales and some of those are really good. And, but they've always only been Delta metal only. And so it seems to me there's a chance that by synchronizing the prices that the next time they do, you know, a business class award sale to Europe, it might include Virgin Atlantic and Air France and KLM. Maybe. I mean, that's, that's a, I think that's a, a pretty decent guess and interesting idea. I'm still not thrilled with that because, you know, as you said, they do run these flash sales and the flash sales are often good, but I wouldn't call them great still. Cause even when they do a flash sale,

it's what 120k round trip to europe which is like just in line with everybody else yeah no right i mean it varies but we've seen i think as low as uh something like 85k round trip at one time or 88 or it was somewhere in that range i remember being like so good i had to grab it i didn't end up flying that flight i grabbed it as it goes which is one of the advantages of delta elite status that i often talk about is is the ability to book these awards even if you don't know if you're going to fly them because they're freely cancelable um the but actually let's back up so that's not the only thing that happened recently with delta. Right. So Delta actually made some positive changes for general members recently in that they removed the change and cancellation fees for paid flights, for domestic flights, which that was copying everyone else, they also did awards as no fee for changing awards.

So that's a good change. Another new positive change is that they've made their global upgrade certificates. These are things that only very top tier diamond elites get to get. But these certificates allow you to, you know, upgrade from a dirt cheap economy fair all the way to live flat business class. And they made them finally valuable on Air France. So previously, you could use them on, for example, like KLM and Virgin Atlantic to upgrade from low-cost economy or discount economy to all the way to business. Air France, it wasn't that way. You had to buy an expensive Y-fare and upgrade to premium economy, which would be a silly waste of those certificates,

in my opinion. But now you could go from discount economy all the way to business um even if you buy through air france instead of buying through delta you can still do that so uh some really nice enhancements there um also this happened back in february but they added virgin australia as a uh as someone you can use your upgrade certificates with. And so, again, you could go all the way from a discount economy all the way to upgrade to business class with one of these certificates. So they made those more valuable. So some bright spots, but the big, big negative is about how, like, the few, you know, there already weren't very many super good uses of Delta SkyMiles to get outsized value. Right. And now there's even less. Even less. Even less than there used to be. And

yeah, and that's such a shame. And it's not only, we talk about business class because I think a lot of readers are very interested in flying in premium cabins because that's something that price-wise might be or might feel out of the range of reasonable when you're paying with cash, but it can feel like a really good deal when you're using miles. But this devaluation really takes away that good feeling in many instances. But then it's not even just that. It's economy class too. So economy class went from a minimum of 25,000 miles one way to Europe to now 35,000 miles one way to Europe. And it's kind of insane to see that happen at a time when basically very few of us can travel anywhere in Europe. I mean, Croatia, you can go to Turkey or something, very few places

we can go to in Europe right now. So there's nobody going. And goodness knows, when it opens, there's not going to be the huge flood of demand that's going to keep prices very high. I'm thinking we're going to see low prices for quite a while. So those economy class prices, I think, are going to feel particularly ridiculous when airfares are going to be really cheap. So it's going to be very hard to get more than a penny a mile. And in many cases you're going to be getting, I think less than a penny a mile at those prices. Maybe, maybe. It'll be interesting to see,

like, are they going to, once that happens, once travel to Europe opens up, if assuming prices are very low at the time, we'll see. Will they immediately have award sales or will they just let it go like that with poor value? I don't know. I mean, that's a good point because they

have run good award sales and we've seen some pretty terrific ones, I feel like, within the United States. And, you know, I should temper my enthusiasm there. We've seen terrific ones in the sense that most programs have a standard price for domestic awards. Usually it's like 12,500 miles one way in economy class. We've seen these flash sales with flights available for five or six or 7,000 miles one way, which seems great compared to traditional prices, though. Right. Usually those are for routes and dates where prices are, of course, are really cheap. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you're still going to get way outsized value, but you may at least get reasonable-ish value. Right.

So maybe we'll see that. You're right. Maybe we'll see flash sales. Maybe they're just setting it up, setting that MSRP really high so that they can give you all the discounts like being a car dealer, right? That's exactly what I was thinking,

that these are prices that you, you know, these are prices that you see when, what, you know, from outside, but once you walk in the door, maybe but, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know how that's going to work in reality, but it'd be kind of funny if, if, uh, you know, you log into the website and it'd be like, yeah, that's what we showed you at first, but let me talk to you more about that. It's a special deal for you. It might be something just for you we could do. That's 10% off sound.

It'll be a timeshare presentation before you know it. So does Delta care about loyalty? I mean, look at this. They've just almost decimated the value of SkyMiles on flights to Asia or Europe. And so they've taken this way down, do they care about your loyalty anymore? They gave away one of your key benefits. I mean, and I say gave away your benefits because, of course, we all know that Greg is a Delta Diamond member. He and his wife, both Delta Diamond members. And one of the key benefits that he always talks about, and he mentioned this in

the post, is the flexibility, the ability to book, just as he said a minute ago, to book flights speculatively and cancel them later if you're not going to fly them. It's super convenient to have placeholder options in case you're able to make the trip or in case you need a positioning flight, et cetera. But they gave that ability domestically to everybody. And then they devalued the miles that you need to spend i mean if you're if you're not familiar again to get diamond status if you're not going to get it the the old-fashioned way by spending a lot of money on delta then you have to spend a lot of money on the credit cards 250 grand a year yeah which is something you've been doing on the credit cards which luckily i know ways of spending money without really spending money,

but yeah, it's still a lot. And one of the justifications I've been able to use in the past is, well, I'm getting all these miles that are worth on average about 1.3 cents each towards future travel. But now I'm looking at these things saying, no, those are only worth about one cent each. And there, I'm actually, I've never even seriously considered before using the pay with miles feature that Delta offers to cardholders. Where if you have a cash flight, you can use your miles to offset like $50 at a time for 5,000 miles, basically. Every 5,000 miles subtracts $50 from how much you pay. I've never really thought about doing that because I've been able to regularly get outsized value. Not huge, huge value in the last few years, but 1.3 or better hasn't been that hard.

But lately, when I've been looking at flights, it's been more like 1, 1.1. And you know what? I think next time I'm looking at booking a international flight where I want business class, I think an option I'm going to be looking at is, is there a cheap Delta flight where I can pay with miles for the economy flight and then upgrade with my certificate? So anyway, yes. So the cost of obtaining status is much higher because the value of the rebate I get back in the form of miles is much lower. So I think of it as like- It doesn't sound much. When you hear 1.3 cents versus one cent,

it may be like we're talking about three-tenths of a cent, but we're talking about three-tenths of a cent over the course of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent. Right, right. It adds up. Yeah. Also, I mean, 1.3 was kind of the number I was using as like the low bar. And I know I was usually redeeming for more than that. So if I'm really going forward to be redeeming for one cent, me but probably more than that is how much less it's worth the rebate

to me than than it used to be or at least used to feel like it was worth um and so it's murky there because we're talking about getting about one cent you know per per mile in value but especially i think with those close-in bookings becoming so astronomically high. I mean, one of the benefits of having miles is that you can book a last minute flight and it's usually the same cost as whether you booked it, you know, eight months in advance or you booked it eight minutes. That used to be the way we thought about miles. And so that was one of the advantages. And, and, you know, when you look at 195 one way, talking about almost 400,000 round trip, I mean, business class fares just aren't that expensive to Europe all the time anymore, you know, so you're not even necessarily getting a

cent each if you have to book close in or basically you're looking at those miles and saying, okay, they're no good for booking close in. They're only good when I can plan in advance and then only worth a cent each. So you almost have to discount a little bit for that too, I think. Well, again, I'm going to peg them at a cent each because I'm going to be looking at them for pay with points or pay with miles, not for booking awards for most things, I think. I think that makes sense. The one thing I'm losing out, I think, is the refundability of international flights.

So when you pay with points, same as paying with cash, and any flights booked after the end of this year, we'll go back to the old policy where you can't freely cancel or change them. But aside from that, you general, the rebate I get towards earning status has gone down. The value of having status my favorite features, the ability to cancel or change awards for free, has gone down for two reasons. One, they gave it away to everybody for domestic flights. Two, I don't want to book international flights with miles anymore

because they're too expensive. Right, right. It's a double whammy. They just thought, psh. Double whammy for that yeah that's the the one place where it's gone up the value is with the uh with the global upgrade certificates so they're they're more widely useful um just give one like real world example where i'm kind of excited is the idea like when booking awards to Australia or

flights to Australia, uh, you know, I'm usually looking for awards and usually to find availability, I'm looking at flying through Asia. Um, because the, the flights that go, you know, directly from like San Francisco or LA to Australia or even Chicago, they just don't tend to have any availability in business class. This now gives me the opportunity to say, okay, wait for a good fair to be available, paid fair in economy on Virgin Australiaralia and well or delta but um and apply an upgrade certificate and and hopefully it looks like based on how they do the fare codes i think

the virgin australia ones will have better chance of having upgrade availability so that that's kind of how you know how i'm thinking about i about, I would really use it. You know, it's not, it's not just a, you know, Hey, here's a theoretical good thing. This is something that once, you know, everything opens up again and I'd want to visit Australia in their summer when it's really hard to get awards. Um, it could all line up where it's, where it's actually very valuable and much more valuable than, you know, there there's another another way that i feel like delta diamond has become more valuable that you're missing in all of this and and that's the sense that you're going to have very very very little competition for awards because nobody in their right mind is doing this anymore like who else

is going to be going after delta only somebody who has to fly delta all the time right somebody is in a delta hub because nobody's going to spend towards that i mean there's no except except that you're so wrong because delta just came out with that easy status match so if you had high level status in another airline for the first time ever they're allowing people to match to diamond status and i think it's like you have to complete i, I don't remember, five flights or something. It wasn't that hard. Low bar, yeah. They had a low bar to qualify to keep the status. So you get it temporarily and then you could keep it for the full year with a reasonable number of flights. And you get the choice benefits, I believe, once you meet the requirements and get Diamond for real. So, wow.

I mean, so I don't expect. So they really are giving away all of your status benefits, right? They really are. Giving it away. Five flights. I mean, you had to spend a quarter of a million dollars on their credit cards. And some joker who had like not even top tier status with another airline can come in and fly five flights and get the same thing you got.

Yeah. I don't remember five flights is the right answer but whatever whatever it is it's not very many yeah I'm gonna be five don't see the link in the description here yeah so so anyway so yeah things are looking pretty bleak as far as the value of pursuing status the old way, the way that I had been doing it. So what are the good things about having Delta Diamond status still? I mean, I know we kind of just tried to talk about it, but like to kind of summarize it and put it together. I mean, why would anybody go after Delta Diamond status? What is it that you really value?

The global upgrade certificates. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the biggest single thing. The free award changes used to be one of the biggest things, but no longer all that relevant. I mean, it depends on where you're going, because I did see that LATAM apparently is not

affected by this. So if you use your miles to fly to South America, and LATAM was a nice pickup for Delta when they stole that from American and One World. So that does give you a lot of reach in South America. So if that's where you're looking to use your miles, then... Yeah, actually. And another really good example is if you want to fly to Israel, you could use, I think

it's 85K Delta miles to fly Virgin Atlantic, I think business class to Israel, which is a very decent price. And then you'd get all those benefits of being able to change for free. So that's, so yeah, so it's not gone that, that value, it's just greatly reduced. I think lots of other, there's lots of other perks, you Platinum, you get regional upgrade certificates to make the chance of an upgrade for regional flights more likely. It pops you to the top of the list. You get free upgrades without applying certificate

anytime there's availability, which is a diamond. I'd say more times than not I get upgraded, but it's certainly not guaranteed. You get better service. So they're very, very likely as a globalist, if I have an issue to waive any fees that might be associated with fixing it and accommodate what my needs are. And they tend to be, Delta tends to be good about that, even with people without status compared to most other airlines. But, you know, you could tell the difference as a globalist.

As a diamond member there. As a globalist before also. They don't care if you're a globalist. That's right. So I'm getting mixed up. So Hyatt is globalist top tier and Delta's diamond. Wow. So they used to be the same, right? Hyatt's top tier used Delta's diamond. Wow. So they used to be the same, right?

Hyatt's top tier used to be diamond. And then we wouldn't be having these mistakes. So I blame Hyatt for changing to the stupid globalist name that's messing me up in this conversation. So don't take this as anything I did wrong. It's entirely

Hyatt's fault, just like our what crazy thing entirely Hyatt's fault, just like our, or what crazy thing did Hyatt do this week? You blamed it on Chase, but I'll blame it on Hyatt. Why not? There you go. So I do think though, that there is another piece of this that actually what you just said is probably a bigger thing than it seemed to be. And I just got something that said it was unstable on my side. So I don't know if you're hearing me. Okay. So I think another piece that you probably need to consider that might, I don't know,

push me towards wanting elite status with Delta is the fact that things are very up in the air right now. And, you know, see what I did there. In the sense that flights are getting canceled sometimes. There's a lot of irregular operations. We don't know what the next few months are going to look like. And man, if 2020 taught people anything, it's that when stuff goes wrong, it can really go wrong in the sense that cancellations, the credits that people ended up with and the headaches and blah, blah, blah. And Delta, everyone I know who has status with Delta has always said that Delta takes really

good care of Diamond members. And that can be really helpful if you're in one of those situations where your flight has gotten canceled or changed significantly and you need something different. So there is some value in that, especially if you're a frequent traveler in a time of great uncertainty. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And there's a lot of other perks. I just, I didn't want to get in all the little, you know, picky ones, but you could but you could use your choice benefits to get into the lounge. You could, there's a lot of good stuff. But anyway, yeah written down elite status benefits are better than ever, but because of the miles going down and because a lot of some of the elite benefits have trickled down to the general population, the overall feel of elite status, it feels like it's worth a bit less than before. Right. Right. And so then of course, that is going to beg the question that you're going to address at some point for us, is it still worth spending for, for a diamond Delta diamond status? And, and so since we kind of completed there, I'm going to transition right into post roast here and say that your post about this

says that you didn't do your homework. And I was like, what do you mean you didn't do your home? You are the frequent miler. You do the homework that the teacher didn't assign. Like, how did you not do the homework on this? So, I mean, you look at how many miles you earn and how much it's worth now. And so status, you figured out the number, the amount that it's worth. And actually let's forget about the miles for a hot second. What'd you come to for diamond status? Do you remember it was a 2000 something or other, 2,700. Yeah. Somewhere in the 2,500 range.

So you have to spend $250,000 to end up with something that's worth about $2,500. Does that seem worth it? I mean, do you have to do the homework on that? Well, when I did the homework before, in 2019 was the last time I ran all the numbers. And early too, it was like January, I think when I published that one, the numbers came out favorable and, but again,

you, you're not just getting, uh, these perks worth spending 2,500 on, uh, you're also getting hundreds of thousands of Delta miles. And that's, that's the crux of the problem. Uh, really that's that's the crux of the problem uh really that's that's where it gets difficult it's like um how much are you so when i did it before i i i here's why i didn't do my homework no actually this is getting too into your home i mean you didn't do your homework how do you not do your homework on this like i'm gonna tell you what i'm gonna tell you why you're in denial you're in denial you don't want to know how bad of a deal it is to spend for yes no that's true that's exactly right so yeah i don't want i don't want to um face the reality that i've got to stop this so there's no reason for me to face time to stop that's exactly what's going on there's no reason for me to face it right now because i have diamonds status secured for next year i need to question it in january

delaying the inevitable finding out that it's not worth doing anymore and you're going to be dealt well you know between now and january delta sky miles might become worth you know 10 times more we don't know what's going to happen. That right there is some classic wishful thinking. So I hope you're the best for you. But imagine I did all that work, and then they changed something drastically about the program between now and January. Then it'd be like, I have to throw away all that homework.

Right, right, right. Nobody would want to read that. That would be what crazy thing did Frequent Miler do this week, right? He did some work too soon. Right, right. Nobody would want to read that. That would be what crazy thing did Frequent Miler do this week, right? He did some work too soon. Right, right. So, you know, you don't want me doing work. I don't have to. But speaking of post-drust, so your post on planning for miles and points afterlife. Right. You talked about all the things that need to be done are reasonable to do

to make sure that anyone who survives you will know what to do with all the miles and points and credit cards and whatnot. And, and, um, that's correct. That's good. It's a good reminder. Um, but talk about homework. So I homework so i've these are things i've been meaning to do for a long time and and now it like brought it all like front and center like oh my god there's a lot of stuff i need to do to get my miles and points sort of uh you know, trust fund set up and ready to continue if something happens to me. And so I blame you for making my life more stressful. And for making me not do my homework for the Delta stuff, because it got on the list below.

Below getting everything in order. Below getting everything in order, which also didn't get done because it's too big of a project. Right, right. And so, you know, I'm never going to get anything done. But you got millions and millions and millions of miles. I mean, we're talking about, like, I probably am not exaggerating here, tens of thousands of dollars worth of miles, right? Yeah. And so, you know,

I think that it's crazy to not do some planning for that. And I hadn't been thinking about it at all until it came up in the Chicago seminars. I thought that this little 15 minute presentation was really interesting. It was interesting seeing the comments from people during the presentation too, that were talking about what they've done and in their families and how they've handled it. And I was like, I didn't even think about this really. Like, I mean, I've kind of, you know, on a surface level right now, and then explain things to my wife, this and that, you know, we got logins for the banks and stuff all laid out. But then I realized she has no idea some of the programs we got miles in or how to log into them or what the loyalty number. And I was

like, wow, that would, that would definitely stink if she all of a sudden lost these things that you know we spent all this time gathering so uh so yeah so so it's worth putting the time into but truth truth be told I haven't finished it either so so after I read your post I turned to my wife and said do you know how to contact Nick if something happens to me because I I'm expecting you to coach her through what to do. Right, right, right. And I figured that probably that's what my wife would do too. She'd like send an email to Greg and be like, what do I do, Greg?

That would be totally cool. Kind of what I figured. So I mean, we get to count on that, but most people don't. So you got to have something in mind. And there was one reader who commented on the post and she also had talked about it during the, during the Chicago seminars also. And she had said that by her kids request, she had kind of simplified things into fewer programs and that sort of thing, because her kids didn't want to have to learn how to manage all these points and things. And I, I thought I wouldn't have even thought about asking my kids, you know, when I get to that

point someday, like, you okay managing all this? And like, should I should I reduce the workload? And so anyway, food for thought, right? Yeah. So I had to deal with all this with my dad, he had a bunch of points and different programs. And luckily, I was already controlling the stuff. So it really wasn't that hard for me. But your post reminded me. So I was actually planning to book a hotel room for my son who's about to go on a road trip. And I was trying to decide between spending 12,500 IHG points or 5,000 Hyatt points for his stay. I read your post. I was like, I forgot.

My dad has a bunch of IHG points that I want to burn down. Definitely go with IHG because it's essentially not costing me anything. I'd rather sort of use up that pool. So anyway. So thank you. You're telling me how I just saved you a whole bunch of points with post so thank you you're telling me i just saved you a whole bunch of points with poster thank you i am glad well if five thousand points i she would like you to think it's a lot of points right right we're gonna get an extra

five thousand points for this promotion uh so all right so that then i guess brings us to the question of the week right i think it does okay so question of the week, right? I think it does. Okay. So question of the week, I actually am going to break the rules a little bit here because I had two really good questions and I didn't want to exclude either one of them. Two questions. What makes you think you're allowed to break any rules? You know, cause I make them. It's the question of the week is my segment.

Oh, that's true. All right. All right. In that case. All right. So, so two different questions. And I think they're both worth answering. So the first one, I'll give you the easier one first, then we'll do the other one. Can I guess the answer before you ask it? You can try. What do you think?

I think the answer is, it depends. Well, that's either you'd be wrong. So question number one came from Vincent. And this is one that he sent to me through Facebook. And so he had a question about the Hyatt mattress runs. So Hyatt offering this opportunity for a bunch of elite nights. We've talked about it a whole bunch. He said, hey, Nick, I have a question about a hypothetical Hyatt globalist mattress run,

particularly as it intersects with the double nights promotion. The frequently asked questions on the promotions webpage explains that only eligible nights qualify for the double nights and goes on to explain an eligible night is one where an eligible rate is paid. The Frequently Asked Questions in Terms and Conditions don't clarify anything beyond that. That's a little bit ambiguous, I think is what he meant, and begs the question, what is an eligible rate? So can it be

under a corporate code? Can it be part of a package? Can it be an extended stay rate? Can it be the work from Hyatt rate, et cetera? So he's wondering how this, you know, how do you figure it out? How do you know that the rate you've booked is a qualifying rate? It depends. You're kind of right. Yeah. No, I mean, actually, I think when you book, if you book through Hyatt, it's going to be an eligible rate. So the only time you're going to get a rate that's not eligible is certain conference rates might not. Don't you book that through Hyatt?

Sometimes you have to book through a conference. Okay, true. And in those cases, you might get a room where it doesn't have point earnings or anything so uh if you book with points you book through hyatt uh with any cash rate put in a code it's going to be point earning oh well it's going to be elite night earning which is what you care about for this and it'll be eligible see now greg is very confident when he says that and i i feel like he's probably right but we know that for example i want to say it's choice privileges or maybe windham have these like minimum dollar figures where if the rate is under like 40 bucks a night then it's not qualifying now i haven't seen that with hyatt before but i don't know if you get a cheap enough hyatt rate

is it qualifying here's how here's what i told vincent here's how you know you go to your email confirmation and then the email confirmation there's rate information and it says like under the the details it says rate details and right in there there's a sentence that'll either say eligible for points in elite nights or not. In fact, I think if I get the screenshot right here. So it says, oh, it took me a second longer than I'd hoped. It says, it says, rate is eligible to earn points and tier credit.

So that line will be there under rate information. That's what you're looking for. Information amounts, which you're looking for. Okay, so that's the answer to that one. I thought that was a good one because there are probably a lot of people out there that have mattress runs of some sort booked because this is a great promotion

and you do want to make sure that it's eligible. So that's question number one. Question number two, totally separate, totally different. This one came in via email and you probably saw this one, but I thought this is worth talking about. So Edward asked us, I received the Barclays JetBlue Plus MasterCard. Now it must've applied a while ago

because it was the 60,000 mile offer. He called customer service to confirm that he spent the amount to qualify for the bonus. Rep, he says, the rep told me I spent $2,002. Spending requirement was 2,000 bucks. Rep said he spent 2,002 bucks. He said, so I waited for the bonus, which was never credited to my account. When I inquired, I was told the $99 annual fee was included in the amount I spent on the card, that $2,002, when the rep said that he spent $2,002. And therefore, he didn't spend the required $2,000 to qualify for the 60,000 bonus miles. In your experience, is this proper on their part? And if this happened to you, what would you try and do to get the points?

Didn't get 60,000 points. You paid the fee. What would you do? Right. That's rough because the rep gave him the wrong answer. I mean, the rep should have known that the annual fee does not count towards the spend. So, you know, overall, they they did the right thing and not awarding the points because he hadn't spent the required $2,000 because the annual fee doesn't count. That's a known thing. It's true with all credit cards as far as I know. The rep did the wrong thing. I think his best hope is to escalate the problem and sort of ask for a one-time exception or even ask for more time to complete the spend or something along those lines. But that said, I haven't heard success stories in similar situations. You know, it seems reasonable that they would allow it, but it just, for whatever reason is, is not something that we hear people say, you know,

I pushed it up the chain and they, they fixed it for me. No, not in that case where you counted the annual fee, thought you made the, met the purchase requirement because you counted the annual fee. I mean, that's a gotcha that people do get hit by. And we get people asking us about that often. Does the annual fee count? Another question we get sometimes is on the Amex cards that offer airline incidentals. Does the spend that got rebated by the airline incidentals count? And I believe that spend does count, but it does get a little murky. It got rebated. Did you spend enough, et cetera? How do you avoid this problem? I mean, obviously you spend $2,000 without counting the annual fee, right? So that's obvious, number one, but how do you personally make sure that you do that? Because I mean, it can get kind of tedious tracking how much you've spent. Yeah. I mean,

personally, I always try to use one of the techniques to increase spend and just knock out the minimum spend requirements, you card, I put in how much, and then I have the spreadsheet calculate how much more do I have to go to, to meet that spend. And so, um, you know, I, I'm pretty sure when I, when I do it that way, that, that, uh, uh, you know, I've met it. I, I don't tend to use those cards for like every day, like $5 purchases, because it's harder to keep track. So I use it more for the bigger purchases and get it through that way. But how about you? What do you do? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely something I do. And one of the things that I told Edward, when I responded to him, and I wonder what the case is for you, is that I don't usually cut it that close. I mean, $2,002 is closer than I tend to cut it. Now, I have a feeling maybe you're going

to tell me that you spend $2,000 on the button, but I usually overspend by at least a couple hundred bucks on the spending requirements, which I know isn't maximizing value because I could have put those couple hundred bucks on a card that earned better, but I'm just always wary of cutting it that close. I don't want to miss the chance for 60,000 miles. I'm sure Edward was upset and rightfully so. They missed like, you know, $900 ish worth of miles by like, you know, less than 99 bucks, 97 bucks. So that, that stinks, that feeling. So in order to avoid that, I always try to spend a few hundred, a few hundred above and beyond.

Do you worry about that? Or are you just trying to- No, I don't do that. So like, for example, let's say I have a tax payment to make and I'm going to pay the 1.87%. I actually calculate like, let's say it's a $3,000 minimum spend. I calculate like how much money plus the fee will add up to $3,000 and like one cent. And that's how much I apply to that card. Yeah, that's smart. It's better than what I do. A little bonus content now that's just occurred to me. I'm going to give you a quiz.

Uh-oh. Uh-oh, pop quiz. I can edit this out, you know. That's true, you can. So there is a bank. I guess there could be more than one, but there's one that I know of where business card authorized users. So like employee cards spend on those cards do not count towards minimum spend for a new sign

up bonus for your overall business card account. Do you know which bank that is? First national bank of Omaha. I'm just making that up. I have no idea. No idea no i i definitely do the authorized user spend doesn't count no who is right u.s bank so this happened back when when when uh radison rewards was club carlson and they have the business version and some people got caught with this where they put all the spend on the uh on the on the employee card and it didn't count oh that stinks that's terrible yeah right right right so i mean this was years ago that i found out so it's possible they've changed that since then but um no it was you know back then i dug into the terms and sure enough it was actually pretty clearly written but not something

you would have thought to look for right who would have thought of that you just thought that the money gets spent on the account and that's good. And with business cards, there's no downside to adding a spouse. Like, you know, cause generally it's not going to add to the five 24 count or anything. And so if you're the person who does most of the spending in the household, it would seem reasonable if you're your player to open a card to just add yourself as an authorized user and then go to town and meet the spending requirement. That's a really good point. I'll have to now keep my eye out for those types of things in the future.

So, all right, there you have it. Avoid underspending and some good advice there to always keep a close eye on the fine print. Yes. All right, now I'm looking forward to the goodbye song now. That's right. So this week- It's gonna be different.

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