Frequent Miler on the Air - Delta Roars Back | Ep88 | 3-6-21

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

00:15 Giant Mailbag: Misdirected mail 2:44 What crazy thing...did Staples do this week? 6:02 Main Event: Delta Roars Back https://frequentmiler.com/exciting-enhancements-for-deltas-top-tier-elites-on-my-mind/ https://frequentmiler.com/delta-now-shows-upgrade-certificate-availability-in-search-results/ https://frequentmiler.com/delta-upgrade-availability-showing-for-award-miles-cash-flights-too/ https://frequentmiler.com/awesome-new-delta-card-offers/ 29:09 Mattress running the numbers: Is it worth spending $90K on a credit card for Delta Platinum status this year? https://frequentmiler.com/passing-the-guc-greg-gives-global-upgrades-to-nick-with-a-catch/ 50:21 Post Roast: Is it really worth spending on Delta cards? Why can't you gift a Marriott certificate? 1:00:42 Question of the Week: Can you name 5 airlines that allow you to share miles?

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event delta roars back that was good uh first of course we have the giant mailbag but i am so sad to say mailbag's empty mailbag's empty well you're lucky then that my mailbag runneth over this week. Really? Yes, yes. So there was a piece of mail. Let me see your giant mailbag. Well, you know, it's right down here just off the camera, unfortunately.

Oh, it's too bad to hold up, isn't it? It is, it is. But a piece of mail got misdirected here. Wow, that looks like an actual piece of mail. No, it is. It's definitely an actual piece of mail. And that's why I don't have it around the other way because it has addresses on it. But a card came in the mail that I think was really for the giant mailbag.

And so I saw this card and I was like, what is this all about? Achievement unlocked is what it says on the front. And the inside says something that I won't exactly repeat now that I read the inside. You really should read the giant mailbag mail before bringing it on air. I should. Congratulations on reaching a whole new level of amazing is what it says. Congratulations on winning the bet that IHG wouldn't start offering free breakfast. Enjoy getting scattered, smothered and covered the next time you head south from Stephen Pepper. So what is that you're holding in your hand there?

I can't. I'm sorry. The people, that's right. And to get a little back up a little bit, my camera didn't refocus. It is a Waffle House gift card. So what I had completely forgotten was that I had made a bet with Steven Pepper that IHG would not start offering free breakfast last year. That was one of his predictions. And I was right, of course. IHG did not offer free breakfast for elite members. It was an easy win. And I had totally forgotten that we had tossed a free breakfast on that. So how much, how much is that worth? $20. So a free breakfast, about 15 breakfasts at Waffle House. So, which is, which is a guilty pleasure of mine. So I of course have not been by a Waffle

House in a long time now, but someday when I get by one again, now I'm going to enjoy one on Stephen Pepper and I'm going to have to teach my son all about Waffle House and get by one again, now I'm going to enjoy one on Steven Pepper and I'm going to have to teach my son all about Waffle House and get him to say yes, Steven Pepper, at least one time. So thank you, Steven. That's great. So Steven's first contribution, I think, to the Giant Mailbag. That's right. Very well done. You heard it. Okay. Now I'm looking forward to the next segment. Well, that brings us to what crazy thing did Staples do this week? What? Staples?

Staples got crazy? So as you know, we all go to Staples to buy gift cards because we bring in our Chase Inc. card that gets 5X at office supply stores. Or right now, the business platinum card through June gets 5X if you signed up for the 5X offer. Anyway, so we go there to buy gift cards. Well, a reader wrote in saying, just walked out of a Staples store, the general manager was pulling all of the Visa and MasterCard $100 and $200 gift cards. He had an email in his hand that said there was a virus attached to them and to pull them right away.

Oh, my goodness, a virus attached to the Visa gift cards. Yeah. So this is like breaking news because, I mean, we all know that viruses will mutate and find different ways to transmit new hosts and this has got to be the first documented case of virus mutating at the point where it's actually carried on a visa or mastercard gift card i mean there have probably been cases of like on uh waffle house uh cards, but I don't think... That would explain a lot.

That would explain a lot. Yeah, I'm perplexed. I'm amazed that I haven't heard about this infection, this spread of Visa and MasterCard gift card disease. Well, you're hearing it first on Frequent Miler on the air. We're known for breaking news at the moment. We're going to send our chief correspondent, Steven Pepper, to the scene to check it out. I mean, are the symptoms an abnormally large ultimate rewards balance?

Is that the symptoms? I wish we had a picture of the memo that was described here because, you know, maybe it did say what the symptoms were. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. We'll never know. We'll never know. So that's, I mean, that's got to take the cake for the most far-fetched reason I've heard a manager give for why the Visa and MasterCard gift cards are no longer available. Right, right. Like often you hear things like, oh, it's illegal. Right, right, right. Right. No, we can't do that. There's a corporate policy against selling them with a credit card or, you know, yes, the whole illegal thing or laundering money, this or blah, blah, blah, that. But I mean, the cards have a virus. That's a good way to get

people not to ask any more questions. Right. I mean, like, you gotta give some credit there. Right. Because, you know, right now, everybody's gonna be like, okay, all right. No, no thanks. I don't need those. I guess I was a brilliant manager in hindsight. Yeah, maybe that's true. I mean, it could be that that's not actually what the email said that he was carrying around.

It could be that that was not what the email said. It could be. But we don't know that. We don't know. We'll never know. We'll never know. right but anyway so watch out watch out be safe out there with yeah you know i'd say handle them with gloves i guess right is that the safe way of handling gift cards these days maybe maybe your viral gift cards all right so so then that normally would bring us to mattress running the numbers normallybers. It would normally, yeah.

But we're going to switch things up this week. We are. We're going to get a little crazy. Change up the order. We're going to hold off on Mattress Running the Numbers. We're going to come back to you with that a little bit later. We're going to jump right into the main event. That's right, and we have a good reason for it.

And that reason will be crystal clear later when we get to the Mattress Running the Numbers because it would be kind of silly to describe it now because why just waste time bantering when we could get right into the main event right into the main event for no reason not to so the main event delta roars back what's going on so all right so a little background here uh delta kind of lost its luster recently for a few reasons. One is, as we've blogged about, there were a set of partner devaluations, meaning the number of points, miles you needed to redeem for a free flight on partners went way, way up. It used to be way, way up, way, way up. Not all partners, but most of the ones that you care about. And so that was one big hit.

Another thing was like, well, yeah, we all knew Delta SkyMiles weren't worth like a huge amount. So that wasn't like that big of a deal, but they were known for great operational excellence. And over the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, unlike their competitors, they canceled wave after wave of flights without any bad weather to account for it. So I think, you know, those two things, been, you know, mostly on the upswing for quite a while, you know, headed downward and quite precipitously. But things have changed this week, right? Right, right. Things changed big time this week because Delta, well, first of all, Delta made their upgrade certificates much better than before, right?

I mean, like you tell us about the upgrades. You're the one with the upgrade certificates much better than before, right? I mean, you tell us about the upgrades. You're the one with the upgrade certificates. They made these global upgrade certificates awesomer than they ever were, right? They did. So there's two types of upgrade certificates that are possible to get if you have platinum and or diamond status. Platinum elites can get things called regional upgrade certificates. And those are for upgrading flights within the US and even flights to the region around the US. So I think flights to Canada, flights to Central America, and so on. Global upgrade certificates are only available to diamond elites. And those let you upgrade any flight, any Delta flight worldwide and a number of partners as well.

If there's upgrade space. In both cases, there has to be upgrade space available. But the point is you could book a very cheap flight and upgrade all the way to first class or Delta One suites even. The only thing you can't book basic economy and use the upgrades. But anyway, so up until now, and pretty much like every other program, you had to have a cash ticket in order to use an upgrade certificate. Now, all of a sudden out of the blue, they said, guess what? Now you can use them on award tickets. Wow. I mean, that's a big change.

That's a really big, big change because, all right. So when I wrote recently about the best uses of Delta miles, I put together that post because, well, the partners weren't any longer a great use, at least some of them aren't any longer. So what was left and the biggest thing that's left is Delta awards on Delta itself, especially flying economy, especially when they have their frequent award sales. And sometimes you get some excellent value that way. Now we can book those. And if you have the right upgrade certificates, actually upgrade to first class for those flights. So that's like a really awesome one-two combination. And it gets better. Up until now, finding upgrade availability meant calling Delta and asking for specific flights. You know,

how about this flight? No? How about this flight? but now the upgrade availability actually shows very clearly in the search results. So you just search for a flight paid or award flight and boom, it'll show you whether, um, upgrades are available. You can, even if you've already booked a flight, you could still do a search as if you're going to book another seat on that same flight to see if it's upgradable. And then if it is, you can call or you can message Delta through the app to ask for that upgrade. So that's terrific. That's a great, great enhancement there.

That's something that I think anyway, Alaska has had for quite a long time where you can see if there's upgrade availability during the booking process. And actually you can even apply it. I think your upgrade online during the booking process, if I remember correctly. But that's something that hasn't been possible with Delta. And I wrote just recently about how basically the only way to find out if there's upgrade space is to contact Delta again and again with the various flights that you're looking at, because there just wasn't a better way to look. Now, this only applies to flights on Delta Metal, is that correct? That's true.

That's true. Unfortunately, so even though they can be used on some partners, when you're looking at a partner flight in the search results, it just says, you know, upgrade availability can't be determined for this partner flight. So it's not going to necessarily help you for partner flights, but great for Delta flights. And like you said, particularly good for those award sales where they're economy class award seats because you're able to snag upgrades on those. And you can tell in advance now whether or not there's availability. Of course, you still have to go through messaging Delta in order to apply one of those upgrades? I mean, is this like messaging thing, this app, iMessage, something or other, the way to do it? Or is there a better way? What's the best way to be able to apply that? Yeah. So I actually just earlier today tried out the messaging through the Delta app. There's an option to message. And on my iPhone, it brings me to an iMessage window. And my experience was kind of mixed. Like, so the downside was you start off talking to a robot, you know, and so the good thing about that is that it answers very quickly.

Bad thing is it doesn't tell you what you want to know. But finally, I got to a place where it said, does this answer your question or do you want to speak to a representative? And I was like, B. And so then the downside was it took about probably 15 minutes or 20 minutes or longer for the representative to come on. But actually, once she was on it, the process was smooth. So so I thought that was pretty good. My experience as a diamond though calling is usually unless there's problems with a lot of like cancellations going on or whatever. Usually, I get a person on the phone within a minute of calling, and they can handle my request right away. So so it's actually

usually easier to call. But still, I'm pretty happy that there's two ways to do it now. So this has a potential impact on our trip that we're going to do together, that you're going to plan, right? Right, because now we can do things differently. So now we have the option of booking the economy flights in economy uh i'm sorry with uh we're all gonna always gonna book in an economy and use my global upgrades to upgrade but um it means we can book with sky miles and then upgrade and so i am going to offer to you

that if you can find um you, you know, those flights that are reasonable number of Delta miles, and we'll get into what that means later. Um, I'm happy to use my miles for both of us to do that. Wow. Wow. All right. So there's some incentive for me to find the miles flight. I was going to say, I think, I think the reason Greg was so excited about this was because it's going to save him the money of having to buy a ticket to upgrade, right? But now it's going to cost him extra miles. So I guess that wasn't the case. I guess I was wrong.

Yeah, actually, the advantage of me paying cash is I have a bunch of Delta funds that I think expire at the end of this year. I'm hoping they'll extend it. But if they don't, that's going to be a problem figuring out how to spend it all down. So that would have actually been a problem solved for me, but I don't know. I think it's cool if we can use this new feature

for its good value. That would be pretty neat. Yeah, yeah, it sure would be. All right, so that was one of the big enhancements this week. Right, right. So another thing they did was they came out with really surprisingly good offers for their credit cards, right? Right.

Right. I mean, I'm not a Delta person. I never had a Delta SkyMiles credit card, never been particularly interested in one. And these offers are good enough that even I was like, wow, those look pretty good. I'm not going to get them, but they look pretty good. Why wouldn't you get them? So, I mean, because it takes up an Amex slot for a card that I, for miles that I'm not particularly interested in. For me, Delta

doesn't work out so well. Cause I, I, I fly out of an airport where my only options on Delta are on very small planes that don't make the rest of the family happy. And by the rest of the family, I mean, I need to have a happy wife to have a happy life. So I'm not going to probably fly Delta out of my home airport. And then, you know, like the best use of the Delta miles typically these days is like domestic economy for the most part, or even international economy sometimes. And I'm not probably going to book an economy award on Delta where I have to drive hours to get to the airport over booking Southwest out of my closest airport knowing that I've got a 730. So it doesn't work for me, but probably for a lot of people, it does.

These offers are really good. So can you review just very high level what those offers are? Yeah. So the gold card, the gold Delta SkyMiles card comes with 70,000 miles as the welcome bonus now. I think it was a 2K spend to trigger that. The business version also comes with a $50 statement credit and it's not tied to a Delta purchase. This is just a straight up statement credit this time. The platinum card, both business and personal side

comes with 90,000 Delta SkyMiles, 90,000. And the business version also tosses in a hundred dollar statement credit on top of the 90,000. Like what? And I think it's 3K spend if I remember correctly on the platinum one. And then there is the reserve cards are offering 80,000 miles and 20,000 MQMs. I think that's the most MQMs we've seen. I mean, at least that I recall anyway, or certainly I don't recall anything that big that also came with 80,000 redeemable miles. So that's terrific. And then the business one comes with a $200 statement credit on top of the 80,000 redeemable miles and 20,000 MQMs. I mean, whoa, those are huge. They are absolutely huge, yeah.

So I guess I understand not wanting to use up a Amex slot if you're likely to get a different Amex credit card soon. But if you have a slot available, why wouldn't you go for one of these? And then next year when the annual fee comes due, just cancel it. And then at least you keep the miles. Well, that's true. And the miles don't expire so you can hang on to them until they become useful for you. So maybe there'd be a time when they'd be useful. So there's certainly that argument to be made there.

And I haven't run into a situation yet where I was like, oh man, I wish I had Delta SkyMiles. And the way they've devalued partner miles or partner redemptions rather, doesn't make me more excited about Delta SkyMiles because I'm more interested usually in redeeming miles for international premium cabin flights. Domestically, we mostly fly Southwest because we've had the companion pass for a long time. They're convenient. They're predictable, same size plane every time. And, and so that works for, for my family domestically for the most part. And then I have United silver status, thanks to my Marriott titanium. So if for some reason, we're

not going to fly Southwest, it's usually going to be United either because of that status or because of the Turkish miles and smiles, sweet spot, 7,500 points each way. There just aren't very many opportunities from my airport where Delta is going to beat that. So, all right. So pretty much the same reason I didn't sign up for the a hundred K jet blue offer. I think it's not likely to use it. It's not likely to use it. You know, if I was, then I would take it. Cause I mean, here's the thing people are going to say, Oh, you know, sky miles, sky pesos, they're not worth anything, blah, blah, blah. Except I mean, are, right? You know, even if they're only worth a penny each, which, I mean, I think it's pretty easy to give it. That's like the floor.

The floor, floor, floor. You're talking about $700 to $900 on these various cards and with relatively low spending requirements. I mean, like basically then you could look at the gold card as a $700 offer on a $2,000 spend or. Right. And no annual fee first year for that one. So if you're not that committed to it, you know, there's not that much lost. Yeah. Like a grand on the platinum card between the miles and the a hundred dollars statement credit. And again, that's like floor value. So if there's any chance that you're going to fly Delta, I think these are worth a look now. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, you know, I'm already sort of reviewing that. Does anyone in my family have an open, you know, credit card slot and hasn't had one of these before? Unfortunately, answer to both of those questions is no. But I'd love to snag these deals. A question I suspect we're going to get

from people is, should they get the 70K gold card or the 90K platinum card because the platinum card costs $250. The gold card is free first year. And then what? I have 95 or something. Yeah. 95, 99. I don't know. Just under a hundred bucks.

Yeah. And so I was looking at it and I realized that for the first year, the difference is, I believe, if I remember this correctly, you know, $200 difference, at least with on the business card side, because of the rebates you get. So you're going to be spending $200 more out of pocket to get the card for the first year, if you get the platinum card. But in exchange for that, you're getting 20,000 extra miles. And if you wait to cancel until the next year's annual fee comes due, so you don't actually pay that annual fee, but you wait until then, you should have a companion ticket in your Delta account that doesn't go away when you cancel. So for that much money, that's a pretty good deal compared to the Delta gold card.

So I think, you know, if I was deciding, it would be like, I think if it wasn't for that companion ticket, I would say most people, if you don't know what you're going to be doing with the Delta miles, I'd say spend less money. Like, why spend any money for the extra miles if you don't even know you're going to be using the $70,000? But if you're pretty sure you're going to be using them and you're pretty sure that you would, again, even if you only get a penny a piece, that's, that's a pretty decent value. And then, yeah, I mean, that companion certificate, I'm sure it could be really valuable depending on how you use it. You know, if you're going to end up using it for a really cheap flight, it may not be hugely valuable to you, but if you're going to use it for an expensive flight or it comes in handy for a last minute flight or something like that, then, you know, it certainly could be great to have one of those lying around. So, uh, so yeah, I mean, I think, I think I would probably lean if I were going to apply for one, I think I would probably

lean towards the platinum because I feel like the miles are a wash with the additional costs. And then if I can get anything out of that companion certificate, I'm ahead of the game and I may end up well ahead of the game if I make good use of the companion certificate. So yeah, no, that sounds good. That's a good way to think of it. And then the way I think about the Delta Reserve one, so this is their most expensive card, $550.

Is it just the business card that comes with a $200 rebate on it? Just the business version. Okay. So that one's obviously in all of these, the business cards are the better deal because they come with these these rebates um but uh the reason you would think about getting the delta reserve with only 80k bonus instead of the platinum with the 90k is if you're chasing elite status and only if you're chasing elite status, I think otherwise it would be silly. So, and the way it works with elite status is you're getting, in addition to the 80,000 miles with the Delta Reserve card, you're getting 20,000 MQMs. These are medallion qualifying miles, or I prefer to call them elite qualifying miles to explain what they are.

They're generally sort of a substitution. They're the currency that indicates how far you've flown on Delta this year, except you don't need to actually fly to get them. You could get them from the credit card. So it's as if you flew 20,000 miles when you get those 20,000 MQMs, And you need 25,000 miles flown for silver status, 50,000 for gold, 75,000 for platinum status. And the Delta Reserve Card, another feature of it that is kind of critical to know is that with every $30,000 spend, you get for the up to $120,000 spend, you get 15,000 MQMs.

That's in addition to the 20,000 you get for signing up. And this year it gets even better because they're giving 25% more on those. So you're getting even more MQMs for your spend than usual this year in 2021. All that adds up to if you're interested in Delta Elite status and you want a credit card to help you get there, the reserve bonus is really pretty spectacular. If you have two credit card slots available, and what we mean by that is Amex limits people

to having four or five credit cards. That limit is not imposed on most of their charge cards or pay over time cards like the platinum card or gold card, but for credit cards like the Delta cards, Hilton cards, blue cash cards, things like that, you can only have either four or five of them and they won't let you get more if you if you have over that um and i'm saying four or five because that limit seems to vary by person and and we haven't figured out why yet although i do have a theory

but that's a that's another story another show right. We've got another show coming on that, I guess. So, all right. So you got four or five slots, whatever. You want to get the Delta Reserve. I mean, is the Reserve... Well, first of all, I mean, is the Reserve a good deal? So 20,000 MQMs, that doesn't quite get you enough to get elite status, right? No, right.

You can get both cards, though. You could sign up for both the consumer and business card. So that'd be 40,000 MQMs right there, plus 160,000 SkyMiles. And of course, you have to meet the minimum spend requirements. And pay that 550 annual fee times two, right? Well, there's that. So, so one of the downsides, one of the great things about the Delta reserve card, it comes loaded with a lot of perks. The downside is if you have two of them, most of those perks don't do you any good to have it twice. So for example, sky club access, or even centurion lounge access, um, you get that because you have a Delta reserve card. You don't get a second person that because you have a delta reserve card you don't get a

second person in because you have two of them so um that's true of most of the features of the card except for one which is the annual companion ticket you do get two of those at the end of the year so those are that's good to have and they're better than the ones that come with the platinum card because you can optionally, so the platinum card, you can only add a companion to an economy fair. And, but with the reserve, you can add them to economy or to a first-class fair. And so there have been a number of times where I've used it to really, really great value. For example, there have been times where, you know, our family wanted to travel during the holidays when it's just crazy expensive to fly in economy or anything. And as a result, the economy price was not that much lower than the first class flight price. So let's say it was like

$700 for economy and 850 for first class. I used the companion certificate, got both of us in first class, you know, and that kind of thing is to me just a great, a great, great win. And of course, there was no award availability at low levels either, because I would have done that instead, probably. But an example of how you can get great value from it. It's not always so crystal clear, though. So should we, anything more about Delta in general, before we jump into our next topic? Well, I, you know, I, I think everything else that's coming to my mind kind of fits in with the next topic. So, all right. So Delta's roared back, right? It was just quick recap. They roared back by doing a few things. They made the

upgrade certificates, uh, applicable to award tickets. In addition to pay, they've always been applicable to pay, but now they're also applicable to award tickets. They made it easy to see upgrade availability for Delta flights online. You still have to contact Delta in order to use your upgrade certificates, but you can see if there's availability online, whether paid or award ticket. And then they came out with great new offers on the Delta credit card. So those three things add up to a pretty good week for Delta in terms of good news for Delta fans anyway, Delta flyers. So let's take that and bring it into mattress running the numbers because mattress running the numbers this week, what we have to look at is that Delta reserve card, right? Right. So the question I want to ask is whether it's worth signing up for that Delta Reserve card and spending your way to Platinum Elite status.

And I'm picking Platinum Elite status for a couple of reasons. One is it's the level right below top, but it's the first level that gives you access to upgrade certificates. So that's the level at which you get those regional upgrade certificates we were talking about. And we just finished talking about how much more valuable they are now. So you want to spend your way to do that. Does that make sense to do? diamond status is just that that's a very, very high hurdle because not only do you need 125,000 MQMs to get to Delta diamond status, but you also need to either spend $15,000 on Delta flights for the year, or you have to get a waiver by spending $250,000 on Delta cards. That's a lot of cheddar, Greg.

That's a lot, right. So let's do the easier one, because to get a waiver for up to Platinum Elite status, you only have to spend $25,000 on Delta cards, and that's very reasonable, especially considering we're talking about spending more than that to earn MQMs, okay? Right, so on the reserve card, every $30,000 spend gets you bonus MQMs. Okay. Right. So, so every, on the reserve card, every 30K spend

gets you bonus MQMs, right? That's right. So if you get the card, you meet the minimum spending requirement, you're going to get yourself 20K MQMs. If you spend a total of $30,000 on the card, you get what? A bonus 15,000 MQMs. Is that what it is? That's the standard. But you're getting 25 percent more than that now, which is 18,000 and change. So if you spend just 30,000 on the card, you would end up with help me here, 38,000 and change miles. Is that right? So I did do the math to figure out how much you'd have to spend to get to platinum status if you did one card. Okay. So meaning you just get one Delta Reserve card. Ideally, again, the business one, so you get the $200 back.

But either one, you get the same number of MQMs. And if you spend $90,000 on it, you'll get back 56,250 MQMs from that spend. Add in the 20,000 MQMs from the signup bonus. And that's over 70, that's just over the 75,000 MQMs needed for, um, platinum status, which is a very high level status. Um, so, okay. So 90,000, 91 card, 90 K spent. Right, right. So obviously that's a lot of spend. Now it is coming, tax season is coming upon us. And I bring that up because there are three different services that let you pay your taxes with a credit card. And they all now charge about a 2% fee to do that. So if you round up to 2% and say, all right, here's the

plan. I know that I can, this might be a stretch, but you know, just, just work with me here. Okay. I'm going to work with you. I'm going to let you go. Imagine you could float the 90,000 until, until the tax rebate comes, but Who knows how long that's going to be, but okay, let's imagine that. This is just so we could do the math. We're magic spending. So basically, you're spending the 2% in order to spend $90,000. You're giving the IRS a loan.

When they find out that you overpaid, they pay you back. 2% of the $90,000 comes to $1,800 you're spending to get platinum status. So that might sound like a lot of money. It doesn't sound like a small amount. No, it certainly is a lot of money. But it's not just the four regional upgrade certificates you're getting from that. You're also getting the 90,000 miles from the spend every, every dollar you spend is getting a mile.

So that's worth at least 900 bucks back. So now we've cut down the sort of the, if you think of it as $900 cash or you're sort of down to about $900 cost to get the platinum elite status, which comes with all kinds of benefits, free upgrades. You don't have to use these regional upgrades to get upgraded. You could take a chance and you get upgraded once you get on the upgrade list, which

happens automatically. I think it's three days before or five days before your flight. And you also get better like Delta service. When you call them, you get answered quicker. And there's a lot of little perks to platinum status that are worth considering. And of course, you get the four regional upgrade certificates. But backing up to platinum status, that's good not just for the rest of this year, it's good for all of next year and through January of the year after that. So you're talking about,

if you really did this like now, you're talking about getting status for almost two full years, getting this high level status. So that's what you're getting for $1,800 out of pocket again. So I'm not counting all of it. So the Delta Reserve card itself has features you're getting.

Of course. And of course, the signup bonus that you're getting. So what I don't think we should do is say is add those things into the mattress running numbers. Because those are always there. Let's just say all that stuff is great stuff to have and the annual fee is is disappointing that you have to pay it but you're more than getting paid back for the annual fee by the signup bonus and all those other perks right right so we could just sort of say all that stuff that's a good offer by itself right right? Right. Signing up for the Delta Reserve card, getting all the points.

That's a good offer by itself. Now we're just looking at, does it make sense? Spend 90 grand with a 2% fee in order to secure Platinum Elite status. Talk to me about these regional upgrade certificates. What can you upgrade with a regional upgrade certificate? How big is the region uh so you can upgrade um many most of delta's flights to hawaii theoretically um and when i say most like they don't allow the ones that go anywhere near the east coast so those really long range ones are not upgradable, but the ones from the West Coast or Salt Lake City, I believe are upgradable. That said,

you know, I looked at a few sample dates. I didn't see any upgrade space now that I can see it. So now it just confirms that it's impossible to get good luck there. Another one that people love to use it on is the the flights from California, especially L.A. or San Francisco to one nonstop that was upgradable with a regional upgrade certificate. So that's, that's really good because those flights are very expensive. They charge a lot for first class for those. So, you know, the value you're getting for the upgrade is pretty big. Um, they also tend to be elite heavy. So by securing it in advance means you're not stuck at the gate trying to upgrade with everyone else, which is very unlikely. Especially if you have lowly platinum status. I say lowly, but that's because most of the, I shouldn't say most, there'll be many people at major airports like that that have Delta Diamond status. So your chances of getting a

free upgrade on one of those premium trans cons is probably low as a platinum member. But if you use one of those certificates in advance, then you lock that in. Right. And so you can upgrade Aeromexico flights, at least ones between the US and Mexico. And I'm not sure if beyond that, but I don't know the rules. You can upgrade Delta flight excuse me to central america oh with a gotcha so with a gotcha delta differentiates their first class like on some flights it's called first class and on some flights it's called delta one if the if you're flying outside of the u.s and it's called delta one you can't do it according to the rules but if you're flying first class then you can and usually not always but usually that's like lie flat seat or not right so so it's it's like the the the shorter hot like

so flying atlanta to costa rica those appeared to be um first class and those are probably just you know upright recliner type of seats that your standard kind of domestic first class um whereas i looked at ah boy i think it was atlanta to to lima um and that said delta one on it so it's, darn. Cause that was one of those flights that was super cheap. This. Right. Just recently the rewards. Yeah. So you could use a global upgrade certificate if you had diamond status, but you can't use a regional for that. So, yeah. So, so they can be pretty valuable. I mean, it's, you know, I'm,

when you say regional, somebody who doesn't fly Delta often, you know, I picture something that's like, you know, a region, like the East Coast of the United States or something. I don't picture upgrading a flight to Costa Rica or a flight from the West Coast to Hawaii. So those are actually pretty valuable. Right. And I should have mentioned, since I mentioned Lima, I'm pretty sure Northern South America is included under those conditions. I was saying that if there's any first class flights as opposed to Delta one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Non Delta one first class flights. Right. Right. Delta one's okay within the U S not okay. Uh, it's least it's, it's okay within the continental U S it's probably not okay to Hawaii, but I'm not sure about that. And it's definitely not okay outside of the U S.

So, so how many of those certificates you get at platinum status? You get four, but I'm not sure about that. And it's definitely not okay outside of the US. So how many of those certificates you get at Platinum Status? You get four. Four. Okay. So four of those. Four of those, I mean, that's not bad. So you get a round trip for two people, right? Two round trips, basically. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Because each one will upgrade you one way. So even if you have multiple segments, it can be used for multiple segments. No guarantee those segments will all be available, but, you know, it is certainly possible to find that. So pretty, pretty valuable perk. So is it worth spending, you know, we're saying a net 900 ish dollars to get two of those that you can use round trip. So you'll get that plus whatever other perks of platinum status, of course, you know, or free bags and, you know, somebody is going to be extra nice to you when you call customer service or, you know, little things like that. I probably get a little tag in your bag or

something that says, Hey, take this one off the plane first. You do get a brag tag. It's funny. I'm, I'm kind of blanking on what the, what the sort of more concrete benefits are. You probably board a little earlier than I do if you got platinum status. Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I've written 100 posts on it, but I... Right, right. So there's some advantages there. So... There are definitely perks that make traveling on Delta more pleasant in a number of ways. So here's another one. When you're buying an economy flight, this has nothing to do with upgrade certificates, but you can, you will get upgraded to comfort plus immediately upon booking, whereas gold and silver members can still get a free upgrade to comfort plus, but not until,

you know, right before the flight kind of like so gold is like a few days before. And so that's big deal, because comfort plus tends to fill up. And so if you want to sit in comfort plus, um, it's going to be very hard to guarantee it. If you have less than platinum status, unless you pay for it with platinum, you don't have to pay for it. Um, same. I like not paying for it. Yeah. Same with like, you can secure, um, uh, like exit row seats at the time of booking instead of waiting and so on. And that can be really nice too. Oh, absolutely. No, you know, it definitely makes the experience of flying Delta domestically significantly better.

Yeah. All right. So, all right. So, and that's with a one card solution. So let's, let's evaluate, I assume you did the math on a two card solution too. I did not. Oh, you didn't. Okay. All right. Well, we can, we can, we can probably run it really fast, but so one card, if you're going to do one Delta card, either the reserve business or the reserve consumer, about $900 cost to end up with all that. What do you say?

Thumbs up, thumbs down? Is that mattress run worthy? Should you put 90K spend on a Delta card to get that? So I like to think of it as like spending $1,800 and getting all those other things, including the 90,000 miles. And the reason I'm putting it that way is I think it's best compared to someone who would otherwise, if you would otherwise consider real, not mattress runs, but mileage runs where you would book Delta flights to fly around to different places and come back.

Think of it instead of that, how much would you spend for, you know, a couple of these flights in order to get, to get the lead status you want. And if you're trying for platinum status, I'm betting, uh, you probably can be spending more than $1,800. So probably, and the time, and the time, you're also be spending the time to do that versus sitting in your pajamas. Right, and so, you know, the contrary point would be, but wait, I'm gonna earn miles for those flights. I'm gonna earn this and that.

Well, yes, but you're also gonna earn miles when you're spending on the credit card to do this. So let's just pretend you learn the same amount either way, but, um, uh, and, and then say, okay, the, um, I think that if you're someone who would consider the mileage running, then I would write, I would say if you could swing these, you know, putting that much money on credit cards, that that's a better way to do it. I wouldn't tell someone though, you know, if you're like, if you're, if you're, if you haven't been thinking about elite status, I wouldn't say, Oh, have I got a good idea for you?

I think that's a bit much. I mean, it does seem like an expensive approach, uh, if you weren't already considering elite status. And, And certainly while I agreed with the fact that you said that the perks of the reserve card and the 80,000 points it comes with more than mitigate the annual fee, the truth is if you also have the platinum as an option right now, you could have even more redeemable miles

for less fee and arguably a better deal. So it's a little tough. We're playing with the numbers there a little bit. It certainly does more than mitigate the fee, but you have another option if you, if you haven't had the platinum card. So, so, all right. So I think I would agree with you that if you are someone who would consider mattress running or excuse me, mileage running, flying and using your money and time in order to earn extra Delta miles, this is a much better deal.

And I think you also have to consider, is it worth it? Because am I going to be able to use those perks anytime soon? I don't know. You know, I would think that next year you'll certainly be able to use the perks, or at least I sure hope this year. I don't know when everyone's going to be flying again. So you got to consider how much flying you think you'll probably do this year and whether or not you're going to get much value out of the perks during that time. Like I said, I'm probably, you'll probably be able to use them next year if nothing else. So I think I'll agree with you that for those folks who would mileage run otherwise, it's a thumbs up on this one. Now, real quick, I did just in my head, do the math. If you were

going to do the reserve business and personal, then you would end up with 40K MQMs from the signup bonus. So if you spent $60,000 over those two cards, then you would end up with the best. So that's still $1,200 at 2%, which is still quite a lot, right? Right. Now, a realistic scenario, though, if you're someone who flies Delta a reasonable amount, maybe you have silver status. So you have MQMs rolling over from previous years. Maybe getting two cards, that's 40,000 MQMs, and spending 30,000 on one of them is going to be maybe enough to get you to platinum status. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point.

Or maybe even just the 40,000, depending on how much you had that rolled over, because Delta rolled everything over from last year, right? So there's a good chance that you might already have a decent stash of miles. And if that's the case, then those two cards might really make sense because those 40,000 points,

if they're going to push you up over platinum status, 40,000 MQMs for paying annual fee on two of those reserve cards and also picking up the other signup bonus perks, you know, then I think it's probably worth it. Okay, but don't forget, you still have to spend 25,000 in order to get the waiver,

the MQD waiver to let you get platinum status. And so once you've spent 25,000, might as well spend 30, get the, get the $15,000 bonus. So depending on where you're at, one card might be plenty if you add in the $18,000 and change MQMs you get from spending $30,000 on it. So yeah, I would look at that first. Look at getting the one card and the $30,000 spent. Say, is that enough? No. Okay, maybe then get two cards is it worth getting

the second card over doing another 30k spent so so if you have right one card right another 30k spend to give you 18k mqms right or you get a second card and 5k spend gets you 20k mqms right right yeah that's a really good point um. I would almost lean towards doing the spend because if you could, because, well, a couple of reasons. If you have a slot open for another card, you might be like Nick said a minute ago, you might be better off getting a platinum card or a gold card. And the other thing is, as I talked about about before like it's kind of a shame having two reserve cards because of all the overlapping benefits like it's great having like sky club access but having it twice doesn't do you any darn good that's right so it's a little too bad

oh yeah i forgot one one cool perk of the delta reserve card that's not well understood is that if you're booked into a flight with people the same elite status as you and have the same fare class, like they also booked with miles or they also booked whatever, the same economy fare class, you get ahead of them in the upgrade queue. It's a tiebreaker.

It's a tiebreaker, yeah. It's nothing to do with sort of like the regional upgrade certificates. That's a whole different thing. But as far as upgrade, you know, free upgrades, it's a tiebreaker. So that's kind of a neat little thing that- That's cool.

I don't have any proof that it works because how would you ever know? You have to ask the person whose name was on the list. Hey, do you have the reserve card? Right, right. And what did you pay for your ticket? What fare cards did you pay? Yeah.

All right. So, yeah. And you don't need two of those for that because it only do you a good once. And really, the more I think about it, it's kind of a waste because you would almost want to have that other reserve card at some other time. So you can have those perks again, right? You wouldn't necessarily have it overlap, right? Because I mean, you only earn the bonus on it

once, then you don't want the valuable perks to overlap because you're probably going to keep both of them. So you'd want to have them like maybe in, you know, successive years or something like that. That's a great point. Cause so remember you'll have status until January of 2023. So if in January, 2023, they, that's two years from now almost if they bring back a similar deal, then, you know, maybe your status lapse for a few months and then you get it back by signing up for the second reserve card and doing a bunch of spend. Right. So yeah, there's,

there's definitely plays there. So stick with one of them I guess and do the spend if you can. I think for most people. Yeah. I think that makes sense. There you go. All right. So that was mattress running the numbers. That brings us to post roast. I think. I think it does. All right. So post roast. Well, you know what? I'm going to go first because it piggybacks on all this Delta stuff. So Greg wrote this week about Delta's enhancements to elite status and these upgrade certificates that you can now use on award tickets.

And in there, he called me out. He said that I had recently written saying that I basically I questioned his sanity in spending for Delta Diamond status because the value of Delta Miles, in my mind, had plummeted thanks to the devaluation of partner awards. And I said, doesn't this just make it crazy to spend on Delta cards for elite status to get this currency that's not worth very much? And so Greg said, rather, that Delta status is now arguably more valuable than ever, right? Because of the fact that you can use these upgrade certificates in more situations.

You can use them on award tickets. You can find the availability online. And I read that sentence and I said, my argument wasn't that elite status is bad. My argument was that spending on the credit cards gives you poor return for spend. So what I'm going to say here is I'm going to roast you and say, all right, so if your argument is that, okay,

it doesn't matter that the miles aren't worth very much. The perks are awesome. Then I would say you could spend $50,000 on the spirit airlines credit card, and you can get yourself free exit row, free snack on board, free check bag, free carry on bag. You know, you get all sorts of different perks for your Spirit Airlines gold status with only 50K spend. You're not doing this 90K business that we're talking about here.

And you get yourself points that, oh, by the way, you could book award tickets from 2,500 points, like all the time on Spirit. So, I mean, shouldn't you just be spending on a Spirit card, Greg? I mean, if all you want is those valuable perks and you don't really care about the value of the miles at all, I mean, hey, those Spirit miles might be a good choice for you. Yeah, you got me. You know, I'd be looking forward to using those Spirit upgrades to fly to, you know, Europe or Asia or what have you um

now well you know the thing is but all right so yes the global upgrade certificates hey those are nice you know when you get those i'm sure those are those are really nice but for the most part delta miles like the fact that you can use the upgrades on award tickets is interesting as we just talked about but on the flip side you're basically just going to be redeeming for Delta award tickets that are within the United States or maybe to Latin America and then using a global upgrade certificate on that. I don't think those are regional. Those are regional upgrades. The globals can be anywhere. Right, right, right. But Delta miles for booking a flight to Asia is not usually going to be a good deal for you. So the only times I would say if you're looking to use your Delta miles for booking a flight to Asia is not usually going to be a good deal for you.

So the only times I would say if you're looking to use your Delta miles, you wrote the post about the best uses of Delta miles. It's basically flash sales, which are within the United States or Latin America. So those upgrade certificates being used on award tickets is not that exciting of an upgrade to me, at least not enough to make it worth spending $90,000. $90,000? So the flash sales lately have only been within the U.S. and Latin America, but in the past we've seen them to Europe, and I think there have been ones to Asia. So I would expect to see those again once travel opens up more widely.

I hope so. But no, I think the way to think about it is this. Yes, if I was spending the value for spend, if I was only looking at the value of the sky miles I'm getting for spend, then yes, it'd be absolutely crazy. But I'm also looking at the value of the perks I'm getting from elite status. And if you divide that value out down to like the per dollar, so you figure

out how much all those global upgrade certificates, for example, are worth to you. And then you say, okay, per dollar, it's this much. You know, when I've done the math before, I've been looking at, you know, more like, okay, and this is when I value things pretty conservatively. I'm looking at maybe a three cents value per dollar spent, something along those lines, which admittedly is not enough necessarily to be super excited because sometimes, like you know, the Bank of America premium rewards card, we could get 2.62% straight up without having to worry about if we're really going to get that much value.

But again, this is based on conservative estimates. And so I expect to get more value from it, from the status and perks than that. It's just sort of how much I'm willing to pay. And so I think that's a good return. And we'll see when we do this, when we do this global upgrade certificate trap, hopefully I'm going to walk away really impressed and be like oh wow you have like no way of winning this one because if if it if it doesn't turn out good that's your fault for not planning it properly if it does then i'm gonna be like oh wow these are really are worth a lot great greg's right should spend a quarter of a million for delta Elite status and a bunch of worthless SkyMiles. So not worthless, just worth less SkyMiles.

Right, exactly. But maybe worth more now. All right, okay, all right. So I roasted you. They're worth less, but a little bit more. But a little bit more. A little bit more than the less that they were worth less. So it's kind of interesting, actually.

The value of SkyMiles itself this past week only went up for top tier elites because it's only top tier elites that get those upgrade certificates. And so it's for them that the value went up because now you can book those economy flights and fly up front. But you know, something we didn't mention in the discussion of the credit cards, and now I feel like, oh, shoot, we dropped the ball on that, is the fact that Delta is allowing free award cancellations, right? And on flights that originate from the United States. And so that makes those miles much more valuable than they were a couple of years ago. Right, right. Like a Southwest mile or something. Any flight originating in North America is freely cancelable or changeable. Now, you know, like

American Airlines went even further and just said all award tickets, which is great. But for most of us in America, I mean, most of our flights are going to be at least start off here. So I think for most people, they'd be happy with that. Once you get to platinum status, though, you can book flights, you know, that originate elsewhere and you get free changes on those. So that's a nice perk. It's just that particular perk became less valuable because Delta made most of it available to everybody. Yeah, right. But that makes the miles more valuable to me than they were in the past.

Absolutely. Because of the flights. No question. I've talked about that lots of times before, but just to reiterate one example of how much more valuable they become is that now you could look at things like these flash sales, like, oh my gosh,

I could get to Lima, Peru for only 11,000 miles. Oh gee, I need to talk to the spouse about whether we can really go on that day or whatever. No, just book it. If you whatever. No, just book it. If you have the miles, just book it. And you know that you can later just cancel and you'll get both the miles back and you'll get the credit back to your credit card for any fees that are on the word ticket. And that's one of the things I've long valued about Southwest

and said that I value Southwest points a little bit more than the value of the ticket they buy because of that flexibility. And then the fact that they don't expire and now Delta's got that. So that does make the miles more valuable than they were previously. So I think that. Right. And actually Southwest is a great example too, because you might say, but wait a minute, Delta paid flights are also freely changeable now and cancelable. But just like all the other airlines, including Southwest, if you do a paid flight, you just get credit that expires a year from now.

And that's not nearly as valuable as just getting your miles back that are good forever as long as you, well, with Delta, it's until you die. And with some programs,'s uh you have to keep activity in your account for every couple years right um all right so okay all right so that's so we're done with post roast then and i think we forgot one post roast oh did we did we are you sure uh yeah so you wrote a post on gifting hotel points, free night certificates and something else. I did. Guilty. So basically it was like a roundup of all the major hotel chains and whether they allow gifting points to other people, whether they allow gifting free night certificates.

I feel like there was a third thing, but I can't remember what it was, but yeah, there, there was, but I don't recall what it was. And something else that we're booking awards for someone else booking, you know, gifting an awards day. Okay. Right. So that's a really great, really helpful post. My problem is that I have a bunch of family members that have Marriott free night certificates. And I'm the only one with top tier status or high tier status with Marriott. So I want those certificates to be booked in my name. But your post said that there's no way to gift them. And the best you could do is book it and put someone's name and, and to, to sign, to check in, but that wouldn't put the,

that wouldn't make the stay, you know, be credited to my account so that we get the elite status. I wouldn't earn elite nights and all that kind of stuff. So I blame you for not finding a way to make Marriott a free night certificate that's giftable. My fault. My fault. I searched for that way and wanted to find that way, but they are very explicit on the website that no, you can't give those away. They spell that right out. They're like, I'm glad that you're taking responsibility for this because I don't know that I couldn't forgive you easily for it. Well, I'm going to have to beg for forgiveness and admit my guilt and not finding a way to get.

We'll see. We'll see. It's it's a real problem you're causing me here. On that note, let's move in to the question of the week. All right. This week, a reader asked a question in response to that very post about gifting hotel stays and miles and all that. The answer is no, you cannot gift your Marriott free night certificate because Nick can't do it because of me. Because no, it was a question. So the reader said, I'd love to see the same post for airline miles and also for transferable currencies. They'd like to see that post for gifting your airline stuff to somebody. And I responded to them, thought to myself, well, that would be a very short, short post, right?

I mean, like, what is there to say about that? And I got to thinking about it and I was like, well, maybe it wouldn't be that short because obviously you could, for example, gift your global upgrade certificates. You just have to be willing to fly on the flight as anybody who's been following along knows because Greg is doing that with me. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, see the link in the show description. But what about airlines that let you pull miles? Can you name five airline programs that allow you to pull miles? Because my thought when they said this was like, I mean, that's got to be less than what would fit on a single hand, right?

And I was surprised. I might be able to do it by cheating. And here's what I mean. Uh-oh. I'm going to count. Well, no, I guess that wouldn't be fair. I was going to say I'm going to count British Airways and Aer Lingus and Iberia.

You can pull your avios. You can pull them, but I guess I think you can only really do the pool on the British Airways side. Now, you can move them from one to the other. But anyway, let's count that as one. Let's count that as one. Can you name five? Virgin Atlantic will let you do it

if you have gold status so that's two there you go okay canada uh will let you do it so that's three yeah spirit spirit does that's right yeah if you got the credit card or elite status yeah that's four oh boy Oh boy. I'm sure there's another one out there. I don't know what it is. Well, I, I, Emirates will allow you to pull my, so we've got five pull with Emirates, believe it or not. I Googled it because I was like, I don't believe it. I think Etihad. Yeah, I know. Right. I mean, you were like,

I don't know if you don't believe that I Googled it or don't believe it. I think Etihad. Yeah, I know, right? I mean, you were like, I don't know if you don't believe that I Googled it or don't believe that there's more than five. But I was surprised because I thought, I mean, there's gotta be only two or three, right? I think Etihad maybe lets you do it. But then I found that Frontier lets you do it. And there's a whole bunch of different ones. I came across a post actually from Summer Hall at the Point Sky

with 22 airline programs that let you pull miles. And I was like, what? There's 22? Huh? Wow. So believe it or not, there are quite a few. So now I'm curious about how many programs can pull because I imagine that there could even be some more that aren't in that resource. And what other things you can gift with airlines? Because I thought to myself, there's nothing to say about that topic. Like I could answer that in two sentences and we'd be done with it. And then I realized, wow, actually, no, there are quite a few and it might be useful information because, you know, look at things like, for example, I can't, I didn't just mention this, but is it aegean? I don't know how you pronounce it, the Greek airline. So that airline program allows you to pool if you have elite status, then you can pool miles. And so I've written recently about opportunities.

They've had a few opportunities where you could pick up free miles, where you just had to sign up for an account. You got like 5,000 miles. And recently there was something else. You had to claim the gift and get an extra thousand. And if you ever end up getting to elite status with them, you may then be able to pull miles with your family

and put those free miles that you picked up together. So that might be a useful thing to know which airlines you can do that with. The other reason I thought about it was because of the Brex bonus and the fact that Emirates miles are poolable. So you can put those together if you had a couple of people with LLCs with the accounts that

are in the 110,000 miles, you could put them together into one pile of, if you had two of them, 220,000 Emirates miles. So, you know, you know, another thing would be good in that post. We often get asked whether you can book an award for somebody else and, and on almost all airlines you can, but there are a few that make it really difficult to do that. So, you know, it might be nice just to have a section making it clear that I wouldn't list all the ones where you can, but make it clear that you can and maybe list a few where, you know, like Korean, where you have to jump through mighty hoops

to do anything like that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, Korean, I think ANA has kind of a restrictive policy, though they may not enforce it as strongly as Korean seems to. But yeah, again, that's another thing where my instinct would have been when somebody asks, can you book a flight for somebody else? I'd be like, yeah, you can always book a flight for somebody else. But it's not quite always the case. It's usually the case. You can use your miles to book for anybody you want. But there are some exceptions. So yeah. So I thought that was an interesting question because I thought the answer was simpler than it was.

So I'll have to take another look at that. And I'm, I'm impressed Greg that you, you did get to four. You didn't quite get to five. You were close. I didn't, I didn't get to feel bad about that,

but, but yes, four out of five ain't bad. I think that, I think that was a song from way back. Very good. All right. Well, my friends, that brings us to the end of today's episode.

If you've enjoyed what you've been hearing about and you'd like to read our posts and get them in your inbox each day, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list, join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter and all the rest of that. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe, ding the notifications bell, leave us a comment, give us a like, do that on whatever podcast platform you're listening on too. We appreciate all that kind of that. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe, ding the notifications bell, leave us a comment, give us a like, do that on whatever podcast platform you're listening on too. We appreciate all that kind of feedback. Thank you very much for being here with us and we'll see you again next week. Yeah. And, and be careful out there, you know, practice safe gift card

buying, wear gloves. Careful folks. Careful. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.