Frequent Miler on the Air - Disputing the indisputable best offer | Ep118 | 10-2-21

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

00:51 Giant Mailbag 5:09 What crazy thing....did the Waldorf-Astoria Maldives do this week? 9:45 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is 129x Hilton points worth a mattress run? https://frequentmiler.com/earn-7500-hilton-points-when-staying-at-hilton-properties-in-las-vegas/ 15:02 Main Event: Disputing the Indisputable Best Offer https://frequentmiler.com/now-125k-15x-platinum-via-resy/ https://frequentmiler.com/settling-for-350k-amex-points-with-one-new-card/ 41:02 Post Roast: Are Marriott 50K free night certificates worth more or are 40K certificates worth less? https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-marriott-bonvoy-points-worth/ Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event disputing the indisputable best offer disputing the indisputable best bone to pick with this title of indisputable best because i don't think it's indisputable at all we're gonna going to dispute that a little bit. Yeah. And just to give you a brief glimpse, View From The Wing has published a post saying that the Sapphire Preferred 100K offer is the indisputable best offer available right now. We don't think so. I don't think so. We'll talk more about it, but you can't give the championship belt to the Sapphire offer. We'll talk more about it. But, you know, you can't give the championship belt to the Sapphire Opera. We'll talk more about that today. Not today.

OK. All right. Let's dig into the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Chuck. Chuck sent this via email. And he says, since plastic, that's the bill payment service that accepts credit cards, since Plastic is weirdly allowing MasterCard payments of mortgage. So they allow a lot of different types of payments, but they have some rules like you can't pay mortgage with a Visa or

Amex card, but you can with a MasterCard or Discover. That's what he's talking about here. He says, since they allow MasterCard payments of mortgage, I suspect I'm not alone in favoring new MasterCards on occasion. So he's talking about getting new signup bonuses and being able to meet minimum spend by paying mortgage. That makes sense, right? Yeah. And he says, your card descriptions include whether cards are MasterCard, Visa, Discover, or Amex, but it's not searchable that way. It would be great to be able to click and see best MasterCard offers. And since I'm throwing out bright ideas, if you do this, you might want to link to your plastic guide at the top of your MasterCard best offers section.

So no one opens a US bank MasterCard thinking that Plastic will work for him. So in addition to Plastic having specific rules by payment network, they also, in some cases, have specific rules by bank. And so like US Bank and Capital One, there's very specific rules about what they allow that go beyond the broader rules. And that's what he's talking about there. So what do you think? Should we create such a section or a page? I think that'd actually be pretty easy. Yeah. I mean, I think that one thing I would love to see on the best offers page is it to be

very easy to type something into a search field and have it auto sort the page for you, whether it was MasterCard or Priority Pass or whatever the case may be. But it's difficult because that page is full of a lot of data and the way that it's populated is not simple. So making that type of resource is harder than it sounds, especially when you look at the complexity of how we put that together, because a lot of that page is automated and you wouldn't realize it probably if you don't work for the blog like we do. But when you look at, for example, a bank, if you look at the Barclays section,

if you've never wondered why are the cards ordered the way that they are? Well, the reason is because the spreadsheet that handles all of our data automatically determines which offer is the most valuable in the first year and puts that at the top. And when I say the most valuable, I mean the most valuable to readers, not the most valuable to us. It doesn't matter whether or not we have an affiliate link. We don't rank things, the cards that pay us the most or whatever it might be. So it's just automated based on the value, based on our reasonable redemption values, blah, blah. So it's difficult to make it searchable in the way that you're talking about. However, because of the way we have the data set up, I think it would probably be really easy to set up a separate page

that's best MasterCard offers or best Visa card offers. Why haven't we done that? We actually have. Oh, we have. We do. We have a best MasterCards page. Unfortunately, it's not linked to from the best offers page. That's why I don't know it exists.

And so it's not easy to get to. And I love the idea. So I think at the very least, I'll surface it, make it obvious that it exists. And I think I like the idea of putting something about plastic near the top of that one so that maybe even I could just put the exceptions at the top so that people know, be wary of this one or that one, something along those lines. But yeah, I mean, I would love to do something even more elaborate down the road where we have a page that lets people easily filter by whatever they're interested in, whether it's plastic mortgage payments, or I want fee-free cards, or I want no foreign transaction fee.

There's a lot of things that people I think would be interested in. That would be really cool for future enhancement. So yeah. Thank you, Chuck, for that suggestion. And I thank you too, because I didn't know that page existed, Chuck, somehow. So thank you for teaching me something today too, Chuck.

There we go. All right. We should talk about what crazy thing next now that we're on the crazy topics here. So what crazy thing did the Waldorf Historia Maldives do? The Waldorf Maldives did something crazy this week. What did they do? They sure did. Well, they didn't reply to somebody's situation. So some listeners may be familiar with JT Gentner, JT Gentner, Gentner, rather, couldn't pronounce the name properly, wrote for many years at the points guy and his wife, Katie

Gentner still does right at the points guy. And now he freelances for a bunch of different sites. And right now they are on a trip to the Maldives where they're kind of hotel hopping. And now he freelances for a bunch of different sites. And right now they are on a trip to the Maldives where they're kind of hotel hopping. And so I've been reading along on Twitter a little bit with what's going on. And so he posted this week that they had a reservation at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives using three of their Hilton free night certificates, because of course those free night certificates are valid even at the Waldorf Astoria that charges more points than any of the other hotels in the Hilton chain so to speak in the Hilton brand and so he had that reservation for three nights but when he got his test at his resort because I should back this up and say in the Maldives there are rules you can visit more

than one hotel but you have to be tested in order to transfer from one hotel to the next. And you can't do a direct transfer. Typically in the Maldives, you have to fly back to the international airport island, Malé, and then fly on to your next resort. So it's not a very simple process, but it can indeed be done. And they set it up that way intentionally. And I think in the Waldorf's case, you actually take a boat instead of a seaplane. Right. So, but presumably from whatever you actually take a boat instead of a seaplane. Right. So, but presumably from whatever resort they were at,

they needed a seaplane back to the airport and then vote to the Waldorf from there. Right. Well, he had the three nights booked, but he said that that Island resort, the Waldorf's Island is now refusing to accept COVID tests from the resort that he was at,

like waiting to transfer. Right. So resort that he was at, like waiting to transfer, right? So he got tested presumably two, three days before he was due to check in at the Waldorf and they're now refusing to accept the test from the resort that he was at. Did he say why they're refusing it? Like, we don't

take tests from a competitor? That part wasn't exactly clear, but it does kind of sound like that because he said they were past the cancellation window of course at that point and this is something we've talked about a little bit and the transfer he said would have complied with the guidelines of the maldives ministry of tourism but the waldorf was following some other policies and not clearly explaining them, not responding to his emails or calls and not responding to Hilton honors. Because of course he reached out to Hilton honors

to say, Hey, what's going on here? Can you help me? Spent two hours on the phone with Hilton honors and they couldn't get anybody at the property to respond either. So eventually they did give him his free night certificates back. And when I say they, I mean, Hilton honors refunded his free night certificates, but of course then he was stuck like stranded two days before arrival, I think in the Maldives with no plan. So, and, and luckily got the free night certificates back, didn't get penalized because one of the troubles of international travel, especially to places like that right now is what happens when you have to cancel at the last minute, right? Yeah, yeah.

And in this case, the hotel was the ones that were essentially canceling the trip in terms of not allowing the test. And that kind of highlights, I think, some of the difficulty right now of international travel, because in that situation, whatever hotel he was at, that's his only option for getting tested, right? So there's no place else to go. You're stuck on a hotel Island. It's not like you can go get a different test and, and there's not enough time. If you were to transit at the airport Island to get tested there before moving on. And so the complexities and difficulties of that, if you

want a hotel hop in an exotic location like that can become really challenging because I mean, what power do you have if they say we're just no, we're not going to take that test? What can you do? Right, right. You're stuck. So, you know, hopefully he found somewhere else to stay besides the Mali airport. And hopefully he's enjoying his his the rest of his time there. It does seem so. But yeah, that's that's that's so stressful and awful i i have to imagine that adds a lot of stress especially in an expensive destination like the maldives where it's not like you can you know get in your car and drive to a different place and look for a room you really are pretty stuck so yeah yeah something you gotta keep all

right so crazy waldorf crazy crazy all right all right so so speaking of which let's talk mattress running the numbers so hilton which is waldorf is a hilton property uh hilton's offering a promo with uh where you get 7500 points bonus points right bonus per night at a hilton in las ve, I believe. Yes. Right. So that's the deal. And you've got some ideas about how you might want to maximize this, right? Well, you know, the nice thing is that it will stack with the current promotion. So you can currently get two or three times as many points as normal double or triple points, which seems to be the perpetual Hilton deal. So you can already score a fair amount of points. Yeah. I mean, 3X, if I remember right, if you have the Aspire card,

which means you have diamond status and you get 3X, you're getting around 50 points per dollar, I think, with that, and then add on a flat 7,500 points on top of it per night. Right. And so, I mean, if you were able to find a night, for instance, for like 100 bucks, which in Las Vegas may not be impossible. So if you're able to find a night for 100 bucks, the 7,500 bonus points is like 75x, right? And then you're 54x paying for it with the Aspire card and the triple points. I mean, you could be looking at more than 100 points per dollar. So if we were at that point where it's 54

points per dollar plus 75 points per dollar, it's 129 Hilton points per dollar potentially. Is that mattress run worthy to you? Would you mattress run for 129 Hilton points a night? I mean, with all those points, you'd have almost enough to stay at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives and enjoy JT's experience. You'd be a little short because $100 at 129 is 12,900 points. You'd be about 10 nights like that short. Righton Pyshko, Right. You have to do 10 nights like that just to get one night at the… And then good luck finding award availability. I'm surprised he found three in a row. David Gardner, That's the trouble. Preston Pyshko, But actually, that's not even a bad

comparison point because if you did 10 nights of that, you'd get 10 nights in Las Vegas, plus potentially a free night in the Maldives. David Gardner, Yeah. mean, it's a fantastic rebate on your stay, but it's not worth more than the stay costs. So if you just think about that, just alone, that Hilton often sells their points for half a cent each. You could just pay the $100 and get the equivalent of 200X just by buying the points. So no. So no, it's not mattress storm worthy on its own. So when might it be worthwhile? Well, number one, there is at least one Hilton property, the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas, that's on Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts. So if you've got a platinum card and you're getting

a $200 rebate on a prepaid Fine Hot hotels and resorts booking, well, that might suddenly become kind of interesting, at least in the sense that I have found the Waldorf Astoria for like 200 or 209 a night or so through fine hotels and resorts. At times it's sometimes much more expensive. It depends on when you go and all the rest of that. But I did look at it just a couple of months ago when this credit debuted and find it for about that price. So, I mean, if you're getting most of it rebated back, then, I mean, deal there. It'll help mitigate some of the taxes, perhaps even better. And I say perhaps because I haven't done this one myself, but I think it probably would work out to be good is this year, Hilton Impresario is offering an increased deal when you book a two night stay at a Waldorf Astoria, LXR or

Conrad property. And I believe, I'm going to double check this as I'm talking, but I believe that the Waldorf Astoria in Las Vegas is included in this twice the perks list. And so it might get interesting because with the twice the perks promotion that Hilton Impresario is running, if you book one of the included properties for two nights or more, you get first a guaranteed room upgrade on reservation. You get complimentary breakfast for two each day, just like you would through fine hotels and resorts, but you also get double Hilton points. And I'm not sure if that stacks with the triple, but it may, and you get a $200 resort credit instead of a hundred dollar credit,

you get a $200 resort credit. So you get more credit than normal. And I think that applies at the Waldorf Astoria in Las Vegas. Like I said, I was trying to pull up the list and then I had some trouble. Oh, there we go. Yes, it does apply at the Waldorf Astoria in Las Vegas. You have to book through an impresario agent. So if you look up the post that we have, which is like getting the elite experience without elite status. If you put something like that into the search box at FrequentMiler, you should find the post that outlines all of those preferred partner programs, and it has a link to that specific promotion in it. All right. Good. Ready for the main event?

The main event. Welcome to the main event the main event welcome to the event yeah disputing the indisputable best offer so you from the wing put out the gauntlet they said or he said right that this sapphire preferred that's what gary said sapphire preferred 100k offer is the indisputable best offer. What? That sounds like a great offer. How is that not the indisputable best, Nick? I mean, when you put it that way, it certainly sounds pretty official, right? The indisputable best offer.

And even within the post, he said it's the indisputable best offer, period. Right? Like, I mean, made period a full- He wrote out period as a word? He wrote it as a word.putable best offer, period. Right. Like, I mean, made period a full. He wrote out period as a word. He wrote it as a word. Word. As its own sentence, period. That's it.

Indisputable champ right now. Except if there's more than one championship belt, this is not the indisputable champion. And I just don't even really think you can make a very good argument for it being the indisputable champ. But before we get into why, I guess we should talk about why the Sapphire Preferred is even considered to possibly be in that category. What makes the Sapphire Preferred so good? Right, right. Well, you know, we talk often about how valuable Chase Ultimate Rewards points are. And Nick, you're muted, FYI. You're back.

I was intentional. Oh, sorry. I unmuted. That's okay. So Chase Ultimate Rewards points. My wife asked what the baby monitor was. She gave me a little note for anybody to monitor. Can't see the note. We love Chase Ultimate Awards points because for one thing, one-to-one transfers to Hyatt. They have a number of options for transfer partners. You could transfer to a number of airline programs, a number of hotel programs. Hyatt is such a valuable program for

hotels. They have such a good award chart and such good redemption options, especially for people looking for luxury, you know, where it's not just that they have like real high end luxury with the Park Hyatt hotels and with the Alila brand hotels that you can book with points. But also as we've talked about before, you can book suites with points with Hyatt straight up and at reasonable rates. So it's not like where you have to pay five times as many points to get a suite or anything like that. So lots of things to love about Hyatt. Chase's other, they have other transfer partners that are worth definitely good, mostly on

the airline side, let's say. And so you've got Aeroplan, you've got Virgin Atlantic. I don't remember all of them off the top of my head. But there's a number of airline partners where there are sweet spots, where sometimes you're going to do really, really well transferring to those partners and booking a sweet spot award. And finally, Chase Ultimate Awards is probably the most friendly transferable points program when it comes to getting decent value easily. And that's because they do things like you can just book travel through Chase and pay with points. The Sapphire Preferred, you get 1.25 cents per point value.

There's no real hassle in doing that they also have the pay yourself back thing where you right now you pay for groceries or dining and a couple other categories and you can actually just erase your your charges by using points and still get that 1.25 cents value finally if someone in your household has a sapphire reserve card, you can move your a hundred K points to them and then points are worth 1.5 instead of 1.25. So those a hundred thousand points then are worth like $1,500 instead of, uh, 1250 towards travel or towards pay yourself back. So a lot of, a lot of great things actually there. I think it's a great offer. I just don't think it's the best available.

But wait, Gary says that the points are worth $0.18 each, and so the bonus is worth $1,800, Craig. Yeah. I mean, if you transfer, if you always use your points by transferring to partners where you're getting better than 1.8 cents per point value, then I think that's a defensible stance. It's more than we've talked before. We like to be more conservative in how much we value points. So we say ultimate rewards points are worth around 1.5, even though if you'd use it to book travel with the Sapphire Preferred, you're only getting 1.25. But we think it's worth 1.5 because if you transfer to Hyatt, you're going to get better than 1.5.

Usually transfer to certain airlines, you're hopefully going to get better than 1.5. So it's a conservative view. Gary picked 1.8. We could debate that. I'm not going to argue his 1.8. No, I've not either. I brought it up because it's a difference that you'll see between our value and values that other people have. And you're right. It doesn't make that valuation wrong. Gary also makes the point that it's a great return for spend. It's a $4,000 spending requirement on the card, only a $95 annual fee on the card. And you're getting, he's evaluating it at $1,800, wherever you want to value it at $1,250, $1,500, $1,800, $2,000, whatever it is on $4,000 spend is a darn good return on $4,000 spend. So there aren't very many cards that offer that much value or more in terms of an intro bonus.

There are some, let's be clear. There are definitely some others, but it's not common, I wouldn't say, in the world of miles and points. So I think those are all good points. I think those are all pluses for the Sapphire Preferred. It's a very good offer. And so it's very good. I mean, I'm not going to talk you out of getting this. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's an excellent offer. And I've recommended it to people myself. There are people for whom it probably is the best offer right now, but that's a long way from saying it's the indisputable best offer. It's the indisputable best offer for my grandmother. It's just not, it doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Roll off the tongue, quite the same. Yeah. I mean, for sure, if you use the points for Hyatt, you can get lots of value. And hey, I'm a big Hyatt fan. I've got an upcoming Hyatt reservation where it's going to save me a whole bunch of money and I'm going to get a nice suite and I'm not going to pay for parking. So I get that perspective. However, apart from Hyatt, if you want to look at Chase's transfer partners, yeah, they've got some good partners. They've got Virgin Atlantic, they've got Aeroplan, they've got Air France, they've got British Airways. They've got a whole bunch of partners where you can get great value, Singapore Airlines. But Amex has all of those partners, too. The only two airline partners that Chase has that Amex doesn't have are United and Southwest. So those are the only two that Chase has on Amex in addition to

Hyatt, of course, on the hotel side. And Amex has a bunch of airlines that Chase doesn't have. And of course, that's all relevant because I think we would agree that the indisputable best offer is what, Greg? The Resi offer. We call it the Resi offer because the Amex Platinum Card, the consumer Platinum Card, is available directly from a lot of sources with a 100K offer, plus you get 10 points per dollar for all small business and dining spend for six months up to 25K total spend in those categories. And let's be clear that offer may not be better than the Sapphire preferred

offer. The offer that Greg just described because the annual fee is higher. The spend is higher, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. I think I would still argue that it's better, but,

but, but that's not that public offer that, that you'll see on a lot of blogs. You see all over the place. It's not the best offer for the platinum card. There's a better offer, which is through Resi, which is that dining reservation site. They have the same card available. First of all, the bonus is 125K instead of 100K.

And the spend bonus, instead of getting 10 points per dollar for those categories of dining and small business, you get 15. What? 15 points per dollar. 15? I mean, 15. 15 points per dollar. You know, when we look at a regular signup bonus, you know, I'm going to make the math easy. Let's say you get 50,000 points after $5,000 spend.

That's like you're getting 10 points per dollar above the 1X that you're getting for your 5k spend. So 11x everywhere for that 5k spend. And that is sort of like what normal offers are. And now that they're more like 100k, you're looking at more than that. But my point is that this 15 points per dollar is like a big signup bonus by itself. By itself. Before you count the 125K, that is a signup bonus. A big signup, not just like a signup bonus, like a whole hum.

It would be a big signup bonus on its own, right? I mean, that's a larger than average bonus on spend to begin with. I mean, if you totally disregard the 125K, again, that is the welcome offer. That's insane. That's bananas. I mean, the Sapphire preferred offer by contrast is not nearly as good. I mean, you could look at it and say, okay, it's 100,000 points for 4,000 spend. So I guess from one stance, you could say it's like 25X on that spend. So is that not better than the platinum offer? So I think the way to think of it is like, let's compare the 125K for 6K spend to the Sapphire Preferreds 100K for 4K spend.

And if I just look at those two, I'd say, okay, I probably, for people who I think would be better off with Chase points, I would say, yeah, I guess the Chase offers a little bit better. It's fewer points, but less spend. But it's, I don't know, close to equal at that level. It's debatable. It's very close to equal. It's very similar offers if you only take that first part. If you only take that part. So then you have this whole other part, which dining alone, let's say you spend a thousand, I mean, that might be a lot, I don't know, a thousand dollars a month on dining for six months. That's what? 6,000 times 15, 90,000 points just for your dining spend. But small

business is- Wait, before you even do small business, hang on, hold on to that for a second. Versus on the Sapphire Preferred, that same 6,000 spend would earn 18,000 points. So you'd earn 72,000 more points with the MX Razia for indisputable? What? Keep going. Right, right, right. No, no, no. So the thing to know about the small business piece of it, that you get 15X for small business

purchases, the thing to know is that it seems like almost everything codes as small business in less, like I think Amex probably keeps a list of large businesses that they say, oh, this one, you know, oh, that's Walmart. So that doesn't count, you know, along those lines, that's Amazon. That doesn't count because, and I'm just saying that because it feels like everything that I spend on, you know, is counting as, as small business. And so, you know, you might think, ah, I don't know how much I spend, but you might be surprised, you know, uh, my, my uncle, uh, was paying for a wedding, uh, at a, um, a large country club for his son, I am sure that's going to code as a small business.

And so the wedding alone, he's going to, between that and some other spend, he's going to easily max out the 25K. And after the 125K bonus, plus earning 15X on 25K spend, he's going to have 500,000 membership rewards points. Preston that transfer to almost all of chase's transfer partners and a bunch more right very similar points obviously not good for hyatt and typically not good for hotels amex is pretty weak on the hotel side of things but when it comes to if you like to use your points for transfer partners, I mean, hello, this is an incredible bonus. Not only is it a great bonus because I say that Amex has a better selection of transfer partners, and that's a debatable statement.

That's disputable. I'm not going to say it as the indisputable best list of transfer partners. But in my opinion, it's got the best list of transfer partners overall. And they also frequently offer transfer bonuses. I mean, we don't normally see 12 at one time, but right now we are seeing 12 at one time. Right. And we might see a 25 or 30 or 40% transfer bonus. And while Chase has started to dip their toes in that world, not nearly as much as Amex has. They have not nearly matched Amex's love of transfer bonuses.

So those points are worth potentially even more than half a million. Yeah. And I'm going to say about hotels that because they often do a 40% transfer bonus to Hilton, that 40% transfer bonus to Hilton, that 40% transfer bonus. So transfers to Hilton are normally from Amex one to two, which sounds good, unless you understand that Hilton points are worth so little that it's actually not that good. But once they do the 40% bonus, you're getting close to one to three, which is a point where it's still not like, oh, amazing value, but it's good enough that if what you want to spend your points on are hotel stays, you're likely to do pretty

well with that. That's a good point, especially when these points are coming in so easily, as easily as they are now. So the bonus really so these bonuses or the bonus really on the Rezzy platinum offer is amazing because it's not just the 125,000 points. It is that 15 X. And a lot of people say, well, you know, how are you going to hit the 15 X? And Greg already made the point that there are a lot of businesses around you that might not seem small, but may code as small businesses. So that's number one. Number two, I mean, what are some ways that you might do it? I mean, what are some things that you might spend on? I don't know. You said a lot of things have coded as small business. What are some other things? So wedding coded as

small business. Have you noticed any other interesting small business codings? You know, I don't have a good, good examples that are, that are universal because, because they're going to apply in Ann Ar Arbor where I am, almost everything's a small business. So any spend I do locally has counted. Yeah, I mean, and that does make a lot of sense. And so I've been pulling out a card that had that referral offer. It's the same kind of thing. It's a plus four for small businesses at places where we have to spend money. And lo and behold, those things come up all the time where it's like, oh, well, my wife broke her phone and needs to get it

replaced. And yeah, I'm sure that's going to code as a small business. And, you know, oh, she's going to go get a massage. So I'm sure that the local massage place is a small business. And so all of those types of things that come up have been coding as small businesses. And so there's certainly a lot to be said there and restaurants and dining. And as Greg has said in the past, if you want to work towards maxing that out, even without maxing it out completely, you might go to a local restaurant and say, hey, listen, if I buy a large amount of gift cards, can you cut me a deal? Maybe there's a place locally that you go to very often. And so you don't mind prepaying for a thousand dollars worth of gift cards or something like

that. That could be a great deal. And certainly doing holiday shopping this time of year, you might be starting to look at that kind of stuff and lots and lots of business. I mean, places we buy toys for the kids are small businesses and places we buy gifts for other people are often small businesses. So there's a lot of opportunity there. It seems almost limitless. Now, you're not necessarily going to hit the cap. The cap on that offer is $25,000 spend in the 15X categories, which are again, restaurants and small businesses. But even if you don't, I mean,

let's say you spend $5,000, right? That's the spending requirement for the 125K. Let's say you just spent- Okay. I thought it was 6K, but yeah. Let's say it's five because that's the easier math for me right now. So on 5K, actually I can do it with six. Let's do it with six. If you do 6K and it's all at the 15X, so it's $1,000 a month, small businesses and dining combined, right? $1,000 a month. That's 90,000 points on top of the 125. So you're talking already 215,000 points, more than double the number of points you'll get with the Chase offer that are incredibly valuable points. Right. And so at that point alone, it's not even close. Anymore, and it gets just farther and farther apart. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I mean,

to call anything but the Rezzy offer the indisputable best offer is nuts. Sorry, Gary. I agree. So has there ever been a better offer? Is this the best offer ever? And will it be the best offer that we will see? Yeah. I can't think of a better offer I've ever seen. I can't think of why anyone would think of it not the best offer unless they have so little spend that the 15X is virtually irrelevant. But… Preston Pys know. Yeah. And I guess if that's the case, okay. I find it hard to imagine not being able to spend much at 15 X, right? I mean, cause you have to not dine out and also

like not spend any other money except for like Walmart and Amazon, right? If that's you, if you spend all of your money at Walmart, Amazon, Costco, I guess, maybe, and don't dine out at all, then the platinum offer isn't for you. And so probably the Sapphire preferred offer is for you. But yeah, although even without all that stuff, you're still getting 125K. So it's still a great offer just by itself. I mean, we used to talk about this, that we used to try really hard to get those 100K offers for the Platinum card.

And those were like targeted. You had to go through various things to try to get them. And then when you didn't get them, you were disappointed. But now there's this public, easy to get 125K offer if you don't spend anything on small business. So it's still a great offer by itself. Yeah. Wow. Anything you spend on dining and small businesses just comes out to be a great deal. And it's nice, nice to be able to support small businesses. And that 15X might make up for

some cost difference. Maybe if you regularly shop at a major chain and you don't shop at the local business because the local small business is a little bit more expensive. I think with this kind of offer, you have to stop and ask yourself, how much more expensive is it? Because those points are worth a significant amount. So I mean, we value membership rewards points at about one and a half cents each. So you're talking about a 22% ish rebate against the reasonable redemption value. So I mean, if the local business is charging five or 10% more than your big chain place, it's still worth shopping and supporting the local small business and earning a boatload of points while you're at it. It sure is. So what we haven't talked about too much is

the fact that the platinum card costs a heck of a lot more than the Sapphire Preferred. So what we haven't talked about too much is the fact that the Platinum card costs a heck of a lot more than the Sapphire Preferred. So it costs $600 more. Right. That's a big difference. That's a big difference. So going back to the 120, if it was just the 125K versus the 100K, I think now that I throw in the first year annual fee part of it, I'd say, okay, yeah, Sapphire Preferred is a better offer if that was the only component to it. And if you had to pay that fee and didn't get any benefit out of it. So that's another important piece because you may not get enough value out of the Platinum card to justify the 695 every year, but depending on how much value you get out of the perks, if you get some value out of the perks, then it starts to get closer together

again. I think you're right that the Sapphire Preferred is better if you're not going to use any of the side perks on the platinum card and just pay the $700 in order to earn the bonus, then yeah, okay. Sapphire Preferred is better in that situation. Not indisputable, Gary. Sorry. No. There's no world in which it Not indisputable, Gary. Sorry. There's no world in which it's indisputable. Sorry. Sorry. It's not. It's just not. No, no. And we brought this up because it was so glaring to us because we've been so excited about this Resi offer, even though it's not an affiliate offer. We don't earn any money from it. But we've just never seen an offer like this before. And so we're excited about it. And for someone to turn around

and say some other offer is the indisputable best is just crazy. I just think that's nuts. Preston Pyshko, CFO Alphabet and Google And the Resi offer, there's no hoops to jump through. It's not like you need to do anything special. It's just publicly available to anybody. You just go to the site. And of course we have that link on our best offers page, but you don't have to go through our best offers page to get to it if you don't want to.

You can just Google Rezzy and Amex Platinum. I'm sure you'll find the landing page. And yeah, I mean, it's just an amazing, amazing offer that's available to anybody, easy to access, not complicated. They have another offer also on the gold card and they have for a while now too. And that's the offer that we available to anybody, easy to access, not complicated. They have another offer also on the gold card and they have for a while now too. And that's the offer that we're listing, I think, if I remember correctly, is the best offer on the gold card right now, because their offer on the

gold card comes with the same number of points, if I remember correctly, as the public offer, but it also comes with a restaurant rebate. So they have good offers. And I don't know why, I wonder, why is that, Greg? Why does Rezzy have the best offers? I mean, in what world does this make sense that Amex is giving an inferior offer to the affiliates who essentially pitch their cards, right? Yeah. Giving an inferior offer to those affiliates. Right, right. So, I mean, the only thing I could think of is that instead of using their marketing money to pay affiliates with Rezzy, they're saying, no or something. So yeah, so they see it as like,

we don't have to pay Rezzy to do this. Instead, what we'll do is give our customers a bigger bonus, which is incredible. It is, it is. It's very interesting though, because they're doing that with Rezzy, but not on AmericanExpress.com, right? I mean, not if you go directly to their own website.

Yeah, I know. Well, yeah. I mean, so they get a lot of pushback when, when they offer a better deal on their own website than is offered through their affiliates. So that might be, that might be part of what's going on there. Maybe, maybe fascinating stuff. All right. So Sapphire preferred offer. Very good. Maybe the best offer for you. Totally disputable. We dispute it. The Rezzy offer is the indisputable best offer out there. It is. It is. Yeah. All right. And we will not see a better offer.

Thank you, Greg. I'm glad you predicted that because Greg's laughing and I hope a few people out there are laughing because they know that when Greg makes that kind of prediction, the opposite is at least somewhat likely to happen. Greg Fossum, Yeah. And this hit me personally because the previous platinum offer, I didn't think we'd see a better one. It was, what, 100K and you get 10X at grocery stores and gas stations for six months. So it was a similar structure. And I didn't think there was a chance there was a better one. So I had my wife apply on the last day it was available for that offer. And then the next day the resi offer came out and I was just like, oh man, I would much rather have that resi offer, but what could we do? And of course, American Express is not good at

matching new offers. Even when it's an offer you applied for directly through American Express and the direct offer increases, they don't match that. So they're certainly not gonna match the offer you found on the Resi website. So that was unfortunate and sad. I did try, but yeah, no luck on that. So, all right. So that I think ties up our main event.

So let's go into the post roast. So should I go first or second, Greg? You should go first because I'm completely unprepared. Maybe I'll think of something. I don't know how I even, I forgot all about this. I didn't do any homework for it, man. All right. Well, let's, let's kick up the flames here and no, it's not, not, not that roasty, but Greg wrote a post this week about Marriott points and what they're worth. And more importantly, what the free night certificates are worth. And so within that post, he valued the various free night certificates, 40 K free night certificates

that you get as a titanium choice benefit, 50 K starts to get with the Ritz card, 85 K starts, which you now can get an 85K cert with the new Bonvoy Brilliant offer. But if you dug into that and read through, Greg is shaking his head because he knows that what I'm going to say is he found that those 40K certificates were somehow worth more than the median price of a 50K property. And so when he said that, he said, that just can't be because the 50K certs can buy any of those 40K properties plus additionally 50K properties. So they can't be worth less, even though he found the median price of a 50K property to be lower than the median price of a 40K property. Now, my question when I looked at that data, Greg's point, I think,

makes sense that the 50K certs can't be worth less than the 40K starts. If the 40K starts will buy you a $300 hotel, then the 50K starts are worth at least $300 because they buy you those hotels plus more. That seems reasonable. Except I say, all right, so if you found that the 50K hotels on average were $262 a night, does it not make you question your data set on the 40K properties? Not really. Not really. So in order to be able to reproduce, recreate these point estimates regularly, I necessarily had to have a fairly small data set. So I have something like 10 locations and three time points that I look at these things at. And what I think is happening is that properties that are more expensive than usual, that are

category five, are pricing at 40K. And properties that are more expensive than usual, that are category six, are pricing at 60K. So they're not available to the 50K certs. And so the properties that are pricing at 50K are the ones that for whatever reason are less expensive than usual. And so the other thing, there were some weird, I don't know, weirdnesses in the patterns I saw. So for example, Seattle. Seattle, the cash prices were surprisingly low for the three time points I was looking at, yet their hotels tend to be higher categories, which tells me that probably during normal times, they weren't priced this low,

but they are right now. For whatever reason, Seattle is not, I guess, a demand destination during the dates I looked at. And so you have these properties that are going for 50K because that's a category they're in, but they're priced at like 150 bucks. That's been my problem with 50 K certs as of late that I, you know, I want to get good value out of my 50 K cert. So I don't want to use it at a 40 K place, except yeah, excuse me. Just like you said, I'm finding that in a lot of cases, those properties that are priced at 50 K are cheap enough that I'm like, I don't really want to use a 50 K cert on there. That's not as much as I value it, but I guess I'm going to have to suck it up and either buy an overpriced 40K property with my 50K certificate or accept a little bit less value out of my 50K cert. I've been looking for a couple of days in New York City

and all of those 50K properties, it's exactly what you're talking about. All of those 50K properties are like 200 to 226 a night or so. And I'm like, oh man, do I really want to waste my $50,000 certs in that situation? But I think I'm probably going to have to accept that because there aren't as many $35,000 properties. And most of those $35,000 properties are located out somewhere where it's not particularly convenient. But in other areas, I have noticed exactly what you're saying, where the $35 35K properties are peak priced. And so that does kind of mess with the numbers a little bit on those. It does. And I think we're going to see the same thing with the 85K certs in practice, which is that I think people are going to find that using them for 70K properties is going to

more often be the sweet spot than trying to find those ones that are priced at exactly 85K. And there will be times that that'll be fantastic value, but it'll also be the case that those properties that are standard at 85K will often be 100K during the times that you want them because that'll be, because there'll be peak price then. And so, um, but one category down peak price is 70 K. You can, you can stay at an incredible property even during peak price with those 85 K certs. So I think people, I think we just have to get used to that idea that, that going using a certificate for less than its full value is often going to be the right thing to do. Right. Right. And I think that that probably the important takeaway there, I was playfully

roasting Greg, but I think the important takeaway there is that rather than valuing your free night certificate by the maximum number of points that it can replace, so to speak, it makes more sense to value it by the amount of cash it can save you in terms of the price of the room. So, you know, when you can find those 40 K opportunities to use your 50 K certs or 70 K opportunities to use your 85 K certs where rooms are absurdly expensive, that's when it makes sense to use those. So go ahead and sacrifice for a few points less in value. Yes, yes, yes. That's a great point. So, okay. So, my roast. Okay. Okay. You came up with one. All right. Sort of. Okay. You wrote about the world's best, doing around the world trip with the world's best airlines. That's right. And something called La Compagnie

or something was in there. La Compagnie, I think. Something like that. What the heck is that? How could that be the world's best? I don't even know anything about it. You don't know anything? Come on now. I don't know anything about them. Clearly, you're not East Coast based. So no, I don't know much about la compagnie but i know that they're an all business class airline based at paris's other airport orly airport orly okay so they're all business class they just one cabin on on their flights all flatbed business class i think i don't know if they only fly a320 neos but they fly a320 neos uh so yeah they i i don't disagree with you like i looked at it and i was like wait la compagnie is on there not not like cafe pacific or right maybe liptonza or ana i mean there were a

bunch of japan airline no japan airlines was on the list i take that back but there's a number of very good airlines that were not on that list. So spirit, spirit, come on. I mean, free spirit. We can't get down with that. So yeah, no, it's questionable. I mean, we talked about this the other day in our Ask Us Anything that these best lists are always a little bit questionable. And when I saw a company in there, I was like, A, what? And B, I know I can't use miles for that. There's no easy way to do that. And I didn't know yet, but learned. You can't even use Chase points or MX points to book them online.

Now, maybe you could use your secret trick and call Chase and get somebody to manually book it. Maybe. That was such a hassle, though. I don't know that I'd bother. Right. So I'm kind of remembering reading about them now a few years ago. So they all business class at, at lower, much lower prices, right, is it not lie flat business class? No, I think they are all lie flat. It is lie flat? I think so, yeah.

I don't think it's angled. I think they're all lie flat. But yeah, and they're more competitively priced. If you're looking at New York to Paris, often they're pretty competitive or the best deal if they happen to be flying on the day that you need. I've never seriously considered it because you can't use miles to book it. And so I haven't been particularly interested. So I haven't followed them closely. One Mile at a Time is written about them a bunch of times. So if you're really curious about my company, you can look there. But what I found interesting for the Post was that they are starting a new

route starting on December 5th, I think it is, between Paris and Tel Aviv. And that worked out perfectly for the Post because I needed to find a way to get them in there. And Virgin Atlantic was kind of a pain because they were in the list and they don't fly very many places. No, they don't. Not very many at all. It's basically US to the UK

and then they fly a couple of places in Asia, but they don't even really fly around Europe. Like you can't get other places in Europe on them. Right, right. I think they were looking into buying another airline for those small flights, but I guess that didn't happen or it hasn't happened yet. And in the meantime, they've made it

so you could use their miles to book KLM and Air France so you can get all around Europe with their miles. But yeah, to actually fly them, I mean, they fly like, you know, London is so much of a hub that literally i don't know that they have you know maybe they've got a couple other flights that aren't between london and other cities but they fly to hong kong from london they fly to cape town they fly to um johannesburg they fly i don't know where else but yeah you're right but yeah there's it would be

it's tough to use them to build a round the world itinerary if you want to fly on their metal using their miles that was pretty good well because of some of the sweet spots they have of course yes absolutely agree but so I was happy anyway when I saw a company was running that route because I said oh well great that'll help me connect two two dots and not have to worry about which one of them am I going to cross the Atlantic with to get back to the United States? Am I going to have to cross the Atlantic twice here? But, uh, but yeah, it was kind of fun. It's fun to dream about those round the world trips. Yes. Yes. All right. So that brings us to the end. If you've enjoyed today's show and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox, all you got to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get it on our email list.

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