Frequent Miler on the Air - Dissecting the deal: United Business Class to New Zealand and beyond | Ep147 | 4-23-22

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

United recently offered business class seats to many destinations around the world for 60K miles each way. Was it a great deal that everyone should have booked? We each share our thought process with this kind of deal and why one of us booked it and one of us didn't. 1:07 Giant Mailbag: The Capital One Venture X travel credit might not be so easy to use on a hotel after all 4:14 What crazy thing...did Nearside Debit Card do this week? 8:16 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is the Wyndham 5x deal worth a mattress run to earn Vacasa nights? https://frequentmiler.com/great-new-wyndham-promo-earn-up-to-5x-points-on-one-stay-by-5-31-22/ 15:12 Dissecting the deal: 60K awards to New Zealand and beyond https://frequentmiler.com/united-offering-60k-biz-class-awards-to-many-locations-worldwide-4-seats-in-many-cases/ https://frequentmiler.com/transfer-partner-master-list/ 48:00 Question of the Week: How can I leverage the Southwest Companion pass into elite status with other airlines? Join our email list: FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, dissecting the deal. United business class to New Zealand and beyond. The deal's dead, but we're going to talk about, should you have jumped on it? Could you have? Is it really that good of a deal? All these topics are worth discussing. And I think it's worth discussing because next time there's something like this, it helps to know, is this something that you need to jump on right away before it's gone? Yeah. I'm excited to talk about this a little bit because I thought about it and I think talking

about the way we thought through it and what we did and why we did or didn't do it, I feel like there's some interesting discussion there. So I'll be curious to get into that with you in a few minutes. But first, no, I thought you had a new first. I was teeing it up for you. I was teeing it up for you. You were getting ahead of me. All right. First, the giant mailbag. And today's giant mail comes from me. So it's almost sort of like a post-roast in advance because I'm taking advantage of my

time here. Because Nick, you've written a few times about how the Capital One portal for booking hotels was better than you expected. And my experience, so you remember my wife signed up for the VentureX card and she got the full 100K bonus, which was available back then and everything. But since then, I've been trying to spend the $300 in portal credit that you get each year with that card. And I've looked, I think, three times now through the portal. And here's what I found. One time, the cost of a stay that I wanted was going to be $100 more through the venture portal, through the Capital One portal than booking direct.

Nobody wants that. And yeah. And then the other two times, even though there were refundable rates bookable elsewhere, I could not find refundable rates bookable through the Capital One portal. So it only listed non-refundable. And in both those cases, that was just not an option for me. So this is frustrating. I want to spend the 300, get the $300 credit back, but no luck so far. I'm sorry. You have such poor taste in places to stay wherever it is you're picking. I just didn't, I couldn't find those places. So, uh, no, I, I, I'm not totally surprised to hear that

just because obviously my sample size was limited to not everywhere anyone would ever stay. So the places that I checked, I found there to be good deals and good cancellation policies, but I'm not surprised that there's some variance there. And that's frustrating because then I know that some readers will be in the same situation

where they won't be able to use it either. And so, yeah, that's kind of annoying and good to know that you've run into it now. I used up the rest of my credits through there. I also used some for a rental car, I believe, if I remember correctly. I can't remember now. I have to go back and check. But anyway, so I did use up the rest of the VentureX credits. The first one was a hotel where it was a better deal. But yeah, so I did use up the rest of the VentureX credits. The first one was a hotel where it was a better deal.

But yeah, so I guess it depends. If you stay at the Hampton Inn, no, it wasn't the Hampton Inn, it was the Residence Inn outside of Columbus, Ohio. It turns out it's not such a bad deal. That's a good deal. Okay. I'll keep that in mind. Fairfield Inn.

I can't remember what it was. Hopefully I'll need a $300 stay each year. Right, right. Or else this card is going to be going away. Buy a car around the corner from the Fairfield Inn and you're all set. Right, right. Great way to earn a half a million membership points too. Right, right.

If that deal ever comes back. Thank you, Amex and Capital One. All right. So that's too bad. And I swear I had a confession to add to this week's mailbag time that I was going to surprise you with, but I can't remember what it was right now. So apparently it wasn't that big of a mistake. So instead we should talk about what crazy thing. So what crazy thing did Nearside do? Nearside is that debit card. It's a business debit card that is offering 2.2%

cash back on all purchases, including debit purchases made this year. So that's a fantastic deal. But it's always been a little bit confusing as to what exact purchases count. So we know that most purchases do count, but anything that's like a financial transaction does purchases count. So, you know, we know that most purchases do count, but anything that's like a financial transaction does not count. And so there, there've been a lot of questions about, well, taxes count. So the nice thing Nearsight did is they sent out an email saying, you know, in my case, Gregory earned 2.2% cash back when you pay your taxes with Nearsight. Sounds great. Right.

Sounds great. It's not crazy. That beats the fee, right? Because the fee for a credit card tops out, I think, at 1.99%, right? And this is a debit card. It beats the credit card fee. The debit card fee is almost nothing, because it's like a few dollars for a debit card fee. So if you're paying at all a sizable amount, it's like nothing compared to how much you're going to get cash back.

So yeah, no, the only crazy thing. So tax day, the day our taxes were due was April 18th this year. And Nearside started sending out this email on April 19th. I saw that email and I laughed. What? What, Nearside? How are you going to? I mean, come on. That wasn't an accident, right? They waited until the day after everybody paid their taxes to be like, oh yeah, yeah, you can pay your taxes with it. Well, why send it off? Yeah. So I think what happened is a bunch of people paid their taxes on or before April 18th with the Nearside debit card and the Nearside folks looked at them and said, oh, look, it's counting to earn 2.2% back. We better send out an email telling people. Because they didn't know either.

Nobody knows. Not like the folks in charge would have an idea, right? Oh, man. Well, it's hilarious. Although not totally useless because if you pay quarterly payments and at least your next few quarterly payments, you could use that and potentially turn a nice little profit, so to speak. I mean, you're still paying taxes, but you could earn better than the fee anyway, if you have to pay. So, I mean, it's got some utility. And then maybe if you have property taxes or something that are due on a different schedule than federal taxes, I mean, I could certainly envision a number of

situations where that'll hopefully be useful sure. The day after tax day, I rolled my eyes. I was like, thanks. Thanks. Right. Right. Right. Right. So my email actually came two days after tax day, but we know Tim's came the day after. Mine did too. Mine came the day after. Yeah. So that's even stranger why they're waiting to inform some people. They're like, oh no, that Greg guy, he might've filed for an extension. We got to wait an extra day. I don't know what's going on there, but no, I am looking forward to using it for estimated tax payments.

I am going to start moving money into that account well in advance because near site, it takes quite a while for the money to credit over there. So you need to have it actually in there before you make the payment. So make sure you do that if you're interested. And it failed.

It got reversed. And I was like, what? Oh, really? Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Slow. Slow.

Yes. Slow, slow stuff. All right. All right. Shall we move on to a crazy thing? What crazy thing did? Well, that was the crazy thing. That was the crazy thing.

It's time for it. What crazy thing did Greg just say? Let me give you. That was the crazy thing. It's time for it. Crazy thing to Greg. Just say a job. Yeah. Okay. We've been, we've been messing up the whole show by jumping ahead and doing each other's parts. It's not working.

So let's move on to mattress running the numbers. So this week's running the numbers. We're going to talk about Wyndham because you might want to mattress run Wyndham I guess right what's the promo what's going on so Wyndham has a promo where if you stay two nights you get double points three nights triple points four nights quadruple points and five nights you get uh fipple points. So 5X points for five night stays or longer. And Wyndham is pretty rewarding on paid stays to begin with. I posted a thing about which hotel programs are most rewarding on paid stays and Wyndham did really well on there. And so with five times the

points, would it be worth simply going and booking five nights stay at Wyndham and just earning the points, even if you don't care about staying there? So just for an example, let's say it's $100 a night, $500 altogether for your five nights stay, get 25,000 points. And that's without elite status bonuses or bonuses from paying with your credit card. 25,000 at Fipple points. That's a stack of Wyndham points. And so based on our reasonable redemption value, that's certainly a horrible idea if you you don't need to stay, because I, what's our reason? I don't even know off the top of my head, our reasonable redemption value for Wyndham points, but it's less than a penny a point.

So it is, it is. Yeah. I don't know off the top of my head either, but it's something. Yeah. So even if it were a penny a point, that'd be $250 worth of points for your $500 stay. Great rebate. If you're going to stay at a Wyndham property, hey, it's hard to beat half back, right? Especially if you may be able to even go through a portal too. I haven't actually ever tried stacking a portal on a Wyndham stay. I don't

know if they show up on any portals, but maybe you could do even better. I mean, that's a great rebate, not a mattress run. Yeah. Well, that's a good point. But keep in mind, if you have the Wyndham business earner card, you're going to get, I think it's eight points per dollar from the credit card if you pay with that credit card. And so you'd end up with more than 25,000 points. And because you have an earner card, you could book two nights at a one bedroom vacasification rental, uh, with the points earned. So, so remember, you know, vacasification rental, one bedroom,

13,500 points if you have the card. So it used to be enough for two nights. And so $500 for two nights at a stay that, uh, you know, might cost you a lot more than that. Right. Well,

okay. So there it could work out, I guess. I mean, that's not bad. And yeah, it is 8X Wyndham, so you would earn 8X there. I double-checked, fact-checked, Greg, on that because I couldn't remember for sure myself. So yeah, that actually could potentially work out if you got a good use for the Vicasa points.

Of course, keep in mind, Wyndham does sell the points occasionally for about a penny a point, so you can sometimes buy them for about $250. So again, questionable as to whether or not it's mattress run worthy, though in the past they used to cap you at 45,000 purchase points per year, though I think their last few sales, they've said 120,000 points per year. At any rate, there is a cap.

So this might be a way if you need to get beyond the cap for a vacation rental or something. So I mean, it's not a pure mattress run, but okay. You convinced me there are situations where you might want to do it. And if you have a paid vacasas day coming up, then you can get Fipple points on that. Right. Wrong paid vacasas day. Right. I don't think so. I was looking to trap you with that one. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think you could book the Vicasa Vickers Reynolds through Wyndham, which would be the only way you could then earn the Fipple points. Now, let me say why I wouldn't do this deal even if I needed the points. Let me put it another way.

It's like gambling because we know from Wyndham portal deals that Wyndham does not understand what multiplying by five means. That's the truth. So they have these deals, you know, once or twice a year where they say five times the points through the portal. And they have examples like instead of earning four points per dollar at Apple store, you'll earn seven. And, you know, so that's something less than double. It's nowhere near five times as many.

It's some magic number that we don't know how they got at. So, you know, if the same mathematician is awarding the bonus points for this promo as the portal promo, you're probably in trouble, but you have the possibility that they'll throw in another zero or something. And, you know, yeah, it could be 300 times, you know, in reality, who knows? But no, I, yeah, no, it's true. And you know what? Like you could extend that joke to the fact that even when there's that seven X or whatever, so many times now I've gotten a number that is not exactly seven X. It's like some weird random number. I, I got a Ramona bag.

How many points they actually post. Yeah. I bought a bag through the portal because I did the point debit card referral promo and I got the five referrals. So I was able to buy a bag and get reimbursed for it. So the bag was like a super even number. It was like, you know, like almost a thousand dollars on the dot. Cause that's what point was, was reimbursing. And so 14 X, it should have been like 14,000 points. And I got some, like, I don't know, 13,272, but it was like less than what 14, but not enough that

I bothered to send an email about it. But I was like, where did they even come up with this number? Yeah. Well, the, the real portal rate was probably 13.621. And they had rounded it up to make it easier to read on the portal. Right. Clearly. That must be where the Fipple points comes from. I mean, that must be the whole origin of this. So short version of the story. Truthfully, I doubt that you'll won't well i shouldn't say that you'll probably get the 5x points properly i think it's likely you will and and um but you know maybe be prepared for it not to be exactly fit yeah exactly exactly not exactly that makes sense and revisiting what i said it is i thought it was kind of strange that you can't earn Wyndham points on a Vacasa, a paid Vacasa stay. I just had a paid Vacasa stay and I thought it was kind of weird that I couldn't, I can redeem Wyndham points for Vacasa stay, can't earn them for a Vacasa stay. But like Greg said, you can't book it directly through Wyndham except using points. So no way to do that. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It is an interesting quirk.

But that's that. Okay. So speaking of booking things and awards and that sort of thing, we should probably slide right into today's main event. The main event dissecting the deal. So United was out with, it wasn't really a deal. I mean,

this is what they charge for. Are you jumping ahead to like your opinion here saying it's not a deal? Yeah, I guess I am. Let me get into what the deal was. Wide open award availability to places like Wellington, New Zealand, but many, many other places, just all around the globe, there were wide open award availability in times, you know, whenever you wanted to go often from often the originating airport could be airports that United sort of barely serves and, and yet they were making award availability, you know, through all the way. And, um, an example is, uh, I was able to book from Detroit through Houston to, um, Wellington, New Zealand through Sydney. So it was like Detroit, Houston, uh, Sydney, and then a air New Zealand flight. This part was an economy. The rest was first class

and business class. An economy flight from Sydney to Wellington, New Zealand. So what is special about that isn't really the award price as much as the availability of it. So you could book your whole family, for example, if you had enough miles. Right. Right. And I don't know, I think it's a little unfair to say that the price wasn't special. I mean, it was 60,000 miles each way. So 60,000 United miles to New Zealand, I don't know, that's not ever been the saver price, or at least not before they eliminated the award charts to my knowledge. I mean, Asia- Oh, is that right? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Asia is 80K. So I think it's 80. Yeah. Yeah. You could be right. You could be right. I guess what I was thinking is more like it's not that special because there are other programs where you could get that similar saver level price if there was, available, but you would never see that many awards available with those other programs. Right. Right. So I, so that's, that's a, that's a separate point. That was one of the first arguments that I was going to make about why I wasn't completely enamored with the deal. Cause I, on the one hand, 60,000 United miles for business class to the South Pacific, I mean, or rather to down under, to New Zealand, to wherever it was in that part of the world.

That is a notable deal because, I mean, come on, somebody commented, I think, to say that, you know, if you want to fly from Chicago to Denver on a Tuesday, it's like 40,000 United miles. So 60 to get to New Zealand. I mean, that is really notable from the perspective of, man, you know, with this dynamic pricing, a lot of times the silliest little itineraries can cost almost that much. So I think it was notable from that perspective. But the argument, of course,

on the flip side is, well, you could use 55,000 Alaska miles and fly Fiji Airways and get a free stopover in Fiji on your way to New Zealand or Australia and that part of the world. So 60,000 United miles isn't an unheard of quantity, but the availability also that piece, I mean, that is huge, not only availability for lots of people, but even from, like you said, these small airports. I mean, I looked at Albany, New York, you never find award availability originating in Albany. If I'm going to fly international, I've always got to drive to New York basically, which is not a big deal to me, but being able to get it from my home airport, that seemed intriguing anyway, especially at that,

again, 60,000 mile saver award space level, which was less by the way than what they were charging for premium economy on the same routes, right? I mean, premium economy is over a hundred. I didn't notice that. Yeah, it was over 100K on premium economy. Yeah, yeah. So the other part of it that was special about the word availability is that it wasn't limited to sort of off-peak travel times. So it's usually when we see deals to Australia and New Zealand,

it's in our summer and their winter. What we saw widely available were flights in our winter, their summer, which is ideal time to go to New Zealand, and even over the holidays. So I was able to easily book flights that spanned New Year's and so took advantage of our holiday times where some of us are off work. And it's normally nearly impossible to find good price deals, let alone, you know, flight awards during those times. Yeah. I mean, like, let's back up to the fact that it's nearly impossible to find awards to Australia and New Zealand in general. I mean, really any time of the year, it's difficult. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's usually fairly difficult. And if you're not willing to position via Asia, then it's really difficult. Like finding something from the United States to Australia or New Zealand is like almost unheard of at the safer level.

I mean, you got to be hawking it and know how many days in advance availability comes out and like looking constantly or setting alerts to the expert flyer and stuff like that. It's usually fairly difficult if you stumble on that one day and you're just lucky. I mean, then book it normally. So that's why you look at this and say, well, OK, then, yeah, I mean, everybody should have booked this, right? Everybody should have just hustled down and booked it. Yet I didn't. But I think you did.

So which way is it, Greg? Should people book or should they have booked or not? Is this the kind of situation where you should have been like, boom, let me hit that button or who should have and who shouldn't have? Right. Right. And also like, let's also expand that after we talk about it to how should you use those ideas to think about the next deal that comes out? Because our purpose here isn't to rub it in if you didn't know about this deal in time, or you didn't have the miles in order to book it, but rather to talk about exactly what you just brought up. Why should you or why shouldn't you

book it when this thing comes up, when this sort of thing happens? Now, for me, I had hundreds of thousands of United miles thanks to the pandemic. Now, actually, thanks to LifeMiles not knowing that Lufthansa flew through Munich two years ago from Detroit. So backing way up. Now I'm confused. What does this have to do with it? Let's hear this. I'm curious. So I was booking a trip to Europe for, gosh, I think it was seven people altogether.

No, five people altogether. And there was a new flight. So normally from Detroit, you could fly Detroit to Frankfurt on Luf on Lufthansa nonstop, and then from Frankfurt to pretty much anywhere in Europe. And, um, the, but the place we wanted to go didn't have award availability between Frankfurt and, and, uh, where we were going. So, um, but there was a new flight that was available that summer, uh summer between Detroit and Munich on Lufthansa. So that's an unusual thing. And Life Miles had the best deal that I could find on that flight because they don't charge fuel surcharges, just like United doesn't.

And, but they were much cheaper than United. But Life Miles could not see that route, that new route. So I ended up transferring a lot of points from Chase Ultima awards to United to book it cost more miles for United, but at least I could book it. And, uh, where it was, you know, happy with, with that flight anyway. And then, of course, pandemic hits. I had to cancel the whole thing. So now I'm sitting on many hundreds of thousands of United miles and no idea what I'd ever do with them until this deal came along.

Until now. You're like, that's what I'll do with them. I'm going to New Zealand. Yeah. And the other thing that changed is that United made their, you know, award tickets fully refundable as long as you cancel within 30 days of the departure. As long as you cancel more, 30 days or more, right? So let's be careful. Right, right, right.

Within 30 days, you're going to. As long as you don't cancel within 30 days. Thank you. More than 30 days in advance. And you could change them even within 30 days for free. You could change to a later flight. So that 30 day thing is, is easy to get around. So, so now I'm in a situation where there's like no downside, right? So I can book United flights whenever I see a deal. And if it turns out later, I can't fly the flight. No big deal.

I'll cancel, get the miles back and we're all happy. So I was in this rare situation where not only could I book my wife and I to New Zealand, but I booked two different outbound flights and two different return flights like like on different dates. So that, you know, as it got closer, we'd see what will actually work for us. And then we'll cancel the other ones. That's, that's awesome. It's nice to see when you do have that situation where you've got a bunch of miles on our program, that's great because then you can just take advantage of deals like this and, and book a backup. I mean, then you give yourself a lot of options. So that is a situation where I think it makes sense to hop on something like this. Now, we said before that there were deals

to lots of different regions around the world. And I'll say that the best deal out of this one, I think, was New Zealand, because a lot of the other regions like I think Milan I saw was 60,000 miles. But that's not necessarily a special price for Europe. It's not a bad price, but it's not a special price for Europe. And a lot of other places were that kind of thing. But New Zealand was a situation where you're unlikely to find that award availability easily in normal times. And certainly for the 60,000 United miles, blah, blah, blah. So it seems like almost a no brainer if you have a lot of United miles and you see a deal like that. And this is not only United. If you've got a lot of American Airlines miles and there's a similar deal on American or a lot

of Delta miles, all of those programs now offer ways to cancel tickets for free. So yeah, Alaska too. Alaska too. Yeah. So there's no sense in not booking it, I guess, when you get that opportunity book first and ask questions later. That's the mantra. Exactly. Exactly. And so, but I wouldn't necessarily transfer points. Now there was, as an aside, there was some issue going on with transfers from Chase Ultimate Rewards to United. I don't know if that's resolved now or not, but even if there weren't problems at the time, you have to remember that's a one-way street. So if you're not sure, there's a big downside to booking just in case. And before we get too far into that, let's talk about your situation, Nick. Well, that's exactly my situation. I had a small, I didn't even have 60,000 United miles,

some small pile of United miles in my account. Uh, so I would have had to have transferred from chase ultimate rewards to, to United. And so I looked at it and I said, well, you know, Hey, I don't know whether the trip is going to happen. Who knows with COVID restrictions, things could totally change. Like obviously things have been opening up now and I'm looking at booking more travel, but I'm not going to be willy nilly about transferring points from Chase for a trip that I feel like is very speculative for me. So that was a big hesitation point for me. Now, if my situation was slightly different, I would say that if I had built points, if I had a bunch of built points, then I might have considered making the transfer there because they also transfer to United. So and they transfer to Chase also, or to Hyatt also, but my main concern is preserving Chase points so that I have flexibility for Hyatt

down the road. And so I think probably if I had both anyway, if I had Chase, cause I can always replenish my Chase and I know that, but I can, if I had that pile of built points also, I think I might've been a little bit more apt to gamble and say, okay, well, I've got enough avenues to replenish here. That makes no sense, Nick. No sense at all. It would have totally made a difference to me because now I'm looking at it and I'm like, I don't have very many chase points. But if I also had a bunch of built points because I've been paying my rent with a built card, then I think I would be more apt to transfer those. Well, you could say the same thing if you had more chase points.

You're right. Yes. If I had more chase points. True. If I had more chase points, I might have done it all. So I mean, that's another good, good, good point there. If I had a million chase points, I might have considered transferring over enough to book this because it's so rare to get that opportunity, especially if I could have gotten four seats

for my wife and I and my two kids, because I feel like four seats to get down under is going to be tight for us to ever manage in the next decade here. So then I might have done it, but I'm not flush with Chase points at this point. I've been using a lot of them. I've got a lot of hired bookings on right now and more that I'd like to make. So I'm being kind of careful with my chase transfers. And like you said, the fact that it's a one-way street is really the big deal on that because then they're locked up in United

and I don't know when I'm going to next need United miles. You know, we've all learned from the pandemic that things can change. And then you end up with this pile of airline specific miles that are only good for whatever that airline sweet spots are. And you never know when those are going to change and they're going to pull the rug out from under you. So, I mean, we saw a lot of people get hit with that with Virgin Atlantic when Virgin Atlantic

changed award charts for Delta. People had trips, I'm sure, booked to Asia that got canceled because of COVID. And then all of a sudden Virgin Atlantic jacked up the prices. And now they don't even have enough miles to rebook the trips that they originally had on the docket. So I wouldn't want to end up in that kind of situation. I feel like United, there's enough utility of the miles that it wouldn't be horrible to have United miles. You know, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I think that I was hesitant to do that because I'm getting so much value out of Hyatt and I value the ability to book suites with Hyatt. So I need my chase points for that right now. Right. Right. Yeah. No, I totally agree. If, if I was not flush on United miles, I don't think I would have done

this. Um, because even though I have a lot of chase ultimate awards points, I don't think, well, all right, let me put it another way. If I was confident that even 80% confident that I would take the trip, then yeah, I would have transferred because it's so rare to find it. But I'm not even that confident. There's various things going on that make me less sure of it. So yeah, I would not have wanted to strand Chase Points or Built Points if I had those into United Miles. United has decent business class pricing, but they're hardly ever best pricing. And so, you know, it just feels like kind of parking points in a suboptimal place.

Yeah. And the same thing is true when this happens with other programs, because we'll see sometimes great deals for booking business class. I mean, right now, the 40% transfer bonus from membership rewards to Avios is a good example because there are some great sweet spots. And so there's definitely some temptation there to transfer over miles and book something. I wrote actually this week about using your British Airways Avios to book cutter through cutter. And so, you know, I looked at that and I found some flights that were available and I said, oh man, I could book this and, you know, lock up a trip and do it for very few miles. But again, then I end up with these points stranded in British Airways and I'm not confident enough yet that that type of trip is gonna happen to transfer over.

And I think a lot of us are in the situation where we've got miles in individual airline programs and I'd prefer to use those first before I start transferring points, so. Yeah, yeah. So what are some kind of lessons out of here? I mean, one is obviously, if you're flush with miles in a particular program that you don't have already pegged for some use, then when you see a deal with that program, especially if it has free cancellations, then by all means, by all means jump on it and, and, you know, worry about it afterwards because things like this don't last long. And so when you see all the blogs, like cheering about,

you know, some ability to book something or other, um, you know, just jump in and do it. If you already have the miles. Right. Right. And that's almost a universal truth when it comes to not only miles, but also words, or I mean, rather cash sales. You know, when you see a great cash deal, most US-based travel agencies offer free cancellation for 24 hours. So it's the same kind of thing. Countless times over the years,

my wife and I have seen a great deal and said, okay, you know what? Let's book it right now. So we have something locked in and then we can look for a better itinerary and or check schedules and call friends and see who else wants to jump in and worry about those details after we lock something in because these things last minutes or hours, not days usually. So, you know, you got to- This one did last days, but not, you know, by the time we reported it, it maybe lasts another couple of days.

I can't remember. I'm not exactly sure how long this one was on for, but a rarity for something like this to last that long. Another piece of hesitation with transferring from Chase was that when I initially saw it, I didn't know it had already been on for days. And I saw it and I thought, is United even going to honor that? I don't want to go strand a bunch of miles with United only for them to cancel it and say it was a price mistake. And I'll sorry, guys, you know, we're going to cancel your flight and give you your miles back. Cause in that situation, I would want my ultimate rewards back. And I know that you can't do that. So, uh, so that was another piece of hesitation for me. I'm not too excited about transferring miles for an award price mistake, uh, so to speak. And I put that in quotations because I feel like that term is

not a particularly accurate one when these airline programs want to have dynamic pricing. If you want to have dynamic pricing, then you can't call it a mistake when it goes dynamic on you. But I make that terminology use, I guess, because I know that's familiar to people. You'll understand what I mean when I say it. So I was hesitant to move the points over under that premise that if they cancel it, then I'm again stuck with this. And I didn't even cancel the trip. United did. So then I'd be even more annoyed that I lost the flexibility of the points. But again, yeah, if you have them, you got to smoke them if you got them, so to speak. Book these deals when you see them. Same is true with hotel awards, too. I search certain destinations that I really like often. When I'm standing in line waiting for something, I'm usually looking at an award search. I'm pulling up like Marriott or Hyatt or a point.me and doing a flight award search. It's just what I do when I'm, when I've got time to kill and I'm waiting for something, I'm looking up those

things that, Oh, I would like to do this if I ever find availability. And then when I do, I know I'm going to book it right away. And my wife is used to the fact now that she'll wake up in the morning sometimes and I'll be like, so I booked this trip. What do you think? And that's, that's a normal kind of a thing because, uh, you do have the ability to freely cancel lots of different types of awards. Again, if you've got the existing miles already now to other regions of the world, I wasn't super excited. And also I mentioned the Alaska thing to New Zealand or Australia, but that's not necessarily the only great deal. There are other good options if you want to get down under too, right? Oh, for sure. You know, I mean, we've talked a lot about how good ANA's pricing is to a lot of parts of the world, but you know, there you do have to worry about fuel surcharges. So if you book part of the trip on an airline that charges a lot, you're going to pay a lot.

So I don't know. What else is in your mind as far as good deals? The first one that came to mind, A for the round-trip Star Alliance, you're looking at, I think, $120,000 to Australia and New Zealand. So it's $60,000 each way. And in this case know, something like United, then you would be not getting hit with surcharges with fuel surcharges since United doesn't charge them. Though that said, these seats were not available to partners. So you wouldn't be able to do that anyway in this specific instance. But my point is that pricing is very similar. So you get that just about any day of the week. First class also via aeroplan is not unreasonable either and you can book

Etihad right I don't know if they're still flying the route but in normal times anyway right right and if they bring back the Etihad first apartments that would be a spectacular way to fly

to Abu Dhabi and onward to Australia, that would be spectacular. It would cost a lot more miles. I think it would be about double what we're talking about for one way. Double the luxury for sure. At least. I mean, more than that. Right, right, right, right. So, I mean, I think that's a potentially really good option. And that's one that I think you're more likely to be able to find at some point than you're likely to find another six seats to New Zealand or something like that, like you could have with this particular

deal. But deals come and go all the time. Like Greg said, we're not looking to rub it in if you miss this one. I mean, I sat on the sidelines and watched other people book it. So I get the fear of missing out sort of feeling, but there are deals that come and go all the time. Knowing how to play them is more important, I think, than worrying about the ones you missed. So when's a deal worth transferring your points over for? I mean, things have changed, right? Because with COVID, the way that the world has changed in that regard has made me more hesitant about transferring over than I would have been in the past.

I feel like in the past, I probably would have said, okay, we're going to commit and go these dates and I'll transfer. And I probably would have said, okay, we're going to commit and go these dates and I'll transfer. And I probably would have transferred for this. I feel like the last couple of years have made me more hesitant. Also the fact that I have two kids now and kids get sick and schedules change and blah, blah, blah. So that makes it a little bit different for me now than it would have been in years past. But yeah, I think that it's a little harder now to determine when I would, I think I would, when my travel is fairly near term and there's availability, which is really hoping for the stars to align. I feel like it's getting tougher for me to consider that. Uh, or when, when two

things happen, when there is both a, a very good award deal and B, a transfer bonus and C, I'm pretty sure I'm going to take the trip. So that's really three things I know I said too. Then I think I transfer over points for that. What about you? I mean, I know you've got so many points in different programs now. You probably aren't going to consider transferring anything anytime soon. Yeah, I mean, it makes when you have that situation like I do right now, it makes when, when you have that situation, like I do right now, it makes the idea of transferring to airline miles, like really, um, you know, unattractive, you know, so, so, um, you know,

let's say now I don't have as many, uh, United miles. So I'm not going to use that as an example, but, but they'll come back. Even if I only cancel half the flights. I'm going to have a lot of United miles back again. But so actually, so yeah, let me use that as an example. So if let's say Air Canada has a that thing or do I use my existing United Miles and book it for a lot more miles? And you know what? I mean, I think to the extent that I have the United Miles, I would usually rather do that. Yeah. You know, I think that that's a sound way to look at it because those United miles are already locked up and have limited purposes. And at some point, you know, it'll

change their award chart and devalue things. And so better to use them and keep your flexible points flexible in general. Though I will say, I think the other thing that comes into play is I'm more likely to transfer either a points that I don't see as being as valuable to me as other transferable points like Brex, for instance, only has a few transfer partners. There's really only a couple that I use a lot. So I would be more apt to play it fast and loose with transferring over my Brex points

than I would with my Chase points since I don't have other ways to generate Hyatt points right now. Now, so that's one thing. The other thing is how often do I use the award program or how often am I likely to use the award program? And so, you know, for me, I ended up booking a lot of star Alliance awards, so I wouldn't feel too bad about transferring points to life miles. I feel like, because I'm fairly likely to use those sooner rather than later, just because Star Alliance tends to work out with my needs. And even though LifeMiles has some drawbacks in terms of the fact they can't always see the availability you want, customer service isn't particularly good.

Overall, they meet my needs enough that I'd be okay with transferring over a decent quantity there or usable quantity. And Avios, I feel like I'm not going to speculatively transfer, but I would also be like, well, okay, between some of the options with American using British Airways or moving them over to Iberia or now being able to use them for Qatar, I might be a little bit more likely to transfer to Avios, I guess, than I would have been in the past, at least. But yeah, I think that's, I'd have to consider, okay, well, how often am I using those miles? If I'm using them a lot, okay, then great, I'll transfer to that program. But if it's something like Singapore miles that I very rarely use, I didn't jump on the deal to get Singapore airline status for transferring a quarter of a

million miles over, not because I didn't have the points to move. Amex has been given points out like candy over the last couple of years. So I had plenty of points transferable to Singapore, but I haven't redeemed Singapore miles and probably, you know, five or six years now. And I don't know when I'm going to again. So. Yeah. So Singapore is actually a great example of one that I'm very hesitant to do, even though I did it for, in order to book those suites when they're available, I ended up having to cancel that. So now I'm sitting hesitant to do, even though I did it for, in order to book those suites when they're

available, I ended up having to cancel that. So now I'm sitting on, yeah. So now I'm sitting on Singapore miles that are going to expire in three years, full stop. And that is bad. So I hate transferring to programs that where the miles are going to expire no matter what you do. Um, when I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm going to take the flight, uh, in that case, I did it cause I so badly wanted to take that, um, sweets flight didn't work out with our schedule. So, um, so that one hurts. Whereas, you know, on the flip side of program that I use all the time, like Hyatt, I don't have any problem moving my points to Hyatt. That's a great point.

Because I know I'm going to use them for great value, even if I don't use it for whatever particular deal I'm trying to hop on at that time. That's a great point. I just did that actually last week because I was looking at Book of Rome and I was like, oh, there's availability. I'm not exactly sure if we're going to need it. But I was like, ah, but you know what? I'll use the Hyatt points one way or another. And I actually did the math quickly and did it wrong and transferred 20,000 points more than I needed. And I didn't even really feel all that bad about it. Cause I was like, ah, I'll use those

in short order here with Hyatt. So that's a great example of a program where I'm not at all hesitant to transfer over to Hyatt because I know that a large portion of my chase ultimate rewards are going to end up there anyway. Now I'm not going to do it just for fun. I mean, I'm not going to transfer them over because I think I might use Hyatt someday. I'm going to transfer them over to book something, but I'm not going to feel particularly bad if I have to cancel that something. That's a really good point about the expiration policies. And it's always good to take a look at the expiration policy of an airline before you transfer to them, especially if it's something you're new with, because that Singapore one is a good example. And they're not the only ones out there that have a hard expiration like that. And also,

even the ones that have ways to extend the miles are not necessarily easy, or at least they vary. Like, for instance, I had in my mind that basically every program these days gives you 18 months that you have 18 months to have activity in your account, whether you earn more points or transfer more points or the various ways to do that. I had totally forgotten that LifeMiles is only 12 months. And so I had some LifeMiles that expired earlier this year because silly me, I didn't realize that they expired after 12 months and everybody had been extending them throughout the pandemic. So I was like, oh, those, those miles are never expiring. Right. They keep extending them and it's gotta be at least 18 months. I know I transferred some a year ago and well, yeah, I mean, I messed up there. So you definitely want to know what you need to do to keep the miles alive and that sort of thing before you start transferring into a program. So I'm glad you made that point because that certainly is a consideration also. And one of the reasons why

I hesitated on that Singapore deal and even the Singapore suites that you booked, I saw that and I found a day with three seats available in the new suites, what turned out to be the new suites. And I was kicking myself after we found out it was the new suites because we didn't know initially whether it was going to be or not because I was like, Oh man, I missed my shot to get three of us in the new suites. But that was a big sticking point for me that there are very few times I'm going to use Singapore miles and man, I got to know I'm going to use them at some point in the next three years. And if I don't feel real confident about that, then I, I'm very hesitant. So, so that's, I think all good information for people to consider when you're deciding whether

or not to jump on these deals. Exactly. Exactly. And how to keep the miles alive, which we have guides on a number of the most popular ones. We should probably have the guide on all of the major programs for how to keep your points alive in each of them and the ones that you can anyway, whether a transfer works or this or that. So that's something for us to work on, I guess, because that's good. Oh, there

we go. I was trying to think of something. So I was buying myself another second because I knew there was something else that popped into my mind. The other thing to consider is transfer times. That's another one. ANA is a good example where there might be great ANA award availability. All of a sudden, somebody announces that there's great availability. Somebody reports that and there end up being posts. I'm hesitant still to transfer over the miles to ANA, both because of their expiration policy and because they don't transfer instantly. So I don't know how many people like Greg have a pile of ANA miles and might book up

all the availability before any points even get there. So I'm hesitant to book anything with ANA miles that requires transferring points like right away to jump on that deal. So I would be actually hesitant to use ANA, even if those United flights were available via ANA in this case, I would have been very hesitant to transfer to ANA to book them because I wouldn't know whether my points will get there before the deal dies. So time sensitive stuff, I wouldn't do that. And we do have a page that shows transfer times, as well as if you just go to our transfer partner master list, which shows all the different transfer partner options. We list the transfer

times to the best of our knowledge there. Some of these things do change periodically, so it won't always be 100% right, but getting some previous data to help you make an informed decision about this is way better than nothing. Right, right. All right, so I think some good information there. So some stuff to chew on

for the next time the deal comes up. All right, so that wraps that up, I think. So we should probably slide into the post roast. Do you have a roast for me? Yeah. I kind of roasted you at the outset around the capital one thing. How about for you, for me? No, you know, I'm a, I'm gonna let you slide this week. So I know you're workationing, so I don't want to be hard on you.

I want to get to this week's question of the week because I enjoyed this week's question. So this came in via the email address, mailbag at frequentmiler.com. And so Taylor says, thanks for the excellent content. Enjoy the podcast. He mentions that he or she, Taylor, got a companion pass in the next, or is going to have a companion pass in the next few months and has a question about competitor status matches. Okay. Taylor says Southwest Southwest. Yes. Yes. I should have been clear about that. So Taylor is about to earn the Southwest companion pass, probably did two credit cards. I'm assuming since the welcome bonuses on those count towards the companion pass. If you're not familiar with the companion pass should be a short story is that if you earn enough Southwest points in one

year, which can include getting them from signup bonuses, then a companion flies with you for free for the rest of that year and the entire next year. It's long been one of the best deals in domestic travel, although questionable as to how good that is moving forward. But that's another discussion for another day. Taylor's question is about competitor status matches, though. Once Taylor gets the Southwest companion pass, they want to know, okay, what are my options for parlaying that into status? So Taylor says, unless I'm misinterpreting their status match challenge guidelines, it seems that many of the other U S airlines include

Southwest A-list status as part of their status match programs, but not the companion pass. Is there something I'm missing here? What opportunities exist to parlay the companion pass into status with other airlines? I just want to make sure I'm capitalizing on any opportunities this would present. Thank you in advance for your help, Taylor. So, Greg, I'm asking you because I'm thinking maybe you can think of at least one

in the past year we've seen. Maybe, I don't know, I'm gambling here. Any opportunities to parlay the Southwest Companion Pass into status with another airline? Yeah, that is gambling because I don't remember. I think we did talk about one on the show in the past, but I don't remember what it was. So these things come and go. So what would you do to, I'll come back to that in a second. What would you do in order to figure out what you could parlay the companion pass into? Yeah. Well, I'd start at-

Besides asking Nick and Greg at mailbag at frequentmiler.com. I would start at the website that's either called statusmatch or statusmatcher.com. I don't remember. We spent about 20 minutes on a prior episode trying to figure out which was which. And I think we just confused ourselves and our audience. So you go to one of those and it lets you find for any given program, what are the known targets of what you can status match from and to. Correct. Yeah. So, and I believe it's statusmatcher.com that I've always used for that because you can pick your airline program out. And so, for example, I'll go to it live while we're talking here, because if you go to the Southwest Airlines page, then it gives you

information initially about reports for obtaining Southwest status using your status from other airlines. But if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, then it has reports for leveraging status with Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards, and it explains what you may be able to match to. And so people list their experiences with what they have either successfully or unsuccessfully tried to match. And so there are periodically opportunities that pop up in there. Now, the one that came to my mind initially was that Aeroplan offered that status match late last year, where you could have gotten 75K status, so gold status with, I'm sorry, Star Alliance gold status through Air Canada Aeroplan with the Southwest Companion Pass. Now that I was counting on Greg to remember

because he did that status match, I think, that required one round trip flight on Air Canada. That was only available for a little while. And in fact, the match from the companion pass to the star Alliance gold only lasted for the first day or two or three, and then they changed up the requirements and it no longer matched to that same high level of status. So you gotta be ready to jump on a scenario like that when it happens. So that's one that comes to mind that did come around. So it might be worth keeping an eye out in case Air Canada does something similar again. Although my guess is that they won't have it matching to an entirely useful

status level since they kind of caught their mistakes, so to speak there. So I doubt they'll repeat that. In the past, Alaska Airlines used to match you into i want to say it was mvp gold with a companion pass because i i tried it at one point um but i i think that they've stopped doing that so i don't think you can do that anymore i think i would try though and and so one of the reasons i wanted to talk about this is I would give it a shot, even with airlines that don't list it as an option. I go back to Delta and last fall, I did a status match challenge with Delta and they had a list of the airlines they match from. And I didn't have status or at least a level of status that I would have wanted to match to with any of those programs.

But I had Spirit Airlines gold status. Now they didn't list Spirit as something they match. And I mean, come on, it'd be ridiculous for Delta to match Spirit Airlines status, right? But whatever, I submitted it because there was an option for other. There was an option if you had status with some other airline. So I submitted my Spirit gold status and said, hey, I want you to match me to Delta gold. And they wrote back and said, sorry, we don't match spirit status. Get out of here. Well, they left out that last part, but I wrote back and I said, well, why not? It requires roughly equivalent spend as Delta Gold and blah, blah, blah. And so I made my argument as to why it was a competitive level of status. And they wrote back and said, you know what? You're right.

Status match on. And so just because I pushed back, if I hadn't pushed back, A, if I hadn't asked because Spirit wasn't in the list, then I never would have gotten it. And then B, if I hadn't pushed back with an argument as to why I thought they should consider matching it, then they wouldn't have done it. But it's worth taking a shot maybe with that kind of thing. So I think that's a great point. Airlines offer status matches, not just to be nice. They do it because they're and yeah, I mean, some are, they, they all have rules that they may or may not follow. And so it's, it's definitely worth poking at the edges

and seeing what they'll do. So especially if you think you're going to fly whatever that airline is enough to meet the challenge, because most status matches are temporary about 90 days. You get status for about 90 days. And if you fly enough during those 90 days, you get to keep it for, let's say a year. It depends on the, on the match, exactly how long you'd keep it. Um, and if you think, you know, Oh, I'm going to be flying on, you know, airline X for a lot coming up, then looking at every option to match to airline X beforehand. Really good idea. Yeah, definitely. And in my case, I knew I was going to fly enough to, to, to be able to meet the requirements for the status

match. So it was totally worth it to me. Now I've skipped out on some other status match opportunities over the years where I've said, you know what, I'm not going to fly enough either A, to meet the requirements or B, to make the status useful. So I've left those B because a lot of airline programs will only offer you one status match either per certain amount of time every few years, or maybe even one per lifetime. So I haven't wanted to burn that bridge when I wasn't going to be able to either a meet the requirements or be use it enough to make it worthwhile. So you want to consider that too, when you're matching, I would be happy though. We talked recently about the ANA status match that they offered, and I'd be happy to take a swing at something like that,

because again, that's another one where I think they just had a box for other. And so why not try to see if you can match it to ANA? I mean, they may say no, but that's the worst thing they're going to say. So I would probably try and submit it because we talked just recently about how ANA has only ever offered that like this time. I think we don't remember a time when they've ever offered a status match otherwise. So there's very little downside to giving it a shot and seeing what happens. And because like Greg said, these programs don't have a lot of incentive to deny you. And while they often have rules and they follow them, I'm sure to some extent, it's also not exactly set in stone. I think probably the person who approves or denies your match has the ability to click a magic button and make it happen. So you're dealing

with a human being. It's not a computer algorithm necessarily. And there's a human that can make something happen. So might as well take a swing at it. So good luck to you, Taylor. I hope that you're able to parlay that into something that's useful for you. Yeah. And once you get that one, use that one, let's say ANA accepts you, use that one to match other things and so on and so on. Exactly the way it is. And that's what I did because I parlayed my Delta Gold now into hopefully ANA. I haven't checked yet today. They said it would take up to 14 days and they seem to be taking their sweet time with it because I did the match before we even posted it. I still haven't seen an update, but one of these days hopefully we will. ANA likes to take a while with things. So I think I mentioned on a previous show that my miles had been renewed.

And the way it renews is they take them all away and they are gone for about three weeks until they suddenly reappear. And they did reappear just the other day. So I'm glad you heard that. Thank goodness. If you're worried about my miles. I thought you were going to say they still haven't reappeared. But good to know that they're back.

All right. So good luck to you, Taylor. And good question. So always look out for those opportunities to match your status and see if you can make it something even more useful to you. Unfortunately, though, I think that means we're at the end of today's episode. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can definitely join. Or even if you didn't.

Or even if you didn't, you might as well join our email list because maybe you'll like what we write better than what we say. So go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media, join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And if you have a question, you can send that to mailbag at frequentmiler.com and maybe you'll get on the next week's question of the week. So thank you guys very much for being out there with us. Oh, and wherever you're watching or listening or whatever, make sure you like, subscribe, hit the notification bell, leave us a comment, a little feedback. We always appreciate that too. Yeah. We are offering Fipple rewards this week

for anyone who leaves a comment or rings that notification bell so that you'll get notified when there's new videos and podcasts and everything like that. You know, I laughed because you started to say that. I thought you were going to say something else. And then I laughed because you made a good, funny, a little, little pun there. But, but I think it's worth mentioning now that you said that, that also we do a monthly ask us anything that has been on YouTube, and we got a little behind these last couple of months. But by the time you're listening to this, we'll have a post out already about this month's Ask Us Anything, which is going to happen on April 27th. So if you're listening to this podcast when we publish it, you got a couple of days before we do it. And the reason that I mention that is because I think there may be a giveaway or two that'll be worth tuning in for.

So you'll find out more about some nice giveaways there. And it'll be. Yeah. Those giveaways to write football rewards and using wind of math. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So come out and join us on the 27th.

If you're listening to this shortly after publication. All right. Thank you guys very much. And we will see you again next week. All right. Bye, everybody.