Frequent Miler on the Air - Emirates sweet spots, giving it all to Google, a pop quiz and more

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Greg surprised Nick with a pop quiz. We also discuss Emirates sweet spots, Google Fi headaches, and more.

Good morning. Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. This is Greg, and I'm here with Nick. We're the primary writers of Frequent Miler. And today, we're both in California, sunny California, in the Bay Area, getting ready to do a FM2Go, which is our way of visiting readers around the country every now and then. And so we're excited to meet a bunch of people in the Bay Area very soon. But this morning, we're going to talk about several things, including Emirates sweet spots and Google Fi headaches. But first, I'll give you a chance to say hello, but also to, I wanted to talk a little bit real quick about the Virgin Atlantic credit card deal that just came out. But why don't you say hello and then talk about your thoughts about that. Sounds good. I was okay with being like the teller here. The teller is the one that's the

signer, right? I could have just could have just mimicked the whole way. Yeah, so I'm Nick Reyes, a senior author at Frequent Miler and Greg's right hand man. And so so like Greg said, great new offer this week that came out great to see an increased offer back again on the Virgin Atlantic card had been quite a while since we'd seen an increased offer on the Virgin Atlantic card. And of course, Virgin Atlantic miles can be great for flying Delta, because Virgin Atlantic usually charges many fewer miles for the same Delta flights and often has quite a bit of availability. Maybe I shouldn't say often has quite a bit of availability, has more availability than you might expect. Anyway, you could save a lot of miles that way. So the new offer 65,000 points after meeting the minimum

spend in the first 90 days, they advertise it as an 80k bonus, but it's not really an 80k bonus. You've written about that before, right? So it's kind of a tricky bonus. Yeah. So I wrote about this back when it was advertised as a 90K bonus, but it's the same situation now, which is the credit card always offers you 15,000 bonus miles if you spend 25,000 a year., it's staged. It's like you get $7,500 with $15,000 spend and another $7,500 once you hit $25,000 spend. But the point is they're counting that $25,000 bonus in their signup offer when they advertise it as $80,000. So I don't think that's right because that's just a standard feature of the card, that extra 25K. But I actually like this, what I'm calling a 65K offer,

better than the old, what we call the 75K offer, because the old 75K offer required 12K of spend. The new one only requires, what is it, 2K, I think. So that's phenomenal. Points are super valuable. You didn't mention, I don't think, the ANA sweet spot. So first class round trip to Japan for 120K from the East Coast and I think 110K from the West Coast, which either way, it's a phenomenal deal. It's stuck around for years now,

even though people have written a lot about it. So yeah, I think it's a really nice offer. It's great to see it back. It's also the first time we've seen an increased offer since they added a companion tickety thing. I call it a tickety thing because... So with, I think it's 30 K spend a year or 25 K. I don't know. You get what they call a companion ticket and it can be used like a companion ticket, but can also be used for upgrades. And,

but there's a lot of fine print there. And so it's unclear to me whether people will really be able to use it at all, but it's something. And anyway, since they added that, I wasn't sure we would see an up in a higher offer on this card, but, but now we know. So it's great. And anyway, since they added that, I wasn't sure we would see an up in a higher offer on this card, but,

but now we know. So it's great. So before we talk Emirates, I have a pop quiz for you. I thought, I thought so. Nick and I always talk before these things to discuss, what are we going to talk about in these,

in these things? And I thought it'd be fun to occasionally throw some, something you, right? All right. So here's the pop quiz. You can only have one type of airline miles, American, Delta, or United. But you can have as many as you want. And your goal is to fly around the world in ultimate luxury, which do you pick? Well, I mean, if you can have as many as you want and the goal is to fly in ultimate luxury, it's got to be American. American has the, I would say, the most luxurious partners between Cathay Pacific, Qatar, Japan Airlines, Etihad. Those are just really luxurious experiences. So I think it would have to be American if there's no cap to the number of miles. Now, if your goal is just to fly a lot

of business class, I would say without a doubt, United would be my pick then because United has so many partners with Star Alliance having like, I think, 27, 29 airlines, something like that. You get tons of different options, lots of availability. So that's much easier to come by if you're looking to fly luxuriously. But if we're not going to say, okay, well, it's depending on availability, if we're going to throw that out the window and the number of miles out the window, I would say it has to be American, right? I mean, what would you say? Yeah, no, that's the right answer. It's something I don't know why I was noodling on this like one day and it became very obvious to me that american just like hands down i mean it's not even close the the there is an american

based a u.s based airline that may be better for but i i still think american is better but uh that may be better for uh luxury and it's not Southwest. Well, okay. All right. So I mean, then I guess you're, you're going to say JetBlue to fly Mint because Mint may, they may end up going to, you know, Europe next year, right. Or something like that. I don't know if they ever announced that. No, the other thing I was, I was going to say on American is that they're the only one that has partners. Well, I shouldn't say the only, they probably have,

and I'm guessing at this, but they probably have more partners that have a first-class cap install than anybody else. So again, well, I shouldn't say the only, they probably have, and I'm guessing at this, but they probably have more partners that have a first class cabin still than anybody else. So again, luxury, so many airlines are getting rid of first class that that'd have to be the one, but no, okay. Now I don't know. You've got me on the, you got me there. You got me on that part. You forgot Alaska. So Alaska lets you fly Emirates and a bunch of luxury airlines as well, like American does. The one reason, though, I think if the number of miles was not a consideration, I think I'd still pick American because Alaska restricts you to the routes that they have on their award charts, which is limited. So you can't fly every which way. American, you might have to pay for multiple awards, depending on the routing rules, but it'll let you fly pretty much anywhere with those partners. So they don't have Emirates, but they do have all the others that Alaska has, I think, all the most attractive ones anyway, I think. So anyway, just a fun little, little topic. So, so you were out vacationing while I was digging into Emirates award charts. I, I don't know what exactly motivated me to do that,

but, but I dug into every last line of every little partner award chart that Emirates has. That's what, that's what you do when you have a job like this. I think I was motivated by the ultimate find of Turkish. You know, as listeners know, Nick found the ultimate sweet spot of all time in the Turkish award charts, the 7.5K one way to Hawaii from anywhere in the U.S. And so I thought, you know, Emirates is weird. They might have some weird stuff like that. So I dug in deep in Frequent Miler Insiders. I called it my anal probe of the Emirates word charts. But I found some things. Did you have a chance to read through my posts? And what'd you think? Yeah, yeah, I did. And before I read the posts, actually, when I saw the headline, I thought to myself, there can't be anything there because Emirates has been an Amex transfer

partner forever. And if there was something interesting to find, somebody would have found it. I say forever, long enough anyway that somebody would have found it already, right? Clearly, I was wrong because Greg found a couple of really good ones. I was really impressed actually with the Korean Air Suite spot, 105K round trip business class, which is the same as Alaska charges for Korean business class and is a great deal. 52.5K each way flying business class to Asia is great. I think it has to be round trip as all Korean awards, I think, have to be round trip as far as I know. Not if you book with Korean miles, I think, but if you book with partner miles, they all have to be. Book one way?

Okay, so maybe you can book one way with Delta. At any rate, I thought that was a great find. And then I also thought that the find to Australia was a terrific find. 145K roundtrip business class Japan Airlines to Australia from the United States. And I thought that was really good because it opens up another routing possibility. If you wanted to be able to fly Japan Airlines and fly via Japan, you can't do that with American miles unless you pay for two awards. You'd have to pay the, what is it, 60 or 70K business class to get to Japan. And then separately from Japan to Australia is another, I think, 40K in business class. And so you would pay more miles. I think

it would come out to just almost more miles one way than it is round trip. Not quite, but almost anyway than it is round trip with Emirates. So I thought that was a fantastic find, especially because Australia is a tough place to get to. If you ever tried to look for business class awards to and from Australia, hard to find availability. So great to find a new way to get there for people. So I thought that was a great find. I also thought in the sports, you found a good find, right? There was a reader that commented, I don't know, maybe you can tell us more about what you found in the ability to redeem miles for things other than flights. Sure, sure. So first, let me say, Richard Kerr beat me to this particular find. So he had written a few days before me about how good the opportunities

are for booking sport events with Emirates Miles. And I had seen the headline. I hadn't actually read his piece until after I wrote mine. But I dug in thinking, well, if he found this, again, just from the headline, surely there's other great deals in all of their non-airline partners. And so I dug in. Surely. Surely there are. And I dug in deep. I mean, it was a morass, and it was painful in so many ways. And I found nothing at all. I mean, it's shocking how bad some of those deals

are. But the sports thing does seem to be a good deal, especially, as you said, one of our readers wrote in saying, well, let me back up. I had written that when I compared the mile prices to how much it would cost to get a ticket yourself to the sporting events, I had looked at StubHub, and I had happened to look at non-English-hosted event. uh uh hosted uh event and and um i found that the sub hub prices were made the mileage uh redemption about one cent value per mile which is way way better than every other non-airline thing but but not exciting uh what did seem exciting was that you can for uh for more miles you can book a a like a premium like emirates sweet type of thing a box seats kind of um thing with food and the other kind of emirates sweet right uh and and so that sounded very interesting to me so i posted about that but a reader says that um the football matches soccer to to us u.s uh people uh hosted in england that it's matches, soccer to us U.S. people, hosted in England that it's illegal for them to resell those tickets.

So you won't find those on StubHub. I haven't gotten on there to check. But anyway, so it seems like this is a way to get tickets that you couldn't possibly get otherwise, because he said otherwise you have to be a seasoned ticket holder to get these. Yeah, that's what he said, and imagine that that's true it's probably something like getting tickets to the masters or getting tickets to a green bay packers game in that you have to have season tickets for some of these teams he mentioned arsenal specifically i'm not a huge

soccer follower so i don't know the specifics on that for different teams but he told us anyway for arsenal that the only way to get tickets is to have season tickets. And like Greg said, apparently it's illegal to sell those for cash to anybody. So your only way to get in the door probably as an American would be using your Emirates miles. And additionally, he said he'd done it. And he said that the seats were fantastic. They were right in the middle of the field. He said there was free alcohol and food and things like that. So it sounded like a great experience if you're a big soccer fan. If you're an English football fan, then that might be worth transferring miles for. Have you ever transferred for an experience with the Marriott or SPG?

Have you ever done any of those? I'm just thinking, have I ever? I don't think I have. I've looked deep into it. I have a... Necker Island. I don't think I have. I've looked deep into it. I have a post. Necker Island. Necker Island. I don't think it's listed. It's not listed as an experience, though.

But it certainly was an experience when I went to Necker Island with Virgin Atlantic Miles. But, no, I have a post about all the ways you can book experiences with miles. I didn't have Emirates, and I used the major miles that people would tend to have. But Richard Kerr's piece, when I finally read it, he also said that which events are available changes regularly. And he has seen, he said, US-based events. So I think there's more there and it's worth checking out regularly um so especially if you're a sports fan i i think i mean they call it something like sports and culture uh so theoretically there'll be other things besides sports but so far all i've seen is sports on there and um so

if you're a sports fan it's definitely worth watching that um you might be at home saying well wait a minute i don't have any emir miles, but you probably have easy access to Emirates miles because they transfer one-to-one from Chase or Amex. It's unfortunately two-to-one, I think, from Capital One. But they ran a transfer bonus that made it two-to-1.5 for a month. Hopefully, it'll do that again. You could also transfer from Marriott but um that's the usual three to one and and um one of the problems with transferring from Marriott is a lot of the partners take a long time to transfer so uh I did a test transfer of like a thousand points uh to Emirates from Chase and that transferred instantly so that was good to know. So yeah, so that was, it was a long, those were long, long posts, but a few nuggets came out of that that are definitely nice and worth doing.

Now, yesterday I posted about Google, how I have over time just found myself increasingly in bed with Google. I mean, and not intentionally. It's just like little by little, like I had switched to Gmail and I had switched to Google Calendar. And when we're building the database for this, for our blog, the database of credit cards, my key requirement was that I wanted an easy way for me, and it was Sean Coomer at the time who was working with me, to be able to input and edit credit card information at the same time if we needed to,

and also to do it from anywhere, from any device was a very nice to have. And Google Sheets met those requirements. So it's not as robust as a true database, but for what we needed, it does what we need. And it's been actually excellent. So that data has turned out to be like it runs in a way it's it's it's our business because even though we only publish affiliate links when they are the best offer our affiliate links are what keep us in business it's it's it's what makes us able to well keep you hired so we can find these 7.5K trips to Hawaii. It is important.

Yeah, it's important. And he has a little son. That's very important to keep him well fed. So, well, first of all, thank you, anyone who has used our links. But the point is, so the database makes it possible for us to say, and it's true, that we always provide the best links that we know of, even if they're not affiliate links. We just change that spreadsheet, republish, boom, it's updated. It makes it so that we can automatically sort our displays by the best first year value um now that's using um published uh uh estimates for how much the points are worth and things like that um and uh that way we are are showing an unbiased ranking

and by that i mean like we we don't choose it we've i mean I mean, I'm surprised. Like, so I get on and I see that the Amtrak card right now is at the top of the list. And it's like, how could that possibly be at the top of the list? But Amtrak points are worth almost three cents each when used towards Amtrak. And there's a 40,000 point bonus. So it's worth quite a lot as long as you actually need and want to book Amtrak. So anyway, so the point is, you know, it has nothing to do with how much or whether we're getting paid for the card. So we display that stuff. And all that is essential to us that we have a business that is doing what we believe is the best thing for the readers. And it's not incidental that we get paid for it,

but that's critical. And we wouldn't be able to do what we do if it wasn't for that. So yeah, so Google Sheets is like the backbone, excuse me, is the backbone of our business. And lately, more and more. So I'm using Google Fi now, and we'll talk about that in a second.

I got this little Chromebook laptop for the 40K to far away challenge so that I'd have something both tiny, physically tiny, and physically light. It's about two pounds with the charger, which is great. Because I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to be wearing on my back literally everything for the whole time. And so every pound I can reduce is important. Now, in my post, I mentioned having problems with Google Fi. And in my case, like, I'll have often, it'll actually show that I have LTE, but I can't get any internet. And then sometimes it works for me to put it in airplane mode and take it out. And that fixes sometimes a reboot. Sometimes I'm not getting text messages and have to reboot till they show up. So those things are horrible, but those have only happened to me domestically. Internationally, I've had great luck with it. And so it's been great in that way.

And so I'm really torn because I am traveling internationally a lot. I rely on Google Fi. I rely on the data only SIM and a second phone, uh, to have a hotspot for my wife. And, um, also as a backup phone for the 40 K to far away. That way, if anything happens to the primary, I've got that. Um, but the domestic stuff is, is really painful. Now you've had similar issues. Oh, I have, I have Google Fi has driven me nuts. Like Greg said, it's been fantastic internationally.

Never have a problem internationally. Domestically, though, it drives me crazy because I also have T-Mobile. So I have a phone that's on T-Mobile and Google Fi runs on T-Mobile and Sprint and maybe US Cellular or something like that. So theoretically, anywhere I have a signal with T-Mobile, I should also have one on the Fi phone. something like that. So theoretically, anywhere I have a signal with T-Mobile, I should also have one on the iPhone. And while that's true in probably 90 plus percent of the circumstances, there's a solid 10% of the time where I'll have a perfect signal on the T-Mobile phone, internet's running along smoothly. And the Google iPhone looks like it has a signal. But like Greg

said, nothing works on the internet. Or sometimes it doesn't show a signal at all. It shows no bars. And I think, how can that possibly be? I'm standing in the middle of a large area, not in a rural spot with a T-Mobile phone that's got a great signal. So yeah, it's been driving me crazy too. So I've paused mine and then just turned it back on to travel internationally where it is much better, much faster than T-Mobile in general. I just used it in Bora Bora and Tahiti, though actually there it didn't get LTE coverage, but both phones got the same coverage. Like Greg said, text messages came through, voice worked fine. So that was all great internationally.

But yeah, domestically, I just couldn't move my life over to Google Fi because I can't deal with the inconsistency. It's kind of surprising to me because I switched to T-Mobile and I live in a rural area where I had the expectation that T-Mobile would not have nearly enough coverage for me. Most people where I live use Verizon, some use AT&T. Nobody uses anything else really because those are the only two operators that are known to have great coverage. However, it turns out T-Mobile has actually built up their network quite a bit in the last few years. And so I was eventually able to switch over to that and have been pleasantly surprised with it. But just a little bit of time with FI and I was like, oh my goodness, I can't imagine people who complain about dropped calls and stuff like that

on their regular services because I haven't had that experience in the past. So yeah, so I definitely I can't move my life over to Google Fi. So I think Greg needs to rethink that. I don't know how he's how he's doing that. But I but I also have the data only SIM, it's definitely useful. And because you can pause it and turn it back on, I think it's something for travelers that's worth having. It's a tool to have in the belt, you probably don't need to invest in a, you know, $1,000 pixel phone in order to do it. But, but, you know, it's, it's certainly something worth thinking about. It's funny that you mentioned that Google started out with Gmail, and that's kind of the gateway drug, how they get you. And then, you know, they just slowly but surely have gotten us addicted to more and more.

And I feel like I mentioned this in a comment, I think, to someone that I used to really value my privacy quite a bit. And maybe I still do somewhat, but I feel like I mentioned this in a comment, I think, to someone that I used to really value my privacy quite a bit. And maybe I still do somewhat. But I feel like I've become more and more comfortable trading that away for convenience. And the more it makes my life a little bit easier, a little bit faster. Greg mentioned using Google Sheets. And my goodness, that's so big for us. And it's so convenient because, like he said, we can be in totally different places around the world, both edit the same document at the same time or different days and see what the other person has done.

So the convenience factor is really high. Do you worry about the privacy factor? I mean, you've basically turned over your whole life to Google at this point. They can watch where you are, what you're doing, who you're emailing. Are you worried about that at all that they've got access to everything now? Yeah, I guess I'm unusual in that I'm aware of it, but it doesn't bother me. And I don't know why it doesn't bother me. I mean, you would think it should.

From a security point of view, it doesn't bother me because all of my important personal information has already been hacked. So I feel like the way to protect yourself from identity theft and things like that is with credit monitoring, with make sure all your bank accounts and things have two-factor authentication set up. Make sure your Google, make sure your email is well protected. Make sure you use two-factor with your email because people will try to get on your bank account and say forgot password. And if they send the password reset to your email and they have access to your email, then they'll get in. So things like that are important to do. And I've done those things to some extent to, you know, large enough where I feel safe. Um, having, having, I don't know, having, um, Google know everything about me is, um, two edged sword though. I mean, on the one hand, um, hand um it's uh i guess it's troubling especially if

you're worried about your privacy um on the other hand um sometimes it's like magic when you type a search into google type like one word it knows exactly which variant of the word you meant because it knows everything about you so um, like, so if you were searching separately or you were emailing separately about Hawaii and you type in surfing or something, it would probably show you information about surfing in Hawaii because it connects those two things. And that's actually very helpful. What about you? How do you feel? Yeah. You know, that's the thing. The convenience factor is huge. Something that I've recently fallen in love with is Google Photos. And I didn't really use Google Photos before. And I had read about how great they can be. And I felt like I was uncomfortable with my photos all being in the

cloud and Google knowing too much about them. I don't know why it just seemed like you've got somebody staring over your shoulder, I guess. But I've given into that because my goodness, it's so convenient, especially as bloggers here, we write about things and I have to find the pictures of things and scrolling through 1000 pictures that I took because it's digital and you can just keep taking pictures these days, right? It's such a pain. But in fact, today, I was putting something together on my computer and I knew I had taken phones on the Pixel and my wife isn't here in the Bay Area with me. She's got the Pixel. And yet I was able to just go to photos.google.com

and see all of the pictures and search for a keyword and find all of the pictures related to that keyword that I've taken. That's super convenient and great. Also, I think it'll be great anyway for visiting family and sharing some of my photos. My parents always want to see some of my photos, but not very many of my photos. And so going through and trying to pick them out and put them together in a way that they want to see them is kind of, it can be

difficult and laborious. Now with Google Photos, I can just type in, oh, let me show them that waterfall or let me show them that view of the beach and that kind of thing and search it. So I've given into the convenience factor for sure. I haven't totally given over my whole life to Google in the same way in the sense that I haven't gone to the Chromebook yet, although I did very seriously consider a Chromebook for the 40K challenge because I gave a Chromebook years ago to my mom and she's loved it. And I gave her another one when that one kind of wore out and she loved that too. So I've been pretty intrigued actually for quite a few years with the Chromebook. There are some things like you said in your post that I think might be easier to have Windows for. But then again, I'm not sure that I really need to

keep Windows. So that's something I might consider in the future. I did just buy a new Windows laptop, but I might consider that switch in the future. So yeah, I'm surprised that they continue to build more and more market share in terms of my life. But at the same time, it's just so convenient that I feel like I have a hard time giving that up. So I guess we're going to stick with Google Sheets for a while. I can't imagine rebuilding that spreadsheet and anything else. All right. Well, I think this has been a great talk. I think we should get going to our FM2Go session.

Why don't you say goodbye? All right. Well, if you just joined us, if you just came in on the broadcast and you want to be able to see it, of course, you can rewind it here. Or you can keep an eye on our YouTube account, the Frequent Miler YouTube account, where we'll post this video. And then also, of course, if you'd prefer to listen in, perhaps on your commute while you're at work, that sort of thing, you can download it from all of your favorite podcast formats. The links for those will be in the week in review post, which we'll post a little bit later today. Normally that comes out Saturday morning. But of course, since we're doing the broadcast this morning, you'll see it

sometime later on on Saturday today. So you can check that out. And again, the website is thefrequentmiler.com. You can find us on Twitter at Frequent Miler. You'll find me on Twitter at Nick at FM. And so thanks very much for listening in. Thanks for watching and leave your comments and we'll take a look and give you the feedback that you're looking for. Thank you guys very much for being out there with us.

We'll see you guys very much for being out there with us. We'll see you guys soon.