Frequent Miler on the Air - Exciting offers from IHG & Lufthansa and how Cap One could surprise us

Episode Date: August 10, 2019

Is that new IHG offer worth a 5/24 slot? Is it worth forgoing award stays for a year just to accumulate a ton of IHG points? Those questions answered, plus how to fly to Asia in biz class w/ a stopover in Hawaii for 47.5K miles and how Capital One could take the CSR down.

Cool. it looks like you might be someplace cool and interesting this week. I am. And you know what just occurred to me? So we have our name showing on the video under our faces. So people watching know who we are, but that was good. You actually touched it from my point of view. But, but those listening via podcast, probably we ought to just introduce ourselves at the very beginning of each

broadcast. Maybe just. That makes sense. So who are you yeah i am greg good greg the owner of uh the frequent miler the frequent miler himself and you are and the myth the legend and i am nick reyes yeah nick reyes senior author frequent miler so i'm I'm Greg's right hand man, and sometimes his left hand man too, depending on the day. And, you know, I try to cover all the quick deals and keep you guys updated as to what's going on in the world and what deals you should be taking advantage of. Very good. So the question of where I am this week is also a mystery for you to solve. Here we go. Okay. All right. All right.

It's a pop quiz. I'm ready. But first a little background. I'm at, I'm going to tell you where I'm at, but, but there's some questions. I still have to figure it out.

Well, you're not going to figure out where I am, but you'll see, you'll see. So I'm at a place called Michigania. It is a alumni camp for alumni of the university of michigan okay so like like a summer it's similar to a summer camp except that it's not just for kids it's for families it's for alumni families so people have been coming uh their whole lives they bring their kids and their

grandkids and so on um it's a really interesting concept i haven't heard of that with others i'm sure somebody else must have it, but I've never heard of that before. I've been told that, I don't know if this is true, but that only Berkeley and University of Michigan have it. Or maybe it's just that those are the two universities that have had it for a long

time. I don't know. It's a lot of fun. There's two pop quizzes here. Um, how can I be here when, uh, I am not an alumni and neither is anyone in my family.

One. Oh, okay. All right. Two. I didn't bring my son here. But he's here, but he's here. He's there. Yeah. son here, but he's here,

but he's here. He's there. Yeah. Not here, but there, I didn't bring him here, but he's here. Didn't bring it.

Plain. What's going on here? What is going? Did he actually drive himself? You just drive separately or how did that happen? So, so am I supposed to figure out the pop quiz here? Is this a pop quiz for me? Well, at least the alumni one.

Yeah. Okay. So the alumni one, it's for alumni and their families. You didn't go to school there and neither did your wife. But I mean, somebody else in your family does go there. Does that qualify? Nobody. Well, goes there.

Nobody is a graduate though. Is a graduate. So did they make a special frequent miler exception? No. If you make enough tuition payments. Is there an exception for faculty members? You're getting very warm. So I'll stop with that.

So they offer certain faculty a free ride for staying the week if they'll do these faculty forum talks. And that's what my wife is doing. So that's why we're here. That doesn't explain my son's presence here, though. It doesn't. And I was going to guess that your wife, because I knew that your wife was a faculty member. So I thought I had a little bit of an advantage there. But it doesn't explain what your son is doing there.

And I think that there it sounds like there must be an interesting story going there. Right. Well, it's just sort of a coincidence in a way, speaker and my son signed up to work here. So he's been here all summer. That's awesome. It worked out. Yeah, it's been great. It's been great to see him this week.

And the camp's a lot of fun. So any Michigan alumni out there, I highly recommend it. Right. And if you're not a Michigan alumni, all you have to do is get married to a faculty member who also happens to get invited to give a presentation there. Right. It's very simple. That's it. That's it. I recommend that. Do that. Speaking of your recommendations, so this week, one of the interesting deals that has come up, and it's kind of funny to even call it interesting.

I think that I wouldn't have thought that I would be calling the new IHG credit card offer interesting before, but it actually is interesting this time around, I think anyway. I don't know, what do you think about this new IHG offer? If you're not familiar, by the way, the new signup bonus, the new welcome offer is 125,000 points after meeting minimum spend. But the kicker on top of that, first of all, the 125,000 points, I think is. But the kicker on top of that, first of all, the 125,000 points, I think is the highest we've ever seen on that card. And then the kicker is 25X IHG properties and 4X everywhere else for a year.

Like there's no cap that I see in any of the terms. So, I mean, is that interesting? Is it just a gimmick? What are your thoughts? Right. Well, I find it fascinating. So first of all, as you said, the 125K, that's an eye-opener on its own.

I mean, it's not so big that I'd say run out and get it because hotel points aren't worth as much as airline miles. So 125K is maybe more like a 70K airline offer or something in that range. But it's very good. There's no question that that's very good. But I find this offer fascinating one i'm i find it fascinating partly because i'm so shocked that we haven't seen this similar things with other hotel and airline cards it right retrospect it seems like such a no-brainer to have an incentive to spend money with the brand. Right. And they all do it in tiny ways built into the credit card reward structure. Like the airline cards offer 2X or sometimes 3X for spend within the airline and hotel cards offer

more, you know, typically 5X or 6Xs, somewhere in that range for spend within the brand. But that's a regular reward structure. This is the first time that I could think of that we've seen anything like this where it says we're going to give you significant rewards. Huge. Yeah. I mean, 25X. This is on top of the rewards you earn as a member as an ihd member so you're still going to earn um 10 days points and then five for being a platinum member you get

15 points per dollar on top of the 25 so you're you're going to be earning 40 points per dollar and that's not even counting any promotions that'll be going on. Right. And I, she runs some decent promotions, right? They do. So there have been times with, I, I don't generally check into hotels just to earn the points. I haven't done so since Radisson rewards,

which was called club Carlson back then offered us 50,000 points each night that we, well for just checking in for one night, but, but this would get me tempted, you know, especially if it's, if it's combined with one of their attractive promotions that they offer every now and then. So, you know, recently, I don't know, the last big offer they had, they always do different offers for different people, and so the one I had, I think, I offer they had they always do different offers for different people and so the one I had I think I think um I had to stay up three different IHD properties and would have gotten I don't know let's say 25,000 IHD points I don't know if it was that high or not but but the uh the point is that that would be again on top of the 40x that you would get from

this card right right and like you said i think that's it's really interesting because it is unprecedented to offer such an incentive for a long period of time like that for a year to spend with the brand like you said airline cards will sometimes give you two or maybe three points per dollar at the airline but that's not particularly exciting because you can get a 3x travel bonus on a transferable currency for booking airline tickets so it's not much of an incentive to use the card for the most part. But this, I mean, 25x, of course, hotel points are not quite as valuable as other kinds of points. But even still, 25 is just an eye-popping number. So I think that's bound to draw some attention. So I mean, is it

then worth putting all of your stays into IHG for that year? Like, is it worth foregoing the other loyalty programs and just going really hard on IHG for a year? That's what I'm wondering. So if you bite on this thing, does the math suddenly change so that when you're looking at, you know,

where you're going to stay, you're going to, you're going to not only forgo the marriott chain and the hilton chain and so on but are you gonna stay at an ihg property and pay for it rather than use points for it because you know that just for that first year you're gonna get an extra 25x for that for that paid stay that seems like such a idea, like to just totally forego award stays, to choose to pay for your stays for a whole year. I mean, for anybody who's big into miles and points, the idea of paying outright for their stays for a year sounds kind of crazy though,

right? It does. It does. But at the same time, it feels like one of those things. It's that sort of once in a lifetime thing that you have the 25x for one year right and if you can afford it i i mean i haven't run the numbers to really you know work it out does it really make financial sense in the long term right um to do that but but i'm sort of guessing that that it probably be a wise move, as long as you're sort of equally happy with saying an IHG properties versus whatever the alternative is. I think it, in my opinion, anyway, without having run the numbers or the math on this, because I hadn't considered it before you brought up the idea. I think that it probably

only makes sense if you are able to stack it with pretty lucrative promotions, because I look at it and I say, okay, well, so every thousand dollars you spend an IHG property, you're looking at 25,000 bonus points. And if you're getting your 40 points per dollar, you're talking 40,000 points for every thousand you spend. And 40,000 points, we know, won't get you a room everywhere. I mean, that won't. That's only about halfway up the scale. And even then there are some IHGs, a couple now that are charging a hundred thousand points a night. The top tier ones until recently were 70,000 points a night. So 40K isn't going to get you like an amazing stay already. It'll get you probably a decent stay. Is it worth putting

a thousand dollars in spend? On the flip side, if it gets you a $250 stay, that's a pretty good return. Yeah, but let's look at another way. That made me think of something. So we have often talked about buying IHD points by booking cash and point stays and then canceling them, basically. It's a way of buying points, usually for around a half cent each. I mean, it used to be around 0.7. We've more often lately seen around 0.5, I think. We've even seen lower recently. But let's just, and sometimes they go on sale

and they sell them for about half a cent. Half a cent each. Right. So that means in your scenario, you've got, by diverting your stays to $1,000 worth of stays to IHG, you're getting back $200 worth of points, right? That's one way of thinking of it. Sure. And that, I mean, that's a return that I said is not super exciting a second ago, but on the flip side, 20% return on your money is not too bad, right? I mean, that's a return that I said is not super exciting a second ago. But on the flip side, 20% return on your money is not too bad, right?

I mean, that's not too bad as far as awards days go. I don't know if it's crazy enough. Is it exciting, though? I mean, that's the problem. I think that's the thing. I don't get excited about IHG stays. And that's why, in general, I don't think I even looked at my Accelerate offer the last time around, to be honest, because I knew I wasn't going to bother staying at IHG Properties since you can't get free breakfast.

But this does make it a little more interesting. Certainly, if you work for a company that reimburses your stays at IHG Properties, then absolutely. I mean, I would take the influx of points here. And like you said, it's not necessarily exciting. But on the flip side, like you said, $200 worth of points for every thousand you spend, I mean, you're probably not going to beat that in terms of a credit card reward with anything else, right? And not only that, you can still book your, you can still click through a portal to get,

let's say, 10% back or whatever it is when you're booking your I your ihd stay and that's on top of of the sort of 200 worth of or 20 percent worth of uh points um another another um scenario here is for those who see great value in ihd points and that want to buy them using the cash and points trick or buy them during sales by paying with this credit card i think you'd get 25x for that purchase because it would be ihd itself selling especially the cash and points trick would the cash and points trick i think it absolutely should work because uh people doing the cash and points trick the normal way would certainly just think they're just paying for an IHD stay. They wouldn't think of it as buying points. So it would be pretty upsetting if you thought you were getting 25x and you didn't.

So let's just say it's a given that you are getting 25x when you do that. I haven't run the math, but that makes the cost to buy the points much less because you're getting a lot more points. Right. Than you would be otherwise, right? Right. So anyway, it's just something to think about that. Maybe even if you're not diverting a lot of stays to IHG, maybe you're stocking up on IHG points like crazy during that year. I don't know. I mean, would I do it? I don't think so. I've had a few hundred thousand points in both mine and my wife's

account for a few years. And we spend them very, very slowly, very slowly. So, you know, become in handy in niche opportunities now and then. I mean, that's really my big question. The thing that I wrote down when I said, is this interesting? Is it worth a 524 slot? You know, and I think that that's the other angle you have to look at it from. Because it's kind of interesting and it's fun to run the numbers theoretically and talk about it. But is it really worth giving up a 524 slot? I don't know. I mean, do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, funnily enough, I was working on a post that I haven't finished yet, but thinking about if someone comes into the hobby totally new, what card should they get? And because of Chase's 5-2-4 rule, which for those who don't know, it's basically Chase, if they see you've opened five or more cards in the past 24 months across all banks not just chase they won't approve you for any new chase cards and and so a big part of any strategy for someone who wants to jump in and start getting a lot of points from credit card signups is to first sign up for chase cards,

but also figure out which ones they absolutely want longterm. Because once you go over 524, it's going to be a long time, especially if you're still signing up for cards from other banks, it's gonna be a long time before you're under and can get these other cards. And, and, you know,

to me there, there are some no-brainers like like you need a sapphire card because then you could either make it the sapphire reserve or the uh or the sapphire preferred like you get the sapphire preferred with a bigger bonus and later on if you decide you want the reserve you get upgraded anyway i think you i think you want one in that line right probably you probably also want a freedom uh it's tough because yeah yeah because normally i wouldn't have in the past i wouldn't have signed up for the freedom to sign up for the sapphire again and then downgraded it but now with the rules in place you have to consider burning a valuable sign up bonus in order to get a card that earns a better return on every day spent

right right so that's a really tough decision um and then they they have um three really solid hotel chains that they're aligned with um so cards that go with them so ihg there's a lot of good things about getting an ihd card not the least of which is just having platinum status that you could use to match your status with other hotel chains. There's the Marriott cards and there's the Hyatt card. And this is tough because I don't think, depending on what you're doing, you're not going to have enough slots to get off.

You might not have enough to get all three because there's other cards you probably want. I have a hard time not recommending the United card. You get the United card, you get better award availability with United. And then you could downgrade to the no fee. After a year, you could downgrade to the no fee United a year you could downgrade to the no fee united card still get that better keep the access to the better word available right right so that's taking up a slot so anyway so i've got i've already burned three slots with non-hotel cards there's three hotel cards what do you get um and i think it comes down so much to personal preference of which which chains are you more likely to want to stay at a lot.

You know, I don't know. Right. And what matters to you in a hotel loyalty program? Because, you know, to me and many enthusiasts, free breakfast is important. I like being able to get breakfast in the hotel, especially traveling with a child now. Very convenient to walk downstairs and get breakfast for free. And that's just not going to happen in most IHG properties, unless you stay at a Holiday Inn Express or, you know, one of those chains that offers breakfast for everybody. So that makes me less likely to want to go to an IHG. On the flip side, before I got into the miles and points game and knew anything about hotel status,

I certainly never had a problem going out and finding a cute little cafe for breakfast. And in fact, you know, those cute breakfasts out at a little cafe somewhere were probably some of my favorite travel memories back in the day. So maybe that doesn't matter to you at all, in which case IHG might be a really good choice, because the points might be more important to you than the benefits. And certainly IHG is throwing on the points heavy right now. Yeah all good points so anyway i i don't know the answer but that's kind of where i'm at with my thinking on that um i do think we should mention you had a caution you wanted to tell people about who the old right the uh what was it called the yeah the select or something like that yeah that i think that is that is what it is.

The IHG Rewards Club Select. So if you've got the old IHG Rewards Club credit card, the $49 annual fee version that used to have an uncapped free night, if you still have that card, which I think is worth keeping potentially, I'm keeping mine, the thing you want to watch out for

is don't upgrade to this card. We've had a few people who've asked about it. Questions come up more than once and on Facebook and on the blog about should I upgrade to this card? No, don't upgrade. If you upgrade, you're not going to get a signup bonus, you're not going to get the 25x for a year. And they've been offering such terrible upgrade offers at 5,000 points. They've been offering to upgrade to the new card for people. And as we already said, you can usually buy points for a half a penny each. So that's a value of about $25. It's going to cost you more than that and an increased annual fee. So they're going to more than get that. Their money is worth

out of getting you to accept that upgrade offer and you're not going to get any of the benefits. So if you're interested in the new IHG card, I think for the vast majority of people, it makes sense as a new application, not as an upgrade, unless you're in that really like thin range of people who, number one, maybe don't have the 524 slot to burn and number two would get intense value out of the fourth night free or fifth night what is it fifth night free and award stays fourth night fourth night free and award states yes fourth night free and award stays uh that comes on that new card and if you can really maximize that if you need that benefit and absolutely can't consider getting the card new then okay maybe upgrade but it's generally speaking a really poor move i agree with you totally and and by the way you'd also be giving up the 10 rebate that the

old car gives you on awards days or any points which which you can stack with that fourth night free benefit if you get both cards right right um the the other thing I do want to mention about the upgrade. So all the emails and letters you get inviting you to upgrade are sort of deceiving in that they show 25x really big as how many points per dollar you'll earn at IHG property. So you might think, oh, I'm special. I actually got an upgrade offer that's going to give me that 25X thing. But if you read the finer print, it actually says you get the 10 points per dollar that this card has always offered for IHG properties, plus 15 points per dollar as a platinum IHG member. So you're getting a total of 25 points per dollar with that upgrade versus 40 points per dollar total if you sign up new. And that 40 points per dollar is just for the first year. But anyway, so that's very confusing. It is. It is confusing. And actually, probably we ought to post something that kind of clarifies that distinction for people because I could definitely see that being really confusing for people who've read

about this 25X offer and not getting the fact that that is not a bonus. That's just the standard benefits of the card. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So are there any other big offers that are on your mind? Yeah, so this week, the offer on the Lufthansa Miles and More credit card increased to, I believe, the highest we've ever seen at 75,000 points after meeting minimum spending requirements. And I find that really interesting. And it's not for the reason that I think most people would write in a post about why it's

interesting. I think probably if you read any posts, even including mine this week, about this new increased offer on the Lufthansa Miles and More card, you probably have heard people talk about the mileage bargains that they run, which are similar to Air France KLM Flying Blue promo awards, if you're familiar with those. Basically, periodically, I think monthly, Lufthansa releases a list of cities where they'll offer 50% off on awards. And so you can potentially fly round trip to Europe for like 55,000 miles in business class. However, of course, they do add fuel surcharges. So it's not quite as cheap as

it seems, but still probably a good deal at 55,000 points round trip. Even if you're paying a few hundred in taxes and fees, then you're probably doing better than you would with, say, paying 140,000 United Mileage Plus miles round trip in business class. So it is a good deal. And that's the thing I think that generally people mention about Miles and More. However, recently, I've discovered Miles and More has a really interesting award chart. And I discovered that thanks to using Juicy Miles, which is a kind of a double-edged sword for me on this. But I've been using Juicy Miles a lot lately, searching different routes, both for the 40K

Far Away Challenge and for family members who are looking to book a couple of trips. So I've been searching lots and lots of routes, and I've been really surprised at the prices for Lufthansa Miles and More awards in some cases. For example, one that really sticks out to me, I have a sister-in-law and brother-in-law who are really interested in going to Australia. And so I've been searching award tickets back and forth between Australia and the US, different parts of the US, because it's typically really hard to find availability to Australia and New Zealand and that part of the world from the United States. But I found that Air Canada releases a fair bit of space out of Vancouver on some flights, multiple seats, and between Vancouver and Sydney,

or they fly, I want to say to Melbourne also, though I'd have to double check on that. Anyway, that'll cost you 71,000 Lufthansa miles and more miles to fly between North America and Australia in business class. And so one way or one way 71,000 each way, which is less than than what you'd pay, you'd pay, I think, want to say it's 90 with United Airlines, and you'd pay 80,000 each way with aeroplanes. So 71,000 is a decent chunk below those other programs. Now, there are fuel surcharges with Lufthansa. So you will pay a little bit more, but it wasn't a significant amount more. It was, if the taxes were $80 on United, the taxes were maybe $180 through Lufthansa. So it was an increase, but it was, yeah, not an increase that mitigated the difference in miles.

What about LifeMiles or even Turkish miles for that same route? I mean, yeah, so life miles, first of all, life miles doesn't show the availability between the United States and Australia online. So I think you would have to email them because I have searched a bunch of different routes and different things for life miles as well. And unless you can find, of course, some sort of a mixed cabin award, their award chart was more, I want to say it's 80, although off the top of my head, I don't have it memorized. So it is a little bit more now. Certainly, you can trick their award chart. However, I'm not sure if you can trick the award chart with an email booking.

And I think you'd have to do an email booking because it doesn't show up as available with them, which is really weird. They show availability on flights on Air New Zealand. So if you want to fly Los Angeles to Auckland, then you'll see that with Lufthansa, or excuse me, with LifeMiles. And if you want to fly to Auckland from other parts of the United States, they'll show you itineraries that connect through Los Angeles flying to Auckland. But for whatever reason, I can't find any of the availability on Air Canada through LifeMiles. Perhaps you could. for that did you so when you're when you're searching awards on life miles there's a there's a uh selector in the beginning that that that uh defaults to doing a i can't remember what they call it but it well it's like star lion search is that what you mean uh smart search it's smart search that's it it defaults to smart search and the past, I have found when I've been looking for, let's say, Lufthansa flights, that it finds more availability by actually forcing it to pick Lufthansa only. So you might want to try picking Air Canada only and see what happens. Well, that's definitely a good one to know about. So that's something certainly to think about. But at any rate, what I was going to say about the Australia possibility here is that it's fairly unheard of to get a signup bonus that would more than cover a business class ticket to Australia.

And so I think that that makes this signup bonus particularly interesting because 75,000 points will more than cover that. It's the same 71,000 miles each way to other parts of Asia as well to, I want to say, certainly to like North Asia. So you could theoretically fly ANA business class to different parts around North Asia or Asiana because Korea and Japan and China and Mongolia and all the rest of that are included in that 71,000 mile bracket. The difficulty with Lufthansa miles and more is you can't connect through a third region where you can, but there's, there's going to be another piece coming on that too in a second. But, uh, but, but for the 71,000 mile price, you can't connect in a third region. So you can't go to

like, let's say Central Asia, um, from North Asia without paying more. I'll have a post on this next week. Cause I think it's actually pretty interesting. The other interesting thing. And, and this is something that I think is an interesting sweet spot, particularly probably for the folks on the West Coast of the United States, award rates from Hawaii to Asia are pretty terrific. Hawaii to Asia, to North Asia and Central Asia, and also to Australia are 35,000 miles one way in business class. Now, finding award availability between Hawaii and Australia would probably be next to impossible because 35,000 miles would get you on Air New Zealand from there since you can't connect in the third region and finding Air New Zealand

business class space is like a unicorn. However, if you want to fly from Hawaii to let's say Japan, United flies direct from Honolulu to Japan. ANA flies between Honolulu and Japan. So you've got a number of options there. I even found the United flight that connects in Guam on the way to Japan. Now, I think that that would also be fine as far as a one-way award at $35,000, the one that connects in Guam, because Guam is covered within the region. So it's the same 35,000 price. So I don't think it would count as a third region, which means to me, I think you can probably book the United Island Hopper between Honolulu and Guam and continue on

to Tokyo all in business class for 35,000 miles. I think. I haven't tried to price it out because I can't do it online, but that's what it looks like. For economy class travelers, it's also really interesting. It's 20,000 miles on the same routes. Now, I bring that up because we all know now with Turkish smiles and smiles, you can get from the mainland of the United States to Hawaii for 7,500 miles in economy class, 12.5 in business. If you're in Los Angeles or San Francisco, I've seen not amazing, but decent business class availability to Hawaii. So for 12.5, you get yourself to Hawaii. For another 35, you get yourself to Japan. So you're talking 47.5 in business class between the West Coast and parts of Asia. That seems pretty interesting.

So there's also a three-region business class award that I'll write about next week too, that looks pretty interesting. 195, thousand round trip in business class. And that includes a stopover in each direction and they don't have to be in the same third region. So that actually seems to me like it might be an interesting way to piece together an almost round the world journey. Although you can't cross both oceans. So there are some details to talk about there next week. But I'm looking for 75,000 points on a signup bonus, I think it's really, when I say you can get from the West Coast to Japan

in business class for $47,500 and build in a stopover in Hawaii, right? A 75,000 point signup offer starts to sound pretty intriguing. That's almost a round trip. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm really excited. I can't wait to read your post on that. Until today, pretty much the only sweet spot I was aware of with Lufthansa was that they used to let you fly one way domestically, like on United business class for 17k. 15k um they recently raised that up so now it's 20k which matches singapore's price so i became uninterested because everything transfers to singapore except capital one um and or does it does it's just it's just two to one oh that's why yeah um and um

and then of course with the turkish thing there, there's no reason to pay even 20K if you're going to be flying United. Well, I guess unless Turkish can't see the availability. Unless Turkish can't see the availability, which is another story altogether. They seem to be having some trouble with that lately. So it's just really hit or miss. You can book some of those Turkish awards online now. But even offline, I've had trouble. I was trying to book Chicago to Honolulu Direct.

Actually, I was trying to book Albago to honolulu direct actually i was trying to book albany to chicago to honolulu and the agents were telling me that the chicago to honolulu segment was not showing any availability in economy class so i tried having them price it out just starting from chicago directly with no connection and they were still telling me there's no availability yet the internet told me that there were eight seats available to book through, like, LifeMiles, for instance. That is just so weird. It's like they're using some other system to see availability that all the other United partners are not using. It perplexes me. I don't get it.

Because, like, the Albany to Chicago flight was no problem, which is the flight that typically I would expect to have trouble with because smaller planes are often harder to find award availability on. They had no problem seeing the award availability on that flight. But that, that long haul flight that had tons of available seats, they weren't seeing, and I just don't know why not. They were seeing Chicago to San Francisco to Honolulu. So they were seeing connecting itineraries without a problem. I don't really know why. We haven't been able to figure it out. I've had theories. Other people have had theories. And I don't think that we've found a single theory that holds up all the time yet. Right. And you're just looking for economy, right? I mean, I could think of reasons why

they might not find first or business because they might be coded as one or the other on different flights. But... Right. No, yeah. Just economy I'm talking flights. But right now, yeah, just economy. I'm talking about economy should be straight up easy. Yeah, it should be. But and some people are having no problem with it at all. I mean, with the number of people who've written about this, and it's been written about all of the major blogs, I can't imagine how many people are out there trying to book these

Turkish miles and smiles awards. And it's, I would say a relatively small number of folks who are having trouble with it compared to the number of people who I imagine must have called and booked flights to Hawaii by now. And certainly from comments that we've gotten from readers, we've had plenty of readers who've been able to book successfully, but then there are people who are having frustrations and, and I'm feeling their pain now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But still, I mean, so many people benefited. It's awesome. But we'll get to the bottom of this. We will. We will. And it's nice to see that some are available online. And so being able to book for 15,000 miles roundtrip online to Hawaii, I mean, that's just insanely easy and exciting. I mean, if you live in a, especially for people who live in small cities where they often had to connect anyway and prices to Hawaii were probably exorbitant, 7,500 miles each way

and being able to book it online is pretty terrific. I mean, a family of four could sign up for the city premier card 60K offer, right? That's right. And book all four people round trip to hawaii that's that's 60k points unbelievable right it's ridiculous yeah i i know we talk about this almost every week since since you found it but it's but it is that big of a deal and and uh yeah so i do think it's it's worth um it is well and and like i said with this lufthansa miles and more thing it's also worth

looking into and thinking about and considering if you're going to otherwise position to be able to get to parts of asia i mean positioning all the way to hawaii might seem kind of extreme and long but especially if you have a a larger group of people that you're trying to get you know move from from point a to point b and then it might make sense to position especially for folks listed out on the west or excuse me located out on the West Coast, to position to Hawaii to get a cheaper award to different parts of Asia, Australia, etc. Well, or think of it as

like a free trip to Hawaii on the way. A free trip to Hawaii on the way, exactly. Right. I mean, that's not a bad deal either. You're getting a free stopover in Hawaii, right? Who can complain? It's an incredible deal. Well, and you could fly bad deal either like you're getting a free stop over in hawaii right it's who can complain it's an incredible deal well and you could fly it to the let's say to the big island and then get yourself a 29 southwest ticket from the big island to honolulu if you need to catch a flight from

honolulu to somewhere else in asia and get yourself a couple of hawaiian islands really cheap i think maybe southwest is 39 now is what they start out on the inner islands, actually, but two free bags. So you don't have to worry about that. You know, and that whole free bag thing is kind of huge. So when I fly to Hawaii, going to Hawaii, if you check bags, you know, I'm always flying one of the main carriers, and I have the credit cards or elite status that gives me free bags. So get free bags going there. And, and they'll interline,

I believe with, with Hawaiian air, if you have a connection. But coming back, if you have that initial flight on Hawaiian and you don't have for your bags, you got to pay for your bags. If you want to,

if you want to check them. And so it's weird, but Southwest is, that to me is one of the most exciting parts of having Southwest there flying Interisland. It really is. It's a huge value. And when I traveled to Hawaii on Southwest earlier this year, I saw the advertisements up around Honolulu talking about the bags fly free on the inter-island flights. And I imagine that's a huge marketing tool for them because before Southwest moved in, I went to Hawaii in January of this year. Inter-island flights, every day of the week, I searched for months for like 103 bucks for the inter-island flights

each way. And you had to pay for your bags on top of that. If you join Hawaiian Miles and Smiles, I think the first bag was like 15 and the second bag was 25 or something. Now with Southwest for 39, you can, and at times I've seen 29, you can fly the interisland flight with two free bags. And if you have a companion pass, you can do that with two people.

That's just an amazing savings. So you're paying less for two people in with expanding paths than you were paying for bags before right right right it's totally true totally true yeah it's a huge value so i think that's that's really exciting and that again makes the idea of positioning to hawaii even more interesting for folks who want to see an island or two on their way to wherever it is they're looking to get, you know, on the other side of the world there in the Far East. Right, right. That's so cool. Yeah. Very cool. What else is going on? Well, you know, the other thing that's on my mind, and I know we've been talking all about credit cards this week, but the other thing that's on my mind, and maybe it's not on everyone's mind,

but I think it should be, or maybe at least I think it's fun to think about is this Capital One premium card potentially that they're talking about. They're saying that, you know, hey, they're, they, or not they, I suppose, but the rumor mill, which, you know, who knows where that came from, but I'm going to guess that it came from someone at the bank. The rumor mill is saying that they're going to come out with a premium card. And so you wrote this week about whether or not that is going to compete with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. So do you think that Capital One can do it? Do you have faith in their ability? They've surprised us a few times in the last year. What do you think?

They sure have surprised us a few times in the past year. So first, let me mention, so in the post, I wrote about how the rumor, and it's just a rumor at this point, as far as we know. The rumor is that they're going to offer 10x points for hotels booked through their portal. That could actually mean through hotels.com like the other cards, but regardless, it's very similar to what the other cards offer. 5x airfare, again, booked through their portal. 4X for restaurants.

And 1X for all other purchases. And in my post, I kind of hammered them on that 1X for everywhere else. Because I don't feel like that is competitive at all. About three quarters of an airline mile in a lot of instances, right? Exactly. Or even half in the cases where they transfer two to one or worse, if you're using it for cash back,

you're getting 1% back, which, well, maybe that's not worse than half an airline mile, but you know what I'm saying? It's bad, right? Really bad, yeah. And whereas Sapphire Reserve, I mean, that's not worse than half an airline mile, but you know what I'm saying. It's bad. It's really bad. Yeah. And whereas Sapphire Reserve, even at 1X, you're getting, you could use it to book travel for one and a half cent value.

So it's not great getting one and a half percent, but it's not that bad. It's not. So that was kind of my biggest beef with it. I also, I don't like that the hotel and airfare bonuses are contingent on booking through their portal. I think that, yeah, I think for their card to be truly competitive, it needs, it could keep those things, but offer something like 4X for all travel. You know, Chase offers 3X for all travel you know chase offers 3x for all travel do 4x your points aren't worth as much so it sort of equals to about the same thing i think uh if you give if you give 4x um i do have to admit i made a big mistake in the post oh what was what was wrong what did you miss so i So I copied and pasted the bullet points.

I changed them up a little bit from Travel with Grant's post on the rumor. And somehow I didn't notice a bullet point in there when I was writing the contents of the post. It's right there in my post, but there's a bullet point that says additional point bonuses at certain spend thresholds so that's interesting so that could mean um i don't think it does but that could mean for example every five thousand dollars you spend you get five thousand bonus points and if if they that, then it would be almost a 2X everywhere card. Not really, because you're not going to end the year

on exactly a 5K threshold, but it'd be sort of close enough for me to feel good about it being good for everyday spend, right? Right. But it could also mean spend 40,000 and a 5 000 point bonus in which case i'd say and barclays tried that this year right right he's tried that and it didn't didn't work out so well for them right right um remind me what what there's the arrival premiere i i think you

if you i think you had to spend i remember 25 000 being a magic think you had to spend, I remember 25,000 being a magic number. You had to spend something big like that, like 25,000. And then you got the equivalent of like three acts. I can't remember the finer details of it, but that was it. If you spent exactly 25,000, then you got like 75,000 is what it was. But if you didn't spend that much or you spent too much more than that then the value proposition started to go down and uh so rather than giving a big signup bonus they said hey well if you spend this much then you'll get 3x okay right right yeah i remember that now so and they they uh brought out that card and they dropped it completely some

number of months later it was really amazing amazing. Six months it was gone. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that will happen. I think Capital One is both a lot smarter than that. They do read the blogs. They will have heard the feedback that I gave them through my post. I don't know if they'll do anything about it, but I do think they're smart enough to know that they do need a signup bonus to attract people. I'm hoping that they know that they need

something more than that, just 1x. And that if they're going to do that more than one X via that spend thresholds, it better be pretty generous. Otherwise people like us, I think maybe, maybe, maybe I'm talking for you, but people like me anyway, will, will poo poo the card as, as not really worth our attention. You know, and, and, and I'm going to give the opposite perspective because even though I've played into some of your main points there, I have to say that I feel differently about this card. I think it could be really interesting. Now, it certainly depends how they frame it and what they do. But I look back at the last year, and I say, you know, a year ago, or whenever it was that they introduced the ability to transfer miles from one person to another. I didn't see that coming. So now you can transfer your Capital One miles,

the Capital One points from one account to another account to anybody. It doesn't have to be a spouse or somebody living in your household. You can transfer your points to anybody. So they added that capability. Then they added the transfer partners. And so the transfer partners obviously didn't have as good of a ratio as other programs. But at the same time, you're in two points per dollar to capital one miles per dollar on spend. So really, it comes out to about one and a half airline miles everywhere, which is similar to say the Freedom Unlimited card, except in this case, you also have the ability built right into that single card to be able to transfer to the airline miles. Whereas with the Freedom Unlimited, you need to pair it with another premium card. Capital One is just one card to be able to transfer to the airline miles whereas with the freedom unlimited you need to pair it with another premium card capital one is just one card to be able to get

all that uh so they they added that i like about it yeah right right and then they added on top of that transfer bonuses and the transfer bonuses have been pretty good they brought it up to the point where you're getting almost two airline miles per dollar if you're able to take advantage of one of the transfer bonuses so i feel like like Capital One... Go ahead. Let me just tell you, the transfer bonuses have been pretty good. Two transfer bonuses have been pretty good, if I remember right. Well, okay. The Air France one and the Life Miles one.

Right. Those brought it up from 2 to 1.5 to 2 to 1.8. 1.876, almost 1.1.8 7 6 almost 1.9 almost 1.9 yeah um those are very good the others though if i remember right they were they were based on transfer ratios that started at 2 to 1 and all they did was bring them up to the 2 to 1.5 so they basically made it like the transfer ratio that those airlines should have been in the first place. Well, right. And, and, and so, you know, I'll give you that you're right. Those transfer bonuses weren't amazing, but what I like is they've consistently run them.

They've run four since the beginning of this year and they've gotten better. They, they started out kind of poor like that, but you know, if I'm capital one, if, if I have a long-term plan in mind, which it looks to me like they do, then I'm not going to lead with the best transfer bonus, I'm going to lead with the bonus to one of those programs that has a poor ratio to begin with, so I can get better along the way instead of getting worse. So I don't really find that discouraging. I find it encouraging that they have moved on to better partners and to better transfer bonuses at this point. And I think it's interesting to see where they go from there. And now let me ask you this, like, I'm, I'm ready for Capital One to surprise me. Before I ask something, let me say I'm ready for them to surprise me. And I would

generally say you get a premium card for the benefits, not for everyday spend. So I don't necessarily even think they need to go crazy with the rewards if they're able to offer some awesome premium benefits. But let's say they don't have any awesome premium benefits in mind. It's just the standard run of the mill stuff. What if they did this? What if they said, okay, if you have the capital one premium $400 fee card,

then with that card, you can transfer capital one miles one to one to all of the airline transfer programs. Would that make it more interesting absolutely that then it would be an exciting card um well let me back up you're talking back up but i think you're going to be wrong why wouldn't it be exciting i mean come on if you can transfer one miles from anyone to anyone else then you can have somebody that has a venture card

earning two miles per dollar, transfer them over to the premium card and transfer them then to partners and be earning one mile per dollar. Isn't that exciting? Two miles per dollar, rather. Yeah, that is exciting. That is exciting.

I didn't think through that part of it, as long as you can move your points from another card to this one and then transfer out at the one-to-one, that's exciting. And it would be crazy exciting if there's transfer bonuses on top of that. And I have no idea if that'll happen. That might not happen. But I don't think it's that far-fetched when I look at the way other issuers run their programs as far as getting more value. If you've got a Sapphire Reserve, you get more value than if you only had a Freedom Unlimited. I think that they seem to be copying the plays of other issuers. I think that's not far-fetched. I don't know. What

do you think? You're going to tell me I'm crazy, aren't you? No, no, I'm not going to tell you crazy. I just, no, I can't think of anyone else that does the transfer ratio. Nope, that's not true. Citi does a different transfer ratio. If you have a no fee card versus a premium card, they do do that. So there is precedent for that. But yes, so what you're saying is basically that you could dream up things that they could do to make this dog of a premium card interesting. I could too. In fact, I did in my post, right? I said, dude, that's interesting.

So yes, I agree. Yeah, give us one to one and it's interesting. Sure. So yes, I agree. Yeah. Give us one to one and it's interesting. Maybe they won't. And so it might not be interesting at all. It might be a dog of a card, just as you said. And I can definitely see why people would doubt that with Capital One and think that it's going to be a dog of a card because for years they did have cards that weren't very good.

But I've been a lot more interested in the Venture card this year than ever before. It's been getting plenty of use and I've been getting good value out of it, so I'm generally pretty happy with it. One thing I'll note for readers out there, if you transfer miles from a Venture Card to an airline program, keep your eye on the phone, because each time I've done a transfer, I've gotten a call a couple of days later from Capital One to verify that it was me, and I have missed that call a couple of times, and then it ends up being I get locked out of my account and it's a pain to get back in. Just look for that call from Capital One and answer the phone when they call because they're just looking to verify that you did it. My wife has also transferred miles and she happened

to catch the phone call one day while I was there and they just wanted to know that she did it. She said, yes, that was it. No problem. Me, on the other hand, I missed the call and it turned into 90 minutes on the phone yesterday. So, wow. So there's, there's a feature that the ultra premium card can offer is a call center that will answer your phone for you to the question of whether you're transferring. Right, right, right. That's all they need. Yeah. Because getting locked out repeatedly is not a lot of fun, which I tried to explain to the representative after it was all said and done that this just doesn't happen with other issuers. But, you know, on the flip side or something else related, I want to mention, I know a lot of people say, well, Capital One doesn't matter because they

won't approve people like us, right? People who open a lot of rewards cards and typically they won't approve people like me, just to be really, really specific, which is a sentence that many listeners and viewers here have probably said before too. I think a lot of people that are into the reward space have trouble getting approvals from Capital One, but I've got to think, and I hope I'm right about this, that if they're going to even consider releasing a premium card, that they have to realize that they need to lighten up on that. And it seems like they're interested in this space, they've certainly been making a lot of headway. So I hope at some point, and if you're listening Capital One, you need to get a little bit easier on your approvals for folks who are managing their credit well and opening rewards cards and looking to be rewarded because those

people can be valuable customers and they are likely the only people who will be looking at Capital One for a premium card. So come on. So I'll tell you what, I hope you're right on that. And I hope you're right that the ultra premium will surprise us with features or benefits that we don't see in our preview. I think that the chance that they'll surprise us with features or benefits, I'd actually say it's pretty high. The chance that they'll surprise us by making the approval process easier, I think that's virtually uh nil i mean it may be it may be but i don't think then who do they expect to get the card oh no no i i don't i think there there there are people whose job it is to make sure that they don't approve cards to people with, you know, that are risky and they think of us as risky.

And there are other people who are who care about the marketing of the cards. And I don't think those people have the same, you know, vision. They don't have the same vision or motivations. And for one to be good at their job, the other has to be bad at their job in a way. And so I just don't see the people who decide the rules on who gets approved or not saying, oh, well, because marketing wants us to sell more cards, we'll lighten up. I just don't see that. And that is totally logical

and reasonable on the flip side i look at the amount of money that goes into probably developing a brand new product and i've got to think that you've got to want to sell it right so you got to come up with a plan as to who your target market is so i don't i just don't know who their target market is if it's not rewards enthusiasts clearly they seem to be more interested in rewards enthusiasts. So I, I, well, that they're, they're looking at what came out. I mean,

everybody and their brother signed up for that card. And, um, that I think that's the audience that they hope to get is, is, uh, hopefully they're not looking at, at the people who missed that first opportunity and want the second,

but hopefully they're looking to bring out a card that's so attractive that all those Sapphire Reserve card holders will say, hey, I'm going to ditch that one and sign up for this new one. That's what I want. Yeah, I'm hopeful to see that. I think it could. I think it could. I really think that people are not paying enough attention to Capital One because I think that there is good value on that venture card now that there wasn't for years. I'm interested. We'll see. I'm interested, though. I think that they've got a lot of potential. yeah based on what we know i'm not a fan with the with the upcoming card but but you're absolutely

right that there are probably things that we don't know that they are going to they are going to bring out hopefully hopefully yeah hopefully yeah which is all we can ever hope for so so this week the credit cards were really the the key part of the story i think that those were the things that funny enough that came to mind as far as the huge talking points, the things that you need to think about. Again, that new IHG card, both Thanza Miles and Moore card. And keep your eye out and see what Capital One does. The rumor is 2020, right? So we've got a little time before that comes out.

We do. They have plenty of time to react to our conversations and make it better. Hopefully. Hopefully they're listening. You're listening out there? I know you're listening out there. Very good. All right. Well, what else? Anything else on your mind this week? No, not this week. Why don't you do your great

ending show thingy that you do, and we'll say goodnight to everybody. Well, first of all, I want to thank everybody out there who's watching us live and who's listening in. Great to have you guys here with us. If you joined us late and you just came here and caught the end of it and you'd like to see it,

obviously you can watch it all on Facebook in the Facebook Live format. We'll post it in our FrequentMiler Insiders Facebook group. We'll also put it up on YouTube. And if you check the morning post tomorrow, that's Saturday, the Week in review post that posts Saturday morning, we'll have links so you can download it in podcast format and all your favorite podcast, different places where you might download your podcast so you can listen to it in its entirety on your commute to work or

all that sort of stuff. So check that out. Check out the weekend review in the morning where we'll recap the posts in this talk. And thank you guys very much for being out there with us. We appreciate it. And enjoy the rest of your... Are you there for the weekend, Greg? Enjoy the rest of your weekend, I suppose. No, I'm coming home tomorrow. Okay.

Well, enjoy the rest of your time there at Michigandia. Michigania. Michigania. There you go. Go blue. Go blue. Go blue. We'll see you guys next week.

Good night, everyone. Bye-bye.