Frequent Miler on the Air - Finding impossible awards | Ep151 | 5-21-22

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

00:45 Giant Mailbag: Double Feature 9:29 Mattress running the numbers double feature. First up: IHG status match https://frequentmiler.com/ihg-one-rewards-status-challenege-get-free-platinum-status-upgrade-to-diamond-with-15-nights/ 16:20 A Sunbaskets stack https://frequentmiler.com/sunbasket-mypoints-simply-miles-citi-stack-80-profit-1000-aadvantage-miles-and-8-meals/ 21:30 Main Event: Finding impossible awards 22:09 Step 1: Know your availability windows 30:25 Delta One to Europe 45:46 SeatSpy to hunt out availability https://frequentmiler.com/lie-flat-to-hawaii-how-to-use-seatspy-to-find-saver-awards/ 50:35 JetBlue Mint Class to London https://milenomics.com/2022/02/booking-jetblue-mint-with-emirates-miles/ 54:22 ANA first class 1:00:53 Singapore Airlines premium cabins 1:04:55 Question of the Week: Am I more likely to get rid of the Amex pop-up with a different device or by thawing my credit? Join our email list: frequentmiler.com/subscribe Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, finding impossible awards. Wait, but it's impossible.

It's impossible, but we can sometimes do it. And we're going to tell you how to find those impossible flight awards. We're going to be talking about how to get those first class, business class seats that seem so elusive, but they're at least, they are possible to get. Right. And we'll make the impossible possible. And we're going to tell you some tricks, how to do that. So that brings us to the giant mailbag where we have a double feature

today. Double feature. Double feature. Today we have both someone named Nick, who I think you're familiar with, Nick. I do know the guy pretty well. And someone named Jeff. And so let me talk about Jeff's first and then we'll dig into Nick's. So let me say first that you know how call center reps are always right about whatever they assert over the phone? You know what I'm talking about. Jeff Booth Yeah, I know about their really high percentage, their high batting average, knowing what they're talking about. Right. And for those who don't know the show, we probably find at least close to 10% of things that are confidently asserted by call center reps are correct. Are actually accurate. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe 10, maybe 10. Just to throw out a number there. Right. No, that's a pretty poor average, but it's right about spot

on. I often tell people, I rarely ever ask a customer service rep a question I don't already know the answer to because you can't rely on their answers. Right. I mean, you never get there frequently. Okay. With that background and one little other piece of background, we mentioned a million times Chase's 524 rule, which means Chase won't approve you for a new card if you've opened five cards in the past 24 months with any bank. And usually business cards are exempt from that because they don't appear on your credit report. And that's where Chase looks for how many cards you've opened in the past 24 months. Okay. Jeff says, just had an interesting experience with the dreaded 5-24 at Chase. The rep stated that while a business card opened at another bank does not count, a business card open with Chase does. That was news to me. I recently opened an ink cash and assumed it wouldn't affect my ability to get a personal card. You're correct. You assumed correctly, Jeff. You assumed correctly.

You are correct. The person who answered you otherwise is incorrect. So you'll find when you go to apply for that personal card, as long as Chase is willing to approve you for it, you'll get approved. Yeah. I mean, it's possible that this conversation was in the course of them telling him why he wasn't approved for a personal card. It's not clear from this note, but even if that's true, the reality is it's probably you were denied for some other reason. And that's the only thing the rep could find to explain it. But they were just making up the reps are not the ones who make the decision. And they are unfortunately not told exactly why. The computer gives a reason, but the reason is not always actually the reason or relevant.

And we know that because people get nonsensical reasons all the time. We did a feedback segment not that long ago from someone who said they got denied for a card because of too many new accounts and she hadn't opened a new account with any bank in two years. So obviously that was not really the reason. It's just what got printed on the letters. So you can't put too much faith in that. The fact of the matter is, and Greg has said this a lot of times before, that any positive data points mean a lot more than negative data points because maybe 10 people don't get approved and there's a multitude of reasons why they might not. But if two or three or four people get approved without the business cards counting towards 524, then you know that they don't actually count towards five.

They don't actually prevent approval. So it's some other reason. And we have tons of data points supporting that. So, I mean, is it possible that Chase changed that rule recently? Yeah, it's possible. But I don't, I think that's very unlikely. I think we would have heard a lot of data points already if that was the case. So no, I think you're safe, Jeff. Okay. Very good. All right. Now you've got something right next.

Second piece of a mailbag today. Yes, I do have something. So we frequently get questions from readers about various credit card insurance benefits. And, you know, like for example, you might wonder, I rent a car with my Sapphire reserve. Is it going to cover, you know, this or that or blah, blah, blah. And often we have to go by, you know, what our interpretation of the terms are. And I, I think this will be, and it should be in blah, blah, blah, but it's hard to ever know, right? I mean, like, it's hard to say if somebody says, Hey, if I rent a car with my Sapphire reserve and I get caught in a hailstorm and it leaves golf ball size dents in my hood, is the chase coverage going to pay for that? Most people will probably put their hands up in the air and say, I think so, probably. Now we can actually say, yes, they will,

because Steven Pepper wrote a post about that a few years ago about having that happen. And so we have some experience with it. And so I always find that type of real world experience valuable because then you know how it actually can operate so i share today's story in that vein because i found out last night that a friend of mine his father was traveling abroad recently and had a medical emergency and he required hospitalization not coveted for the record but a serious medical emergency he had to be hospitalized and the local hospital just wasn't able to meet his needs. And luckily, very fortunately for them, his father had opened the MX Platinum card. I understand during the resi offer for the small business bonus last year.

And so he was an MX Platinum card holder. Now, some people probably know, I know Greg knows that the MX Platinum card, one of its benefits is emergency medical evacuation. And the interesting thing about MX Platinum card emergency medical evacuation coverage is that it's A, not limited. So theoretically, Amex will pay whatever it costs to evacuate you in a medical emergency, theoretically. And B, you don't need to have paid for your trip with the Amex Platinum card. You just need to be an Amex Platinum card holder. And that applied in this case. He hadn't paid for his trip with the Amex Platinum card, but he was an Amex Platinum card holder. And so they reached out to Amex Global Assist to see if they could cover the emergency medical evacuation to get them to a different hospital. And initially, I understand

Amex did not agree to do it. And so it required a little bit of pushback. And so they had to do a little bit of research and present some facts and some reasons why it was necessary. And I share that because it's worth knowing that sometimes you have to advocate for yourself, right? You have to be prepared and gather some information. And if you get a no answer, it's not always the final answer. You can push back on these things. So sure enough, Amex covered the emergency medical evacuation to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars to get him to a hospital in the US. And so I share that story without all the deeper details at this point, but I share it because it's valuable to know that that kind of thing does work. Because you read about it and

you're like, oh, it covers it. But until you know somebody that you're like, oh, yeah, they paid for it. Then it's just words on a piece of paper. Right. I agree. That's so good to know. I mean, I'm sorry that he had this medical emergency, but that's so great that he was able to take advantage of this perk. And now we have this positive data point that tells us that it is possible. What I thought you were going to say when you started it was that he had paid for the trip with his Sapphire Reserve and used the medical coverage, which is, I think, up to $2,500 or something like that. Right. That the Sapphire Reserve provides if you pay with the card for travel.

But this went a different way. If any listeners has experience using that medical coverage from the Sapphire Reserve, we would love to hear from you. I haven't heard of anyone collecting or trying to even use that. So I'd be interested because it's pretty unique. Not many cards offer medical coverage. For your medical expenses. Yeah, exactly.

Hospital abroad. That is unique. And that's another one that people ask us about. We always say, well, I don't know. I haven't broken my arm abroad. I don't know how it would work if I have to go to the hospital. I just hope that it's going to get covered. So that is a really good one.

I'd love to hear a data point on. I have once at least previously read a data point from view from the wing and someone who similarly had an emergency medical evac with the MX platinum card that was very expensive for, you know, again, these are private medevac flights. So they, they, they flew them in a private medevac jet to get back home, so to speak. So, you know,'s a, an amazing, amazing benefit. That's at least two data points now that I know, and I'm very glad to see that it does come through. So, uh, so that's, you know, going to cover the cost of the platinum card for a long time, I guess. That was a valuable, valuable mailbag. Right. There you go. Information. So valuable mail in the mailbag. Good job. Um, so then let's talk. We're going to skip crazy thing this week because we've got another double feature this week. We have a mattress running the numbers double feature. This is exciting.

The week of double features. All right. So what's up first? All right. The first mattress run, true mattress run material here. IHG is out with a status challenge. Now we've talked about how IHG's new program has real benefits, especially for diamond status. You get free breakfast, for example, on your stays. And so IHG's new status challenge, what it'll do, you sign up, you get 120 days of platinum status not diamond and then during those date those 120 days if you stay five i think it's paid nights you can then keep your platinum status for the rest of that year and all of 2023

um and or if you stay a total of 15 nights you you'll get diamond status again, rest of the year and all through 2023. So what do you think? Should everybody run out and do this awesome status challenge? I started to read about this and I was like, ooh, IHG diamond, free breakfast. Oh, and maybe this will be pretty interesting. Can I status match? Can I match my high globalist status and not have to do anything and get, but unfortunately it requires 15 nights to end up with a diamond status. Platinum status doesn't impress me at all because anybody can get

that. All you got to do is sign up for the IHG premier business premier, right? So that part of the status challenge I think is almost worthless unless you're over 524 and you want IHG platinum for some reason, but you know, you don't qualify for one of the credit cards. And then I would totally like, let's say you're a regular IHG, um, you know, you, you regularly travel to IHG, but you're just not getting enough for platinum status. I think it would totally make sense. It only requires five nights, you know, good. Yes, okay. But I agree. I agree. Diamond status, 15 nights.

15, yeah, that's too much for me. I can't imagine. You have to really be able to leverage the diamond perks for 15 nights to be worth it. And the diamond perks is like what? I mean, it's breakfast and... And then that's pretty much... Some more points per dollar spent. Yeah, you get more points.

You get like a hundred percent bonus instead of, I forget 70% or something at platinum. Right. Right. You'll be five nights short of a sweet upgrade, I guess, but that has nothing to do with the diamond status. That's a 29 milestone benefit.

Right. Right. So like, if you were already going to stay at IHG for like 10 or 12 or 14 nights, then yeah. Okay. Maybe add an extra night or two in order to get, you know, diamond status. Then it would make sense, but I wouldn't do all 15. No, no, totally agree. Nope. Although, you know, I, I just said that out loud. And as soon as I

said it, I thought to myself, you know, I know there's some really cheap holiday ends out there in like Bali or something, you know, maybe you do like a $20 a night holiday. And I don't know. I mean, like, where's the cutoff, Greg, how much would you be willing to spend for IHG diamond? Like you find a 30 or $40 a night holiday and would you do it? Oh, how much would you spend for diamond status? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mean, it depends so much on how much I think I'm going to stay at IHD hotels where it'll matter. So, you know, where it'll matter, it won't matter at all at low end hotels where you get free breakfast anyway, or where, or, you know, if breakfast, even, even if you haven't paid for breakfast, if it's only five bucks or 10 bucks,

you know, then it's not mattering much. What you care about is when you stay at an intercontinental where breakfast starts at 30 bucks or so, um, and you're getting that free, then it's going to make a big difference. Um, so yeah, I, you know, if I knew I had a bunch of upcoming stays, then I think I would just look at how much am I likely to save with free breakfast. And then maybe I'd pay about half of that if I could get or already have an IHG Premier card or IHG Premier business card, I just think you're much better off figuring out how to spend the 40K required to get to diamond status because that 40K will result- Really? $40,000 spent on the card over spending 15 nights at a hotel, Greg? Doesn't that seem like a big difference? It sounds like a big difference, but

the card now earns three points per dollar. So you're going to have a ton of points when you're done with that spend. And at 20,000 points, it gives you some point bonus and even cash back bonus. And then at 40,000, you get the other. Anyway, if you look at my post about spending big on the IHG cards, you'll see it's actually pretty rewarding compared to most cards. So if you'd highly value diamond status, I would strongly consider doing that instead of trying to stay 15 paid nights. Interesting. That's an interesting pick. I mean, I think that it mathematically makes sense, but it might seem like quite a stretch to some people to spend $40,000 on one card and forego all of the other spending on other cards. Of course, I think there's only an applicable technique if either A, you've got very high expenses where $40,000 spend isn't going to

make much of a difference in terms of not being able to meet other spending requirements, or B, you're doing some sort of manufactured spending where you're able to spend a bunch of money on your cards, on multiple different cards. Because otherwise, that probably seems like a pretty high bar for a lot of people in terms of trying to concentrate all of their spending on one single card rather than staying a few extra nights. Now, keep in mind, it is a MasterCard. So you can use Plastic, P-L-A-S-T-I-Q, to pay your bills, including mortgage payments and rent payments and whatever. So yes, that would cost you 2.85%, but you could do the math and say, is 2.85% of 40,000 or whatever extra spend you need above what you would spend naturally, is 2.85% of that worth it to get diamond status? And the answer is going to be different for everyone. And it's only going to be yes, if you are pretty confident you're going to be staying at high-end IHG properties after earning diamond status. Otherwise, what's the point?

For sure. For sure. All right. Okay. So mattress running the numbers, probably not on the IHG status match challenge thing. Probably. Exactly. Exactly. What's the second mattress running the numbers today? Second one is Sun Basket. So Sun Basket is one of those meal delivery services where they send you either a meal kit where you make it yourself. Or in this case, I believe Sun Basket also offers pre-made meals. So you could just get a already made one and just heat it up when it arrives. Wait, where's the mattress here, Craig? So this is about, yeah, there's no mattress. The question here is, should you order Sun Basket

even if you don't care about the meals, if you don't value the meals at all? So it's sort of like checking into a hotel when you don't really want to stay at the hotel. So this is ordering a meal without needing it. The deal is that- Yeah, I was going to say, tell me the deal here. What's the deal? This thing that's sort of like a shopping portal called MyPoints is offering $125 worth of points. You get 20,000 points, which are redeemable for $125 in PayPal credit, um, for signing up for clicking through my points and signing up for Sun Basket. And, um, you can stack that with a bunch of other things, but let's just for a second, just talk about that alone. So you can, um, let's say you're, you're, uh, you sign up for, um, $65 worth or $70 worth of, of food then. Um, and you cancel after your first delivery. So you get the $125, you're out $70. So you've got what? $55 profit plus a bunch of meals.

Sounds delicious. I can take a bite out of that. If it's the first time doing Sun Basket or you could convince my points that it's the first time doing Sun Basket. I mean, that seems to me like a viable- No brainer? to me like a viable no-brainer yeah right you know just on its own you can add in simply miles if you're paying with a mastercard you can um sign in a simply miles and register for a uh offer to get american airlines miles um it was a thousand miles this morning i saw it was down to 750 AA miles for signing up for Sun Basket. And Citi merchant offers will give you $20 back on $65 or more. There's also a, and all three of those would stack together. You could get the MyPoints and the Simply Miles miles and the cash

back from Citi. Alternatively, you could do an Amex offer to get, I can't remember if it was 20 or $25 back on Sun Basket. You could stack that with my points. You can't stack that with the Simply Miles deal. Well, so that gets pretty interesting. Now I'm going to back up the truck here and say, I didn't even think about whether this was mattress run worthy when I saw it. I just thought, okay, we need to do that because we've ordered sun baskets a bunch of times. And I like the pre-made meals that they have, but you know, not the prepare your own. I don't particularly enjoy theirs as many as, or as much as some other services. We tend to get every plate in my household. We tend to like those. I haven't tried that one. Tried a lot of them, but haven't tried that one.

Well, it's HelloFresh. It's just the cheaper version of HelloFresh. So it's like, it's the same supplier, just instead of individually bagging the ingredients, they put them all in one box. So it's cheaper, but they run a bunch of deals you can stack too. So, and every time you cancel, they give you offers to come back that are attractive enough to make it cheap enough that we've ordered a lot of every plate. So that tends to be my, my preferred one out of the various, you know, prepare your own meal kits. But the pre-packaged, pre-prepared ones from Sun Basket, I actually like. I like their Thai and Indian dishes, particularly so far out of the ones we've gotten. So I saw this and I was like, okay, well, I like the food and it's profitable and I learned some miles. Absolutely. We got to do it. And I haven't

done it yet as we record this. So I'm a little disappointed to hear if the Simply Miles offer actually dropped. Now, my question there is, did you see it at a thousand previously in your account? Because I can't remember. Sometimes these Simply Miles deals are targeted. Different people get different offers. So it's definitely possible that it didn't drop, but rather I just got a lesser offer. Crossing my fingers for that because I'd take a thousand miles. So a thousand loyalty points, more importantly with American Airlines. So yeah, I looked I take a thousand miles. So a thousand loyalty points more importantly with American airlines. So, so yeah, like I looked at this and I said, okay, great. This sounds good.

Profitable food that I like. And I'm going to earn some easy American airlines loyalty points. Yes. Mattress running this one, Greg, definitely going to do it. Totally agree. Totally agree. I'm about to be traveling. And so I didn't want to order right before I left.

So I'm hoping it'll still be around when I get back. Now, yes, you might be able to order. I don't know how and schedule for delivery later. Yeah, because you can get deliveries and stuff, but I don't know how the cash back will all work if you do that. I might I might give that a try. We'll see. Yeah. All right. OK, so there we go. Mattress running the numbers. We, we done ran it through.

So as a sun baskets, yes, I H G. No, I think that means it's time for the main event, main event time, finding impossible awards. We've got sort of a grab bag of techniques that we're going to go through. How do you find,

you know, we write about these like fantastic awards and a first class Delta one to Europe for only 50,000 points, all kinds of great things. But they're so hard to find. There are tricks, though. So let's get into them. Maybe we'll take turns. Why don't you start with one, Nick? I am, but I'll wait.

I'll wait and I'll throw it later on. So, okay, you want me to start? Well, so let's start with talking about availability calendars because I feel like the first step is knowing when our seat's going to even become available because if you're looking and it's not available yet or after it's already been available for weeks, you may not find anything.

So knowing when airlines release space is important and different airlines release them at different points. Like I'm pretty sure American and Delta, uh, both do 331 days in advance. They released award space on their flights, whereas United is 337 days in advance and a releases space 355 days in advance. And so as some airlines are 360 or 360, 359, I saw somebody Air France, I think it was like 359. So if you Google it, you can usually figure out how far in advance airlines make their award inventory available. And that can be useful because sometimes snagging award seats as soon as they become available, as soon as the calendar opens is the best time because some airlines will release whatever they're going to release sometimes snagging award seats as soon as they become available, as soon as the calendar opens

is the best time because some airlines will release whatever they're going to release right at the beginning and you either get it or you don't get it. And once it's gone, it's gone. Absolutely. And, you know, I've seen that with Delta, even where I was looking for a flight, Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa, where they hardly ever release, you know, saver level awards, um, on that nonstop route in business class. And, um, I was able to find once by waiting up till midnight Eastern time, it, a, uh, a single seat appeared, uh, right at like right at midnight. And so it does happen. And yeah, you have to be ready to grab it when you see that. Now, go ahead. Well, there's a trick here, which is that you mentioned,

for example, that ANA has a longer calendar than United, but you could use United miles to book ANA. So can you book ANA through with United miles as far out as ANA's end of schedule? I don't know off the top of my head the answer to that, but I do know like with American and things like Qantas, let's say, they're partners. Qantas releases space far further into the distance than American will let you book it. And so a lot of times, even if you'd want to book with American Airlines, you just can't until it gets within 11 months, I guess it is.

And the word space might be gone by then. So the trick then is to use a different program that does let you book further out. And so like Qantas, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, those all are programs that will let you book all the way out to the end of schedule for Qantas awards. Yeah. And I think that that's an important technique to keep in mind because I'm fairly certain that the example you used with ANA, United would not yet be able to book that availability. So if you want to book ANA business class, being prepared with ANA miles at 355 days out or looking anyway at 355 days out can give you an advantage over booking through another

program because you'll have access to that availability sooner. So that's, and the point that Greg's making is really important too, that certain programs will give you an advantage there in finding that really hard to find space. Qantas is a fantastic example because it's notoriously difficult to find award space on Qantas. Alaska Airlines has a great award chart for those Qantas flights, but you're more likely to be able to book them with Cafe Pacific Asian miles. So it might cost you a few more miles, but you might actually be able to snag the award that's impossible to book

with your Alaska miles. Yeah. Yeah. And I did that once with Japan Airlines. They had first class award availability, wide open way out when I wanted to book. And American Airlines would have probably been the cheapest option for booking the flights, but I couldn't book as far out as I wanted to. So I used Cathay Miles and it wasn't that much more. And so that was a great way of doing that. Yeah. And you can think of it as paying a small surcharge to be able to access that inventory sooner than other programs. And it's, it's worthwhile in that case. Yeah. I've done that with other, other awards before too, where I've booked it through the program that has access first, because, you know, even though it's a little, a few more miles, at least I know I've locked it up

before somebody else jumped in and did it. So, all right. So that's, that's one technique is know your award availability calendars and be ready to book that far in advance, especially if you want to travel during peak times. Often you'll find with many programs booking right at the beginning when the schedule opens is going to be almost essential if you want to fly in the summer to Europe or that sort of thing. Right. Right. Right. The extreme opposite side of this is that a lot of programs open up award availability last minute, like within a week, within days, same day. I've often been watching for award space for live flat award space on United to Hawaii. And the pattern I find repeatedly is that award space opens up day of. So, you know, if I was packed, if my bags were packed, I was ready to go. I could get up in the morning, book that, that nonstop live flights

seat to Hawaii and, and fly there. And then at the end of the trip, I'll wake up in the morning and book my return flight. That's the direction it's a lot harder in, right? Because I mean, you only have a hotel for so many nights and then like, wait, what do you got to just keep hoping the hotel is available and you have enough points to cover it or you want to keep paying for it? It's hard on the way home to count on that technique, I feel like. But the thing is here now, you joked about having to have your bags packed and ready to go to the airport, but that's not necessarily the case. The technique here, I think, especially these days, is since most of the major U.S.

airline programs allow free cancellation, then you would look to probably have a backup of some sort that's freely cancelable, have a flight booked, but then keep your eye out. And even on the day of departure, as long as your original flight is still cancelable, and I say that because some programs have rules about how far in advance you have to cancel. But as long as your original flight is still cancelable, keep your eye out because you may find that more desirable flight day of departure. Absolutely. I see people do that all the time, all the time. I read stories, people, miles and points, people who are really deep in the game were like, oh, yeah, you know, I just booked it three hours ago. And here I am at the airport. I know they had something else booked. They just

canceled whatever they originally had booked and booked the thing that came available. So that's a very good example. The United to Hawaii is a good one. Lufthansa is another one worth mentioning here. And I mentioned them with, I don't know, a little bit of trepidation this week because, my goodness, Lufthansa has been in the news lately for a horror story. They just, I don't know, been a horrible, horrible couple of weeks for Lufthansa. They did a terrible job on how they handled the entire situation there in Europe with the denied boarding. But anyway, if you're looking to fly Lufthansa and you want to fly in first class, they typically only release those seats to partners 14 days in advance. So you've got to be ready to book them within 14 days of departure. And oftentimes,

maybe even less than that, you may only see seats two or three days in advance. And so again, this is the kind of situation where you either a have to be super flexible, where you're like, I don't know, I'm gonna go on vacation sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'll figure it out the day that I see availability, or you need to have something booked and then just keep hawking and looking or set a seat alert somewhere where you're able to get alerted when there's availability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great way to do it. And it's something that I have to be honest. I often forget to check that, you know, like I'll have things booked, like a good enough itinerary and I'll forget to, as it gets closer, I need to start checking for an even better option. So that's a great reminder.

Yeah. All right. So let's see. Yeah, I'm just looking at the list. So I'm going to talk about a really specific one now. We've talked a lot about Delta One to Europe. You know, Delta so rarely releases Delta One award space to their partners. And so, you know, a lot of people, when we've talked about this, written about it, a lot of people complain, you know,

well, I never see anything. How can we find it? So I'm going to just briefly run through how to do that. So Virgin Atlantic lets you search for awards on Delta or Air France or KLM or Virgin Atlantic itself on their Virgin Atlantic website. You just say you want a book with points and if you want business class, you want Delta One business class, you select upper class. That's their term for it. So you need to know those things, points, upper class. And when you pick a date to search, so just do a one-way search at a time. When you pick that

date to search, know that it's searching that date plus three days before it and three days after it. And if it finds anything at all in that seven-day window, it'll show you a little seven-day calendar and you'll have the option to switch to a month-long calendar. And then you can start looking a month at a time for award availability. So just for example, like maybe, maybe it pops, maybe you're looking for a Delta flight and it pops up a Virgin Atlantic flight or a Air France flight. Maybe you don't want those for whatever reason. But at least that's enough to get you to be able to move into monthly mode to find, to find awards quicker. I think the link says price calendar above that seven-day window. There's a little link above that that says price calendar. And you click that and then you can see a month at a time. Right. Right. But even if you don't get to that, what you can do is just search one week at

a time. So you do like Sunday, beginning of the month uh sunday the the next week sunday the next week and so on so the and event and it sounds awful to do it a week at a time but it i find it's actually very quick yeah like i can get through a whole calendar in about 10 minutes um for for one route. So, all right. So obviously to do this, based on what I'm just saying, you have to be very, very flexible with when you're willing to travel.

So I went through a bunch of different routes and as I found stuff, I was posting to our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. Here's what I found. There's availability between Seattle and Amsterdam or whatever it was on, you know, on this day, this particular date. And so you can do what I just described, find that particular date. And, and, you know,

if you're lucky enough to be available to fly that during that time, if that works for you, fantastic. One, one really cool thing, I don't know, about Delta is that even though they so rarely release award space, when they do, they often release great big chunks of it. So it's not unusual for me to find just one day out of the entire year that there's award availability between two cities and, you know, US to Europe, but nine seats, well, nine or more, because it'll only tell you if there's nine, you know, you can't, you can't search for 10.

So, um, yeah, it's, it's often wide open on that one day of the year. Right. Right. So I, you know, that, that makes an interesting question here. And that is how do you normally plan your travel? Do you normally figure out where you want to go and when first, and then look for award availability, or do you look for award availability and let that determine when and where you're going to go? Yeah. Um, you know, I usually do it the other way. I usually know where and when, at least roughly, I want to go and try to find it based on that. So this made the point in it that they have a mantra of essentially figuring out what you want and then figuring out the best way to pay for what it is

that you want, rather than you seem to suggest that the way that a lot of award enthusiasts do it is sort of the tail wagging the dog in the sense that we look for the awards first and then decide what we're going to do. And I do tend to do that quite a bit because I have the flexibility. So it doesn't so much matter to me whether I go in June or July or August or September, I would look for the availability first. But that's going to really vary based on your situation and when you're available to travel or how easy it is for you to pick travel dates as you like. So I do tend to more so look for availability first and see what's available. One of the reasons for that is because I'm frequently looking now for so many seats because now I

have a family of four where I'm going to need four seats. And so that becomes a much bigger challenge. And so I'm going to toss a curveball in here for the next one. This is the one that I didn't tell Greg about in advance. And that is how the heck do you find four seats in business class? So really there's not a secret technique here, except knowing which programs tend to have multiple seats, because that's going to probably dictate what awards you want. If you want to fly Kathy Pacific first class, you're not going to do it with four people. So you got to figure out which situations do have it. So I've got a couple off the top of my head. Do you know any, any, well, like, so Delta is a great example of that. You mentioned that if there is availability booking via Virgin Atlantic, you will probably be able

to fly the entire family, right? There's a really good chance of that. Yeah. So that that's one that comes to mind. Another one that comes to mind is Star Alliance carriers to Europe. Swiss frequently has four seats available when they have business class available. Lufthansa also very often has multiple seats, but Swiss I find to be particularly reliable at having at least four seats. So that's a good option for crossing the Atlantic. I don't know the current status of Asiana, but historically, they were very reliable for having four to six seats on their flights. Like I said, haven't looked at that in a long time here since the pandemic. So I don't know that that's still the case, but historically it was.

I recently found that Air Europa frequently has four seats available and that's bookable via Flying Blue. And I wrote about that just recently because the taxes and fees are significantly lower than booking Air France and KLM flights through Flying Blue. So it was desirable both A, because it was $200 less per passenger. So that's $800 one way in savings for my family of four. Plus it was much easier to find four available seats at the lowest saver levels on those Air Europa flights.

So those are a couple that come to mind. What do you have, Greg? Do you know others that frequently have lots of seats? I really don't have anything off the top of my head because it's so rare for me to be looking for that many seats these days. I'm usually looking for just my wife and I now. That makes sense. The other tip I'll give is premium economy.

You start looking at premium economy spots because I've frequently found that like British Airways or Japan Airlines will have four seats available or more in premium economy cabins. And that's not going to be the same as flying in flatbed business class, but it's going to be comparable to flying domestic first class.

So that might be enough for a family. It might be desirable enough to have a little bump over economy, but even when business class isn't available. Another tip on ones that do frequently make a lot of seats available is British Airways. They do tend to make quite a few business class seats available because their surcharges are so high. So you have to A, be willing to pay the surcharges if you're going to book via British Airways, but B, if you're not willing to pay the British Airways surcharges, then it's worth knowing that Cathay Pacific often has more attractive surcharges on British Airways flights. So you may still have access to those four seats

and save yourself hundreds of dollars by booking the Akate Pacific Asia miles. Yep. Great, great, great tips there. One thing about, about premium economy, not all programs will let you book the partners into, you know, the partner premium economy. So that's something that could be a little frustrating at times. I don't know, for example, if you probably can't use American Airlines miles to book British Airways premium economy. No, I don't know, for example, if you probably can't use American Airlines miles to book British Airways premium economy. No, I don't know that for sure, but I'm not aware of any word chart for that. So no, I don't think so. Yeah. So there's a number of examples like that, even if that's not true, there's a number of examples like that where it can be a little frustrating, but there are other cases where you can. And we've talked before about how Virgin Atlantic actually has a really great award chart for flying Air France premium economy to Europe.

So that's something to keep an eye on to see if you could find award availability there. Okay. One other sort of general tip I'm going to bring up is if you're really interested in finding awards for a specific airline, um, finding their overseas long distance nonstop routes is like an important first step is identifying the routes that are, that are possible or of interest to you. Uh, even if they're not originating at your home airport, if it would be a reasonable one-stop to get to the airport where they fly from. And then you can search for, you know, are there ever awards availability available for this long flight? Worry about later how to get between your home airport and the departure airport and from where you end up and where you ultimately want to end. Those things are easier to handle, the sort of domestic legs portions.

But finding that long distance one, that's the one that matters at least if you're, if you're, um, you really want to find business or first-class awards, you know, that's where you're going to get the most value from those business or first-class awards is as long distance ones. So, um, the, the way I find those non-stops is, uh, I really like this tool called, um, flight connections, connections. Thank you. You could tell that I was like this tool called Flight Connections. Connections. Thank you. You could tell that I was like struggling. I saw it in your face and I was like, I've been using it every day for weeks here.

So yeah, Flight Connections. Yeah. So Flight Connections, it's actually free with ads with limited functionality. But I think even with that version, you can pick a single airline and see all the routes that that airline serves graph can pick a single airline and see all the routes that that airline serves graphically on a map. And then you could just kind of drag the map around and look at, oh, which routes fly to the US? And then you can click on the different endpoints to see, okay, they fly from Chicago, New York, San Francisco, whatever. And then that will tell you okay these are routes that you know you find the routes that are make sense to you that you'd want to fly okay now these are routes i need to look for award

availability so right that's sort of a first step that you almost have to do so i was describing you know looking for delta one to europe before well well, you need to know where, where Delta flies from and to, in order to do, um, reasonable searches like that. So that's a first step. And that's important. It's an important first step. Greg kind of already touched on this, but because like, for example, I live near a small airport. I usually drive to New York city to fly internationally, but I'm within like a one to three hour flight of Chicago and Washington DC and Atlanta. And I'm a couple hours from Boston. And so I will frequently look for flights from all of those places,

because if I search from my home airport, it's Albany, New York. So if I search from Albany to, you know, let's say Frankfurt, just as an example, I may not find availability because the Albany to, let's say Frankfurt, just as an example, I may not find availability because the Albany to Chicago or Albany to Washington DC flight isn't available. And I don't want to miss that long haul flight because I didn't see something immediately available on the Albany to DC or Albany to Chicago or whatever it might be, because I know that either A, I can buy a cheap ticket on those or B, I can book something for fewer miles through a different program. Maybe I book United Award to get to Europe, but I can use American Airlines or British Airways maybe even to book American Airlines to get to Chicago or something

like that. So I can figure out that part later. I don't want to be hamstrung by the fact that United doesn't release a lot of saver space on these like small domestic flights. I want to make sure that I can find those non-stops. And so, and I don't memorize, I don't know who flies where from Chicago. So flight connections is super useful for finding those long non-stops like that. It sure is. I love that. If you don't want to invest the $0 into that one, you could also look at Wikipedia does a pretty good job for any particular airport that you search on Wikipedia. You look for airlines and destinations section, and it'll tell you all the airlines and where

they fly to. So that's another way to do that. It does. But what's nice about flight connections is when you see that nonstop, you can click on the route and see which airlines fly it and which days of the week, because that also sometimes can make a big difference. And you may be able to manually piece something together. So to give an example, maybe you search on a Tuesday from Albany to Frankfurt, and maybe Lufthansa only flies from Chicago to Frankfurt on Wednesdays. That's not a real example, just something I'm making up. So maybe I won't see any availability because

United for some reason isn't going to put me on with the overnight connection, flying Albany to Chicago, and then the next day, Chicago to Frankfurt. But United allows that. Maybe they just don't have it on their website. Now, United, again, was a bad example here. But the idea is I may be able to book that over the phone with an agent. So I can figure that part out later if I can figure out which days of the week they fly the nonstop large flight that really matters. So again, flight connection is useful for that. I've been looking at it lately because I've been trying to piece together a trip in Europe and it matters to me which days of the week airlines fly these routes because that is going to dictate which day I go from point A to point B

or C because a number of routes I've looked at aren't daily routes. So flight connections, big plug there. And I don't pay for the premium service, but I'm not opposed to it. I've thought more and more about it because there's some additional functionality that would also be useful, but even the free service is great. Yeah. And I do pay for it and it's well worth it in my mind. Another tool that is really helpful, but only for certain airlines is Seatspy. So I mentioned earlier trying to find those business class lie flat flights between mainland US and Hawaii on United. And I don't even, I wouldn't even consider like trying to use United's website to try to find that, but Seatspy makes it really easy. You could see at a glance that there's

nothing available for the whole year for any given route, or you might see one, you know, one day. And then you can set up an alert and it'll email you when it becomes available. So, you know, one day. And then you can set up an alert and it'll email you when it becomes available. So, you know, I just can't think of any other tool that makes it that easy to find United Awards. But, you know, not only is it limited, like it only supports so many airlines, but some of the airlines that Seatspy supports, it doesn't do a great job of because of the way it supports them. So like American Airlines, American Airlines has like dynamic award pricing, basically. And if what you're trying to find is just save rewards that are available to book with partner miles. Um, they, they try to put in stuff to help you do that, but I just find it like almost unusable to, to try to do that. Um,

same thing air air France used to be used to work really well through there, but now it's like coming up with, um, all these flights that air France is pricing dynamically really high. So, so, um, you'll have. So you'll have to check whether they support the airline that you're interested in, but for the ones that it does and where it only shows save reward availability, fantastic tool. It is, especially if you do have that flexibility where you can look at a year calendar and say, oh, okay, this is when what I want is available and I'll plan my trip then. Hawaii is a good example because that's a place that I don't really care if I go in October or June or May. It's going to be nice any time of

the year. So I'll go when there's availability. So that's a good example, except it's a good example, except that Greg wasn't joking when he said you can look at an entire year and not find a single seat in business class. I just looked it up, both the Newark to Maui and the Newark to Honolulu, not a single seat in business class for the entire next year as we speak right now. And that's again for saver award space. Obviously, you can pay United an exorbitant number of miles to fly up front if that's what you choose to do. But if you're looking for saver seats, you could book with, for example, Turkish for

12,500 miles each way. Not going to happen on those routes anytime soon. But the tool is useful for that. I wrote this week about using British Airways Avios to upgrade a paid business class ticket to first class. And I have found the tool to be really interesting to use for that because I can easily see which days have first class award seats available, which means that I should theoretically be able to upgrade on those days. And again, I'm not finding much availability, but I can see it. And interesting to me is that I could find days far in advance. Like if I were looking to plan a trip for next year, I can see days where I could plan it out and get my ticket on the right day when I could upgrade if I were

planning far enough in advance, or if I were willing to look at multiple cities. Like for example, I found a lot more first-class availability to Boston than New York. And in a normal world, it wouldn't matter to me. I would be happy to fly into Boston. So I like SeatSpy and I like the ability to set an alert. You've set a lot of alerts and you pretty reliably get alerted, right? Yeah. Well, actually I had to, I set up the alerts come through email and I set them to go into a folder. I was just getting too many because yeah, I was getting them. I'd set up a whole bunch of alerts for Hawaii, you know, like every route that I could find.

And I was getting alerted, you know, pretty much every morning for a bunch of the routes and that's great. But what I really want to know is when does one come up further in advance so I can plan? Well, you can set the date range that you want to search for. Yeah, so I should probably change that. Yeah, you can just search that and say future days because that's what I did. So I'm imminently going to buy a business class ticket on British Airways using MX

membership rewards points. There's more story to that, but, but for me, anyway, I set an alert for any time within like weeks of when I'm planning to go so that I'll just see that window. Cause I don't want to see stuff that's available next March and April. Cause that's not going to do me any good. And so I set the dates that I wanted anyway for the availability alert. So that could be a great tip and make it much more useful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you had a trick about getting JetBlue Mint Class to London, I think. Yeah. So Mint Class to London. Now the

JetBlue Mint Class that flies transatlantic looks really nice. It looks pretty swanky, and it's fairly expensive, I think. So a particularly good deal or a fairly good deal anyway for that would be using Emirates miles to book JetBlue Mint class to Europe because it's a really reasonable number of miles. I think it's 64,000, if I remember each way. And that's a very good deal. Of course, if you're departing the UK, you're going to pay the premium cabin duty that makes it expensive in terms of fees. But if you're departing the United States, I think it's just the $5 and 60 cents in fees. And Milonomics wrote a great post that we referred to a while back about their experience booking those JetBlue flights through Emirates, because there's a few things you need to know. First is that they only release availability to Emirates, it seems, four months in advance. So whereas we

were talking before about 330 days or 370 days or almost a year, 11 to 12 months in advance for most programs, this is a really unique situation in that they only seem to release space four months in advance to the day. So if you're looking for a trip, it's good to know that because, you know, you might look and be like, oh, well they have this last minute space available. Maybe it's only available for two weeks in advance, but no, it's available for months in advance. You just need to start about four months in advance. So, so that's tip number one. Tip number two is that there's a specific fair class that you need to look for. I believe it's iFair class. And there's a way to do that through ITA Matrix to look for the specific fair class. And so I'll put a link to the myelonomics post

actually in the description so that you can read about how to do it, how to seek that out. Because once you know what you're looking for, it's helpful. And then the last tip that they had that was super valuable to me because I'm a flexible person. So I'm always happy to look at a calendar with more dates. I always figure if I can see more day, I want to see as many dates as I can because I don't care which day of the week I fly out. But this is a case where you don't want to do that because they found that clicking the plus or minus three days, the ability to check multiple days at a time, often returns zero results rather than searching for a specific day, which would return results. So you don't want the flexible date calendar when you're looking for those. And again,

you can book those on emirates.com. So you can book those through Emirates once you figure out when availability should be there, but search the exact date once you figure out which dates are available through ITA matrix, not the plus minus three days. Right. And so they fly, remind me, they fly from New York to London. Is that the only route open right now? I don't know that for sure. I'm not sure if they fly from Boston or not. I'd use flight connections to figure that out. Yeah. Great idea. Okay. All right. So that, that sounds great. And for anyone wondering how in the world would someone have Emirates miles, you know, you can, any transferable currency transfers one-to-one except for Marriott, which is three-to-one to Emirates.

And, you know, so it's actually very easy, whether you have Capital One points, Chase points, City points, Amex points, Bilt points, you're good. You're good to go. And the same is true for the domestic mint class flights also. It's just that Emirates distance-based chart is less attractive because the domestic ones are 52,000 for those trans cons and 52,000 miles for a trans con business class seems pretty steep unless you're booking in the last minute and fares are very expensive and you really need to get there, in which case maybe it'll be useful for that. But I find the flights to London to be more reasonable at the $64,000 because that's a more typical price for business class to Europe. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. All right. So let's talk about ANA first class.

So this is the best sweet spots, right? One of the best sweet spots with Virgin Atlantic miles, which again are sort of almost like Emirates and that almost everyone lets you transfer to Virgin Atlantic one-to-one. And so everyone has Virgin Atlantic miles and you can at least theoretically book and a first class international first class, which is so much better than business class, for either 55,000 miles from the US West Coast or 60,000 miles from Central to East Coast to Japan or vice versa from Japan. And that is a ridiculously smoking hot deal. It really is. I mean, that's fewer miles than most programs will charge you for a business

class ticket to Asia. And of course, these first class international true first class, if you're not familiar with this, if your image of first class is domestic US first class, and it's just like a recliner seat and a meal of some sort rather than a meal, meal, meal, then this is a totally different experience. So first class for 55,000 or 60,000 miles is amazing. Right, right. And how bad the fuel surcharges are, that varies over time. Those go up and down, but it's worth it to spend. It is so worth it to spend a few hundred dollars to, you know, on top of it to get there if you need to. So the trick I have is that you could use united.com to find these. I'm not going to say it's easy.

It's not easy to find these. But start with Flight Connections to find the routes that they serve. Make sure that first class is available on that route. And then go to united.com and do an advanced search. Say you want a book with miles. Say you want nonstop only because you're going to be looking only at that specific route and click the button that says you have flexible dates. And that way, when you have flexible dates, oh, and one more thing, say you want first class. That combination will bring up a award calendar. And unfortunately, the word calendar will show you prices, not just for first, but for business class as well. So it's not a hundred percent. So

what you have to do is look for whenever there's a lower priced award on the calendar, click on it. And then down below the calendar, you'll see the specific flights. Sometimes those flights, maybe even often those flights will not actually be in ANA because sometimes United serves the same route or some other airline might serve the same route that is partners with United. But in my experience, it's always been United. That is the other one. But sometimes you'll be lucky and you'll actually find ANA first class. I just did this before the show, just looking LA to Japan to Tokyo. And I found a couple of dates like this month and next month that were available. And that's I first Google ANA list of destinations.

And the reason for that is it'll come up with a Wikipedia page and it'll show you all of the various cities that they serve. And what can be useful there is knowing, for instance, that they fly from both Haneda and Narita in Tokyo. So if you're only looking up one of those, now, United does a pretty good job, I think, of showing both. But it's worth knowing because they also serve some routes, I think, out of Osaka. And so you want to know which routes they serve because then you know which airports to search from. Because if you use flight connections, you can't just search Tokyo. You have to search Narita and you have to search Haneda separately to see where their non-stops are. And they do serve the United States from both of those airports.

So that's, I think, a good first step is figuring out which airports, which cities in general they serve. And then you can find the non-stops on those particular routes. But otherwise, good. Just to be clear, just, yep. Yeah. Just to be clear though, if you're in flight connections, if you don't click on an airport in Tokyo and you're just looking at the, if you filter to ANA and you're just looking at the map of all the routes, you could see where they land in the US.

Oh, look at that. And those are the airports to, to click on. And then you'll see whether they're going to Tokyo or somewhere else. And it's always, always, it's almost always going to be Tokyo. Yes. It'll be one of those two airports United. You could just say you want to fly to Tokyo in general and it'll, it'll pull up both. So that's good to know.

I did not realize that until now that you can search just an airline instead of having to put in an airport code first and flight connections. I've always put in an airport code first and then selected an airline. I didn't realize you could just select the airline. So boom.

Right. Okay. I learned something new. There you go. There you go. So there you go. Just ignore everything I said. Greg had it all right.

So there you go. So I think that's a good one. That's a particularly difficult one to find. And this is another good example of you got to be willing to fly from different gateways. If you want to enjoy that first class experience, it's not just transportation to you. And I think that's the case. If you're booking first class, it's not just because you want to get from A to B, it's because you want the first-class experience that you need to be willing to position to Houston or to Los Angeles or to Washington, D.C., wherever they have those available seats. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. If you want to get there as soon as you can,

then this is not the technique for you. Right. Right. If you have the flexibility and you've never done it before, I do highly recommend it. Do it one time as a special treat. It'll really blow you away what you'll get there. All right. Let's talk about next, I think, Singapore. So Singapore awards can be difficult to snag sometimes. And it's well known that Singapore releases more award space to its own members than to partners. And in fact, they very rarely, if ever, release business and first class space to partners. First class in particular, I think you can only book through Singapore. In business class, you usually can only book through Singapore, maybe Alaska in some cases. But nonetheless, it's somewhat difficult

to find. And they release space, I don't know, it kind of trickles out. So you'll see space kind of open up at different times. So one technique with Singapore, and I've used this before in the past, is taking advantage of the wait list. So here's what you got to do. You got to find a date that's got a flight that you are okay with. Okay, this is a good enough option that I could fly this. And once you've found that, and you're happy with the idea of booking that award, transfer the miles to Singapore in order to book that award, but don't book it yet. First, find all of the other routes that you would rather fly or the other flights that you would rather have first and waitlist those because often Singapore offers waitlist seats. Now it varies a little bit as to whether that's available at safer level or not on the waitlist. So there's a few ins and outs here, but the moral of the story

is that for example, years ago, I booked a route that was going to get me from A to B, but it wasn't my ideal routing. I wanted to fly the old Singapore suites and the route that I had picked didn't have the suites, but I wanted to try to get on a flight with the suites. And so I wait listed a whole bunch of options that included flights with the old Singapore suites. Now they have the new Singapore suites, but this was back in the day with the old Singapore suites. So I wait listed a whole bunch of different flights on different days around when I was planning on going home. And then I booked the flight I wanted. And the reason for that is you can only wait list. If you have enough miles in your account to pay for the flight. You can only get on the waitlist when you already have enough miles. So what you have to do is transfer those miles first, waitlist the stuff you want,

then you can use the miles. Once you've waitlisted the stuff you wanted, go ahead and book the flight that you found that's like the good enough option because you don't need to keep those miles in your account. You just need to have them initially to join the wait list. Then you can go ahead and use them to book what you want. And later on, call to change when you get a notification in your email saying, hey, those seats you waitlisted are now available. Then you can call in the agent. I'll be able to cancel your old flight and book your new flight with the miles. No problem. Okay. And so just to be clear, so then you have to pay, I think, the $50 per person or so to make the change? Yes, you do. You do. So you have to be prepared

to pay the Singapore change. Totally worth it though to get, if you could get an outstanding flight, which is exactly what you want it to be. Exactly. That'd be fantastic. What if the miles aren't the same between the two, your good enough one and the new one? So you have to have enough in your account to wait list for the one you really want. You do the new one. So you have to have enough in your account to wait list for the one you really want. You do. You do. So that'd be a tough situation because I wouldn't want to transfer over extra miles just to get on the wait list. I would be very hesitant to do that. So what about the reverse? Would you do the reverse? What if the good enough one costs more miles? And so if you switch to the

better one, you're going to have like orphan miles in your Singapore account that'll expire after three years. I mean, I guess that's better than, uh, like if you were willing to take that flight anyway, you were willing to part with the miles. So then I guess, yeah, I would probably do that because I was willing to part with the miles.. So if they expire, they expire, and hopefully they won't. So, yeah. Good answer, I think. Yeah. Okay.

Hopefully that's clear. All right. All right. Are we done with the impossible awards? Good enough. I think so. That's quite a few. It would be impossible to cover all impossible awards, so I think we should call it a night.

Okay. We're going to call it a day, a morning, depending on when you're listening to this. Right. It does depend. Okay. So then I think that's call it a night. Okay. We're going to call it a day, depending on morning, depending on when you're listening. Right. It does depend. Okay. So then I think that's going to bring us into, well,

so post-race, do you have a post-race Greg? Oh, I don't. I'm so unprepared today. Well, we're going to go into the question of the week then, because Rachel writes in with a question that we've gotten a bunch of

variations on before. And she said that she's wants to know how to get approved for Amex cards. Are there any pitfalls to watch for? Any tips or tricks? I'm at 324. Never applied to these cards before. Good credit score. My credit is currently frozen for security. I have a credit freeze. Does it matter for the initial screen that tells you if you qualify for the bonus? Is there a better device to apply on? Is there some other browser to use? Is it best to call or use visit a bank, which of course with Amex, you can't actually do. There is no bank. I don't think anyway. I continue to get the dreaded. You don't qualify for this

bonus, but I can't figure out why. So what's the trick, Greg? Well, so, okay. So, if the issue is that you can't get approved because you've actually filled out the full application and they denied you, that would surprise me. MX is so easy on approvals in general. This is a little different. She's talking about the pop-ups that say, you're not qualified for the welcome bonus for whatever reason. And we've drilled into that before. But there's two reasons why you might not be qualified. One is that you've had the same card before. And in that case, the pop-up will tell you that. So that's easy enough to know at least why that's happening. But the other one is the we we don't like you pop up. It's like, it doesn't tell you why you're not eligible.

And what we believe to be the case is that when people often sign up for Amex cards and cancel them without keeping some open and putting spend on them regularly, that Amex has some kind of algorithm that identifies, you know what, you're not a valuable customer to them because you're just basically collecting welcome bonuses and that's it. So they then flag you so that when you try to sign up for an Amex card, you might get that pop-up.

And might is a key word here because there are examples where, so my son, for example, any personal Amex card he's tried, he gets that pop-up. Any business card he's tried, he's gotten approved. Other people have reported it's even know personal cards that they might be approved for some without getting the pop-up and others get the pop-up so it's really unclear what causes what so there's a not to interrupt you but there's two components that i wanted to also dig into on this because you're right we have talked about this a couple times before but there are two components that i found a little unique here and one of them is that she has her credit frozen. Does that make a difference? If you have your credit frozen, will Amex not be able to do the soft pull that I assume

they do before they decide that you're not eligible for the bonus? Does that matter? Do you need to thaw your credit before you apply for an Amex card? I don't think Amex cares if you're an existing card holder, which I believe she is, that I think they use their own knowledge about you to decide whether to go forward. But you know what? I haven't tested, so I don't know that 100%. Yeah, I don't know that either. I mean, I make it a habit of always temporarily thawing before I either A, even go to apply for something,

not only credit cards, but bank accounts too, because banks will frequently do a soft pull. And I have found that I will not get approved for a checking account if I don't thaw my credit report first. So that's something that I would typically do because you can do a temporary thaw for just a day in most states anyway. And I believe in most states, it doesn't even cost anything anymore. It used to cost something in my state, but now I think it's

free in most states anyway, where you could just thaw it for a day before you go to apply, thaw it, and maybe that will help. I don't know, but I would do that before I went to apply. So that's number one. Number two, she asks, is there a better device to apply on or a better browser? Do you think that'll make a difference? That's an interesting question. I don't think it would make a difference to the pop-up problem. But we've definitely seen that different devices, different browsers, especially when using referral links, but this could be any links to credit to Amex cards, different browsers and devices will bring up sometimes different offers. And so sometimes there's this great offer that you can try like five different browsers before you finally find that great, you know, that much better offer.

And so I can't say that there's one particular one that that is better than the others, though. The trick is to keep if you have some reason to think there might be a better offer out there, just try it through a bunch of different browsers. So, I mean, I'll open it in like Chrome incognito mode. I'll open it in Firefox private mode. And what's the Microsoft one edge private mode and try it all those ways. Might even try on my phone on a couple of browsers. So then that begs the question, your son has gotten the pop-up. You said for a long time on personal cards cards has he tried different devices and different browsers does he get it consistently across everything is it just one uh he's definitely tried different browsers different private modes and all that that hasn't helped at all um have not tried on a cell phone or anything like that. So I doubt that that works, but at the same time, I don't know.

My guess is that that's all server side. You know, once they know who you are, they make the decision of pop up or not. And boom, that said, there's some anecdotal evidence that sometimes referral links result in a different outcome regarding pop-ups than other links. And either for the better or worse, I can't remember to be honest. So for example, maybe you get a pop-up when using a friend referral link, but then you go to the link that's directly on the Amex website and don't get the pop-up when using a friend referral link, but then you go to the link that's directly on the Amex website and don't get the pop-up. That's possible. So that's worth trying.

There you go. All right. So we've got a few different answers for you there. Generally speaking, we don't know because nobody really seems to know how to avoid the pop-up. The best piece of anecdotal evidence that seems to be the case is putting spend on your existing Amex cards is your best shot at getting out of pop-up prison, but not a guarantee. So if you do have other Amex cards, it's worth putting some spend on them, but it's not necessarily going to make a difference. So don't put all of your spend forever on them and assume that it's definitely going to get rid of the pop-up because it doesn't always, but sometimes it does. So that's worth trying.

And then, yeah, I would probably, if you're getting the pop-up, because you get the pop-up before you get to the point where you submit the application anyway, right? So why wouldn't you try multiple devices? I mean, I would try a different device. I would try a network somewhere else. I'd go to somebody else's house and try their Wi-Fi and just see what happens. I mean, it does seem worth it, but keep in mind there are cases too, where it might make sense to apply despite the pop-up. The pop-up saying you're not going to get the welcome bonus. One example I have is, so my son has been interested in getting the Hilton Aspire card,

but he gets the pop-up. Well, he gets the pop-up if he tries to get the Hilton No Fee card as well. But what he could do is go ahead and get that Hilton No Fee card and then wait and hope for an upgrade bonus to the Surpass or to the Aspire and get points that way. So you're not necessarily shut out of bonuses altogether if you get these pop-ups. Good point. Good point. All right. Well, my friends, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about, you'd like to get posts in your email inbox each day or each week about this kind of stuff. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can follow us on all the various social media and join our Frequent Miler Insiders

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