Frequent Miler on the Air - Gems from our Giant Mailbag | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep347 | 2-27-26

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

In today's podcast episode, we'll talk about stacking dining credits, give a caution aboutgifting Marriott free night certificates, and will resurrect expired Southwest credits.Crazy Thing(00:57) - Southwest shows different seatmap availability to different passengersRead more about Nick's experience with Southwest's assigned seating hereAwards, Points, and More(04:10) - Alaska Vacations adds discounts, VIP perks for elite membersRead more about this here(07:05) - “Free” Norwegian cruise for Caesars Diamond Elite membersRead more about this here(10:26) - Recent breaking news... Hyatt devaluationFind out more about the Hyatt devaluation here(14:43) - Wyndham Rewards added as new Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partnerRead more about this here(16:17) - Bilt has launched a transfer bonusRead more about this here[28:03:23 ad]Main Event: Gems from our Giant Mailbag(28:05) - Bridget says: DEN is an airport that has the security reservation program (DEN Reserve)...(29:44) - Chaim says: For Resy and Sapphire Reserve® Exclusive Tables credits you can buy gift cards online for lots of restaurants that trigger the credit. Therefore, you can bank up multiple hundreds of dollars, and then when it works with your plans, you can splurge on an amazing dinner or two...(32:47) - Mark says: I just finished listening to the January 2 podcast. With regards to your answer for the question of the week about which cards you keep in your digital wallet, I recently discovered something about Apple wallet specifically that might be of use, at least to Greg since he is the only one of you using Apple...You can catch that episode here(36:16) - Nathan says: I just listened to episode 343 and wanted to share a data point regarding the $500 Gift of College gift cards...You can catch episode 343 here(39:29) - Mike says: If you look up IHG Destined One Night On Us, there's no result directly from IHG, but multiple hotel booking agents' websites reference a stay x nights get 1 night free promotion for participating hotels. For example: https://bonvivant.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Q3-IHG-Destined-Stay-Pay-Promo-HFP.pdf(44:42) - Panayot says: Convert expired SWA credit to a LUV voucher...(48:51) - Tracy says: I have a data point relevant to your episode on gifting points and miles...Catch that episode here(52:19) - Melissa says: Thanks so much for the article on the pitfalls and warnings booking via I Prefer hotels...Hear some of the pitfalls of booking via iPrefer here and read more about using Citi points for I Prefer here(53:44) - Amalan says: Just sharing a couple of good data points from a quick weekend trip to Chicago...(55:27) - Jefferson says: Thanks to the FM team!Question of the Week(57:33) - Is there a formal appeal or consideration process when Citi declines for high amount of unused credit?Find out more about Citi application tips hereSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyscape.com. On today's episode, we've got some great reader and listener tips, like how to stack your dining credits, though we'll add a caution there, how to gift free night certificates from Marriott, and how to resurrect expired Southwest credits. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, gems from our giant mailbag.

This week we're going to be going through our giant mailbag and digging out treasures that we found, which were things people had written into us with all kinds of different tips that we found really useful, interesting, helpful, and we think you will too. Yeah, and remember, if you'd like to jump ahead to something or come back to it later on, we'll have some timestamps in the show notes probably to go with some of these topics, so you can always look there for that. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this video. Give us a thumbs up, leave a comment.

We always appreciate hearing your feedback and, you know, receiving your reviews on the podcast platform. So thank you very much for that. All right. So let's kick things off with what crazy thing? What crazy thing has Southwest Airlines done this week? You're going to have to tell us, Nick, because it was all, yeah. Oh, man. You know, so I ran into some really frustrating stuff with Southwest this week.

So our flights were impacted by the snowstorms, the blizzards this week. And so I was kind of scrambling to replant everything. and unfortunately, it was super confusing. I had my family of four under four different confirmation numbers, and the story as to why is probably another interesting story for another day. But we were all under separate reservations, and what made that super annoying is that I was trying to still select seats together, but each passenger was seeing slightly different seat map availability.

And I don't know why. I'm not sure why that is. but my eight-year-old son had a seat selected on the aisle with an empty seat next to him. So I just wanted to pick the seat next to him. And that seat didn't show up as available for me under my PNR or under my wife's or my five-year-old sons. None of us could see the seat next to my eight-year-old empty. And then what was additionally weird is that he had other seats that showed up available that I didn't see. And then my wife and five-year-old saw a seat that I didn't see.

It was so weird that we were seeing different seat maps for the same exact flight. We were all on the same flight. And my wife and I both have like the premium Southwest credit cards. She's got the consumer card, the priority card, and I have the Southwest Performance Business card. They both have the same seating benefits. And it's not like we were seeing extra legroom seating and my, you know, eight-year-old wasn't or something.

My eight-year-old was seeing just, there were, I guess, maybe seats towards the front of the plane. So they weren't the standard. They were the preferred. But all of us should have had access to. to preferred seats. And I don't understand why we weren't seeing the same stuff. It was so weird.

That's pretty crazy stuff. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, seat assignments are brand new to Southwest, so it doesn't surprise me that things would go awry. But it's kind of surprising in this example, because you almost have to try really hard to make something like that happen. Yeah, yeah.

I don't understand it at all. If you saw the screenshots, you'd be like, how is that even possible on the same flight? And in fact, when I booked the last passenger, it was like inventory was going in and out and added him as a companion. And it showed no seats available at all to select as I was booking him. I checked him in a few minutes later. And there were a handful of seats that were available for him to select. But again, other passengers on the same flight, we couldn't see them.

So yeah, it's so weird. But I guess that's something worth being aware of. I don't anticipate that would have been as much of a problem if he was on the same reservation number, or the same confirmation code as somebody else. It's just because he's a companion. And the way Southwest handles companion pass, people, they end up under a separate PNR. And so that's kind of an annoyance with this whole seat selection thing,

if that keeps up. Hopefully it won't. But if it does, then that would certainly come into play to annoy me here and there. For sure. All right. Next up, we've got awards points and more. For awards points and more,

our first piece here is that Alaska Vacations, which is the vacation booking, platform for Alaska Airlines has added some discounts and VIP perks for elite members. So if you have Alaska elite status and you book through Alaska vacations, not only will you earn some Alaska miles and some credit towards elite status, but you might qualify for some discounts and some VIP perks, like food and beverage credits, free breakfast, and that sort of thing. It's interesting because I have low-level Alaska silver status and Tim has titanium status, and there was definitely a difference in pricing on the small handful of example properties that we both looked at. He was getting much

better pricing than I was for the same properties. So having high level Alaska elite status was meaningful in that way. However, when I went to compare against other things, I was less impressed because I also have some status with Expedia. And it occurred to me to check what pricing I was seeing through Expedia because Expedia powers the Alaska Vacations booking platform. Now, Alaska, or I'm sorry, Expedia status rather, just requires booking a certain number of trip elements through Expedia. Expedia and Priceline both have elite programs. And it's the sort of thing like each hotel night you book is one trip element and each car rental day is a trip element. So if you just book some car rentals, for instance, through those platforms, which is typically what I've done,

then you'll end up with elite status with them relatively easily. So with the first level of Expedia elite status, I actually had access to better pricing. than I did with the first level of Alaska elite status for the same places. So better deal there. Better than, better than like low level Alaska status, but not as good as high level Alaska status. Is that right? I believe you have to check the post, but I believe it was also better than Tim's titanium status, if I remember correctly. But I also had status with priceline, a slightly higher level of status with price line.

Their gold status, which is their second highest tier. And the pricing with that was significantly better. than any of the other options. So it was surprisingly better, in fact, than what I saw with, either with my Alaska status or Tim's status or my Expedia status. So it appears that it might be worth checking those things. And I was kind of surprised by that because I didn't really think there was much value in having priceline or Expedia elite status. But it seems that there might be. Now, I say there might be because we checked a few properties. And, you know, out of all of the hotels in the world. I can't say with any kind of blanket confidence that you'll find that pattern

to hold true all the time. More important to me was to recognize that it isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be if you're seeing a discount as an Alaska elite member. You still ought to shop around. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a great tip. All right. Next up is Norwegian and Caesar's rewards have a new partnership or maybe an existing partnership that expanded some. So now Caesar's Diamond Elite members can get a complimentary Norwegian cruise lines cruise. Also, of course, these are seven star members, which is the next tier up from that, can get a free Norwegian cruise as well. I say free, you're going to pay port taxes. And Norwegian, I think, charges a small administrative fee of something like $20 a person a day to book even a

complimentary cruise offer. So you will pay something. So this is a decent little addition for Caesar's Diamond elites, but don't get too excited because you don't want to confuse you. use the Caesar's Diamond Elite with Caesar's Diamond, which are different things. So Caesar's Diamond status requires 15,000 tier credits. It has been possible to match from Wyndham Diamond to Caesar's Diamond, but no longer if you're a Wyndham business earner credit card holder, you need to actually have gotten your Wyndham status from Wyndham, like from Wyndham stays, for instance. Then you can match over to Caesar's Diamond. But that's not the same thing as Diamond Elite. Caesar's Diamond requires 15,000 tier credits. Then that's

there's another level up called Diamond Plus that requires 25,000 tier credits. And then Diamond Elite requires 75,000 tier credits. So it's a significant difference from Sears Diamond's Deges. All right. I'm lodging a formal complaint here. If you're going to have an elite program, you cannot differentiate a level of your elite program by adding the word elite. That's just criminally mean, evil. I mean, come on.

Like, imagine if Marriott had done that, right? Because they call platinum, platinum elite, right? But what if they had platinum and platinum elite for their elite status? Although it would drive people nuts. This drives me nuts. Yeah. It makes no sense. No, I totally agree because I actually knew that Caesar's had more than one diamond tier.

So I happened to recognize right away that this wasn't the same thing as diamond. However, I thought that Diamond Elite was what they call Diamond Plus. I didn't realize that. I forgot that there were three tiers of diamond. I knew that there were two. And so I thought, oh, well, maybe I can get that because if you get the credit card and you do the spend, but you can get pretty close to Diamond Plus. And that's what I assumed this was when I first saw it.

So I got a little excited. And then I realized, oh, no, this is another level beyond Diamond Plus. There must be another word you can use, Cesar's. Come on. You would think. You would think. Cesar's, come on. Go with the program here and create different tier names because it is super confusing.

So in fairness, that has worked out well for matching in some scenarios where people have been able to match to higher levels than expected because someone saw the diamond card and didn't put together that it wasn't really diamond plus or diamond elite or whatever. So maybe you get lucky here and there. But overall, yeah, it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea. And you're going to need to be a significant, a person who is significantly invested in the Caesar's rewards program, whether that's because you spent a lot of money at Caesar's

properties or you gamble a lot or you do a lot of advantage gambling. whatever the case may be, you're going to need to earn a lot of tier credits to get that. So it's not a carrot that's going to be of consequence for most listeners. Still, for some, it should be good. All right, this just in. I am on vacation. And so we recorded most of the show early in the week. And then I took off without my podcast equipment or anything, not thinking that there'd be big news this week,

that Nick felt was important to present for this show. So now Nick is going to jump in and present the news that he thought, you shouldn't mess just because Greg is away on vacation. Well, it's a good thing Greg had the foresight to add this segment because sure enough, we ended up with a bunch of big news this week that's come out between the time we recorded this and now and with Greg on vacation. I'm going to tell you all about all the news that's fit to print. So first up, of course, we have,

what is shaping up to be a pretty major devaluation from World of Hyatt. Now, they're claiming it's not a devaluation, but it's hard to see it as anything but because in May of 2026, they are launching a brand new award chart. And these changes were so massive that Tim and I actually recorded a separate breaking news podcast just a couple of days ago. So if you really want the full details and a little more analysis, just check back through our last podcast episode before this one, which was a special breaking news edition with Tim and I. But to give you a quick summary of the changes, World of Hyatt for the last

several years has had an award chart with eight categories and three pricing bands within each category, off-peak, standard, and peak. However, starting in May of 2026, that award chart is getting significantly more complicated. It'll still have eight categories, but within each category, there will be five subcategories. Lowest, low, moderate, upper, and top will all be different numbers of points. So the number of points that a hotel will cost you within a single category could vary by as much as 100%. You paid more than that, actually, more than double from the low end to the top end in some of the categories. All of them are at least double from lowest to top. And the increases are really significant. I mean, we're talking about peak pricing increasing by like 67%. And moderate

pricing across the board increasing by 20 to 37 and a half percent from the standard pricing of today. So this is definitely a huge change. Now, Hyatt says that they'll maintain similar value as to what they have today and that this new chart is about creating a chart that can live on for years to come and reduce the need for category changes year over year. I have a little bit of skepticism about that as I think many other people do. So you can hear Tim and I talk more about that on that breaking news podcast that we titled, Hyatt takes us to the Heartbreak Hotel. And so you can hear more analysis. There were a few positive changes that came out of the announcements this week, too, or a few positive tidbits, not even really changes necessarily. But Hyatt is going to make points

transfers between members possible to do online at some point this year. That's a big improvement over the old paper process that for a long time required faxing a paper in. And now I think you can email it in. But still, it's not instant. and it's a slow antiquated process, really. So they're kind of modernizing that by making it digital, though we don't know if it'll be instant yet. And the other sort of positive news is that members who have explorist or globalist status or who hold a high credit card are going to get access to a booking window for hotels

that is one month further out than other folks. So you're going to get one additional month to book awards, which theoretically might make it a little easier to snag awards at high. demand properties. But as you'll hear Tim point out on that podcast episode that we recorded, he's a little skeptical because there probably aren't all that many people who are looking to book 13 or 14 months out or whatever who don't have either explorist or globalist or a Hyatt credit card. So you're probably not competing with a ton of, or really not getting an advantage over very many people who you're already competing with for awards today. So maybe not a huge benefit in the long run.

And we'll see, and we'll see what this new pricing scheme means. Again, listen to the other podcast episode for some more information on that. Next up, Chase has launched a new transfer partner. Chase Ultimate Rewards can now be transferred to Wyndham rewards one to one. And, you know, in light of a big hotel devaluation from Hyatt, you might think, oh, well, great. Chase has added a new hotel transfer partner, so at least that gives me another option for lodging. But truthfully, this is not much of an ad. Windham pretty regularly now offers their points on sale for less than a penny per point.

We've seen them offering points for about seven tenths of a cent per point. So they sell them for less than a penny a point often. If you really wanted Wyndham points and you really wanted to use your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to buy them, you'd probably be better off just cashing out your points at one cent per point and then buying Wyndham points with them. you know, for every $100, you'd come out with more than 100 Wyndham points since they're only charging seven-tenths of a cent. So you'd take 10,000 points instead of transferring them to Wyndham to end up with 10,000 windom points. You could use $70 of that to buy the Wyndham points that you

want and have $30 left over, buy some more points. So the short version of the story here is that it probably won't make sense to transfer to Wyndham in most cases. Maybe if you just need to top off a thousand points or 2,000 points for a redemption and they don't happen to be on sale at that time, maybe, but this isn't a terribly useful addition for Chase Ultimate Rewards and certainly doesn't make up for the big hit that World of Hyatt looks like it'll be taking in the long run. Next up, Built has unlaunched an incredible transfer bonus. So this is a rent day transfer bonus. You'll need to be able to take advantage of this shortly after this podcast publishes because it'll only be available on March 1st of 2026. But on March 1st of 2026, Built is launching a transfer bonus to

Japan Airlines mileage bank. And this can be a phenomenal deal. So there are only two programs that, as of the time of recording, transfer to Japan Airlines mileage bank. It's built at one to one, and capital one at less than one to one. Instead of one to one, you'll actually transfer to capital one miles to get one and a half Japan Airlines miles. They do run transfer bonuses, though. At the time we're recording this, I think there's still one in effect. But even with the transfer bonus, it's actually a little less than one to one. Built, however, is going to be offering a transfer bonus of 25% to 125%. And that's starting at a better transfer ratio than Capital One has. So members with no status, they call Blue status, we'll get a 25% transfer bonus to Japan Airlines, meaning,

that for every one built point you transfer, you're going to get 1.25 miles with Japan Airlines miles. Keep in mind, if you have blue status, the minimum transfer is 2,000 built points. Those with silver status are going to get a slightly better transfer bonus of 50%. Gold status will get 75% transfer bonus. Platinum status gets 100% transfer bonus. And whichever level you're at,

you can redeem $135 worth of built cash to boost your transfer bonus by an additional 25%. So that'll bump you up one level. So for instance, if you've got no status with built, but you have built cash, if you have $135 worth of built cash, you could buy your way up to silver status and get a 50% transfer bonus,

one and a half miles for every one built point you transfer. And those who are at top tier, platinum status, will bump up from 100% to 125%, getting 2.25 Japan Airlines miles for every one built point to transfer it over. And this can be an absolutely phenomenal deal, particularly for those folks out there who've got a fair chunk of built points, whether because you've been earning them for a long time, or maybe the Racketon payment just hit a couple of weeks ago. So maybe you earned points from your online shopping and whatnot. And so being able to take advantage of a big transfer bonus to Japan

airlines can be just a fantastic deal. To give you some examples of awards that you might be interested in booking, of course, you've got business class to Japan for. from the United States, the sort of savory level awards are 55,000 miles one way in business class. And even at the non-savory level, you sometimes see a fair amount of awards base at 80,000 miles each way per passenger in business class, which, again, for those really long flights, even at 80,000, it's a steel, particularly if you've got like either built gold status, you buy up to platinum for 100%, or you have platinum for 100%, then you're talking about 40,000, built points buying a one-way business class ticket to Tokyo, even when those savory-type

tickets aren't available. I mean, if you can get one of those 55,000-mile tickets, wow. Then some other great uses potentially. You got Air France business class to Europe with no surcharges for 60,000 miles one way. So again, depending on your level of built status, you might be looking at only having to transfer like 30,000 or 30,000 miles rather for a business class ticket to Europe. Also, speaking of Europe, you can fly Emirates business class round trip JFK to Milan on the A380 in business class is I think 85,000 Japan Airlines miles. One way is a little bit more. I think 62 in change, if I remember correctly. Or maybe 60, I can't remember the exact figure, but it's somewhere around there.

So close to the Air France business class price, if you want to book a one way, if you can book a round trip though for 85K and you're able to take advantage of this transfer bonus. I mean, that's just a phenomenal value. And really, it illustrates the value of using built cash to buy up in these transfer bonuses. And it really depends whether or not that's valuable really depends on how many built points you have. If you don't have very many built points, then spending $135 worth of built cash to buy up to another level of status won't make a lot of sense. But let's put some numbers on it. Let's say you had 100,000 points to keep the math easy.

You got 100,000 points with built. and you got gold status. So maybe you recently opened the palladium card. You met the spending requirement. You've got gold status. And somehow now you have already 100,000 bill points. Maybe had some already got some from rackettin, et cetera. So you got 100,000 points and you got gold status. So with a 75% transfer bonus, you would end up with 175,000 Japan Airlines miles. I mean, that's like getting an additional business class ticket to Tokyo essentially or Europe out of the transfer bonus already. Then if you used the $135 worth of built cash in order to bump your transfer bonus up, another 25% to the 100% transfer bonus level, you'd get an additional 25,000 Japan Airlines

miles. You'd end up with 200,000 Japan Airlines miles. So at a level like that, you're redeeming $135 worth of built funny money. I mean, these built bucks, we've covered plenty of times before are essentially coupons that aren't worth anywhere near the face value of built cash. yet you can trade $135 worth of it for, in that example, an additional 25,000 Japan Airlines miles. I mean, that is, again, a pretty terrific deal. I mean, if you were looking at it in terms of dollars and cents, if that was $135 worth of real cash, which you can't use in this case, you'd be paying just over a half a penny per mile to buy those miles.

And we're using built cash that's worth far less than actual cash value. So this is really like, trading away funny money for a great deal in terms of additional points if you have a healthy balance of built points. Now, how good of a deal that is depends on how many bill points you have. If you have 50,000 built points, still might not be bad. You're essentially trading your bill points one cent per point for Japan Airlines miles. If you got way more, maybe you got a really big, a couple of really big racketing payments lately and you're earned the welcome bonus on the palladium. Maybe you got a big housing, I don't know, whatever it might be that you've been able to stack up some built points with, if you got a lot of them, this really can become a phenomenal,

phenomenal deal. So I think that that makes this kind of exciting and interesting. Now, if you don't have a near-term use for Japan Airlines Males, if you're not confident you're going to use them, then there are some caveats here. And in fact, there's just some general caveats. First of all, we generally don't recommend making speculative transfers. Built transfer bonuses are, tend to be the exception to that because they're so big that they provide one of the rare opportunities to get hugely outsized value to the point where it might make sense speculatively. However, if you do that speculatively here, one of the big problems you're going to have is that Japan Airlines miles have a hard three year expiration. So if you don't use those

in the next 36 months, you're going to lose all of them. And then you'll have gotten no value at all out of your bill points, and that'll be a terrible deal. So if you're not highly confident that you'll use them. If you don't know that you'll prioritize using these, even if it means planning a different trip than what you originally had in mind, then you might think twice about making any sort of a speculative transfer because that hard cutoff is a tough one. Unlike other programs, you can't just transfer in more and kind of renew the miles and keep them alive. You've got to use them or lose them within three years. So that's the first thing to be aware of here. Second thing to be aware of with Japan Airlines miles is that you can only redeem for people within your

sort of immediate-ish family, officially anyway. They have policies about who you can redeem miles for. So at least theoretically, you're not allowed to redeem miles, not even theoretically, you're not allowed to redeem miles for perhaps a friend, for instance, or a colleague. Now, I'm not aware of Japan Airlines requiring documentation, but if they did, then you could end up without a ticket. And who knows, for a vice. violating program terms, you could end up getting all your miles taken away. So it's probably not worth the risk. So I would only be taking advantage of this with it in mind to redeem the miles for my own family and friends to travel, or not my family and friends, rather, for my own family to travel

with me, not friends. So that's a big caveat with Japan Airlines miles. No, Japan Airlines, I think, does have surcharges on their own tickets. So you're going to want to check out what those are because I think that does tend to vary. But no surcharges, like I said, on Air France, KLM, flying. Blue way less on Emirates flights than Japan Airlines or rather than Emirates charges directly. Be aware that the partnership with JetBlue is ending. So you're not going to be able to probably take advantage of this with JetBlue. If you'd read what we'd written about that partnership last year, kind of throw that out the window. And then finally, the last thing, which is really key also is that there's a restriction on redeeming miles within X number

of days from the time when your Japan Airlines account is created. So if you don't yet have a Japan Airlines account, once you create it, you're going to have to wait, I believe it's at least seven days in order to be able to redeem miles out of it. And so that's a bit of a challenge here, because I just said that we often recommend against transferring speculatively, and I gave you the reasons why you might not want to do that here. So I'm insinuating then that you would only want to transfer if you have like an immediate redemption in mind. However, you're not going to be able to make an immediate redemption if your Japan Airlines account is brand new. So if you're listening to this and it's before March 1st and you're interested in taking advantage of this, create a Japan Airlines

account right now in order to reduce the amount of time you have to wait after you transfer over points from built before you can actually redeem them. So what that means is you might see great availability today for the award that you have in mind, but a week from now when you're able to redeem points, we don't know whether that award will still be there or not. I mean, there are some people out there who have seasoned Japan Airlines accounts. I've had an account with Japan Airlines for years. So if I were taking advantage of this, I would be able to book an award right away. So there is a real risk that an award you're seeing today may not still be available when you go to redeem for it when you're eligible after the seven days. So that's a risk to keep in mind.

Again, it's going to depend on how flexible you are. In my situation, we have a lot of flexibility about when we travel and how we plan trips. So that wouldn't necessarily determine because I'd say, know what, even if I can't use it for that trip, we'll just plan a trip to Japan or we'll plan a trip to Europe around using these miles or, you know, I'll plan something around using them. And so it wouldn't matter as much to me. But, you know, in a previous life, I worked a job where I had to bid my vacation time a year in advance. And so there was no flexibility about when I would travel for a trip like that. And so if I were in that situation again, then it would be much harder to consider making a speculative transfer or transferring without being able to redeem for a week. So,

you'll have to consider all of that, but all that said, I think there's some great opportunities there. So that's all of our news that's fit to print for this week that didn't come in in time to make the episode. So that hopefully brings you up to speed. You can check the show notes for links to post with more information about everything that I've just talked about. All right, we'll be right back after this with this week's main event. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Myler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? frequent miler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs and many

other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back. Today's main event, gems from the giant mailbag. We have a lot of gems that we've dug out of our giant mail. mailbag and we're going to present today. We're going to alternate reading the giant mailbag entries and we'll discuss each one briefly. First up is from Bridget. Bridget wrote in saying, Denver is an airport that has the security reservation program called Den Reserve. I've used this program in Phoenix and Orlando and have had wonderful experiences. So I've gotten in the habit of checking after arrival to the airport at the beginning of my trip, if they have the program,

and then going ahead and booking a spot for departure, if they do. You do not need pre-check or clear for this program, and it's great for those of us who don't have either yet. Reserving a spot meant that we were through security in under 10 minutes, even with it being a Monday holiday afternoon. So I thought that was a great tip. I knew that some airports had this, but I've only used it at JFK and really hadn't thought much about it otherwise.

Yeah, we recently flew. I can't even remember where from, but we flew from an airport that I recognized had this, but by the time I looked into it, it was too late, and it wasn't able to actually take advantage of it and do it. But it was something that was popped into mind that day. So this is a good tip to check for, obviously, if you live at an airport with it, you probably know it exists. But if you live at an airport that doesn't have this, it's worth maybe giving it to Google before your trip to see what you have to do in order to reserve a spot, because it does seem like a lot of people report that it saves them a good amount of time when they're able to take advantage of it. Yep, yep. All right. Next up, I'm going to have Greg pronounce the name. The next entry is from Haim. Okay. It's no, wait, hold on.

I need a drink of water. Hold on. I'll get this. There you go. I knew Greg could do that one. I knew I would not pronounce it well. So I can hear it in my head, but I knew I wouldn't pronounce it well. So thank you for your help with that.

Yes. So they write in and say that for Rezi and Sapphire tables credits, you can buy gift cards online for lots of restaurants to trigger the credit. Therefore, you can bank up multiple hundreds of dollars, and then when it works with your plans, you can splurge on an amazing dinner or two. I currently have a staycation plan for next year when I found standard award availability at the Waldorf, New York City, and I'm going to stay there and ball out with a $450 gift card that I have to a nice steakhouse.

Then also, I have the next night booked at the park Hyatt, and I'm going to do another nice dinner with another gift card I'm building up to a different restaurant. This is not only a way better way to use the credit, it also allows you the flexibility to use it when it works for you and even a year or two later. So this is a great tip. I like the tip a lot. And it's a tip in fact that I've used myself in buying a creditor to this way. But I want to add a caution there. Just last month, I was in a city that had a couple of different restaurant options.

And so we looked at a few and I ended up picking one and ate there. and then a couple weeks later we were in the same area, and I went looking and I didn't see one of the restaurants that I knew had just been there, not long before. And so I gave it to Google and sure not found out that after 15 months in business, that restaurant had suddenly and unexpectedly closed his doors. And I felt very lucky that I hadn't bought a gift card

for that particular place, because I would not have been happy if that had happened. So I want to caution here that, you know, obviously I think if you're buying a gift card to a place in New York, you probably can find plenty of places that have been open for 50 years and aren't going to close any time soon. However, on the flip side, you do need to be aware there is some risk. I wouldn't probably recommend buying one for a place you expect to eat at two years from now just because you don't know what's going to happen in the next two years.

I'd want to look for something a little bit closer in. Nonetheless, I did do this for a trip for the second half of this year where I used my credits at the end of December to buy a gift card for a particular place where I figured hopefully it'll still be open. when my trip comes around and we'll be able to use the gift card. And what I thought the caution was going to be is also that this isn't guaranteed to always work everywhere. Some restaurants use like weird third party sites for selling their gift cards and those might not necessarily trigger the credit.

Usually, I believe, Toastab, if it goes to that, it will usually trigger the credit. but if it goes off to some custom other thing, I'd be very cautious. Maybe buy like a $10 gift card if you're feeling lucky and see what happens before you go all in. Good safety tip there. All right. Next up, we have mail from Mark, who he wrote in saying, I just finished listening to the January 2nd podcast. With regards to your answer for the question of the week about which cards you keep in your digital wallet, I recently discovered something about Apple Wallet, specifically that might be of use, at least to Greg,

since he is the only one of you using Apple. If you tap and hold on a card in the wallet, you can move that card up or down within the credit card portion. That makes organizing your cards easy. For example, I currently have 31 cards in my Apple Wallet. I have them arranged by card issuer. All Amex cards are together, all Chase cards are together, etc. Another caveat is, whichever card you move to the bottom of the credit card section will be

the card that comes up automatically when you double-click your right-side button. Hope this helps. Yeah, I think that's a really useful tip and something. I had actually discovered before Mark wrote in, but it was something I don't think I knew when we discussed it on the show. And so it's great to share that for everyone else who doesn't necessarily know that you can move things around. And you know what?

I did not know that moving it to the bottom. makes the default card for the double click. I always go into my settings to set my default card. So that's a good tip too. Yeah, you know, this is interesting because I haven't tried this at all. And no, it does not appear to work on Google Pay for those who are curious about that. I, you know, I don't often go in and sift through the cards. I usually just use the card that's on by default just by tapping my phone. So I'm rarely actually looking at the cards in the wallet, only on rare occasion. But yeah, it doesn't. appear that there's any way to accomplish that on Google pay, but that's a miss. I'll have to

add that as a bit of feedback somewhere if I can figure out where to do that in Google Wallet, because it would be nice to be able to organize them as you like. Yeah, for sure, especially as we get more and more cards and try to load them into the digital wallet. It becomes more and more important. And in that particular episode, he's referring to as talking about how I'm now using two or multiple custom cash cards for my grocery. purchases so that I get 5x, but I have to make sure not to spend more than $500 on one of those cards in any given billing cycle. And so I said the way I would do it is have one on my phone and one on my Apple watch. And that way it would be like easy to remember, you know,

I could switch back and forth. But another way I could do it is to just like, you know, once I've used one, move it pretty far down in my list. And then once I've used it. And then once I've the next one, move, you know, move the other one back up kind of as a way of alternating. I think if I just alternate between two, and I'm not at any risk of going over $500. I don't tend to spend that much at grocery stores in any given billing cycle. See, now the length of that explanation explains exactly why I have no interest in doing the custom cash thing, because I don't want to have to like, do I move to the bottom or do I move it here, where do I put it? Because I can't figure out which one I don't want to have to figure out which

one I've used and keep track of it. So I don't know. But I think it could be easy if you're just going in for a single purchase, I guess, on each card. I could certainly see where it would be a good strategy. I'm just kind of kidding there a little bit. But it is kind of tough if you got a bunch of them on there. I imagine it could get hard. All right. Nathan writes in and says, I just listened to episode 343 and wanted to share a data point regarding the $500 gift of college gift cards. I was just getting into the points of miles game last year and was exploring my local gas stations for useful gift cards when I stumbled across the $500 gift of college gift cards at my local Fast Track. Sure enough, I was able to pay with a credit card, and since that discovery, I've earned hundreds of thousands of points in large part through

these gift cards. I used them to fund my kids 529s and also to pay down my student loans. So Fast Track is another gas station brand, and I was not aware that Fast Track carried gift of college cards. So that's a great little tip. Yeah, it really is. You know, for those who might not have listened to that episode, gift of college cards let you, you can buy them sometimes with a credit card. And it's like buying money that goes towards a 529 account or to pay a student loan. And so you can earn credit card rewards when the stores let you pay.

And when they're sold at a place like a gas station, if you have a card like the strategy, If you have a card like the Strata Premier that gets 3X at gas stations, you can earn 3X when buying them. So that's awesome. You know, Nathan also went on to list that there's a number of affiliates that Fast Track has that might also offer these, but he, of course, hasn't checked them all out. There's like certified oil in Columbus, Ohio, Fast Track in Rochester, Quick Shop, Loafend Jug, Mini Mart, Quick Stop, Sprint Foods, Tom Thumb, and Turkey Hill.

So if you're near any of those, it might be worth just checking out to see if they have Gift of College gift cards and whether they let you buy them with a credit card and load up up to $500 at once, because that's what you want to do in order to minimize the fee as a percentage of the overall total. Yeah, and another good piece to come out of this is that, so he also mentions that he discovered that Fast Track is an affiliate of Cumberland Farms. And we knew that Cumberland Farms carried these cards before. So I just didn't realize that Cumberland Farms and Fast Track were affiliated together. But that's a really important tip, I think, or a useful tip. Because,

for instance, last year at some point, it was reported and discovered that gift of college cards were available for sale at Stop and Shop grocery stores. And when I googled that and took a look at the Wikipedia, I realized, oh, stop and shop is owned by the same company that owns Hannaford, which is another grocery chain that exists in the Northeast. And in fact, in my case, is close to me. And I thought, well, stop and shop is carrying. Maybe Hanford carries them too. And sure enough, they do.

So that's not something that's going to show up probably on the Gift of College website because Gift of College probably has the agreement with whoever stop and shop is and doesn't even know that that it's also, that inventory is also getting shipped to other affiliates within the network. So that's why I think probably you may see a number of scenarios like that. at where they're available at stores that we didn't realize they were at just because they are kind of under the same umbrella company. So it's worth taking a look around. I don't know. I have a habit of always kind of looking at the gift card rack when I walk past it wherever I am just to

see what's available. So I think it's kind of worth taking a look if you're looking for something like that. Absolutely. All right. Next up, Mike has his new built palladium card. And he was surprised that he found some good rates when looking for hotels. And it's a very specific situation that he uncovered, which I found very interesting. Mike wrote, when trying to use the built palladium hotel credit, so the built palladium card, by the way, has a, was it two, $200, am I remembering this right? Yep. Two, $200 hotel credits you can, you get each year. And when using each one, you could use up to $100 in Bilt cash as well towards a hotel of two nights days or more. Okay, so he said when trying to use the Bilt Peladium Hotel Credit,

I found something interesting in the Bilt Travel Portal that I haven't seen anyone talk about. Some IHG hotels for Home Away from Home Bookings. All right, I need another aside here. Built has their own sort of fine hotels and resorts type of thing. That's called Home Away from Home. and when you book through those, you get like extra benefits, just like fine hotels and resorts, but you also like fine hotels and resorts. It's supposed to book sort of directly with a hotel so that you get, you can earn hotel points

and things when you put in your IHG number on this, on IHD's days anyway. So he said these IHG home away from home bookings were pricing lower than their direct booking best available. rates, but only for longer stays. For example, the Kempton-Fitzroy London from March 2nd to March 5th is $549 per night, but make it March 2nd to March 6, it's $412 per night. Search the same dates on the IHD website, and March 2nd to March 6 is $569 per night and $552 for members. I scrolled down on the built home away from home listing and expanded terms and conditions to find this. IHG one night on us, destined benefits apply. Commissionable one queen room, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we found that there's something called one night on us destined benefits. If you look up IHG Destin One Night on Us,

there's no result directly from IHG. But multiple hotel booking agents websites reference a stay X nights get one night free promotion for participating hotels. The Hotel Kempton Fitzroy is one of those that he found in a list of participating hotels for stay for pay three. This seems interesting because built partners with virtuoso for those bookings, not IHG Destined. This seems interesting because built partners with virtuoso for these bookings, not IHD Destined, yet they seem to be honoring an IHG Destin promotion. through the Built portal without having to go through a travel agent.

The participating hotels are by no means cheap, even with the offer, but they're cheaper than booking a flexible rate direct or even a member rate or through other online travel agencies. And depending on the hotel on dates, could be quite reasonable and compare favorably to other nice hotels flexible rates, especially after you factor in free breakfast and property credit. And he goes on to say that Bill shows the all-in price right away rather than sort of showing you the before taxes price and stuff.

So he likes that. It's also loyalty eligible, which doesn't matter to me, but made to others. It was nice to feel like I was getting unique value from home away from home rather than struggling with inflated prices like I was expecting. Yeah. So that's interesting that they were able to get that, you know, the IHG desk in one night on us promotion. Although I will say that it, well, it doesn't necessarily surprise me in the sense that

they seem to have these direct negotiated rates with the chains. And that does apply to the home away from home bookings, but not necessarily other booking. So all of the home away from home bookings are supposed to be loyalty eligible, which means that they've worked it out with that chain to offer the member rates, which then doesn't surprise me that they are eligible to book through that chain's program. Essentially, like, there are a lot of travel agents out there that are affiliated with Hyatt Pruve and Marriott Starr's and IHG Destin. One travel. One travel agent often is able to book through multiple different programs like that. So I assume that what's happening under the covers here. I know IHG or rather built is using virtuoso, but maybe they have

access to these other programs like that as well. It doesn't necessarily surprise me. That makes sense. Yeah, but good. That's good to know and good that you were able to get a good deal with it. That's what's really important there that yes, you were able to get a deal you wouldn't have gotten if you just went directly to the chain's website. And that's good to know because we'll be on the lookout for situations like that to be able to use those credits. I think a lot of people benefit from that. All right, Pennyot wrote in to talk about converting expired Southwest Airlines credits to love vouchers. So let's see what we have to say here. Quick follow up on the data point Nick and Greg mentioned in the last episode or a few episodes ago about using expiring

Southwest credits with a gift card on a choice preferred fare to convert them into non-expiring credits. So quick pause there. If you missed that, we talked about a trick whereby if you use a Southwest Airlines credit, one even that is scheduled to expire sometime, could even be near term set to expire. And you book a flight before, of course, the credit is expired. Using that credit plus a gift card of any amount could be a $5 gift card to book any choice preferred fare on any route. And then you cancel that trip. Because of the terms, the way that Southwest has written this to work with gift cards and choice preferred fairs, you'll end up getting a credit that doesn't expire and can be transferred to anybody. So you can essentially erase the expiration date on your credit by mixing it

with a gift card to book a choice preferred fair. And it actually is just there. in the terms, as it turns out on the Southwest website, that that's how it's sort of meant to work. I say sort of, because I have to imagine that that's not exactly the scenario they were envisioning when they wrote that, but that's how it does work. So anyway, so that that's what we're talking about here. So Penaette says, I tried this myself recently with an expiring credit. I bought a $25 gift card and booked a flight using the gift card plus the expiring credit, plus a small amount on my credit card. So that's an additional step that we hadn't necessarily mentioned, but that Pennyott did. In my rush, though, I accidentally booked a regular choice instead of choice preferred.

When I canceled, the credit kept the original expiration date. Totally my mistake. I called Southwest just to see if anything can be done. They confirmed that this is exactly how the gift card amount will be reallocated, but they also shared something I didn't know. If you call within two years of the credit expiring, they can convert it into a love voucher that's valid for 90 days. Figgered that might help folks who missed the preferred trick or already have expired or near expired credits and don't want to do the gift card shuffle. So, I mean, that's an interesting tip. I would probably not count on being able to get someone who can resurrect your expired credit after the fact and give you a love voucher that's valid for 90 days. I don't question that that's possible. I just question whether or not

you'll happen to get an agent in a good mood willing to help you with it. Whereas I know that if you use a gift card and any amount of credit on a choice preferred fare, you definitely can end up with a non-expiring credit. So, yeah, but, you know, I thought this was a great tip, though, for people who hadn't heard your trick or didn't know the details of it and have a voucher expire, it's got to happen all the time or it's going to, especially as things have changed to where these credits are in some cases unreasonably short-term. So I thought this was great that there may be, a way to resurrect your, your credits. And then I assume, tell me if I'm wrong about this,

but if you have a love voucher, that's valid for 90 days, could you book a choice preferred with along with, I don't know, do some magic to basically resurrect it? Probably. You know, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have necessarily counted on that, except that the reason that the choice preferred trick works is because that's what they've laid out, if you use a gift card for a choice preferred fair, and you later cancel, you end up with a credit that doesn't expire.

I'm going to assume that that has something to do with state laws about expiration dates and gift cards. Because some states don't allow a gift card to expire. So maybe if you combine your love voucher with a gift card, it might work. It might work. It might work. It wouldn't shock me. Might work. And so it is certainly worth a call, like Greg said, if you've got a voucher that expired

or you forget and then later realize, oh, no, I had one that expired, then it's, certainly at least worth calling, and that is a fantastic tip. Yeah. All right. Next up is Tracy, who Tracy wrote in saying, I have a data point relevant to your episode on gifting points and miles. My dad is 83 and doesn't stay at hotels anymore, but has lifetime Marriott titanium status, hundreds of thousands of miles, and a free night certificate.

I booked a stay in New York for my wife and I under his account, with his permission, of course, with points and the free night, and then listen to your episode. the next day. I was worried about the under no circumstances, can you use a free night for a guest warning. My dad and I called support and he was able to add me as a guest with no issue, free night and all. We didn't do anything tricky and we were completely upfront about him adding me as a guest and not using this day for himself. I got a confirmation email saying my name has been added. I also confirmed the hotel will be using our status platinum, not his. Thank you for the timeliness of your episode. I felt well equipped with all the right questions to ask when we called.

That's awesome that it worked out. Yeah. I mean, it's something that Marriott says you're not supposed to do. But I mean, honestly, I've done sort of variations of this many times. Usually I do it like, you know, I book under my name with my certificate and then a relative who's using it. I just tell the hotel, they're going to check in first. And so it stays under my account, but you're not supposed to do that. What I just said, like, Mary doesn't want you doing that. But somehow, and they don't, and they claim that you can't, you know, use a free night certificate in someone else's name, but Tracy seemed to make that happen with their dad.

So that's great. Well, I think the interesting thing and the thing that Tracy, seem to take some comfort in is that they were up front about it on the phone and the agent said, yeah, this is fine. We can do this and took the reservation and the names and everything else. So, I mean, in that case, at the very least, if Tracy ended up with a problem, I would certainly have gone back to Marriott and said, listen, we talked to an agent and an agent said we could do this. How would we have reasonably known that this would be a problem if somebody told us it wasn't? So, I mean, in the one hand, I think that that was a good way to approach it, being honest and saying

what you're doing and seeing if that's allowed and then being told that it is. Like Greg said, I mean, it says in the terms that you can't, and both of us know from plenty of experience, that programs don't always operate exactly how the terms indicate. So in a lot of cases, that probably would fly without an issue. But there are, I mean, inevitably are some, and there'll be some reader of the comments here, probably listening to the comments here. If you look at the comments to say, that didn't work in my situation because there'll always be somebody that runs into that problem here and there, but most of the time, probably. that. Yeah, you know, it's possible that having part of the stay paid with points is what

sort of unlock the ability here. Because you can definitely book another person with points when you call up. Right. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. That might be the route that they, the agent took was the points sort of gifting thing. But, you know, I think they, it sounds like they'd already booked it with points and free nights sort of get it like online. It sounds like to me then called to change it to a sort of gifted well. So I don't know. That's something I'm going to want to try out and see if that. That does work that way. All right. Yeah, good. Good tip. Good tip.

All right. Melissa writes in next and says, thanks so much for the article on the pitfalls and warnings booking via I prefer hotels. We love, I think it's the Nemon-Cullen Woodlands resort in Farmington, Pennsylvania, and try to visit a few times a year. Due to remodels, the rates have really skyrocketed. So I was thrilled when Greg mentioned them in a recent article. with the ability to book via I prefer hotels using city points. Opening one $95 credit card allowed me to book a three-day free stay at nemacholin, nemicolin, I don't know how to pronounce it, in the height of summer with a price tag of $4,700

with a single sign-up bonus. And your article was spot on with the pitfalls, but I forged onward and got it. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. So, you know, I prefer is a weird program where, it's kind of new-ish. I mean, it's been around for a few years,

but it seems to be just kind of crawling towards being a mature program. And so you run into problems. But the value, going from city, where you could transfer one to four from like a strata premier card, for example, transfer your city points one to four to I prefer means that there are some amazing values to be had.

and Melissa found an amazing value there. So that's awesome. Love that story. All right. Next up, we have Amelon, I suppose. That's how you say it? Amelan wrote, just sharing a couple of good data points

from a quick weekend trip to Chicago. We did one night at the Hyatt Regency, Chicago with a club access award from a generous person on the Frequent Miler Insiders' Facebook page. Amazing property gave us 9 a.m. check-in, great service all around. We used Rove Miles to book the same cash

rate as the member rate on the app and combined with a $100 off $300 MX offer. Everything posted and that will end up being a fairly cheap stay for what we got. That's terrific. That's particularly exciting that they were able to book through Roeve and get a loyalty eligible rate so they could earn high at points, somehow use the MX offer, I suppose by paying with the MX card and still apply the Club Access Award. Yeah, yeah. And they presumably they earned Rove Miles by, that's why they click through Rove Miles.

And so all of that is great. And it's worth, you know, again, a call out that our Facebook group called Frequent Miler Insiders, we have a thread in there called the Wild West Sharing thread where people just post on there that I've got these Club Access Awards or sometimes Sweet Upgrade Awards, guest of honor awards, things like that, to share who wants them. And that's apparently how Amalon got theirs. So that's terrific, too. Yeah, that can be fantastic. And so it's nice when that works out.

I've been able to occasionally give away or get something there too. So it's a great little place to participate. All right. And finally, here we have Jefferson sends a thanks to the FM team. Jefferson said, I just wanted to reach out and say, thanks for all that you all do. I started dabbling into the points of miles game about a year ago and quickly found your podcast. I've since binged every single episode, starting with episode one and have learned so much. My wife begrudgingly goes along now every time I tell her about an

incredible offer that we can take advantage of, but in less than a year, we've been able to accumulate over one million points and miles. We've leveraged this into an 11-day 10-year anniversary trip this summer, flying business class round trip to Europe, staying at the Park Hyatt Paris, the Grand Hotel Victoria based solely on y'all's glowing reviews, and the Park High at Milan. We're both so excited for this trip that wouldn't have been possible without this great new hobby. That's fantastic. I love hearing success stories like that, and I am quite sure you're going to have a fantastic trip. I love the Grand Hotel Victoria, but you know what? I also love the Park Hyatt Paris when I was there. I love the Park Hyatt

Milan. I mean, so yeah, this is a great trip that you've planned. I love it. Yeah, and it's amazing to be able to use this hobby to make stuff like that happen. And, and especially, I think, when you first discover the hobby and you're able to do all that stuff the first couple of times. I mean, it's just, it's an incredible feeling being able to unlock that world and then realize, wow, we did that in, what, a year? You said you accumulated a million points in a year, and to realize we could go back and do that again. And that's pretty wild and crazy. So I'm glad that you're going to enjoy that.

I'm excited for you and I can't wait to hear all about how it went. Yeah. And let me point out, if you don't have Hyatt globalist status, it's definitely worth seeing if someone will give you a guest of honor award for the two park Hyatt stays. Because on each of them having globalist status for this day is phenomenal. They have incredible breakfast that will be completely free. Very good. Absolutely. All right. That brings us to this week's question of the week.

I have a question that came in via email for this week's question of the week comes in from Edward. So Edward recently applied for the City Advantage Platinum Select World Elite MasterCard while he was booking a domestic flight. But my application was denied. The reasons cited were a high amount of unused credit and the fact that I've recently opened one or more accounts. Guilty is charged. This is particularly a particularly, frustrating, given my 10-year history with a different city card. Since the denial letter did not indicate a path for redress, I have a few questions. Number one, is there a formal appeal or reconsideration process? If so, is it worth pursuing, given that the reasons for denial are factually accurate? Two, is city uniquely sensitive to these factors? Should I expect similar denials

from other issuers? Or should I wait a certain period before applying for new cards elsewhere? If a waiting period is recommended, how long do you suggest? And number three, given this experience, considering moving my business to other carriers. He was opening an American Airlines card here. So is there an opportunity for another card that makes sense? That one's a whole other question. But let's start with those first two. So he got denied, got a couple of reasons. He's given reasons where, again, high amount of unused credit and recently opening one or more accounts. So is there a way to kind of turn things around there, even though that those things are true? and then number two is city uniquely sensitive and how long does Edward need to wait before considering another card?

Yeah. Well, all right. First of all, the reason they give you in the letters, in their rejection letters, is not something that is necessarily the real reason. They have to give you a reason and you can't really count on it. Now, I know you agreed that what they wrote is accurate. it based on your situation. But the truth is there could be any number of real reasons behind the scenes, and they just kind of pick one.

But in general, a lot of banks will let you call and ask for reconsideration. And so even in a situation like this where it seems like, oh, they had a totally valid, true reason for denying me. It sounds like that. that doesn't mean that they would reject you if you call and say, hey, can you reconsider this application? That said, I don't know off the top of my head whether City is one that is good about those reconsiderations. You know, had a lot of luck with Chase, for example, in the past, but I don't know about City. Before we go on, Nick, do you have any experience there?

No, I don't have any relevant experience there with City. I do know that City has been kind of fickle over the last few years in terms of approving new applications. I know that, for instance, if you've had an inquiry within the five previous days, like the five days preceding your application, they will typically deny based on that. And we've had reports from people who've called back in six or seven days after their previous application and gotten city to pull their credit report again, and then they've been approved. So that does seem to be a rule. It's a weird one that's uncommon with other issuers. But if you had just applied for something with another issuer, it might be worth calling again for that. But I think that Greg's general advice there is really what I wanted to get at

there that very often, whether or not with city specifically, but very often, you can call reconsideration. And if you go to our best offers page, we include the reconsideration phone numbers for every single bank in the bank section. So you can call and speak to a human being. I mean, keep in mind that the denial was probably an automated computer decision here, or even if it was a human decision, it's always beneficial to get another human to review that and see, is there anything they can do? Because a lot of issuers out there can and will reconsider it. And in some cases, it might be as easy as just saying, you know, I don't actually need new credit. I already have this existing card that I've had with you for 10 years. And I don't need as much

credit limit as I have on that. Could we shift X amount of the credit limit from that card to this new card in order to get it open? So that's a very normal part of the process that you may run into, especially if you're somebody who ends up getting kind of really into this and opening a bunch of cards, that's not an uncommon hurdle or an uncommon situation. Many of us have called reconsideration plenty of times before. So definitely there is a process for that. Just call. Just call and speak to a person.

Yeah. And, you know, I remember when the first time I did that, you know, I just thought, what's the chance that they'll, you know, change their mind just because I'm calling and asking. And I was so surprised when the answer was like almost immediately. yeah, okay, well, you were approved. Right. And it happens a lot, and it's surprising, but it does. So that's definitely worth a shot. As far as how long to wait, I don't know.

Each issuer has like kind of different rules and things about like how often if you applied for one card, how long should you wait before applying for the next one? In this case, I can't think of any that are based on an application that was rejected. So I don't think that there's any particular reason to wait any amount of time. Nobody else knows that you had an application tonight. And it wouldn't necessarily matter to them that you did. So you don't need to wait. There's no waiting period.

So if you decided you wanted to apply for a Delta card or United Card or something like that, there's no minimum amount of time you need to wait before you do that. denial, they're not going to see that you were denied for the city card that you applied for. And again, even if they did, they're going to base their decision on their look at your profile and whether or not you fit not based on whether city approved you or not. Right. Yeah, I was talking specifically about like complying again with city. But yes, yes, you're right about that for sure.

The other thing to think about, and here's another thing that seems counterintuitive, but your luck at getting approved for a different city bank card may be very very, different. So, you know, city's got several different American Airlines cards and they may be pushing harder to get like approvals for their city executive card, for example. And so applying for that, you know, even though it's a higher end card, you might get approved right on the spot for that and, you know, get the welcome bonus. And if it's not the card you want long term, in a year, you should be able to product change to the card you want. Yeah. So, The moral of the story here is that getting denied for something happens to anybody who plays in this pool for a long time.

And so don't be afraid to call reconsideration again. You can find those reconsideration phone numbers on the best offers page. Just go to frequentweiler.com and up in the top bar, you'll see best offers. Click on that. And at the top of any bank section, you'll find the reconsideration phone number for that particular bank. So that's takeaway number one. Call, speak to a person, plead your case. You may not have to plead much at all, as Greg said.

There's times when I've called and I haven't really had to explain anything. all. Somebody just put me on hold for a little bit and came back and we're like, okay, yeah, I was able to approve that. So sometimes it's just a matter of getting human beings help. Or sometimes just like, we just need to confirm a couple of things. Well, why didn't they ask me that? Right. Online, but yeah, it's just the way it works. Yeah. So don't be afraid of that. And then don't let that influence your decisions as to what to apply for elsewhere. because you specifically asked about applying for new cards from other banks, other issuers, and that wouldn't be much of an influence at all for me in terms of what I apply for elsewhere.

Right. Okay. That brings us to the end of today's episode. And if you've enjoyed this stuff and you like to get more of it in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media. Join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like this stuff and share data points. like these anytime you want. Wherever you're watching or listening,

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If you love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast. Every Monday I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures, and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicecape.com.