Frequent Miler on the Air - Greg's choice: saving points from a Wells Fargo shutdown | Coffee Break Ep115 | 7-21-26

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Greg's been thinking through how to handle the recent shutdown of his Wells Fargo checking account. Worried the shutdown would eventually impact his credit cards, he had to make a decision about where to transfer his points...(01:30) - Greg's Wells Fargo shutdown(08:54) - Reader tip(13:03) - Nick's advice(16:20) - Greg's decisionSubscribe 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:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkFrequent Miler's Best Offers Pagehttps://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Today's coffee break, Greg's choice, saving points from a Wells Fargo shutdown. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. A few months ago, I opened a Wells Fargo Premier Checking. account for one purpose only. I didn't actually want a Wells Fargo Premier Checking account, but what I did want was the opportunity to sign up for Wells Fargo's Premier Autograph Visa Infinite card, which has a better welcome bonus than the similar Wells Fargo autograph journey card,

and it also has some features that are better. So I wanted the opportunity to sign up for that. So I signed up for this Premier checking account, which has a $35 monthly fee. but that's waived for the first six months. So my plan was to sign it for the account, hope to get targeted for this special credit card I wanted, and then close that Premier account before ever getting charged a monthly fee. That was the plan. The first part of the plan worked great. Two weeks after signing up for the account, I found a targeted offer for that Visa Infinite card that I wanted. I applied.

I was approved. and I quickly met the minimum spend requirements, and so I had 104,000 points on its way. So that was great. But then not that long after that, I got an email from Wells Fargo saying that they were closing the premier checking account. And the email said specifically that they're closing it for fear that the account has been, compromised or impacted by potential identity theft. Now, I hadn't received any alerts, you know, cautions anything that would suggest that they were worried about such a thing. But, you know, but so I don't, I had my doubts about whether they really suspected identity theft.

But regardless of that, it's really common in the rewards world when someone, has a bank account shut down that their credit cards often get shut down soon after. So that's what I was worried about. I mean, if you think about just the Premier account, Wells Fargo did me a favor by shutting that down because I was planning to do that anyway. So they saved me a step. But now I had a problem, which was I've got to, well, I was worried about what's going to happen with these 104,000 points. Yeah. So Wells Fargo has a limited number of transfer partners. So you don't really have a wild range of options, but there are probably a few that appeal to to you more than the others, I'm going to guess. So choice privileges is the one that probably

most people that are deeply into rewards associate with the Wells Fargo program because they still offer one to two transfers to choice. City used to no longer does offer that ratio, but Wells still does. So you can transfer one to two to choice and essentially double your points, you got a little over 100,000 points, so you could end up with more than 200,000 choice points on the flip side, points are on sale. Right now, as we record this, for 0.57 cents per point. You can buy choice privileges points, that is, for just over half a cent per point. So transferring to choice really saves you from spending $1,000, just over $1,000 on points. and so you're kind of essentially redeeming your 100,000 points for around $1,000 worth of value by that measure in terms of what you could buy.

Of course, some folks have pointed out the fact that Choice limits you to 180,000 purchased points per year. So you actually couldn't buy the full 200,000 points that you could transfer from Wells Fargo. So choice is an option. It's not your only option. You got Wyndham 1 to 2 also. they have a four-year expiration policy. I don't know how you feel about that, but that is a potential issue.

And then they have some airline programs. Now, I would choose to transfer. They have Avianka Life Miles, right? Well, so that's some life miles. That's probably what my airline pick would be, but probably not yours. That's right. That's right.

So I went through all their transfer partners to look at, you know, what should I do with my points? Now, to be clear, there was no indication that my credit cards were going to get shut down and that I would lose the points, but I was worried about that, so I wanted to use my points as quickly as possible. I could cash them out, so $104,000 would be $1,040.

I could have just gotten in cash. Yeah, the three that I thought would be most valuable for me were Choice, Windham and Air France, Kala, I'm Flying Blue. choice as Nick said is desirable because of that one to two transfer ratio. Wyndham is also desirable because it also has a one to two transfer ratio and that's really unique among transferable points programs. The problem with Wyndham for me, yeah, Nick mentioned the four-year expiration policy, which there's no good way to avoid that if you don't use your points before then. other than signing up for Wyndham earner premiere card.

So like picking Wyndham kind of sets me up for like other requirements down the road in a way. Yeah. So that's a little unpleasant. Air France, KLM Flying Blue is a really good choice for me, I think, because I know, I know from past experience that I'm very likely to use the points to good value. I don't have, for any of these, I don't have specific plans for anyone. That's what makes this hard. If I had specific plans, it'd be easy. But the downside of the KLM thing, Air France KLM, is that I have plenty of other transferable points that can transfer to them.

And there are often transfer bonuses, sometimes really big ones, to Flying Blue. And so, you know, this isn't maybe ideal for that reason. Backing up for just a second here. So we're talking about how you can use your points under the assumption that maybe. like you said, your credit card accounts would be shut down since your checking account was shut down. And like you said, that's a relatively common connection to make. And certainly if Wells Fargo really suspected some identity theft was going on, then it would seem reasonable that maybe they would close your credit card accounts. But at least as of the time of recording, do you have any

indication that that's actually going to happen? Yeah, I mean, no, everything seems to be fine with the credit card accounts and the rewards account. I've logged into my Wells Fargo account a million times and everything's still there. It seems to be fine. So, you know, I feel a little bit less worried than I did before, like, you know, about things getting shut down. But still, it seems prudent to use my points. So anyway, I asked readers on the blog what they thought I should do.

and I laid out what my preferences were on the blog post about transfer partners and all of that. And here are the results. 11 readers said I should transfer to choice. Eight said I should transfer to Flying Blue. And three said I should transfer to Windham. So Windham wasn't so popular. There were a couple other individual votes for things like JetBlue and Obios. Interesting.

Well, we'll have to talk more about what you're actually going to do in a few moments. I want to point out one kind of interesting tidbit here, and that is that New York has a law that I think might be unique that when your account gets closed, you have something like 90 days to use your points. So if Greg lived in New York State, I think he'd probably be less worried about how should I use my points now in case my account gets shut down. Unfortunately, I live in New York, so that doesn't do Greg any good. It doesn't help him. But that is an interesting piece anyway, if you do live in New York, that you'd probably have less stress over this type. of situation, probably. Anyway. Right. All right. We'll talk more about this in just a moment. We'll be right back after this.

Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin. He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah. Well, your cousin ought to go to frequentmiler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet,

you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. And we're back. Okay, Nick, you've heard the background. You know what my preferences are or my thoughts are about transfer partners and you've heard what the readers have voted on. What do you think? What should I do? Well, I have my opinions here.

But first, before we do that, we've had a piece of information that came in from a reader that might really be relevant here. So reader AJ commented on your post and said, I actually received a very similar email a long time ago, shortly after opening a checking account, and then again a few days later with a premier account. I don't think it exactly mentioned identity theft, but something vague about account security. The branch manager, so AJ went in person to a branch, the branch manager finally found someone that an idea what was happening, and they asked me if I'd logged in from abroad. I'm mostly based in Asia, so it made sense upon reflection. They were able to clear the flag pretty easily, and no problem

since then, despite similar activity. So if you happen to have logged in from abroad or had some other irregular activity, I'd try checking further with different agents or a banker before completely liquidating and writing them off. So then, Greg, the question for you, I know you travel a lot is, did you log in from abroad after opening this account? AJ might be on to something here. I was in Ireland and then Spain before this happened. In fact, I think I was in Ireland when I applied for the credit card I talked about earlier. So there's no question that I had, you know, logged in from abroad.

It could be that this is what's going on. And that might be what led to the checking account, shut down. I haven't pursued this with Wells Fargo to try to see if there's a flag that needs to be cleared, though. Well, so, all right, so why not? Why haven't you? I mean, I think that's a pretty interesting data point. It makes a lot of sense to me, especially. I didn't know, especially if you applied for the credit card from abroad, too.

That might make me more nervous about the credit card account than I was five minutes ago. So why haven't you pursued that? Well, I mean, I have actually already made my decision about what. two transfer points to, and I've done it. So the pressure is off. Now, I would still like to keep my credit cards intact and everything. So I probably should follow up and see if there's a flag that needs to be cleared, but it's not a pressing concern for me right now. Oh, interesting. You know, the autograph, well, the premier version of the autograph card is basically the same as the autograph journey. And it is a pretty good card to have in terms of return on paid hotel nights and

whatnot. So I don't know. I'd be interested in keeping that. And I think, you know, as they said here, it might just be worth. I think probably pursuing that at least via like email or phone or letter or something to see where it goes. We don't have any Wells Fargo branches within, I don't know, hundreds of miles as far as I know. So it would definitely be phone or some other electronic means if I was going to when I pursue it. I think I will. That's just not, you know, urgent for me right now. Right, right. Well, okay, so it's not urgent for you because you've already decided you've already done something with your points.

Now, I know from reading your post about this that you had some difficulty transferring to choice. You were able to transfer points to most of the other partners except for JetBlue in choice, right? Right. Right. And yeah, those two I couldn't connect to and I kept getting error messages. I was able to finally get a connection to choice that was successful by just creating a new choice account. So I can transfer to choice. I imagine I could do the same thing with JetBlue if I really wanted to, but that's not one of my high priority ones.

Right. That makes sense. Okay. So then out of the options, then I have to decide, did you transfer to Choice or Wyndham or AirFran? or did you throw us a curveball and actually transferred Avianca Life Miles or Avios after all? I don't want you guessing what I did. I want you to tell me what I should have done and then I'll tell you what I did.

All right. So what you should have done clearly was transferred Avianca Life Miles, but since I know you wouldn't have done that, what you should have done probably was transferred to Air France KLM Flying Blue. And the reason for that is because I know that if you really wanted choice points,

A, you could buy the choice points on your own. B, I know that you don't have an avenue for choice points through city, but I imagine that other members of your family do. So you probably still have the opportunity to get some choice points. That way, if you needed to, at least choice points that you could use. So I don't feel like choice is a compelling Wells Fargo redemption when those points are on sale. And because they go on sale pretty frequently, it doesn't feel that compelling to me at all.

It feels even less compelling to me because I've already purchased a lot of choice points this year and I had to cancel the trips that those were attached to. So I've got a whole ton of choice points now. So I don't feel like that is pressing. And you could always earn some choice points through welcome bonuses in the future potentially. Of course, I think Wells Fargo issues those cards. So if they shut down your cards, maybe you wouldn't be able to get those, hard to say. But anyway, so I don't think that's a particularly good one. Windham, I don't see you staying at Windham property is often enough. And if you really wanted more Wyndham points, you'd open a new Windham card or you can earn them at ADACs at gas stations and things like that with your Winderminer business card.

So I don't think that that's probably a high priority for you. So Air France, KLM Flying Blue is pretty predictable value. They released decent award space some of the time. If you've got decent flexibility, as I know you do, then you would probably be able to make good use of flying Blue miles, both for Flying Air France and for Flying Delta sometimes if you're able to book in advance. You do need to book, I think, 21 days in advance to five. find Delta availability via partners these days, but there's enough good uses that I think you're

pretty likely to get more value. Like I said, I know you could buy choice points for around a thousand bucks. I think you'll get far more than $1,000 worth of value out of 100,000 Air France miles. That could easily be at least a one way to Europe during, you know, even at slightly elevated pricing. It's at least a one way business class flight to Europe. Now and then when the promo rewards come around, you might even get round trip to Europe and business. class for that. That would be worth way more than 200,000 choice points to me. So I say Air France, KLM Flying Blue. I know it's not necessarily awesome because of the transfer bonuses that happen with other currencies, but there are points that you're probably going to use and that you can easily

keep alive. That's the other big benefit with flying Blue. It's super easy. Right. Especially Air France, they finally fixed their, they had a really weird expiry policy in the past where if you credited any flights to air France, and it kind of messed up your expiry and made it harder to keep your points alive. Oh, wait. But, but, but before you reveal, I will say, I know you like to go to the UK a lot.

And I know that Wyndham still has their partnership with cottages.com. So maybe if you found a great cottages.com redemption, that you're like, oh, we're going to do that sometime within the next year, maybe you would have transferred to Wyndham. but even if you did, I think you could have gotten the wind and points elsewhere. So I'm going to say flying blue.

I mean, I think actually any of the three would have been a great option. You know, I wouldn't feel bad with any of the three. What I actually ended up doing was transferring to choice. Wow. So I will explain that. I'll explain that in a second,

but I transferred all of the points to choice. And then my old account, the one that didn't work, still had like 6,000 points in it. So I called Choice afterwards and asked if I could merge the accounts. No problem. They got it done in seconds. And I'm retaining the new account as the primary,

because I know that one works with Wells Fargo. I kept a handful of points with Wells Fargo just in case I want to like test out things with different transfers or whatever. Also, Wells Fargo is great because you can transfer one point at a time. So if you have a program where you need to keep points alive by adding more points to that program, you could just add one. So that's a really nice feature there. Anyway, why did I choose choice when you could buy points for 0.57 cents each right now as we're recording this? That sale goes, I think it was just until maybe today as we're recording this.

I'm not sure. So it might be done by the time you listen to this show. The thing is I was thinking about this as like, okay, I have about, I have a, I have a hundred and four thousand points, which I could cash out for $1,040 cash. And anyway, so I was thinking of like the transfer as kind of like buying points. So it would be buying choice points for half a cent each, buying wind of points for half a cent each, buying winda points for half. a cent each or buying flying blue points for once in each. And which one would I rather spend that slightly over $1,000 on? So the, as I said before, the Windham or choice, I'd be kind of equally happy in a way with either one, but Windham has that complexity with the

cancellation or with the expiration situation. While Windham does have that cottages.com thing for booking vacation rentals in the UK. That's a very kind of like specific thing that often doesn't lead to great value because often those rentals aren't that expensive. And as far as like special things you could do with your points, I'm much more likely, I think, to use and get good value from using choice points to book preferred hotels. And so that's that's really what was on my mind is One of the things I love about points, about points in general, is where you have these special opportunities to book things for great value that you wouldn't have necessarily booked otherwise. And so there's some, and I'm not going to say that all preferred hotels bookable with choice

are great value. That's not it by a long shot. But there are some that are out there that are really great. And so I like having that ability. Now, you could say, well, I could get that ability by buying points, but if you go back to thinking about it as buying points for half a cent each by doing this transfer, buying points on sale for 0.57 is a little bit more. And so, and also had that 180K limitation. So anyway, that's what I decided to do. And the reason, I think all of your points, Nick, about flying blue, why that would be better, are valid with with the one exception. And or the thing the thing that stopped me is like it's not by transferring to flying blue, it's not enabling something I couldn't have done otherwise.

Like, you know, because because I have so many other transferable points that can transfer to flying blue, I always have those points available. Choice is harder. I do not have anyone in my family that has city points that can transfer to choice at 1 to 1.5. So, you know, anyway, despite the sale, I saw this as a good, as a good opportunity. That's interesting. That's interesting. I mean, that all makes sense.

And if you were going to buy choice points anyway, then you saved yourself a little bit of money by doing it this way. So I certainly see your logic there. I still think you're crazy, though. And here's why. Okay. So there's two pieces why I think you're crazy. First piece is this. That really heavily hinges on.

a preferred hotels booking. And while we don't have any indication that anything is going to change there, we certainly don't know that that partnership is going to last forever or that we'll get a heads up when it's not or that we'll get a heads up before they change redemption values. I mean, city, you know, kind of surprised everybody when they greatly reduced the transfer ratio to preferred hotels. And, and so what if choice all of a sudden increases those prices? It seems like you're heavily relying on that because, and I say this because I know that you're not very likely, I don't think, to use your choice points to stay at like a comfort in or, you know, that's true. But there are, of course, choice as there are a send collection hotels, which are really independent boutiquey hotels around the world. And I have stayed in some of those and gotten good value from choice points doing that.

And so that's always on the table as well on something that I'm not unlikely to do. Okay, all right, fair or not. I feel good about it. I'll give you that. So then the second reason why I think you're a little nutty here is because choice privileges points expire after 18 months of inactivity. And you don't have another great way to earn choice points right now. So you're going to have to monitor that now and make sure that you either buy or earn

or use some choice points every now and then. Now, I'm sure that the argument back would be the same kind of thing is true with Air France, KLM Flying Blue, but you have lots of points that are easily transferable to Air France KLM Flying Blue. I suppose your counter argument there would be, but you've got Wells Fargo that you can transfer one point to keep those alive. You're doing the argument for me. Yeah, I mean, as long as the Wells Fargo accounts open, I can transfer a point every year and half and keep my account alive, so I'm not too worried about that.

And if I didn't, I mean, there's other ones. ways to get activity that that aren't hard. True. Readers on the blog voted in favor of choice. I want to know about podcast listeners. What do you think? Did Greg make the right decision here? Would you have transferred differently?

Which program would you have transferred to if you were in a hurry to use your Wells Farco points? This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash suburbation. subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future

question of the week, or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag. You can send that to? Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel comedian and since 2011 host of the Travel Tales podcast. When I'm not traveling the world telling jokes for money, I'm traveling for fun out of curiosity and love of new places. And I love talking about travel with other people who share my passion. Whether they're travel experts, influencers, expats, or I'm just catching up with a fun friend. The subject is always my favorite one, travel. So if you love travel and want to listen to other people who love travel, and maybe even laugh or learn a thing or two, check out the Travel Tales podcast with me, your host,

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