Frequent Miler on the Air - Hacking Asia Miles mixed cabin awards and more

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

This week, Greg and Nick Discuss: -Chase's no-notice elimination of the Ritz discount airfare benefit: why Greg thinks this might be good news. -Is DoorDash DashPass a good benefit on the CSR? Was Nick right to value the CSR's DoorDash credit at full value? -Hacking Asia Miles: How to fly first class for less and when and where it might be worth it. All that plus reader feedback, the question of the week, and more.

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. This week we are going to be talking about hacking Cathay Pacific Asia Miles. But we actually have a lot of other really hot topics to cover first. So I'm looking forward to all of that, including talking about the latest RITS development, which is not so great. Before we get into that, though, your favorite segment is reader feedback time. It is my favorite. Let's jump right into it. This week's reader feedback.

You know what? I'm throwing us a softball this week. Oh, okay. Because I feel like I know I need it because my… You have vacation brain going on? No, it's how bad I did with all the predictions that we talked about last week and the week before. So, I decided to just give us a nice pat on the back reader feedback today. Okay. This one's from Bombay Mike. Bombay Mike says...

What does Mike have to say? He says, First, I am writing to let you know how much I enjoyed your last FM on the air. I'm not normally a podcast kind of guy, prefer to read, a random access rather than a sequential medium, and have only listened to fragments of your previous ones. But I really enjoyed the relaxed discussion and a debate over the CSR, that's the Sapphire Reserve, pros and cons that reflected exactly the points I am torn over when trying to value the new benefits and fee. Your back and forth arguments and gentle ribbing,

in parens he says, maybe not so gentle in the case of Nick pulling up a tape of Greg's blown prediction, in parens, and great sense of humor all the way around made it more like I was part of a family dinner table discussion. Kudos to you both for packing so much information in such an easy-to-digest format. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. I'm glad to hear that you listened and you enjoyed the conversation. I mean, we have fun, right, Craig? I mean, I have a good time

doing this each week. We do. We have a great time. And it's really good to hear from readers that they're enjoying it too. I have the same feeling when I listen to Travel is Free podcasts that it feels like just, you know, guys hanging around and chatting and talking about things that I'm interested in. Unfortunately, they haven't been doing those podcasts anymore. I don't know if that's a permanent pause or they'll come back. But in the meantime, I'm glad that people are getting that same kind of satisfaction from ours. So that's awesome. Now, he does point out that you were very harsh to me. So I'm kind of waiting.

I got to lighten up on you a little bit. I'm kind of waiting for your apology. Is that what you're waiting for? Well, you know, I predict that. No, you should predict that I apologize. And then I don't have to worry about it. Is that what you predicted before this? That you thought, oh, this will make Nick apologize?

Well, guess what? Nick will apologize for sure. What can I say? Greg's on a roll. We're hoping that the rest of his predictions are wrong. Remember, if you were listening last week, there are good reasons to hope that he's really bad at predicting now. So hopefully those other predictions will be wrong. And I don't want to jinx that.

So I'm not going to apologize because Greg predicted that too. So, no, we have fun here. We're having a good time. And, you know, the nice thing is it's always fun when you do something that you like and other people enjoy it too, right? So like Greg said, it's great to hear from people that they're enjoying the podcast and the discussion. And it really kind of is almost like a discussion at a dinner table because, you know, we talk about briefly what topics we're going to discuss. But it's not like we cover in detail what we're going to say when we get on this. It's just kind of an off-the-cuff discussion. So I'm glad that it comes across that way.

We only discuss ahead of time what topics to cover, not what we're each going to say about them. And I'm as curious, you know, as anyone else, hopefully about certain things that I'm going to ask you. And you're probably curious about some things with me regarding these topics. So it's fun just to find out, you know, are you going to be taking advantage of this deal? Did you pull up a recording, steak fair, whatever, right? Are you going to pull up a recording showing how bad my predictions are right you never know you never know what's going to happen and that that kind of adds to the spontaneity of everything right all right let's get into our quick hits uh so the first thing we did predict this correctly we didn't make it an official prediction but every time we've talked about the Ritz card in the past, well, since CNB ditched the $100 airfare discount, every time we've talked about the Ritz card, we've said, oh, I don't know how long that's going to last, right?

Right. And so what happened now? Ugh, yuck. Unfortunately, just this morning, a reader wrote in to give us a tip, and we posted it really early. I say this morning, and this was Friday, January 17th. Early in the morning, we wrote about it because, unfortunately, the benefit is totally But as of January 15th, the benefit is completely dead. And the interesting thing is, actually, I went to go look for data points about exactly when it happened. And I saw comments on January 15th in the evening on Flyer Talk from people who were speculating about whether or not it would end. So at that point, I assume some of them were already looking at it and the site wasn't yet down. So they must have taken it down. I'm thinking the 16th of the earliest and said

that it was dead as of the 15th. So it was really one of those things that there was absolutely no notice. All of a sudden, the Chase Ritz Carlton card no longer has the Visa Infinite discount, the Visa Infinite airfare discount that was good for $100 off when you booked two or more people round trip domestic economy class. And that is a huge blow for Ritz cardholders. Well, I think it is anyway. What do you think, Greg? I mean, is that a big blow to the card? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I still love the card anyway. And a lot of that has to do with the Priority Pass benefits and the fact that you can have unlimited free authorized users and each of them can get the Priority Pass membership. Now, if they nerf that, that will, to me, substantially decrease

the value. Another thing that to me is really big is the travel protections, which are equal to the Sapphire Reserve's travel protections. So I don't personally need it right now, as long as I have the Sapphire Reserve, but it gives me an out if I ever decide the Sapphire Reserve isn't worth it. I can lean on the Ritz. A little bit risky and, you know, we don't know how long that'll continue, but. You got to wonder, although at least in this case, there's some speculation that the benefit was being ended on the provider end. And so I don't think it exists on certainly not any other cards in the United States, but I think perhaps it might have existed on some foreign cards that I think it doesn't anymore, perhaps anyway, based on what we've heard so far. So I'm thinking that the benefit probably got nerfed actually

beyond Chase's control outside of it, which probably bodes well for the other benefits for Ritz cardholders in the sense that I don't think it was Chase's decision to remove it. However, the bummer here is that obviously CNB, which also got rid of this benefit, knew far enough in advance that they were going to get rid of it. They gave people two months notice, and that would have been nice. Even having a couple of weeks notice would have been nice. I'm personally pretty bummed about this because I just paid my annual fee last month

on the card. And I definitely thought I would use that more this year because I didn't aggressively go after the companion pass when I probably should have. I'm hoping to put together enough points for it. But in the meantime, I figured I'd probably take advantage of this benefit a couple of times. And right now I'm nearing the end of United Mileplay promo that ends January 31st. I've got some flights that I was planning to book in March and April, but I'm waiting, hoping there'd be a new Mileplay offer coming in February. So I figured I would match it up with this. And now I'm really disappointed that it just went overnight. I should have used it already. Right, right. So you should have used it. Would you have canceled the card if you had known about this? Probably not, I guess. You know, it's one of those edge cases where,

like you said, I like the fact that it has the unlimited gas and priority pass. And I typically get the $300 in value out of the travel credits. And the free night cert is worth more than $150 to me because I live in easy drive from New York City and we go a couple of times each year. It's going to be very easy for me to get more than $150 in value out of the 50K cert. So for me, I guess I would probably still keep it, but it definitely is something that would, I think, affect the calculation for a lot of people, certainly people who are using it a lot. And here's the thing. I think the benefit is probably dying because it wasn't available for a lot of people, the very small segment of people that had access to this benefit. I'd say that there was a smaller segment yet that knew how

to maximize the benefit and how to use it to the most potential. And the thing is, this was a benefit that was ripe for abuse. We've long known that it could be abused. We've mentioned once or twice before, I think in passing, that even though the terms state that the cardholder had to be on the booking, the reality was you could book flights for anybody and it worked. So I'm surprised, honestly, that it didn't get over abused sooner and eliminated sooner. And we've said before, we thought it was probably going, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing that they got rid of it overnight. I think that that's really- Yeah. No, I'm disappointed by it going away. I'm happy though that Chase did not put out an announcement.

Oh yeah? Why is that? Now I feel bad for everyone in your situation who would have booked things and didn't, you know, because they didn't know. But to me, this reinforces the idea that Chase is just not paying any attention to the Ritz card whatsoever, which I think is a very good thing. Because if they pay attention to it, they might start nerfing other benefits on it, or raising the annual fee. Is there a precedent for that, for raising the annual fee on a card that's been discontinued? That's a good question.

It seems like an odd thing to do. I know we've talked about that, about how it might make sense for them to raise it. But at the same time, it seems like an odd move for a card that they're not even marketing, that new people can't even get. So I don't necessarily think that that's a legit fear. Truthfully, I think that there's a better chance that at some point, Chase will follow Amex's lead and remove the priority past restaurant benefit. And that would stink. If you can't use it at restaurants anymore, then I would definitely start to question the value of holding it long term. I agree, you're right, that out of sight, out of mind is probably the best place for the Ritz card right now from a Chase perspective. But at the same time, I'm not sure what other benefits there are to Nerf other than the unlimited priority pass guests and restaurants.

I mean, that's it, right? Anything else? They're not really going to take anything else away from this card are they no probably not um although they could uh you know they they could if if amex decides to increase the annual fee on the marriott brilliant uh right i think it's uh then probably Chase will match it because they matched sort of the general structure of everything having to do with the high-end Marriott-related card. At that point, they might revisit everything about the card, and that would be a shame. So, hopefully Amex won't raise the fee on the Brilliant because, again, that'll get eyes on it. So I have this picture in my mind of what happened when Visa Infinite, I think, killed this perk, this $100 discount. I think that's a good guess. And they probably sent a memo to Chase. They didn't read it well no it probably went to somebody who is you know sort of generally

in charge of the ritz card as well as a bunch of other things and they probably didn't didn't even know what it meant you know it's possible it's not a perk that Chase was providing directly. So, I doubt it's something that is well-known by most Chase reps, you know, agents, whatever, managers. So, that's what I'm picturing. They got a memo. They didn't know. Stuck it on a desk somewhere. That might make some sense because a reader commented with a link explaining that the benefit was going away. That seems like it's a generic visa link, not a Chase Ritz visa link, but a generic visa link saying that the benefit was going away.

So speculation is that this is something that went away on the visa. And the interesting thing is that link shows it ending December 31st and Chase didn't end it until January 15th. So maybe that supports that theory. Maybe that's why it got cut overnight because maybe Visa was already like, wait, guys, we're not paying for this anymore. So right, right, right. So now my slightly altered theory is that Chase got the memo and was told it's going to end the end of December. And whoever managed this program at the Visa end is like,

they're not replying. You know, they're probably calling them, leaving messages, trying to call me back about this. And when they didn't hear anything back, they decided to extend, you know, give them about a two week buffer and then they still didn't reply. And so boom, it's cut off. Could be. It could be worse. It's as good a theory as any I have. So at any rate, it's cut off. Could be. It could be worse. It's as good a theory as any I have. So at any rate, it's bad news.

It's bad news for people who had the Ritz card anyway and were even contemplating using that. So that's the bad news of the week. But there's also been some good news this week. So in other quick hits this week, American Airlines has improved things by getting rid of the close-in ticketing fee. So they used to charge you $75 if you booked an award ticket within 21 days of travel. That's gone now. They don't charge it anymore, not on their awards, not on partner awards, not in anything. They got rid of that $75 fee. What do you think about that? Is that good news? Could it be bad news? What's your perspective and opinion on it? Well, on the surface, I think it's great news. The ability, so a lot of, especially the partner

awards, a lot of them don't open up until two weeks or so before your travel date. And so now, American actually has great award prices for a lot of their partners, partner flights, especially business class. So, you know, the ability then to jump on those awards when they're open and not pay that extra fee is great, right? The fear, of course, is that it might just be the other shoe might drop, that, yes, we're raising, we're eliminating this fee, but we're going to do this other bad thing at the same time, like United did, where United eliminated the fee,

but then they increased the award prices for close-in bookings. So you're still paying the fee. And Delta did the same exact thing when they eliminated the fees, although they did not impose it on partners, partner awards, whereas United, I think, is imposing it on partner awards. And it's not even true to say that it's the same thing, just a different type,

paying the fee and mileage, because elite members who didn't have to pay the fee before are now paying the fee like everybody else. Which is also true with Delta. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a devaluation pay the Which is also true with Delta. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a devaluation for the most loyal customers when that happens. Now, that hasn't happened with American yet. And it's possible that it won't happen with American. The odd thing is they didn't even release a press release saying that they were getting rid of this fee.

And you would think that they would want the positive coverage of people saying, hey, look, American's reducing fees. Great. Instead, this was just something that the points guy stumbled on and, hey, look, Americans reducing fees. Great. Instead, this was just something that the points guy stumbled on and got reported on a bunch of blogs now, but American didn't announce themselves. Isn't that odd? It is very odd. Maybe it's possible they are planning to announce something and we're just opening up first to make sure everything's working right before they do the announcement. Who knows? So American, are they coming on strong?

Are they the next great program to watch? I mean, you know. There's a question that nobody predicted Greg would ask. Definitely not. So here's the interesting, as Nick knows very well, I do not fly American if I can help it. Because a few years ago anyway, my personal on-time percentage with flying American was so, so bad. I would guess that 70% of my trips had at least one canceled flight, let alone like, you know, drastically delayed. So, it was so bad. I just like, I am never flying them again. But now, their latest stats, so the stats showing on-time arrivals for U.S. flights still has Delta number one,

but American has clawed up to number five, which is well above United, above JetBlue is down near the bottom. That kind of surprised me. Yeah. So American now, at least from that stat, has climbed way up. And they've done all these interesting things with their web awards and now eliminating the close-in fees. They seem to be making a real effort to both improve their operations and maybe to make their program valuable again. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. It's impossible. I'm just saying. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I mean, it is possible. It's interesting that they're trying to be competitive. I think that's I think the the the message that I see and that they been running those types of specials for a while now, and they've been pretty popular, those flash sales, it gives them an opportunity to charge many fewer miles than American was.

United started doing the same kind of thing. And so this gave American an opportunity to offer competitive deals like that. And they've really offered some pretty terrific web specials. You know, we saw some of those like the New Zealand and Australia flights for like five or 6000 miles each way in economy class. So it's given them the ability to do that and pick up some positive coverage. So it's not impossible that they are trying to be more competitive since everybody else got rid of that fee. And you know, three cheers to competition if that's the case. However, I have to feel like Greg said,

I'm very skeptical that this was all they were going to do. Perhaps this happened earlier than they anticipated, or they didn't plan on announcing it yet because they figured nobody would notice for a while, and they were going to announce something else. I have to feel like something else is coming. I don't know if it'll be catastrophic. It might not be terrible. This might be a net win. But I'm concerned, I think, about whatever that change is going to be that I haven't yet anticipated. Yeah, yeah. No, me too. But for now, book your flights tomorrow for tomorrow because you can now without that fee. And that's great. That's good because I never bothered booking American flights with American miles, at least not very often. I'd always book them with somebody else's because British Airways didn't have that close in fee, for instance. So now at least it gives

American the chance to clear some of my miles off the book, so to speak, by booking American flights when I do want to chance the fact that I probably won't get there on time, if at all, and book an American Airlines flight. But if I decide to do that now, at least there's a chance I'm going to use AAA miles. So I guess that's good news. In other good news, at least I think net good news, now Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders and preferred cardholders both have Dash Pass, so they both get reduced fees. And the Sapphire card holders of course get the 60 credit this year for door dash right for door dash delivery and you compared those services and found that well what did you find did you find it yeah it's worthwhile is this an exciting change or not

yeah yeah so well last week i i ribbed you about the idea that you'd be willing to pay $60 for the DashPass membership plus the $60 in fees. Not unbindable. Wait, wait, wait. Did we find that your prediction about that was wrong? The fact that that would be a bad idea? Did we find that you were wrong again? It depends where you are and who you're ordering from and what your personal tipping policy is. So let me explain. This was a very surprising finding for me.

I looked at restaurants in three different cities. I only looked at two in each city. So I picked two restaurants that were available through DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats. They had to be available in all three of those services. And I looked at the final price after, both before and after, including the recommended tip. When I looked at it after the recommended tip, across the board, the services before DashPass were roughly the same. The prices after included recommended tip came out within a dollar of each other, I'd say, in most cases. So that was actually surprising in itself. Yeah, that is surprising. It doesn't

really seem to matter who you order from in that case. Prices are about equal when you're including the recommended tip, right? Right. And so in those cases, DashPass was great because it actually did reduce the overall price by about five bucks or so. And so that's just a net, you know, win. And so if you're going to be ordering 10 times a year, that's about $50 in savings for that Dash Pass. So would it be fair to say that somebody might consider paying $60 for a $60 gift card and $50 in savings? No, I'm not going to give you that. Just tossing that question out. Let the reader consider, let the reader think about it for yourself.

Would that be worth it? Might be. Okay. Keep going. All right. So, so if you, if you, if you include the recommended, if you're the type of person who's just going to pull up the app and go ahead and order and whatever it says for the tip.

Yeah. Okay. Click. I'm hungry. Let's just get the food here. Then you're going to come out nicely ahead. You're going to come out ahead with, with dash pass. In most cases, there are, there are I'm hungry. Let's just get the food here. Then you're going to come out nicely ahead. You're going to come out ahead with DashPass in most cases. There are restaurants available through DoorDash

that don't have DashPass benefits for some reason. Yeah, that was surprising. I haven't used enough DoorDash to know. Now, it's easy when you go into DoorDash to filter to the restaurants that have it, but that's something to keep in mind. So one of the six restaurants I looked at, I think it was one in New York City,

wasn't eligible for DashPass, and so that hurt DoorDash's overall stats a little bit, or DoorDash with DashPass. Here was the really surprising thing, was that the prices were dramatically different if you don't include tip in the overall pricing. And that's because they were, at least for me, only tacking on a $4 recommended tip, no matter whether my order was $20-something or $80-something. Whereas the others seem to do, well, Grubhub seems to do a 20% tack-on, which was way more than the others. And then DoorDash is some magic formula that's in between those two.

But Grubhub, pre-tip, Grubhub tended to be the cheapest pre-tip. And often they matched DoorDash with DashPass pre-tip. Not always. So like in Ann Arbor, DoorDash with DashPass was consistently cheaper than Grubhub, even pre-tip. But in other cities, DoorDash seemed to do very well. And part of that is, I don't know.

You mean Grubhub? I mean, sorry, Grubhub did very well. And one of the things I noticed was that certain restaurants, Grubhub showed a 99 cent delivery fee instead of a bigger fee that they charged in Ann Arbor, for example. And in one case, it just sort of magically said $5 off, and I don't know what drove that. So, Grubhub seems to have some things going on, at least in bigger cities, maybe, at least LA and New York, where they have, maybe they're competing more, right? Which would make sense. There's more services to compete with. So, they seem to have good prices. And so, but they, conversely, remember, they have the highest suggested tip.

So, if you're someone who is comfortable ignoring the suggested tip and just will always tip based on your own magic formula, whether it's a fixed amount or you think however you do it, then Grubhub might actually be your best bet, again, depending if I lived in New York or LA, and if these results were more broadly consistent than, you know, if you could generalize from these couple data points, then DoorDash with DashPass isn't that valuable unless you're a default tipper. So it's very confusing. Right, right. So personally, even knowing that Grubhub would be cheaper in some cases if I change the tip, I feel bad about changing the default tip. I mean, changing it down.

And so even if I were to do that that there's a cost to me like i feel bad about placing this order yeah obviously cost of the driver too not getting that right they're more concerned with the cost but yeah slightly more significant than your feelings to the driver but yeah yep okay yeah so anyways so personally luckily Ann Arbor, that didn't come up. DoorDash with DashPass is better overall for the two restaurants I looked at. The downside is my wife and I actually ordered out last night, ordered from our favorite delivery restaurant, not available on DoorDash at all. Had to go through Grubhub. Bummer. Is there a way to suggest a restaurant for DoorDash?

You know what's weird? I have this distinct memory of doing that when I first pulled it up about a week ago. And last night when I was looking for this one restaurant, I couldn't find any way to suggest it. So I don't know what happened or if I'm imagining it. Maybe they didn't like your last suggestion. Maybe I used up all my suggestions. I had already suggested a terrible taste of the restaurant. Yeah, no, I well, that's I think that's really interesting because no, no, no, I shouldn't say because not just because it supports my theory, but it certainly does help to support my theory that that valuing your $60 at $60 is not necessarily so bad. Because you certainly might, depending on where you live and where you order food, you

may come out ahead with DashPass, which I guessed could be the case. And now it's exciting to actually see some data points that show that, yeah, you will if you're the kind of person like Greg and I that has a conscience and will feel bad about adjusting your tip down. Now, I know some people will totally feel cool with taking off the recommended tip, taking in cash, a smaller amount, different amount. And great. If that's you, awesome. But I'm the same as Greg.

It's not even necessarily – maybe it's partially feeling bad, but also partially just a matter of convenience. Like, you know, am I going to take off the recommended tip to add my tip to save 85 cents or something? Probably not. Just as a matter of convenience, I know I'm going to click through and probably accept whatever the recommended or suggested tip was. So it's interesting to know that I may save some money. And I had said last week that I would not do what Greg did. I probably would not compare prices across three platforms to see. And now I'm glad I don't have to because Greg went ahead and did it and found that generally speaking, I'm probably going to be okay going through DoorDash

and the DashPass. I'm not going to lose out by taking advantage of that. That's right. It doesn't look like you'll lose out and you might win pretty big depending on how often you order out. Yeah, right. So that's good. That's right. It doesn't look like you'll lose out and you might win pretty big depending on how often you order out. Yeah, right. Right. So that's that's good. That's great news for Sapphire Reserve holders. And keep in mind also that the free dash pass benefit also applies for Sapphire preferred cardholders. And I saw, although I didn't actually verify this yet, but I did see it reported that you also get three months free if you're a freedom card holder or a slate card holder, I think. Right, right. So, yeah. So, that's great. If you're about to be ordering out for a while, that'd be a good time to trigger those. Right. And that's a good point. You have to register for it and the time period doesn't start until you register. So, if you're not going to be ordering out right now, then wait a little bit.

Yeah. It, you know, it just occurred to me, a lot of us have multiple freedom guards. I wonder. I'll leave that to the, to the listener. Right.

Right. It's a nice little, nice little in between the lines there. So of course for Sapphire Reserve holders, it's a moot point because you can have it for the next two years anyway or yeah next year rather anyway so so wait for this transition so right talking about having multiple cards my son just signed up for another delta card okay yeah so at the end of last year i think i posted about this, that my son signed up for the Delta Gold Business Card, the 70K. Oh, so what it was.

So you might remember, I think you posted about this. There was a targeted deal for Delta cards where they had better welcome bonus offers. And even if you were targeted for a personal Delta card, you could scroll down and pick a business card instead. And sometimes those offers are really good. Happened my son had really good offers. And that deal is still alive through, I think, the 21st or something like that. So hopefully readers listening to this will jump on that right away. Google for our post about targeted Delta offers,

and you'll find the link in there so you can log in and find out if you're targeted. So my son had taken advantage of the 70K business gold offer. Yesterday, he applied for the 80K business platinum, delta platinum card, and was instantly approved for that as well. Nice, nice. And no pop-up saying that he couldn't get the bonus or anything. So he was able to get another bonus.

That's awesome. And he shouldn't have gotten a pop-up because he's never had that card before and um you know so so that's that's great 80k miles for only i think it's 2k spend which is very little for that big of a bonus now i i do want to uh mention so the offers for the personal cards through affiliate links which is what we i I'm sorry, through Refer a Friend Links, which is what we have on the site, are very high right now even if you're not targeted. Right. mention this and the reason that I was eager for my son to sign up for this business platinum card is this is the last time for the platinum delta platinum and reserve cards to get in on the lower annual fees they're going to go up at the end of the month and so you can sign up now get the big

bonuses again on the personal side anyone could get, on the personal side, anyone can get them. On the business side, you can only get the big bonus if you're targeted. You get the big bonus and have be used for domestic flights with Delta. And that is in your Delta account. That's not in your Amex account. So if you decide not to renew the card for another year after that, you will keep your companion ticket. So just want to point that out there that the offers are maybe better than they appear because you're going to, after a year, get the companion certificate. Right. And locked in at that lower rate for the first year. Yeah.

For one year. For one year. Exactly. So that's a good point. Now, one thing though I want to go back to is you said that your son shouldn't have gotten the pop-up and I totally agree. He shouldn't have gotten the pop-up. However, when I go back through in my mind without having looked back at your posts, I can think of just in the last couple of months here. So he opened that business gold or the Delta gold business credit card. And I think he had the offer also for a second business platinum card, right? Right. which he got and and he yesterday i think canceled or the day before he canceled his original business platinum and that went fine well and so now we're at three amex cards in relatively close proximity within a couple of

months which which is typically not a problem however some people end up getting a pop-up and the reason I brought this up actually is because a reader in our Frequent Miler Insiders group mentioned just a couple of days ago that he was hoping to get in on this lower Delta Amex fee before the fees go up, but he went to apply and he got the pop-up and he didn't know why because he said he had never had the card before, just like you said, your son hasn't. And he asked if there was any way to get around that. And I know some people have run into that when they've opened a number of Amex cards, either in recent proximity or a number of them over the years, and then just not put any spend

on them after that. And it seems, I wanted to mention, it seems anecdotally that by putting some regular spend on your Amex cards, that tends to help get rid of that pop-up. However, it's not going to happen between now and the end of the month. It's something I think over a couple of months time, perhaps if you put some regular spend on your cards, you may be able to get rid of that pop-up if the reason you think you're getting the pop-up is that you just haven't spent on your cards in a while. If you're getting the pop-up because you've had the card before or because you keep canceling cards before they renew, if you think there are other reasons why you're seeing the pop up, then that might not help you. But I wanted to mention that for people who see it and didn't expect to see it,

that could be a potential solution. All right. But that's just a theory, right? It is just a theory. We don't really know that the spend has anything to do with anything. Now, if that theory is true, it's possible that his signing up for the business platinum actually helped because that required something like $20,000 in spend, which did a lot of it with his tuition payment. And so, yeah, they might have seen, oh, he's very active with his cards. Great. Right. Right. Right.

So that could make a lot of difference. And I just thought that was worth mentioning for anybody who does run into that problem. Not that that's going to help you get these offers now, like Greg said, I think that those Delta offers are worth considering for anyone who has a use in mind for Delta miles, because that is pretty low hanging fruit and you might as well get it while it's cheap. If you even have it on your radar. All right. So sidebar, have you ever seen the pop-up personally? No, I haven't. I haven't either. Yeah. Not, not once. And you've tried. I've tried to force it and it hasn't happened. You know, I guess you ought to try on like one of these offers that you would really just love to be able to get again. I mean, I, it worked for

you in the past. Maybe you ought to try it a couple more times. Maybe I should try this same. Well, I don't think I'm targeted for it, but I was gonna say the same business Delta Platinum card. I mean, I definitely don't qualify for that. I've had the card for years, but who knows? Who knows? I mean, you have pretty good luck so far. So who knows?

Exactly. Exactly. Good luck with that anyway. Speaking of good luck, another lucky find this week and probably the big news of the week from Frequent Miler was this terrific post you wrote about Cathay Pacific Asia Miles. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I was excited when I found it for sure. I was doing word searches for a real trip i was um i already have the trip booked but i was trying to see if i could wait list for some first class flights because i want to fly first class who

does catholic pacific would be great and i noticed a weird thing which is that if I was looking at the flight from the U.S. to all the way to Singapore, which is what I wanted, there was a certain price shown. But if I just looked to Hong Kong, which was all the flights went through Hong Kong, if I just went to Hong Kong, the price was more. And a sort of side weirdness about all this is if you have to wait list for the flight because the award isn't available, it shows you on the search results screen before you click on it what the final mileage price will be whereas if the word is available it shows you it doesn't it shows you the max it'll be and you have to click on it to find out the right price but anyway the the reason it's like totally bizarre but anyway the the reason it costs less to go to singapore through hong kong was very quickly clear to me and so I did some tests to find out if it's true, and it was, is that there's no first class from Hong Kong to Singapore, at least that was

available. And so it was booking me first, or it was looking at waitlisting me for first class from the US to Hong Kong, and then business class onward to Singapore. And so what it was doing was it was looking at the overall distance of the trip and saying, okay, let's say 90% of it is in first class, then we'll take 90% of the first class award price plus 10% of the business class award price. And that brings down what would have been 100% up for the first class price. And the other factor involved is the fact that normally adding on another segment would get you to a higher award price

if you're looking at the same class of service, right? So, like, if you're looking at business class all the way and you have a 3,000-mile flight versus a 5,000-mile flight, the 5,000-mile, no matter how many segments are involved, the 5,000-mile will cost more. Because that Pacific has a distance-based award chart. Distance-based award chart, right. But they cut off the chart at 7,500 miles in distance. So, as long as you're going that far anyway, tacking on additional legs does not cost more. So, you can go to, you know, if you're flying, let's say you're flying all business class, you could fly to Hong Kong for a certain amount. I think it's 85,000 miles one way. Or you can fly to South

Africa via Hong Kong, which is almost double for the same price, the same 85,000 miles. Now, where it gets super interesting is if you really want to fly first class, then you could tag on that business class all the way to South Africa or all the way to Australia to make it actually a lot cheaper, even though you're getting a much bigger trip out of the whole thing. So wait, let's repeat that again. So first class will cost you less if you fly more. Yeah. As long as you're going over that 7,500 miles anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And again, it's important to note that that's mixed cabin as long as that second segment is in a lower class of service than first. Right. Right. Or lower class than whatever your first segment was. Yeah. Yeah. And so this happens online only if first class is not available for the whole trip.

So if, if, and they have a lot of flights where there's no first class is not available for the whole trip. So if, and they have a lot of flights where there's no first class. So it's very common to see this online where you have part of it's in first, part of it's in business class. And so the overall thing average is lower and you would pay less for that trip. What I had to do, I had to call to find out

what it would cost to fly the first part in first class and the second part in economy, because I couldn't find any way to price that out online. And luckily, for anyone interested in doing that, I found out that it in fact does average exactly as you'd expect, which is to say it looks at the overall distance and says, let's say your trip is 50-50 in distance, that you're flying half in first, half in economy, it'll average the two award prices. So, $125,000 for first class and I don't remember, $45,000, something like that for economy. It'll just take the average of those if you're exactly 50-50 in distance.

And to me, the most exciting find in that whole post was the fact that you found that calling priced it out exactly the way you'd expect. Because I might've guessed that this was some sort of a computer glitch that it was pricing out incorrectly online and great, take advantage of it while you can. But the fact that the phone agents priced it the same way that we expected means that

that is just how the system is built. That's how their pricing engine is built. And that's really good news. It is. It is. It's great news. And one nice thing is there is a public transfer bonus right now from any bank transfer, right, where Cathay will throw in 10% extra. They throw it in sometime later, though.

You don't see it immediately. Right. So if you're trying to transfer for an award right now, you're still going to have to transfer as many as you need, but at least you'll get some extra later. And now there's also a targeted bonus, right, from Amex. What's the deal with that? We posted that today. So it's targeted. Some people have been targeted for up to 25% transfer bonus. And so if you were targeted for the 25% transfer bonus

from Amex membership rewards points to Cathay Pacific, then every thousand points you transfer over will become 1250 cathay pacific asia miles but then that's before the 10 bonus that asia miles is adding on to that transfer so in reality you can take every thousand amex membership rewards points and if you're targeted for that transfer bonus, you'll end up with 1,307 or 1,000. What is it? 13,750, whatever that I'm adding too many digits in there. 1,375 for those counting at home that many miles. So you'll end up with, with even more miles. It's essentially a 37.5% transfer bonus. If you're, if you're targeted for the 25% bonus from Amex. Now,

the thing on that is there's no listed end date. And unfortunately, with those offers that don't list an end date, we never know how long Amex is going to offer that. So if you log in and you see it in your account, it might be there today and gone tomorrow. So you probably don't have a lot of time to dilly-dally and think about whether or not you want to transfer points. And I hate that. I hate being pressured into making that decision. However, the good news is now Asia Miles improved their expiration policy. So activity will extend the expiration date of your miles.

And that activity will include transferring over points. So you can keep those miles active. You don't have to worry about losing them. You can always transfer over some more membership rewards points or city thank you points, or I think Capital One also transfers to Asia miles. Then you can keep your miles alive that way. And so they're not going to languish and die at least. So I would feel a little bit better about a speculative transfer in this case, although I'm always a little wary of those because your points are better when they're flexible. But with the value that Greg unlocked here with this post, you know, it does look like

there are some opportunities to really get a ton of value. It's worth noting that Greg's example there of flying from, let's say, New York to Hong Kong to South Africa would be even cheaper with Alaska mileage plan miles. In business class, I think that'd be, what, 60,000. And in first, I think it's 70,000 Alaska miles. Yeah, Alaska is much cheaper. But of course, Alaska miles are much, much harder to get. And so, you know, if you think about it,

there's hardly anything these days in terms of welcome bonuses. So there's the two Alaska cards, the personal and business. And then after that, what you're stuck earning one X for most, unless, unless you you're able to take advantage of something through the shopping portal online. Uh, but there's really no easy way to generate more miles. You can transfer from Marriott. So perhaps you've got a lot of employer sponsored Marriott stays and you don't want your Marriott points for hotels, then you could transfer those over to Alaska. But no, there's not a great way to earn a lot of Alaska miles. And also, I think you mentioned in the post that Cathay Pacific

releases more space to their own members than they do to partners, right? Right, right. So it actually could be more valuable than Alaska miles if you couldn't get the award with Alaska, right? Right. Which is likely. Likely, very. Especially, did you find two seats in first class, by the way? So the example I showed in the post was not my real trip at all.

And so, you know, I had to look way out to find a available seat. I mean, I just sort of randomly picked a date in the future that was like far enough out and they do like a seven day calendar, I think. I see. And that helped me find it. But I was just curious if you're able to find for two passengers,

because I don't think that it's very common to be able to book two passengers in first class at once with partner miles with Cathay Pacific. I wondered if it was more widely available when you're using Asia miles. So I guess that's something we'll have to experiment with. Yeah, so actually Lucky posted on One Mile at a Time about that very recently, and he found that he could book two with Cathay miles and not with partners, but only either, if I'm remembering right,

which that's possible. I'm not only either end of schedule or within the next 10 days or so. Okay. You know, something like that. I'm not sure I remember exactly right, but it was something like that. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's interesting. And also interesting to me was that this doesn't only work for Cathay Pacific flights, but you found that it also worked with some partner flights, right? It at least works with British Airways. And I'm not sure that it works with other partners. It seems like it probably does, but they don't publish,

I don't think anymore, a single partner chart anymore. So they have a multi-partner chart when you want to fly with multiple partners. And there are certain cases where that chart is useful. But when you're flying just one of their partners, the pricing tends to be similar to their pricing on their own. But I think someone found that it seemed to be consistently about 5,000 miles more to fly on a partner. But that all makes me, just the fact that they're not opaque about it, they're not open with it, makes me wonder, does it work with other partners? they have a companion ticket thingy where you can use miles to get a companion added to a paid ticket. Uh, and that works with their own flights and with British airways.

That's it. So maybe, so British airways, you know, potentially has a special place in their hearts. I don't know. Anyway, they're the only people that have a special place. The important thing I don't know. Anyway, they're the only people that

have a special place. The thing is, British Airways is where I specifically saw it as as something available. And I saw it online as as showing up with with that same idea that it that it averages. So you could do the same trick with British Airways. Another very interesting thing about that is the fact that for whatever reason, they don't charge as much in fuel surcharges and taxes when flying British Airways as other mileage programs do. Now, it's not always a big difference. Sometimes it's a very small difference. But still, you know, British Airways is infamously expensive with regards to those fuel surcharges, which they've changed the name of to something else. But still the same amount of fee that they tack on to just charge you on top of miles. And you end up paying that fee, generally speaking, no matter whose miles you book with, you end up paying huge fees for the most part on British Airways. I know.

That's what's so unfortunate, you know, because like you have other airlines like Lufthansa, which also infamously charges huge fuel surcharges. But if you book with Avianca LifeMiles or United, neither of them pass along those fuel surcharges. And so you don't have to pay them and you can still fly Lufthansa. Right. That explains why I've flown Lufthansa and I have never flown British Airways. I take that back.

I have, but not on a TransCon flight. I've never flown them over the ocean because it's just ridiculous. I'm not going to pay $800 on top of the miles to redeem miles for a business class ticket, especially for a business class that is typically not all that well reviewed. I'm sure it's better than flying economy class, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot of love

for their business class. Oh, I've flown it a couple times actually. And? I actually liked it fine. Well, there you go. So don't believe everything you read. You know, I understand people have complaints about it. But, you know, maybe I was going in just expecting something really bad,

but I actually really enjoyed both of my flights. The biggest complaint I had the second time I flew was that they had so many blankets and amenities and pillows and things with nowhere to put them. I mean, this is the old cabins, right? There's literally no – and this is really frustrating. There's no shelf space, no nothing. So you're basically sitting there with a pile up above your head in your lap. That could be part of the reason people don't like it. So that part I didn't like. But no, I mean, the service was good.

I found the seat very comfortable. And yeah. That's a great point that it's all subjective. Yeah. Often we're splitting hairs over such small things when it comes to business or first class. You're typically flying pretty comfortably as long as it's a flatbed seat. Often we're just splitting hairs over which ones are better than others. So even though you may love one or I may hate another, it doesn't necessarily mean that every reader is going to feel the same. And I find that sometimes when I write about different airlines and I'll say that I really liked my flight, then I'll get a comment or two from somebody who says, oh, I hate the seats on that

airline or, you know, didn't have a good experience with the service. So it really does seem to vary in terms of experience. So that's a good point. So are you going to consider using Cathay Miles in order to fly British Airways to Europe? Are you going to consider leveraging this trick? that are on or near the East Coast, it doesn't get the full value of the trick the way the Cathay flights do because these flights to Europe are not long enough. So you fly first class to London from, let's say even Chicago. I think it's, I don't remember how many miles it is,

but it's not close to the top of the reward chart, which means if you tack on a big extra flight, you're going to be pushing things up to the next reward chart. And so you might not actually be saving by doing that. That said, there are probably tons of examples where you could fly onward from London to somewhere in Europe in economy. So fly, let's say, well, business or first to London, and then fly somewhere within Europe in economy such that you're still within that same band. So there are distance bands. And so, whatever the band is that you're in to get to London, look at that and see how many more miles

can I stuff in here, right, before I get to the next band. And then look for a city pair, you know, from London that British Airways connects to and say, well, what happens if I tack on that flight? And if you're lucky, it's somewhere you want to go. If you're, you know, you could consider just adding a throwaway segment. Now, what's your feeling about doing that? I think that it's inconvenient as somebody who travels with a family and a family that packs too much. It'd be inconvenient for me because you got to check bags and then you have to hope that you can get your bag if you've checked it, that you're picking it up in London.

So if you want to throw away that segment, you can get it. Best practice if you're going to book a throwaway segment is go carry on only, which never happens for my family. So unrealistic for me. On the other end of that, I know that people are always worried if you book these throwaway segments, are you going to get in trouble with the loyalty program? I don't think that that is likely to be much of an issue. I think if you did it all the time, you're going to have a problem. But if you do it once or twice, like most people are going to do, I doubt you're going to run into any problem with Asia miles. Although on international flights, I don't know if the throwaway segments are a good idea, a bad idea, if that might cause you more issues when you get to immigration and they ask for

information about your ticket and you show them that you've got a flight you're not taking. I don't know. Are you setting yourself up for a problem? I'm not sure. Would I do it? Maybe. I don't know. It really depends on how many miles it's going to save me. Yeah, yeah. Now, here's where I think it might do really well. People have often written about London has these departure luxury taxes or something like that i can't remember what it's called but basically if you're flying business or first class departing from london they tack

on a few hundred dollars in fees and so flying one way british airways from london to the u.s much bigger fees than going the other way right right? Mm-hmm. So a common trick around that is to start elsewhere in Europe, go through London if that's your preferred route, and then they won't charge that fee because you're originating somewhere else. So, you know, wherever you are in Europe, flying British Airways home might be a good way to go. You fly BA economy to London, business or first class home, and you'll save a little bit in mileage if you book it through Cathay because of that economy segment. More importantly, you'll also save on those departure taxes. Right. So, you know, that combination might be a really good way to go. I don't think that's a huge, huge win, you know,

but I think the really big wins are probably where you're talking about really long distance travel. You're flying to... You're flying to Asia and then on to Australia or South Africa or the Middle East, things like that. Yeah, it might might make a lot more sense. Yeah. And in terms of routing rules, do you know, can you fly from North America to Hong Kong to Europe? I don't know. Sure. Yeah, that's something that might be interesting to look at. I don't know

what Asia miles routing rules are when it comes to that kind of thing as to where the limit is and how far you can stretch that with your extra throwaway or actual fly segments either way there. And I'd be less concerned, by the way, with throwaway legs if I were booking an overnight connection, then I certainly wouldn't worry about booking a throwaway leg. I'd be much more likely, in fact, to do it in that case. Another thing for the really adventurous among us, and I don't recommend doing this, but people who are really adventurous and want to try something crazy, I haven't looked for the latest status on this, but I know as of a few months ago, there were some cases going on and we had something in Week in Review at some point, and this might have been six months ago or so, about a court case, I think it was in Italy. And I want to say Italy and Spain both have some sort of a law when it comes to skipping the first segment. Now, generally speaking, if you skip

the first segment of a multi-segment flight, then the carrier typically cancels the entire thing, right? So if you were booked to fly Rome to London to Chicago and you skip Rome to London, typically the entire itinerary is going to be canceled. But I remember that there were some cases that found that if you were ticketed from Italy, so to speak, and you skip that Rome to London segment, as long as you contact the airline and tell them that you intend to take the London to Chicago segment, they're supposed to let you on. Now, there's some complexity there because I think it has to have been ticketed in Italy, which I'm not sure how it works when you're booking Cathay Pacific, but I know often when you're booking tickets like that, you do pay your taxes and whatever the local currency is at the point of departure. So there's a possibility that someone who's super adventurous could book that

throwaway ticket and not even fly it at the front end but you'd have to be prepared for a fight at the airport because i doubt the british airways is gonna let that go easy so yeah yeah that's that's a great that's a great uh theoretical uh right idea i personally i would not try it but i'm sure that there's somebody listening that would so so for you adventurous folks out there, let us know how it went. Yeah, please do. We'll feature you on a future FM on the air when we hear your story. We're looking forward to that. Or had to go to Naples or wherever in order to catch that flight that you intended to cancel. Yeah. And while we're on the topic, by the way,

of flying to Asia, we should have mentioned this in the quick hits at the beginning. So I want to add it in here. If you missed this month's Singapore Airlines spontaneous escapes, we're looking really good. And that had totally dropped off my radar since it was a few days ago. But it's worth mentioning, if you haven't looked yet, if you book by January 31st, Singapore Airlines is offering excellent discounts, 51% off on award tickets on lots of different routes. And the really weird thing is that normally you look at the landing page on Singapore Airlines website and it shows you all the routes. has a much longer list of cities that does appear to be valid. So I don't know where they got their list of cities from, but it seems to be accurate. So there are even more cities than what you might have seen if you only looked at the Singapore Airlines website. If you saw this on somebody else's blog and didn't read our post, then you may have missed out on some of the routes.

For example, New York to Singapore, I think the current longest flight in the world in premium economy is like 35,700 miles or something like that, I think right now. So that's a terrific price for premium economy for like 18 and a half hours and what looks like a pretty nice premium economy. Got the same deal going from Los Angeles for a few less miles, like 33k or so. And if you're looking to get to Europe, it was just over 11,000 in economy class from Newark to Frankfurt or Houston to Manchester. And I think the Houston to Manchester route was also on sale in premium economy for about 23,000 miles. Now, it's all for travel next month, February 2020. So you have to

be able to drop everything and travel right away. And then, of course, I didn't mention it in all that talk, but the headline route that everybody was talking about was San Francisco to Singapore for 46,000 miles in business class. I don't know if there's any availability left on that, but it was available in both directions. There were also some great deals from Singapore to other parts of the world, really long flights in business class. I want to say Johannesburg was like 24,000 miles in business class from Singapore. So if you're the kind of person who wants to tack together a multi-leg trip, I mean, 24,000 miles to fly business class from Singapore. So if you're the kind of person who wants to tack together a multi-leg trip, I mean, 24,000 miles to fly business class

from Singapore to Johannesburg. My goodness, that seems crazy to me. So some great- Or you can reduce your price by flying Cathay and adding that. Right, right. So you got options, right? That's why it popped into my mind

because I was like, ah, well, you got something interesting going with Cathay. You also have an option with Singapore Airlines. So if you can't find what you're looking for with Cathay and you're looking to fly next month, it's worth taking a look at Spontaneous Escapes. So I have to say something interesting is going to post, what the deals are. I don't know until I see say, oh, that's nice. But whatever reason, it doesn't work with my schedule. I don't have, you know, I don't have time or I don't have plans to go there, whatever it is. It's worth noting that I expect that to be the

case for lots of readers. For most people, probably. Exactly. There's enough people that benefit that it's that is great yeah exactly so recently though you posted a post about uh deals to columbia right uh-huh that's right the delta was right in the midst of booking flights to columbia when you posted that exciting unfortunately none of them worked for the dates i needed so that was a bummer um and then as you know i'm planning a trip to singapore and this uh we're leaving in february so so i immediately you know as soon as you as soon as i saw that i jumped on to find flights from san francisco to Singapore, business class. And of course, they had already been waitlisted when I'd looked before the sale and they're still

waitlisted now. At best waitlisted. I mean, I couldn't even waitlist on every day that I had as options to go. But on some, at least one day I could waitlist. But waitlisting, I think, requires you move the miles into Singapore's account. And there's two problems with that. One, it's not instant, right? And two, Singapore miles do expire without any exception. Like you can, I wrote up once ways to sort of extend their life a little bit. But after three and a half-ish years, they're gone if you haven't used them. And I have no interest in moving miles into Singapore that are likely to expire without getting used.

So I'd let that one go, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, that's the tough part, especially with the waitlisted ones. And it's worth noting there that if you waitlist one of the flights that's eligible for the discount, it does cost the fewer miles if it tickets by January 31st. But if the waitlist doesn't clear until after January 31st, then you won't get that discounted rate. So it's a big gamble transferring over just for a waitlisted seat. I probably wouldn't do that. Now, if you're somebody who doesn't mind flying economy class, but would like to fly business class, then maybe you'll consider transferring over because I assume that you don't have to waitlist the economy class deals. Economy class from San Francisco, I think it was 18,000 miles one way to Singapore. So if you have that as a backup plan

to book that as your backup that you'll fly in economy, then maybe it'd be worth, you know, proactively transferring over. But it is a bit of speculation. And you do have the problem that if it doesn't clear, you're going to wind up with these extra miles that you're not using. Right, right. So meanwhile, instead of doing that, I moved over enough miles into my Cathay account to wait list a bunch of things. So I only had to move across, I think it's 70% of the mileage price. And I'm willing to do that because the miles don't necessarily expire. Even though I wasn't targeted for that extra bonus.

So I'll get the 10% bonus, but you know. But I'm willing to do it you know it's i think i'll eventually use it and and luckily if not i mean they'll sit around a long time and i'll be able to re-up them easily just by um adding more miles in if if they if i don't use them in a long time um one weirdness about waitlisting Cathay. Have you ever waitlisted with Cathay? Not with Cathay, no. I couldn't find much information about this online, but when you go through the screens, it's just like booking an award. It goes through as if you're actually booking the flight, but it gets to a screen where it says, it doesn't clear and it gives a date and that date is three weeks before the flight it says then the wait list will be dropped and if that's true

that it drops at three weeks ahead i have very little faith in this working at all right right because you don't typically release those seats that far in advance. Right, right. I found something on Flyer Talk where someone asked about that. They had the same situation three weeks in advance. Someone replied that, no, the policy is 96 hours or something like that.

But they didn't give it. But I'm more inclined to believe the person who wrote in because it's what Cathay Pacific writes on the screen and, you know, in response to you booking it. And so I don't know. I'll find out. Yeah. You know, it's the same unfortunate thing with Singapore these days, too, that if the waitlist doesn't clear, if your waitlisted seats don't clear 14 days before departure, then that's it. They cancel your waitlisted seats don't clear 14 days before departure, then that's it. They cancel your

waitlisted seats there. So you got the same kind of thing going with Singapore in the sense that you're not going to be able to book it, especially if it's the first half of the month here. I guess if it's the first half of the month, you'll know whether or not the waitlist clears before the end of this month, before the price deal But, but yeah, so there's not a lot of hope there because typically I think they're more likely to release space closer in my experiences with waitlisting Singapore awards has been that the waitlist has often cleared, but, and sometimes right away, but sometimes not until just a couple of days before departure in the past before they, they started that 14 day limit. So yeah yeah, that's kind of bad news then

on the waitlisted end. Yeah, yeah. But at least, again, my miles aren't wasted. I'll use them eventually, especially as long as this trick works. I think I have a pretty good chance of using it, if not for this trip, in a future one. Right. And generally speaking, big mileage changes are probably going to be announced in advance. So hopefully you'll have a little more advance notice than we did about this Ritz Carlton thing we talked about at the beginning. Hopefully you'll have enough time to know that, okay, now it's time to use these miles. I need to plan a trip around that. So hopefully you'll be in that situation. So speaking of planning out your plan of attack,

your long-term plan of attack i think that brings us to this week's reader question am i right yeah let's go for it all right so this week's reader question came from sophia and she left this on an old post about the welcome bonus on the ink cash card i think and and this question is a question that we've addressed before, I think, both in posts and in presentations. But I don't know as though we've addressed it here on the podcast and broadcast. I don't think we have. Or if we have, it wasn't fresh in mind. So I wanted to bring it up because I thought maybe readers would benefit.

So her comment was this and questions. She said, I have a couple of questions regarding downgrading the ink business preferred to the ink business cash. One, how do you downgrade? Do you call a particular line? And two, does the downgraded card inherit the original card opening date or does the date reset? Now, the reason for that, which we're probably not even going to answer that. The reason for her asking that was asking. So I know when I can cancel and reapply after the 24 months have passed. So it seems what Sophia wants to do is downgrade her ink business preferred to an ink cash, but then she wants to know, well, when do things reset so that she can apply again for the ink business cash?

Or sorry, for the ink business preferred, rather. I misspoke. Yeah, yeah. And have you answered her on the post? I have not yet. So I answer now and then we'll add the answer to the post. I saw it and it was, you know, in, in, in my mind and then out of my mind, cause it was yesterday morning and had some stuff going on yesterday at home. So I have not answered yet, but go ahead. So, okay. So, so the, the interesting thing about the ink cards, unlike the other Ultimate Rewards link, something like that. With all the

other cards, with the Sapphire card, with the Freedom cards, if you click that offer terms, you'll see language that says you can't get a bonus for this card if you receive a bonus on it within a certain number of months, right? The ink cards do not have that listed. And we know lots of people who have signed up multiple times within 24 months and have gotten the bonus each time right now some people will point out if you go all the way through to the application page and go way down into the terms and conditions there is a 24 month thing listed there now that is confusing and uh you've every reason then for doubting what I'm saying, but all I can say is I believe that's there because they basically copied and pasted the terms from their other cards. And so that's why it's there.

But it seems like a reasonable guess because when you look at the actual offer terms for the specific offer you're applying for that language, it's not there. It does exist in that same place on all of the cards. And that's, and that doesn't seem like an oversight. Exactly. Exactly. And it's, it's what's on those offer terms in the beginning that I believe and experience tells me is what's actually enforced. Right. Right. So the answer for Sophia is there is no clock. So go ahead and downgrade your ink business preferred to the ink business cash. Doesn't matter what the

opening date on the account is anymore, right? Because you can go ahead and go for the ink business preferred again at that point. Now, which as far in terms of how do you downgrade Sophia, you just call the number in the back of your card, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's a way to do it online and they don't even through secure message, I don't think they'll let you. Not anymore. I think they used to, but I don't think they allow that anymore. You have to call the number on the back of your card. But yeah, no special number to call. Although I will tell you, I always call the number on the back of the most premium card that I hold with the bank. So for example, with Chase, I would call the number on the back of my

Chase Ritz card or Sapphire Reserve card. And I do that because I typically find that you get to the best customer service representatives that way, and they can help you with all of your cards. So I would do the same with Citi with the prestige card, whatever the case may be. Now with Chase, I've found ever since I opened the Ritz card, I don't think it matters which number I call on the back of any of my Chase cards. It takes me through to the JP Morgan executive line and they never have to wait to speak to a person and they're usually pretty knowledgeable and it's quick and easy. So, uh, so if you, if you do have a Sapphire reserve, for instance, I would call the number on the back of that and then explain to the agent that you're looking to downgrade

your ink business preferred and they should be able to help you. Right. Right. Yeah. That's a great one to bring up. Cool. Yeah. So that was this week's question answered, answered and done. So I think, Greg, that brings us to the end of today's episode, right? Yeah, I think it does. And we still do not have the shortcut, so.

We don't, we don't, but we will for the next one. So for those of you who are listening in in some form or format, I'm one of the many different podcast formats where you can find this. You can find out more about what we're talking about by going to thefrequentmiler.com. That's our site, thefrequentmiler.com. You can find us on Facebook under Frequent Miler or join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions and connect with other people who have the same interests. Find us on Twitter, all the different social media. We're on YouTube and you can find this podcast if with other people who have the same interests. Find us on Twitter, all the different social media. We're on YouTube.

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