Frequent Miler on the Air - Hidden Gem Credit Cards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep368 | 7-24-26

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In today's podcast episode we'll talk about Seats.aero enhancements, The Amex Green mystery, and credit cards that are rarely talked about but worth a look.Giant Mailbag(00:46) - Mea Culpa re Marriott/Japan AirlinesCard News(05:11) - Amex Green card intrigueCrazy Thing(10:44) - Nick's Bilt hotel experienceAwards, Points, and More(15:29) - Chase offers: new terms about "abuse", which you can read about here(17:56) - Transfer up to 60K points between Wyndham & Caesars through 9/11/26, which you can read about here(21:24) - Citi may be adding JAL as a transfer partner, which you can read about here(24:57) - Singapore Airlines now requires minimum of 1K miles to search for award flights which you can read about here(27:49) - Qatar walks back restrictions for some elites, which you can read about here(29:30) - Delta status match terms/condition I didn't know about(31:50) - Seats.aero enhancements, which you can read more about here(36:59) - Gondola updatesMain Event: Hidden Gem Credit Cards(40:27) - Reader Elliot gave us a request: "I've got a number of favorite credit cards that I virtually never hear talked about"(41:12) - The favorites rarely discussed and what we think(51:08) - Rakuten American Express® Card and what we think(59:00) - The Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select and what we think(1:02:07) - Casino cards like the MGM Rewards World Elite Mastercard®, Unity™ by Hard Rock Mastercard® Credit Card and Caesars Rewards® Visa Signature® Card (and what we think)(1:09:02) - Which hidden gem cards did Elliot miss?(1:10:36) - Can we name any other card that gives you 2 free checked bags? Read more about free checked bags via credit cards here(1:15:52) - Others?(01:32:57) - Check out our Best Offers Page for a database of credit card offers hereSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/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 Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. On today's episode, we'll talk about some seats. Aero enhancements. How is it getting better? We'll discuss the MX green card mystery. What's going on there? And we've got credit cards that are rarely talked about, but worth a look.

Frequent Milo on the air starts now. Today's main event, Hidden Gem credit cards. We're going to talk today about cards, credit cards, that are worth having but are rarely talked about. Yeah, so if you want to jump ahead and find out what those are or you want to come back to something later on, don't forget you can find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand that description box. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up, a like, subscribe, enable notifications. We appreciate all that stuff. Thank you very much for that.

Let's drag out this week's Giant Mail bank. All right. Today's giant mail comes from, well, people who wrote in saying that what we said last week about Marriott and Japan Airlines partnership didn't seem exactly right how they understood it. And if that was you, you're right. What we said, what I said last week was just wrong about certain things, about how to get status from Marriott to Japan Airlines. I misunderstood. Japan Airlines has a chart showing how to get status, and I misunderstood it. So the status points with Japan Airlines are called fly-on points, and the chart showed that, for example, to get crystal status, which is like the lowest level of elite status, you need 30,000 fly-on points, and 15,000 of those. have to be from Japan Airlines group flights. I misinterpret that to think that that meant

only 15,000 were needed if they were all obtained by Japan Airlines flights. But that's not true. Basically what it's saying is you do need 30,000 fly-on points regardless, but at least half of those have to be earned directly from Japan Airlines. So back to Marriott, the Marriott, if you have Marriott elite status and you link your accounts, you get a certain number of fly-on points each year. And it looks like those fly-on points count as Japan Airlines group fly-on points.

So it's still a good thing, but it still means you need more fly-on points than we thought when we talked about this last week. So, for example, I'll just be really specific. If you have Marriott platinum status, you get 20,000 Japan Airlines fly-on points each year. Crystal, their first-level status requires 30,000 flying points with 15,000 of them coming from Japan Airlines. So because you have Marriottom, you get 20,000, which counts towards those 15,000 required. So that's good. It gets you more than half of the way to crystal status, but you're still 10,000. fly-on points short, but you could get those from other means like flying American Airlines,

for example, any of their partners and crediting those flights to Japan Airlines. And that's how you could get to crystal status from Marriott Platinum. Now, if you have Marriott-Titium status, you get 30,000 fly-on points. So that is enough right there for crystal status. You should get that basically automatically. But if you want Sapphire status, which equates to one world sapphire too, which we talked about gets you in a business class, one world lounges and all that, you need a total of 50,000 fly-on points. So you're still 20,000 fly-on points short. So you'll have to get 20,000 fly-on points from flights or whatever other activities Japan Airlines allows to get you those things, but those don't have to be, if it's flying, for example, it doesn't have to be with

Japan Airlines or Japan Airlines Group Airlines because you could just credit from American Airlines, Alaska, wherever. So hopefully that makes it a little more clear and more correct. Yeah. Yeah, and Greg took the fall for that one, but I was under the same misunderstanding. I looked at the same chart and had the same interpretation that he did. So I'm going to say that if two out of two of us looked at the chart and misunderstood it, that maybe the Japan Airlines chart should be improved.

But who am I? I'm just looking for somebody to blame, I guess. So I had the same interpretation. Also, for anybody who's new to elite status, I want to be clear when Greg says you can fly American or Alaska and credit it to Japan Airlines, they're going to need to be paid flights in order to earn status points. So, you know, your AA award tickets and your Alaska award tickets,

like you can't credit those to Japan Airlines because you don't earn any elite credit in most programs for. award tickets. So true story. All right. Next up, let's move on to card news. So in card news, some juicy news out just in time for the podcast this week. Amex knows that we record on Thursdays, I guess, and came up with something that was juicy this morning regarding the Amex Green card. So tell me more, Greg. What's going on with the green card? Well, you know, we got up this morning Thursday, Thursday, July 23rd, and the Amx Green card is no longer on American Express's website. So links to the application page, for example, are gone.

You know, they don't lead to anything useful. And so let the speculation begin. What we already knew and previously reported was that Amex had put out that the name was going to change of the green card to the American Express classic green card. So it seems likely that a refresh is coming. And it will probably be pretty drastic. Because normally they don't rename the old cards when there's a minor refresh, right? So it seems like they're going to be overhauling it entirely.

So I don't know. It's a little fun to speculate, I think, about like, what's happening here? And which approach are they going to take? Because in recent years, actually quite a few years with Amex, whenever they've changed an existing card, they've gone hard on the couponification. trend, meaning they raise the annual fee and they add a whole bunch of coupons. Basically, you know, $20 back per month for this and, you know, $10 back per month for that or $150 back for some vendor you've never heard of, a whole bunch of stuff like that.

And that's our usual approach. But more recently, Chase refreshed their Sapphire Preferred card. and they didn't do those things. They kept the $95 annual fee for the Saffirer preferred. They actually increased some of the benefits. They did downgrade one benefit with the Hyatt transfer, but in general they made the card better. And they made their one coupon, their one major coupon better,

but they didn't add like a slew of new coupons. So, you know, I'm kind of like, are they going to go, is Amex going to do their traditional thing? are they going to do the chase thing or something entirely different going to happen? I don't know. Well, you know, the word classic in the name throws me

because if we're going retro, we can't couponify it then, right? The classic green card didn't have any of these coupons in higher annual fees. So maybe I'm just trying to subliminally plant the message to MX, not to increase the fee

and the coupons. But yeah, I don't know. I really don't know what to expect, although, I mean, it does kind of feel like Amex is sort of eaten Chase's lunch each time that there's been a refresh. So I have to imagine that they're paying attention to what's happened on the Chase side. So I expect that they will probably pleasantly surprise us. I mean, what's the last time that Amex refreshed a card in a disappointing way? Yeah, I mean, that's true. A Hilton business card, maybe.

Yeah. That's the one that comes to mind because they got rid of the free night certificate, made a 5X everywhere. Some people were initially a little bit enthusiastic about that 5X everywhere, but as Hilton points have gone down in value, that hasn't looked any better. And they're already talking about maybe adding a free night certificate back to that. So that's the one that comes to mind. Otherwise, I mean, generally they usually, they've increased fees.

And I don't like the increase in fees that we've seen on a lot of their cards, but they've increased relatively. useful coupons. Yeah. I agree with that. I agree with that. And the platinum card was, of course, a great example where they

actually, you know, blew our minds basically and how good they made it. And we did not expect when they raised the annual fee to $8.95 to actually be like, oh, that's a good deal. Right. And the gold card too, you know, like, it's not,

is a gold card less compelling on their refresh, I think, for the increased annual fee? But still not, like, bad. It's arguably still a good fit for a lot of people. Business gold, same thing. This seems different though. Because of this whole classic green card thing makes me think that existing cardholders will not be converted automatically to whatever this new thing is. And why would they make it that way? Probably because the annual fee is going up so much that they know people be upset. Or it's going to lose like, you know, for example, let's say they're doing.

away with the 3x travel benefit. If they know that most people who have and use the card, use it because of that, and that's going away, you know, there could be reasons like that. Yeah. And so I think they are explicitly letting people who like the old green card keep it. And that's different from anything they've done in recent times. I can't remember any other situation like this in the last 10 years. For sure. So I, So expect the unexpected, I think is the moral of the story. We don't know what's going to happen. This is definitely different.

Yeah. Let's see. All right. Next up, what crazy thing did Bilt do this week? I hesitated a little bit when I said that because it's definitely crazy from Bilt, although a little crazy from my end too, perhaps. So this is my story, my experience with a built hotel booking. I managed to accidentally book a non-refundable hotel through Bilt.

And I won't belabor that story. But I was trying to just check the price and somehow accidentally booked it without actually entering a credit card or anything. It just charged a card that was connected to my built account, my built dining account. But I don't know how that happened. And I'm not going to place 100% of the blame on them because it was really weird. But at the same time, somehow that happened. And I immediately reached out to Bill after this thing happened because I got the email confirmation that I had this nonrefundable booking and it wasn't cheap. And so I was, I immediately reached out and said, hey, I did not click any book button. And I know I didn't. This is not my first rodeo. And long story short, Bill eventually said that they would follow up through their hotel partner. And of course, they started with the AI bot, which is so frustrating. But anyway, said they would follow up with the hotel partner. And I would hear back within three days if they were willing to cancel it without a fee. And I was somewhat hopeful since this was like,

minutes after the email came through that maybe we can get this resolved. You know, it was a nice hotel. So I thought perhaps they would be interested in in decent customer service. It wasn't really costing them. And it wasn't like I was coming back months later to cancel here. So I was somewhat confident that perhaps there would be a good resolution. But I was also pretty skeptical that I wouldn't hear back from built in three days. And, you know, as you may already expect, I didn't hear back from built after three days. I didn't hear back from built ever again about it. And I debated what to do whether to file a charge back on it or something. And I left the reservation. And we did need a room at this hotel. So I left the reservation begrudgingly,

unhappy about it. But then plans ended up changing completely. And I can't make it because of a memorial service. So I reached out to the hotel, not expecting them to be helpful, but hoping maybe they would because it is because I have to attend a memorial. service that I can't, I can't make this reservation. And so I explained that situation. I said, is there any way you could just, like, I'd be happy to change the dates to next summer and pay a difference if rates have gone up or I'm not trying to back out. I just, I can't be there during this time. And they very graciously wrote back to me and told me that they had canceled this reservation four months ago and returned the payment to the booking platform. And I was like, what? I pulled up the

built app because I've pulled up the billed at plenty of time since and the reservation has been there staring me in the face all this time. And sure enough, still as of right now when we record this, that reservation shows active and paid in my built account. But the hotel did indeed cancel it and did indeed refund it. And that's perhaps where the crazy lies on me that my wife was doing the bills and I just didn't notice that they did indeed refund that stay after we had paid for it. And so, also, it ends well in the sense that I did get the refund for this booking. So, you know, kudos to the hotel for that. But if this hadn't happened, if this, like, you know, the memorial service that I'm attending,

if that hadn't been planned for that week, I would have showed up in Switzerland for a hotel booking with a confirmation in my built app, showing that I had paid for it, and without a room since they had refunded me. Yeah. Wow. That's mind-blowing. Mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems like, you know, where Bill dropped the ball. I mean, aside from accidentally booking a room in the first place, that was crazy.

They not only didn't notify you that the room was successfully canceled, but they didn't notify themselves or their travel portal software or something that it was canceled. And so it was still there in your app. So crazy stuff. Yeah. crazy crazy crazy I mean all like I said all as well as well I did get it refunded so thankful that that all happened and that I really only half expected that they were going to try to do anything about it when I came back with the fact that I certainly didn't intend to make this booking so I'm glad that they did reach out and handle that just yeah wild that they

never told me the outcome and that they still show the reservation in my belt app you know months after it was canceled by the hotel. So yeah, anyway, that's the crazy thing for this week. Let's move on to this week's awards, points, and more. So in awards points and more, Chase Offers has new terms out about abuse. And I quote, abuse of offers may result in exclusion from future offers. Now, I'm talking about Chase offers like the type that are linked to your card. Like, you know, you see those offers when you log into your card account that you can, you know, make a purchase at, you know, Chewy.com and get 10% back up to $15 or whatever it might be. I made that one up. So Chewy might not actually be there. But anyway, so they're saying abuse of

the offers might result in exclusion of future offers. What does that even mean? Yeah. I mean, my assumption is that people have been doing things like, you know, buying things or booking hotels or, you know, whatever the offer is for and getting the rebate and then, returning the thing or canceling their stay or, you know, what have you. It's my assumption. I don't know for sure. But so they're probably getting it to where, you know, just making it clear that if you do that, you'll probably, they probably will not just claw back what they gave you, but stop giving

you any offers in the future, which is actually a pretty minor penalty, better than them shutting down new cards or something. Right. Right. spoken from the voice of experience. Not with Chase. Shutdowns just because Greg's written about shuttowns lately. So anyway, but so let me ask you a question.

Do you think it's like, I know you can't say with certainty, but do you think it's likely that someone will accidentally end up being excluded from future offers? If you don't know that you're abusing, are you likely to be accused of an abuser? No, no, no. I mean, they've got to know. People are going to book, you know, Hotel State. and cancel them. I mean, that happens all the time. And so, you know, if it just happens once in a while

that things get returned or whatever, that shouldn't be a problem. I think they're going to look for a pattern of that's excessive. You'll know if you're doing something that. That's, yeah. Well, and I mention that because every now and then when this kind of thing comes up, we get emails from multiple emails from people who are like, oh my goodness, this happened or that happened. Am I going to get everything shut down? And chances are if you're asking that question, you're probably not in danger. I think that, yeah, that's that. All right.

So next up, you can transfer up to 60,000 points between Windham and Cesar's through September 11th of 2026. So we've got to post up about that. Normally, the limit is 30,000 points in either direction. We have seen them increase in the past to as much as 100 or I think even 120,000 points at one point that you could move back and forth. So they do increase this once in a while, usually once a year. I think. So this is probably the best we're going to see in terms of an increase for the number of points. So you could transfer 60,000 points one way or another. That can sometimes be useful for keeping Wyndham points alive because you can transfer over to Caesars and then transfer back to Wyndham in order to restart your expiration clock. But I say that and it's slow. I mean, the last time I transferred Wendham to Cesar's, it took five or six days. And I have not transferred back from Cesar's to Windham. But all of the

reports I've ever heard about that have been like it took weeks. Yeah. Yeah. That's been my experience. It takes a long time. Sometimes you have to keep like calling them to try to get something to happen. That's it's frustrating. So that is one use of this. I mean, the other use is to actually get one cent per point value at Caesar's properties, right? And since Windham points go on sale, sometimes for significantly less than a penny each, it could be a nice way to just save on an upcoming. Caesar's vacation or stay, you know, and get some points to use there. For sure, yeah, I mean, absolutely. So a penny apiece.

And really the value is, depending on how you want to calculate that, even a little bit higher than a penny because you can use them towards your room and towards like restaurants that are owned by Caesars and some of the entertainment venues and whatnot. And so the nice thing is when you use your reward points, you don't pay tax on that part of the bill that you erase with the reward points. So hotel tax is relatively high in Las Vegas. So the savings is really more than a penny per point if you're using it towards room. But keep in mind, you can also use it towards restaurant.

Like we ate at Nobu, Las Vegas, which was absolutely fantastic at Caesar's Palace and really expensive. But using reward points in that situation worked out really well because we enjoyed a terrific meal. I mean, the A5 Japanese Wagyu and all sorts of different interesting dishes. So it was great. and I would totally, even if I wasn't going to Las Vegas to gamble or whatever, I was just passing through. I would go back and eat with reward points pretty gladly if I transferred over from Wyndham. The thing you need to know that a commenter pointed out is that Caesars has an awful expiration policy on reward points. You need to earn or redeem every six months or they get forfeited.

So if you're going to do this, you need to be able to keep your Caesar's reward points active. And so I don't do this for a trip that you might take someday unless you're like using the Caesar's sportsbook, online sports book or something. I mean, you place like a bet of a couple of dollars and earn a reward point every now and then in order to keep them alive, I guess. So if you live in a state where Caesar's has an online sports book, it can be relatively easy to keep your reward credits active. Or if you have a Caesar's credit card, it can be. But if neither of those things applies to you, then only transfer to Caesar. either with a plan to transfer back to Wyndham or with a within the next six month use of your points.

Okay. Next up, City might be adding Japan Airlines as a transfer partner. Hmm. This is intriguing. So, yeah, this is exciting, I think, for those with City, thank you, rewards points. So it showed up, Japan Airlines hasn't shown up as a transfer partner with City. Let me be clear about that. But people have noticed that in your city thank you account, if you go into there, you can sort of pre-link different rewards programs to your thank you account.

And the list of programs you could link to are mostly limited to those that you can transfer to. But Japan Airlines is in there as an odd ball out. And so people are speculating that they're about to add Japan Airlines. And so why is that exciting? Well, I mean, that's interesting because Japan Airlines has a bunch of good uses. I mean, number one, for their own flights, they release more award availability to members, and they have potentially some really good pricing, sometimes business class from 55,000 points each way to and from Japan.

Now, they do have surcharges, and with the cost of fuel being high, those surcharges are in the $500 or $500 range, I think, right now. But they do tend to be pretty good about changing that when the cost of fuel changes. So if it never comes back down, then you can reasonably expect that those surcharges will probably come back down. But they can also be useful for things like flying Air France without surcharges. They don't add any surcharges on Air France Business Class Award tickets. So they can be great for that for Flying American. There's a bunch of different uses of Japan Airlines miles.

So that would be nice. And historically, it's been really difficult to earn Japan Airlines miles because they didn't partner with anybody. But now they partner with built and they partner with Capital One. So they seem to be interested in getting into the U.S. market. So it would be great to see them added as a city thank you partner. When Greg mentioned before that that section of the city thank you profile where you can add this is mostly transfer partners. I think you undersold it, Greg. It is only city transfer partners and Japan Airlines are the only program that is not a transfer partner that you can link up your or save your loyalty information.

So it seems likely that seems pretty likely. But when? I have no idea. I mean, the IT for this kind of thing might take a while and maybe some IT person just forgot to scrub that back out of there, left to put it on the production side accidentally and maybe this is months and months away. Or maybe it's right around the corner. We don't know. Yeah. And what's your prediction if it does happen will be one to one? I mean, I hope. I hope so. I hope so mostly because I don't want to see city change the transfer ratio to American area. airlines. And I feel like if they start to do that with other airline programs that I know they

already do with one or two, but most of them are one to one. So I'm hopeful for one to one. Yeah. And now that Japan Airlines and Marriott have a partnership, you can transfer Japan Airlines miles four to three, if I remember right, to Marriott. So would that be a good use of your city points to transfer them to Marriott indirectly? No, definitely would not be. So you definitely don't want less than one Marriott point per city point. So definitely not there, but hopefully one-to-one to Japan Airlines. And, you know, it'd be nice to see. So keep your eye out on that.

And obviously, we'll report it if anything exciting happens there at any time. Next up in the list, we got Singapore Airlines. Now requires a minimum of a thousand miles to search for award flights. What's going on with that? Isn't that annoying? I guess you can still call them and ask them to look up award space. But yeah, if you want to see online whether Singapore has any award availability, you need some miles in your account. And apparently they have to be recently acquired too.

I think if you've had a few points like sitting around for a long time, that might not count. I don't know. It's a little unclear. But regardless, it is probably intended to prevent. the award search tools from, you know, so a lot of them, what they do is, is they have these bots that search for award space. And with programs like Singapore, where you have to actually be logged in to search for award space, what these tools do is they set up bots with lots of hundreds or thousands of accounts so they can be searching a lot. And, you know, they're not going to be

do that. They're not going to add a thousand points to all these different bots accounts to do that. So the effect is going to be that to the extent that any tools were successfully searching Singapore airlines before, I think we can be pretty sure that they won't be going forward or at least not consistently. That's not a big change, though. Not many tools were successfully doing it already. So I'm not really sure why Singapore thought this was such a pressing need to do this at all. Well, they also don't have great award pricing. I mean, it's the best way to fly Singapore if you want to fly Singapore, but you have to want to pay the premium to do that to begin with.

So, you know, it's not a, I don't know. It seemed a little weird to me to create that extra barrier. Yeah. Do you not want your members to payable to redeem points? Right. I mean, the only thing I, the one hopeful thing, if anything, is that for some reason this would allow them to give more award space to their members. I don't know why it would, but that would be positive because I know, you know, as someone who's had Singapore miles in the past, like, it's not just partners that they don't release awards space to. they rarely release saver-level award space to their own members for desirable premium cabin

routes. And so, yeah, I find the whole program extremely frustrating. And this just adds to it right now. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Agreed. Speaking of frustrating, Qatar has walked back some of their frustrating changes, sort of, for elite members. So Qatar Privilege Club instituted a whole bunch of restrictions regarding who you can redeem your privileged club points for your obvious for. So when you're making an award reservations,

I don't know. I can't even remember the word. They were so complicated that I kind of were like two different lists. You have to add the other people to. And if they're like under 18, you can't put them on this list. And if they're over, they can't have had an account before or something. I can't remember the rules either. It was ridiculous. And there and there were limits to how many people you had to each of these lists. Luckily, as long as you have guitar gold or platinum status, you're not going to be, they're not going to enforce those rules. So right now you could get around them by calling and starting in August, you can, it should be enabled online that you could get around those rules. So all you need is a little

cold status. Wonderful. Well, you can get that from one of the cardless, one of the cardless guitar cards you can get status from. So if that really matters to you, then you could pursue that with the more expensive card, but it's questionable as to whether that's worth it. Right. Exactly. That's the problem is that's a pretty big investment for yeah. You know, obviously if you want to if if you want to fly guitar a lot and with others, it might be worth it to you. But I think for the average person, I know I'm not going to be bothered. they're in with it. Definitely not. Definitely not. All right, I added something to the list because I mentioned in a post the other day, I think, actually, you know what? Maybe I haven't even published that

post yet. Now I think about it. I was writing it. But I, so I had one of my kids apply for a status match to Delta because my family has Mosaic 1 status from the JetBlue 25 for 25 challenge. And we've got an upcoming trip where we're going to fly on KLM city hopper and we don't have free seat selection right now. It's an award ticket booked through Virgin Atlantic. It does come with free check bags for each person, but not free seat selection. And so I wanted to get Sky Team status, presumably really eventually probably for a few of my family members, because I think it won't extend to others on the same booking. It doesn't really matter. I submitted the status match from my youngest son to Delta to match to his Jet Blue Mosaic 1 status. And Delta came back and

said no, and they cited a term that I didn't realize exist. maybe you did in the status match terms. So it's, well, so they said, upon review your submission, we're unable to enroll you in the Delta status match challenge. To be eligible, all applicants must be a Sky Miles member for a minimum of 30 days. Now, he met that. That was fine. And, and the bold underlying part, must have taken a Delta marketed flight in main cabin

or higher, excluding basic economy within the last three years as a Skymiles member before submitting your enrollment request. now because we haven't flown Delta and credited a Delta flight. I mean, we did fly Delta once on an award ticket booked through SAS, I think. But because we haven't had any Delta flights in the last three years, I did not realize that you needed to have flown Delta within the last three years in order to get a match. Yeah. Yeah, that's too bad.

Yeah, and I don't remember whether it's been a while since I wrote the post about the Delta status match, which is quite generous, by the way. But yeah, I don't remember whether I knew about that restriction or not. Yeah, I've done other status matches in the past with other airlines without having flown them. And in fact, I've matched to Delta. And I don't think I had a paid Delta flight. I did it my match a few years ago. So, yeah, that might be new.

But I don't know whether or not it is. It just popped in. The email just popped in. So I figured we would toss that on here just as a good to know. If you would do a status match Delta, you'll need a flight within the last three years. Yeah. Okay, next up, Seats. Arrow has added some enhancements. And so there's a couple of really key enhancements here.

So when you hear the word enhancement, if you're like, uh-oh, don't worry, these are actual enhancements. Seats. Dot Arrow has added cardholder pricing. Now, that's not available yet for everybody. I think it's rolling out slowly. But at any rate, if you've got a United credit card or a Delta credit card that gives you access to discounted award pricing, there'll now be a place in your account settings that you can enable cardholder pricing. So you can see that in search results. That's super handy for anybody who's

looking for some of that expanded awards based or better pricing, I guess, with one of those credit cards. So that's good to know. That's a nice enhancement. Even bigger news, I think, is they have a Google Flights Chrome extension now. Previously Points Path, was the only one that had a Google Flights extension, a Chrome extension for that for Google Flights. Now Seats.Aro does. And that's a huge enhancement for Seats. Dot Arrow because they do have a number of programs

that aren't available through Points Paths. So there are quite a few things that you can search for now, and you can kind of compare the two and see and the two different ways of displaying information. I think it's kind of interesting to compare and contrast. I have not extensively checked, this out yet. So I've only taken a quick glance at it so far to write the post. I imagine we will have a deeper dive coming soon. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that's great news for

Seatstero subscribers and it might be something that that pushed them into it. The cardholder pricing, I think, is so key and I hope it'll hit more tools soon. The points path already has it for certain level of membership. But, you know, for a tool that is used extensively, like Seaside Arrow, to do like alerts and stuff, assuming it works with alerts, I feel like that's really important with United specifically, because United enables more Polaris business class award availability to cardholders than non-card holders. And so an alert system that doesn't take that into account is kind of useless for finding you or not useless, but you're not likely to find United Awards in business class if it doesn't have that feature. So that's great news.

I wish I could test it out, but it's not, it doesn't seem to be enabled on my account yet. And what I mean by that is I can go in my profile and turn it on as something I want, but it doesn't seem to affect the output at all. So I'm kind of waiting for that to actually happen. Interesting. I should mention points path also. You have to go in both of them, you have to go into your profile and explicitly turn these things on.

It's just not going to otherwise just magically appear with those better pricing. Oh, and that's important because it's somebody who doesn't have the card. I don't want to see that space because I can't book it. Yeah, no, exactly. It's just something that you might not realize that you haven't turned it on. And yeah, I've just played with the browser extension briefly. It looks good. I mean, some of the ways it displays information I find better than Points Path.

Another point's path has other types of information and capabilities that C.S.S.D.O. doesn't have yet. I think that this is good news from the competitive Lancy. They're going to push each other to keep making the products better and better. And so I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And very much, like you said, my experience is very similar in looking at it and saying there were some things that I liked more about seats.

Dot Arrow's Chrome extension and some things that I liked more about the points path extension. So until I dig deeper into it, I don't know as though I have. a strong opinion one way or the other. But I do definitely share the opinion that there were things on both sides at first glance that stood out to me as, ooh, I like this, I like that. And that's great because like you said, that will just push both sides to continue to innovate. And so I look forward to seeing what else comes there.

Right. One thing that's missing, and my guesses will always be missing from the seat side arrow one, is I use points path on my iPhone in the Safari browser. And that's something that you need a special Safari browser plugin or something to be developed for that. And as a non-Iphone user, I didn't even realize that. So there you have it. All right, that seats at arrow.

Next up, gondola is also out with some news. It's now possible to connect your gondola and a word wallet accounts. rather than having it scrape your email. So that way you could see what you know, know what you have. If you don't want to allow access to your full email, which I certainly don't enable full scraping, full email scraping access to anything. So that's an interesting alternative.

If you want to be able to connect up your existing reservations and points balances and things like that. And Gondola is now live in the chat GPT app store. Now, I'm not really even familiar with the chat GPT app store. So tell me what that means. Well, so with these AI model things, there's generally ways to connect third-party tools so that they are able to interact with those tools. And so by having Gondola connected to chat GPT, it means that you could have a conversation with chat GPT about your travel, and it could actually use the gondola system to check on hotel availability, award availability

at those hotels, book hotels for you, and do things like that. And what could possibly go wrong if you're having chat GPT do all you're talking for you. That's what I was the full book? Slow down. Slow down. I'm going to start to feel like older than I am if I, but I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this crazy technology is getting a little out of hand here. Yeah.

But, but, you know, but potentially really useful, right? I've been, you know, I've been doing more and more of my trip planning with, you know, AI systems and the ability to have a useful, like, a system tied in that can actually check availability. I could see that cutting a lot of steps out of the whole thing. And on the first part about a gondola connecting to ward wallet, remember gondola has a couple features where it automatically checks for hotel price or flight price prices to go down. And so I think this means that, you know, if you have your airline account tied in with award wallet, and gondola then has access to your award wallet and you have a flight booked with that airline,

you know, it should be able to see that and hopefully track it. I don't know. I haven't tried all that, but theoretically, that should all tie in together well. Yeah, pretty interesting. You know, I'm starting to get more into integrating some of these things myself. We just set up like a calendar at home to sit on the countertop and electronic calendar. And I was able to figure out how to get the URL for my trip it trips shared to that calendar. And so, and I see as you start to integrate some of this stuff, there's a lot of opportunity to automate things in the background, like searching for those price drops that could save you a lot of time

and the mental bandwidth of having to constantly check and see if prices have changed. Right. So, all right, great. We will be right back after this with our main event. We hope you're enjoying the frequent miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, best credit cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources.

If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to Frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back with today's main event, Hidden Gem Credit Cards. This whole main event was sparked by an email from a guy named Elliot. He wrote in with a podcast topic request. And I thought his email was fun to read. So we're going to actually organize this whole main event around Elliot's email. So congratulations, Elliot, for getting us intrigued about this topic and really entertained, actually, by your email. and has us really thinking about some of these hidden gem credit cards that you brought up.

And we'll talk about some others that we've thought of as well. All right. Elliot wrote, I've got a number of favorite credit cards that I virtually never hear talked about. I'll give some examples of my favorites. Last year, I picked up all of the online travel agency credit cards, booking.com, priceline, and Expedia. They're all free and all come with status, including top, tier status for life with booking.com. The sign-up bonuses and reward structures are also quite good.

For example, priceline gives a $50 statement credit and 20,000 points after $500 spend. You would think that those points could only be redeemed on price line purchases, but it's actually the opposite. You can only redeem them for cash back on your statement credit at one cent per point. So you're really getting $250 back on $500 spend with no annual fee and free perpetual status. Sometimes when looking at Google hotels, I will notice either booking.com or priceline will have a crazy deal, and stacking the credit card rewards with free status perks and shopping portals can give unparalleled value. Yeah, so that's interesting. Let's back up here for a second. Take a look at some of these.

So he first mentioned the booking.com genius rewards visa signature credit card. So that's interesting because, as Elliot said, it gives complimentary genius level three status, gives you a minimum. of 2x on all spend, 6x when you're booking through booking.com, et cetera. So that's kind of interesting, no annual fee. The price line VIP rewards visa card that he mentioned with a decent introductory bonus gives you, again, automatic gold status in the priceline VIP rewards program. I'll mention that I have VIP gold status right now, or I think actually technically my wife does, and I have lately noticed better rental car pricing a few times through price. line. Thanks to that gold status rather. And notably better car rental price. I'm talking like

probably 10% better than I could find anywhere else. And that's after having searched everywhere else. So on an expensive rental, that worked out to be, I don't know, 50, 60 bucks better than what I could find anywhere else. And, and this was kind of interesting to me, I clicked through from a shopping portal. So I think Capital One Shopping is what it was. And initially Capital One Shopping had showed some sort of pricing for the rental car that did show up when I clicked through to Priceline. But then I signed in and ran the search again and got the better pricing, thanks to having Priceline gold status. And it still triggered the Capital One Shopping cashback. So that was really good.

So anyway, Priceline VIP card comes with gold status there. It has $120 global entry or TSA precheck credit. So if you don't have that otherwise, kind of nice to have that on a card with no annual fee. And then he also mentioned the Wells Fargo one key cards. What's up with those? Yeah. So he mentioned the no fee one, which, yeah, it gives you automatic silver status. So it has a base earning rate of one and a half percent back and then three percent at various things.

So that's the one he was talking about with the automatic silver status and no annual fee. I just wanted to also mention that there's a one-key plus master card for $99, $99 annual fee. That gives you 100-mine gold status. So that gives you a higher level of status, but it also gives you $100 of one-key cash every year. So as long as you're booking something at least once a year, the $100 of one-key cash should more than offset the annual fee. and that's why I put it in here because to me, if I was going to pick one or the other, I think it would actually be the plus.

It also has a base 2% earning rate, so you're not going to do too bad spending with this one just in general. And it also has some other perks, but I'm not going to go into the whole list of them. But yeah, so what do you think? So we have these different online travel agency cards. We don't generally talk about these, but does Elliot have a point? Are these things like hidden gems that ought to be

talked about more? I don't know if I'd call them hidden gems. But, but, you know, I mean, should they be talked about more? No. But, but are they maybe worth getting? Maybe. I mean, $250 back on 500, for instance, as an intro bonus. I mean, that's a decent offer, I guess, on any card, though I don't usually apply for many of those cards, because I mean, I'm usually looking for higher value welcome bonuses, though those higher value welcome bonuses also have higher spend requirements. So if my spend capacity was lower, then I would absolutely be pretty intrigued by the ability to essentially get half back on some of these. So I think that it definitely makes sense, particularly if you do have a limited amount of spend to be maximizing the return that you can get on that spend through offers like these. So that's just from a welcome offer standpoint.

And from a benefit standpoint, I mean, not bad. I'm less enthused about the one key cards because I'm pretty sure that the 2% back there is just in one key cash. And so that can only be spent through the systems. It's not even as good as a 2% cash back card because 2% cash back you could spend anywhere you want. Having to spend it through Hotels.com or Expedia or whatever makes me less enthusiastic than a cashback card. So I'm not wildly excited about that. I'm more intrigued by the fact that the price line card, it sounds like, is essentially a cashback card, though the base level is only 1% back, which would not be any good.

So, again, my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered there. Also, I should mention that price line elite status, I did say just a few minutes ago that I've been seeing some better rental car pricing, and I've been pretty happy with that, actually, lately, save some money that way. But it's not real hard to get elite status with price line. So price line requires five completed trips to get gold status, which is their second sort of elite level. There's member, blue, gold, and platinum. So you need five completed trips in order to get that status. And a trip can be just a car rental.

You don't need like a whole trip. So like five car rentals booked through price line and boom, you've got gold status. And based on the frequently asked questions, I'm not sure that that status ever expires. Now, the same true from the status that you get from the credit card. I'm not sure that status ever expires once you get it. Maybe it does. I can't say one way or another for sure, but it's not terribly tough to get to that level, is my point.

So I don't value that a ton, but it's not worth nothing because if you don't have status now and you want to save on a car rental, that might be the way to do it. So, yeah, I'm kind of like mid-tier enthusiasm here. These aren't amazing, but they also aren't the worst cards on the market. Yeah. Yeah. So the way I think about it is like I like cards that you could just get and sock drawer of them, but they give you some benefit, right? And that's, I think, basically what he's talking about here is like once you've earned the whatever the sign-up bonuses, yeah, you wouldn't use these for general spend because they're not that rewarding in general. But if they're giving you elite status, you wouldn't have had otherwise. And that's really where it.

That's the question, I think. Would you have had this elite status otherwise? This isn't adding much, so why bother with it? But I've just very lately been more and more intrigued by these online travel agencies elite statuses because like with one key. So either Hotels.com or Expedia, I have seen lately better hotel prices that I could, than I can, I can find elsewhere. Plus, with some hotels, special on-property perks that you don't usually see. Now, you're not going to see that for all hotels or necessarily the hotel you want. I might have just been lucky in finding one, but the fact that I stumbled upon one that I actually wanted, you know, made me think, oh, you know, these online travel agency elite statuses might actually be valuable. So I think it's a very reasonable. way to get a short-term sign-up bonus and a long-term, you know, status that'll make your travel that will potentially make your travel cheaper going forward.

Yeah, all right. I'll give you that. That may be the case. And, you know, I think you're going to have to shop around. But you're right. I have some status with one key also. I think maybe I only have silver status with Hotels.com. And so, therefore, all the one-key sites.

And you're right. Occasionally, I have seen a deal through their. there. Though these days there's so many different hotel platforms that I almost don't like that because I have to shop so much harder, but to find the right deal these days. You're going to look through like with Delta stays and see does your Delta elite status give you a better deal or your Alaska or less do that. The other thing I don't like is it makes my hotel free night certificate or hotel discounts from different credit cards less valuable. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's true.

The price I have to compare to has gone down. And that's kind of, you know, I don't know, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But anyway, it does, it makes it like less attractive to use all these hotel discounts that I have when the alternative best price not getting one of those discounts is much better. Okay. Let's go back to Elliot. Elliot was not done. Elliot says, the next card I don't see talked about enough is the rack. Racketon card. It's an Amex card that does not count towards the five Amex maximum, and all earned

points can be transferred to Bilt, including the sign-up bonus, which is frequently elevated. Forex back on Rackettin purchases in Bilt Points is great and can make Rackettin purchases from stores with very modest cashback percentages quite rewarding. So we need to explain this, right? Tell us about how the Racketing card works. So Racketon is a shopping portal like any other shopping portal where initially if you signed up as a new member, you would see cash back at various stores. Now you can take that as money as cash that they'll deposit every few months. Or you can connect it with your American Express account and then you'll earn points. So instead of earning 10% back, you'll earn 10 MX membership rewards points per dollar, for instance, when you click through to a store, I'm saying.

And if you connect it with your Amex account, it will show up. as it'll show 10x instead of 10%. However, there's another option. You can choose to earn built points through Racketon. So instead of earning cash back, you'd earn built points. If you choose that option, it does still show up as 10% back. And later on, transfers over to built. Now, how it transfers to built depends on whether or not you have elite status with

built. If you don't, then you're going to get half a built point for every one cent in cash back. If you do have built elite status, then it's a one-to-one. Every penny becomes a point. point. So what Elliot's saying here is if you've got built elite status, then that 4x on racketon purchases on this built card will eventually become four built points if you've got built elite status. And so he's saying that's that's great. And it can make your racketing purchases even more rewarding. So yeah, let me explain a little bit more there. So the way of this credit card works. So let's

say your shop, you go through the Racketon Shopping Portal and you see you're going to buy something at Home Depot and you see it says earn 2% back at Home Depot. Normally, if you click through and pay with any regular credit card at Home Depot, you get two points per dollar from the Racketon portal and you get how many points your credit card would normally give you for shopping at Home Depot from your credit card. But with, the racketing credit card. If you click through and pay with your racketing credit card, you're getting the 2x or 2% plus you're getting 4% with your racketing credit card up to a limit.

Up to, yes, and up to $10,000 in purchases per calendar year. So, so, you know, it has that and it has a couple other bonus categories, 2X groceries and restaurants or whatever. There's no annual fee, so that's nice. So what do you think? I mean, is that extra 4% on up to 10K per year, or the four extra points per dollar, let's call them on $10,000 per year? I mean, is that, should that be a cart that everybody should be talking about and everybody should get?

What do you think? You know, it's, I think it just depends how much online shopping you do to be whether it's, it's really worth it and and um i don't know uh like i don't think that the the the total upside is huge here but i mean 10 000 spend it means up to 40 000 additional points um doesn't really additional because you would have earned let's say you would have earned 2x with a credit card right so it's up to 20 000 additional points so that gives you an idea of what the limits are with this thing, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's not even that exciting to me, because if you get the built palladium card, which presumably if you got built elite status, there's a chance, and you're listening to this show, there's a chance you got that built status because you have the palladium card. And if you're using the accelerator,

then the built platingium card is earning you three points per dollar everywhere and up to $25,000 in purchases per year, including the purchases you make through Racketon. So this Racketon card's getting you one extra point and up to $10,000. thousand dollars and spend and if that's your situation. That's not enough to move the needle for me. Like even when the sign-up bonus is decent. So far, it hasn't been enough for me to be like,

oh, yeah, now you definitely ought to get that. I mean, again, it is an extra point even in that situation. And I'm not usually one to turn away from extra points. So, you know, I'm not criticized. Yeah. It's just that it's not moving the needle by a lot. Maybe, you know, I think for people who maybe if you order a lot of gift cards from giftcards.com or, you know, one of those things like where where the earn rates aren't generally that good, you're, you know, being able to earn that much is pretty nice. The other thing, it does, it does earn 5x extra on racketon dining. So that's like a one of those card link programs where you earn points for dining at certain restaurants. You know, it's just select restaurants. That could,

And so you'd get whatever Rackadin dining offers plus five by paying with your Rackadin card. So you could be getting, what, 10 points per dollar at certain restaurants, which is pretty good, probably better than you'd be getting at like if you had the same card link to like or any card link to built dining program. You're probably earning more built points at certain restaurants this way. So there are there are certain plays here that makes sense if you're in the right situation and you actually dine at those restaurants. I have the card, but the main reason I signed up for it was, I mean, I did get the sign-up bonus. So it was like 20,000 points at the time, you know, turn in bill points. That's great. But the main reason I got it is last year before the holidays, they ran a special promotion where cardholders were getting something like 30, you know, X at certain.

stores 30% back or 30x if you're earning points. And that was really intriguing. And I thought, oh, maybe as a card holder that happens fairly regularly. It hasn't happened since, but maybe it'll happen next holiday season. And if it does, then it may be worth getting the card, you know, if and when we see that. And I think that that type of thing is, at least has the potential to make the card much more intriguing. It's not a bad card. It's certainly if you're purchasing things through Racton, and you don't care about 524, which is the rule regarding getting new chase cards, you know, if there's a lot of other boxes here that I could check if you're not signing up for other cards, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is a time and a space where

this card would be a fit. I don't know if I'd call it a gem, but maybe, maybe you would. And I would probably not tell you you're wrong because it can be worth it. Like you said, if they run that holiday thing again, then I would, I think I would be on a team racketing card at that point for sure. Yeah. All right. So anyway, and I want to be clear, we're not saying it's a bad card. I mean, you know, what Elliot said was all true, you know, good points about it.

It's, it's all of these cards he's talking about have their, have their place and are gems for some people. For some. Yeah. All right. Let's get back to Elliott. Elliot says, another example is the $95 per year choice select master card. It gives mid-tier status as long as you hold the card, gives best in class cell phone

protection for paying your phone bill, and gives you 30,000 points per year at less than a third of a cent per point with no expiration date. And what he means by that last part at less than the third a cent per point is he's saying when you pay the annual fee, the $95 annual fee, if you think of that as like buying 30,000 points, cost less than a third a cent per point to do that. You can let your points accumulate for a few years and strategically use them at a luxurious preferred hotel

for outsized value. And it's a no-brainer card for me. Yeah, so the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges MasterCard Select Card has a $95 annual fee. So that's the number who's comparing against. It gives you 10-exit choice. and then it has a couple other bonus categories as well. It gives you that automatic platinum status.

And I think the key thing, as Elliot mentioned here, is the 30,000 points every year for $95. I mean, that is less than a third of a cent per point. Wells Fargo's cell phone protection is the best in the business. Now, I think the cell phone protection on this card is up to $800 max per claim, so that may or may not cover your phone in full, but we'll probably cover a cracked screen anyway on most phones.

The thing that makes the Wells Fargo cell phone insurance the best is the $25 deductible. I mean, it's the lowest deductible, I think, in the other cards that offer cell phone protection. So I think that this card is a hidden gem. I think the ability to earn 30,000 points every year for $95. Even, you know, you mentioned luxurious preferred hotels, Elliot, but even at many regular choice privileges properties, you can do that well. know, certainly better than a third of a cent per point. And what I like about points rather than a free night certificate is that, like you said, the points don't expire. You don't have to use them this year. You can accumulate them for a few years for a meaningful stay. I just had to cancel a stay in

Copenhagen at the Hotel Admiral, which they just, I think, just redid that hotel. And my goodness, I don't even remember what the cash rates were. They were expensive. $500 a night, I think, during my stay. And I think it was 20,000 points a night for that place. So, you know, you find a place like that. and you can do really well with choice privileges points. And this is a low cost to keep renewing, you know, getting some more each year and build them up over a few years. I think this one stands out to me as you're right.

This is a hidden gem that is probably worth considering. Yeah. And I agree totally. You know, just get it and, and let the points add up until you find a great use for them. And it seems extremely likely you'll have a chance to use them for much better than one-third percent per point value.

So you'll do well whenever you end up using your points. So nice find. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Great. All right. Back to Elliott. Yeah, he's not done.

Elliot says, next is the casino cards. The free MGM and Hard Rock cards give status, which gives free parking among other benefits. The Caesar's card with the annual fee has no cash advance fees and gives 1x back on cash advances, which seems too good to be true. Also gives many tier credits and property credits and is a no-brainer to anyone who would visit any Caesar's property once a year. Yeah, all right. So let's talk quickly about these casino cards.

So the MGM rewards World Delete card, there are two, by the way, MGM cards. There is the no annual fee one, which is what Elliott mentioned here. And that gives you really the most important thing is the automatic MGM pearl status for the free parking. because parking has gotten expensive around Las Vegas. You used to be you can park for free at all the casinos because they wanted you to come in and gamble. They still want you to come in and gamble,

but they want you to also pay for parking. So that's nice. If you're going to Las Vegas, that can be worth it. Because when you hear MGM, if you're not very familiar with Las Vegas, you might only think of MGM, but more than half the strip is MGM casinos.

Belagio, Cosmopolitan, Aria, Vodara, MGM, Park, MGM, New York, New York, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur. There's tons of MGM casinos on the strip. So you're getting free parking at a lot of places with that card. So that can be worth it if you're going to Vegas. The Unity Hard Rock card, this is one I don't know anything about. It's got no annual fee. And if I had heard that Hard Rock launched a card, then it went in one ear and out the other. So I'm not very familiar with this one. It gives you 5X at non-casino hard rocks and 4X at the casino hard rock properties. So that could be worth it if you're going to be spending some money at those places and the automatic legend status. The hard rock, by the way, bought what was the Mirage in Las Vegas. And they're building this giant guitar. Oh, my goodness, this thing is going to be massive. And take, like, that will be the thing you see on the Las Vegas skyline once it's done.

Will it will it be a working guitar? Will it be able to come play it? No, but you'll be able to sleep inside the guitar. So, yeah, the rooms are in the guitar. But I would be very unhappy if I own Treasure Island because all of their strip view rooms are going to be a guitar view from now on. Wow. I thought you were saying I'd be very uncomfortable. I'd be very unhappy sleeping inside the guitar if a giant came along and played it. Well, okay, that would also be true. But maybe that'll become even more intriguing as that property fills out. So that's interesting. Cesar has two cards also. So Elliot mentioned that the no annual fee card would,

give you some level of status with Caesars, I guess, that might give you free parking, gives you platinum status after first use of the card within 90 days. So that's decent. And also you can spend your way towards status. Now, Elliott also mentioned that the annual fee version of the Caesar's card was a no-brainer for anyone who had visited a Caesar's property once a year. And I'll agree with that pretty clearly. So the Caesar's Prestige card has a $150 annual fee, $149. I think it is. and every year you get a $100 dining credit at a Caesar's property and $50 in free slot play at a Caesar's property. And after anniversary, you get a free night at a Caesar's property up to $300 every year. So between those three things, I can certainly be worth continuing to pay the 150 if you're going to stay at a Caesar's property.

The $50 in slot play credit I used at a video poker machine with a bad payout table because I just didn't want to pour the time into searching for one with a good payout table. I just wanted to make it easy and be able to do five bucks a spin and count out my 10 spins in order to cash out what was left. And I cashed out $46.75 at a video poker game using a hundred. It was 100 play for anybody who's somewhat familiar with video poker. I did that in order to decrease the variance and hopefully cash out with about 50 bucks, which I did. So that card, I think I agree can be a no-brainer.

Either way, you earn 2,500 tier credits after $5,500, tier credits after $5,000. 5,000 spend and then after 15,000 spend, you end up getting enough for diamonds. I'm sorry, after $50,000 in spent, you get enough for diamond status. So you can spend your way to diamond status on this card. You can spend your way to platinum status relatively easily on this card. And that can be worth it for a few reasons because, number one, you get your free parking. Number two, platinum members and above get a complimentary stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas. So you would get that complimentary stay at Atlantis. Now what you pay for in how many days, I think it depends on the time of year.

You'll have to take a look at our post about that. But that could make it worth spending towards platinum status, even though this card doesn't have a great earning structure. So I think that these casino cards, you know, sort of similar to the online travel agency cards, they'll make sense for some people that are going to get invested in these systems. I happen to be enthusiastic-ish about the Caesar's prestige card, but I don't think it's a fit for everybody.

It wouldn't be a gem for Greg. But I like it well enough. I wished I had gotten one of the MGM cards before our trip because I did need the free parking. I ended up doing a status match to MGM for free parking, but that's a temporary fix. So for a future trip, I would probably consider that no annual fee card because what it would save me in parking

over the course of a week would probably be worth having gotten the card. Right, right. I mean, I think that all of the no annual fee cards that Elliott mentioned, with the possible exception of the Rackin card, like makes sense for like card collectors who just want, since they have no annual fee,

like there's no harm in keeping them and you may or may not end up using the, perks on them, but it's kind of cool to just have automatic perks. And I shouldn't have excluded the Rackettin card. I mean, that's also true, especially if they do do special portal rates once a year, then it really pay off just having it sitting around with no annual fee. So those are kind of fun. I think those are all fun for card collectors to think about. And by card collectors, I mean, like I've talked before about how I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to the credit cards. And I like having a big collection of cards that, especially ones that

are sock drawer cards where I don't have to think about them, but they provide some benefit year after year just by having them. And these all kind of fit that in some way. So yeah, that's pretty cool. All right. Now, let's talk about what else? What other hidden gems are out there? And I'm going to start, we're going to bring up some of our own ideas in a second. But I'm going to start with a email from Matt. Matt wrote in to the giant mailbag. And he wrote, in last week's show, you seemed a little dismissive about earning five frontier miles per dollar. I know you guys like to rag on the low-cost carriers and their cards, deservedly so in most cases.

But the Frontier World MasterCard is one to actually be taken seriously. In reality, it's one of the most overpowered airline cards for $99. Can you name any other card that gives you two free check bags just for holding it? See you in Frontier class. Okay, so there's some fighting words there. So the Frontier Airlines World MasterCard has a $99 annual fee, and it does give you 5x at flyfrontier.com, 3X and restaurants. And yeah, the perks include two free check bags.

for the primary card holder only, not for anybody else in your reservation. Priority boarding in zone two. The miles don't expire as long as the cards open. So you've got a few decent perks there, no award redemption fees when the taxes and fees are paid for with the card. So there are certainly some arguments being made for the frontier card being good if you live in a market that's well served by frontier. But I want to go back to the question here. So Matt asked, can you name Any other card that gives you two free check bags, Greg? I can. So we have a post about free check bags via credit card,

and we'll have a link to this post in the show notes. So I turn to that. But off the top of my head, I remembered that Delta has recently changed. All of their cards that offer free check bags, increase that to two free check bags for the primary card holder. Now, you can add up to eight, you can have up to eight companions with you on the same flight, and each of your companions will get at least one free check bag, but you'll get two.

So that's a great example that goes beyond what Frontier gives. The Hawaiian Airlines consumer card has the same benefit as Frontiers card, two free check bags for the cardholder only and no companions. The United Quest card, United Club card, and United States. Club business card all offer two free check bags for yourself and one companion. So yes, Frontier was a good example of one that does that, but it's not the only one. Yeah, well, and if you're traveling by yourself, then the frontier card and none of those other cards, you know, work for you, then the frontier card does offer you the two. If you're traveling with other people, a lot of

the airline hotel credit cards do extend that one free check bag to others. your reservation. So, you know, like I travel as a family of four with Southwest credit card. We always could have up to four free checked bags with one credit card. So, you know, whereas frontier, it's going to be a max of two. So, so I think the benefit of that is limited for anybody who travels more than one person anyway, then, you know, we would already get the two free check bags with most airline that we have a credit card with. But, you know, that's not to say that it's not worth anything. I mean, if you do fly Frontier often, then 5x is 5x. I mean, you know, and it depends on, I guess, how you value your frontier points, but that might be worthwhile.

I'm not saying that the card isn't worth it, just that I don't find that perk as the unique differentiating perk necessarily. My airport, I don't even think Frontier serves at all anymore, and when they did, it was one flight. So that's, I don't rag on Frontier for a dislike of Frontier. It's just I can never find a way to use Frontier because they don't fly to my home airport. And I'm rarely in a situation where they are serving the route that I need. But I know that for people that live in a market that's well served by them, that'd be a totally if I lived in Denver, I would feel differently about Frontier. I am almost positive because I don't have any problem with the low cost carriers personally.

Right. No. I mean, I think this is absolutely a gem for people who fly Frontier at least once a year because, you know, low-cost carriers charge for checked bags or carry-on bags even. And to be able to get two bags for free each time you fly could save a lot of money. That's a great. So, you know, right there, that's worth having if you're going to be flying Frontier anyway. It's definitely not, it definitely doesn't qualify in my mind as one of those

sector cards for other people because, like, Like for me, because I can't even remember the last time I flew Frontier, I'm not going to be saving anything by paying $99 a year, right? Yeah. But, yeah, anyway, yeah, it's a good card for it. And I'd say, you know what? I think that's true with most airlines. Most airlines have a card that if you're going to be flying them a reasonable amount, it's worth getting the card. You generally will save on bags and other things just by having the card.

So definitely worth looking at which airlines you regularly fly and consider their cards. Agreed. And I think that is the key differentiator here between like Elliott's hidden gems and a card like this frontier card. Because the hidden gems that Elliott mentioned were mostly cards with no annual fee that like Greig said, you could just keep in sock drawer for the day when you need that benefit. And that should be, I think, now that I think about it, a key factor of a hidden gem card that it's one that you're like, oh,

I don't even need to think about this. It's just a no brainer. Or like the choice one, which has an annual fee, but you're getting those points every year automatically. So it makes it worth it. They don't expire. So it doesn't matter whether you're going this year or three years from now.

You're probably going to get better than a third of a cent per point value. Yeah. Yeah. That made me think of the Wyndham cards too, because now I don't, I'm not immediately familiar with the new structure of Wyndham cards, but the old Wyndham card structure anyway is pretty cheap. way to buy points every year. So I've looked at those as being easy sock drawer cards for me because

I just stockpile up the points over the course of a few years. Though the difference there is that the wind and points expire quickly. So the choice card I think is a better gem. I say quickly after four years they expire anyway. All right. Other cards. What are some other hidden gems that came to mind? I know the first one on your mind was probably the AAA card. It was because I knew that people would would be screaming it from their, wherever they're listening to, from their keyboards, or from their lawnmowers,

wherever you're listening to the podcast, right? Triple A cards are problematic for us as podcasters, as bloggers because there are some good ones out there, but they vary depending on where you are. So in different parts of the country, the different AAA, local offices, have different credit card deals. And so, like, the credit cards available to you are not going to be the credit cards available to me. And so we've kind of stayed away from trying to, like, list, you know,

here's the benefits of the AAA credit card because we don't really know. And it's very hard to explain which one you're likely to get. It's hard to find out. And so what I do know from people writing in repeatedly over the years is that there's some good options out there. And so it's worth paying attention when you get like an ad if you're a AAA member for, you know, credit card. I'm not saying it's going to be great, but there may be perks there that fit your needs and are worth paying attention to. Very well could be a hidden gem. Yeah.

And to be a little extra clear, the AAA car. cards aren't even issued by the same issuer, I don't think, in all the different regions. So when Greg says they're different, like they're different cards depending on the region that you're in. So, uh, so yes, they may be good in, in your region. Certainly keep your eye out for whatever they're offering. All right, next up, we got the Robin Hood gold card. Now, here's a card that we have mentioned a few times before. We haven't talked about it many times, because neither of us have it, I don't think. But this card gives you three percent cash back and everywhere. That's it. That's the base earning rate is 3% back. And that's super compelling.

Why haven't we talked about this more, Greg? Three percent cashback? I mean, that's better than Bank of America's, you know, whatever platinum monitors status with their cards and other benchmarks that we've used over the years. Why aren't we talking about the Robin Hood 3% card? Yeah. Well, and you didn't even mention that it has no annual fee, ish. True. I'm glad that you said it that way, because you have to have Robin Hood Gold status. So there's no annual fee for the gold card, but there is a fee for Robin Hood Gold, rather, a Robin Hood Gold level account, which I think, if I'm correct, is $5 a month. Yeah.

So it's not a lot, $60 a year. But yeah, the reason we don't talk about it much is this card's hard to get. You have to put yourself on the waiting list and hope to get picked for the card. You tried to get this card, right? I did. So I got on the waiting list like the day that they launched this card. Like years ago, I think at this point, they put out the waiting list. And so I signed up right away.

And I finally got an invitation to apply last fall. And that was a long time. I mean, I was on it for more than a year, I think, maybe two years. Before I finally got an invitation to apply, I almost forgotten about the card. And at that point, I was almost under 524 and I knew I wanted to get a couple of chase cards. So I didn't want the Robin Hood gold card right at that moment. But I do have Robin Hood Gold. I maintain a Robin Hood Gold account.

I did a big transfer bonus and moved my IRA there years ago. And so I've had Robin Hood gold for all that time anyway. I get the additional 3% on my IRA contributions. I can't remember what the, well, your IRA contribution limit, I guess. but it's just a couple hundred dollars a year. So it's a net win for me to have a Robin Hood gold account. So I thought I wanted this card. But anyway, the invitation was only for a limited amount of time.

And it expired before I had the chase cards that I wanted to get. And so then I went back to my email after I was ready to open the card and the link no longer worked. I couldn't still apply. And there was no way in my Robin Hood account to get back on the wait list. And so like I went looking around the internet. I found at some point it did show up in like pre-approvals or something in credit karma. And that was a way to get the card because there's no public application link for it. But again, that was something that I saw before I was ready to apply.

And then once I was I was ready to do it, I couldn't find it there. And so I just got back on the wait list, like literally just today as we record this, got back on the wait list for it. But the bottom line is it's just not easy. there's not like an easy, simple way to apply for this thing. So that's annoying because from a timing perspective, I want to be able to pick when I want to get the card because who knows the next time I get off the wait list if that's going to be a time when I want to open the card or not. But anyway, also worth noting is that this card does not provide any rewards for tax payments.

So this is not a card to get to pay your taxes with for a win on the margin there. Kind of like build cards in that way. Yep. All right. What else? Yeah. Well, the U.S. Bank Altitude Connect. We've talked about this before because it is a gem.

And I'd say outside of a few close circles, it is a hidden gem in that you don't hear many people talking about it. But it's pretty impressive for no annual fee. You have no foreign transaction fees. You get 4% back for travel, gas, EV charging. and 2X for various other things. You get free Priority Pass select four visits, and that includes Priority Pass restaurants. So you could use it up to four times a year for one person

or a family of four once once a year. You have some TSA pre-check or Global Entry credits. And you have a special Gig Sky deal where you get complimentary five gigabytes for 15 days. Am I remembering that right? Yeah. Yeah. And yes, but you're underselling it.

So you get an E-Syckeye is an e-Sim platform. So it's like an electronic SIM card. So service, cell phone service, that you can use when you're traveling overseas. And so you get a complimentary 15-day five-gigabyte plan. So you get up to five gigabytes of data and 15 days to use it. But the thing that sets this card, apart from other cards that you have, is there are a number of visa cards that offer a one-time deal with Gigsky. Where you can one-time get a free ESIM. The L-2 Connect card, you can do it again and again.

So every 15 days, you could enable a new free ESM. Now, obviously, if you did that every 15 days all year long, I imagine you would find that there's an unstated limit at some point. But if you're going to travel a few times a year, you're going to travel for more than 15 days, or you're going to take two or three separate. trips that are not within the same 15-day period, you can get free a free e-sim for your card, free data access for your phone abroad. Like, that is not worth nothing. Between that and four priority pass lounge visits a year, whether you're using those just to visit a lounge because you're only going to travel a few times and you only need the four

visits, or like Greg said, if you're going to use it for a family of four for a restaurant meal, I mean, for no annual fee, those two things would be good enough. then you add in the 4x travel and gas stations, which is 4%, basically, because these points are only redeemable for a penny per point. You know, then 4% travel, 4% gas stations and all that other stuff. The U.S. Bank Altitude Connect, this is like the sleeper card, I think, the one that, like you said, outside of like very few small circles, you probably won't hear any other blogs writing about this card.

And, you know, there's certainly nothing that makes the news, you know? Right. But it's strange because a international traveler, there's very little reason not to just add it to your portfolio. This is one of those where you could sock drawer it, but you still get those benefits, like the priority pass and the Gig Sky benefits. But you don't have to sock drawer it because the Forex for travel and gas is a really good return. So, yeah, there's no transferable, you know, you're not getting transferable points,

but yeah, I really, I really like this card. It's surprising to me that it hasn't been, that they haven't decreased the benefits on it in some way since it's come out. Stop it, Greg. Myler, don't jinx us. All right. So, yeah, that's a good one to get and have. And whether you get it new or if you're able to product change,

I think you were able to product change to this card, right? Yeah, yeah. I used to have the US Bank Altitude Reserve card. and they really decrease the cards benefits in significant ways not long ago. So when my annual fee was coming due, I product changed. I'm glad I did. Yeah, I'm going to have to call again and see if I can product change my altitude go to the connect card.

I wasn't able to do it. You can do it online. Don't you have to call. Sweet. Sweet. Online chat. All right. All right.

Next up, we got one more hidden gem card. the Chase Aero Plan credit card. Wait a second. That's a hidden gem. It is hidden in plain sight. There is a sort of a special benefit to having this card that is very hidden. And I'll explain. So the basics of the card are not hidden at all.

It's a $95 annual fee card. You get benefits with Air Canada, like a free check bag. There's some elite status benefits. You get discounted award pricing. by having the card. Now, where things start to get interesting, there's a 10% bonus when you transfer ultimate rewards points to aeroplane.

So if you have a Safari preferred card, for example, then you can transfer points from ultimate awards one to one to error Canada, but because you are a card holder of this airplane card, again, 10% bonus. So that's nice, but where it gets more interesting

is Chase has been running a 20% transfer bonus every year. And so the 10% automatic bonus adds to that 20% makes it a 30% transfer bonus once a year from Chase. Okay, that's nice. But now let's tie in another feature of this card. This card lets you pay yourself back for travel at 1.25 cents per point, up to maximum of 200,000 points per year. So what does that mean? It means let's say you purchase some kind of travel, any kind of travel, with your aeroplane credit card. You book a hotel, you pay for a flight, whatever.

You can then basically go into your Chase account and erase that charge by applying aeroplane points to the charge. And you're getting better than one cent per point. You're getting 1.25 cents per aeroplane point doing that. So that's fine. I mean, I wouldn't usually use my aeroplane points for 1.25 cents, but it's really nice being able to book travel however you want,

including clicking through portals or whatever to book it, and be able to use your points after the fact is nice because you're still earning rewards for the purchase. Where things get really interesting is when you combine the two things. When you combine the 30% transfer bonus from Chase to Aero Plan and the 12, 25% extra you get from the pay yourself back, when those combined together, the 30% transfer bonus and the 25% boost, it makes your ultimate rewards points worth 1.625% towards travel that you erase. So let me give an example. Suppose you transfer 100,000 ultimate rewards points to error plan when the bonus is going on. So you end up with a

130,000 aeroplane points. Then you spend $1,625 on travel with your aeroplane card, and you use those same 130,000 aeroplane points to erase all of that travel. That means you've got just over $1,600 in value from 100,000 ultimate rewards points. So there's for 1.625% per ultimate rewards points. Very complicated. This is definitely not one of those sock drawer opportunities, right?

But it's a hidden gem in a different way. A hidden gem in a different way. So this is not one that I would personally do because, you know, I say that. I don't know if my actions speak louder than my words. I think the sentence that you said in there that I wouldn't redeem my era plan points at 1.25 cents per point normally. It's still renaming your aeroplane points at 1.25 cents per point. It's just looking at it from the perspective of, well, but it was fewer ultimate rewards points to begin with. And you're right. And I hesitate

because I've recently used some chase points to book a hotel through the edit for 1.65 cents per point. So that's essentially the same thing you're doing here. It may even better here because you're booking whatever travel you want. You're not stuck with the edit properties or whatever. So arguably, this is an even better play with ultimate rewards points than one that I recently did myself. So I think that's the reason I'm most hesitant on this. But generally, I like to use aeroplane points for flights. And so I don't know that I would be willing to part with 130,000 aeroplane points for $1,600 worth of travel. But that's really personal.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there that would be like, oh, I'd gladly do that. And if that's you, then this is, I think, an intriguing play. Yeah. And let me tie things together. Suppose you had those online travel agency cards that we talked about at the beginning of the main event that gives you better rates with hotel bookings, for example, or car rentals, as you mentioned. You can get, like, the best rate you can find, pay with your aeroplane card, and then end up redeeming ultimate awards points to cover all those charges, you know, up to the annual limit for all those things. But anyway, anyway, it's a fun. It's a fun, interesting play. And I think, I know people who do it.

And I think it's, would I do it? I think I might. I don't have the aeroplane card, but you don't believe you. No, you wouldn't book $1,600 in travel on a card that doesn't have best in class travel protections, which you? I don't think you would. That probably depends on the situation. If I'm booking hotels that are canceled, well, anyway, why not? Okay.

Well, maybe. Maybe you would. Someday maybe Greg will prove me wrong and pull this one off. Or, yeah. Or book multiple car rentals. I mean, car rentals tend to be fully refundable or not even. Yeah, but you want a card that's got primary CDW? Does the airplane card have primary? Yeah, a good point.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's a baby. I'll give you a maybe. And I'm sure that there are people out there who certainly would. So I know that there are folks that would. And it's not a bad play with you. points. Like everything else today, I think a lot of these, I think the thing about hidden gem cards in general is that they're going to be much more valuable to some people than others.

And for some folks, any one of these cards could be like, oh yeah, that's perfect for my situation. And Elliott's point from the beginning to kind of tie this back is that none of these cards tend to get a lot of air time because they aren't as widely applicable necessarily for everybody or they aren't as exciting. They don't have like a whole bunch of flat. And new things. They're not changing these cards up very often. So they don't tend to get much airtime, but they all could be a really good fit in the right situation. So I'm glad that Elliott got us to talk about all of these because there certainly are a lot of cards out there that are worth getting. And to that point, our best offers page has all of these cards and a lot more cards that we don't

always talk about. I mean, there's 150, 180, 200 cards on our best offer. I can don't even know how many there are right now. There are a lot more cards than just the ones. hear us talk about. So it's worth taking a look and seeing what else might fit your, your situation. 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 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, Mike Siegel, anywhere you get your podcasts. If you love travel, but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10, and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, what actually matters when you're planning out a trip. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for travel and tin wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyescape.com.