Frequent Miler on the Air - How to handle gift card fraud | Ask Us Anything Ep69 | 9-4-24

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is not your usual Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is our Ask Us Anything live session, recorded and brought to you in podcast format. Once a month, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on YouTube to answer your questions. Ask us questions about points, miles, credit cards, airline and hotel loyalty programs. We don't know what's coming next and neither do you. Enjoy. I like it. This is our monthly live brought to you not live on a podcast oh we're evolving we are now live on youtube with freak milers ask us anything and while we're

Starting point is 00:00:39 waiting for people to gather i'm going to start this off by asking Nick. He just got back from a trip to Tokyo where he not only went to the same Team Labs experience that our whole party of five went to a couple of years ago, but also went to another one called Borderless, I think. Nick, how was it? Was it? I'm sure going back to the same one was still great because we had so much fun and we all wanted to go back but how did the other one and how did the other one compare i guess is what i want to know yeah i mean so team lab borderless and tml planet's both really cool if you're going to go to toky, I'd highly recommend at least one of them. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you go to both of them.

Starting point is 00:01:29 And if you do go to both of them, I think I would recommend going to the borderless one first. Now, borderless is way bigger than planets. So it's an experience that takes us significantly longer. If you look it up on the internet, people say that Planets, the one that we all went to together, typically people spend one to two hours there and Borderless people spend three to four hours at. So it's a significantly longer experience. But the reason that I say to do Borderless first is that so TeamLab Planets is a linear

Starting point is 00:02:02 sort of experience. You go room to room, one thing to the next, sort of in a circle, and then you end up at the end. And there's no kind of going back again to previous things. So it's a little, I guess, when you first get in there, you may not know how to appreciate it properly until you're getting towards the end. You're like, oh, man, I wish I could go back to that first room and check out this or that. And borderless, totally opposite is, as it says, borderless. So there isn't any sort of linear way. They let you in and then you just have to wander and find everything. There's a whole bunch of different rooms. They say some of them are harder to find than others. I think we might have actually even missed one in there somewhere. And we were

Starting point is 00:02:46 there for hours, I mean, more than three hours anyway. And I have young kids that are not as patient as most. So, we spent a long time wandering room to room. And the other cool thing about Borderless is that the art doesn't all stay in one place. Everything is constantly moving and changing. So, I mean, things even move out of some rooms and into the hallways and into other rooms and things like that. So, anytime you come back into a room, things have changed drastically and dramatically. So, it's kind of cool because I think it gives you the full experience and gives you a chance to appreciate all of it. And then if you go to planets after that, then I think the fact that you only get to each room once won't be as, won't be problematic at all. And you'll appreciate some of the differences because

Starting point is 00:03:31 there's some physicality to planets that isn't there with borderless that I think you can enjoy once you've had the borderless experience. So there you go. There's my long answer. I'd say definitely go to borderless. And I think you should go to Borderless and then go to Planets so that you get the full experience. All right. Well, I'm excited. I mean, I love the Planets one. So it's time to go back to Tokyo and get my feet wet again, right? Because we love waiting around in the water.

Starting point is 00:04:02 We did. And Borderless doesn't have that specific experience by the way and also there are other cities with these so we got looking at them afterwards and we're talking about maybe trying okinawa next year because the one there looks like it might be a little bit more family friendly yet and uh and there's one in singapore that looks really cool too and then there's a an exhibit in miami right now so we So we're thinking about maybe hitting that up because we have a cruise booked out of Fort Lauderdale next year. Is the one in Miami more similar to planets or more similar to borderless or totally different? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:04:36 I haven't done my homework yet, so I don't know. After you mentioned that the other day, I tried looking it up and I didn't find any information about one in Miami. I'll find it. I can't remember what it was called. I tried looking it up and I didn't find any information about one in Miami. I'll find it. I can't remember what it was called. I guess I wasn't looking in the right place. Yeah, yeah. I'll find it in the hospital. That's right.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Yeah, yeah. I do have some questions. Greg, I'm going to give this one to you. What are your thoughts on the new U.S. Bank Smartly credit card? Yeah, okay. So Stephen, I think, just wrote about this today. Are your thoughts on the new U.S. Bank Smartly credit card? Yeah. Okay. So Stephen, I think, just wrote about this today. U.S. Bank has announced a new credit card, but not all the details are out yet, I think.

Starting point is 00:05:20 But they have a landing page for it. And the basic idea is you start with 2% cash back. And then if you have, depending on how much savings you have with US Bank, you get additional bump in the amount of cash back. And apparently, if you can put 100 grand or more with US Bank, you can get 2% extra cash back, which means a total 4% cash back for all your spend. But there's a lot we don't know. We don't know, is that capped? Like, is there a monthly limit to how much 4% cash back you can get? Are there any other gotchas there? I don't think we know.

Starting point is 00:05:59 I was assuming there wasn't, just because it says an unlimited amount of 4% cash back on the website. And so I'm assuming that that means that there's no cap unless they're interpreting unlimited to mean something completely different. But that's how I took it in that respect. But yeah, we don't know what the annual fee will be or anything like that. So if it comes with a $500 annual fee or something, that would be ridiculous. Whereas if it's a no annual fee or something that would be ridiculous whereas if it's a no annual fee card that would be amazing so right right uh but i mean for big spenders even with an annual fee unless they're less than your fees out of control four percent everywhere is unlike anything

Starting point is 00:06:38 anything um so you know the the biggest we see elsewhere is i guess three percent everywhere with uh the robin hood card um that's a whole nother percent so for yeah again for big spenders that's a lot of extra money um yeah i i think it's exciting will it last will it be capped we don't know all right anyone else have anything they want to add to that before we move on? All right. Second question for Steven. Hi, team. If I downgrade my Ritz card

Starting point is 00:07:13 to get the Amex Brilliant sign-up bonus, then upgrade again to Ritz card, will that affect my Ritz 85k cert? Anything to be careful of so I don't lose that 85k Ritz cert? I'm so i don't uh lose that 85k uh ritz cert i'm actually going to throw this one over to nick just because he actually has a ritz card and has done like upgrading and things like that before so i feel like he's if anyone's going to know this

Starting point is 00:07:37 it would be more likely to be him but i don't know if any of us have experience about downgrading a card and then be upgrading so that's kind of the more tricky thing. I mean, as far as I'm aware, the renewal date should still stay the same, shouldn't it? Like if you downgrade and upgrade. But what are your thoughts? I think so. Yeah, I think so. And you're not going to lose the rates 85k cert.

Starting point is 00:08:03 I mean, it sounded like that was a concern. If you downgrade, will you the rates 85k cert i mean it sounded like that was a concern if you downgrade will you lose your 85k cert no once you have your certificate in your marriott account you're not going to lose that if your product change your card once you get it it's it's yours it's there so um so i don't think there's any i was just thinking more in terms of when you like it if it would affect you all of the thing or if it would like postpone it for another year or something like that which yeah i'm not sure so i hear what you're saying there and yeah i don't know when if you downgrade and then upgrade again i don't know when your next certificate will be based on will be based on your original anniversary date or your new anniversary date i i don't know to be honest so well i'm not positive report back

Starting point is 00:08:46 to us um viewer if you find out report back to us let us know um this question is for everyone but we're going to start with nick um what is one uh international destination that has a bad reputation for being touristy but you don't think it deserves that reputation um or alternatively uh what's an example of an international destination that's way overrated that's uh that's a tough one for me to answer so i guess underrated and overrated kind of yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I feel like some people, so Times Square, a lot of people look down on Times Square. They're like, oh, you know, New Yorkers love to be like, you know, to look down on Times Square as being too touristy and silly. But I don't know. I mean, I grew up with, my father grew up in New York City.

Starting point is 00:09:41 My grandparents lived in Manhattan when I was a little kid. And I still love going to Times Square and seeing it. I don't think it's overrated. I think the lights and everything and the action and the excitement and the theater is like, I find that exciting still. And by the same token, I often say that places that are really touristy are like that because people like going to them. So, you know, so whether it's Paris or the Maldives or whatever else, I generally find that those places are, you know, certainly attractive. Now, does that mean I want to always go to all of those spots? No, of course, I love getting off the beaten path and seeing something new and different. I very much on my recent cruise loved Couture

Starting point is 00:10:21 Montenegro, which is a place that i had never even heard of before we booked the cruise uh and i loved it i thought it was amazing and i don't know why it isn't as popular as dubrovnik uh because it has a lot of the similar sort of scenery and whatnot i mean i guess game of thrones is why it's not but um but at any rate a beautiful beautiful scenery love the place so i always i i like most of the places i go to so i have a really hard time um picking out places that are either overrated or i mean underrated i could probably talk all day long about places that you know i thought were really cool but that's because the list of places i haven't enjoyed is like almost non-existent so uh so

Starting point is 00:11:03 i don't know if that really answers the question but that's my answer i'm sticking to it um i'm pretty sure there actually was a game of thrones scene filmed in bay of kotor as well i mean i would believe that anyway but yes someone let us know um greg how about you anything that's overrated or underrated uh yeah time square is way overrated i just can't i i just can't i mean honestly i i can't i can't stand the the crowds and the and the um the constant you like tokyo uh yeah tokyo's just, it's like crowds and lights and like, why is that good in Times Square? Not, uh, yeah, it just is. Um, on the flip side, I've been surprised how many people, uh, I, I meet have never been to, um, Big Sur, California, and I just adore that area. So I guess I'd call it underrated,

Starting point is 00:12:09 although I don't know anyone who's been there that underrates it. But it's maybe a little less well-known than it should be. I don't know if you guys are doing this on purpose or an accident, but we're totally disregarding this questioner's request for international destination. I mentioned Kotor Montenegro. That's true. You broke one rule. And I just chided Craig over Tokyo.

Starting point is 00:12:35 Come on. True, true, true. Well, Stephen, I think we'll have you weigh in. I mean, it's tough because a lot of the time these places can be completely different depending on how you actually experience it and who you're experiencing it with. So the first time my wife and I went to Paris was I think it was like 2007 or 2008. And we were really underwhelmed. We're like, like a couple of days here was fine. We love Notre Dame, but other other than that we weren't overly excited

Starting point is 00:13:06 about it but then we spent like three or four days there with friends a couple of years ago and had an absolutely amazing time because we did like different stuff to what we had done the first time and kind of being with friends just helped us enjoy it even more because it was their first time going to France and things like that so um and yeah we've been to other places before where the first time we didn't really enjoy it but then subsequently we loved it so I know this next one isn't international but Albuquerque I feel like has a very bad reputation with people and people associated with like meth and Breaking Bad and stuff like that but we absolutely love it there and the first time we visited was early on during Covid and so we didn't get to so we hunkered down when everything was first

Starting point is 00:13:50 shutting down for two weeks there so we didn't get to see anything because everything was closed and it seemed fairly dull and so we weren't at all interested in heading back to Albuquerque thankfully we did because we've been back two or three times since then. And I love it there in New Mexico. So yeah, if you feel like people are saying something's overrated, or if something has bad reputation, give it a go anyway. And then maybe give it a go again, just because you may actually enjoy it eventually. So Kira, you're probably more qualified to answer this question than the rest of us. So what's your answer? Well, I hate to be consistent with us breaking the rule, but I think Grand Canyon people don't give enough credit to. I'm sorry.

Starting point is 00:14:35 We're just totally going to disregard the. But a lot of people go to the edge and a lot of people go to the south rim. And I think the north rim is really unique and there's if you don't want to do the hike all the way down there's kind of a day version you could do down to a waterfall and back up um so i think getting into the canyon is important to really enjoy that um and i think a lot like nick said i think there maybe you said the opposite i think there are a lot of places that are overrated maybe I'm saying the opposite

Starting point is 00:15:08 no you are you're saying the opposite go ahead I agree with Stephen that I'm shy about admitting what I think of as overrated because it's just my experience so like you know I also thought Paris was kind of like you know there's a lot of tourists

Starting point is 00:15:24 here and you know, there's a lot of tourists here. You know, anyway, but I have also really enjoyed parts of Paris too. So I think Croatia, the beaches in Croatia are not necessarily overrated, but Bay of Kotor is so amazing. If you go into like the kind of more unique parts of that region, like Albania has these amazing beaches that are less touristy and, and look just as beautiful as Croatia. So I feel like you can kind of get the off the beaten path version of Croatian beaches by going further into that region. Sorry,

Starting point is 00:16:04 you were going to say something? No, I really liked Stephen's point about how just going again can give you a totally different experience because there are definitely places I've been twice that I had totally different experiences that I loved the first time and hated the second time just based on the feeling that particular time. And there may have been the

Starting point is 00:16:25 people that you know the crowds that were there or like you said the people you're with can make a big difference as to how much you enjoy a place and what you're doing so yeah that's also i hope that was a fantastic point too i agreed with with that just like carrie said might might as well try it out let's see for yourselves um all right so greg um i was zero for three on my credit card applications for barclays hawaiian airlines personal barclays hawaiian airlines biz and bank of america sanesta did you have better luck with your credit card applications all right so uh what grant is talking about i I applied for the Hawaiian Airlines business card and my wife applied for both the business and the personal card. And so did my son applied for both of those. I got approved for the business card. They did call me and ask some questions. My wife was denied the personal one. They tried to call her to ask questions about the business one, but they left voicemails and she doesn't play this game and isn't willing to call them and talk to them about it. So,'re just going to let that go. So she struck out on hers.

Starting point is 00:17:46 And my son, he was auto approved for the personal one. And I need to check in on that business one. And nothing has happened. I was waiting to get some information one way or another, but we haven't gotten any. So yeah, so right now, two of the five approved and one more potential. Alrighty. Next up, Stephen, any suggestion on how to improve odds and getting targeted for useful Amex offers? I guess it depends on what we're referring. Like, are we talking about Amex offers as in Amex offers or welcome offers on Amex cards? So if we're talking about Amex offers that are the card linked offers, then you will only ever see 100 offers on any given card.

Starting point is 00:18:42 And so in order to see more, you have to load them on, load existing offers onto other cards, and then in order to see more you have to load them on load existing offers onto other cards and then you'll eventually see some more so if you're only getting like the three percent cash back at ashley home furniture and two percent rc willy and four percent at jd sports and stuff like that load all of those onto some kind of card that you very rarely use like maybe a no annual fee card that's sock draw or something like that, and then refresh or log out and log back in. Hopefully you'll then see some of the better offers.

Starting point is 00:19:12 It does feel like over the last like three months or something though, there have been far fewer interesting Amex offers and the bulk of them have just been these low percentage cashback ones that aren't as interesting. If you're talking about welcome offers and how to get targeted for things like a 200,000 point Amex Business Gold offer, going in incognito mode helps trying to use different browsers. So if you just normally use Chrome, try looking in incognito Chrome, but then also try Edge, Firefox, Safari.

Starting point is 00:19:46 I forget. There's another lesser-known browser that apparently has some good success with finding higher welcome offers as well. So that's also a way of getting increased offers. All right. Very good. Anything from anybody else before we move on? Also, if you're traveling, try logging in and or looking at the offers from different locations, too, because sometimes found that being in a different place populates different offers. That's true. So, yeah, turn a VPN on if you have one as well. All right, Nick, this next one is for you and very timely as you just came

Starting point is 00:20:25 back from this exact hotel i think um this person says i went to stay at hilton tokyo bay for family of five disneyland and disney sea which you also just did um what card should i get first are there specific rules to follow like there are for marriott? So, no, there are not specific rules on the Hilton cards. They don't have the family language yet anyway. So the Hilton cards you can get as you like. In terms of which ones to get, so let's back up a notch here. So the Hilton Tokyo Bay is right on the, for anybody who doesn't know, it's one of the sort of on-property hotels at Disney Tokyo. So if you go there, you're right on the monorail.

Starting point is 00:21:14 You're across the street from the monorail, one stop from DisneySea, two stops from Disneyland. So it's a great location in terms of being right there at the parks. So that's really good. And the other nice thing is that unlike lots of other places, you can book rooms for like a family of four or five. They just keep putting more beds in the room essentially. So you can book a room for a family like that. Now, I don't know if you're going to be able to book a standard room for five people. You, I assume, would not be able to book a standard room for five. I'm not positive, but you'd want to check that first because if you're getting the Hilton

Starting point is 00:21:50 cards, presumably you're getting them because you want the points to be able to book the rooms. But if you can't book a room for five people as a standard room award, it's not probably going to be worth booking a premium room award with points. And so I don't actually know if the Hilton cards are necessarily the right answer. The other reason I would tack on with that is that that property, at least during the dates when we stayed, was so reasonably priced that it didn't make sense to book as an award. So we did use a Hilton Aspire card because of the $200 resort credit and the fact that it is a Hilton resort. And I was going to also use my Hilton business card to pay for part of it. We ended up with extra cash at the

Starting point is 00:22:31 end that I wanted to get rid of and not bring home. So I ended up using that instead of my Hilton business card. But we did use the Aspire card in order to get the $200 resort credit off. And I booked through a portal. I actually just yesterday got targeted for 22.5% back on Hilton stays through the Capital One shopping portal. So whether or not you'll get targeted for that, I don't know. But at the time when I night for a family of four. So that just made it not worth considering an award because I think the rooms were 60,000 points a night and that was too many points to be worth booking as an award versus paying the $130 or whatever it was that came out to you. So it's worth looking at what the cash rates are because you may want to look at cash back bonuses instead to cover that if the awards aren't a good value during the days when you want to stay there. But all that aside, we've talked about the Hilton cards before on the Freak Mile Around the Air podcast. And generally speaking, I find the surpass to be the best deal because you get a decent number of points.

Starting point is 00:23:42 Usually you get a good multiplier on spend if you're going to do most of that spend at us supermarkets, um, or the other six X categories there. Uh, and when they do offer, um, a free night certificate with part of the welcome offer, which they're not right now, I don't think, but when they do that amplify this deal a little bit more, and of course you can spend the 15 K to get a free night certificate. Plus if you're spending it six X,'re earning 90 000 points you get more than enough of that particular property so you would almost certainly want the surpass and the aspire would help because of the the fact that you do get that twice a year 200 resort credit all right nice and thorough i like it um before we move on to Greg, everybody watching, please like this if you liked Nick's

Starting point is 00:24:29 answer and like it if you didn't like Nick's answer and follow us if you're not already doing that and subscribe so that you see notifications for when we have these Ask Us Anything. We appreciate it. One other small thing I should mention. I told the rest of the team that, by the way, that Hilton Tokyo Bay, the outdoor pool was like $20 a person to use. And so there's a bunch of small negatives like that. If you don't have diamond status, then you're not going to get breakfast in the main restaurant. You'll only get, at best, lounge breakfast if you have gold status and you get upgraded to a lounge room. So there's some potential drawbacks there, too.

Starting point is 00:25:06 So do your homework. I would still probably stay there again, but it's not. So you don't regret staying there? I don't regret staying there, but it's not all rainbows and sunshine either. When I finally write a review, it's going to be like, eh, it was okay. It's a place to sleep while you're going to Disney. And I wouldn't use it as a base for Tokyo, by the way. If you want to go visit anything else in Tokyo,

Starting point is 00:25:29 book someplace else in Tokyo for the days you're going to do that and just book the Hilton for the days you're going to do Disney because it's far away from everything else and it's going to be expensive and a pain to get to where you want to go. But closer to Team Labs, right? Closer to Team Lab planets but still like not not yes closer to team on planets not borderless and not central i mean you're talking like an hour to get basically anywhere so uh yeah that's a drawback good tips all right um greg um All right. Greg, I have a big spend coming up, capacity for $20,000 in spend, but I can't get business cards. Any recommendations on sign-up bonuses or big spend bonuses? Well, first, let me say that you should maybe look at some of the things we've written about how you probably can qualify for business cards if you try hard enough.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Everyone in my family has been able to, even though they don't necessarily think of what they do as businesses. That said, if you really just don't want to get personal cards, just go to our best offers page on the blog and look right at the top. There's a best consumer card offers column where all the offers are sorted based on our estimated first year value. So it's taking into account the value of the welcome bonus, subtracting out the cost of the annual fee and some other things. And so it's sorted them from best to worst that way. And you'll see a lot of great offers right there. there um but actually giving advice in this context like specific advice is really hard because i don't know what kind of things you need or um what card you might already have and

Starting point is 00:27:34 and not be eligible for the the bonuses for yeah anyone else have any thoughts on that i mean i think that's a good point to highlight that you know the card recommendations often depend on so many personal factors that uh you know it gets um very personalized um all right uh steven have you ever had issues with gift card fraud and how would you deal with it? I've definitely had occasional issues with that. I haven't had too many issues over the last few years because I haven't done all that much gift card buying in terms of physical gift cards. A lot of the stuff that I do is digital, and so there tends to be fewer issues with that. Several years ago I bought some Visa gift cards from the grocery store and then when I finally got around to using them it turned out that they were locked and so I called up whoever it was I can't remember if it was Metabank or

Starting point is 00:28:38 Parthewood now or Sutterbank or something like that And I called up and they said that they had, as soon as it was activated, they had immediately frozen the cards because someone had already been trying to like balance check the cards or use the cards before they had been activated. And so they knew that the cards had been compromised. And so once it had been activated, I was able to give them the information on the cards and then they sent me replacement cards in the mail so that was hassle but it was super nice that they ended up um just immediately freezing the cards rather than having them be compromised drained and then having to go through that whole uh big role um there can be a lot of issues with high value cards like lululemon and apple and things like that and best buy and so the best thing to do if you're going to be buying gift cards from a grocery store somewhere else open the package before you actually um buy the gift cards um it does look a little bit weird when you go to the checkout and you have like these open gift cards and you hand over the

Starting point is 00:29:42 stuff however that can help ensure that you haven't um had the cards compromised so check if like the pin's been scratched off check if um there's any kind of like weird stickiness and things like that um or if um anything yeah just you can't even if you're like careful about it people who are well accustomed to um gift card be selling they still sometimes end up being affected by this, even when taking precautions. So if you do end up having any fraudulent transactions on there, go back to the grocery store where you bought it and report it there.

Starting point is 00:30:19 Because usually if you call, say you bought a Best Buy gift card and it's been compromised, if you call up Best Buy, they're just going to tell you to go back to Kroger or Safeway or wherever you got it from. Unfortunately, you go back to Kroger and Safeway, they'll often tell you that you've got to go to Best Buy because it's their gift card. So some stores are better than others. So if you get someone in a store who's not at all helpful, maybe try going back the following day and see someone else and they might have a better idea of what to do but yeah unfortunately it is a little bit of hassle trying to get things like that resolved if you do end up buying a drained card and in your experience going back to the store where you

Starting point is 00:30:56 bought it is the actual thing you're supposed to do regardless of what that is yeah because they were the ones who activated the card they're the ones who are supposed to be able to get a refund. So, yeah. That's good to know. All right. Another Japan question. Nick, what parts of Japan besides Kyoto and Tokyo do you enjoy? And this could be an everyone question.

Starting point is 00:31:22 I haven't yet stopped in a place in Tokyo, or or in japan rather that that i i haven't enjoyed we went to hakuba several years ago which is in nagano prefecture and and we went to see well went to the top of mountain there and played in the snow we went to see the snow monkeys that was really cool uh we went to um uh hakone which is near sort of near Mount Fuji. There's a Hyatt Regency there that a lot of people say is kind of a hidden park Hyatt. It's really, really nice. We've also been to Hiroshima and Nagoya and I've been in a number of different places. I haven't yet found the place that I didn't enjoy. So really, I'd say explore, look for places and see what you find that interests you. I can't remember the name of

Starting point is 00:32:11 the city right now. Somebody hopefully will chime in in the comments. There's a Toyota museum somewhere. And I found that fascinating. I've always had a hard time imagining when people explain to me the way that cars work in general. I have a hard time imagining the internal parts and seeing a car like sort of in a cross section helped me understand things like a crankshaft and like stuff that was inside the car that I had had a hard time understanding before. So I found the Tokyo or rather the Toyota Museum really cool. So yeah, anyway, my answer is that I haven't found anything that I haven't enjoyed in Japan. We've enjoyed every single place we've visited. So, I would totally recommend anything that strikes your fancy. Was that in Nagoya?

Starting point is 00:32:53 It could have been in Nagoya. I can't recall. So, that's certainly possible. That's what Google says. Good. So, yes, it was in Nagoya. All right. I think Google is right.

Starting point is 00:33:05 Not always, but a lot of time. All right. We're going to move on to Greg. How much of a transfer bonus from Amex to Hilton would you find to be on the same level as the normal one-to-one transfer from Chase to Hyatt? Yeah, that's a great question. I actually saw that question coming I did a little math and based on our reasonable redemption values a 70% transfer bonus from MX would like make these match up exactly if I did my math right meaning you would get 1.7 cents per point value basically based on our reasonable redemption values if there was a 70% transfer bonus. That said, I'd be pretty excited about a 40% transfer bonus because I'm interested in the current 30% transfer bonus to Hilton. And so I wouldn't wait for a mythical 70% that we've never ever seen and

Starting point is 00:34:15 probably will never see. Because if you're interested in Hilton points, you can get some really good value now, especially of slh and uh and fifth night free which hi it doesn't have all right i i'm gonna say you cheated on that one but like for the good of our listeners so by doing your math ahead of time um all right steven i have united silver um is booking Basic Economy on United and or Star Alliance partners still going to give me the free check-in luggage? With

Starting point is 00:34:52 United, unless things have changed recently, I'm pretty sure you do get the free check-in luggage. You aren't eligible for seat upgrades though so just be aware of that because if you book a regular economy um ticket you will be eligible for i forget exactly what class it is initially when you book that you can um get an immediate upgrade to and then i think it's like economy plus or something like that within 24

Starting point is 00:35:16 hours you can um like within 24 hours of checking you can get upgraded to um that's not the case for basic economy but yeah free check-in, you do get one bag with United Silver as far as I'm aware. Alright, thank you. Nick, what's the best bet for a new card or downgrade

Starting point is 00:35:38 to keep Amex points when cancelling a gold? My husband has a Business Platinum. Too hard to get all the benefits offsets for a second one i mean i think everybody should have a blue business plus card you know if you can if you can get a business card which amex business cards are generally pretty easy to get with even a very small tiny new business um. The Blue Business Plus just makes sense. It's got no annual fee. It'll keep your Amex membership rewards points alive. You get two points per

Starting point is 00:36:10 dollar everywhere. So it's like that's the card to keep and have. It's sort of an everywhere else. If you're, you know, if a 2X card is good for you for an everywhere else card. And I say that because, you know, there are some other cards you may consider even better than that. But I think for most people, 2X on bonus purchases is pretty darn good. And so that's what I would say to get that card before you cancel your gold card. Now, if you are dead set against business cards, then the MX Everyday card is the consumer equivalent of that. So you could get that card and have, again, no annual fee. In either case, your points will remain transferable to all of MX's transfer partners, whether you have the Blue Business Plus or the Everyday card. So those cards will keep your points transferable and alive, and they all

Starting point is 00:37:01 pool together by your social security numbers. So whether you have business cards and consumer cards, whatever that those are the cards that will keep it alive. Now, in terms of a downgrade, your only downgrade option from gold is the green card. And the green card is still going to cost you 150 bucks. And it to me doesn't come with enough benefit, probably for most people to make it worth $150, at least not in my opinion. So that wouldn't be as exciting to me or as good of a long-term play as getting one of the two other cards I just mentioned. But the third thing I should mention is that the other thing to consider is, okay, well, which card has a great welcome offer right now? Because if you're going to get your gold card and you want to keep your points alive, have you had a platinum card before? If you haven't, maybe check out the platinum card

Starting point is 00:37:48 offers right now because maybe there are enough points. I know you said business platinum. You didn't want to get again. Maybe the consumer platinum fees would be easier for you to offset. I don't know. Maybe not, but that's certainly worth considering or the business gold card because the business gold card right now, you can find a potentially a 200,000 point offer. So if you can meet the spend on that, then that's even better than the sock sock drawer card. But long-term you're going to want a blue business plus or an Amex everyday

Starting point is 00:38:17 card. Everybody should have one of those two. All right. Very good. Thank you. One other thing that I'll like quickly is if the gold card is in the name of the person who's asking this question, then have your husband refer you for a new Amex card from his business platinum, because then you'll earn anything from, I guess, like 15 to 40,000 membership rewards, depending on targeted offer um he's got for uh referring from the business platinum at the moment so and it doesn't mean that you have to apply for business platinum he he would refer you to a business platinum landing page but then you could pick

Starting point is 00:38:56 any other amex card and apply for that and he would still earn the referral points um so that way that can give you a bit of a boost, which is handy if you do end up getting something like the everyday card or the blue business plus where the welcome offer isn't always particularly high. Yeah. Nice. All right. Thank you. Greg, what is the best use of avios after all the short haul devaluations? I'm not sure there's a single best use that I can point out, but maybe there is. The one that jumps to my mind is the Iberia Business Class Awards that are as low as, what, 34,000, I think, one way to Europe from certain East Coast-ish airports.

Starting point is 00:39:49 That's for the off-peak time. So that's one of the best sweet spots for live flat business class across the ocean. But there's a number of, there's still a lot of good uses for them. Maybe not as amazing as that, but lots of good uses. But it just depends what you're trying to do. All right. Anything to add from anybody else? Steven, what is your favorite hotel ecosystem for long-term commitment?

Starting point is 00:40:22 I feel like we've discussed this before for long-term travel but for long-term commitment yeah like that's a really interesting question and that's a that's a really tricky one i'd say feel free to be somewhat promiscuous i wouldn't necessarily um be counting on long-term commitment because all the different hotel chains go up and down in terms of which ones are the best for benefits and which ones are the best when it um comes to redeeming your points for award nights and things like that so settling on one now might be good but then in three five seven years they may be absolutely terrible and if you put all your eggs in that basket then it might not necessarily be great um if you're anticipating say like having a job where you're

Starting point is 00:41:11 going to be traveling a lot and so you're going to be getting like 50 75 nights in a hotel every year though year after year then i guess it maybe marriott would make the most sense because you can get lifetime status with Marriott somewhat easily in that I've already this year managed to finally wrap up lifetime platinum status which means that for the rest of my life or until they decide that lifetime no longer means lifetime I'll get free breakfast free lounge access room upgrades and things like that whereas with Hyatt I've earned globalist status even getting like up to 100 nights in a year um for the last like six seven years um but I'm gonna have zero lifetime status with them because their lifetime status is based purely on spend and so because a lot of our night to award nights we're just never going to be

Starting point is 00:42:05 spending that kind of money with Hyatt in order to earn lifetime status I don't think IHG has lifetime status I know Hilton does but you have to put a fair bit of spend on their credit cards or at their hotels in order to be able to earn lifetime status with them too so I'd say Marriott's probably the easiest one to do but i wouldn't be too concerned about going for long-term commitment necessarily unless you have a specific like scenario in your mind where that might prove useful anyone else have a different take all right um nick uh this person got the surpass card on july 31st and they are close to meeting spend they want to work towards the 15k spend on for a second free night cert but they need to pause since they got approved for the us bar what is that? Bank of America? US Bank Altitude Reserve.

Starting point is 00:43:09 We'll spend in 2025 before anniversary count. Good question. I smiled actually when you got a free night certificate out of the FNC there, Carrie. I'm getting better. I like it. It was tougher. That's not as, as commonly used. So, uh, but to answer the question, no. Uh, so the surpass card, you can earn a free night certificate from $15,000 calendar year spent. And so you would

Starting point is 00:43:41 need to spend 15 K all in one calendar year. So whatever spend you've done this year is going to count towards $15,000 spent this year. If you're not going to spend the full $15,000 this year, then you're going to have to start over at zero and spend $15,000 next year in order to earn a free night certificate for next year. Now, you could do that before your next anniversary, but you're not going to be able to put together the spend you've done this year already with spend you do in january or february of next year all right um greg i may have two in a row for you um what's your best guess on how long the jet blue status match offer will be active i have jet blue cash flights booked in october domestic, and December, mint to London. Trying to time it right.

Starting point is 00:44:27 Okay. It's going to be purely guessing because I really have no idea. It's possible that the JetBlue status match is a perpetual thing, but it's also I think likely that they

Starting point is 00:44:42 have certain targets for getting a number of elites into the system by the end of whatever their calendar is, whether it's a fiscal year or some sort of loyalty year that they define. I don't know. So long way of saying that there may be an end point to this, but I don't know what it is. But if I had to just guess, I'd say I'm betting it would be safe through the end of October at least to wait till to sign up. But I wouldn't I wouldn't count on being able to sign up after October. All right. Another JetBlue question for you. I think you're the one who wrote the post on this. Correct me if not. This person can't book jet blue economy via qatar uh they try to using your article for finding mint

Starting point is 00:45:32 via qatar using ita matrix they used p fair class for economy and got the calendar but qatar website doesn't show the flight does that just happen sometimes or what's going on yeah i don't know um someone else maybe the same person i wrote in on on that post uh about a very specific scenario and i checked it and they were right that in this case it was it was a mint um mint class i tried doing that itA matrix found some availability Couldn't find it on Qatar's website. It's pot. So it's possible that that whole process was based on the idea that Qatar's able to book

Starting point is 00:46:19 awards based on JetBlue's Having certain fair classes available. It's possible that that's not anymore the way that JetBlue releases awards to Qatar. But other than agreeing that I think you're right, there's something wrong there, I don't know the answer. All right. Getting really deep in the weeds. So just before we go to the next question, if we can go back to the JetBlue one just very quickly. The person had mentioned that they were going to be flying in december to london in mint um if that flight is going to london gatwick i'd double check if that flight's still going ahead because one mile at a time um wrote a post a few days ago about how

Starting point is 00:47:02 jet blue's um changing up their transatlantic schedule and they're going to be cancelling flights from New York to Gatwick over the winter season their flights to Heathrow are still going to be going ahead so if you're flying to Heathrow it doesn't sound like there'll be any issues with that but if you're due to be flying to Gatwick then yeah just keep an eye on that and maybe follow up with JetBlue just to make sure that your flight will be proceeding just because it would suck if they just hadn't sent you notification or if it went to your spam folder or something like that and then you lock up at the airport waiting to fly there and find out you don't have a flight so yeah uh not a situation we want

Starting point is 00:47:41 um Stephen hold the mic what is the best award booking using left tons of miles without the exuberant taxes and best way to find availability i have no idea i don't think that i have ever redeemed left hands of my also i've never paid too much attention and i've never and so i'm not sure um generally what they're what the sweet spots are do either of you guys know about who wants to be the lifthansa correspondent not it yeah i haven't i haven't paid enough attention i mean the one thing i'd say is uh what i do know is what you're going to want to look for are their partners, their Star Alliance partners that don't impose fuel surcharges

Starting point is 00:48:28 like United Air Canada Air Canada, yeah yeah but that's as far as my yeah

Starting point is 00:48:43 and the reason that all of us are kind of like i don't know is because liftonza isn't a transfer partner of any of the major transferable currencies so the only like common way to get a bunch of liftonza miles is by getting the liftonza credit card and and that's never had a super i shouldn shouldn't say never, it doesn't typically have a super compelling welcome offer. They did have that big booking.com thing. So I'm sure a while back there was a big promo with booking.com. So I'm sure there are a number of people out there now with a decent chunk of tons of miles, but not us.

Starting point is 00:49:19 Yeah. They also have a deal out right now where you could buy tons of miles cheaply if you buy enough of them. Okay. But I wouldn't do that i mean there are there are sweet spots but i'm just it it's been so long since i paid any attention to that i don't remember what they are i wouldn't count on them lasting all right um so nick um this person is planning a trip to Ghana or Kenya next June. They would like to use flying blue and Qatar to stop in, I assume, Amsterdam and Doha. Is it worth it to transfer points now?

Starting point is 00:49:55 Hoping award prices come down closer to the trip. Oh, uh, no, definitely not. I mean, I say no, definitely not. I mean, I would not transfer points hoping that it's going to decrease in price. I mean, I got, I think hidden in this question is the fact that there's a transfer bonus to flying blue right now, I believe from capital one. So maybe you're thinking, Oh, I'll take advantage of the transfer bonus and hopefully prices will get better at some point. But I wouldn't count on that. I would sacrifice missing out on the 20% bonus and just keep an eye on it. If the price comes down, great, be happy and transfer even if you're not getting a transfer bonus and book then. But no, I wouldn't speculatively

Starting point is 00:50:40 transfer points if the prices aren't good now and just hope that they get better later i would just wait until you find the availability you need because who knows whether they're going to be available or not right and you know in fact i mean unless there's a reason you need to be in amsterdam specifically you might end up finding that there's a great uh you know flight on cutter overall and you can save a lot of points by booking all in one program yeah i feel like uh everyone will hear us say they flexible um a lot when we talk about award booking um so greg um this person says why don't you guys have a paid service for your subscribers to help make award bookings?

Starting point is 00:51:25 I've been following for almost a couple of years. I know you teach us to do it on our own, but I'm going to add to that. What services do you recommend for people who are having a hard time figuring out the award booking stuff? And have you ever considered a service well so we we've never considered doing a service because um it's it's just very very time consuming if if we were if if the people who who work on the blog and the podcast were uh taking you know award booking requests we wouldn't have any time to do the blog or the podcast and so we'd much rather work on things that will um you know help lots of people um than helping one paying customer kind of thing um so that's the reason we've never done that and uh so instead i

Starting point is 00:52:20 mean i we've done a lot of research into uh uh, award booking tools. And so we have a nice like post on what are the best, uh, award search tools. Uh, and there's different variations. Like there's, um, there's a post on award discovery tools. So these are where, uh, where you, um, are open to where you want to go. And so I compared tools that let you just say, I want to leave from this airport, but tell me where I can go. And maybe in business class for three people or four people.

Starting point is 00:52:57 So we have a resource on that. We've got resources on what are the best hotel or word search tools, things like that. I think we also have some how-to videos somebody referenced the uh qatar jet blue thing i think we've got a number of how-to videos that show that kind of award booking stuff in action that i find super interesting and useful yeah and we'll be doing more of those soon. Yes. Um,

Starting point is 00:53:29 to tag onto what Greg said about how, like it would take obviously the time away from producing other content. Uh, like the whole idea of, of, of award booking is like a job. A lot of people do that. And there are a lot of services that do that. It's never appealed to me like to spend all day searching for awards awards and trying to accommodate requests for changes and different things and stuff like that. It's never appealed to me. So even if Greg was like, we're going to start an award booking service tomorrow, I would probably be like, okay, who particularly doing it so i think that's another uh reason i wouldn't personally

Starting point is 00:54:05 be particularly interested in in doing that uh and it's not that i don't want to help people i do but i i find it more useful to help people by like greg's kind of saying teaching them to fish rather than fishing for them uh that's just where our interest probably collectively is not to speak for everybody but i think that's probably where we all are. Yeah. I'm going to skip ahead in our questions a bit, because this relates to what we're talking about now. And I'm going to give this one to Nick or Greg.

Starting point is 00:54:36 So actually Greg, so related to that same post that we referenced earlier, where you shared that video using ITA Matrix to find award availability on JetBlue booking via Avios. Is there a similar trick around that for United availability using that same process? Not with Matrix. So that was a particular situation where a paid fair class indicated that, uh, awards were available, but that's not usually the case in most scenarios and wouldn't be the case with United, I don't believe. So instead, there are lots of tools that can help you find United, uh, awards.

Starting point is 00:55:24 And I think you're talking about booking United with partner miles. Cause I saw in the chat later on, they said they want to use Turkish miles to book. So one tool that's pretty good if you're looking for a specific route, but you're happy to go like any time a year, just whenever it's available is Seatspy because it'll show you a year of United availability across time. But then if you want to have a lot more power in what you're looking for, another good one that will also let you do that sort of thing is, uh, is, uh, seats.arrow is a really good one. All right, great. We did a lot of award booking talking.

Starting point is 00:56:22 So now, um, as our probably last question, Steven, we'll switch back to credit cards. Should I go for the Hilton Surpass now for the 150k signup bonus that I can find via incognito browser or wait for a better offer? Here we are with another speculative waiting game. So 150,000 is a decent offer on the surpass card. I think the standard offer at the moment is 130, but like they mentioned, you can sometimes find higher offers in an incognito browser. However, at some point,

Starting point is 00:56:57 I think it's in like the last six months or something like that, they had an offer giving 130,000 points plus a three-night certificate. And those three-night certificates can be redeemed at properties costing up to about 120,000 points. So if you were able to max out that value, that kind of welcome offer is worth up to 250,000 points, which is obviously significantly better than 150 000 however if you anticipate needing to book a hilton stay in the next few months and you're wanting to get um some points under your belt so you could actually book an award stay um 150 000 is certainly not a bad offer on that card so um depending on how imminently you need the points then i'd maybe go ahead with that um something else to bear in mind again if you have a player two who can refer you from one of their cards um have them do that because even

Starting point is 00:57:53 if their offer is only showing up as 130 000 the number of points that they um receive for preferring you could end up outweighing what you'd be losing for taking that slightly lower signup bonus. Plus, check out their referral link in an incognito browser, because even though it might in theory only offer 130,000 points in a regular browser, if you open the referral link in an incognito browser, you might still find that 150 offer so then you get the 150 000 points plus however many hilton or membership rewards points um that you'd earn from being referred by them to i was gonna say the same thing steven just i was i was hoping he was gonna miss that so i could be like just like steven said earlier because because i did go right back to what he said before to put

Starting point is 00:58:44 a number on that so let's say your significant other has a card that offers 20 000 membership rewards points per approved referral if they refer you and even if you only get the 130k offer on your surpass card but your player two gets 20 000 membership rewards points they could transfer those to hilton and have 40 000 hilton points along with your 130 yeah so you so you'd come out better than the 150k alone uh even if you only get the 130k offer if you have a player two and if you account for your points as all being you know uh in one pile so to speak so it's the same difference to you,

Starting point is 00:59:25 whether they're in your Hilton account or in your significant other's membership rewards account, which of course, if they transferred to Hilton, then you can pull. And so you could move them from their Hilton account to your Hilton account pretty easily, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, that was a great tip that Steven gave you. All right, great tip to round us out and finish the ask us anything.

Starting point is 00:59:48 I think that's it. But if you haven't already liked the video, please do that. Subscribe so you can catch the next episode. We try to do these every month, the first Wednesday of the month at 9 PM. So yeah, thanks for joining us.

Frequent Miler on the Air - How to handle gift card fraud | Ask Us Anything Ep69 | 9-4-24

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