Frequent Miler on the Air - How to turn a $95 card into 4 ocean cruises | Ep191 | 2-25-23

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

A $95 credit card could currently get you 4 (or more!) ocean cruises. This week, we talk about how to set the process in motion and why it could be a great deal. 00:00 Intro 00:50 Giant Mailbag 3:05 Card Talk https://frequentmiler.com/c1v1/ 11:52 Mattress running the numbers & What crazy thing....did Hyatt do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-promo-earn-3k-points-every-2-nights-500-points-every-2-nights-in-select-cities/ 19:33 Greg almost books Qantas First Class 22:10 Main Event: How to turn a $95 card into four ocean cruises https://frequentmiler.com/wyndhamearnerbiz/ https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-cruise-for-next-to-nothing/ https://frequentmiler.com/holland-america-cruise-match-program-possible-free-cruise-offer/ https://frequentmiler.com/tips-for-new-cruisers-from-new-cruisers/ https://milestalk.com/the-status-match-merry-go-round-explained-using-both-hotel-and-casino-status-match-opportunities-year-after-year/ 57:44 Question of the Week: Pop quiz -- which chains offer compensation when you get walked? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, how to turn a $95 card into four ocean cruises. That sounds pretty good.

It does sound good. And this is Nick's expertise. So we're going to be learning all of this from Nick while I sit back and relax during the main event today. We'll see if we can get you involved a little bit, Craig. This is kind of like my vacation during the show. During the recording of the show, I get to vacation. Once we get to the main event, I'll be doing a little bit of work before then, starting with the giant mail bags. Let's dig in there. There we go. Today's giant mail comes from Sarah. Sarah says, hello, Frequent Miler team.

I wanted to pass along a huge amount of gratitude. Earlier this week, we had a tragedy in my partner's family and I needed to get him to France on less than 24 hours notice. Thanks to you with brand new knowledge about seats.arrow, which is a word finding tool that I had written about. I was able to find loads of same day award availability to Europe and back for fewer points and fees than I've ever spent on business class bookings. We would have otherwise had to pay more than $2,000 for the last minute booking in economy. We're both so grateful. And then she went on to list the specifics of the flights, but I'm going to simplify it. She spent 50,000 points and $5 to use Virgin Atlantic miles to book him outbound on Delta one to Europe.

And then on the return 43,000 points plus $246 in taxes to fly Iberia business class back. So good job, Sarah. I'm sorry for the circumstances but yeah but excellent job you know taking advantage and that's one of the great things about miles and points that you can handle those types of situations that would ordinarily be incredibly expensive right i mean a last minute international flight like that i can't even imagine how much it would have cost with cash but ironically award availability tends to be the easiest to come by at the very last minute like that. So it can come in really handy in that kind of situation.

It sure can. And I've learned something from Sarah because Delta has been historically an exception to that rule of award availability being better as you get closer. Like normally, I haven't found good availability close in, but to find Delta one available to book with partner miles with Virgin Atlantic miles last second, like that means there's at least something going on from, from that, you know, for those city pairs. So that's really cool. I'll have to start looking at that again.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Very good. All right. Excellent. Well, I think next up, we're going to debut a new segment on this week's show. Am I right? We're going to break out a little something new, Greg? We are. You know, we've been doing this show for quite a while now, and it's been a while since we introduced a new segment. And what we're going to be doing is each week diving into one credit card of interest and just talking about what are the pros and cons of that card.

If, you know, if it's something that some people should sign up for, others shouldn't, we'll explain that. And, you know, we'll try to base which card we pick on something interesting happening. Like for example, maybe it has a new all-time high signup bonus, or maybe, maybe, you know, for example, there's something else going on where you need Alaska miles just to pull an example out of the hat. And so we might talk about the Alaska credit card then, because that's a way of getting Alaska miles. So that kind of thing. So we think we're going to call this segment card talk which is kind of fun card talk it's kind of fun because it's a play on the show car talk that that ran for many many years and and um it also is copying we we had a we had a short-lived show that we did separate from Frequent Miler on the Air a while

back that we called Card Talk where we sort of interviewed a listener to talk about what they needed with credit cards. That turned out to be a bit of a burden to do. We stopped doing that pretty soon, but we like the name.

So here we are back. Same old name, new segment. That's right. Same name, new content, totally different format. What, what do we have up for card talk this week? This week, our card talk segment is on the Capital One Venture One card, which has a bonus out now. It's the best ever bonus, I believe, on the Venture One card because you can now earn 40,000 Capital One miles after spending, remind me, Greg, is it $1,000 in the first three months? $1,000. Yeah. Boom. Nailed it. All right. So 40K after a thousand in the first three months. Now, this is a car that has no annual fee and it earns just a base 1.25 miles per dollar spent everywhere. So is this worth it? Is it interesting? Is it intriguing? What do you think, Greg? So, it's interesting in a couple ways. One is that you don't usually get 40,000 points and such a small spend requirement for a card that earns points that are transferable to airline and hotel partners, which is the case with Capital One Miles. I also find it interesting because if you're someone who

has a, or is thinking of getting a Capital One Saver card or the Saver One card, which earns, I think they both earn, right? 3% back at grocery stores and they vary on dining, I think. Yeah, it's three on the no annual fee card and four on the 95 annual fee card for for dining they both earn a three percent grocery though yeah and then they both also earn for entertainment purchases right which i think is also three percent yeah so um so the cool thing is and this is what i learned from nick several years ago is that if you have a Capital One card that earns Capital One miles, what they call miles, and one that earns cash back, you can actually turn that cash back into miles, which are then transferable to partners. So you can make your cash back from the Saver One

more valuable just by having this Venture One card. Yeah, and I want to mention that I learned that from a reader. So that wasn't even something I discovered on my own. It was something that made sense when the reader mentioned it because things I had noticed in the Capital One login, but I didn't actually discover that or realize it on my own. But I wrote quite a bit about it when we finally discovered that that was possible and doable. So yeah, I think Greg's points are really good that this is a decent sign of bonus, even if you used it just to erase travel purchases, you're looking at $400 on $1,000 spend. That's a good, good return on a no annual fee card, not the best on the market, but not bad.

But I think really, the key is that they're transferable and Capital One has lots of good transfer partners. So this could be a way to dip your toe in the transfer partner pool and Capital One's transfer partners. We've talked a lot about Turkish Miles and Smiles, 7,500 miles each way within the United States. If you can find United Saver availability and Seat Spy is a great tool for finding that. Capital One has a bunch of other good partners also that are partners with lots of other transferable currency programs. So it's a decent little way to get your foot in the door with a transferable partner program. Decent way, like Greg said, to set yourself up if you're going to get Capital One cash back cards to

transfer to airline programs. Is it a good card for ordinary spend? Is there anybody who should get this and use this as like a daily driver card? Nobody. I don't know. I don't know if that's a little bit harsh, but, you know, earning only 1.25 per dollar spent, you know, there's a time just 10 years ago, actually, to get transferable points at that rate would have been fantastic. But today, there's just so many better alternatives. So the one case, you know, where you might want to consider it is if you can't get approved for other cards, you know, I think that Capital One is more likely to approve people for the Venture One than for like the Venture X, for example, or the regular Venture, both of which earn two points per dollar for all spend. So those are both solid earners for spend.

This one, not so much. Yeah. And I think it's a good point to mention the fact that this could be good if you are having trouble getting approved for other cards, because not only would this potentially be a card you can get approved for, because like you said, I think Capital One is easier on the approvals on the Venture One. It also might be a path to upgrade down the line to one of the better cards because Capital One does occasionally allow product changing. So you may position yourself to get one of those other cards down the road, probably without any kind of a bonus. Although I say that, and we did hear some data points of people getting offered upgrade bonuses to the VentureX over the last year. So maybe Capital One will continue dipping their feet in that pool. So certainly I think this

card could make sense for someone who, A, doesn't have a lot of expenses, so can't meet the bonus requirements on a card with a larger spend bonus. B, wants to get into the Capital One ecosystem. And C, wants a decent transferable currency bonus, again, without a lot of spend. So this is not a card that would be at the top of my list personally, but I can imagine the person for whom this would be a good fit. Yeah. And let me point out that for those hoping to sign up for a bunch of Chase cards, this will add to your Chase 524 count. If you don't know what that means, then you probably aren't in the process of signing up for a lot of Chase cards,

so it probably doesn't matter to you. But for those that care about that, that's an issue. And then, of course, if you're like me and Capital One just hates you and likes to shut you down, you probably don't want to mess with this card. But, you know, I will say that, you know, even if you have been collecting Chase bonuses and this may not be a bad card to pair because there are quite a few transfer partners that overlap with Chase. And so, you know, whereas you may want a Freedom Flex card, for instance, to get the rotating 5X categories for a few years. If you maxed out all of the

rotating 5x categories for a year, you still wouldn't have the 40,000 points, right? I mean, I guess with the welcome bonus, you would have the 40,000 points. But that's what this 40,000 point infusion is like. It's like more than maxing out the 5x categories for a year on a Freedom Flex. So this plays nicely with your chase points if you want to transfer to, say, Aeroplan or Virgin Atlantic or one of the many partners that they share. So I think there's a reason to consider that in with a chase-centric strategy, just for instance. But again, like I said, not going to make sense for people who are chasing the big bonuses, the business card bonuses and that kind of a thing. This is definitely a different product for a different set of people. Yep.

Okay. That's Card Talk. That's our new segment. So then I think the next piece to talk about today is sort of a, well, I almost called it a double header. It's not exactly a double header. It's a twofer, right? It's like, you know, a double of sorts.

We're going to talk about both mattress running the numbers and what crazy thing all in one all in one you get yeah i see what i was about to say the same sort of thing of like you get two for one but not really you really get one for two right yeah you're getting gypped yeah Oh, well. Okay. So what crazy mattress runny-ish thing did Hyatt do this week? Well, you know, Hyatt came out with their newest promotion, which is so complicated that it took eight emails back and forth to determine what it even was. And Stephen was really the one, you know, running those emails back and forth. And I'm just kind of reading the email chain and trying to understand what this promotion is. And so not only did I have a hard enough time

following that via email, but just before we started recording this, we took just a minute or two. We were like, okay, so what are the details of the promotion? And we talked about it for five or six minutes. And we're two guys that talk about these things for a living.

And I still don't know exactly what the promotion is. Oh, come on, Nick. It's very simple. Very simple. Let me lay it out for you. All right, lay it out. Here's what it is. You earn 3,000 bonus points for every two nights, starting with your second stay.

And then you also earn 500 bonus points for every two nights you stay in the following cities, starting with your first day. If you're a worldwide credit card holder, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, or Washington, D.C. What was complicated about that, Nick? Mic drop. Wow, that was really well done. I have no idea what this promotion is still. And if you made sense of any of that, well, you know, congratulations, Hyatt marketing team. You're the only people that get this one. Yeah, so what? So, yeah, let me simplify it a little bit because there's actually something interesting here. Okay.

The interesting thing, which is not in anything I just said, is that this promotion counts on award stays. And so the simple part, not even simple, but the easier to understand part of this whole promotion is you get 3000 bonus points for every two nights during the promotion window. So every two nights you stay at a hyatt whether it's a point stay or a cash day whatever um but you have to have first stayed um without getting any bonus points at a hyatt right you have to have completed a stay during the bonus period extra in order to sort of like, actually really mean it. Right. Right. Right. We're going to activate your promotion here. You have to stay at least once.

And so like, okay. All right. So I get it. So you have to stay one time. And then after that one to that first time, doesn't count after the first time, every two nights,

you get 3000 points. So like, what is the whole purpose of that? That doesn't really make any sense does it because like for instance if you have to stay seven nights somewhere for business basically what they're incentivizing here is for you to stay one night and then go stay someplace else and come back right like they're incentivizing you to leave it doesn't make any sense i don't understand this it's not like it's such a big bonus that, you know, they should be worried about people who only do one stay getting something.

I mean, what? Yeah, I find that totally crazy. Now, they're not alone. I mean, we've seen similar requirements out of Marriott and others where it's from your second stay. So the hotel chains like doing this kind of thing. And I find it it even though i sound like i know what i'm talking about i i actually don't i like for example for when it says for every two nights starting with your second stay do those stays have to be two nights

or is it okay to have two separate one night stays i mean i'm sure you could dig into that and figure it out no i don't think they do i think that was covered in the yeah in the emails back and forth and so i'm like 80 sure that they can be one night stays as long as you have a stay before that which could be one night or it could be multiple nights right so this is so ridiculously complicated i i yeah i just find this kind of hilarious but um but i do think in steven's posts he pointed out something which i'm assuming he's right about which is that this is potentially a good opportunity for those who want to earn top tier globalist status with

hyatt um from stays if you uh have easy access to one of those cities that I rambled off, some of those cities have Category 1 Hyatt's. And if you can find those Category 1 Hyatt's pricing at off-peak, that would mean they cost only 3,500 points per night. And then with all these bonus points that you get, it would be something like less than 2,000 points per night and then with with all these bonus points that you get it would be something like less than 2 000 points per night um that would end up costing you all together not counting that first day that was like triggering the whole thing right right so yeah i mean the point is you could earn the extra nights that you need to get high level status so that's no that's pretty cool yeah that makes sense so without even like reading exactly i didn't read all the details of steven's post but i could do the math on that right because if you're doing award stays there are 3 500 points

a night category one off peak then it's going to cost you 7 000 points and if it's in one of those cities you're going to get 3 000 bonus points plus 500 points per night is it or 500 points per stay in those cities 500 points for every two nights for every two nights in those cities in those cities so you do the two nights in those so you end up getting 3 500 points back after two nights you get half back so i mean you could essentially mattress run global status yeah for 3 500 times 30 nights basically so basically. So sort of, sort of. Because you're getting the points. Yeah, I mean, sort of.

I don't know. I don't even want to get more into that. But it's interesting for that if you're looking to mattress run those category one nights, I guess. Right, right. All I'd say is read the fine print a few dozen times so you fully understand what's going on there before you go committing any mattress runs to this. Crazy high. It has mattress run potential. It does.

It does. It's crazy that they make it so difficult to wrap your mind around. I mean, there are too many layers there. We're not looking to peel onions high. Just make it simple. Give us a certain number of points and stop with all this extra complication. I'm still just chuckling about the whole thing. I just find, you know, to give us a certain number of points and stop with all this extra complication. I'm still like, just chuckling about the whole thing. I just find it so funny.

You know, the other thing that drives me crazy about these is that they keep calling them bonus journeys and like, come on, just differentiate the names, like running the same name every time. It's so confusing because it means something different every, you know, four or five months months and so i wish they would just name them different things or keep them similar and you know like ihg had the accelerate promotion forever and it was basically the same kind of thing okay you know if it's going to be the same kind of thing keep the same name but these are totally different promotions all the time with the same name it doesn't make any sense right right add in another adjective make it like confusing bonus journeys of 2023 or something like that that's all we're

looking for that's all we're looking for all right so we've done so words we booked this week is our next segment right so you well did you book anything this week craig what happened so so we posted about um qantas had had promised to release a whole bunch of word space this year. So all the way through to the end of the year. And so I and everyone else in the universe who had read not just our post, but a lot of blog posts about that, jumped on to see what we could get. And I found that in December, which is a very nice time to go to Australia, I found two, not just business class, but first class seats at a time then that my wife and I could go. I found it through first I used Expert Flyer, which helps me look about seven days at a time of award space. And then I confirmed it

on BA.com. But then I went to see if I could find it on Alaska. No. And then I checked American. No. And then I double checked on BA. And by that time, the award space was already gone. Because everybody's looking for it. So I didn't actually book anything new this week, but I tried. You tried. Nice try. Points for effort, Greg. Well done.

I took a brief glance at dates that would be convenient for me and didn't see them through Alaska. And I said, all right, well, I don't have that much effort in me to hunt down the way to book it. If it wasn't going to just be available online via Alaska, I knew it would

just get scooped up so fast with this deal with people, especially people in Australia. They do also have not as many credit card opportunities as we do, but they have some anyway, the transferable currency membership rewards type things. So there and obviously with Qantas being such a major carrier there, there have to be a lot of people that have Qantas points and have been sitting there waiting for a good use for years, especially these last few years. So it doesn't surprise me at all that anybody that had Qantas points was like, all right, great. Finally, I can book an award with them. And I was jumping on that space pretty quickly. Right, right.

Because, you know, historically, Qantas was like impossible. You wanted to nab a Qantas business class, let alone first class seed. Good luck. I mean, it was just not easy. But yeah, I saw tons and tons of business class award availability, by the way. But yeah, who knows if it'll be there by the time this show publishes. Probably not. All right. So that's about all there is to say about that. So let's move on to this week's main event. Main event time. I'm about to go on a little mini vacation now while Nick explains how to turn a $95 card into four ocean cruises. Hopefully, okay. So let me reframe this and say, a $95 card into four ocean cruises. Hopefully.

Okay. So let me reframe this and say up to four ocean cruises and maybe more. And so we'll talk about how to turn that $95 cruise into four, potentially, potentially even more. And then I'll even add a bonus tip that's a little separate from all of this towards the end. All right. So, all right. So where do we start here? We start with the Wyndham earner business card.

Now, Greg, you thought you were going to get a vacation, but I know you know about the Wyndham earner business card and why that's where we're going to start. So why don't you explain why you would want to start with the Wyndham earner business card to get this whole thing going? Sure, sure. So the Wyndham earner business card is the only Wyndham card that gives you automatic Wyndham diamond status. And by the way, just as an aside, this card's only 95 bucks. It automatically gives you 15,000 points every year

upon your anniversary of the card. It's like a no braininer to have this card anyway. And plus it earns eight points per dollar at gas stations. I mean, this is like an excellent card regardless of what we're about to talk about. So everyone should have this card. So it's a card you want. If you don't already have business, get one.

So you can get this card. And anything's a business. Selling stuff on eBay, writing the great American novel or having ideas in your head that you're going to write that. That counts as a business. So get the card. And then what do you do? You match to scissors. Okay.

So once you have Wyndham diamond status, then you can match your Wyndham diamond status. And again, I want to just briefly mention, Greg said, if you don't have a business, get a business. But for anybody who's out there saying, I don't have a business though, we often say, yes, you do. And I just want to quickly say, yes, you do, because it's very easy to have one. You don't have to go through any complicated steps to like form a business and register it and this and that. You can have a sole proprietorship. That's what Greg said when he said you could be writing the Great American Novel. You could be selling stuff on eBay. It can be a sole proprietorship and you can have $1,000 in sales a year and you can potentially get approved for business cards. So you can be very honest about

whatever it is you think you might earn from whatever business it might be. And business cards are relatively accessible and easy to get even with new businesses like that. So that's why this is really pretty wide open, more wide open than maybe it seems initially. Okay, so that's that. So you get your Wyndham Diamond status, which should happen relatively quickly after approval on the Wyndham business card. I can't remember exactly how long, but within a week or so, I think you'll end up with that. And then you can match that over to Caesar's diamond status. There's a website for it. You could just type it into Google. Even you can find it on our site. I'm going to link a post that explains how to do almost everything that we're going to talk about

today. I'll link in the show notes and I'll tell you when I kind of go off the, you know, the script from the post in terms of the additional tips that I add that aren't in there. But anyway, so you go to that website and match your Wyndham status to your Caesars status. Now, you'll need to create a Caesars Rewards account. You used to have to go to a casino in order to do that. You don't need more. Thanks, COVID era. You can sign up right online and get yourself a Caesars Rewards account, and so you can match your Wyndham to Caesars Rewards. Now, that can take a varying amount of time. It should take up to seven days. Mine took five days this

last year to match over. Other people have had trouble and had this drag on for weeks and even months. We've had some readers who have reported success, though, following up with the Wyndham Rewards team or the Caesars team on Twitter specifically. So you can kind of hunt this down and make this match happen. But the fact is, Wyndham and Caesars have a partnership, so you should be able to match over your Wyndham status to Caesars Diamond status. This isn't like a maybe you'll get approved kind of a thing.

It's an official partnership they have. So it should take about a week. You'll end up with Caesar's Diamond status. Now, once you have Caesar's Diamond status, you take a picture of that. I recommend loading the app, the Caesar's Rewards app on your phone, because that gives you a better picture of a like a diamond rewards card than you get on the website on the desktop version. So if you can load the app on your phone, you can pull up your Caesars Rewards Diamond card, take a screenshot of that. Then you go to the Carnival

Fun Match page. And so we have a link to that, to the Carnival Fun Match. And so the Carnival Fun Match is a match program run by Carnival Cruise Lines, where they will match your land-based casino status by giving you a free cruise. Now, this step involves uploading a picture of your casino status. And so you're going to upload a picture of your Caesars reward status, since that's what you've got with your Wyndham business card that, again, gave you Wyndham diamond. You match it to Caesar's diamond. They ask for the front and back of your card, which is great if you have a physical Caesar's card because you've been to a Caesar's casino. But if you've just done this online, you're only going to have one screenshot. We've had no trouble uploading the same screenshot for the front and the back of

the card. So you just upload that for both the front and the back. And then you wait. And Carnival says that maybe they'll send you an offer for a free cruise. Now, some people have waited a long time and not seen the free cruise offer for a long time after that. Many other people within a couple of weeks or maybe a month start receiving offers for a free cruise. And usually those offers start with a free interior room. But if you waited out another couple of weeks or a month or whatever, usually people are seeing an offer for a free balcony room. And so that's a nice value if you want to cruise in a balcony room. A lot of people enjoy having that space to stand outside and catch some fresh air. And the nice thing about the Carnival Fun Match is that it's valid on most Carnival cruises, basically everything but the cruises from

Australia, more or less. You can match and take a free cruise. And I say free cruise because really the word free should be in quotation marks here. You'll still have to pay $100 a person and you get that back if you're cruising with two people anyway, you get that back in the form of onboard credit. So for instance, if you're in a two player household or two person house, so you're gonna be cruising with one other person, you're gonna pay $200 and you'll get $200 non board credit. And you can use your onboard credit for restaurants or drinks or laundry on board or video games in the arcade or whatever it is that you might want to do with your money when you're on board excursions, of course, and things like that would count also. So you will also have to pay the taxes, the port taxes,

which vary wildly depending on the itinerary that you're looking at. I did one in Europe last year where I went to a number of Greek islands and Turkey and Sicily and Naples, a bunch of places around the Mediterranean and the port taxes wereples, a bunch of places around the Mediterranean. And the port taxes were $90 a person on that particular cruise. Some of the Alaska cruises for the whole cruise. Yeah. No, right. Yeah.

Thank you for pointing out. That was $90 for a 10 day cruise. So for my wife and I, we would have paid the $200 that we got back as $200 non-board credit plus $90 each in taxes. So the, yeah, yeah, that's, that's amazing. Yeah. A pretty, pretty nice little deal. So less than, less than $400 all in for that, that cruise, that example.

But as you're saying other ports, it might be much more expensive. Yeah, it could be hundreds. It depends on what your itinerary is and where it is. Some of them are three or four hundred dollars a person so it really just depends on where you want to go uh although i'll mention later on here that you should consider both where you want to go and what ship you want to go on if you're new to cruising anyway you might want to consider some of the amenities on this specific ship but i at any rate you've got a lot of different options you can do alaska cruises you can do some trans of different options. You can do Alaska cruises, you can do some transatlantic and transpacific cruises. There's cruises on the Mexican Riviera,

there's cruises, obviously, in the Eastern and Western Caribbean, Carnival does a lot there. And then of course, there are some in Europe, there's Norwegian fjords. So you've got tons of different options, potentially now what's available ebbs and flows and varies from month to month, but they send you these offers almost monthly. If you don't book by the deadline, they almost always will send you another offer the beginning of the next month, at least for the first year after you start receiving these. If you don't book, they'll almost always send you a new offer each month. So let me ask you, so presumably they're doing this because someone with high level Caesar status is probably a big gambler. They want gamblers to come on board

and drop a lot of money and that's good for them. Is that right? Yeah. That's essentially what they're giving you. Yeah, exactly. That's why they're giving you the free cruise. So you can't give it to somebody else. And that's a question we've gotten. Can I do this and gift the cruise to somebody else? No, you can't because presumably they think you're a high roller gambler because in order to get Caesar's Diamond status from gambling, you'd have to gamble a lot. And so they're looking at you as a Caesar's Diamond member, not as a Wyndham business card owner who paid $95 and matched to Wyndham Diamond and Caesars Diamond. They're looking at you as a Caesars High Roller gambler.

So when you're on board and suppose you don't go to the casino, does Luigi come and get you and take you out of your balcony room and put you down in the staff quarters or something? Great question. Nope, nobody. No, not even once I didn't get a nobody from the casino from the host, sort of the casino host never spoke to me, or sought me out at all on the cruise. And there was certainly no question about how much I was going to gamble or if I was enjoying the casino or anything else. So that just never came up with anybody, the stateroom attendant, nobody in the dining room, etc. So even though clearly they had down somewhere that I was there as a gambler, there was never a question about the gambling aspect of it. Now, I did play a little bit in the casino, but I was also on the cruise with other people who didn't and none of them got questioned by

anybody. So no, I mean, if you don't gamble, you don't gamble. They probably won't continue to send you free cruise offers if you don't gamble at all. And if you do gamble some, they might continue to send you free cruise offers. So whether or not you want to gamble, that's totally up to you. But there's no written requirement that you need to gamble X amount per day or anything at all like that. So you'll be free to do whatever it is you want to do. And in fact, when I did it, they had a free play offer where they also added an additional $200 in free play in the casino. So I also got that money back from Carnival too. Anyway, so you will, I should mention, you'd be on the hook both for the taxes and then of course gratuities. The way cruises work, if you've never been on a cruise

before, is that you pay all of the gratuities at once at the end. And there's a set amount, most cruise lines have a set amount that they charge per day. And you could add more or you could go to guest services and ask them to take it off if you don't want to tip whatever amount it is. But I think most people just pay whatever it is that the cruise line tells them they should pay. It's around $15 or $16 per person per day. So that's another cost to consider, although that's probably not a bad deal considering that you're tipping the people that serve breakfast and lunch and dinner and all the various folks on board that you might ordinarily tip during the course of a vacation. So it's not particularly outlandish in my opinion at all. All right.

So that's the Carnival Cruise offer. Now, I should also mention here that some people have an image of Carnival being a cruise line that perhaps isn't in line with what they want. And maybe you're right, but I would also say maybe you're wrong. You might be surprised. It's worth hunting around and looking up reviews of ships and their itineraries because I was really pleasantly surprised. I had been on one Carnival cruise once before. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I felt like the atmosphere on the Carnival cruise I took in Europe last year was very different than the Caribbean Carnival cruise I had taken before. And I imagine that it varies quite a bit from a three-night cruise to a 10-night cruise or

depending on your itinerary and your dates and things like that. So it's worth looking into. I was pleasantly surprised. And spoiler alert, I recently took my second Royal Caribbean cruise, and I thought the Carnival cruise that I took was much better than this one Royal Caribbean cruise that I took. Now, my previous Royal Caribbean cruise was, I think, probably a step ahead of Carnival, but close anyway. So speaking of Royal Caribbean, let's talk about that next. So you've done the Carnival match, and now you have this offer for a free carnival cruise, but that's not enough. You'd like to cruise for free a little bit more after that. Maybe you went on your cruise or you have booked your cruise and you're looking for another free cruise. So Royal Caribbean offers a match and that was originally scheduled to end

at the end of December 2022, but it's still going on. So I don't know how long they'll offer it, but they're still offering it right now where you can submit offers that you have from land-based casinos or other cruise lines. And so if you have one of those free carnival cruise offers, that's what you want to submit to Royal Caribbean. Okay. So you're not, you're not matching from Caesars anymore. You're matching from the offer you got from one cruise line, and you're matching that to another. Interesting. Yes, and you want to do it that way because I experimented

because I knew people would ask about this. So I experimented, and in my household, I submitted to Royal Caribbean my Caesars Diamond status, and my wife submitted a free Carnival cruise offer. And Royal Caribbean only offered me like a 10% discount on a cruise with my Caesar's Diamond status, but my wife, who had submitted the free balcony offer from Carnival, got a free offer for a free cruise with Royal Caribbean. So you want to get the free Carnival offer, even if you aren't necessarily interested in cruising with Carnival, you can at least take that offer and match it over to Royal

Caribbean for a free cruise with Royal Caribbean. Now, the Royal Caribbean offer is a little bit different. So again, you have to submit a screenshot of your current offer from a competing cruise line or land-based casino. But again, the success reports we've had with Royal Caribbean have all been from the Carnival Cruise Match, the Carnival free cruise offer. So you'll want to submit a picture of that free cruise offer. Royal Caribbean is offering a free five-night cruise or a free cruise of up to five nights.

They have a bunch of four- and five-night Caribbean cruises that you can choose from. So it's a little bit more restrictive, whereas the Carnival offer is valid on cruises of all sorts of lengths. I mean, we've seen Trans-Pacific 22-night cruises for the $100 a person, plus the port taxes with Carnival, which is pretty incredible. That is amazing. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think that all of your food and, I shouldn't say all non-alcoholic drinks, but some drinks anyway, and food for 22 nights for $100 a person plus the taxes is pretty crazy.

Can a single person do this if they just want to be alone in a cabin? You know, I assume so, but I guess I don't know that for sure. I would think that you could do it. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to. So that's a good question. I don't know the answer for sure, I guess. I think things are based on double occupancy. But in this case, because you're only paying $100 a person, I think the worst case scenario

is you'd pay $200 and get $200 in onboard credit if they make you pay for that. But you're not going to have to pay the taxes on a person who isn't there. So because Royal Caribbean or Carnival or whoever it is, wouldn't have to pay taxes on that person either. So I don't expect it would cost you anymore. All right. So the Royal Caribbean offer, like I said, is for cruises of up to five nights. Now, the thing I didn't write about, I don't think anyway, I've kind of hinted at this and I maybe I mentioned it on the, is that when Royal Caribbean does this match offer, I haven't obviously only done this once, so I haven't done it again recently, but at least when we did it, they send you an email and say, okay, here's the information. You click through the email, log into Royal Caribbean, and there were two redeem buttons, for lack of a better way

to describe it. There was the offer for the cruise of up to five nights and it was listed twice, almost like a little glitch. It kind of looked like it was listed twice on the page, but there were two buttons to redeem for it. So I tried clicking one of them. And so this was my wife's account and booking the free cruise, and it didn't seem to work via email. So she called and redeemed the first free cruise that we wanted to book. And then that line disappeared. When she clicked through into her account, that line disappeared. But the other line that still had a redeem button was still there. So it looked very much like she still had a free cruise offer in her account. So she called

again and she booked a second free cruise. So I think the Royal Caribbean offer is probably meant to be one free cruise, but we're not the only people who booked two free cruises. Let me put it that way. So you may very well be able to get two free cruises at a Royal Caribbean. And I can confirm that I got off of the second cruise just this week and both of them were free. And when I say free, we did again have to pay port taxes. In this case, unlike Carnival, we didn't have to pay anything for any sort of onboard credit. It was just the port taxes. So our port taxes for our two Caribbean cruises were about $100 a person. So for $200, you could end up with a five-night cruise with a balcony room. Again,

if you had the balcony offer from Carnival Royal Caribbean is matching that with the balcony offer on their cruise so so we got another you know nice cruise we got two two decent Cruises with Royal Caribbean we did one that was uh the first one was their private Island in the Bahamas and then I think also to NASA is what that one was and then the second cruise we just took was to Cozumel and Grand Cayman. So and that one was interesting. I didn't enjoy the ship as much, but it was kind of interesting because it was a unbeknownst to me, it was a Green Bay Packers fan cruise. And so there were a bunch of former Packers players and a current Packers player and their

families on the cruise. So everybody packed a week's worth of Packers clothes to wear on the cruise, which was kind of fun. Except for us, of course, we didn't get the memo on that. But it was a fun time. And for the price, the value is absolutely there. Yeah. I mean, so you have this $95 Wyndham earner business card. Your wife also has the Wyndham earner business card. Your wife also has a Wyndham earner business card. And so you both have Caesar's diamond and then this whole avalanche of now, now you're up to three cruises that, that you've told us about,

but right. And so we, in the title, we said four, right. We did say four. Well, now I'm going to,

this is, I'm not going to cheat and do this, but I'm going to say that if you're in a two-player household, we've only been counting one person so far. So really, if you're in a two-player household and you both have the Windermere business card, that could be six cruises so far. So you could have six for $2.95 cards, but we only talked about $1.95 card. So, so far, we're at three cruises with $195 card. Right, right. Now there's another offer.

Holland America is now matching your cruise offers from other cruise lines or your land-based casino status. Now, we have had plenty of people who have been successful with Caesars Diamond matching that to Holland America to get a free Holland America cruise. Now, when I say plenty of people, some of us have not gotten the Holland America cruise. And the, those of us who haven't gotten the free Holland America cruise have been people who have cruised with carnival relatively recently and not gambled all that much. They realized that we are not because Holland America is owned by carnival. And so I was like, I don't understand. No, Holland America is owned by Carnival. So those of us who recently cruised with Carnival and didn't gamble as much as perhaps they had expected, they're saying, oh, well, we see from your activity with our sister cruise line that you're only good for $200 off of a cruise. But for people who haven't cruised recently with Carnival anyway,

they have been able to take their Caesars status or Caesars Diamond status and match that to a free cruise with Holland America. So I don't know how long that Holland America offer is going to be around for. Now, Holland America is owned by Carnival, but it's like a higher end experience, presumably anyway, than Carnival. So, you know, a nicer cruise line, so to speak. Of course, these cruise lines, very similar to hotels, have different brands that appeal to different market segments, just like Marriott. You've got your Spring Hill Suites and your

Residence Inns. But then, of course, you have your Marriotts and your JW Marriotts and your St. Regis and your Ritz and everything else. So they have just different brands to appeal to different types of customers. So Holland America is a slightly higher end brand. At least that's my understanding. So you can get yourself a free cruise. Now, I believe the Holland America offer is good for a cruise of up to seven nights, but only for cruises, I believe, up through the end of June of this year,

if I remember correctly. You'll have to check that link that I'm going to put in the show notes, and hopefully it'll be above my head as I talk about this. If I do it right on the YouTube video, if you're listening to this in podcast form, you can't see my head. So you'll have to go to the show notes, but I'll have your imagination, your imagination that there's a link somewhere above my head to, to read all about that. Okay.

So, so the solid American one, at least for now, it has some fairly near-term limit to when you can cruise. What about the previous ones you talked about? Good question. Do you have to cruise within a certain period of time in order to take them up on those offers? So, no. All right, great question. So let's back all the way back up to the Carnival offer. Carnival offer is valid on cruises through the end of the schedule, but only on select cruises. So it's not every single cruise that's available and availability ebbs and flows.

So when we originally booked this, we booked a European cruise that was a year out. So we booked it, you know, whatever, October of 2021 for October of 2022. And it was literally a year in advance for that cruise. So that was really far out that you could book that. We ended up canceling that and rebooking it later on. And so that's why I say availability ebbs and flows because I had watched that specific cruise and I would see some weeks it wasn't available for the free cruise offer and other weeks it was, I assume as they got bookings and cancellations and whatnot over time, that just changed. So you got to keep your eye on it. And the dates that certain cruises will

be available will change some. So when you first get the offer, if you look and you're like, oh, man, none of the stuff I want is available. Don't be discouraged. Don't give up on it. Keep looking every now and then. I would take a look every week or two to see what may have changed in terms of what's available but you have like i said basically throughout the end of the booking calendar or at least a year anyway in advance of different cruises that you can book with the carnival what about if you're just not ready to even look yet like does the email say you have to do this by yeah it does or whatever it does but with the carnival offer they don't really mean it. So the way the Carnival offer worked, the dates varied every month, but what would happen

is something like I would get an email on the third of the month that would say, oh, here's this free cruise offer and it expires on the 28th of the month. And so they would continue to send me emails throughout the month saying, hey, you got to book this free cruise offer by the 28th. And then I didn't book it by the 28th. And so then it would expire on the 28th. And then on the second of the next month, they would send me a new offer and say, okay, book by the 27th of this month. And then that one would expire in the next month, they would send me a new one. So that continued for a year. So I would feel fairly comfortable that if you're not ready to book, yes, the offer will technically expire.

But I'm pretty comfortable in saying that I think Carnival will just send you a new version of that offer after it expires. So I don't feel a lot of time pressure on that one. The Royal Caribbean offer is a little bit different. The Royal Caribbean offer, the terms of the match program say that you have to book within 14 days of getting the match offer. And I didn't push or stretch that one. So I don't know for sure whether they will extend that. So that one, I think you do need to book relatively soon. And at least the way that was originally written, it was only, or at least the offers that were originally sent out, they were only valid on cruises through March 31 of this year. Now, obviously, we're getting closer to March now, I wouldn't be surprised if they at some point here start extending those offers,

I can't imagine that they're going to match people and say you have to cruise this month kind of a thing. Right. But I can't do the match again so i don't have a very recent data point on that the most recent data points i had seen were long enough ago and they were still march 31st so i'm not sure what the current status is on the end date of booking that one the holland america one like i said i believe it had to be by the end of June of 2023. So that one doesn't allow you to go too far out. But, you know, free cruise is a free cruise. So the Holland America deal looked like a pretty good one to me.

Now, that's the four cruises. And again, if you're playing in two player mode, you could potentially get eight if you're new to cruising. Anyway, if you don't have a history of not gambling with Carnival, then you should be able to get all of those. So that's potentially eight cruises in a two-player household. And we should probably add a little bit more to the mix. So if you're getting these free cruise offers, and especially if you've taken one or two and you have gambled at all and you've continued to get offers from them, then another thing to consider, and I don't have extensive experience with this yet, but there's a website called YouAreComped and it's the letters YouAreComped.com. And so that website is a place where you can submit offers that you're getting from various cruise lines and they will help match you to other cruise lines. And so they

include cruises on lines like Celebrity and Virgin Voyages, and of course, Royal Caribbean and MSC. And so that's a site to look into, especially if you really are a gambler at all, then definitely you should be looking into that. And if you have gambled some and continue to get offers from these other cruise lines, I think they're not really helping people with the carnival fun match anymore. So if that's the source of your, you know, free cruise, uh, uh, match, if that's the one offer that you have to match, you may not get very much out of your account with that, but if you've got some other free cruise offers, then that's a site to look into. And then finally, so that could be a fifth free cruise potentially for you,

maybe even more than one. I'm not sure how many they'll let you book with their various cruise lines, but that's one to look into anyway. I've kind of gotten the ball rolling, but I haven't actually gone through with that yet. And then the last one to mention is an Atlantic City offer. Now, this one is separate from everything else. And so this is I didn't include this in the count of free cruises, specifically because this is not related to the $95 card, but it could still be of interest and intrigue for a lot of people. And that's that if you have MGM gold status, which you can't get from a $95 credit card, I mentioned again, but if you've got Hyatt Explorer status status, which you can't get from a $95 credit card, I'm going to mention again, but if you've got Hyatt Explorer status or better, you can match that MGM Gold.

And so if you have MGM Gold, whether it comes from the MGM side or from Hyatt, then you can take that MGM Gold. And I believe this is still working. My data points on this are about a month old, and they're from the Miles Talk Facebook group. MilesTalk.com is another blog. Dave Grossman runs it, and he runs the Facebook group Miles Talk. And so there have been a lot of great data points on casino stuff in that group in the last several months. And so I was following a thread of discussion over there where people were taking their MGM gold status to Atlantic City. And Dave has written a great post about kind of merry-go-round matches available in the casino programs.

And so you can take that to Atlantic City, match to Hard Rock royalty status at the Hard Rock Atlantic City. Take that Hard Rock or Rock royalty status or whatever it's called to Ocean Casino there. And Ocean has been matching people to Ocean Prime status. Your Ocean Prime status comes with a free MSC cruise. And the interesting thing about this offer to me is that the MSC cruise is totally free.

You don't even pay the port taxes on the MSC cruise. And you can get a seven night cruise for nothing if you get that Ocean Prime status. So yeah, that seems like a pretty good deal if you can get to Atlantic City. But the thing there is you do have to get to Atlantic City because you have to do the matches to Hard Rock.

You have to first match to Hard Rock because Ocean Prime will not match your MGM Gold. You need to go to the Hard Rock and get your Rock Royalty status from your MGM Gold. And then you have to physically take that to the Ocean Prime Cas or to the ocean casino to get ocean prime status. So there's a few stops you have to make and some stuff you got to do in person. And I'll include in the show notes, a link to the miles talk post that describes that because I haven't done that one myself yet. And Dave's done a great job of laying out the steps for that. So I'll link to that in the show notes too, because it's a good resource, I think. And we've been talking about making a trip to Atlantic City specifically for this,

because I'm starting to enjoy these cruises. So I never, ever thought of myself as a cruise kind of a person. I wasn't interested at all, but we found that we've been enjoying them. And I say that with a little bit of irony, because this last cruise that I got off of this week, we didn't like as much as the other ones, but we realized it was our fault for not liking it, mostly because we didn't do enough research in advance. So we learned some lessons about what to do for next time and looked at some other ships and said, wow, there were some really cool things we could have probably done if we had picked the right ship. And so

now with some of these other offers, I'm interested in seeing, well, okay, what can we get now in terms of a really cool cruise experience? We've gotten some good port stops and we got some things that lined up nicely with the schedule. I was really impressed that we were able to get a free Royal Caribbean cruise during President's Week. I mean, President's Week, kids are out of school in my state. So I know it's not the same in all states, but there were enough people on vacation that there were a lot of people on cruises this week. We stopped in a couple of ports where they were very full with cruise passengers. So I was really happy that we were able to book a free

cruise during a peak travel week. But I wish we had chosen a different ship, a different boat. So I did write a post this week about tips for new cruisers from new cruisers, the things that we wish we had realized three cruises ago. And so hopefully we'll get better at that if we continue to do it. I don't think we're going to be like... A cruise would not be my... If there was to be my only vacation every year, it probably wouldn't be a cruise. But if I'm going to do some points and miles traveling and do a variety of different things, it's certainly something I wouldn't mind mixing in again. We've had more fun than I would have anticipated on cruises. So I'm looking forward to the next one.

That's great. That is so great to hear. So, you know, I think four cruises plus a bonus cruise, if you do this MGM stuff, that's pretty good. I think we – That's not bad. I think we, you know, together kind of nailed that one. Right, right. So we'll see you on a cruise soon, right, Greg?

You will see me over Zoom from your cruise. That's right. That's funny because Greg knew that this would probably be a decent topic for a lot of people, but cruising isn't for everybody, especially not those who feed the fish very frequently when there's a little bit of motion on the ocean, right? That's right. That's right. That said, there are situations where being on something that's like a cruise is great even for me. And that was, you know, recently I was in New Zealand and we did an overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound. And it was like one of my favorite things I've ever done.

So I absolutely loved and adored that. But the sound is also, you know, the water doesn't move. There's no rocking, so there's no nausea and very few people. So that's one of the things I don't like about it. The two cruises I had done before, thousands of people. And I just dislike the whole sort of cattle call to meals and and getting on and off the boat experience of lining up just to get anywhere um yeah that whole thing yeah and those are fair points so it's not for everyone because there are a lot of those things that i i didn't think would appeal to me

and and those pieces of it didn't necessarily appeal to me either. So I totally get that. There's pluses and minuses to everything and lots of different styles of travel out there. So and I interestingly saw on this last cruise we were on, we were in port with a ship that's much larger than the one that we were on one day. And we met a couple that was on the larger ship. And in fact, they were doing back to back cruises on the Odyssey of the Seas, the Royal Caribbean Odyssey of the Seas. And so the previous week they had been on board with 4,400 people on their cruise. And then they said that this particular week, there were about 5,000 people on the cruise. The second week they were on it and they said they thought it was crowded with 4,500 people. And they said when they got to the 5,000 people, they were like, oh, no, wow, this is really crowded.

So some people love that because there's lots of amenities on those big ships. And, I mean, the ship looked really cool from the distance that I saw it. But, you know, of course, there are downsides, too. So you'll want to consider those kind of things when you look around at the ship. And I mentioned in my post this week, and I'm going to reiterate it here, it's worth taking an hour of your time to look for a YouTube video walkthrough to see what the ship looks like, because I think that would probably make a difference in which one I would pick in the future, taking a look through and seeing, well, what does it actually look like?

Like, what does the buffet look like? Is it going to feel like that cattle call kind of a thing? Or are there a number of different restaurant options where it's going to feel more like being in a, you know, smaller type of an environment. And that's really going to vary, you know,

quite a bit from ship to ship. So we're taking a look. That's great advice. Okay. Yeah. All right. So my friends, I think that wraps up the main event and brings us to the question of the

week. Go for it. So this week's question of the week. Hang on. Sorry. I had the question of the week up and we restarted. There it is. Okay.

Ah, yes. So pop quiz time for Greg. So Greg, pop quiz on walk policies. If you get walked from each of the major chains, and when I say each of the major chains, let's go with Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, and Hilton. If you get walked, what are you entitled to? Now, when I say if you get walked, for anybody who's not familiar with that terminology, it means you show up at the hotel and they cannot honor your reservation. They don't have a room for you. They've oversold.

They don't have a room for you. What is the walk policy if you have any sort of elite status with the various chains? Let me not even get into all the nitty gritty. I'm not going to make you do everything. Which of them have a policy that you're entitled to anything? Okay. If you get one so first let me say um in in every case i believe they will even if you don't have elite status they'll put you up somewhere else

for free that is like you shouldn't have to pay for the night at all i i think that's what like everyone will do but you might not like where you go um but uh marriott is the one that has a uh elite guarantee for if you get walked and it varies by chain i mean sorry by brand within marriott as to what specifically you're entitled to when that happens but it's things like um a whole bunch of points um or I think there's a cash option. I can't remember exactly. Yes, absolutely. So that is exactly what I expected you to say.

And the reason that I gave you the pop question or the pop quiz for this week was because I had I didn't have a good way to to make this the question of the week, but I learned something interesting from Frequent Miler Insiders just today, actually, as we record this, because there was a member of Frequent Miler Insiders that posted a scenario where she had a bunch of rooms booked at a particular hotel that was way oversold. And so she was at a Hilton property with diamond status, had a bunch of rooms booked a block for a special event, and they had to move them somewhere else. And it was quite a mess because they initially offered to move them to one particular hotel, and then they moved them to a different one, blah, blah, blah. And they

were wondering, is this okay? And what should I do in terms of pursuing what I really want? And the thing that stood out to me was someone in our Frequent Miler Insiders group posted a link to a loyalty lobby post that Hilton Honors has a walk policy, which I did not know. assume that this is something that is published on the hotel end. So hotels should know it, but members wouldn't necessarily unless they had seen this. And so diamond members, if they get walked, they should theoretically be the last person walked that's relocated to a different hotel. And in addition to getting the best available accommodations somewhere else, the typical type of stuff like Greg mentioned, where they're going to put available accommodations somewhere else, the typical type of stuff like Greg mentioned, where they're going to put you up someplace else, you are supposed to, as a Diamond member, get $200 in cash payment for the inconvenience of getting walked on the spot.

Now, that's something that was totally news to me. I had never heard of that before. I have not verified that beyond the Loyalty Lobby post, but I at least thought that was quite interesting because I've never heard anybody mention that before. So I think it's at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay that didn't go particularly well. And we had a problem in our room and they offered to move us to another room, but they were oversold. So the best they could offer was not a room that was comparable to the one that I was in. And they explained that they were already oversold and they were going to be oversold by an additional room if they moved me to a new room. But they were offering that as, you know, to inconvenience me as little as possible. And so it got me thinking about, well, yeah, they're going to have to walk right now X number of people. And it's going to be one

more person if I take this other room and it didn't particularly work out well for me. So I proposed a different solution in that particular case. But it got me thinking anyway about, you know, these walk policies because I've written in the past that I think IHG doesn't have a walk policy at all. I think you said that most chains will put you up somewhere else, but I remember looking into it. I wrote a post about it a couple of years ago and I didn't prep by reading that post before we talked about this today, but I'm pretty sure that IHG didn't have a walk policy at all when I had written that post. Yeah. Okay. Well, I was going to ask you questions about that, what it sounds like.

Yeah. I don't have that. We'll talk about that next time. But I, well, and the reason that I had written about it was because I remember a reader had written about getting to a hotel that was oversold and being told, I'm sorry, we just don't have any rooms. And they didn't offer anything. They didn't offer them a place anywhere else which is crazy because uh you have a great set i think with most of the major chains you'll get offered a room somewhere else and with marriott if you have elite status and you get walked then you're entitled to points and cash compensation depending on your level of elite status and now to be clear that doesn't mean you will necessarily get those right right it is the written policy but it's the written policy. But it's the written policy.

Exactly. Exactly. So if that happened at a Hilton hotel and you have diamond status, it's worth at least asking about that. Potential. Yeah. Right. It's going to be a little harder to argue it because there's no written documentation that you have that proves it. So, yeah, I think as you said, Nick, it's better to just ask a, maybe even say, like I

heard that Hilton hotels give diamond members $200 if they have to get walked and then see what happens. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth approaching it in a friendly sort of a way and just making the person aware of it so that the desk agent may just not be aware of the policy or may know that there's something that I've forgotten forgotten and at least they can then go and look it up and whatever it is that they have on their side and see if there's something you're entitled to. So yeah, I think it's worth approaching it in a friendly sort of a way. If the Hilton says no, Nick will send you the $200. Nope. Himself. Nope. Definitely not. All right. So my friends, that brings us to the end of this week's show. If you've enjoyed

what you've been listening to this week, and you'd like to get more of our posts in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media wherever you're listening to this show or watching this show, please give us a thumbs up, subscribe, enable notifications, leave a comment, all of those things help out our various channels. And if you have questions you'd like to be considered for a future Mailbag segment or for a future Question of the Week segment, you want to send those to? Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody.