Frequent Miler on the Air - How we use our Amex Platinum coupon book credits | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep294 | 2-21-25

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

On this week's episode, we talk about our Capital One mistake, how Uber has tried to "Bonvoy" us, and the many ways we use our Platinum credit card credits. (01:27) - OOPS: Capital One doesn't transfer to JetBlue like we implied (02:33) - BUT...then this week Capital One announced they ARE adding JetBlue as a transfer partner, (but at horrible rates) (05:24) - Hotel transfer bonuses, yay or nay? (10:29) - Uber adding 1.5% charge to rides abroad – here’s how to avoid overpaying Read more about this Uber change here. (14:37) - How we use our Amex Platinum "coupon book" credits... (15:34) - Read more about maximizing American Express credit card rebates and credits here. (16:07) - Both consumer & business cards (30:50) - Amex Platinum (consumer card) Learn more about the Amex Platinum consumer card here. (48:37) - Amex Business Platinum Card Learn more about the Amex Business Platinum Card here and read the Platinum Guide here. (58:03) - Read about the indirect Amex Platinum benefits here. (58:51) - One reader asks for advice about a Qatar Airways issue they experienced on a cash flight (for Q-Suites) where the entertainment system went out and the reimbursement offered for this problem was unsatisfactory.

On this week's show, we talk about how we made a big Capital One to JetBlue transfer bonus mistake and Capital One tried to come back and fix it, but they didn't do it very well. We also talk about how Uber has tried to bonvoy us all, and finally we talk about the many ways Nick and I use our Platinum credits to get money back from our Platinum cards. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, how we use our Amex Platinum coupon book credits. Amex Platinum cards are expensive.

They cost $6.95 a year, but they come loaded with perks that can make them well worth the annual fee, except a lot of them are kind of irritating perks in that they are more like coupons. They're like spend at this specific type of thing and then you'll get back some money worse, like some of them are monthly. So you could get back like $10 or $20 per month by doing these things. We're going to talk about how Nick and I use these credits to make the Platinum card worth keeping. We'll train you to jump through those hoops today, and it won't be too painful. Don't worry. But first, don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to something or come back to it later on,

you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description wherever you're looking at this. Also, if you want more information about the stuff that we're talking about, don't forget to go to the show notes for links to our site for all the various stuff that we discuss throughout the show. Okay, it's time. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right. This week's Giant Mail comes from our last regular show, our weekly show we last published a couple weeks ago.

In it, we made a big mistake. We were talking about different ways to use Capital One Miles. And one of the things we said was you could transfer Capital One Miles to JetBlue, and here's how you could use it that way. Well, Katie wrote in saying, big fan here. I just want to point out that in your recent segment on Capital One Miles, you talked about transferring miles to JetBlue. However, JetBlue isn't a transfer partner of Capital One. I only wish it were. And David also wrote in, said, hey, Nick, you stated transferring Capital One points to JetBlue, not a transfer partner.

Very rare mistake. Overall, great show. We appreciate those. Thank you very much for jumping in with those and katie i am glad to be your genie in a bottle here and tell you that our next segment is what crazy thing did capital one do this week and uh and the the answer to this all in one so uh so while you were both absolutely correct and and I was totally wrong when I said the Capital One miles transferred to JetBlue, it just so happens that I had a really well-functioning

crystal ball on me that day, I guess, because now this week, suddenly Capital One has announced that yeah, they heard me talk about that and they liked it. So, they're adding JetBlue as a transfer partner. And so, that would be crazy enough if it was like, oh, well, you know, I said this and it wasn't true. And then like, you know, a week or two later or whatever, it turned out that it was true. That would be crazy, but that's not why it's crazy. No, the crazy thing is that they brought out a terrible transfer ratio. It's not one to one. So, you know know we implied on the show that it would be one-to-one when it didn't in fact exist at all at the time but um no they came out with a five to three

ratio which means two you have to transfer two thousand capital one miles to get 1200 jet blue points and that just stinks don't do it why add what why even add it if they're going to give us such a terrible transfer ratio you know if they couldn't negotiate a better deal just don't do the deal then this doesn't make any sense to me yeah you know i say that i guess probably they have a lot of card holders that don't pay attention to awards in general and may not know that this is a terrible deal so i guess maybe they thought that their target market i mean i guess capital one has the data maybe they're looking at it and seeing oh a lot of our cardholders are buying jet blue flights maybe we could you know offer them as a transfer partner and then i guess

the bean counters counted them up and said yeah but we got to do it at this really confusing ratio that nobody's going to really understand and everyone's like yeah sure but we got to do it at this really confusing ratio that nobody's going to really understand. And everyone's like, yeah, sure. Why not? Go ahead. Do that. So, yeah. So, yeah. So if I'm remembering right, Amex also does a non one-to-one transfer ratio. 250 to 200, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And then every now and then they offer a transfer bonus, which makes it a one-to-one transfer. But in this case, the transfer ratio is so bad that I think even with a transfer bonus, it might not become one-to-one.

No. Even with a 50% transfer bonus, it wouldn't be one-to-one, right? So it'd still be like a weird number that wouldn't be one-to-one. Right. So to be crystal clear here, if you want to transfer points to JetBlue

as things currently stand, what you want are either Chase or Citibank points. Both of those transfer one-to-one. And Amex and Capital One are off in their own weird transfer ratio land with JetBlue. Right. All right. That wraps that up.

Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. For this week's Mattress Running the Numbers, speaking of transferring your points from other programs like Chase and Amex, we're going to talk about a couple of hotel transfer bonuses and ask you yay or nay, Greg. So Chase Ultimate Rewards is out with a 50% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy. So yay or nay? Is that a good transfer bonus? Good deal? Should we do it? Should we not do it? What do you think? Generally, nay. When we've looked at the value of Marriott points, we usually see them being worth around 0.7 cents each or maybe 0.8 cents each, somewhere in that range. Yeah, you can cherry you know, cherry pick awards and get, you know, one cent or more value from

your Marriott points, but it's not a lock that you'll get that good of a value. But let's say you're pretty sure you could get one cent per point value. That means transferring from Chase to Marriott, you're looking at hoping to get basically one and a half cent per point value with your chase points. When if you had a Sapphire reserve card, you could just book travel through the travel portal and get one and a half cents that way. Yeah, but then you wouldn't get your elite benefits. You wouldn't get elite credit. Wouldn't you rather book an award, Greg? I mean, if it was equal like that, sure. But, you know, so let's put it another way. Like, I would only transfer if you had a

high value use in mind that you knew, like, you needed the Marriott points for this specific use. But I wouldn't do it prospectively, just like, hey, my points are gonna be more valuable as one and a half Marriott points instead of one Chase Point. No way, because there's so many better things you could do with your Chase Points. No, totally true. Totally true. I think Marriott points, if I remember correctly, are on sale, at least as we record this, for less than nine tenths of a cent per point. So, you know, you could buy one and a half of those for one point three cents or so per, you know, for one and a half points.

So yeah, it doesn't make sense. Totally agree with Greg. Probably not, unless you got a really high value near-term use in mind. All right, what about the next one though? We've got Amex membership rewards points is out with a 25% transfer bonus to Hilton. 25%, that's less.

So this must be less interesting. What do you think? Yay or nay, Greg? Yeah, I mean, it's a little confusing because the normal transfer ratio from amex to hilton is one to two so you know it's not like you're only getting one point two five hilton points per amex point um so you're getting more than two i don't know off the top two and a half you're getting more than two. I don't know off the top of my head. Two and a half. You're getting two and a half Hilton points for every Amex membership rewards point, which in the right circumstances could be a good deal because we've talked many times recently about how you can get great value for your Hilton points with some SLH properties, for example. But Amex does these transfer bonuses quite often to Hilton,

and we usually see 30% to 40% as a transfer bonus. So this one at only 25% I'm not excited about. Yeah, you know, I tend to agree with you. And our reasonable redemption value for Hilton points is somewhere around half a cent per point, might even be a little bit less. You can very frequently buy Hilton points for half a cent per point or less. And yeah, there's a limit as to how many you can buy, but you can pull your points with

up to 10 people. So, you know, you could buy points for nine if your family members are friends and then kind of pull them all together. So you can buy a couple million Hilton points a year anyway, that way. So it doesn't seem super exciting through that lens. At the same time, like Greg said, if you're looking at an SLH place that's like 120,000 points per night, let's say a really high end SLH property, then you're looking at about 48,000, I think, Amex membership rewards points that you have to transfer for every night. Now, that's not cheap. That's certainly not cheap at all. But you know, as compared to top tier

Hyatt's, for instance, that's not too far off. So it might be of interest if you've got a ton of Amex membership rewards points, though, keep in mind, if you can buy the points for half a cent each two and a half points is 1.25 cents so you're essentially getting 1.25 cents per amex point with this so not great value out of your amex points but not horrible and if you're staying at a really nice you know slh property and you've got a ton of amex points maybe it's worth it and of course if you do fifth night free then things get a little bit better so it might look even more appealing to you but anyway anyway, yeah, that's that. So yeah, it's like,

it's a yay. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a nay. Good summary. Yeah. Yeah. As Nick said,

I mean, under the right circumstances, it's, it's worth doing. But again, just like with the chase thing, I wouldn't do it unless you knew you were planning a specific redemption yep there you go all right bonvoyed this week uber decided to bonvoy everybody

because they launched a really poor feature right yeah well a poor feature i don't know not why it's just so so so the the new the new feature is designed to make uh booking ubers easier for you worldwide because it's going to show you by default the cost for your uber ride in u.s dollars if you're u.s based um and uh that would be nice and helpful but what they're doing is is when you enable that feature or keep it enabled because it's enabled by default, they are going to charge you a 1.5% interchange fee to basically convert whatever the local currency is to U.S US dollars or vice versa. And so, yeah, it's like a 1.5% tax on your Uber rides. Yeah, yeah. And so to be crystal clear on this, up until now or soon, I can't remember exactly the date this is switching over,

the way it has been is that you had to opt in to this, what they call preferred currency. So you would have to go into your settings somewhere and say, I want to see everything in US dollars and agree to pay the one and a half percent fee. But the change here is that they're going to put that on by default for everybody. So you've now got to go into your settings and say, no, I don't want it to show prices in my local currency. And, you know, whether or not you want it to or not, I guess it's up to you. But you do have to be aware that they're going to charge you one and a half percent just to show you the price in U.S. dollars. And presumably they're going to charge you in U.S. dollars. But keep in mind, if you're

thinking, oh, well, I've got a card that has foreign transaction fees. So if they charge me in U.S. dollars, then at least I won't have to pay those. That's not necessarily true. Some banks still will charge you a foreign transaction fee if the transaction itself is based outside of the United States. So you may still, even though you're paying in US dollars, pay a foreign transaction fee if you're using a credit card that has one of those. Hopefully you're not. If you're traveling abroad, hopefully you already have a card that has no foreign transaction fees, if you're listening to this show anyway. But yeah, it just adds bad on bad. So I'm certainly going to turn this off. I have no problem looking at prices and local currency. I'm looking at everything else in local

currency. So probably I have the math down or at least have some way of figuring it in my head, because I'm going to go to the store and see prices and local currencies so I can pull up the Uber app and look at prices and local currencies too. Right, right. Now, one thing that would make this worth doing, in my opinion, would be if having this on allowed you to use your Uber credits. So as things have stood for since the beginning of Uber time, as far as I know, you haven't been able to use your Uber credits abroad. And that's been frustrating. Do you happen to know, Nick, whether this changes that? I do because it was in our post. So yes, you cannot use Uber Cash for these preferred currency transactions. They specifically called

that out in the terms of this. So yeah, your Uber Cash is not going to work for this. One small note on that that Greg mentioned, you can't use your Uber Cash overseas for the most part, but there's a couple of countries that use the US dollar as their official currency. And my understanding has been that the Uber Cash has always worked in those places like Panama, for instance, Ecuador, they don't have a local currency, they use the US dollar for their currency. And in those places, I think your Uber Cash actually does still work because the charges are actually in US dollars. But in this case, since they're doing the currency conversion, apparently, they say anyway, that they've they've called out that that's not going to work.

And I assume people have tested it because it has been an option for a while. So all right, that wraps this up, I think, for Bonvoy. So Uber is Bonvoy. Just make sure you go into your app and turn that off if you don't want to have to pay that extra one and a half percent on all of your foreign Uber charges. All right. That makes it time for this week's main event. Main event time. How we use our Amex Platinum Coupon Book credits.

Amex Platinum cards. They come with these mighty $695 annual fees, but they also come loaded with perks. And a lot of those perks, some of those perks are not coupons. They're things like they let you into lounges and give you elite status in various programs. But a lot of the perks are,

we think of them as coupons. They're different ways of getting cash back if you use the cards in ways that are prescribed by those coupons, so to speak. So yeah, it makes it easier to kind of concretely value them when you look at these coupons versus like lounge access. Okay, that's nice. And maybe you can figure out what you'd pay for it. Maybe you don't know how many times you're going to go blah, blah, blah. These are dollar figures. You you could say, okay, how can I use this dollar figure or how much dollar figure do I assign to this coupon? Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to go through the different coupons and talk about how

Nick and I use them. It's worth pointing out that we recently republished or Tim recently republished a post on our blog called Maximizing American Express Credit Card Rebates and Credits. And you can find there like a number of suggestions beyond what Nick and I are going to talk about because we're going to specifically talk about how we personally use these credits. Very good. All right. So let's start out with the credits that are shared by both the consumer and the business platinum. So there's obviously there's two major types of platinum cards. And to be clear for anybody who's new to this, Delta Platinum is a totally different thing. That's not an Amex Platinum card. It's confusing because they name it that way. But if you've got an Amex Delta platinum, this conversation is not about your card. We're talking about the Amex platinum card and the Amex business platinum card, which are the cards with like the Centurion in the middle, the only co-branded version, so to speak, that

are more versions that are out there, I guess, are the Charles Schwab one and the Morgan Stanley one. So those are the only other Amex Platinum cards that fit this. So let's talk about the benefits around both. So the first one that's, I think, the easiest to talk about probably is the $200 airline incidental fee credit. How do you use that, Greg? Yeah. So to be clear about that credit, it's intended to be used for things like if you pay for check bag fees or if you pay to get into the airline lounge. And with your card, you have to pick your favorite airline. And it's only fees that go to that airline that will get credited back. And so the way it's intended to work is you pick, let's say, Delta in my case, and if you pay for check

bags with your card, those fees will be automatically reimbursed up to a maximum of $200 per calendar year. But we found over time that a lot of things credit that aren't necessarily intended. And so sometimes we use these for unintended things. And so what I personally use my airline incidental fee credits for is to get Delta airfare credit. And the way I do that is I start with either a Delta gift card or more often I have airline credit from a previously canceled flight.

And what I do is I try to find another flight that costs $200 more than however much credit I have. And I book that flight and, you know, pay with the platinum card. I wait more than a day so that it's not refundable back to my credit card. And then I cancel. And by default, then what happens is the money goes as Delta flight credit as opposed to going back to my credit card. And that way I get reimbursed and then I have Delta flight credit I could use for a future flight.

One downside to this approach is that it's stuck with the person who books the flight. So I like tend to alternate between booking for myself and for my wife so that we both have flight credit to use, but I can't, like, I can't use my wife's flight credit. Now, is there an expiration date on that flight credit? Yeah. It'll be about a year after you do this, this little trick,

but we fly Delta enough that that's never been an issue for us. Okay. So for me, I have two different things, two and a half different things that I do, because we've got a number of platinum and business platinum cards in my household. So there are a couple of different tricks, so to speak, that I use. So the first one is very similar or similar ish to what Greg is talking about. So I'll use Southwest Airlines as my chosen airline, and we'll book a flight that's under about 105 bucks. So that that figure, I don't know if anybody has nailed down exactly where the cutoff is. But it's not $200. Like Greg is saying with Delta with Southwest, it needs to be a flight of around $100 or less. I did one for $104.10 recently that

worked. So it's a little bit more, but I don't know exactly where the cutoff is. At any rate, I specifically book a want to get away plus fare. So I'll just search all sorts of routes. I often find flights for around 100 bucks on the West Coast, like San Francisco to San Diego, or Los Angeles to Las Vegas, vice versa, routes like that that are around 100 bucks. And I want the want to get away plus fare, not the want to get away fare. So I'm looking for a want to get away plus that's around 100 bucks. And so I'll book that. And then I could either wait the 24 hours, like Greg said, to cancel.

Or actually, when you cancel the Southwest, it'll give you the choice to get a refund to your original form of payment or to hold it for a future flight credit. And so sometime after I've booked that flight, doesn't really matter whether it's right away or days later, weeks or months, I'll cancel that. And then I'll booked that flight, doesn't really matter whether it's right away or days later, weeks or months, I'll cancel that. And then I'll have a flight credit. And with Southwest flight credit never expires. So unlike the Delta credit that Greg is mentioning, it theoretically will hang around forever. And the reason that we book want to get away plus and not want to get away is because want to get away plus flight credits are transferable. So you can transfer them to anybody. So then anyone can theoretically use it. Now, it's a little bit

more difficult than it sounds because you can only use up to a certain number, I think three flight credits per person per booking. So if you actually want to put those together in amounts that are perfect for the situation, you need them, just trust me that it takes far longer than you would expect. If you've got multiple passengers on an itinerary, it's kind of a pain to put those together later on, unless you just happen to be booking $100 flights for everybody. But that makes it again, transferable. So I can use it for anybody, anytime, whenever we want, without expiring. So that's one way we use most of our flight credits is that way, because we fly Southwest a lot. So that's our usually our preferred airline. So that's preferred method, a secondary method that I have used,

but don't use as much anymore, because the want to get away plus makes it so easy to combine credits and transfer them. But another technique that I've used before is booking an award with Southwest and then paying the taxes on my platinum card, because that triggers the credits, even though it isn't one of the official uses. And specifically, flight taxes departing foreign destinations like Mexico tend to be close to $50 a person. And so if you book a few award tickets, then you'll use up your $200 and those get reimbursed. And then if you later on, at some point down the road, cancel the flight, then you can choose to get a refund of the taxes. And I haven't yet had Amex claw one of those back.

So that's another potential use. So that's that. And then the other thing I've been doing is United Travel Bank. So this is I only use this on a couple of cards or one or two each year maybe. But that's travel bank is sort of like gift card money you can load to United that has a five year expiration. And so you can buy that in $50 increments or $100 increments. And so I'll load my travel bank with one of the platinum cards. And that triggers the credits automatically if United is your chosen airline. So that's another way I've done it. So I've banked up a couple thousand dollars over time in United credit, though,

like I said, that expires after five years, which sounds like a long time. But I have some of these that are starting to come up relatively soon to expire. So I do have to start using my United travel bank credit. Travel bank credit is a little restrictive in some ways, because you can use it for United flights, but you can't use it for partner operated flights. So there are some pluses and minuses of travel bank credit, I think it gives you a slightly better boarding position. So that's kind of nice. But anyway, another final safety tip I want to mention on this is when you select your airline, because with Amex, you have to select it in advance. We didn't mention that at the beginning, I guess, but you have to select your airline before you use the credit. So you have to pick one airline to do this with. You

can change it later via chat. They say you can only change it once in January, but based on real life experience, I've been able to change it plenty of times before during the middle of the year. But once you select that airline, wait until at least the next calendar day to try to use the credit. I've been burned a couple of times. I know other people who have, who've made the charge too soon after changing the airline and the system just doesn't recognize it yet and it doesn't end up being eligible. So I always recommend change your airline and wait until at least the next calendar day before you make a charge. There you go. A couple more things about Delta before we move on. Delta also, it works to charge the award fees to the credit card and it'll give you the fee reimbursement. So that's a really nice thing.

I used to do it mostly that way. Amex might claw back the rebate if they see that you keep booking these things and then canceling them. Because if Amex doesn't claw it back, basically you could get back the fee both from Amex and from Delta when you cancel your flight, your award flight. The other thing I didn't mention is what I've been doing with these paid flights is because I also have multiple platinum cards in my household, like Nick does, is I can immediately like, so let's say I bought a $200, a $250 flight using a $50 in credit and $200 more on one platinum card, I could then immediately, I don't have to wait a day, I can immediately go in and change the flight to a more expensive flight to one that costs like $200 more than that. So a $450 flight, use a different platinum card to pay for that. So they'll charge me the $200 differential, and that looks like a fee, and that gets reimbursed as well.

And so I've done that multiple times, one right after the other, had no problem with that. It's just the last one. When you go to cancel the last one, that's when I wait. Delta used to pop up a thing letting you choose whether you want it back to the card or not. But now, or at least lately, they've defaulted to putting it back to the card unless you wait a full day before canceling. There you go. So short version of the long story we just told is that we don't really have trouble using the $200 airline fee credit. That one's pretty easy to use. And we have a whole resource on how to do that, that we publish periodically. And you'll find it on our resources up at the top of the page on the Freak & Miler homepage.

All right, so that's the first benefit. Next up, $199 clear plus fee credit per calendar year. This exists on, again, both the business and the consumer Platinum cards. How do you use that? I actually haven't used it at all yet. The Delta Diamond status, which both my wife and I have, comes with free Clear. And so I haven't. What I should do probably is make sure to buy Clear for everybody I know with my

different Platinum cards, but I haven't done that. How about you? Yeah. So I didn't sign up for Clear for a long time. And then we were traveling Thanksgiving weekend a couple of years ago. And it seemed like that would probably be a time when I would want to have clear departing from a busy airport. And so we finally signed up for it. So I, we have a number of platinum cards, like I said, so I signed up for myself and my wife on different cards. And then we did the same for like my sister-in-law and her husband and my wife's parents. And so we've added them to different cards. So we are using these. None of us fly enough that we would ever consider paying for clear, I don't think. So we're not, I don't really assign a dollar value to this. I use it now, but I don't really

assign a dollar value because the truth is I've gone my whole life without clear and I'd be fine without it. Probably. I know that's probably heresy in the frequent flyer world, but, uh, but anyway, that's where I am with that. So we're using it, but I don't really care whether we are or not. We just happen to be using it because it worked out that way and I haven't turned it off. Sure. Right. Okay. Um, next one that's shared between both consumer and business platinum cards is a global entry or TSA pre-check fee reimbursement. It's available every what, four and a half years or something like that. Now, lots of cards have this, not just platinum cards, but for me, the way I use this is whenever mine or my wife's or my son's TSA or global entry renewal comes due, I'll go through the renewal steps and pay with one of the number of cards I have that have this credit. And I mark it down in a spreadsheet which one I use because it can be really easy. Since this only happens so rarely, it can be really easy to forget which one you've already done.

And you don't want to get caught in using it again in less than the four or five years when they allow it to happen again. Yep, very good. That's one that I'm not using at all. I've never done global entry, mostly because I live so far away from an airport where you can actually do an interview and setting an appointment far in advance is a pain. And everybody says, oh, you could do it on entry when you come back, but the kids are tired and whatever. I don't want to waste time sitting in an interview on the way back. So I haven't done it. I usually use mobile passport. And there's usually almost no line for mobile passport coming back into the US. So that it's a little bit slower than global entry, but so small, usually a difference that I haven't, I haven't felt

compelled to sign up for it yet. Now, I was at Atlantic City Airport recently, and they were doing like a mobile event there where they were doing the interviews and stuff. And I didn't realize they had started doing that in different places. And if I had known that in advance, then maybe I would have considered it because I could have scheduled it there. But I didn't know that. And I don't know where the next one's going to be. So I'm not using that and probably won't be anytime soon. Funny thing for me is like, I get the global entry part because that it's sort of rare that that saves a lot over over the mobile passport but going without tsa pre-check i can't even imagine that i've been using pre-check for so many years

and i'll walk a half mile out of my way to use pre-check instead of regularly well you know i got to the airport to just a couple days ago in albany and the pre-check line was longer than the regular line. So, and I've seen that in other, I mean, of course, Albany is a smaller airport. And so usually there's not much of a line at all. And that's really why I don't feel compelled because on half my flights, it doesn't matter because there's not usually a line.

It's the way back where it might run into an issue, I guess. But so far I've survived all these years without it. So one of these days, maybe I'll get with it and not be so lazy and sign up for PreCheck. But it hasn't happened yet. All right. All right. Let's move on to the coupons that are specific to the consumer Platinum cards. First up is a $200 prepaid hotel credit. Tell us what that is and how you use it. So this is a credit that you can use through Amex travel to book either fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection. So fine hotels and resorts is the Amex kind of premium hotel booking platform where you book through them and you get guaranteed late checkout,

4pm late checkout, you get breakfast for two each day, and some other benefits, chance at an upgrade, chance at early check in, and some sort of a credit. Usually it's about $100, like $100 resort credit or spa credit, or sometimes it'll be something else that's of equal value, maybe an airport pickup or a dinner or something. Those are pretty rare. But occasionally, those are the benefit that's included. So you have to be booking prepaid, you have to be booking again through fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection. I'll get back to the hotel collection in a second. Fine hotels and resorts bookings can be for any amount of time. So it could be for a single night,

there are some hotels that cost about $200 a year, or $200 a night rather, not a year. And so I will use max FHR, which is a tool that we've written about to find cheap Amex FHR properties, because there are some around the world that you can book for around 200 bucks. And so I usually just look for one of those and see what lines up with my travel plans. The hotel collection is the other option for this hotel collection, you don't get breakfast, you do get $100 credit, but it has to be for a booking for a minimum of two nights with a hotel collection, whereas fine hotels and resorts can be for one night. Now, of course, the hotel collection includes a lot of properties that are more reasonably priced. So maybe there's a better shot that you'll find a two night stay that comes out to around 200 ish,

usually a little more than that with the hotel collection. But it gives you some more options anyway. So like I said, I use Max FHR to find cheap FHR properties. And I usually look for ones that are going to roughly line up with where I'm traveling. I have been able to use this last year, I use them in Las Vegas, because Crockford's was on there, which is a Hilton property and LXR property at Resorts World. And I happen to like Resorts World, it's across from Wynn. So we stayed there, we ended up going to Las Vegas a couple times last year. And so we used that pretty easily last year.

This year, I have a hotel booked in New Orleans. I can't even remember which one it was or what it was called. But it was around $200. I found it through Max FHR. And I booked a number of different dates when I thought, maybe we can make a trip to New Orleans work. I don't know whether or not it's actually going to happen. So it was a bit of a gamble. I used some credits right before the end of the year last year on a couple of newer platinum cards that I had opened after our trips to Las Vegas. So kind of have my fingers crossed that those are going to work out.

And I don't yet have a use for this year's MXFHR credits. So I'm hoping that Greg is going to give me a great tip because I have a platinum card I'd like to cancel soon, but I need to use this credit. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, I don't have a great tip on that. Yeah, I mean, I basically use this credit as intended, meaning like so when I have travel plans, I'll look at whether there are any fine hotels and resorts or hotel collection hotels where I'm going to see whether it doesn't make sense to book this way instead of like with hotel points or whatever other options I might have. And so last year, my wife and I went to Taiwan and we used a bunch of fine hotel and resort credits at the Regent Hotel, which is an IHG property in Taipei, which was very nice. And I think the cash rate was around $250.

So I had to book a separate stay for every night in order to use the credits on multiple cards. So that's kind of annoying. Another thing that's annoying is that, but I understood this to be the case up front, you don't get all of the benefits repeated by booking back-to-back stays like that. So, um, you know, the, the, that hotel had, I'm going to make up a number cause I don't remember exactly something like $250 of, of spa credit that came with the booking. And, you know, you get that once per stay and you would think since I booked a number of, you know, each night as a separate stay, I should get that every night, but no, they know not to do that. However, you do get daily breakfast for two and room upgrade and things like that are included

with the fine hotel and resort benefits, 4 p.m. late checkout, early check-in, things like that can be really valuable. Yeah, absolutely. Good. So both of us essentially using that as intended. And so far, most years, I haven't had too much trouble. Like I said, we have a few platinum cards in the household. So that's why if I only had one of them to use, I think I would find that pretty easy to line up with travel plans at some point. Now, if you've only looked at FHR properties in like, you know, New York and Paris, you might say, Oh, wow, these are exorbitantly expensive. They're places I wouldn't normally pay to stay at. How are you guys finding places that are reasonably priced? You just have to look

around. Some markets happen to be less expensive than others. It just depends on where you're traveling. If you're going to New York or Paris, the FHR properties are going to be very expensive. So you just have to look around other places where you might be traveling and maybe it won't line up with your travel plans. So that's going to vary person to person. All right, next up, MX Platinum card benefit on the consumer side, up to $20 per month for digital entertainment credit. You can use it for Disney Plus, Disney Bundle, ESPN Plus, Hulu, New York Times, Peacock, and or the Wall Street Journal. Are you using this and what are you using it on? Yeah.

So I use with one of my platinum cards, I use it for the Disney bundle of it's a duo bundle where you get Disney plus Hulu for around 21 bucks. So it rebates most of that. I also, with another card, use it for a New York Times subscription. Other card, I get the Peacock thing, and I can't remember whether I enabled the Wall Street Journal or not on another card. But the one I value the most is the Disney plus Hulu one because I think I would subscribe to both of those anyway. And New York Times I value, but it doesn't cost the full $20 per month to get that subscription.

So I don't value it at $20. Yeah, so similar-ish to Greg, I use the Disney Duo bundle for Disney and Hulu. Kids watch Disney Plus. So that's something I was already subscribing to Greg. I use the Disney Duo bundle for Disney and Hulu. Kids watch Disney Plus. So that's something I was already subscribing to anyway. And my wife had been bugging me to get Hulu. So it was easy to do that with one of our platinum cards. I have a platinum card that I somehow accidentally signed up for Peacock twice with two different accounts. I don't even know the login information. It just keeps getting charged and reimbursed. So I haven't actually taken the time to figure it out. I'm not using

Peacock at all, but they're getting 12 bucks a month out of me or whatever, or out of Amex rather because he gets reimbursed. So that's not one that I really value at all, but I am getting it. And I haven't signed up for the New York Times. I'm going to do this because my wife also would like to have this. I like reading stuff like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but those news sources, I want a physical copy. I can't stand reading a New York Times length article on my phone. I want that in print form. And unfortunately, I don't think there is a print subscription with the New York Times that really fits well with the $20 credit, and there's a digital entertainment credit. I think there was a Wall Street Journal delivery plan where you could get just the Sunday Wall Street Journal or weekend edition Wall Street Journal. Rather, there's not a Sunday version. But I think there was something like that, and I thought about it, and I haven't done it. So that's what I would look for, though,

if I could do something like that, because I would rather have those in physical form than for some reason. I'm picturing you like holding up your your your big newspaper with your wearing your fedora, lounging on a big on a big like, you know, lazy boy chair and maybe smoking a pipe. I know you don't smoke, but I don't. But it would fit. It would fit, though. It's the image. You just hold it. Right, just light it and hold it. Use your fingers that aren't holding pipe

to change the pages as you're reading. I want to page through and find something interesting. Yeah, that's more appealing to me. So I'm not particularly excited about that for digital entertainment. I know a lot of people read stuff like that on their phones, though. So I'm not particularly excited about that for digital entertainment. I know a lot of people read stuff like that on their phones, though. I'm the oddball there. I'm definitely the old-fashioned pipe holder in that case.

But anyway, that's... I kind of like just supporting the newspaper industry, even if it's just in this little tiny way, and having Amex pay for supporting it. Right, right, right, right, right. Fair, fair. All right. That's the fire I needed to be lit to go and subscribe to some stuff.

I'll take care of that. All right. So that's the $20 a month digital entertainment credit. Next up is the $15 monthly Uber or Uber Eats credit. $15 a month during most of the year, $35 in December. How do you use this? Yeah. So all of our platinum cards, even those that are in my wife's name,

I load them all into my Uber account because I tend to use Uber rides more often and I tend to be the one who, if we're gonna order food from Uber Eats, I'm the one doing that. So it combines all those credits in one place and most months we use the credit no problem from Uber Eats. I'm the one doing that. So it combines all those credits in one place. And most months we use the credit no problem just through one or two Uber Eats orders. But some

months I'll have an Uber ride that I need to take and use some or all of the credits that way. So it just depends. So basically this is a way of saying I use these as intended. I have enough Uber and Uber Eats charges that it's no problem to use them each month. Similar-ish. So we put all the platinum cards and gold cards that have an Uber credit also into a single Uber Eats account. Greg mentioned that he's usually the one ordering. And that's relatively similar in my household. But the tip that I'll add to that is that you can be logged into the same Uber account

on more than one phone. So my wife and I are logged in to the same Uber account on our phones. So whether we're together or separate, it's getting ordered through the same Uber account no matter what, which means that when I'm traveling by myself for work, and I'm getting an Uber or I'm ordering Uber Eats, she sees it because it pops up on her phone too. So there's no sneaking a, you know, an extra chocolate cake at night without without her knowing or whatever the case may be. But but it's really convenient because then we don't have to think about, okay, we got to order on your phone or my phone, or you've got to place the order, either one of us can order and it'll trigger the credits the same. So we share that. And we also have another family member.

My wife's mother doesn't travel without us. If she's traveling, it's with us. So we have her card in the account too. Safety tip though, somehow I accidentally got her set as the default card at some point in my Uber account. So she started getting these random Uber charges that she thought were fraud. And then I realized, oh, no, no, no, I just somehow default to that

card by mistake. So make sure you're careful about which is your default card if you've got multiple people's cards in your account. When you're using Uber credits to pay for a ride, there's been some posts from other blogs and through Reddit about Uber supposedly charging more, uh, for rides when you're using your Uber credit rather than a credit card. I, I have strong doubts about the veracity of that, but, um, let's say it's true and you believe it to be true. You can set up your Uber account to default to using a credit card. And then after your ride,

switch the payment source to your credit and use a credit that way. That way it's impossible for them to charge more because you've already taken the ride and paid the amount. Great tip. Great tip there. there okay next up walmart plus they will reimburse amex will reimburse you for a walmart plus membership

on the consumer platinum card and so this is only if you sign up for the monthly membership which is 13.99 a month at the time we record this anyway so if you pay for that with your consumer platinum card it gets automatically reimbursed do you use that i do sort of i mean in that i'm enrolled in walmart plus and it gets reimbursed every month i hardly ever use the benefits i know it has some benefits that i should be using but i hardly ever happen to to use it how about you yeah i do use it i wish that i could get player two on board with Scan & Go at Walmart because it's so much faster. I like using the Scan & Go in the times when I'm at Walmart.

But more importantly, we have Paramount Plus through this because you get Paramount Plus with your Walmart Plus subscription. And that is something that we use from time to time. And I just recently learned from Steven Pepper's post about hidden Amex Platinum benefits that apparently I could be getting 10% off at ExxonMobil gas stations with my Walmart Plus membership. There's something you got to scan in the app, which was news to me. So I'm going to start saving on gas because I do end up filling

up at ExxonMobil stations pretty often. So that was a good little tip for me. And you know, occasionally I do use the free shipping from walmart.com. I've been able to sometimes get discounted gift cards through Pepper and then stack that with free shipping from Walmart.com. And that's worked out okay. Yeah. And I forgot, I do use Paramount+. So it gives you the free version of the one with commercials, but I pay a little bit extra to get the commercial free version. And I think it automatically gets charged if I'm remembering right to that same Platinum card, but that part isn't reimbursed.

Yeah, I can't remember whether we got the ones with commercials or not. I don't actually watch it, but other people in the family do. So that's that. All right. You're too busy with your newspaper in front of you. Right, right, right.

I mean, I just want to look at the physical paper. I don't care what's on TV. I've got a newspaper in front of my face. I want the physical paper. Okay. Nobody else what's on TV. I've got a newspaper in front of my face. I want the physical paper. Okay. Nobody else does. Just me. Nobody else.

Clearly. Okay. Anyway, last but not least here on the consumer side, up to $100 in credits annually for purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue split up into $50 credits semi-annually. So January through June, you get statement credit for up to $50 in purchases. And then July to December. Do you use this, and how do you? I do.

It's annoying because options for getting free shipping have dwindled away to nothing. So you're often looking at, like, what, $12 or something like that to get something shipped to you. So what I've tended to do is look for things that are around 40 bucks, 50 bucks, and just accept the fact that they're not gonna be free, but I'm getting them very, very highly discounted. And I'll do things like we want a new set of hand towels. So I find these hand towels that are $40 and I'm buying them one at a time through Saks. So it's kind of ridiculous, but that's what I do. Yep. Very similar. So I just find stuff. So I'll sort stuff. You can go into different sections of the Saks website and then sort it by price, low to high. And so, yeah, I mean, Saks carries

a lot of really expensive items that I'm not particularly interested in myself. But there's plenty of items on clearance that are $10, $20, $30, $40. So I rarely have a hard time finding something that we can use. Now, it's not necessarily something exciting or that I want to purchase. So I don't place a ton of value on this credit. But I can usually find something. Just recently, I bought some kind of classy looking but plastic goblets that the kids can use for drinking glasses that aren't going to get broken

that still look you know kind of nice yeah and so those were 20 bucks for two of them so i did you know two orders of that or i guess two maybe i can't even remember maybe they're 20 a piece and so i ordered two of them together for 40 plus shipping was close to 50 and i placed two separate orders because i had two different platinum cards to use so we'd end up with four of them so you know stuff like that very similar to what greg's saying i i did the same thing recently i found these beautiful wine goblets that i think they were four for 40 or something like that so it was a good price actually to begin with. And so I got two sets of those by making two separate orders and replaced. We had all these mismatched wine glasses from different things over the years.

And so we replaced all those with some beautiful new ones. Yeah, yeah. We've bought wine glasses a couple of times now from Saks also. So the other thing that we've done occasionally, when our travel plans happen to put us close to a Saks Fifth Avenue, then we'll go in and buy gift cards in store because buying a gift card in store works. And so we try to do that. Now I say try to do that. And I'm emphasizing the word try because we've been in New York City twice in the last month, very close to the flagship Saks Fifth Avenue and both times forgotten to go in and get our gift cards that we intended to. I brought all the platinum cards with me. We just forgot about it on both trips. So, yeah. So I'm not great about that, but we try and we have a gift card that, you know, has been sitting around for a long time

unused because of that, but there you have it. Okay. So that's consumer side, but the business side has slightly different benefits. Yeah. So, uh, one, uh, benefit that we've been enjoying, in quotes, for years is the Dell credit, which currently is recording this. It's $200 every six months of Dell credit. And I phrased it that way because they keep incrementally moving up the end date for this, for this perk. So we don't know how much longer we're going to have this perk. And, and if they replace this with something we like better, I think we'll all be very happy because it gets tiring.

Like that's a lot of credit and, and finding things that we still want after all these years at Dell, uh, it gets harder and harder, especially Dell stopped selling a lot of third party, uh, electronics and things that they used to sell. Um, so in the past I've gotten things like ring video doorbells and stuff that, um, I don't think they sell anymore. So, um, so yeah, uh, so, so I'm down to things like, um, buying, I don't know, different cables, connectors, just kind of miscellaneous stuff that I might kind of just barely need.

But I'm just not excited about this anymore at all. The main value I get out of it these days probably has more to do with waiting till a shopping portal has a really big uh reward and then you buy something for 200 and you're getting a big uh rebate through the shopping portal that has real value yeah yeah yeah same very similar yeah so i've i have also gotten down to buying some of the miscellaneous stuff i just recently bought a USB-C extension cable, which seems like a ridiculous thing to buy, except we take quite a few cruises and cruise lines always have like one power outlet and it's all the way across the room. It's such a pain.

So actually I thought that would be really useful for plugging in, uh, you know, an extra long cable. So, right, right. So I bought one of those. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying my favorite purchase recently was actually, I had three, uh three business platinum cards, which you can use up to three cards at once to pay. So you could buy a $600 item and get that fully reimbursed because it's $200 per card. And I bought a little projector that works really well. It was on sale for $600. And so I don't use it a lot,

but when I do, it's just really fun. You can put it on your Netflix or whatever and project it anywhere, or you can share your screen remotely. You don't have to actually connect up with wires from your computer. So my family has been using it, just miscellaneous stuff. We play, uh, New York times crosswords. We, we, uh, you know, share the screen from our phone and we'll play the crosswords together. For example, my kids will play games sometimes. So I'll set it up. So we have one that I didn't get, didn't get through Dell, but, but I would have gotten one through Dell by now if I, if I didn't already have one. But we'll use it sometimes for video games to put those on a big wall. So I play video games on a big wall.

Or when they were a little younger, before video games, I would sometimes project something on the ceiling just to get them to lay down and calm down for a little bit. That makes sense. So lay down and watch something on the ceiling for a bit. And that works pretty well, actually. So yeah, that'd be pretty cool. The other thing, I just mentioned games. And my kids have a Nintendo Switch that we got in part so that they'd have something to do on long airplane rides.

And so they sell a bunch of Nintendo Switch games at Dell. So we bought a whole bunch of games that we will eventually kind of give as gifts, but not all at once. So like Valentine's Day just passed and my kids got a game for Valentine's Day. And we've got a bunch of other games in the closet that'll come out for various things like that, because we stocked up on a bunch of games using Dell business platinum credits. So lucky them, they'll have a bunch of games in the end, but it'd be, you know, at least some stuff that they'll eventually hopefully use and enjoy. And then we bought enough of them that my wife's listing some of that stuff on on facebook marketplace and figures that she'll

meet up with somebody if it's convenient and sell a couple of those games too so we get something back from those sounds good all right next up 200 in hilton credits you get up to 200 in hilton credits per year but this is kind of split out into 50 per quarter so your dribs and drabs here so are you using your Hilton credits and how? Yeah. Here's the thing. I have enough business platinum cards and Hilton cards that have similar credits that I don't want to carry them around every time I go visit a Hilton where you're supposed to use them. So the thing I've been doing is pre-booking stays where they take a deposit up front. And so I will book a different one-night stay with each of my cards that has this benefit for far in the future.

And I'll make sure it's fully refundable. That way, if I don't end up taking the stay, I just cancel. And I'll still have my credit back and get the money back from the hotel when I cancel. Yeah, yeah. I've used mine until the end of December buying gift cards at buyhiltongiftcards.com. But they have stopped stocking those for now. And who knows if and when they'll bring them back and if they do, whether or not they will actually work for this credit again. So right now, I'm kind of in that situation

that Greg mentioned where it's like, man, I don't want to have to carry all these around to a Hilton property. I did see a reader report somewhere and I don't even remember where and this is probably not going to work most of the time, but I'm going to try it out, is that they went to a Starbucks inside a Hilton property

and bought a Starbucks gift card. And again, this is going to try it out, is that they went to a Starbucks inside a Hilton property and bought a Starbucks gift card. And again, this is going to totally vary by property, I'm sure, but it did get credited. And I imagine that there are some of those that the charge is going to look like it's a Hilton charge, even though it's at the Starbucks in the Hilton Hotel. So I'm going to try that out because I would use the starbucks gift cards over time i know and if i can't get hilton gift cards easily then that's a way that i could easily use up a bunch of these credits in in one stop so so i'm going to try that out because i don't see myself carrying them all around and i could do greg's technique but then i gotta book a whole bunch of different hotel stays and pay for them up front and then later on you, you know, it's kind of a pain. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So next up and final is the $120 in wireless services credits per year with the

business platinum cards, and it's doled out $10 per month. Do you use these credits? And if so, how? Absolutely. My wife has a notebook where she has all the card numbers written down. And first of the month, she goes through and makes $10 payments to our T-Mobile bill. Actually, T-Mobile, if you try to put in two identical amounts in a row, it gives you an error and says, oh, you've already scheduled a payment for 10 bucks. So it's like $10, $10.01, $10.02, $10.03 on the different business platinum cards that we have. So she goes and does that first of every month. Now, my bill generates around the third of the month, and then I make sure to pay that, excuse me, before it's due with a card that has, well, with one of my Amex cards, because they have various cell phone protection, protections of whatever you call this. I can't even think of

what you call it now the insurance for cell phones in case they get broken. So make sure to pay the bill in full after it cuts. But then yeah, she uses all the various cards to pay $10 at a time. Now T-Mobile gives you a discount for using a debit card. So we have a debit card set as the default payment method, but we make sure to pay the bill with a credit card before it charges the debit card. And that works. Yeah, that sounds good. In my case, we have AT&T. And what I do is I have one of our business platinum cards set to auto pay. And when I get the bill, I just go in and pay $10 with each of the other business platinum cards. And I know technically what's happening is that the full bill isn't being paid with one card, which could theoretically be a problem. But the one that's on autopay is still paying more than any one person's bill on our plan. So I feel pretty confident that we're fully covered with that one.

Probably work. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So does AT&T not offer some sort of like a discount for using an autopay that's not a credit card? Because I know like Verizon and T-Mobile both have that set up. Yeah, that's right a credit card? Because I know like Verizon and T-Mobile both have that set up. Yeah, that's right. They do.

We seem to be grandfathered into a plan that's through the university that, I don't know, doesn't seem to be applying that. Or it doesn't seem to be penalizing us, let me put it that way, for paying with a credit card. There you go.

Very good. Yeah. So if you do have that, though, I think setting up a debit card is your auto pay and for paying with a credit card there you go very good yeah so if you do have that though i think setting up a debit card is your auto pay and then paying with a credit card with a lot of plans anyway i don't know if that's true with all of the major wireless service providers but that can be a way around that role all right don't forget if you want more information about this stuff that we've been talking about to check out our platinum card guide because we have a complete guide to the mx platinum card yeah and also uh steven recently wrote a great post that's the indirect uh mx

platinum benefits where he listed all kinds of things you can get from uh free burgers to uh champions champions league soccer matches to uh cheaper best western stays and more um through by indirectly getting benefits from your platinum cards and so a lot of those for example are are nick mentioned the 10 or a rebate or discount sorry uh at exxon thanks to walmart plus and so there's a lot of things like that where there are discounts or free things that you might get thanks to indirectly to the benefits that are available through the Platinum Cards. All right. I think that wraps up our main event and brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week comes in from K2, and it's a little bit long, but I thought it'd be interesting to ask what you would do or what you would think in this

kind of a situation. So here we go. K2 says, wanted your advice on a Qatar Airways issue I had. I made a cash purchase of a Qatar Airways business class flight from New York JFK to Bombay, to Mumbai, through my Amex Platinum. Now there are two issues. Qatar flies two aircraft products, and they also have a co-chair with a budget carrier, Indigo. For my booking, I specifically chose the Q Suites flight, end to end. So both segments, Q Suites, and it resulted in me paying a bit of a premium because they also have a non-Q Suites business class product, and they charge less for that. Now about three to four weeks out, they notified me that they changed the plane. And now I'll be in a legacy business class product, which is a setback. And they allowed that particular leg, which was Doha to Mumbai in this case to be changed for free.

But I had onward travel from Mumbai. So I couldn't take a different flight had to take the same flight and take the downgrade essentially is what K2 says. So except in my fate, come the flying day, the JFK to Doha flight, on that flight, the in-flight entertainment wasn't working and the overhead light wouldn't turn off. I notified the cabin crew. They tried their best, but no resolution. They apologized. I understood they couldn't do anything about it. They reported it to their team and said that someone will reach out. A week later, Kataraways reached out offering me $250 in compensation. And that didn't seem like enough. I asked them for more and said that I'll complain to the DOT and the FTC.

They declined to increase the limited validity voucher to more than $350. So they offered up to $350. So K2 says, what should I do next? Should I contact Amex for purchase protection for services not rendered as sold? Should K2 be happy with the $350 they're offering now? They initially offered $250 in credit. Now they're offering $350. Of course, a business class, a paid business class ticket from New York JFK to Mumbai. I don't know how much that costs, but I'm sure it was at least $3,000 or $4,000. What do you think, Greg?

I don't have a good answer to this. I'm hoping Nick does. Not a good one. I will say that the first part of this about getting reassigned to a different aircraft, that's just really common. And I don't think there's much you can do about that. It just happens all the time. And it's very, very common with Qatar. So, you know, it's just kind of a risk of booking a flight like that. With the rest, like I said, I don't have a good answer off the top of my head. Well, what would you do? Would you take the 250?

Would you take the 350? Would you push back? What would you do if would you take the 250 would you take the 350 would you push back what would you do if this was you yeah you know the the combination of the two things the downgrade and then the you know the light that wouldn't go off the inflate entertainment didn't work what do you think would you take the money and run or would you push back what would you hope for in that case right um you know i i don't know. So it depends, I guess, how much I spent because I tend to be, I tend to value my time with things like this. Like I really hate, you know, spending all my time trying to force getting, you know, a little better, better compensation. So

my default would be to just be like, all right, well, I tried and 350 is what I'm going to get. But if it was a huge outlay that you're talking about, maybe I would try harder. But I don't off the top of my head know what avenue I would take to do that. Yeah. So the reason that I put this in for question of the week was because I kind of knew that Greg would say all of those things. And while none of that is what K2 wants to hear, it's the truth. The first off, the aircraft swaps, they happen and it stinks when they do. And it stinks that they charge you more for a better aircraft and then we'll still swap to a different one. But that does happen. Like Greg said,

it happens with Qatar probably even more often than other airlines. But it does happen with other airlines, too. And unfortunately, that's just part of the deal. However they set up their contract to carriage says basically they can swap out aircraft when they want as they need to. And you don't really have any recourse. There's just not a guarantee that you're going to get the aircraft that you booked. So I wanted to bring that up for question of the week, because I think it's important to know that because if you don't travel a lot, if you don't do these award redemptions and things like this a lot, you might not know

that that can happen. And so you should know that it's definitely a downside and a potential risk that you could get downgraded in terms of the aircraft. And that will be a shame, but there really isn't anything you can do about that part. The second part, the in-flight entertainment not working and the light not working. Again, there's no particular rule about them even having to compensate you. Forget about how much. So you're not entitled to anything, which again, sounds terrible. It stinks. But there's just no entitlement there. There's not a rule about what they have to compensate you with. So it's totally up to them and up to you as to what you'll accept. And so I have exactly the same feelings as Greg, where I would look at it and say, what's my best case scenario? If they're saying if they started at 250, they went up to 350.

What's my best case scenario? What am I going to get out of them? Another $100? Another $200? How much time is it going to take me to get that extra 100 or $200? Because like, if we're talking about 100 bucks more, like, maybe I can get them to 450. Like, is going to take me four hours to do that? Because if it is, I don't know if it's really worth the 25 bucks an hour of arguing and, you know, additional points on my blood pressure for for the extra $100 in Qatar Airways credit that's going to have to be used for Qatar Airways anyway. It's not like it's cash. So it's of limited value to me anyway. So yeah, I would look at it the same way as Greg. And I would kind of be like, this stinks. And I wouldn't be particularly thrilled with Qatar. And it might not make me hurry to book another cash fare with

Qatar. And that's unfortunately a risk that Qatar is running and taking there. But I'd probably just take the 350 and be happy with it. Now, I'm sure that there will be some readers who chime in, hopefully. And that's part of the reason I asked. Also, they may chime in and say, oh, this happened to me. And this is what I did. And a good place to ask a question like this is our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. Now, I will warn you that there will be some people always who say, oh, you shouldn't get

any compensation at all. But there'll probably also be somebody who jumps in and says, well, I had something similar, and this is what happened. And so that would be a place that you might ask for what other people have gotten and what they think is fair in that situation might give you a better barometer because you'd have access to a wider range of people's experiences. But at the same time, I think probably ultimately, you're going to get a very similar answer that says, you're going to get what they give you. And that's about it because they don't have to give you anything at all. They could just say, oh, I'm sorry, that's too bad and not give you anything, which would be terrible business, terrible customer service.

Don't get me wrong. It's just that there's no rule. You're not entitled to get something. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed it and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this video. Give it a thumbs up. Leave us a review. We appreciate that.

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