Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt Thumps Marriott | Ep91| 3-27-21

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

00:57 Giant Mailbag 4:10 What crazy thing...did Marriott do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-on-twitter-worth-a-try/ https://frequentmiler.com/reverse-bonvoyed-doubled-elite-nights-awarded-when-they-shouldnt-have-been/ 19:42 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is Wyndham Rewards the ticket to Disney+? https://frequentmiler.com/disney-plus-subscription-deal-stack-it-while-you-still-can/ https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-make-that-disney-deal-work-for-5k-wyndham-points/ 29:39 Main Event: Hyatt Thumps Marriott https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-get-top-tier-hyatt-elite-benefits-without-status/ https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-use-hyatts-guest-of-honor-globalist-benefit/ https://frequentmiler.com/gift-hotel-points-free-night-certificates-and-award-nights-booked-with-points-rules-by-program/ 50:45 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/best-options-for-domestic-first-class-awards/ 54:18 Question of the Week: How do you prioritize increase Sapphire bonuses versus great Amex card offers? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and enable notifications to hear about new content as soon as we post it. Join our email list: FrequentMiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event hyatt thumps marriott whoa let's not get political here craig no i said thumps oh oh okay i'm not aware of a political term that thumps but no we're going to give a careful and considerate comparison of the two loyalty programs, Hyatt and Marriott, and explain exactly why Marriott is at the top of our circular file right now. I was going to say, wait, Marriott's at the top. I was getting confused for a second. I thought it was going to be like good, better, perfect. I was getting confused. Yeah.

I wanted to say something nice, but I couldn't quite. There's lots of good things to say about Marriott, but just not today on the show. Sorry, Marriott. Sorry, Marriott. That's right. All right. That brings us to the giant mailbag. And you know what? I still have not gotten ink for my printer,

so I'm still doing the mailbag electronically, which is, I don't like it that way. But anyway, here, that's what we've got. Now I know the next gift for Greg. I'm going to send him a laser printer. Can't wait. Okay. This one's from Larry K. We know Larry. Good guy. Yeah. So Larry says, the content has been amazing lately, guys. Very nice, Larry. And then he said, and this is with respect to last week's show,

did I hear Greg saying that good is better than great and good is better than perfect? Great is actually better than good. Well, you know, fool me once, shame on, well, I don't know. We're not really sure where that was going there. Well, I mean, I know what I was trying to say, which was there's an old quote that's perfect is the enemy of good. And, you know, it basically means that the endless pursuit of perfection gets in the way of getting to like something that's good enough, right?

Right. And that's what I was trying to say. And it didn't come out that way. Did you hear it? Like when I was talking last week, so you were like, what the heck is Greg saying? But I'm just not going to mention it. Well, I mean, there's no sense in highlighting it. It was like, I get the general gist of it

here. I think done is better than perfect is what you're trying to say, right? Like completed is better than sitting there and, you know, in analysis paralysis. Right. So I was getting mixed up between sort of that expression done is better than perfect or done is better than, you know, great. And, and the perfect is the enemy of the good. Those two expressions got all mixed up and didn't quite come out right. It made for a funny soundbite. You know, it's a live TV guys or podcast or whatever, you know, live recording here.

We don't, we're not like. We don't do a take two. No, there's no, there's no second take. We don't go back and edit these things. I mean, edit them in the sense that, you know, like we put them together and, you know, to make sure that the, you know, my, my face is in the middle and there's a title bar at the bottom and some timestamps, but you know, we're not going to go back and, and fix Greg's inaccurate expression. Like, right.

No, I mean, I'm not, does not have time and budget for that i mean right right right uh so but you know when i say you know fantastically inaccurate things like right marriott is better than hyatt then you should correct me so well for sure audience doesn't get too confused and i'll make sure there's a graphic for those watching on youtube that's like don don't listen. Hold your ears during this part. But thank you, Larry, for highlighting the fact that, yes, there was a slight slip of the tongue,

and it happens to all of us now and then. But we got the general idea. Greg, I understood what you meant. You got the just well enough. Well enough. All right. All right. Well, okay. So that's the mailbag.

Very good. That brings us to our favorite segment. What crazy thing. Did Marriott do this week? And guess what guys? We've got a double header this week. We do. It's a double header.

And it's a double header of Marriott. We got it. We got a Marriott back to back coming at you. So on, on an's a double header of Marriott. We got a Marriott back-to-back coming at you. On an episode that's about Marriott. It's about Marriott. If you love Marriott, or if you love hating on Marriott, I guess, you're going to love this show. Right, exactly. If you love Marriott, you might love this show

because you might love yelling at us and saying why we're wrong. Right, right. Your neighbors are going to wonder, why is this guy always yelling or this girl always yelling during the lawn work but uh but because we know that you guys are doing the yard work pretend yard yard work to listen as we heard last week from what was it goob 2000 or 6008 or something like that with the number yeah i don't know the number anyway uh anyway back back to the key point here.

What crazy stuff did Marriott do this week? So the first thing is, really, it should be what crazy thing did Greg do this week, right? Not what crazy thing did Marriott do. What crazy thing did Greg do? Greg put his faith in the Marriott Twitter team. I did, yeah. So I was excited because, you know,

years ago I tried using Marriott's Twitter team the way I have long used Hyatt's Twitter team, which is to get things done. And a few years ago I tried to use them because the Marriott website wasn't working. Call center was all jammed. And all I wanted was to book a very simple awards day. I had reached out to Marriott. They told me, forget about it. We don't do that. What do you think we're here for, Greg? Right. So, so, so I, I gave up on them for years. Um, and, but then I had this, uh, seven night stay certificate that had, that had been renewed year after year after year. So I'd gotten it a long, long time ago. But this year Marriott's saying

they're not going to renew them anymore if you ask. So I'm like, all right, I've got to use it. I have a reservation, an award stay booked. I want to apply the certificate to it. I said, I'll give the Twitter team a chance. Why not? What do you got to lose? I mean, it beats being on hold forever on the phone, right? Exactly.

And so I did a direct message to them on Twitter. And the next day, they responded back saying, you're all set. Your certificate has been applied. I jumped on my account to check that the certificate was no longer in my list of active certificates. It wasn't. So it felt like it was good. And then I wrote a post saying, Hey, Marriott's Twitter team,

it's not so bad. You should give it a try. Sure. Greg, sure. You should give them a try. Yes. Give the Marriott Twitter team a try there. You know, no, nobody ever said that except for Greg. So the story gets worse. So not only did I write that post, but then I, I wrote, I re you know, I updated that post when the Marriott Twitter team failed to help me with a simple request, which was, I had the seven nights day. I wanted to see to see, could I move it just by one day? Check in one day later, check out one day later. And it's not so much that I expected them to help me, but I expected them to at least try. Like to say, you know, there's no award availability on that other day or whatever. But now there's a whole list of excuses they could give. And you figured you'd get one of one of those many excuses about why it's not going to work.

But I would like to hear that they're at least in my corner. Right. But no, the answer was no. Our social media team cannot book or cancel awards. I mean, that's because they're hiring they're hiring somebody for a nickel somewhere else to handle social media, apparently, because they clearly don't empower their social media team to do anything, anything really. Right. I mean, but I don't understand. You know, that was so odd to me because applying a travel certificate seems like it'd be more difficult, a lot more complicated than moving a reservation, booking a stay. Right. Right. Right. Applying an award certificate. That's like a super rare thing that there's only, I mean, so many of these seven night certificates that exist in the first place and understanding which hotels they work at and whether or not it's valid for the type of reservation you already had and whether or not you can do that without canceling.

I mean, there seems like there's a lot of movingublishing that post, I happened to check on my reservation. I don't even think it had anything know, view, modify reservation to see details of it. And what does it say? It says, you haven't yet paid for this stay. You need this many more points. And, you know, and so on. And so I'm like, okay, it doesn't look like that travel certificate was applied at all. What's going on here? I called Marriott. To their credit, it didn't take very long to get someone on the phone, so that was nice.

That's nice. She told me that after a bunch of searching, that my certificate had been applied to a stay that I had canceled a few months ago. Oh, nice. Nice. Which I canceled well before I had asked the Twitter team to apply it to anything, by the way. But they resurrected your old dead reservation. I mean, it's still canceled. It's just that's where the certificates have been sitting.

So Marriott, of course, wasn't able to fix it over the phone. They had to, you know, kind of open a case and, and, uh, you know, ask, uh, I don't know who to, to actually fix this, but, but there you go. So now I'm waiting on that. So anyway, so you're still waiting. It's not even done yet. I'm still waiting. No, she assured me it would be fixed, which is worth less than the nickel you mentioned before. Right. Right, right. That's one valuable guarantee right there.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So, let's back up. So, the Twitter team that normally can't do anything said, oh, yeah, we did it. seemingly proud of themselves for having helped you by attaching your seven night certificate to a canceled seven night reservation that you were never going to check in for since, Hey, it was canceled. And you know, and how would you ever find that again on your own? You wouldn't be able to, you'd have no idea.

And because we, and because they did that it made it impossible for the call center person to assign it to the right place. Cause it was already assigned to somewhere else and she couldn't detach it what a nightmare what a nightmare so the crazy thing that greg did was that he had the twitter team do something which was crazy to begin with even letting marriott's twitter team touch anything clearly in hindsight was a mistake but but you know hindsight's 2020 anybody can play monday morning quarterback on this but the crazy crazy part, Craig, is, come on, you didn't check that reservation immediately after you got the message from the Twitter team?

That's the crazy part. Absolutely right. Come on, you got to double check. I piled up crazy things. Writing the post without double checking. Writing the second post without double checking. So anyway, so yeah, it's, uh, moral of the story, stay far away from the Marriott Twitter team. There's, they're not

going to do anything to help you. And there's a good chance that they're going to bury your certificate in the graveyard of canceled reservations where it's going to take like a specialist to resurrect it. And then, you know, and, and, and the crazy thing on that piece is that I once had this situation where I had canceled a reservation with a one-night certificate. And of course, my one-night certificate went to the graveyard with the canceled reservation. And so I ended up wanting to use it, but it wasn't anywhere to be found. I assumed it would just go back in my account when I canceled the reservation. I mean, isn't that what would happen? I mean, that's what happened with Hyatt, right?

You cancel the reservation, you have to get pops back up. So I would have thought it was there. So I went to use it and it wasn't there. And I was like, what's going on? So I had to call and talk to somebody. And lo and behold, same kind of thing. I found out that it was attached to this old reservation that I had canceled. It just doesn't detach when the reservation gets canceled,

which makes Marriott sense, which means none at all. But in my case, the phone reservation agent was indeed able to unattach it from the dead reservation and attach it to the reservation I wanted, which doesn't tell me it's definitely possible

with a seven-night certificate, but tells me that it's possibly possible with a seven-night certificate. I'm going to call again and see if I could get someone a little more capable. So we'll see how that goes's possibly possible. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna call again and see if I could get someone a little more capable. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes. All right. But I guess I should say, let me let me point out a couple good things. So I use the Marriott app to find so I have elite status with Marriott. Inside the Marriott app, it's like, has the number right there or you could click to call the elite phone number

line and once you get past the you know call robot um someone picked up immediately so that was that was awesome another thing i thought was awesome is that they actually recognized my phone number and didn't have me put in my marriott rewards number and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, they were doing a couple of things that they did right. So kudos for, for those things, at least. Yeah. But Marriott was not done this week doing crazy things. No, they weren't. They weren't. They started getting crazy with everybody. It's not just Greg. Don't think that Greg is special blogger and they just want to give him some material to write about. Marriott's just being crazy for everybody this week. Right.

So Stephen wrote about his experience. So we've talked before about how Marriott has this double elite night promo going on. It's kind of a copy of what Hyatt did, except Marriott decided to make it more complicated. So what they said is, unlike Hyatt, this has to be a stay of two nights or longer. Unlike Hyatt, it can't be entirely an awards day, but it can be partially a paid stay and partially an awards day. So as long as you have at least one paid night in your reservation, everything, all the nights of your stay should get doubled. Which is intuitive is nothing, right? I've never seen anything like that before, but still that's way better than saying

you can't do it on any award stays. True, true. But like, no, like we know that you can book one paid night and a bunch of award nights, but I mean, seriously, what average Marriott business traveler person who's not immersed in miles and points would have any idea it's even possible to book a single paid night with a bunch of award nights under one reservation. Right. Well, you know, yeah,

it's not easy. Okay. All right. But, but they told us that that's what they told it. And actually there's an FAQ. Marriott has an FAQ. That's nearly impossible to find,

but if you could find it for this promotion, it does actually sort of list this exam this case and say say that it should work sort of um and so what's been happening is people have not been getting those double elite nights for the award part of the stay and so they're supposed the the official line for marriott is it definitely will work, but you have to wait 14 days and then submit a ticket to Marriott if you didn't get your doubling. When you don't get your doubling. When you don't get your doubling.

Unless you're Stephen Pepper or a handful of other readers who Stephen Pepper had 100% awards day, and the entire thing was doubled. The entire thing. The entire thing. No paid nights. Zero paid nights. Not a single paid night.

12 award nights in a row. No paid nights. The whole thing got doubled. Right. Lies in the face of what Marriott said. Right. And a few people here and there have reported the same thing. So, you know, I think what's happening is people with,

not all people, but some people with a hundred percent award stays are taking your doubled nights that you were supposed to get. Right. And so Marriott's like, well, I don't know. I mean, there's people have only stayed, you know, 3 million nights and we've given away 3 million bonus nights. How could there possibly be a, I don't understand why. Exactly. And it's already attached to Steven Pepper's account. We can't detach it. Right. Right. Right. There's no way to detach it. Maybe they can help. No, not the Twitter team. Not the Twitter team. That's where Marriott sends customer service representatives at the end, right? It's like, all right, go to the Twitter team, relax, ride off into the sunset. You don't have to do too much. Just every now and then somebody puts

a rant on there, encourage them to send you a DM with their reservation number so you can look into it. It's basically what the Twitter team is good for, for saying, hey, send us a direct message. Let's take this offline and we'll look into it. So that, so that publicly, it looks like we're doing something. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So, so you may get doubled no matter what. I mean, I, you're supposed to have one paid night. So if you have an entire award stay, don't count on it getting doubled just because Steven's got doubled. That would be almost as crazy as Greg trusting the Twitter team with his seven night certificate. So don't expect that that's going to happen, but you never know.

It might because Marriott clearly has awful it, right? And is that not the lesson here? Marriott's it stinks. It does. Thank you. But you know, to be fair,

when we get into the next segment, Hyatt's Hyatt's it is pretty bad too. And in my experience, there are lots of things go wrong there that the difference is whenever I've had to call or contact Hyatt in any way to resolve those things, it's done like that. And somebody, somebody magically figures it out. But anyway, so all right, so so Marriott double elite nights, probably, I don't know, they might post the way they're supposed to, but there's a good chance that they won't post the way they're supposed to. So you may have to follow up with

Marriott. So you gotta wait like two weeks until you can follow up, but then please do follow up because I think most people who followed up have eventually reported getting the double, right? I don't know whether that's true or not, but, but I mean, I do trust that they will. That's one thing. Since we've been reporting on Marriott and getting information from their PR people, a lot of times things like this have happened. Every time. Things like this have happened where what they tell us is how they tell us it's going to work doesn't actually work at first. Then we go back

to them and they say, oh, yes, it will. But anyway, they resolve it eventually. They do. I'll give them credit there. They have been pretty good at resolving those things in general. Because, I mean, we do constantly run into these issues. And, you know, we're joking. And we're going to talk about the ways that aren't a joke, that Hyatt is a lot better than Marriott. But at the end of the day, if they fix their mistakes, then, I mean, I guess how upset can you possibly be?

And they have been pretty good at fixing those mistakes. At the end of the day, they've told us. What they've told us has held up over these last, I don't know this last year or two, really what they've told us has held up. It's just not been necessarily as easy and seamless as we'd all like. Right. Right.

So, so, all right, let's, let's, let's not talk about Marriott for a minute. Cause we got a lot to say about Marriott later on. Let's mattress run the numbers and talk about everybody's favorite hotel program.

Let's talk about Wyndham Rewards. Marriott. Oh, Wyndham. Okay, all right. Close. You're very close. You're very close. So Wyndham's out with a promotion this week.

Their shopping portal has had these increased rates for the last couple of weeks. Steven Pepper wrote a post on March 11th about increased rates at the Wyndham shopping portal. And I know when I say that, there are some people who are immediately like, the Wyndham shopping portal, okay, where when I say that there are some people who are immediately like the Wyndham shopping portal. Okay. Where's the next timestamp I'm moving forward. But I'll tell you there, they are definitely giving away a lot of points on some of these

merchants and some merchants are merchants that don't often have a lot of points per dollar. So it's worth a look. And, and I mean, some of them are ridiculous payouts. Like things remembered as 124 points per dollar, which I mean, I don't need anything at Things Remembered, but if you do, 124 points per dollar is probably pretty good if you value those points at all. So there's a bunch of those little things. I needed some auto parts this week, 15 points per dollar at Advance Auto, and that was much better than anybody else's payouts. But something we wrote about this week was that the Wyndham Portal is also offering 5,000 points. If you sign up for a Disney plus subscription as a new subscriber or a

Disney plus gift subscription, which gets a little bit more complicated and I had to write a second separate post about, but either way, it's 5,000 points. And as we're recording this, the subscription is still $70. But by the time you listen to this, Disney Plus will have gone up to $80. So it's an $80 annual subscription and you get 5,000 Wyndham points if you sign up for it. So Greg, is it worth signing up for Disney Plus just to get yourself 5,000 Wyndham points? So before I answer that question, I just have to get something off my chest here. We should have

had this promotion, not the Disney Plus promotion, but the Wyndham Portal promotion in the Crazy Thing segment because they have a page that clearly lists that all of the rates on the portal will be five times the usual amount. That's right. Have you seen a single one that's exactly five times? They don't know how to multiply by five. Not a single one. And it's the least intuitive portal I've ever seen. I mean, unless I've just

missed it, I haven't found an easy way to sort all of the retailers. Like there's a page for like, I don't know, home stuff. And there's a page for the hot increased offers or whatever. But just getting a single page with all the stores that I can sort by payout is like, if it's there, it's not intuitive because I've spent more time on the Wyndham portal in the last week than I have on any other hotel. Anyway. Okay. Okay. Back to Disney Plus.

So should you sign up for Disney Plus? What are you doing? Should you sign up for it? Well, let's get the easy one out of the way. Should you sign up for it even if you don't want Disney Plus and you don't have anyone who you want to gift Disney Plus to? Should you sign up for it even if you don't want disney plus and you don't have anyone who who you want to gift disney plus to should you sign up for should you pay 80 bucks to get 5 000 window points no no the window points aren't worth that much let's get that out of the way right no but they're probably worth what 30 bucks something like that we

haven't done it like seven tenths of a cent per points that'd be 35 35 there you go yeah i mean and and you can get more value yeah not unheard of to get a cent or more out of windham points right right right so so but we would you should never buy points i mean unless you're unless you're unless you need the 5 000 to reach an award level um you never buy you know points based on how much you might redeem them for you should buy it if you're going to buy the points it should be for a lot less than you're going to redeem them for so that you're getting a deal so um but is this enough sort of to if you're on the if you're on the fence like uh do i want disney plus or not? Or, Hey, uh, I, I know my niece would enjoy Disney plus. So

I'm going to gift her gifted to her. Is this enough of an incentive to, to pull the plug and do it? I think it is. I think it is because you're not going to see something much better, probably for Disney plus, right? I mean, it's a Disney. How often do you see a discount on anything that's Disney? If you do, it's like 3% or 5% or something like that, right? I mean, it's a Disney. How often do you see a discount on anything that's Disney? If you do, it's like 3% or 5% or something like that, right? I mean, Disney is a full price gig all the time, basically. So I remember when Disney Plus first debuted,

there were a couple of ways to get a deal on it. And I think maybe AT&T or Verizon was offering some deal for their subscribers or something or other. But at this point, I'm not aware of any better way.

And when I signed up for Disney Plus back in December, there was a Rakuten payout of $12.50 or 1,250 membership rewards points. And that's the best I think I've seen until this Wyndham portal. And the Wyndham deal is, I would say, better at 5,000. Wyndham points is better than that. So I think it's worth it because you're getting basically, you know, like 20, 30% off here, 40%, 40. I don't know.

I can't do the math that quick. It was about half is what I was figuring because it was 70 bucks and I was figuring $35 worth of points, about half back. That's pretty good. And the nice thing is you could buy a gift subscription for the future. Now, if you already subscribe,

you can't buy a subscription for yourself. Like if you already subscribe, that's it. You can't get yourself another subscription under the same email address, but you could gift a subscription to somebody else and you can set it to deliver anytime you want in the future. Now, I don't know how they're going to deal with that in the future. Like, are they going to give you a year? Are they just going to give you credit for whatever you've paid? I don't know how that's going to work, but it's at least possible. What I did is I bought a gift subscription for my wife because I signed up last December. So I bought a gift subscription for my wife. I set it to deliver the day after my subscription ends this coming December. So it'll come up in her email inbox

and she'll sign up as a new subscriber the day after it ends. So, I mean, so my assumption is that you don't have to do that. Like my assumption is like, you could have it be delivered immediately. And as long as they don't click the link and, and actually use it to sign up whenever they start, they should get 12 months of Disney plus. I mean, that's my assumption. And that that's what I assumed when I pulled the trigger on it too. So I followed, I followed the instructions in your too. So you did. You did do it. So I followed the instructions in your post. So another crazy thing about the portal is that it says, basically click here for the gift subscription. And it doesn't actually go to a page for the gift subscription.

So Nick wrote a whole post on how to work around that. Another crazy thing is instead of 5,000 points, you got what? 4,998. I don't know. I don't know where the other two points went, Wyndham. It was like two points. So if you're, if you're exactly 5,000 points away from a award that you're looking forward to, this will be extremely frustrating. Yeah. Yeah. So, but so, all right. So you're able to do it and do the gift subscription and you're totally right you probably don't have to set it to deliver the exact day in the future

but the thing is then you got to keep track of the email so yeah so so i i think i'll know soon i i mean there there is a show that i've been wanting to watch on disney plus so once we're ready to watch it i'll start the the timer then you know and i'll see whether yeah whether it gives me 12 months or not before this deal my my approach to disney plus because i don't have any young kids at home has been oh there's something i want to watch sign up for a month watch it finish the the series finish the movie whatever it is and then you know and cancel so you could actually cancel as soon as you've signed up. So like you still have the rest of the 30 days or whatever, uh, to watch it. So, so that, that makes it easy. That way you don't have to keep like, Oh, I got to remember to cancel. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, that's been my approach. So, so for me to pull the trigger on this,

I had to think about like, okay, the points back, let's say they're worth about 35 bucks. So this is costing me about $35 cause this was the old rate. Right. And, um, so that's about, you know, a little more than three months of doing this juggling, uh, which I won't have to do every year. Am I likely to do either do more than three months or at least appreciate not having to do that juggling? Um, you know, and, and, and so I, it was right about the edge. I think it's pretty likely that, uh, I'll get enough use out of it. That that'll be a good, good call. But ultimately I spent so much time dithering on whether or not to do it. It was so stupid. It's like, it's not that much money and it was ridiculous. So, so I,

I finally just, when I realized that I just pulled them. That's why I was like, you know, it's like $35 worth of points. So this is really not a very big spending decision in terms of if you value the points at all, not a very big spending decision. So I was like, all right, let's go ahead and do it. We don't, we don't want, I don't watch it at all, but I do have two young kids. They won't sit and watch a movie right now, but probably sometime in the next year and a half they will. And they watch some of the TV shows and stuff. and then there's some tv shows that adults would watch

on there too so and movies and things like that so they have 35 bucks why not let's do it so if you're listening to this i'd say it's probably worth it if you're interested in disney plus yeah and uh it's not a pure mattress run there's some good stuff on there even for adults like the the movie soul that came out recently i don't know if it's still on Disney Plus, but we watched it there. I don't know either. I wanted to see that. Did you see it? Was it good?

Oh, it was great. Fantastic. I'm really disappointed that I missed it if it's not on there anymore. I think, was it also Hamilton that showed on Disney Plus? Yes. Yeah, that was fantastic. That was awesome. Even though I saw it in real life, I super enjoyed it on TV.

I saw it in real life just before the pandemic. So I saw it like right at the end. I'm glad I did get a chance. Cause initially I saw it in real life. And then I heard like, just after that, that it was going to be on Disney plus. And I was like, oh man, I mean, it was like, you know, tickets, it was a gift, but I know that it wasn't a cheap gift. Right. Somebody gave me that. It was a really nice gift. Yeah. and i was like oh man i was gonna be on disney plus and i felt kind of bad now i don't feel bad at all because i got a chance to

see it before the world fell apart so yeah yeah so uh so all right that's magic's one of the numbers we talked enough about windom let's get into this whole main event let's do it so uh hyatt thumps marriott so we already talked about how you know they both did similar doubling of elite night promos but the experience for for the reward pursuers for for those of us who are trying to earn elite status from these promotions the experience is like night and day different um the hyatt thing it just it just worked and the marriott thing just didn't for most people and yes we agree that it'll eventually work but it's frustrating you you want to see your double elite nights and and you don't and uh yeah um no I got to give Hyatt credit for is they're very good at setting expectations and making sure that they don't set them in a way that's unrealistic for them to meet

or beat. And I think that that's really where they do much better. Because when you just made that statement, I thought to myself, oh, yeah, the Hyatt thing was a lot smoother. But then a second later, I was like, well, actually, Hyatt was similar in the sense that the Hyatt thing was a lot smoother. But then a second later, I was like, well, actually Hyatt was similar in the sense that the Hyatt promo that offered double elite nights, you got one set of elite nights when you checked out, but then the doubling didn't happen instantly. It was happening in like every other Tuesday. So it wasn't even necessarily just, you know, the same week or anything like that. It might've been a week or two that you had to wait, which is similar to Marriott, except that Hyatt let everybody know,

hey, we're going to post these nights like every other Tuesday. And then they went ahead and did that. And so nobody had to worry because they were like, oh yeah, I'm going to get my nights another Tuesday or two or whatever. Also, the original promotion terms said that the doubling wouldn't happen

until the end of the promotion. So they actually exceeded the written terms written terms of it which was which was very nice exactly um another thing i mean again we talked about this already but hyatt's twitter team and i've heard this is the same for their um their facebook team you know you need to get things done and really complicated stuff they they're not only happy to help, they actually succeed at helping. I mean, you know, in my experience, I talked about once a very complicated thing that I had asked for. I had a suite night award booked, so booked with points. And I wanted to instead book a standard room with points and use my upgrade certificate to upgrade to the suite.

But there were no standard rooms available. So I contacted the Twitter team and said, look, the end goal is to get in the same room that I already have booked. But can you talk to the hotel? You know, because I knew that they couldn't do it themselves. I was with, can you talk to the hotel and get them to release the space for the standard room, just so that we could apply the upgrade certificate and get back in the suite that I started with. So let's make this clear. Greg is like, hey, hi, Twitter team. Can you call the hotel and ask them if they'll take a little bit less money for that room by opening it as a standard room, so that they'll get reimbursed for fewer points. And then let me use my free upgrade certificate on it.

And the Twitter team was like, all right. Yeah. They were like, well, we'll give it a try. And a few hours later they succeeded and it was all set. Of course the pandemic hit and I never stayed there, but that's not the point. The point is they got it done, you know, and that was something that isn't a standard everyday type of a request even close no not even close and something that i maybe maybe one would say probably shouldn't work or it's like not not not something that's in the rules not that it's against the rules but it's

not like there's a policy or a procedure for this this is something that like they just had to contact the hotel and ask and see what the hotel said and work with them. And so somebody has to get on the phone and explain what's going on and well enough that the hotel understands and, and speak to somebody at the hotel who's got the power to actually change something. There's a lot of different spinning parts in there and how it's like, well, we don't know if it'll work, but we'll give it a try. And sure enough. And done. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like night and day. It's, it's, it's, you know even if the two programs were equal in all other ways, like that alone almost would, would make me more of a Hyatt loyalist. Right.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, and you talk about, for example, you were trying to book a reservation a couple of years ago and you didn't want to wait on hold forever. And so you sent a message to the Marriott Twitter team and Marriott said, no, we can't make reservations over Twitter. And then, you know, to give a contrasting example, just recently, somebody pointed out to me that the hotel Nyack became a, whatever it is, Joy DeVue, however they pronounce it, a stupid brand. So one of those new Hyatt brands, right? And so it's like a category two, 8,000 points per night, which sounds like it might be good.

I figured maybe I book a couple of nights because I have some Hyatt points, but the problem was on the website, it wasn't showing any availability for 8,000 points per night. It was only showing cash in points, no rooms that were just points, even though a standard room was available.

And so that's clearly just some sort of an IT glitch on the website. So I figured maybe if I contact Hyatt, they'd be able to help me make a reservation. But first I just wanted to see if yes, rooms are even available before I waste time sitting on hold or something. So I sent a message to the Twitter team to see if they could even tell me if standard rooms were available for 8,000 points per night. And they wrote back and said, yeah, they are. Would you like me to book it for you? And yes. Okay. I guess so. Save me a phone call. I didn't even initially think to ask them to book it, but sure enough, they just hadn't booked it for me. So proactively asked if I wanted to book it. So, right. Whereas Mariette says, I'm sorry, we cannot book rooms or book or cancel rooms.

Right. Hi, it's like, oh, yeah, the website doesn't show there's availability, but there really is. Sure, we'll make that happen. You know, totally different than Marriott experience. So, yeah. And if you haven't if you haven't dealt with the Hyatt Twitter team before, it's a joy. And I know that there are some people out there who are probably like Twitter.

I'm not that interested in Twitter. And I've talked about this before. You should still sign up for Twitter because there are times when Twitter just becomes really convenient like this. Yeah. Just send a message. Or again, in this case, if you're more of a Facebook person, Facebook Messenger with them should work just as well. I'm sure it's the same team. Probably the same people sitting at a computer. So, yeah, I mean, totally worthwhile. Always very good. Have you ever asked them something they couldn't get done for you? Well, you know, they, they, they can't, yeah. I mean, they can't open up a word space when it's not there. Right. You know, and you

asked them to open up or I'm wondering if there's something you've asked. No, I mean, I mean, like sometimes I like just sort of hope that something like what happened with you would happen where I don't see award space, but, you know, oh, maybe they could see something. So, yeah, there've been times where I've said, you know, oh, can I get it? Can I apply a suite upgrade? And then they replied, there's no suites available

or I'm trying to book these nights just in hoping. And, you know, so that hasn't worked, but I don't expect it. I don't expect them to do magic. Exactly. You're just hopeful that maybe they will do magic and they give you that hope because they're so darn good most of the time.

Exactly. They probably can do just about anything. So, you know, if Marriott didn't have that prohibition against a social media team booking stays for you, they might, you know, say, okay, yes, I booked it. And, you know, and who knows what yes, I booked it. And, you know, and who knows what you'd actually get. You don't know, you don't know what's going to be booked or when it's going to be booked or where, what reservation, no idea what's going to happen.

Oh boy. Well, with Hyatt, I've never had that kind of thing. I've never had any confusion, nothing that's happened wrong. When I asked for something, it's been taken care of. I mean, I had a hotel that, that charged me a deposit a few months back for a future stay far in the future. And they charged me a large deposit, $800 and change or something and something that didn't seem like it should be. And so they reached out and checked and found out and they communicated the hotel's apologies to me

saying that it was a mistake and it would be refunded soon. And not only did I get that from the Twitter team, but then I got a very nice apology email from the hotel apologizing for it. And I know that not only did I get that from the Twitter team, but then I got a very nice apology email from the hotel apologizing for it. And I know that the only reason I got that from the hotel is because the Twitter team said, what are you guys doing?

Right, right. They went to bat. And I don't see Marriott's Twitter team going to bat for anybody. Right, right. And so, all right, if you go beyond the social media teams, you know, you wrote a post recently about how you can gift free nights from different programs to other programs. To other members.

I mean, to other, sorry. Perfect is the worst thing. I didn't call it out this week. Larry, hold your keyboard. All right, buddy. Draw back. Yeah. So gifting is better than good or something. I don't know. Anyway, the short answer, right? You can gift them to other people. With Hyatt.

Right. And what can you do with Marriott free nights? You can hope to book a room. Maybe if there's availability and they don't have it peak price in such a way that is just a little bit too much for your free night certificate, which seems to be something they like. I got to give some a while, when they've started to run some of their promotions and they've done this like 10% off promotion where they've done super off-peak pricing, where it's 10% off of the off-peak price. And I realized, wow, somebody did some math there. Nobody did, no fool there that decided to price the 40

or the 50K properties at 40K off-peak so that they could run them 10% off and still be 36,000 points instead of being bookable with a 35k certificate. They went further than that, if I recall. I think things that are off-peak and saver or something, point saver rate, the combination. There was a couple of versions of those where if they were 10% off, they would have gone down to the next certificate level and they made exceptions for those.

So those weren't 10% off. They did not want anyone using a certificate on a hotel that wasn't meant to be used with that certificate. They're like, no, you can use those at the cheap places that we want you to be able to use them at and nothing else. Don't try and get outsized value there. Like Greg said, they're worth $200. Don't expect $205.

Okay. So that's that. So apparently, I think this is what it comes all down to is that unlike Hyatt, I don't know who runs Hyatt's, you know, rewards program, who makes the fine details, but it's apparently Scrooge McDuck on Marriott side. They've got Scrooge over there. Yeah, no, it totally is Scrooge McDuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely they got Scrooge McDuck over there saying, no, no fun for you. So yeah, you can't gift your Marriott free nights to anybody else. So if you got free nights from credit cards and they're going to expire soon because you couldn't travel during the pandemic and now they're all set to expire August 1st, your

certificates that would have expired last year and got extended. If you can't use them, let me not say you can't book them for somebody else. You might be able to get around it by booking a room in your name and adding someone else's name to the reservation and hoping that the hotel doesn't insist that you're there to show up and check in. But there's not an official way to gift that certificate to anybody else. They're like, no, you use it or you lose it. Whereas Hyatt is like, no, you want to give that to somebody else? You're a nice person. Fine. Great. We can help you do that. Yeah. And, and I mean, wow. Hyatt also does that with their elite program. So top tier elites can say, I'm going to gift entire awards day to my friend. And that friend then doesn't have to

pretend to be you can, you know, we'll check in and get all the top tier elite benefits during their stay. Just remarkable. Marriott has nothing like that at all. No, no. To be fair, very few, very few other, like the only other thing comparable I can think of is Air Canada has just introduced something sort of similar where you could sort of gift elite status for a flight. Not, you know, So that's pretty similar.

Very different though. I mean, similar, but very different in the sense that in a hotel stay, like with Hyatt, in a hotel stay, we've talked about before, you're talking about free breakfast, lounge access, free parking, and there's a whole bunch of different benefits that you're looking at getting on a globalist guest of honor stay that could save the guest a lot of money on their stay. So, and especially because those guest of honor stays, I'm not aware of any time limit as to how long one can be. Have you ever heard of one that was like too long? I think you could presumably book one as long as you have enough points. If you got enough points to book somebody 30 nights, I think you book them 30 nights on a guest of honor stay. And I suppose you could, you know,

Hyatt has a weird technical thing where they can't book more than 10 nights on an award stay, but they can chain them together. So if you call or, or the Twitter team, I'm sure could do this. They could set up a 30 night stay. That's, that's all connected for all, for all intents and purposes. You'll just see multiple. And to be clear, multiple records in your account. If you're abusing the guest of honor program, I'm sure that Hyatt is going to kick you out at some point.

So I'm not suggesting that. I'm just suggesting that it is incredibly generous of them to offer that. I mean, they're offering a great slew of benefits for you to be able to show a friend or family member, this is why I play the game. This is why you need to learn how to play the game. Right, right. Get all this. So, so that's a lot of fun. So you can you can gift your elite perks. And I mean, hi, it's just got better perks. It's not only a matter of gifting elite perks. I mean, if you could gift someone Marriott titanium perks, or Hyatt

globalist perks, which gift do you think somebody would appreciate more, Greg? Without question. I mean, it's just not even close. So I'm soon going to be traveling again. I'm getting my second shot next week. Congratulations. Exciting times. Thank you. It is very exciting. So my wife and I are excited to like nearly fear-free from the virus. And we're going to be using, as I mentioned, hopefully we're going to be using that seven night travel certificate, but I'm going to be using it at a Ritz property, which means that even though I have near top tier Marriott, I have Marriott titanium status, which, uh, you know, let's talk about the perks that, that, um, I don't get at the Ritz. Uh, so, and let's be clear for anybody who's not familiar with Marriott titanium status ordinarily requires 75 nights a year. So we're talking about

you ordinarily have to spend two and a half months of the year in Marriott hotels to get titanium status. Like that's where the bar is in order to get all in order to not get all of these benefits. So, so, um, you know, obviously, cause this is the Marriott, not Hyatt. I'm not going to get free parking. I'm not going to get waived resort fees. So I get to pay for both of those things. I'm looking forward to that. Nice. I mean, they provide so much value to the guests, right? That's right. Now, Marriott does give Platinums and higher free breakfast at many properties, but not at Ritz. So I'm not going to get free breakfast. I will get a welcome gift,

but my understanding is I think it's a thousand Marriott points. A thousand points for staying seven nights at a Ritz. Right. You shouldn't have, Marriott. You shouldn't have. Oh, another thing. I have tons and tons of suite night awards that give you a chance of getting upgraded to a suite.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice to be able to use one of those at a really nice Marriott property like a Ritz? I can't think of where I'd more want to use it, but also where I more cannot because Ritz is one of the brands, and there are more than one, where you can't use your sweet night awards. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. It's crazy. It's completely nuts.

So, you know, not only does Hyatt have better perks overall for elites, especially top tier elites um they uh they they apply them pretty uniformly across their all their brands and marriott is so inconsistent with that it's it's it's a nightmare like if if you're expecting a certain perk um it better be because you did your homework and found out what other people got with your status level at that exact hotel, because not only do they have exceptions by brand, they have exceptions by individual hotels within a brand. It's a real problem. And I can't believe Marriott hasn't done more to address it because that's got to hurt the loyalty of their customers. You would think because somebody who's spending night after night in business all year long at Marriott's and staying at JW's for business or something like

that and having lounge access all the time, then goes and breakfast and that sort of thing goes to the Ritz. Can't use the sweet night awards that they've earned. Can't get their free breakfast. Can't get into the lounge. There's a lounge and Ritz is going to be like, oh yeah, we've got this awesome lounge, but you can't get in with your top tier status. You know, it's like, what, what do you mean you can't get the lounge with your top tier status? I mean, you know, you don't see anything like this at Hyatt. And the crazy thing is Ritz is obviously a high end property, you know, a ritzy type of a place, but hyatt's top end places are i would say generally most of the park hyatts i've been to and most of the other top top tier type hyatt places i've been to are at least as

nice as a ritz if not nicer and you've got better benefits like you don't have to go to hyatt to find an example go to the the uh saint regis within the Marriott portfolio. They do honor all those benefits and they are, well, I mean, I can't compare them one-to-one, but I'd say on average, St. Regis is probably better than the Ritz, at least on par. At least on par. And if not better, most of the time. And how do those, and when we say better, we mean like higher end. So it'd be one thing if they're going to be like, you know what, this, this brand is too ritzy, like the Bulgari, you know, whatever you would make it kind of designery and get a tie in with some designer brand. And you want to be like, okay, this is just too high end to let the peons get free breakfast. Okay. But, but Ritz is not there. It's nice.

It's a lot nicer than staying at, you know, the Hilton garden in or something, but it's not like, it's not on that level. So, so you would think that they could handle giving you, you know, a couple of muffins and, you know, so, so whatever. I might, I might get a room upgrade. In fact, I might get an upgrade to a suite. But the only reason that I might get an upgrade to a suite is because I have titanium status. Platinum status

is not enough at Ritz to get you into a suite, even though, again, most brands you can. And to be clear, I'm talking about an upgrade now at check-in, not the upgrade where you apply a sweet night award, because I'm not allowed to do that. I'm sounding bitter, but I don't actually really feel all that bitter. I'm sure that it's going to be a nice day.

Yeah. And that's the thing you're expecting it. And so like we can joke and laugh about it here and, and know that Greg's going to go enjoy a really nice day because his expectations were set properly. He knew what to, he knew he was going to have to pay for breakfast. He knew he wasn't going to get free parking. So he's not going to be upset at check-in or checkout or whatever else. He might be marginally disappointed if they don't upgrade him and the place is half empty, but he's going to know that that's a possibility going in. But your average person who just stays a lot of nights at a hotel chain all year long has got to be really disappointed in that. Right. I would think so. I would think so. So, so I don't know, you know, I don't understand it. I don't understand why, uh, Merritt hasn't

fixed this. This is, this is a big gaping hole in their program and they, they need to fix it. And but they haven't. So there you go. I mean, we could go on and on, but I think we've probably said enough about why Hyatt thumps Marriott. Thumps Marriott. Thumps Marriott. Both have their issues,

but Hyatt typically fixes them, as you said, and makes it much less complex, much easier. Right. Simpler times. All right, my friends. So that brings us then to this week's post roast. Post roast. I think you should go first this time. I think you let me off the hook last time, if I remember. I did let you off the hook last time. You do remember that

correctly. And now I'm trying to remember what I had lined up for the post roast. So this week you wrote a post. Oh, that's what it was. You wrote a post about, uh, I know, you know what, I'm going to save that one. So I'm going to, you did two posts that I was ready to roast two and a half. Cause I already roasted you a little bit on the crazy thing that Greg did over the Twitter bet. You wrote a post this week about the, uh, um, the best options for booking domestic business and first class. And I want to know how you missed in that post that Virgin Atlantic is no longer 22,500 points for Delta, Greg.

Oh, well played. Well played, Nicholas. So let me go first on the rest after all. Nick, you wrote a post. No no you updated a post called uh domestic first class for last that i had originally written you repost it saying we've updated with all the new information and still blatantly obvious everywhere in the post was this assertion that you could fly first class domestically using Virgin miles for 22.5 K on Delta, which is no longer true.

It's no longer true. The second part of that roast is that even though you rewrote the post, you left my name on it. I updated it. I updated it. I added a section. I was like, all right, well, you know, Greg wrote most of this post still. So I'll leave his name on it. Cause I just added the Alaska stuff. And I was like, all right. You know what I mean? He wrote most of it. I don't know. I don't need my name as though I wrote this whole thing. Cause I didn't write the whole thing. Of course, Greg had

written it long ago when Virgin Atlantic still could book Delta 22,500 points. And, and so, you know, of course, when I was going to update it, that was the type of thing that I should have been updating. And, and I looked through it, like I looked through this post and I was like, okay, actually I was surprised. I expected some more of it to be out of date. And I looked through and I was like, oh, well, I mean, we got everything for United. I'll get a change of our plan. All right. Okay. American looks pretty good. And Delta. Yeah. Okay. Delta. Fine. Move on. And, and I just totally went right past it. And actually when I saw Delta, I thought to myself, well, Virgin Atlantic devalued Delta, but what came to mind were the flights to Asia and how they changed the flights to Europe back.

And I had totally forgotten. And this is my fault because I don't fly Delta and I still need to know about Delta, even though I don't fly them, but it just, I don't fly Delta and I still need to know about Delta, even though I don't fly them. But it just I don't fly Delta, not because I dislike them. They're just never convenient for me. And then on top of that, Virgin Atlantic charges by the segment. And I live somewhere that's not a Delta hub. So I'd be talking about paying for two flights every single time. So I've never really paid attention to what Virgin charges for Delta flights.

I did actually book some Delta flights once, but like, that's it. So yeah. So I like there, it wasn't on my mind that that devalued at all. So I totally understand. So, so this is good. We, we, we post-roasted the same exact post. I had a feeling that was coming. I figured I'd be to it. Cause it looked like it was my fault. It was my fault it was my fault so uh so yeah i should have taken the lumps on that one i i guess i i eased out of it because people who read the post didn't realize it was my fault but but that's why i had to take credit for it here i'd say appreciate it

my bad guys all right so post roast out of the way question of the week yes steven asked a question this week about uh chase cards or cards in general and 524, etc. Because we've seen lately that the Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserved are now featuring increased offers. We've got increased offers on the Amex Platinum, the Amex Gold, etc. So Stephen says, hi, everyone. New to the points game. I have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Chase Freedom, the Southwest Priority, and I'm currently at $324. Should I go for another Chase card or go for the Amex Gold or Platinum since they have such great sign-up bonuses right now? Amex Gold, $75K plus $200 in home improvement credit through a referral link.

Platinum, $100K plus the 10X for six months on gas and grocery. Which one should I get? Should I get the platinum and refer player two to gold? Or should I have player two get the Sapphire Preferred? If you're at 324 right now, Greg, which offer or offers do you prioritize? And I'm gonna ask that in that way, which do you prioritize? Because most people can't do an unlimited amount of spend.

Because I'm sure that your first answer would be, well, you, you got to get the chase cards first. So, you know, get one of the chase cards and then get the Amex platinum and then get gold. But I mean, altogether, you're talking about more spend than what most people do in three months. So how would you prioritize the Sapphire preferred or reserve the Amex platinum and the Amex gold right now? Okay. Just remind me which which Chase cards did he say he already has? He's got the Sapphire Preferred right now. So that's something we need to address. He's got the Chase Freedom and the Southwest Priority.

Okay. So presumably if he's considering the Sapphire, it's been more than 48 months since he got the signup bonus before? Hopefully. That came up in the comments. This was something that came up in, in frequent miler insiders, but that's something that's worth mentioning here. It's got to have been 48 months since you last received the welcome bonus on

a Sapphire card. Not since you signed up for the card. What matters is when you got the welcome bonus. And that leads me to a question that's come up a few times this week that I'm wondering if you know the answer to, how do you find out when you last got the welcome bonus? Like if it was a few times this week that I'm wondering if you know the answer to, how do you find out when you last got the welcome bonus? Like if it was a few years ago, how do you find out when 48 months ago was right? Cause that's, I don't think, I don't think like, uh, Chase's,

uh, ultimate rewards portal shows you, uh, transactions back that far. So they don't, it'd be pretty tough. I mean, you can, you can look at the date you signed up and add three months and say, I probably got it before then. So that's sort of like a worst case or probably secure message chase, I guess, and ask would be the safest way to go. Somebody suggested when that question came up this week, they said, send a secure message because you can't see back that far. So send a secure message, which is probably a good technique. Although then you are relying on somebody to tell you the right answer. Chase's reps are usually pretty good, but, but, you know, I mean, if they're anything like Marriott's Twitter reps,

if you happen to get a former Marriott Twitter rep, you have no idea what's going to happen. Right. So, um, so, uh, but, but getting back to the question, so how to prioritize these, these great offers, and there are some truly great offers out there right now. Um, I almost feel like you're, you're, you have like an answer in mind. No, I don't. All right. Cause I was going to say, just, just spill it, man. No, no, no, no. I'm curious because, okay. So the first thing is gotta be 48 months since he, since, uh, Steven here got the Sapphire preferred welcome bonus, if he's going to go after either of the Sapphire cards. And so if it has been more than 48 months, first step is to downgrade that Sapphire preferred, assuming you're going to apply for a chase product. You could downgrade it to the,

uh, the chase freedom flex, I assume, or to the chase freedom unlimited. It doesn't matter if you already have those cards. It doesn't matter. You can still downgrade and have a second one. That's a common question. That's come up a bunch lately. Yes. You can have another one. There's no,

is there a reason? Let me ask you, because I've said this to people, but now I should ask you, is there any reason to consider canceling? If you're in Steven shoes, these are three 24. He qualifies for another Sapphire preferred or reserve bonus.

It's been more than 48 months. Should he consider canceling the Sapphire preferred or should he downgrade? Like I just said, I don't, I can't think of any good reason to, to cancel what one, um, uh, mistake. A lot of people make is assuming that if they downgrade, let's say to the freedom unlimited, that that would prevent them from ever being able to get the sign-up bonus for the Freedom Unlimited. That would be true if we're talking about American Express, but we're not. With Chase, you could in the future get the sign-up bonus for the Freedom Unlimited. You just would have to product change it again or cancel it before you do so. So the point is you can't have the Freedom Unlimited at the time

that you apply for the Freedom Unlimited, but you can certainly sign up for it. And the rules about whether you can get the sign-up bonus are based on last time you got the sign-up bonus for the Freedom Unlimited. So product changing to it won't affect your ability to do that. So, you know, I guess the way I think of it is a couple things. One, he's already in the sort of Chase Ultimate Rewards ecosystem,

so presumably knows what to do with the points and would appreciate getting more points. I'm making some assumptions here. So I would jump on the Sapphire preferred offer while it's hot. If he qualifies for it, I think that's, that's a great offer. I also heard something. I don't know how much credit to give to it and no way of checking, but that chase might be easier on approvals during this promo promo period so uh you know that makes me like

want to even like you know look at the cards my son has and say you know is he under 524 could he apply for the sapphire preferred now uh possibly get approved even if he might not have been earlier um the you know the amex cards tend to be easier to get approved for. This 100k thing has lasted a lot longer than we thought it would. So there's a chance it'll last like long enough that once you complete the minimum spend on the Sapphire card, maybe you can still jump on the platinum or the gold offer and get just as good of an offer. I do think that it's likely that if the economy starts booming, that these offers are not going to stick around through the boom cycle. So, so, you know, it could be that by summertime,

a lot of these great offers won't be available anymore. So I would be looking at it at that timeframe and say, you know, to get all these offers in the 80 K to a hundred K range. I mean, it's not that they'll be gone forever though. You know, we see things like that come back and back, but there's a lot of them right now. And we're not going to my guess is if the economy starts booming, that'll be the end of having like almost everywhere you look, these gigantic offers. So I would plan accordingly. That's sort of a big non-answer, I think. Well, but it's not a bad non-answer.

And I think that your point in terms of having some more time is actually a good one because we saw this week, I think, correct me if I'm wrong here, but now you can get the $100K Amex referral offer via referral with the $200 in home improvement credits, right? That's right. It's even better. It was so ridiculously good before, and now it's $200 better. Right, $200 better. So that's awesome to begin with. And then that tells me that maybe that 100K offer will last until May 5th because May 5th is when those are scheduled to end. So you've probably got a month and a half almost before that is gone. So with that in mind, and that's not a guarantee, they could stop giving

away the hundred because the standard referral bonus on the platinum right now, I think is really only 75 K the a hundred K is, you know, this, this unicorn that's been around since November and has managed to stick around. So my guess, if you're asking me to bet is that will probably still be possible until May 5th. So get the Sapphire Preferred now. If you're eligible for it, downgrade your current Sapphire Preferred, get the Sapphire Preferred now, work on meeting the spend, and then closer to May 5th, open up the Platinum card because that'll give you a little bit more time to work towards the spending requirement there. And also you should be able to generate a referral link from the

Platinum card on day one. As soon as you get, if you, well, if you don't have an Amex login, maybe that's not true. As soon as you get your card, you should be able to then generate a referral link. And if you don't have any Amex cards, which based on the way the question was worded, I think Stephen probably doesn't. And you are interested in referring your player to, to get Amex cards. Then I would think to open that platinum card at least a few days before may 5th so you have enough time to get the card they typically overnight the platinum card but i wouldn't count on that i'd apply by like maybe may 1st or so to make sure

you have enough time to get it set up your online login pull your referral link and refer player to if that's what you want to do if you want to refer player two now question to tag on to that though is i think steven was also asking all right so if steven gets the sapphire preferred and steven gets the platinum card and still wants to refer player two should he refer player two to a sapphire preferred of their own or refer player two to the MX gold for 75 K and $200. Yeah. So, so the Sapphire preferred, at least when I checked the day before recording, this was not yet being able to refer the 80 K offer. So people were getting a lesser offer. I think it was like 60K from referral. So, you know, unless he values his player two's points less than his own,

he shouldn't be referring that card until the referral offer goes up to the 80k which it might do and might even have done by the time this airs um but similar thing with the with the amex uh platinum if if if he doesn't get that special 30k referral offer that's able to refer people to the 100k offer i don't think it's a good idea to have player two except a lesser offer just so that he could get 20k or whatever it is well right no i and i think he was thinking about the gold for player two it's a the gold preferred okay gold which the gold's gold the 75k offer on the gold has been pretty widely available. Standard offer is 60K plus the $200 home furnishings credit through referral. But most people have seen the 75K.

If you keep opening the link or opening different windows and stuff like that, you'll probably see the 75K offer at some point on the gold card. And I think that's a tight race because 75,000 membership rewards points plus $200 is as good, if not better than 80,000 member, or excuse me, ultimate rewards points. However, the ultimate rewards points are so easily combinable. You know, if you, if player two is in the same household, if you're married, you know, if there's a long-term thing where you're going to combine points together, then having ultimate rewards points is easier to combine than,

than membership rewards points. It's not impossible to work out a way for membership rewards points to gel together. They won't all go into one pile, but you can add somebody who's an authorized user and then transfer to their loyalty account and there's some rules there. But with Chase, you could just put the points in the same pile. That's true. That's true. That's a big advantage of if you're going with Player 2, it's certainly easier to manage the whole thing with Chase. Chase has the advantage of that.

If you're doing this in two-player mode, you can keep... I guess that's not really an advantage of Chase, but with Chase doing it, you can just keep one premium card that has the ability to transfer points and have Player 2 just have you know sign up for the premium cards to get the signup bonuses downgrade to the no fee cards that often

have better category bonuses for spend and and then just have them move all the points to uh to player one for redeeming and that way you get the better value for the points while also, you know, reducing annual fees. Amex sort of has that as well. Cause they, they don't actually, they have no fee cards,

completely fee free cards that have full ability to transfer points. So there's plenty of ways to keep points around with them as well. Right. But I think the moral of the story then that we've come to is you should get the Sapphire preferred. You should get the platinum because that offer is insane. And then you should get player two, probably to also get the Sapphire preferred 80 K offer.

If you're looking at a third card, then I think that's probably the one to go for, for easy combined ability. Yeah. I mean, read, if you haven't already read my post about why you should get the, the platinum a hundred K offer now, um, it might, if, if you're really only looking at just one, you might actually be convinced

not to go with the Sapphire, but that's of course up to you. Right. Right. I agree. By the way, I'll say first, first of all, I should say, I prefer membership rewards points over ultimate rewards points, generally speaking, in terms of transfer partners and transferring for luxury flights and that sort of thing. So I really love membership rewards points, but I see the value in the chase angle here because you're only going to be under 524 for so long, probably. And these offers don't often increase on the Sapphire Preferred and the Sapphire Reserve, et cetera. But all that out of the way,

the Platinum offer has just been at us. I mean, if you had to pick one, I would totally agree with Greg. Platinum card is it. Right, right. All right, cool. I actually agree. That brings us to the end.

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