Frequent Miler on the Air - Is Qatar's promo ethical? Is Hilton watching? | Ep 46

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Like, subscribe, and comment! Links to related content below. Greg and Nick discuss: -Qatar Airways's amazing flexible ticket promo. What's exciting, what's not, and is it ethical to game it? See related post here: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/qatar-airwayss-amazing-promo/   -Hilton's watchful eye: Did the claw back Greg's points in response to his post, or is it coincidence? Readers weigh in, we respond. See related post here: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hilton-finally-claws-back-my-points-are-they-watching-me/   -Transferable points report card: Did Greg rate Capital One too low? See related post here: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/transferable-points-programs-compared/   All that and particularly interesting reader feedback and question time this week. Timestamps and links to related content: 4:03 Reader feedback about wanting to use affiliate links Related content: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/how-frequent-miler-the-business-will-survive-covid-19/ 9:46 Qatar's crazy promotion: How it works and what parts of it are actually notable (and which aren't) Read more: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/qatar-airwayss-amazing-promo/ 17:38 Are there ethical implications to taking advantage of the Qatar deal? 27:56 Is Hilton watching Greg? Readers have voted - do they think Greg's clawback was a coincidence or connection? What do we think? Read more: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hilton-finally-claws-back-my-points-are-they-watching-me/ 41:02 Transferable points report card: Is Capital One as bad as Greg rated them? Nick argues for better grades. Read more: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/transferable-points-programs-compared/ 1:04:29 Question of the week: Are the banks keeping tabs on whose links we use? Will they hold it against you if you apply through a particular blogger or referral?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. How's it going? It's going great. You know, it's a beautiful, sunshiny day, so things are looking up. Parts of New York State are reopening, including where I live, so slowly, you know, in phases. But phase one, so it's seeming like a bright summer, you know, spring, summer kind of a day here. How about you? How are things going for you? Good. So I'm thinking that if we come back and listen to these or watch these a year or two from now, it's going to sound really weird to talk about. Now everybody's going to remember this question, but it's still going to sound odd, isn't it?

But what kind of things are opening up? You know, it's construction and manufacturing and nothing particularly exciting. It's just exciting for, well, I say not particularly exciting. It's very exciting if you work in an industry that's reopening, I imagine, to be able to go back to work. So exciting for folks who are in those businesses. Exciting for the rest of us, just in the sense that it feels like we're a little bit closer. The region I live in had all seven of the metrics that they're laying out for reopening in New York. So, you know, that feels good.

It feels like, you know, we don't have more cases here. We seem to have the capacity. So, so that much is good and good news today. Very similar here in Michigan. The numbers have been trending downward for quite a while now. It's looking really good. And they're talking about letting up to 10 people gather by the end of the month. it's weird to think that that's exciting that's exciting but but the small wins small victories yeah seems yeah the things we get excited about now i was excited to find yeast and flour this week so i can make those bagels you made last week right did you did you find bread flour or you know my sister-in-law did and i was able to get a hold of it yesterday so yeah yeah so i couldn't find it but but she did so and and she's been shopping for instacart so she goes

to more stores than uh than i ever see so yeah so the bagel recipe i used to make the bagels for this for the show i did for frega miler um it was very specific you have to use bread flour but i couldn't find any and we had all the work but we had all purpose flour and one of those purposes in under the heading of all it's got to be bagels right it's got to be that's one of the all purposes i mean all you know it doesn't leave a lot of you know fine print there right on that deal so yeah and you know what it worked so had i known that i wouldn't have been hunting for bread flour here i thought it was essential you can literally use that flour for anything it does all purpose all purpose whatever you need i didn't read the fine print on that

need it to power your car whatever you need i didn't read the fine print on that need it to power your car whatever you need well i have some of that too because i made pasta and i've been wanting to make some more so hopefully this weekend weather cooperate and i have a big green egg so i'm looking forward to grilling on the egg this weekend i'm gonna make pizzas one day and i'm gonna make something barbecue the other so you're gonna you're gonna put you're gonna uh cook pizza on the grill yeah yeah so the big green egg you know gets very hot and the thing is with pizza when you're gonna you're gonna put you're gonna uh cook pizza on the grill yeah yeah so the big green egg you know it gets very hot and the thing is with pizza when you're making pizza that's what makes a pizza oven special is that it gets really okay so you have like a pizza stone

or something yeah yeah exactly and you can get the egg up to six seven hundred degrees which you can't usually do in an oven so that's why you know don't usually do a great job of making pizza at home i don't mean you specifically greg, in general, if you're trying in the oven. I understand what you mean. So I was picturing you at first, like putting the flattened dough directly on the grill grates. I don't think that would work. That would be a good video. Had I tried it that way, I guess maybe it would have been comedy gold for the Steakhead Farway Challenge.

One or the other, yeah. Maybe a little. For pizza lovers like us, it'd be very comedy gold for the steak cake. One or the other. Yeah. Maybe a little. For pizza lovers like us, it'd be very sad. Watching it all melt away and burn into a crisp. Yeah. That's true. That's true. It would be.

So I'm looking forward to that. I think we should. So now that we've talked about my eating plans for the weekend, I think we ought to get some feedback. Get some feedback. So it is feedback time. Reader feedback time. Listener feedback time. Watcher feedback. You never know who it's going to come from. so it is feedback time reader feedback time listener feedback time watch your feedback you never know who it's going to come from all kinds of feedback time all purpose feedback time all purpose it's them all bagels we have feedback from tim okay

and tim sent a very thoughtful email and this is just part of it but but it's it's a it's a gem tim says oh well actually let me give a little background. Obviously, you know this, but maybe not all watchers and listeners know this, that when we post links on our best offers page to credit cards, actually, if we post them anywhere on our site to credit cards, we always post the best offer, that best public offer, even if it means we don't get paid for people clicking through and signing up. So there are times where we have an affiliate relationship with a bank. So we have a link to the same credit card, but to a slightly inferior offer, sometimes a much inferior offer, it depends. And so we won't show that affiliate link, we show the better offer to the to our readers. And that way, they're always getting what's best for them. And in turn, we find that we think, you know, readers tend to be

loyal, they appreciate that we're doing what's right for them. So they're more likely to come back to our site, sign up for cards, recommend us to friends, whatever. And so it works out for everybody. It's a big win-win. Anyway, so with that background behind us, Tim says, as a reader, I have used affiliate links on FM's best offers page

to apply for cards. However, even if a public offer is better than an affiliate offer, I think you should display both and let the reader choose. Sometimes the affiliate offer is worse, sometimes better, sometimes the same. I get that. I, for one, would not mind taking a slightly worse bonus if it meant helping FM. If the difference is too big, I will take the better offer, obviously. Any FM followers would do FM justice given the opportunity. So that's a really nice idea. First of all, thank you, Tim.

I mean, that was a very nice email to send. And, you know, I think one of the things that came to me today, and there was another comment somebody made, and I thought, you know, I'm really proud to work for Frequent Miler because I feel like the reputation that you built up specifically, Greg, over the years makes people respect the site. And that is something that I feel really fortunate for. So people like Tim out there having that kind of a sentiment for us, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, seriously.

And I think it's worth us talking a little bit, though, about is it something we're going to do? And why, why not? Right. Right. Well, I know the why not, but I'm sure that you're going to explain that part. Well, actually, let me let me first just say that if it was really easy to do then yes i would definitely do it why not right right like we could literally if we could literally like just stick it in there maybe even in smaller print or something that just says by the way there's an offer that's

you know a little different that would we would get paid if you sign up for that. You know, I don't think anyone would mind. And clearly, some people would like that, because they'd like to give have that option. But it's not that easy. And do you want to talk at all about that? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I could. So, you know, the affiliate relationships come with certain rules. And one of those rules tends to be that they don't want their affiliate link next to a link that's not an affiliate link. So I think that we would run into issues with the compliance team. So they're, they're, they're obviously the, the, the banks want to make sure that their affiliates have accurate information. So when you have an affiliate relationship, they make sure that our offer for that card is accurate and that the details of it are accurate

and linked to the right places and everything else, and that the details of it are accurate and linked to the right places and everything else. Because essentially, the bank is taking the responsibility for that, right, saying that they're, that we're an affiliate, so that we are a reliable source. And so they want to make sure that everything matches to the T with what the bank is publishing on that particular offer. So if you were to have two different offers, that would be viewed as being confusing. And I mean, I understand that perspective from the bank's end of things. So so they wouldn't, I don't think the compliance team would let that fly. Right, right. But what we might be able to do is create another page where people can go to find our affiliate links if they want to do the work to try to find them. And, you know,

it's not gonna be as user friendly, because it won't be side by side. But at least if people want to do it, they can do it. So so that's something I think we should do if we can, we'll have to talk more about. a page of these are FM's affiliate links, if you're specifically interested in that, you know, these are the affiliate offers, but, but yeah, you know, putting them in the same place, while it might seem natural and obvious to folks is not, not something that we can do. So I'll have to find another solution. But I think that's a great idea. Because there are times when the affiliate offer is similar, or perhaps just a little bit worse, but it's a little subjective. There are times where we have to look at it it and we talk and we say, okay, well, which one's the better offer? Because it's a kind of a subjective difference.

And so there are times when our affiliate link, we decide is not the better offer there, but maybe you would disagree with the way that we had chosen that and want to go after the affiliate offer. So I think it does make some sense to have an option somehow. Yeah. All right, cool. We'll do that. So we have it does make some sense to have an option somehow. Yeah. All right, cool. We'll do that. So we have some interesting topics today. I think one of the most fascinating things is the cutter promotion that that has been talked about the last couple days on blogs,

and we just published today as we're as we're recording this, the show, which would be Friday, May 15. Right? Correct. Do you want to summarize what's going on there? Yeah. So basically they're making tickets super flexible. If you're willing to book 2020 travel and you book by September 30th, again, for travel by December 31st to 2020, tickets are theoretically at least super flexible. They're giving you a few different options. One is that your ticket will be valid for two years.

So if you need to change plans, then the ticket can be reused at some point within two years. If you want to cancel your trip proactively and accept a voucher, they'll give you a voucher worth 10% more than the cost that you've paid. So let's say you buy a ticket that's $1,000 right now, you'll get a voucher for $1,100 if you request that that's valid for two years from the date that the voucher is issued. So I think you could actually probably book for later this year and then cancel pretty close to departure and potentially get almost two and a half years to have used that extra 10% value when you include the time between now and the end

of the year. So that's kind of interesting. And it also opens up some possibilities if you just want to buy a cheap ticket in order to turn that into a more valuable voucher and buy a more valuable ticket with it. Then a couple of the other options are less exciting, they're going to give you one that you could instead exchange your ticket for miles at a value of one cent per mile, which I guess if you're looking to top off an account with a few miles might be a cheap way to buy miles, although their program isn't particularly rewarding. But really, the exciting thing that everybody's talking about, the key is that they're allowing you at least theoretically, there's been some problems with it, it seems in the last 24 hours, but at least theoretically,

they're allowing you to change your destination to anywhere within 5000 miles of your original destination, which, you know, if you don't have a great handle on distance 5000 miles is really far. So what everybody's been talking about is Philadelphia to Kiev has been on sale for about $1,600 round trip. And so people have booked that for instance, and then Qatar will let you change it to a destination within 5000 miles of Kiev, which includes places like Hong Kong or the Maldives or things like that. So you could potentially get a much more valuable ticket. And then to add crazy on top of crazy, they will also allow you to change the origin as long as you stay in the same country of origin.

So for instance, let's say you really live in Los Angeles, you could theoretically change that to make it a Los Angeles to the mall. He's ticket or so on. Right, right, right. So, uh, so that's pretty amazing. Cause you could take a cheap ish business class flight, like a $1,600 business class flight and turn that into Q suites, like going halfway across the world and back, um, you know, which are considered, uh, the best or among the best business class seats in the sky.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it looks phenomenal. I haven't flown Q suites. I have flown cutter business class before, but it wasn't the Q suites product. It was before that. And, and it was really good before the Q suites. I imagine the Q suites are amazing. And these days when, you know, business class is probably mostly about the seat and not as much about everything else because of changes due to COVID-19, you know, you're getting like the best seat in the sky is what it looks like for business clients. So that's a pretty great deal. So, and so, and so just to be really clear about the situation,

it's not just that they're waiving change fees, they're waiving price differences as well. We're just letting you say, we, you can change anything within these rules. Without paying the fair difference without paying any fair distance difference, but does, does the flight have to begin before the, by the end of this year, or does all travel have to end by the end?

It says for travel by December 31st, 2020. So I, I took that to mean both begin and end. And in the comments that I've read on it, people have said that they weren't able to switch to anything in 2021. So I think the whole thing has to be completed in 2020. So there's a little gamble in the sense that who knows whether you're going to be able to travel in 2020. And maybe we'll talk about that a little bit. But there's less gamble

than there might otherwise be because they are going to allow you to change your ticket and keep it valid for up to two years or trade it in for a voucher that's valid for two years for 10% more than what you paid for it. So the risk is somewhat low, as long as you think that you will fly Cutter Airways again in the future, and you think that they're going to last through this COVID pandemic. The other issue is that while I just made it sound very easy to change, it sounds like some people are getting pushback now while the first day or so people were able to willy nilly change to anything. It sounds like some agents now are giving them some difficulty over specific

destinations. And maybe they're allowed to change to one city, but not another in the same country. And so there may be some headache in dealing with Qatar Airways. If you book it through a travel agent, I think the travel agent has to take on the headache and make the calls for you. So that might be the way to go if you're going to book this. But it sounds like it at least has been super easy, exactly the way it sounds, like as unbelievable as it sounds for some people. And for others, it's been a little bit of headache and multiple calls and that sort

of thing. So pretty amazing sounding deal. I don't know. What do you think about it? So it's very, very interesting. Let me ask you one more sort of technical question about things. So when I looked at, I think one mile at a time, or maybe it was brief from the wing, I forget who had a map showing 5,000 miles around Kiev where you could potentially go okay yes and what didn't appear to be in there if i if i saw it right right was south africa which is the first thing i thought of where i'd want to go if

i could go um with cutter and but it did say you could make as many changes as you want right no right no it's okay yes Yes, it did. But I know you see where I'm going with that. Yeah, your next step is okay. So you change from Kiev to someplace kind of close to Johannesburg, and then change again to someplace within 5000 miles. Now, at least I don't think so with a person who commented a comment that I had read at one mile at a time was from someone who had called in and was told specifically that if they changed again, the 5000 mile radius would go back to the original destination of Kiev, not the new destination, because otherwise you Yes, theoretically,

forget about South Africa, you could change to let's say Hong Kong, and then change from there to Australia, get yourself a really cheap Australia business class ticket to not the South Africa is an exciting I love it as a destination, but a much more expensive destination typically to visit would be Australia, though, this year, who knows if you'd be able to travel there anyway. But yeah, so you're locked into the original 5,000 miles within 5,000 miles of the original destination. And you know, I brought up the Maldives a second ago, and there was one success story from somebody who changed from Kiev to the Maldives, and then another person who said they were told they couldn't change to the Maldives, and no particular reason why it doesn't seem to violate the terms of the deal at all.

So the terms are pretty wide open and there have been a number of success stories, it seems. So there's a little bit of gamble in doing it. It at least has worked exactly as advertised for some people. Right, right. Now, so you book your travel for up to the end of the year. If you have to cancel, you get the $1,600-ish in credit, right? Correct. that credit to go to Hong Kong in business class, right? Because that that flight is more expensive. So it really, you could actually get a voucher with 10% more. So I guess that $1,600 ticket, you get what 1760. But yeah, a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, when I first read this, on one mile of times, site, I did think it was one of those like oh my god this is so good and and i was actually thinking about the ethical implications of it like is it actually is it is it wrong to take advantage of this right right yeah i mean there's been some debate on that. Yes. But complaining about like publishing this like crazy deal and how to take advantage of it, complained about like people booking a flight in order to get that travel voucher and then immediately turning around and using the 10% more voucher to book something, which I just found kind of funny because to me, that's the sort of the least of this deal and let me explain why for me what doing that that's buying that's essentially like buying a cutter gift card for nine percent off right right and not only that it's one that expires after two years right right would you would

anybody do that i mean like i mean not unless you had immediate plans to use it if you had immediate plans to use it you might right media immediate plans to use it, you might. Nobody's got immediate plans to use anything right now, right? But the second you do that and you book a flight, if they cancel the flight, you're not getting your cash back anymore. You're getting back that credit because you used the credit to book that second flight. Right. You see what I'm saying? Yes.

If you didn't change it into the voucher for 10% more and they cancel your flight, you can get a refund, but once you, but once you've converted it, yeah, to a voucher for 10% more. Yeah.

You're locked into the voucher for two years. Right. So to me, that's, you know, yes. And if, if you're very committed to flying cutter,

it's, it's a fine deal, but it's not even close to a smoking hot deal. Like we see discounts for gift cards, like all the time. It's just not a fine deal but it's not even close to a smoking hot deal like we see discounts for gift cards like all the time it's just not a big deal um the not for cutter airways gift cards to be clear well no no no not for cutter but yeah yeah right right right so so really it's the question is like doing this thing about booking a flight to kiev and then changing it to to where you really want to go. Not that there's

anything wrong with going to Kiev or I know they're pronouncing it differently these days, but I apologize if I'm mispronouncing it. I'm not sure. I'm with you. So yeah, and certainly, I mean, I'm actually kind of interested in visiting there. But I think the reason that that's become the symbol here is because those flights for whatever reason that Philadelphia to the Ukraine or to just Ukraine, I said it wrong already. See, I'm going to get yelled at here from somebody. So from Philadelphia to Ukraine, it just happens to be the cheap market happens. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Um, so yeah. So for a while I thought, oh, we're, you know, tricking the, you know, taking so much advantage of this loosely worded rules to really do this. But the more I saw people writing about it. Roll like bloggers that's right but the more i saw people like successfully taking advantage of it it dawned

on me exactly what you wrote today which is it's pretty clear they knew exactly what they were doing that they knew some people would do this and they were they were okay with that they're basically saying we'll give some people who know how to take maximum advantage of this about a 50 discount for travel that they're going to commit to this year right during a pandemic when nobody's going anywhere right exactly and worst case from you know cutter's point of view is well we might have to give them their money back if we cancel the flight or they do. If they do, then they're stuck with credit with us that they're going to have to pay full price later for some flights with us. And we'll have given them a 9% discount, which wouldn't even be a headline most of the time, right?

Exactly. So it's not, it's not really that mind blowing of a, of a deal to where it's like, oh, we're taking advantage of these poor, you know, this poor airline. I don't, I don't see that at all anymore. No, I don't either. And for anybody who didn't read the post, I kind of, I compared it to buying a camera with a rebate in the sense that the camera company could just discount the camera, right? I mean, they could just drop the price of the camera across the board, but they don't do that. They offer a rebate. Canon and Nikon do this all the time with their high-end DSLR cameras. And why do they do it that way? Well, because they can get the cheapskate like me to buy the camera and get

some of my money. And they know that they'll have to give the rebate to some of the people who mail it in and other people won't jump through the hoops right and cut out the UPCs. And then there's still some people who will stroll into Best Buy oblivious and pay the full price. And so they want to keep the perceived value for those folks that are going to pay that. It's the same kind of thing here. Cutter knows that there will be business travelers who pay the full business class price to go to Hong Kong or to go to wherever it is that it is, you know, that they have in mind to go to that won't have any idea that this promo even existed. But meanwhile, they can lock in 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars of leisure travel that anyone would have laughed at them a week ago, if they had said, listen, we can get people to commit to 1000s of dollars of travel in 2020. Like somebody was in

a room somewhere laughing saying no way that's not possible. You can't do it. And they were like, pull my beer exactly exactly and of course for for the people who see it as a straight up like who aren't thinking of sort of gaming it um it's still a very attractive thing like right like so yeah i might not be able to go to kiev but maybe i can go to germany or, you know, or Morocco or something. Right. And so having it so open ended is really great. And I kind of hope that, you know, other airlines follow their lead.

You know, I hope this is successful for them. Yeah. Because that would be an awesome future of purchasing airfare if if you had some kind of, you know, ability to change your destination if you needed to. Yeah, I mean, it is. It's a terrific promotion. It's a brilliant promotion. Whoever came up with it deserves a raise because certainly, you know, what a way to bring in a whole bunch of money at a time when airlines are not bringing in any money. You know, that's I think it was a very smart promotion. And as I said, in the post that I wrote about it, the purpose of a promotion is to promote the

product and to get people to spend their money, which is exactly what they're doing with this deal. So I don't, I wouldn't have any, any remorse about taking advantage of it. I don't, you know, I don't think that it was something that they meant to help people with while it will help people who need flexibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That's not why they came up with the promo. They came up with the promo to get people to buy tickets. So if you're buying a ticket, that's good for them. It's good for you potentially, if you can take advantage of it. Now, that said, I don't know. I'm not that optimistic that 2020 international travel is going to happen. I don't think I'm going to buy anything because I just,

I don't feel confident enough that I can do it. What about you? Would you? No, I, you know, well, first of all, I have miles, you know, so as long as the award availability is there and Cutter's actually pretty good or historically has been pretty good with business class award availability compared to many other airlines. And, you know, so, so I don't feel like I need to commit my real dollars to Qatar. And that's, that's where really where it scares me is like, same as you, I don't, I don't have a lot of confidence that I'll be flying internationally this year. And so what this really means for me is a very high chance of committing a little over $1,600 times two, you know, assuming

I'd be traveling with my wife to Qatar to, you know, it's just basically saying that's how much I'm committing to you. And I don't have, you know, enough reason to think that I would use those funds. So that's a really bad idea for me. Yeah, yeah, me too. And I said, when I wrote about it, that if I were to travel internationally in 2020, I think it probably more likely be a fairly spontaneous decision within a few weeks of travel where I look at award availability, and there's something that makes sense. And even that, like I said, I think is a really low chance. So I totally agree. I don't think it's worth tying up all the real money dollars. But on the flip side, some people are going to hit the lottery potentially, you know, if you sure travel

does happen, you're going to get probably the best business class experience that you possibly can at this time anyway, you know, a great long flight at a fantastic price, but that's not enough for me now. You know, fantastic prices are great. I like fantastic prices, but for 2020 travel, it's going to take more than a fantastic price to get me to commit any money to it. And I need to see some more fantastic things. Exactly. I'm sure we're going to see plenty of really interesting promotions too. So we're going to have similar conversations the next, you know, I don't know how many weeks, but a lot of weeks. Probably the most exciting thing here is that, you know, we expected that we would see good promotions, right? I mean, you even said this back in March when we went to the very beginning of March before everything started to lock down and we went to the Travel and Adventure show.

And that was one of the things people were asking, what's going to happen? And you said, you think that airlines are going to run crazy promotions and travel companies in general to get us back in the door. And, you know, lo and behold, no shock. You were right about that

because this is definitely something I don't think anyone sort of expected. And so it makes me kind of, you know, curious to see what else people come up with. Curious and optimistic that there'll be more interesting things and things that will we will be able to take advantage hopefully yeah yeah yeah so that'll be that'll be interesting to see speaking of taking advantage of things you had an opportunity to take advantage of hilton this week and and you didn't but maybe

maybe you shot yourself in the foot and and hiltonilton came back to bite you. So what I'm talking about, if you're not familiar with it, is that Greg had written a long time. Well, you know, why don't you tell, you know, the story better than I do. You or 15 months ago, my Hilton account was hacked by someone who just called Hilton and pretended they were me. me in order to do it. And they book stuff with my points. And I called them, you know, I got it all sort of resolved, sort of resolved. And then he did it again somehow. And so I had to call them again and prove it was me. It was a whole, it was a whole ordeal. But eventually, this was like a couple, I think it was a month or two after this happened. They set up a brand new account for me, restored my points, you know, and they had me set it up to a different email address so that, you know, this person who knew my other one couldn't kind of use that again anyway so um all was good in fact all was better than good because they had restored way too many points to my account almost triple the points it was kind of weird because it wasn't like wasn't exactly triple it wasn't double you know so so it's not clear like where they came up with this why that happened or yeah what exactly

happened there so anyway yeah it could have been them just saying hey listen we're sorry we let it get hacked once our bad and then twice my goodness you know fool me twice shame on me so maybe they just gave you a gift you know that would have been nice um but you know you think if they gave you a gift they would say something about it. Take credit for it. When they sent me an email saying my account was restored to this new account and everything, I actually wrote them back back then. So this was more than a year ago. I said, thanks. This is great. And by the way, there are too many points in my account, but I'm not complaining.

Just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to do anything about that. And so that was it. Which is pretty nice. I mean, that's a pretty nice guy thing to do, right? I mean, it's one thing when you're at the checkout lane and they forgot to scan your big screen TV and you say, hey, listen, you forgot to scan that because you don't want the employee to get in trouble. But in this case, talking about a phony made up currency that they gave you a whole bunch of and it was pretty nice of you to to write and say hey listen guys you gave me a little too much there you know i i thought i was being a stand-up guy and giving them a chance to to correct their

mistake and um and so fast forward more than a year and and I wrote a post about Virgin Atlantic. Most of the post had nothing to do with Hilton whatsoever. It was about Virgin Atlantic being in financial trouble, and what was I going to do? Because I have over a million Virgin Atlantic miles. miles and well one of the things i could do with those miles is transfer them one to one and a half i think it is to hilton points and when i explained why i wasn't going to do that part of the reason was well i have way more hilton points than i need because of and i told the old story, like a very condensed form. Fine. You know, so I published that.

Oh, in that post. In that post. Yeah. I was going to say there was a little bit more there. Go ahead. That's true. So in that post, I said something like, and Hilton, if you're reading this, feel free to take back the points. They're not really mine.

Something like that. Is that how you remember it? That is almost, almost to a T how I remember it. Yes. Okay. So three days later later i think it was it was a very very short time later i get an email from the hilton hilton's fraud department the same people who had emailed me way back when to say your account was restored more than a year ago that you had responded to more than a year ago more than a year ago saying uh we have finally corrected a thank you for your email first of all it said so email of more than it was replying to that email from about 14 months ago thank you for your email

there was like a merge error or something we've corrected that and your account will soon show the updated totals. So I got the email. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of points, right? They did. I mean, I had close to 900,000 at that point. And afterwards I had, I don't know, I think about 300,000. So yeah, it was a lot of points. So that's fine.

I'm not upset about that. I always feel like somebody's watching me. We've entered the musical entertainment phase of the show. I'll stop with the karaoke right there. That's as much as anybody wants to hear. No, that was good. That was good. So the question then becomes, I mean, put the karaoke right there. That's as much as anybody wants to hear. That was good. That was good. So,

so the question then becomes, I mean, can't just be a coincidence, right? I mean, it was three days after you wrote and said, Hilton, if you're watching,

you know, take the points back and they took them back. I mean, so was Hilton reading the post? I mean, they had to have been right. Well, I mean,

it may be, but you know, it just seems weird to me that the the department that handles this kind of stuff would for one be be the type of department that'd be reading this stuff so maybe they weren't you know maybe someone else read it and sent the email to this department actually that's plausible that's more plausible than the fact that the fraud team was reading your virgin atlantic post right right right so you know yeah i mean sure it could be it could be that hilton reads all our posts but more likely they they have um you know well i, I don't know. There could be fans of our site that read it all the time.

Right. Certainly possible. Possible. There could be. They should be. There could be executives who have news aggregators that look for all, you know, articles that not about Hilton and it was like way down in the post, still not that hard to find that kind of information, clip it out and make it part of a summary for executives. So that could have been happening. And so someone at a high level may have seen it, sent a message off saying this has to be fixed.

You know, I don't know. I don't know. But our readers have weighed in, but I put out a poll on Twitter. I haven't seen the results of this yet. So I'm kind of curious. Well, at least before we started this show,

I checked and it was along the lines of, um, 84% on Twitter and 82% on Facebook or vice versa that believe that Hilton's watching. That it wasn't a coincidence. Not a coincidence. So the overwhelming majority of people who've read it are buying into the conspiracy theory that Hilton'll be watching paying attention and right basically that i poke the bear and i shouldn't have is basically what the what i'm being called yeah so do you think that 84 of the people really believe that or do you think that there's a chunk of people that just

kind of want to believe that they want to be like haha they got you blogger i mean do you do you think that do you think anybody's kind of like rooting for the fact that you you got caught there or or do you think that people really believe it what i mean and and more importantly what do you think do you well first i want to hear from you well which which do you think is is the truth i think it was a total coincidence i don't have any chance that hill no that really read the virgin the Virgin Atlantic post and then somebody took the effort to go through with making sure they took your points away. I don't think that Hilton cares that much about the few points that Greg got in the overall scheme of things. No, I don't think I think it was just legitimately at least one reader had commented that their points have been

doing all sorts of wonky things in the last week or so because Hilton had been updating their systems. So I think it's much more likely that a computer really did catch this as they updated things. I mean, you know, I think that people often assume even that we read every post from every blog and, you know, I would love to. And before I worked for a blog and spent, you know, a good chunk of my day writing posts, I did read lots and lots and lots of posts from other blogs. And I still do read lots, but certainly not all of them. There just aren't enough hours in the day to read a blog post and write our blog posts and, you know, plan out things and record stuff like this and blah, blah, blah. So there's lots of posts that I miss. So I got to imagine

that the Hilton fraud department and most of the departments at Hilton are not reading every single post on every single blog every single day. I think it's unlikely. So no, they're definitely not. They're definitely not. And I agree with you. I think I think it's a coincidence, most likely a coincidence. Most likely, right? I mean, I don't know. But most likely a coincidence, you know, possibility it could have been connected, but I. Right. Right. I mean, so going into this, before I started talking and explaining it, I actually was much more on the coincidence side. But as I thought about the possibility that Hilton's a large organization, there's a lot of people who probably do read our posts. It's possible. So it's possible.

It's possible somebody wants a promotion and they read this and they're like, hey. Somebody saw it and just forwarded it off to someone and said, hey, can you look into this? And they looked into it and was like, oh, yeah, that's screwed up. Right, right. It is certainly possible and plausible. I don't think that there's as much of a nefarious program reader out there who's out there looking to find ways that system, you know, I think that people sometimes give too much credit to blogs in that sense. Like, I think that they're certainly loyalty, people are checking for mentions of their program and

whatnot. But I think that the people at the top probably have other things to do with their time. The time they worry about what we have to say about their loyalty program so so uh so anyway so i think it was probably a coincidence but you're right there is certainly some chance that out of the you know tons of hilton employees that there is somebody who's sitting at home not in an office right now because the office is closed and happened to have read our post in their free time and was like hey we can fix it so you're right right right possible and and the and the truth is like people see like patterns and and so you know coincidences that are unbelievable happen all the time in various ways but um so this seems like you, it's such a big coincidence that I just written that post, just, you know, just said, Hilton, if you're reading this, do this. But, you know, I don't know how to explain it well, but there's just so many coincidences that we just don't examine that that hard and and so it if you just look at this one

thing it seems like oh it's too big of a coincidence to to have happened like that but but if you look at all of the things that didn't happen that that right uh you know there's there's a whole universe of things that that are not interesting because they just happen on whatever schedule they happen and there's no there's no coincidence going on that this is just one tiny thing and in like millions of happenings and and so yeah uh chances are it's coincidence mostly most likely a coincidence we're gonna get a lot we're gonna get a lot of feedback on the oh i know i know you guys are so. Right. How can't you see this? Obviously. Obviously, it was going to.

I know. I know we are. Nobody's going to want to agree with this. That 16% of people out there will. But even that group might have just shrunk. So maybe not so many of those anymore. That's totally okay. Please do comment wherever you're watching or listening to this.

If you're in your car. Well, you're probably not in your or listening to this. If you're in your car, well, you're probably not in your car listening to the podcast. I don't know if you're jogging and listening to the podcast, then just tell Siri or something to send us a comment. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of disagreeing,

you, you updated a post this week. And as I read it, I realized that I disagreed with some of the things that you said what i just agreed with me yes i did believe it or not if you can imagine a world where i would disagree with you i agreed with a few things in there yeah yeah so greg wrote a post or updated it anyway this week about uh it was a comparison of transferable points programs so it was a comparison of chase ultimate rewards mx membership rewards city thank you points and

capital one miles and i'm doing the quotation for the people who are listening with miles because they call them miles but we know that they're not really miles more like points but anyway um you had this comparison post where you graded each program. You gave them an A, B, C, D, E, or F. I did. No E's, though. No E's. No. No E's.

Actually, there might not even be any D's that I think about it. I think there was. I can't recall. There's no D's. I'm looking now. Okay, never mind. No D's. So A, B, C, F.

A, B, C, F. That was my grading scheme. Yeah. So A, B, C, or an F based on a number of different metrics. For example, the value and cashing the points out for cash, you know, obviously, if you can get more cash than if you get an A, and if you don't get very good cash value, then you get an F, etc. So there were a couple of specific ones that I disagreed with. And one of them was the value of redeeming points

for travel. And by this, we mean for paid travel, not transfers to award partners. So for example, Amex is really poor in that because if you redeem for travel through their portal, you get like what, eight tenths of a cent per point or something like that. Six tenths of a cent per point. It depends on the travel. You can get a penny per point for flights. For flights, right. Yeah.

For hotels and other things, really poor. I think plus yeah so so capital one you get one cent per point in value and and the venture card the or the spark miles card the cards that you'd use to earn those points earn two points for every dollar so essentially earning two cents for every dollar spent but i think probably the metric you were we were working on is it's one cent per point towards paid travel. And so you gave them, I can't remember if it was a B or a C, but you gave them a mark. I gave them a B. A B.

And on the flip side, you gave Chase an A. Now, I'm going to presume that you gave Chase an A because you can redeem through the travel portal. And if you have the Sapphire Reserve, you can get one and a half cents per point. If you have the Sapphire card, you get 1.25 cents per point. So you said that Chase was better at redeeming for travel than Capital One. Before I tell you why you're wrong,

let me just make sure. Is that truly what you believe? You think that Chase is an A and Capital One is a B in terms of redeeming for travel? Based on sort of the value of your points for redeeming for travel, yeah. So, and why do you believe that? Because you can get 1.5 cents per point value from Chase. It with a $550 a year for the Sapphire reserve.

Right. Uh, yeah, but you know, I mean, that's not accounting for all the rebates and things that you get with the Sapphire reserve. So it's not necessarily that much, uh, different, uh, in net cost, depending on how many rebates you get, than the Capital One card. So I wasn't basing it on the annual fees being involved. I was just saying, you know, straight up, you could get 1.5. With Capital One, it's one, but I was giving them some credit for the flexibility. You know, I mentioned in the post how it's really good because you can, you know, book directly, you could take advantage of discounts and deals and portals and so on. So, you know, I think of it and I say, okay, well, if you're into loyalty programs and travel, somewhat, obviously, if you're looking to book paid travel

through the portal rather than using points, maybe you're not all in on this loyalty thing, but at least you're somewhat in on this loyalty thing, then Capital One is a far superior currency, I think, because A, you can book anywhere. So you can book directly with a hotel chain and then you get your elite night credits, you earn hotel points and you get your elite benefits. So breakfast and things like that, that you aren't going to get when you're booking hotels

through a program like the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal. So that to me creates more value. And then you got to look at earnings on the earnings side. Now that gets complicated because Capital One only has one card, basically, or two cards that earn the same kind of a thing. So you get one option. It's two points for every dollar, 2% towards paid travel. With Chase, you're going to have to pair whatever premium card you have with another card.

So you're going to either have the Sapphire Reserve and the Freedom Unlimited, for instance, or maybe a Chase Inc. business card with Capital One. It's just going to be the venture. Now, see, I look at that and I say, okay, well, there are many people that aren't going to get a business card and that aren't going to manufacture spend. We had that conversation recently where you said you felt like a lot of the people listening probably aren't manufactured spending. So if you're not manufactured spending and using the ink card to do that to earn points, then basically your best deal with chase is earning one and a half points per dollar, and the freedom unlimited.

And so if you're to compare apples to apples, I look at it and say, Well, if you're comparing a sapphire preferred, which has a $95 annual fee, which is fairly similar to the Capital One Venture card, then you're going to get 1.25 cents per point. And at best, you're earning generally one and a half points. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say at best. On most of your spend, you're probably earning one and a half points per dollar with the Freedom Unlimited. And so if you're redeeming those at 1.25 cents each, you're getting 1.875 cents in value towards paid travel. And it's not even that much because I don't value that in full because you can't use the AAA discount and you can't get any points from the hotel

program and you aren't going to get any elite benefits. So I don't even value it at the full cash value at that. So I think you're arguing the wrong category. Okay. So, so my chart has different categories that I graded. Earned points was one of them. Yeah. And, you know, redeeming for different types of travel were different ones. And, and so I was separating those things out. So if you look, if you, if you, if, if we take

earned points as a separate conversation, we'll debate that in a second okay and you just say just the value of redeeming for paid travel then it's like you already have points what value are you going to get for those points redeeming for paid travel chase you can get the same exact one cent for point if you want to book direct right right so okay all right no so to me yeah i don't i don't think you have a Right, right. So, okay. probably book a rate for 10% savings, if you're able to stack a portal and any kind of a discount or just a discounted corporate rate or AAA rate or whatever it might be, probably you could generally pay about 10% less net than what you're going to pay through the portal. So to me, that one and a half cents is really more like 1.35 cents at best, I think I'm booking hotels and that's assuming hotels, but hotels, yeah. Flights is the only thing.

Yeah. And, and we just said it a little while ago that we're not going to invest our dollars in flights. Right. So that's kind of like investing your dollars in flights, isn't it? I'm not really sure what you mean by that,

to be honest. I said, I wasn't going to invest in cutter. Okay. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. This is not doing that. Well, right. But I, I said I wasn't going to invest in Qatar. Okay. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. This is not doing that. Well, right.

Okay. If you're going to redeem for flights, I totally agree. You're getting good value redeeming for flights most of the time, provided that the airline you want is on the ultimate rewards portal and they have the best price. Or you can go with Greg's method of getting a hold of somebody that can actually book the best price over the phone, then yes, it's very good for that. But for any other kind of travel, other than flights, it's not, I don't think that much better than Capital One. So how often would you cash out your ultimate rewards points at one cent each in order to get the same value as you would with Capital One? I wouldn't if, well, I wouldn't at all because I would transfer to partners. If I were not interested in transferring to partners, I bet I would cash out more ultimate

rewards points at one cent each because I think I could use the money more effectively than I can use the one and a half cents through the travel portal. Because I'm, I would, I don't book very many paid flights. So I rarely ever book the one and a half cents per point for paid flights. So that's not a common redemption for me. More often, I'm using points to book with transfer partners is in terms of flights. And then when it comes to hotels, I do spend some money cash on hotels. And I rarely ever even consider using the ultimate rewards portal for that because a I want the elite benefits and B I can usually get a better price elsewhere. So I think that the value of having capital one points to be able to do that and get reimbursed for it is a better deal.

And I think that when you look at it now, I have a hard time looking at it in a vacuum, because you're right, right earning points side, I think is a big piece of it because if you're going to have the, either the Sapphire reserve or the Sapphire preferred, you're going to need another card. Otherwise you're looking at getting one and a half cents towards paid travel for every dollar you spend rather than getting two cents for every dollar. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to help you a little bit with your argument. All right. So let's move over to the earned points section. So there, I gave Chase an A for earned points, and I gave Capital One a C.

And now that we're talking this through and me talking about dividing it up, I realized that was a mistake. And let me back, the reason I gave Capital One a C was because you're essentially earning one and a half miles, airline miles for all spent. So I was forgetting about the two cents per dollar, basically, because it transfers at less than one to one to airline miles. But if I want to keep true to this kind of division between the earning and the redemptions, then I need to give

them a B, I think, for saying, yeah, they don't have any category bonuses, so they're not going to reach an A, but they're actually very good at the bottom end of the everywhere spend because you're getting 2x everywhere. So I do think that one deserves a higher grade. Okay. All right. So at least I got you halfway. There you go. Got you tempted to agree a little bit. Yeah. So that was one piece of it that I thought, again, you know, if you're going to be not using the business cards, not MSing, then I feel like if your goal is to get paid travel out of your credit cards, I think Capital One makes more sense than Chase. Is that not right? If your goal is to book paid travel. And you're not using like the freedom card to get at the 5X rotating categories.

Okay. All right. So, I mean, that certainly has some value for people. I'll give you that then. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think it's a little more complex with Chase because you do have to juggle then two or three cards and knowing when to use the freedom and where to use the freedom. Which, hey, I mean, listen, if you're listening to this podcast, I hope you're spending some time doing those things.

And I'm not trying to say that you should give up on Chase and go to Capital One by any stretch. But I think that if your main goal is to book paid travel, I don't think that Chase would be my go-to. Yeah. So, you know what I'm realizing, though? Man, my earn points category also includes the ability to earn points many other ways, not just through spend. And so it's like signup bonuses. Well, capital one, you can't do much there. Chase has a lot more opportunities, even if they're restricted by some things, they have a lot more refer friend deals and they have their portal. You know, there's just a lot of things going on.

So then I think what you really need is two different categories. You need earned points from spend and earned points from other or something like that. Yeah, because you're right. I mean, Chase, you can accumulate points much more quickly and in huge quantity quickly. And then from different sources, like you said, category bonuses, all of that. So Chase has some advantage there but i think that if you're primarily looking to book paid travel and you're looking at based on your spending patterns you're not going to open a bunch of different credit cards and i think capital one would be my pick i think but but certainly if you're willing to

open multiple credit cards and uh you're willing to follow the different category bonuses and whatnot then i'll give it to you that That chase certainly as a better play there. Now there was another one that I told you I disagreed with. Can you jog my memory? Domestic travel. Oh, domestic travel. Yeah.

You gave capital one, a C for domestic travel for domestic. I gave them a C for domestic flight awards. You transfer partners. Why explain why? Um, so, well,

they're only the only domestic airline that they support is JetBlue, and it's not one-to-one. So, you know, Chase has Southwest and United and JetBlue all one-to-one. Amex has Delta and JetBlue. Oh, no, they're not one-to-one um amex has delta and jet blue oh no they're not one-to-one with jet blue i forget who else the amex has but um so amex i gave a b2 because they've got them they at least have a major u.s-based airline um and city i gave a b2 i can't remember why they got a B. They have JetBlue one-to-one. I can't remember. I have to look at my notes there.

I guess you probably gave Chase an A because they have United in Southwest also. Right. So you gave them an A. So, you know, Southwest is a very strong program for domestic travel in particular but united really makes it possible for people especially if they're not interested in sort of like figuring out the whole foreign program thing it really makes it possible for them to um you know for for almost anyone to book domestic travel to anywhere at reasonable rates you It might not be the best possible rates, but reasonable. I remember now why Citi got a B was because,

I think it was because of the Turkish thing. Because even though they don't necessarily have the sort of easiest partners to book domestic travel with, they have one of the cheapest partners to book domestic travel with. Which has gotten relatively easy because I see lots and lots of availability online these days. Not every airport, not every flight, but I definitely see a good bit. I found that there's a lot anyway, more than there was before.

And now that you can mix carriers on an award and all the rest of that online, there's certainly, I think, a more useful program in general. Obviously, it doesn't matter for domestic travel but for international it does anyway i thought that a c for capital one was i i thought that was an unfair rating now what you had explained as to why was because of jet blue not being a one-to-one although again you're earning two points for every dollar spent so it's not necessarily as far off of most Chase cards as it sounds. But you said that they didn't have they were missing a couple of things like for example, obvious, they don't have British Airways obvious, which Chase does and Amex does.

And B, they didn't have Virgin Atlantic, which can be great for booking Delta awards, which you're right, Virgin Atlantic can be great for booking Delta awards. But for domestic awards, Air France would probably be the same price, wouldn't they? Um, no. For booking Delta awards? Yeah, you know better than I do. No, yeah, no, unfortunately, no. The, um, Air France has sort of a, almost a distance-based award pricing for Delta flights domestically. So for a very short flight, there are times when Air France is actually cheaper, but it's only for very short flights and they're quite a bit more expensive in my experience

for medium flights and definitely for long flights. And do they charge by the segment like Virgin Atlantic does? They don't, no. So in that case that is an advantage to using air france for sure and and that's what i had assumed without having looked up any rates on air france was that i looked at it and said well virgin atlantic can be good for domestic delta travel if you live in a delta hub then it can be great if you don't live in a delta hub then it's not any good to you because you're going to pay for each segment individually so

terrible partner for that and air france would be better. So, um, so yes, there's some advantage for those that live in Delta hubs, but for people who live in all of those other cities, I felt like Capital One has as good a booking option for Delta flights as anybody else. And Capital One has a number of good foreign transfer partners. You're going to pay about the same price for domestic awards that are open to partners anyway, if you're using Etihad to fly on American Airlines, though American does have their web specials these days, the standard ish price of 12.5 each way, domestically, you could book those through Etihad. So and that is going to beat out British Airways again, if you don't have a direct flight, And that's the problem for anybody who doesn't live somewhere that has a direct flight that

you're going to. Then I think having Etihad as a transfer partner is a better deal. So I felt like that Capital One has decent enough partners with Singapore, although Singapore is not a good ratio. So that's perhaps a bad example. But they had a number of domestic partners that i thought i'm sorry international partners that can be good for booking domestic flight that i think actually capital one is worth at least a b well you know so for a lot of these

grades if i had pluses and minuses things would be different but i had decided when i first created the post way back when i'm like you know what i've i've spent all this time adjusting the size of these images for the a's and b's and c's you didn't want to add yeah it was like a real pain so anyway i was like all right i'm not doing pluses and minuses so um so it forced me to do like what seemed like drastic differences so instead of just saying yeah they're just a little bit worse than you know amex for domestic flights let's say it it forced me to give a whole letter grade down and do i really feel like they're a whole letter grade down no but uh but that's what happens when when you force things into big buckets because i i do think they're not as good for domestic travel

as a in general and that and and you know what i would be shocked if anyone agreed with me 100 on all these ratings i mean mean, I barely agree with myself on these. I think that was part of the reason I wanted to disagree here to show that these things are tough. It's hard, you know, when you come up with values and you come up with comparison points, it's tough because everything is pretty subjective. You know, I knew that when you said that, that Virgin Atlantic is good for Delta flights, I thought to myself, well, for you, because you live in Detroit, but for me, I'm never going to, well, for you, cause you live in Detroit. For me, I'm never going to,

I, the only fly to Atlanta from, from Albany. That's it. I got one Delta flight. I can book. And I'm not going to book that. They don't fly to Detroit from,

from all. Oh no, I'm sorry. They do fly to Detroit also. I apologize. Forget about me. And I actually use Virgin Atlantic miles to book a flight to Detroit last year to go see.

Where else could you possibly want to travel domestically? That's it. I got Atlanta and I got Detroit. Anything more and I'm going to be paying a lot more in miles than I want to for a domestic flight. So, but of course, if you live in Detroit or Atlanta or even New York or Seattle, I imagine then, you know, it's a great partner to have. So, so it very much varies based on your situation. And I think that the capital one is easy to dismiss, but I think that they actually can be pretty good for a lot of people, especially, you know, if you look at booking domestic travel, if that's what you're going

to be doing over the next year, then I think picking up two points per dollar and, uh, and getting the signup bonus on that card, if you're eligible for it, I think serves you better than getting one chase card. Um, yeah. And we've talked about that before. If you're, if you're eligible for it i think serves you better than getting one chase card um yeah and we've talked about that before if you're if you're only going to have one card what you know what's best and this wasn't trying to get at that this was you know of course not broadly looking at the programs and trying to do something impossible one it wouldn't be capital one if i could only pick one it would probably be program it would be capital one i think actually one card maybe it would we talked about this recently i guess if i could only pick one, it would probably be one program. It wouldn't be capital one. I think actually one card. Maybe it would.

We talked about this recently. I guess if I had to pick one program, it would be membership rewards. Um, but Chase, yeah, like two probably. Right.

Um, although the funny thing is during current times with, with, you know, without having international travel on the horizon, Chase is looking better and better to me. Why? You know, if I could have a program to have right now and I had to pick, I think it would be Chase Ultimate Rewards because of Hyatt, because of Southwest, because of, well, I'm not going to say United. I think just having a real domestic airline like that, like

if anyone had American, that would be very valuable because all three of the big ones have like now when you book through them, they sometimes have these like award sales or however they do the pricing in their magic ways. It doesn't make a difference. They're sometimes really good deals. And so, yeah, so having United directly is really good. Now, of course, and for the same reason, having Delta directly with Amex is really good deals. And so, uh, yeah. So having United directly is really good now, of course. And for the same reason, having Delta directly with Amex is really good. It's just too bad.

They charge that small fee to transfer to Delta, which is ridiculous, but, uh, luckily it's a small fee. So it's not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you might be right about that in terms of domestic travel. I think that, uh, it's hard for me to disagree with that sentiment right now, especially like you said, with the web special type pricing that they all have with their dynamic pricing. Now there are times when that program, you know, oddly, it's for years, it's been the case that if you wanted to book a flight on any particular airline, really, it's rare that that airline's miles were the best deal for booking. Absolutely. Right. Generally not going to be your best option, but now with variable pricing and all three carriers,

there certainly are times where using that airlines miles are going to be your best bet. So, and, and usually for economy flights, right. For economy. Yeah, correct.

Correct. If your aim is to fly business, then you probably want to deal with, uh, with international partners. Okay. So that brings us to the end of that argument, I guess. So that brings me to the question of the week. All right. Which I think was a pretty interesting question. So, uh, and this one, and if you're

watching on YouTube, I'm sorry, my face just moved way up. It was cause I was trying to scroll and see who this was from. And I've already missed it. John, John says, hi guys, love the blog and podcast and Q and A's. I know bloggers are motivated to push referral links, Hi, guys, love the blog and podcast and q&a. I know bloggers are motivated to push referral links FM less so which I respect and hope means you can give me an honest answer on this one. When I apply for a credit card, do banks keep tabs on whether I'm applying using referral links or affiliate links? I think he means as well, especially links from travel bloggers or points maximizers. My concern here, which is admittedly a bit paranoid, he says, is that if they or that they may catch on to me, if they catch on to me,

they may be less motivated to approve me for their cards if they know that I'm a points maximizer too. I know bloggers want us to use their referral links to support the blogs we like and I want to do that. But in the back of my mind, I've always been wondering if there's a downside to this. Or is all the bank cares about whether I'm a profitable customer, regardless of which links I'm using to apply for their cards. Obviously, the banks are getting business from the bloggers, which is why they support referral links. But I'd love to know if they're tracking how I found out about them. And if they could theoretically use this in a punitive way against me in the future. Thanks. So John wants to know, are the

banks going to come after him? Because they know he's a gamer. He reads frequent miler. Right. So I thought that was a great question. You know, yeah, some people might say, wow, that sounds paranoid. But I think it's actually a legitimately really good question. It sort of reminds me in spirit of when people travel, like, let's say, on business class, and they know they use miles. And there's a lot of people worried that the flight attendants or someone knows that they're there on miles and isn't going to treat them as well. And, you know, I've never seen that actually happen, and I don't think it actually I mean, I don't know what banks do with our information, but I have a number of reasons for thinking that the answer is no, that it doesn't hurt in any way. One is that a lot of the banks, chase including amex um deal with us as advertised

like as um we're sort of advertising their products they have affiliate relationships with us and they pay us if you if someone uses our links and signs up we get paid a commission and and to be clear that varies and it's there's not it's not every card again we talked in the beginning that right you know you can always tell when you go to our best offers page which links are affiliate links and which links are not and and you know we obviously maintain the best offers there so but yes the fact that they choose but the point is right, if they were that concerned about our website or the Points guy or, you know, any of these blogs, they would stop having that relationship with us, right? So that's one thing.

I think they would do that before they would punitively, you know, do anything to anybody who signed up through our links, you know? Right. What's the point there? To pay us and then punish the people that signed up through our links you know like what's the point there to pay us and then and then punish the people that signed up and in fact along those lines the one and only case that i'm aware of where people where a bank used data about like who signed up from a blogger was for the purpose of seeing are these uh websites uh bringing us valuable customers you know so if people are just signing up and then canceling right away after getting the signup bonus then they're not valuable customers and so and the reason the bank did that analysis wasn't to punish those individual people who signed up. It wasn't at all. It was to

punish the publisher, basically. Decide whether or not they want to pay us, right? By saying, okay, we're not going to give you affiliate links anymore because you're not profitable to us. And it's not something that's going down to the individual level because they know there's tons of people that sign up through our links that are good customers. And yes, there's going to be the gamers that they're not happy about. But again, the reason they make these affiliate links available is because overall they're seeing the business as profitable. So was it John? John, I think you're safe.

I think so too. I think, you know, I look at it and I say, it's kind of like if you've been watching the last dance, the Michael Jordan documentary at all, I've been watching it. I was a big fan back in the day. My wife and I were just been watching it as well. Oh yeah. Yeah. I watched all the games back in the day.

So it's been so much fun kind of reliving that, you know, it's funny. I look at it and I look at these sneaker contracts, right? That's kind of become a news thing now. And I read about how Zion Williamson, I think he got what $75 million in a sneaker contract from Nike. And I say, Wow, how can one person be worth $75 million in advertising, but clearly they are because if they weren't, if they weren't selling more in shoes, then the 75 million, they're going to pay him, they wouldn't be paying him that, right? You know, exactly. You look at that deal with Michael Jordan, they said they hoped to have sold 3 million in sneakers in the first four years, and they sold 126 million the first year

in shoes, you know, and that was in 1985 or something, right? So, so you look at it and say, I think that banks obviously have decided here that they make a lot more money than they spend. And so obviously, they're gonna they're gonna continue to do that. So yeah, I doubt very much that you would see anything now can they track and do they know what link you signed up through? Of course. I mean, that's the whole purpose of having different affiliate links or different affiliates and, and the referral links are the same thing. Obviously, they know whose link you signed up through. I'd be very skeptical of the thought that they're going to punish you

because of who you signed up through. They want you as a customer. That's why they're offering you a bonus. Exactly. So, yep. So, there you go. So, solved. Solved. The mystery that remains unsolved to me is why Michael Jordan's eyes now are so yellow in the current day what's with that i don't i don't know i i guess i hadn't really noticed that really i do yeah you're not gonna be able to watch it now without us i know sunday night i'm gonna be sitting there ruining the rest of your time i was trying to pay attention to what's going on but now i can only look at his eyes well i think that brings us to the goodbye song. So thank you guys very much for being out there.

If you've been listening along and you're curious to read more about what we've been talking about, find out more about Frequent Miler, you can go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. That's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe, where you can get on our email list, join our Facebook group, find us on Twitter and all those fun places. So you'll check that out. And you can always check out the rest of the posts. Once you've subscribed, you get those instant or daily emails and read even more about what we've been discussing. Thank you guys very much for being here with us. Thanks, Greg. And we'll see everybody again next week. Thank you, Nick. Bye, everybody.