Frequent Miler on the Air - Is there a new sheriff in town? Is now the time to stop applying? | Frequent Miler on the Air

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

Subscribe here and visit: thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe for more from FM. This week Greg and Nick discuss: -Citi's latest crazy move. --Do recent developments on the credit card scene signal us to stop applying? -Greg places to travel in the USA --Our favorites from StayCay week 1 -And more! Timestamps: 00:28 Reader feedback: Should the "pod" have its own post? 4:35 A new segment: What crazy thing has Citi done this week? 6:40 Emirates sweet spots 11:24 American Airlines: The most customer-unfriendly airline? A new round of shut downs and increased bag fees. 15:40 Is here a new sheriff in town? Is he patrolling other programs? 17:54 Amex clawbacks unfair given COVID-19 21:25 Chase is tightening the belt. Will other issuers? Should we stop applying for Chase cards? What about other issuers? 31:10 Travel: What are the resorts that most excited Greg from his series this week? 47:42 StayCay Week 1 wrap up 1:02:17 Question of the week: Should one cancel a Virgin Atlantic award and transfer points to Hilton out of fear that Virgin Atlantic will shut down?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. Today we're going to talk about whether or not American Airlines has completely lost it. They might have. It's quite possible. Yes. And we've got a number of other juicy topics too, but instead of asking you how you're doing today, I know you're doing fine. I'm fine.

We're going to hop right into reader feedback time. All right, let's do it. Let's go. This one, I know you saw this already. This one's from Larry. Okay. Larry said, I noticed this week you combined the post about the pod. And remember, pod is the cool way of saying podcast. Right. Little did I know. Recently learned. Yeah. Now I'm hip to it. With a post about the week in review articles. I kind of like the standalone about the pod you had a few times before, if I remember correctly. It gives a place to comment exclusively on the pod.

There were a few good pod-related comments in prior weeks. So I thought, I thought, I know you answered Larry directly, but I thought that'd be a good topic for us to discuss. Sure. Yeah, I agree. Go ahead. And here I was going to say, what is it you had in mind to talk about? Yeah. So the pod, I guess I'll, I'll, I'll address more or less. I think what I said to Larry that the pod has never really had its own post because this is, in fact, something we do for our week in review post each Saturday. So every Saturday you find the video content for this embedded in our week in review post. And then, of course, people have questions, comments, they can leave them there. Now, we have been also doing a Frequent Miler live every Thursday. And every Thursday I post that on the Frequent Miler site

so that people can ask questions if they have specific questions to ask for our live broadcast. So that is a dedicated place, but we don't have a dedicated place necessarily for questions about the pod, so to speak, unless you leave them on the platform where you listen maybe, and maybe you'd see them. Right. Well, so that's, I think, worth discussing. Should we? Should we have a dedicated post? Because the Week in Review has become kind of that, but it also is a review of all the and on its own. So I can see the argument for that. On the flip side, I like the idea of giving people who are listening the opportunity to also read about all the other stuff that we've written about throughout the week. So I kind of like the idea of drawing the two audiences together in one post as it is. So I actually think I prefer it the way it is. The other thing I like about the way it is, is we talk about

some things on this that we don't necessarily write about on the site. And so I think having it in with the Week in Review gives the people who regularly read a chance to pick up those tips if they want to listen in, but also kind of keeps the discussion in a place that perhaps isn't as, you know, standout-ish. It doesn't stand out. Like instead of giving you to say something that we don't want to public. Is that what you mean? I mean, I guess, and not that we always divulge secretive information, but I feel like now and then there are some tips that we talk about here that I feel like if it had its own post, it may,

we may not be able to talk as freely. I don't know. Am I wrong? What do you think? Do you think we should do the separate post? I'm totally opposed. Yeah. I'm kind of on the fence i mean i could see us doing i could see us friday night just spitting out a late night post that's nothing but embedding the the podcast and um and if we have the the time stamps by then that's basically the content and it shouldn't you know it wouldn't take very long but um and still do like i do like i agree with you i like this saturday morning post being the combination of the review of our of our uh posts for the week and a review of our podcast right you know it's like one place for the whole week in review. Yeah.

So I wouldn't change that. But the question is, is it worth adding another one as a dedicated thing? Might be. Might draw more. We'll give that a shot. Yeah. I mean, why not?

I guess it won't hurt necessarily. So might as well give it a shot. Yeah. I think that's something that we can look at doing. See how we can. Yeah. All right.

Let's do it. All right. Good suggestion, Larry. See? See? We get feedback every now and then. We talk about it like this. And then sometimes it improves things. And something go? Yeah. All right. Let's do it. All right. Good suggestion, Larry. See? See? We get feedback every now and then. We talk about it like this, and then sometimes it improves things. And something changes.

Yeah. Or changes things. So thank you for this week's reader feedback. So speaking of magical things that change, Citi has been on a rampage lately in doing things that don't make any sense at all. And so each week they've come out with something kind of crazy, right? Right. So that's why we've decided to introduce a new segment,

a new regular segment to this show called what crazy thing has city done this week? I mean, they are just on a roll. Like the last few weeks, you know, if you aren't following along when everybody else has been kind of like pulling back on offers and pulling back on their advertising and pulling back on approvals and everything else, Citi is like, hey, here's an increased offer on this card. And here's better earning on that card. I mean, it's just the total opposite of what everyone else is doing.

So I could tell you were about to, but I interrupted you. Why don't you do your DJ voice to introduce this segment? Ooh, ladies and gentlemen, now we introduce the next segment. What crazy thing has City done this week? Maybe we'll just play that each week. I'll just place that clip in. No, no, no. I think you need to do it hammier every week. All right, I'll just play that each week. I'll just place that clip in. No, no, no. I think you need to do it hammier every week.

All right, I'll work on that. So what did they do this week? So this week they thought everybody is interested in travel. Right. And so let's introduce a new travel partner to the Thank You program, right? What better time? That's not flying any planes right now right but it's like totally grounded no end in sight on that uh yeah i mean that's a it seems

like a great time right so so what who did they add so they added emirates which which makes emirates tie i believe for with with a couple other programs for having the most partnerships with transferable points currencies. And so Emirates isn't usually the program that we're the most excited about being able to transfer to, but at the same time, there are a few sweet spots there. So what have you found? What are the sweet spots that are worth thinking about? Yeah, well, you know, if you remember not that long ago, I did a series, I did a two-part series where I dove into the Emirates program

to look not just at using Emirates for flying Emirates, which there are a few sweet spots there. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but I think there's like flying to Milan, business class, something like that is decent, is a good one. But my two part series was like,

let's look into everything else you could use Emirates for. So the first part was using them on partners. So use Emirates miles on partner airlines. That's usually where you get the best value with any program, let alone Emirates. Right. So, and surprisingly, I actually did find a few really good ones. And one of them that I remember is flying to, I believe it's to Australia from the US on Japan Airlines round trip business class for 145,000 Emirates miles. Which is very competitive and well regarded as one of the better business class products out there. Right, right.

And then they also have, you can redeem for other stuff right and almost all of that is worthless there were there were a couple things where people said so you could use it for certain um football matches european football so soccer matches and apparently you can you can use it to get into games that you wouldn't normally be able to buy tickets for. So that can be pretty valuable if you're a big fan there whenever those kind of sports come back. Right, whenever that happens again. And you also want to be in a stadium

full of 20 or 30 or 80,000 people or whatever it is that go to those games. Right, right. The Japan Airlines thing though is fairly interesting right now because of course to use that, you need to have award space. Airlines flying. You need to have airlines flying.

You need that. But then also. But you also need a saver level award space from Japan Airlines business class the whole way round trip. And back when I wrote that, I thought, you know, well, this is nice theoretically, but who's ever going to find that. But if you look out to next winter, you know, maybe February, March timeframe, I'm betting right now, you'll find quite a bit of business class award availability. So it might be something worth considering. If you city points if you want to go to australia keep in mind we have no idea if that'll be possible at that time but um but there's that

so it's it's somewhat interesting the other thing i think anytime there's a new transfer partner that's a good thing and anytime uh when you have a program like this that you could transfer from multiple programs is really nice because a lot of people might have signed up for a Sapphire Preferred and got 60,000 points and signed up for City Premiere and got 60,000 points and so on. And so they have a bunch of points in different programs, but they want to book this 145,000 point trip, maybe they want two people on that, you can actually transfer from all those different programs, Amex as well, Capital One, Marriott. So all of them transfer in and so you could probably cobble together the points you need

if you don't have enough in one program. So I think that's pretty good. It is. And with Citi, it's also particularly nice that you can buy points relatively cheaply from them. So if you're a little short and you need to top it off, I'm like, I don't think you can buy ultimate rewards points at all from Chase, right? That's right. That's right. So that gives you an opportunity. I think it's what, two and a half cents each you've written about before. You can buy up to 100,000

points, which I wouldn't generally recommend paying two and a half cents each for thank you points but if you're a couple thousand points shy of an award you know by combining all your different points then this gives you an opportunity to buy those last few thousand potentially you may also be able to buy them from emirates i don't know what emirates charges directly so maybe it's cheaper from emirates but i don't know either you can do the same thing the two and a half cents with amex as well so if you have amex points you can do so a couple options there. So yeah, I think overall, that's always a good thing. It's just weird. Why now of all time?

Like if they had it all worked out and inked and ready to go, you'd think that they'd just wait a little bit. Maybe Emirates pushed them and said, listen, we need some revenue from somewhere. Please let people start transferring. I don't know. All I can say, I can't wait to see what Citi does next week.

We'll see, but we can feel confident that it'll be something. So, and hopefully it will be nothing with their American Airlines cards because obviously there's been a lot of controversy over the last few months because they've been locking out accounts and shutting down accounts for people that abused, and I'm going to put that in parentheses, abused the mailer codes for the American Airlines credit cards. And so AA has been shutting down people who opened too many credit cards or accounts in their view, which really varies quite a bit as to how many is too many and whatnot. But we've talked about that before. But this week, AA started

shutting down accounts for a new reason. Have they completely lost their minds? Are they just looking for excuses and ways to get miles off the books? I mean, what is this? Greg, what do you make of it? Right. So, in this case, I mean, people are doing something that is legitimately, obviously wrong, right? I don't know. I'm not totally, you know, some people I'm sure did. So, all right, why don't you talk about it? What was the way to shut down? So my understanding is what people are doing is taking old rental car receipts that aren't even theirs, I think. In some cases, yep. And then submitting to get mileage credit with those receipts.

And so there's sort of the uh or i have the assumption based on that that this has been like a known loophole in american airlines program for a long time and so people probably been doing this for a long long time and american airlines either just recently figured it out or just recently decided to crack down on it. That's my take on it. Do you have a different take? No, not necessarily. Not really. So yeah, the key was, I guess, apparently that if your miles had expired, then a way to unexpire them was to find a rental car receipt from the time when your miles were still valid and then they would magically get unexpired. So apparently that worked for a long time. I wasn't aware of it,

but I've never had my miles get that close to expiration to have to worry about it. So, so yeah, so people were then getting friends or family members or who knows who to claim mileage credit for an old rental. Now, if you were doing that for your own rental, it was a rental that you legitimately rented, then I would be upset if my account got shut down. Absolutely. That's not what I've been hearing about, though. It seems like it was rentals made in other people's names for the most part, at least from what I've seen. And so I tend to agree with Greg. I think in this case, you were playing with fire when you violated the program terms, even if it worked

forever and ever. You probably knew that it wasn't legit, I legit, I guess. Right. So, so I don't, I think that AA is probably within their rights to do it, but that's still separate from the question for me. I mean, is AA just losing it? Are they going crazy? Are they just looking for excuses to zero out balances? Cause it does seem like, I mean, how much does that really cost them in the overall scheme of things? You know, and right now of all times is now the time when you want to shut people's accounts down. I mean, this week they also increased the luggage fees, the checked luggage fees for basic economy going to and from Europe. So now it's 75 bucks each way, $150 round trip for your bag to fly to Europe. You can just about buy it a seat for that price these days.

That's where I think they totally lost it more than the shutdowns, to be honest, because that hits the general population. Like everybody who's looking at fares to Europe, once that's a thing again, have to keep in mind that on these basic economy fares, you're going to be paying as much as the ticket to get a bag check. That is crazy. I mean, it just blows my mind.

Yeah. You might as well buy the thing, a seat, and get a free carry-on with it too, right? I mean, at that point, because, you know, you buy a seat, at least if it comes with a carry-on. These days, you can, at least from the northeast of the U.S., you can probably buy a round-trip basic economy ticket to Europe for $250, $350. So, geez, Luis, it just seems crazy to me of all times to increase.

Why now? It just seems like AA is going after a super customer unfriendly image. Right, right. Well, yeah. So I see these things as two separate things. On the one hand, the shutdowns, you just, does not like these gamers, right? That really has an ax to grind, I think. And so, and I'm not saying it's wrong. It's just, it's unusual.

It's not something we see a lot from other programs. We haven't seen AA do that before, but now it does seem like there's someone there like, we're watching you. We're going to get you if you do anything wrong. Watch out. You know, Dan Steele's wrote, and I think that this is an interesting point

because I think that this might apply to other things too. So his take on it was that the audit team basically now is in a mode where they have to justify their existence because obviously the airline isn't making a lot of money. And so, you know, they're obviously going to be furloughing, laying off lots of employees. And so this team that was going after everybody for the mailer signups has to somehow justify the fact to keep them around, Right. So, so his thought on it was that they're going after any kind of little abuses

here to help clear some miles off the books and justify why they should still be getting paid, which might be kind of a crazy stretch, but at the same time, I don't know how crazy of a stretch it is. Maybe that's part of the reason they have that ax to grind. Now, will that also apply to the,

you know, the rat team, so to speak, or the, you know, similar teams of people auditing different types of things, like at the credit card loyalty programs and people looking at manufactured spending and stuff like that,

is now becoming a really dangerous time to be labeled a gamer. Is it more or less dangerous than any other time, or you think it's just, ah, it's just coincidental? It's not really. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my guess is the thing with AA is coincidental, but I think it's plausible what Dan said.

So it's plausible. Now, I think there's a very interesting thing happening on the Amex side that I don't know how it's going to play out. But they recently started clawing back those airline incidental fees when the airline itself refunded those fees as well. So people, I'm not going to name any names, but there's probably people in this room,

that would book things that sometimes they would cancel. Who else is with you? Get their money back. Yeah, I'm just guessing there's someone in this room. Okay. Clearly, it must be. And those things would have triggered those airline incidental rebates. And so, I mean, the person in this room hasn't had any clawbacks, but it's conceivable, but, but now we're in, we're in a very different situation from when that those clawbacks started. Now we're in a situation where anyone who had booked anything that had legitimate airline incidental fees with it probably have had those flights canceled and those airline incidental fees returned, or hopefully they did.

Right. And so there's a lot of people now who legitimately use the incidental fee credits the way they were supposed to. And then the money's coming back. Is Amex going to claw that back? I mean, I think it happened to Steven Pepper, didn't it? I think he emailed us with one of those that happened to him. I thought anyway, he had said it was a Delta flight that got canceled.

And then he ended up getting it clawed back. I thought maybe I'm misremembering. Maybe that's right. I don't remember that email. But okay. So they are doing that it sounds like and that's i feel like if somebody at the top were looking at it they they would probably say you know what that's a pretty customer unfriendly thing to be doing in this situation now Now, it's not wrong, right?

Because they're giving you back your, or they should be giving you back your ability to earn those credits for future flights. But under these circumstances where people aren't going to be able to travel to earn those rebates, I think it's a really bad time to be doing that. And it gets tricky because, I mean, right now,

so what is it? It's April, right? So, I mean, travel that is happening now and in May, very conceivably, was booked in 2019. So people may have booked in 2019 and used their 2019 airline incidental credits and fully intended to travel to that wedding or to see, you know, great aunt Susie and wherever and and figured that they were using the credits legitimately and

it's it's not their fault necessarily that the flight got canceled so to lose the money from that benefit because they can't go back in time and use the 2019 credit in some other way seems pretty unfair yes yeah so so i agree that somebody at the top looking at that would look at that and say that's not fair but the person who is trying to justify their salary will look at that and say they didn't get any of the, you know, the credit. So I don't know, I'm not sure what's going to happen there, but I think that there's some potential for more of those types of moves to come. I, you know, I, I, it does make me a little bit nervous anyway. I feel like each day I'm waiting for,

what's going to happen now? Do you think it'll happen with any company that doesn't begin with the word American? We've talked about American Airlines and American Express. I mean, I think it's highly, Chase tends to be fairly conservative and we've been getting more and more reports from people that have been having difficulty

with Chase approvals. In fact, this came up during our Frequent Miler Live broadcast on Thursday, and then I saw Dr. Preditt also posted about it, saw some more data points on the internet saying that Chase is becoming much harder on business card approvals. And this is a good transition to the next topic we plan to talk about anyway. Chase is becoming much tougher to get approved with. They're giving people rejections. One of the reasons people are hearing is the business structure, which presumably is the fact that they're a sole proprietorship. Now, Dr. Credit said people are calling in and being told that that was a mistake,

but then given another reason why they're rejected for the card for whatever reason, which totally falls in line with what I said the other day, that the bank is just going to make up some reason to give you. And whatever reason it is that they give you is likely not the actual reason. So at any rate, yes, I mean, I think that a bank like Chase that is already demonstrating that they're more conservative on their business card approvals. Yeah, I mean, I think that they could start taking a look and saying, you know, what is this person spending $250,000 a year on? Is this legit? I think it's possible that manufactured spenders might have something to be nervous about. I don't know. Do you disagree? I agree. I agree. So in a way, it's good that it's hard to manufacture spend right now, I think, because if you were doing a lot of it right now,

maybe you'd be getting more eyes on it. But do you think, so does this mean to you that you shouldn't be applying for Chase business cards right now at all? Because they're being harder on approvals, and that might draw eyes to your account. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think for sure, if you're doing any kind of manufactured spending

or have been over the last six months, I wouldn't apply for a Chase business card right now. I don't care what other kinds of positives there are in your corner, whatever kind of credit score you have or history with Chase or however big your business is. I would leave that alone right now

because I imagine that they're getting firmer on it. They're requiring you to log into your account in order to apply now for the business cards. If you go through the public links on the site rather than a referral, you have to log in to apply. People have been getting denied for not having a deposit relationship with Chase. They are clearly looking at approvals much more closely now. So I have to imagine that if you have existing accounts with them, they're going to look at those more closely too. So yeah, I don't think that I would apply for one at all if you've been manufactured spending, but even if not, I think I might avoid it right now. It's just seems like it's tough to get approved. And conventional wisdom is that if you get denied for a card that you shouldn't reapply for at least another six months after that for the same card

again, I mean, or even another card with the same bank. So why start that clock now? I hope that things will turn around in three or four months. And so then maybe you will have an opportunity to apply for those cards rather than lock yourself out for six months or more. I would just hold off. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think some people should still consider applying for Chase business cards right now? Yeah, no, I would hold off too, which is, you know, it's hard to say because for so long, the Chase business cards were like the best option out there, but not right now. No.

So, I mean, I think, you know, I guess if you're brand new to signing up for credit cards and you have a very solid business, very solid, um, you know, income that, that you could back up the application for, then I wouldn't be too scared about it cause they're still going to approve some people. But, um, if you have a history of signing up for lots of cards, that's part of what they're going to look at. And I mean, they're, they're clearly not waving the banner saying, hey, open, looking for more business here. You know, that's clearly not the message that they're sending right now.

And they are rather clearly sending a message that they are not looking for that. So, yeah, I would hold off, I think, for most people. Like you said, maybe if you've got a business that's been around for, you know, five, six, eight, ten years, you have a lot of revenue, good income, okay, and you haven't been signed up for credit, all right, okay, you have a lot of revenue, good income. Okay. And you haven't been signed up for credit. All right. Okay. You could try, but it doesn't seem like it's very easy right now to get approved with them. Whereas oftentimes it has been in the past. And I hope that it'll return to that. I don't know. Do you think that there's a timeline for when it's going to feel like safe and normal again? Do you think it'll go back? Like now you have to log in in order to apply for a business

card through their public links. Do you think it's going to go back to where you could just hit apply now and enter your information or do you think they're going to continue to look at this with you know through like like a fine tooth comb so to speak well i think i think the way we'll know that it's likely to be easing up is when the economy starts bouncing back when when when we see news reports about, you know, small businesses doing well again, that restaurants are new restaurants are opening up and, and so on.

So, and we're just so far from that right now that it's really hard and pot impossible to predict when that might be. Yeah. But I don't, until that happens, I don't see Chase changing their minds about how they're going about it. Because as long as it's likely that small businesses are going to

be going out of business, they have no interest in extending credit to you. Right, right. And so I think that, you know, we asked before, do I think that the potential for companies to be looking more closely at things extends beyond just those that begin with the word American? Yeah. I mean, I also chase, I think, yeah, chase. I mean, I think it's possible at all of them. I mean, I haven't heard similar stories from Bank of America and Citi yet, but I imagine that we're going to start to hear some of those similar stories from other places too, and other corners. so i think it's a good time to lie low would you stop applying for other ones so we talked about chase specifically but let's take amex for example so amex has been amazingly easy to get approved

my son has gotten a bunch of amex business cards with very little business background. And so is it, should he lay low? I mean, Amex is also now requiring a minimum amount of income, whereas in the past in applications, there were times when you could just put zero in for business income, but now they're requiring at least a thousand for the, you've got to pick out of a dropdown, I guess. So, so, you know, they've obviously tightened up somewhat there.

Now I haven't heard the same kind of things that I have with chase. So, and I imagine that if, and when they tighten up, we will hear more and more reports of people that are having trouble. So, but I think it's a matter of when, not if so.

Yeah. I mean, I think that I probably would unless, well, you know, I'm going to say that I would recommend laying low if you're the kind of person who has been opening a lot of cards for the last few years and or the kind of person who's been doing a bunch of manufactured spending on any of your cards,

then I would probably say, yeah, I'd take a few months off, relax, enjoy life, pick up some points now and then here and there, you know, win the small battles and lay low. Would you take the opposite approach? Would you just go pedal to the metal and say, hey, keep going? Will they say no? There is an argument to say, get in before they implement any changes, you know? So we haven't heard anything yet. That might be because they've had other things to worry about. So they haven't changed their acceptance policies yet for the business applications. Maybe, we don't know. So I could see that argument. Now, conversely, we've also argued this is not the time to apply for like airline or hotel cards because we expect to see

better offers coming soon. Certainly on the consumer side, business cards, maybe not. Maybe not, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting point. So maybe strike while the iron is hot on those offers where you can and it's a great offer. But specifically airline and hotel cards,

yeah, I mean, I would totally, we talked last week, I think, about the fact that Amex just bought like a billion dollars worth of Hilton points. They're obviously going to be looking to give those out at some point, so I wouldn't be jumping on those cards right now. And I'm sure that the same thing is going to be happening with airline miles. I mean, we're seeing airlines offer them on sale. Alaska, I think, has the best bonus they've ever had right now going on. And I'm sure that they're going to

continue to offer those at a discount to Bank of America, as long as Bank of America is a buyer. So revenue down. So yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see better offers anyway, in a lot of instances. So yeah, I think it's a time to lay low, except for, you know, we talked before, is now the time to jump on some of those, like, maybe cash back offers. And we talked about some like the city premier that we thought, I mean, it's got a good bonus now and they may just take the bonus away. So maybe you lock it in now and then match later on if it goes up. You know, it's hard for me to say. I don't feel like I still agree with that advice. Yeah, I don't see city. But who knows? What crazy thing will city do next week we don't know

I think it's unlikely that the premier cards sign up offer will go dramatically higher and even if it does they'd probably match it so there's a little risk there as long as they don't as long as you don't have a history that's going to make them question it after the fact

so I think things are getting to that point with most issuers now where you got to think about that before you apply. All right. So all the bad news and doom and gloom out of the way, let's talk about travel because you talked this week, you wrote several posts this week about some of the best places to go on vacation in the US.S. You wrote about the best resort properties from Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott in terms of places to go for summer vacation this year under the premise that probably most people will not be looking to fly if it's become safe to travel this summer. Most people will probably not be looking to fly anywhere, but will be looking to get anywhere. So if they can get there in a car, great. So you took a look at some of the best places to stay. So what did you find out of

that? What are like two or three of the hotels that you were really excited about that you thought, okay, if and when I can get away, that's one of the places I'm going to really seriously think about going to? Yeah, good question. First, a little more background. So I did not include places that are likely to be extremely hot, partly because that's not my idea of a best summer vacation. And partly, to be completely honest, because the list of potential resorts to include is outrageously long, especially for Marriott. And so having a constraint, some way of narrowing down the list was really helpful. And so I also didn't include Hawaii because this was really intended to be the places in the U.S. that you can drive to. And I didn't include Canada because I don't know whether we'll be allowed to drive across the border.

I just don't know whether we'll be allowed to drive across the border. I just don't know. And I'll say that I have much more tolerance for heat than Greg does because I saw your posts and I saw you excluded North Carolina, and I was like, North Carolina? I mean, I'd be happy to go to North Carolina and go to the beach in the summertime. I haven't been to the beach in North Carolina, so I don't know if it's too hot. But I was like, that's not too hot for me.

But on the flip side, my wife would probably be like, are you crazy? No, I don't want to go there. Actually, I sort of peeked at, so North Carolina, I didn't see resorts on the beach with these chains. South Carolina, there were, and I was very close to putting those in. But again, I just got to where I was like, there's too much to do right now. What I was specifically looking for in North Carolina

was were there any on the beach or in the mountains? Because both of those would be great for summer vacation. But I didn't see that with these particular chains, these three chains. And also keep in mind, I filtered to what those chains, uh, describe as resorts. And so that left out a lot of great properties. Um, a lot of places I'd probably be maybe even happier to stay then, but I had to filter in some way. And so, you know, but just keep in mind if, if, if, if a, you know,

summer vacation in the Northolina mountains is of interest to you look at what's available like in the ashville area for example or you know or on the tennessee side in the mountains um there's a lot of uh really i would i would look mostly in ashville it's it's a great area and so um it's just it wouldn't be a resort you'd be in a hotel uh but you know if you enjoy outdoor activity anyway it's very resort like so right it wouldn't be a problem right and by the same token if you live in texas you're probably okay with the summer heat in texas so you may drive to east texas after, and decide to stay in one of the resorts there. So I think that there were, there are more places, but like you said, you got to draw a line somewhere because you know, you'd still be there next week looking at these different properties

if you didn't have some parameters. Right. As it was that Marriott Post took me like, you know, I started early in the morning and I was working on it till late at night. It was so painful. Yeah, I'm sure. There's just too many. And so, but I do plan to go back to those states that I skipped to do post about doing like winter and spring break travel. And so that'll include all the Southern states, Florida, Texas, and things like Las Vegas that I skipped before.

So I need to take a week or two off before I tackle that. Yeah. I mean, there's just so many properties. I mean, my goodness. Yeah. I can't imagine. But it did seem like you found some great places. In fact, I was kind of excited that you had one in Lake Placid there because that area is beautiful and that's drivable for me. And we've enjoyed trips to Lake Placid before. So I was happy to see something in my own backyard in the list. But what excited you out of the different places you saw? Yeah. Well, that one, I encountered that a while back when I saw it was part of the SLH.

Yeah. Small Luxury Hotels partnership with Hyatt. So I saw that one. That one's pretty interesting. The reviews are mixed though. So you'll want to dig into that and see if it's a place you want to spend a lot of time. But if it's not that far for you, it's probably worth giving a try. Yeah. I mean, it's three-ish hours or so drive from me. And really, the times that we've gone to that area, it hasn't been for the

resort itself necessarily. It's been to go see Lake Placid and the surrounding area. There's a lot of things to do there. So good to have an option there, different seasons of the year with Hyatt points, because I had no idea there was something there. So, and I think that that's the sort of fun of the exploration here. And that's what I thought was exciting about the post in itself, that, you know, we often look at great places to get good value all over the world because with Airline Miles, we typically have the reach to get just about anywhere we want to go. And that's the case for a lot of readers and listeners too. So we're often looking for those exotic locales far away and we might miss the stuff that's in our own backyard just because we don't ever look.

I can't remember the last time I did look at Hyatt to see all of the ones in New York State at some point a few years ago, probably, but I haven't looked since they started adding small luxury hotels in the world. So I had no idea there was one in Lake Placid. So it might be the case for readers too, that there might be things that are two, three hours away. You had no idea we're even there. Absolutely. Absolutely. So another one I was excited about is that there's a new Miraval property. So again, that's a Hyatt thing. Up until now, there were just two. There's one in Arizona and one near Austin, Texas. And so neither of those would be my idea

of a great summer vacation. Right. So to find one that was in the Berkshires, I'm not sure I'm saying that right. As far as I know. I live closer to the Greg Duds than yes. To find one that was in the Berkshires, I'm not sure I'm saying that right. As far as I know. I live closer than Greg does, and yes. That was pretty exciting.

So those are all inclusives, very health-oriented. I think they have yoga and all kinds of different classes for exercise and health. And apparently they have fantastic food. And so anyway, I've been wanting to do one of those. And so now it's like, wow, you know, a new one in New England. That sounds really, really appealing. It sounds appealing to me too, because it's much closer for me. And there is a Simon mall right there in the way. So you could actually premium outlets. You go get some gift cards, pick up the points, wait it out until your statement cuts and then go right and check it. That sounds perfect. So the, the only, the only downside, there are two downsides to the,

to this one. I mean, it's brand new. So, you know, most places aren't on their A game right from the get-go. So it's a little bit chancy going this summer. They aren't yet showing online award availability, but they might have it if you call. And the other sort of downside, and this is true of all the Mirables, is that it's very, very expensive, whether you're looking at points or at cash. And so I'm going to be keeping an eye on that one to see whether they do specials. You know, there have been special deals with Mirables before where they've offered you know 25 off or something like

that off their uh points rate and then of course there's cash deals all the time so that's that's one i'm keeping my eye on um another one that surprised me to see is the is that there's a height regency chesapeake bay so, and it's a low category. So I can't really figure out, you know, usually the, the things that are anywhere near the Northeast, um,

and anything close to being like a resort, like thing in a desirable place are usually crazy expensive and top category but this is i don't remember off the top of my head maybe category four i think yeah i thought it was because i remember that that you could use a free night cert uh here and so that surprised me so that that looks interesting again i haven't read enough reviews to know whether uh it's somewhere i want to go way out of my way which these are i live in michigan so these are long long drives for me so it would be a big commitment i wouldn't based on how much i've time i put in now i wouldn't go driving out there but if i read

enough about it and like it i earlier today i actually read a few reviews but the most recent ones were like well it was a bad stay because of covid19, well, it was a bad stay because of COVID-19. Well, of course it was a bad stay because of COVID-19. Right. So that doesn't tell me anything. No, not at all. And that one actually stuck out to me too, because of the cheap number of points that it would be. And I haven't really spent much time on Chesapeake Bay as a kid. We used to go to Ocean City, Maryland for vacation a bunch. And I saw that you had a property in Ocean City in the post. I think it was today on Hilton Properties.

It was, or maybe it wasn't today. I thought it was crazy expensive in points, whatever it was. I remember seeing it and thinking, I'm not interested in spending that many points to stay in Ocean City. But I went to that area anyway. And I had fun as a kid. And Chesapeake Bay, not too far away from there. I'd probably go check that out for a nice little

summer vacation if I could. I don't know whether or not I'll, I'll take a road trip this summer, but if I do, that seems like a place that'll be on my list. Right. Right. Um, so, so that's pretty exciting. There, there's a lot of nice looking things in California and that's not a road trip for me. If you're talking about what I'm actually going to be doing, I'm not going to drive all the way to California. Right. And so that's, that's hard because both my wife and I are, are like so desperate to go back to the,

uh, big sir property, the Hyatt there. Uh huh. So nice. But it'd take you like two days of driving, right? Two very painful days probably. All right. So, so far we've talked about

the place in the Berkshires you're not going to go because it's too expensive to start out. I might go if I see a deal. Okay. All right. So, you might go to the Berkshires. So, where else would you actually consider going? A place I've been to a number of times, the Inet Bay Bay Harbor which is in Michigan it's about a three and a half hour three and a half to four hour drive for us to go to northern Michigan right on Lake Lake Michigan which for those who haven't been there it looks like you're at an ocean but it's it's not saltwater and there's fewer sharks. Which chain was that? Was that a Marriott? That's Marriott, yeah.

And so I've stayed there a bunch of times. I really like it. And it's one of the only... I was hoping to find more desirable resort-y type things in the Midwest and I just didn't find much. This one is not only desirable, but based on the summer prices, if you could find award availability, it's a good value with points as well. How many points was it?

Well, it's standard 35,000. You're not usually going to in the summer, you're going to find that because they're going to be peak, which I guess is 40,000, I think, um, uh, a night. And, um, but it's also, it's, it's just hard to find availability in the summer at all at this particular property, but if you could find it. So, so what we usually, what we've done many times before is, is, um, just go up for two or three nights, you know, just whenever we can find those few nights that are available, grab them and go up there. And it's, it's really nice.

And then Petoskey has some very nice restaurants and there's like state park nearby with great hiking and there's bike trails all along Lake Michigan. So it's, it's really an area that's worth checking out. If you've, for anyone who is in driving distance, but hasn't been there, I do highly recommend that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, and I think that those types of activities are going to be very popular this summer, the hiking, the biking, the outdoor activities where you can kind of, you know, keep some distance still, but enjoy the chance to get out. I think those are things that are likely to be very popular this year. So that makes sense. Yeah. And I think that this is going to open up those opportunities to find those places in your own backyard that maybe you haven't checked out. You know, maybe you live in Michigan

or you live in the Midwest somewhere and you think, oh, well, you know, I haven't done that before. So why not? I think before I started traveling with miles and points, I used to look for those opportunities here in my home state of New York. And then over the last few years, I've done very little New York state travel. I haven't really, apart from New York City, I haven't done much travel in my own state. And so it might be time for me to discover some of those kinds of things and see. I've been to the Erie Canal once or twice, but I'm sure there's a museum or something to check out that might be worth my time that I haven't done before. And so things like that are kind of appealing, I think, this year. And I'm also, by the way, I also wanted to mention, I was really surprised at the high

prices of a number of the properties for summer travel. I mean, I know summer travel is popular and peak, but wow, did you expect to see cash prices that were that high? Or do you think it's because of the COVID? I kind of did. And the reason is, we know someone who is a manager, I think, at a very popular resort on Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island is a island where they don't allow cars that's in northern Michigan. And it's a very popular island in the summer and a very popular resort that this person works at. And they said they were expecting higher bookings than ever before this summer. And the thinking is that people are so, you know, eager to get out, but not eager to go far. And, and that's the type of place that, um, you know, everybody who lives in Michigan or Northern Ohio or, uh, Indiana, even, uh, Chicago, that area that they'll, they'll come around, uh, and up and,

and go to places like that. And so, uh, so it didn't really surprise me to see that, you know, I think, uh, places are hopeful that, that that's going to prove true that once things open up, there's going to be a rush people like us who are talking about what can we do locally. And if everybody's talking about that, it's going to drive prices up. And so prices are already, I'm not sure they're higher than they would normally be for the summer, but they certainly don't seem to be extraordinarily low given the COVID stuff, which is what we kind of would hope as buyers. Right, right. It might be a great summer for points travel domestically

in terms of getting value out of your points. Yeah, yeah. It might be a great summer for that if we're able to travel again, if and when. And hopefully we will be able to in time to be able to enjoy some summer vacation for folks. So, all right. So you got a whole bunch of places there

and whichever chain it is that you're into, whether it be Marriott, Hyatt or Hilton, Greg did all three posts this week. So you got all three of those to check out and use your points to good value. So I think that that was a great series to do a great timing on that and useful stuff. So the other great series that we had going on this week

was the Stay K to Far Away series, which of course, this is our new challenge. If you enjoyed last year's 40K to Far Away challenge, the new challenge for 2020 is on Stay K to Far Away. So this week we debuted our first four videos. Why don't you explain the format of Stay K to Far Away quickly for anybody who's missed it. I know regular listeners heard us talk about it last week, but can you? Sure, sure. So this year's challenge is really four mini challenges, and there's four contestants. So Carrie is our newest employee, and she is our creative director, and she's joining the challenge.

So four of us competing, four mini challenges. The four challenges all have to do with creating a video. So we're trying to do short three minutes or less videos. Some are cheating and going longer than that. I was waiting for the dig there. I knew it was coming as soon as that came out. I was like, Oh, Oh, I'm going to get it right here. Um, you know, I had to do that. Um yeah um and so okay so the so the many challenges are the um uh destination cooking so nick this week did uh pasta making and he did that with his son which was adorable absolutely adorable and uh let's see. And then Carrie did imitation travel. That's where you try to recreate something from a travel, you know, some kind of travel you've done or place you've seen or been to try to recreate a scene or even recreate a whole experience with things that are in your own home. And so she did a really cool copy of Lake Bled. But I actually loved the thing that she started with and decided not to do,

but at least she still included it in the video. Yeah, I'm glad she did. She did this Easter Island thing where she recreated a picture of herself, but using a doll and did the perfect orientation of the doll looking just like she did and used beer cans, I think it was, as the statue. So I really like that. And then Stephen did a travel hack. Well, travel life hack.

So the idea is some sort of travel-related life hack. And his was a portable kitchen. He's been on this five year 50 state road trip and has carried with him this little almost carry on size bag, which has everything he needs for cooking and for eating. So plates and dishes and bowls and mugs and you name it, it's all in there. And it was really cool watching his video, him unfolding. Every time something came out, I was like,

whoa, whoa, what else is in there? You're going to pull out a rabbit at some point. Where's the, where's the top hat coming out of this? Yeah. Yeah.

Foldable bowls and microwave things and blah, blah. I couldn't believe how much stuff you pulled out of that bag. That was awesome. And then, okay. So then the fourth challenge is improv travel. And that's where someone else makes a background video for you. And while you're watching it for the first time, you record yourself giving a tour of whatever it is that's in, you know, that's going to be shown behind you when it's in the recording. So I did a, I had a video that Carrie had put together and it turned out it was Sri Lanka, but I had no idea what it was. I never figured it out and uh but um it was fun

there were some fun moments in it and i was completely flummoxed but um yeah so that so that's what we did and yeah we're gonna be well so just to create the story so over the next so this was that was week one and over three more weeks we more weeks, we're all gonna rotate who does which one. And so by the end, we'll all have done all four challenges. Right, so this week will be the same schedule in the sense that Sunday will be cooking and Monday will be life hack

and Tuesday will be imitation travel and Wednesday will be the improv travel. So it'll be the same schedule, but different people doing each of those this week until we've all done all four challenges. So it'll be neat to kind of see everybody else's take to see what everyone else has done to kind of tackle the same challenge. Because a couple of these challenges are really open to interpretation. I mean, cooking is cooking, I guess. So that one seems a little less open to interpretation, I guess, in the sense that everybody's going to have a video of cooking something. I'm curious to see how people vary that up.

But, you know, when it comes to the improv travel or the imitation travel or even the life hack, I feel like we're going to have very different takes on those things. So I'm kind of excited to see how different this week's videos are than last. Absolutely. Absolutely. And this week you were doing improv travel using my footage. I don't know if I like the tone that Greg used there. It sounded highly evil there. I don't know.

No, I'm looking forward to seeing how you react to it. How I react to it, yeah. You haven't recorded yet. I look forward to seeing how you fail miserably um no i no i have not recorded it yet so no haven't done it yet in fact i i need to still make a slide deck so i can run a practice through and do it just like get comfortable with knowing how the how it works because i mean we've been using zoom for these but i haven't actually stood in front of a presentation on zoom to kind of get an idea how it works. And we want to get these in one take. So we want to make sure that I know how I

got to click and where I got to click so that I record and hit the record button and go one time through. Cause I can't, I can't have seen the slides. Right. And it'll ruin the whole, if you, and if you mess up, then I have to create a whole nother slide deck for you. Yeah. So we'll avoid that. And I'll do a practice run through before I even give it a whole nother slide deck for you. Right, a whole nother slide deck, yeah. So we'll avoid that and I'll do a practice run through before I even give it a shot. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out. But there is, at the time of recording this, there is still time for people

to like the videos that they like. And I think it's worth mentioning. I don't know whether or not this will be published far enough in advance for people to hear this and vote for the week one, but you'll have time to vote for week two. So here's the deal. You want to watch these videos and we're posting them on Frequent Miler each day at noon. We're posting a new video and then, and you'll get an email if you're subscribed to our email list. And then on Thursday,

we're doing a wrap up to kind of, you know, summarize all of the videos and give you a chance to see them all in one place again if you'd like. And when you see a video, when you watch it, if you like it, you got to hit the like button. Now, in order to do that, you have to click through to YouTube. So when you bring the video up on FrequentMiler, you have to click the title or the place where it says YouTube. So you can go over to YouTube and then you'll see the little thumbs up. And you want to click that thumbs up if you like the video because that's how we're determining the weekly winner each week, the person who gets the most thumbs up for that week. And then in the end, we'll also determine

who had the most thumbs up for the cooking challenge and who had the most thumbs up for the improv travel challenge, et cetera, et cetera. And then you guys will get a chance to vote for the overall champion totally separately on Frequent Miler. So there's no disadvantage to liking all the videos you like. If you liked all four of them this week and you hit like four times, great. If you only like two of them, that's fine. If you like none of them,

you know, whatever the, the, you know, your take on it is go ahead and, and vote the way you see fit. So also your, your like,

your like is not wasted. If you, if you click like on some of the ones from week one, even after we've declared the week one winner, your like is not going to be wasted because at the end of the four weeks, in addition to the vote, we're also going to see who won each type of challenge. So who was the destination cooking winner? And that's going to be based on likes that that are across the whole four weeks so right of course whoever went the first week will have an advantage uh on on the that one but they'll have gone you know last on a different challenge so it all sort of balances out right right so so if you are listening to this and you miss the week one videos it's it's still worth taking 13 minutes of

your time to watch the four videos there on week one and see which ones you like and hit like on all of them because that will count towards the cumulative. That's a great point, Greg. So that said, who earned your like this week? Which one was your favorite apart from your own? I know you liked yours the most, Greg, but- I didn't. But apart from Improv Travel, which one is your favorite? Yeah. No, mine was not my favorite. Really? I got a lot of positive comments about it.

People said it was really funny, but I think I'm more critical, I guess, about my own work or something. I don't know. I was not thrilled be like so hilarious and so like, you know, spot on and everything, but I think you're selling short how it came out. You're selling yourself short there. So yeah, no, I got a lot of positive comments. So that was really nice. But yeah. So if I had to pick just one, that's what you said, right? Just one. Just one. Because I really honestly did like them all. As I said, so...

I thought it was fun. I got to say. I thought it was... I wasn't sure how all of them would come out and I was very pleasantly surprised. Not even surprised. I was pleased. I was very pleased with how they came out

because it was enjoyable to watch each one of them. Yeah. So my, before I say which is my favorite overall, my favorite idea was Stephen's Kitchen. Like the sort of the concept. My favorite, as far as like that i thought was the most artistic i like carrie's but as far as what i enjoyed the most it'd be your cooking one with your son so you found a way to pick all three of them anyway

i did nicely done wait wait it's running for office next year right right So you found a way to pick all three of them anyway. Nicely done. Wait, wait, it's great for office next year. Right, right. Clearly, clearly.

Well, we're all going to vote for Greg. So I'll, I'll lose some votes here. I'll pick a favorite. Greg's was my favorite. Really? It's not just because he's the boss.

No, you know, the first time that I watched it, I think I, my reaction was not your reaction because I feel like you seemed, like you said, kind of critical of it and you weren't super confident with it. I didn't like laugh wildly with it. And I, so I understood why you said that the first time I watched it. Then I watched it again with my wife and we cracked up. Really?

The second time I watched, I don't know why. I don't know what it was. It was different. But my goodness, the two of us just like laughed and laughed. The second time I watched it. Yeah. So, and it was the first time she had seen it and she thought it was hilarious. And I was like, yeah, actually it is really funny.

I don't know why the first time I watched it through, I didn't laugh out loud, but the second time I sure did. And then I've watched it since a couple of times. I've gotten a good laugh out of it each time. Wow, that's great. So that's a good thing for our watchers and listeners. Go back and watch it again. Maybe, maybe. I think the thing for me was that the first time I was watching it, I wasn't watching it as a viewer. I was watching it as like a person, you know, helping to create this competition, right? So I was looking at it from a different perspective of like, you know, the publisher, so to speak of it. And so more of a critical eye rather than an enjoyment eye. And once I kicked back and I was like, okay, let me enjoy not think about it let me just enjoy it as it comes yeah then I had a lot of fun so how awesome so yeah so I think that was really good it turned out really well um surprisingly well and some

great one-liners I thought that stuck with me afterwards so if you haven't watched it yet you got to go back and watch it you got to see it's I've renamed it to smoking coconuts smoking coconuts so and if you don't know why it's called smoking coconuts all the more reason to see it. So I've renamed it to Smoking Coconuts. Smoking Coconuts. So, and if you don't know why it's called Smoking Coconuts, all the more reason to watch it. So you should find out. So that was fun. And I can't wait to see what's going to happen this next week because I know Steven Pepper is on the cooking this week, right?

And so his hack was the kitchen. So I'm thinking that he's going to cook something with the kitchen. So I'm looking forward to seeing. That would be a huge letdown if he's like, we know he's staying at a Airbnb that's like a house. So he could be using the real kitchen. Wouldn't that be disappointing if he used the real kitchen? What a bummer. Everybody would be like, like oh man steven what were you thinking yeah okay cook all your meals there all right you got to see if that kitchen can uh can talk the talk so or walk the talk the talk already because we get to see if it walks the walk next so i'll be curious to see how that comes out this week so i'm looking forward to it check those out

they're going to be out again sunday monday tuesday and wednesday noon. And then Thursday, we're going to wrap them all up in the Thursday morning posts. So you get a chance to like all of those, like the ones you haven't seen yet. It's just kind of a fun way to spend a few minutes. And I feel like that was the whole purpose of this, right? To be competitive and have some fun. It really is. And you know, I wasn't too confident about my week one entry, but even though it's not done yet, week two's Imitation Travel is going to rock your world. That is bold, ladies and gentlemen. You heard that, right?

It's recorded right here. What I like about this is that next week I can cue it up. And so if it somehow doesn't have as many likes as Greg is expecting, I can cue it up right next to the thumbs, and we'll get an idea as to whether it rocks everybody's world. That'll be fun.

Now you have to do that regardless. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe it did. Well, next week we'll have a segment that's like, did it rock everyone's world? There we go. We'll find out.

What crazy thing did City do this week, and did Greg's segment rock your world? Well, I do not share greg's confidence because i have no idea what to expect with improv travel so right it's impossible to know if you're going to do well or not right maybe it'll rock your world i have no idea we'll find out so on that note wait a minute wait a minute wait wait i was just about to end things and i didn't mean to because of course we have everybody's favorite segment here at the end the question of the week question of the week all right let's go so the question of the week this week comes from Brandon Buzz on Twitter and so Brandon asked a question and he sent it just to

me so I don't know as though you've seen it and it was a good question I thought the question that other readers may share so Brandon asks hey Nick booked a sweet spot VSF partner awards. That's Virgin Atlantic first class partner award with ANA for late November. With the uncertainty surrounding Virgin Atlantic, would it be too knee jerk to get the points back for a $50 cancellation fee and transfer all of them to Hilton at two to three to ensure that they're safe. Thoughts? So Brandon's asking, should he just go ahead and cancel? Because Virgin Atlantic, we don't know. They might go out of business. There's talk of mortgaging Necker Island. Greg was talking about coming in as one of the potential suitors for Virgin Atlantic.

With Shane, he and I are go have these. So, uh, so I mean, Virgin Atlantic is, you know, they've been in the news anyway, as being in a precarious spot and potentially could go out of business. They're saying if they're not able to secure funding. And so his fear is he has this first class award booked. And what I now understand from seeing One Mile at a Time post about it this week is that I didn't realize award tickets are generally only paid for after you fly the flight. I assumed that they were paid for up front,

but apparently they're only typically paid for after you've flown it. So even if it's been ticketed, if the airline completely goes out of business, you could conceivably lose that ticket. So is he better off canceling now for 50 bucks and transferring all of those Virgin Atlantic points to Hilton instead? Now I think you'd end up with 180,000 Hilton points instead. What do you think? So I think there's two things going on here that ought to be addressed. One is,

are we so worried about Virgin Atlantic and their mileage program that it's worth getting rid of any miles you have, like finding some best use for them that's guaranteed? That's different from the question of whether to give up on this particular flight. So to me, those are two different questions because when I first heard you read that question, I was thinking not so much about Virgin Atlantic's

financial troubles, but about what's the probability that we'll be allowed to fly to Japan in November, was it? November, yep, late November. So that requires that both the U.S. is allowing flights to and from Japan, and also that Japan is allowing people from the U.S. to come. And both of those things are likely, I'd say, by then, but certainly not guaranteed, not by a long shot. So that's one thing. The other part about, though, basically getting rid of your miles by converting them to Hilton, I wouldn't recommend that. I think that, in fact, actually, Gary had a view from the wing, had a have creditors that are deciding their fate and everything,

the mileage program is most likely to be the main thing that's kept intact. And so I think there will be funding to keep that going because it'll be a continued source of revenue as long as they, you know, still have partners like Bank of America and whatnot can do credit card deals. So I think, I don't think it makes any sense at all to dive out of that mileage program right now. That, you know. That was essentially what I said. I said that I think that the likelihood of Virgin Atlantic completely going out of business is low because if they just file for whatever the UK's equivalent of bankruptcy protection is,

I would assume that the mileage program is going to be unaffected because like Greg said, it's the most profitable part of the airline. I mean, right now, that's about all the revenue that's coming in for airlines is whatever they're selling to the banks, right? And whatever miles they can sell is it. So I don't see the miles becoming worthless unless Virgin Atlantic completely goes belly up and sells the entire operation and all the planes. And I just feel like that is a very low probability for a major airline like Virgin Atlantic.

I think that's not likely to happen. However, now that said, I agree with Greg that it seems, I think, I don't know, actually, I don't agree with Greg. I think it seems relatively unlikely that you're going to take the trip to Japan in November. I think, I mean, but that's a guess. So I don't know that that's true and I wouldn't cancel right now because of my guess.

You know, I wouldn't cancel it in advance because you have no idea what's going to happen between now and November. My goodness, you have no idea what's going to happen between now and May. I forget about November. So I wouldn't cancel it because of my fear of that. However, I want to, for a second here,

think about this and look at risk reward. So while I generally agree with Greg and I told the reader, I wouldn't do that. The more I thought about it later on, I was like, okay, Hilton's not going out of business anytime soon, right? Those points are going to likely continue to be worth something. Virgin Atlantic, on the other hand, I don't know what's going to happen. Is it from a risk reward standpoint worth taking $900 worth of Hilton points? Because that's 180,000 points and generally gets you about $900 worth of stays over the potential to have nothing. Because if Virgin Atlantic does completely liquidate, you'd have nothing. Are you sure

you still take the, you keep the Virgin Atlantic or do you take $900 cash? I mean, let's think about if it was cash, would you take 900 bucks cash to cancel the ticket? No, no, I would. I don't, I don't think I would either, but I thought about it more and I was like, I don't think it's a likely enough scenario that I would, that I would bail out. Right. Right. I agree. I agree. It's a, you know, the, the gamble that you have in there, I guess at 120,000 miles per passenger might feel high, but at the same time, I feel like, yeah, that may not be accepting very poor value for whatever points you transferred for that award. So I wouldn't do it proactively either. I assume that we will see warning signs for a while in advance before an

airline gets to the point where you're going to have to liquidate your points really quickly. So so yeah, I think that that ability is going to last for a while, uh, to be able to move them over to Hilton. So yeah, I, I think the same. So we agree. We're in agreement. There you go. That's your answer, Brandon. One small tip though, right now, if, if you decide you do want to cancel it, don't try to call them, um, text them. And I've had some luck recently doing that. A few texts went unanswered, but eventually a text magically worked. And I was able to cancel a flight that is in the summer,

past the time when they're saying there's free cancellations and everything. But they didn't charge me to reinstate the miles completely and to refund the taxes. So that's a possibility yeah if you decide if you decide you definitely don't want it uh you know you might be able to get get uh avoid that fee but i agree with nick i mean if you think that you're still going to want to go in november in the off chance that it's possible to do so, then there's not a lot of advantage to canceling now. Yeah, I mean, the fees can be the same if you cancel it in October as it is now.

And so, you know, unless you're in a boat where you think your Virgin Atlantic miles are going to expire unused, then I would, I would hold out. Or if you have another use in mind, you're like, okay, well, I don't want to go to Japan, but I do want to fly to, you know, wherever it is. And I can use my Virgin Atlantic miles. And then maybe go ahead and cancel it if you want. But, uh, but otherwise I just hold out and wait and see. All right. So all that said, that brings us to the goodbye song. So thank you guys very much for being here with us today and make sure if you want to, if you want to hear more about what we've been talking about, you want to make sure that you go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. So you see it right up there, the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. So you see it right up there, thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

And that's where you can get on the email list. There you go. And so you get the daily emails or instant emails, whatever kind of emails you want. You can join our Facebook group and find out more about what's going on at Frequent Miler. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you very much, Greg.

Always a pleasure having you here. Thank you, Nick. Bye everyone. See you next week.