Frequent Miler on the Air - One card to rule them all | Ep111 | 8-14-21

Episode Date: August 14, 2021

1:17 Giant Mailbag: Why not log in to United? 4:44 What crazy thing...did Aeroplan do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/aeroplan-might-be-a-more-exciting-transfer-partner-than-we-thought/ 10:41 Mileage running the numbers: When is an Emirates Skywards+ subscription worth it? https://frequentmiler.com/emirates-launches-skywards-subscription-plans-surprisingly-compelling-offer/ 18:10 Main Event: One card to rule them all Trip down memory lane: 2012: https://frequentmiler.com/one-card-to-rule-them-all/ 2013: https://frequentmiler.com/a-new-card-to-rule-them-all/ The new 2021 opportunity: https://frequentmiler.com/curve-is-coming-get-on-the-waitlist/ 45:03 Question of the Week: Is it worth it for me to pay rent with a credit card?

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event one card to rule them all you know nick there's lots of cards out there that have fantastic category bonuses meaning somewhere yeah you have maybe even on the show uh show. But what we're talking about with category bonuses is where you could get anywhere from two times your points to three or five times even for spend that in specific categories like grocery shopping, gas stations, travel, you name it. So the great thing about that, of course, is it's possible to get a tremendous number of points and miles from your everyday spend. The downside is it means juggling a whole bunch of credit cards and knowing which one to use where. potential solutions to that problem that we're going to discuss because there's at least two exciting possibilities that are current or coming. So that should be a fun topic. And I'm looking

forward to that. But of course, first, we have the giant mailbag, which I do have with me. I'm on vacation this week. And other than this segment and the main topic, I don't know what's happening on the show today. It's all Nick all the time. But I'm glad to see through snow, sleet, rain, or summer vacation, the mailman always delivers here, so to speak, right? Mailman has delivered. So today's mail comes from a friend of mine who reached out after our last show where we talked about Aeroplan and comparing it to United award prices and whether or not we're excited. Apparently,

something we said in there, we said something about hopefully Greg didn't log into United when checking the award prices. And he understands why we don't, but he misunderstood and thought, oh, there's some benefit to not logging in when booking United. that when you log in to United, if you have a United credit card or you have any kind of elite status with United, you get some better award space on United's own flights and economy.

And better prices sometimes. And better prices sometimes. With that availability comes better price. In fact, I wrote a post this week and one of the example flights in my post that I had in there when I wasn't logged in was 15,000 miles one way. And then later on, I logged in for some reason and I saw that same flight was 7,700 miles because I have silver status. So expanded availability or whatever gave me not only a few more flight options, but also a much cheaper price than that flight. Right. So the reason that we sometimes talk about

make sure you don't log in is when you're checking for award availability from partners of United. So for example, if you want to use Air Canada's miles to book United, or you want to use Turkish miles to book United, or you want to use Lufthansa, all of their partners, you can use their partner miles to book United, or you want to use Lufthansa, all of their

partners, you can use their partner miles to book United flights, but only when there's SAVR award availability. And so that's why normally we think that by not logging in, if we see SAVR award availability in United, that shows us what's going to be available with partners. And as Nick found this week, that shows us what's going to be available with partners. And as Nick found this week, that's not necessarily true. Sometimes they have better award availability than what United shows when not logged in. So it's not a foolproof technique, but at least I think it shows the minimum of what should be available. It gives you at least an idea. And we get questions all

the time from people who say, how do I book the expanded award availability with my United credit card or elite status when I use Turkish miles or something like that? And you frequently have to explain to people that Turkish can't see the availability that you can because they don't have the United credit card. The agent, it doesn't have elite status. So they can't see that expanded availability.

It's only for people who have the United credit card or elite status. So it's definitely worth logging in if you have those things and you just want to see how many united miles it's going to be uh right it's just long been a technique of finding like brexit those partner award spaces to not plug in confusing as maybe using as maybe well then let's move that into what crazy thing, because that's my crazy thing this week. So what crazy thing did Aeroplan do this week? And so as Greg is alluding to, Aeroplan is showing usintuitive and the opposite of what Greg was just talking about, the opposite of what we would expect. Now, before I get too deep into that, I should say that, as I said in the post, it's possible that they're showing phantom availability that isn't actually bookable. I didn't actually try to ticket any of these. So possible it's not going to work, but I think it probably is. And the reason I bet on that is because this, so the

crazy thing that Aeroplan is doing is it seems like they are piecing together saver awards by finding saver space on each individual segment. And that might not sound exciting if you're not used to award booking, but for those that are more experienced in award booking, you know, that just because there's saver availability from A to B and from B to C, it doesn't necessarily mean you can book a saver award from A to C. Sometimes that'll be true. Sometimes it won't be true. And in the examples that I showed in the post this week, that was exactly what was happening. United had saver availability on A to B and B to C, but nothing on A to C. So you couldn't book those together as one award, except Aeroplan is stringing those together. And that's rare. That's not something we typically see with partner programs. So that

seems kind of crazy because you can suddenly book, it looks like, lots of different awards that United would not even show you. Forget about have a higher price. They're not even showing them as possibilities on the United website. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember, I don't know if this is still true, but it might be. I remember the opposite being true with American Airlines and British Airways. So when American Airlines started doing this married segment availability thing, so that married segment is where it's like Nick said, where whether or not awards are available from A to B and B to C sort of has nothing to do with whether they're available from A to C via B. From A to B to C. Yeah.

Right, right, right. And so what Americans started doing a few years ago is opening up awards more often. So this is the opposite of what you were talking about with United. They open up awards more often on these A to B to C itineraries and not on the smaller point to point ones. And so people were frequently finding that when they searched, you know, their whole play. So it used to be to find a word availability, you kind of piece together,

like look for things like point to point and then string it all together. And then you could book it. But American broke all that and just said, you know, we're going to open it up for your whole itinerary, but not for the individual segments. And so what happened then, at least at the time,

was those same flights that you could book at the lowest level with American, A to B to C, were not available through their partner, British Airways, for example, because British Airways was booking, was looking segment by segment. And now we're seeing sort of the opposite, the same situation with Air Canada doing that potentially, but where it's a good thing as opposed to a bad thing. Right, right. And so that's to give a concrete example for anybody who's having a hard time following our letters, like what Greg is saying American frequently did was New York to Los Angeles would not be available, but New York to Los Angeles to Phoenix would suddenly be available. So that New York to Los Angeles flight was possible, but only if you were connecting it with something else. United is kind of doing things the other way around where New York to Los Angeles is available and Los Angeles to whatever, let's call it Phoenix again, to Phoenix

is available. But New York to Los Angeles to Phoenix isn't via United for whatever crazy reason. Aeroplan, however, like you said, is searching segment by segment, finding saver availability on both and putting it together. And that's exciting because long term, that will probably be helpful when we piece together more complex international itineraries. And in fact, somebody in the comments brought up that they were already seeing some situations on partners where, for example, on Turkish, Aeroplan was showing more availability, more options on Turkish flights than United was.

So, you know, that was kind of interesting, too. Now, another reader commented to say that they saw more Lufthansa first class availability than they thought was realistic. So it's possible that Aeroplan has some phantom availability here. I would be more inclined to believe that that was it. And this was a non-story if not for the fact that I was able to find these United segments available through LifeMiles also. So I could verify that those individual segments were available. I'm betting that it'll work. But anyway, crazy, because not what we would expect. It's not the way these things typically work. It's awesome. So it's inching the addition of Air Canada as a chase transfer partner towards great. We were debating,

is it just good? Is it great? It's certainly, if this proves out, it's definitely inching more towards great because obviously being able to find award availability in one program where you can't in the other is a huge benefit. Well, it's a huge benefit and there's a big difference in price sometimes because, for example, one of the examples I used in the post was Myrtle Beach to Newark to Albany, New York. And so that itinerary was not available separately via united.com. Now, if you did a multi-city search, you could select those segments separately, but then it priced them separately. So that would cost 19,000 total miles. And the example that I had shown in the post, I didn't actually show the multi-segment pricing, but it would have been 19,000 if I wanted to book it via United. And if instead I booked that via Aeroplan,

it would be 6,000 points one way. So big difference. Sure. Sure. So, all right. Very cool. That's the craziness. Now let's talk about mattress running the numbers, except, you know, there were a couple of hotel promos this week and I looked at them and I kind of prepped one of them. And I was like, you know what? I am just not excited about talking about this. What I think is much more interesting is the post that Steven Pepper wrote about Emirates Skywards Plus. So we're going to do like mileage-y running the numbers, mileage-y. Is that a word? Mileage-y running the numbers here. So Skywards is offering this subscription program where you can pay and there's a few different levels, but the only one that really makes sense for most people is going to be the $399 level, lowest level. You can pay $399 and you get a few benefits, but the two key benefits that matter are you get a one-time 20% discount on a classic award. So on, you know, a saver award, one time, 20% off and two lounge passes for the business

class lounge. You can do it in Dubai or I think in other locations also. So my question for you is, is it worth it? What would have to be, what parameters do you think would have to be there for a 20% discount to be on an award ticket to be worth $399. And also the two lounge passes. All right. So tell me a little more.

So $399, is that a lifetime subscription? Like, is that per year, per month? What are we talking about? Per year. Per year. So you're going to pay $399 to access that for a year. And so you've got a year to make a booking essentially and use your one time 20% discount. So, okay. So potentially if they keep this program, you could do this once a year.

Potentially. If this was valuable to do so. Right. So about $400 to get a 20% off. I'm going to discount, I'm going to just forget about the lounge passes because, um, if I'm booking Emirates, uh, awards, I'm going to be booking. And I think this is hopefully true for most of our listeners. I'm going to be booking business or first class, and you're going to get into the lounge anyway, from that, right. From flying in the, in that class of service. So, so, and if you're not flying business or first, you're probably not using enough miles for the 20% discount to make a difference. So spoiler alert there. So right. Yeah, totally agree. Lounge passes are worthless. And I kind of vaguely remember someone writing about how like Emirates just packs them in like really tight and economy, which I've never,

I've never spent much time even looking or thinking about Emirates economy, but they're known to have an incredible first class. And so that's what, you know, what I'd be looking at using my Emirates miles for. And so, all right. So you're going to want me to do some math off the top of my head here to say whether like how much saving. let's say i don't know um you want to get at least one cent per point value from this four hundred dollars so so that's uh what forty thousand you want to save forty thousand points or more it's probably good at this game yes all right good good all right so multiply that by five to say what the how how big your award has to be so um let me back up and ask you another question uh does this discount if you're booking for multiple people this one award does the

discount come off of the whole thing or just your own? Yeah, that's a piece. That's a darn good question. Cause the way that Steven wrote it up, certainly made it sound like it would apply to one booking. Um, but as we were talking about this, I thought to myself, you know, it says it's a one-time discount. Does it apply to multiple tickets? So I had to pull up the terms while I was just saying that sentence. And so it says you qualify for a one-time discount in a classic reward flight on eligible Emirates flights when the ticket is purchased within the subscription period, even if the travel date is outside of the subscription period. And it says it will apply to all travelers within the same booking.

So yeah. So if, as long as you book multiple people in one booking, it counts for multiple people. Okay. So our listeners just got a huge extra perk. They got to listen to some terms and conditions. Maybe for those looking for more of that, we'll read some out at the end of the show. Always a good time. We've talked before about how when we're on the phone with someone who has to read terms and conditions before you, for example, upgrade a credit card, kind of zone out or whatever, even though we should be listening. So hopefully listeners haven't been zoning out. The answer was that it'll count for everybody on your itinerary. So as long as you are, I'm going to assert, as long as you're booking an award that in aggregate costs 200,000 Emirates miles or more, it's probably worth doing.

There you go. There you have it. If it's 200,000. So, so then now I got to get to your fringe case then. So that's a pretty close number to what it would cost for two business class awards from the U S to Europe. So if you were going to book two people round trip business class from JFK to Milan or Athens on, on Emirates, it's 90,000 round trip on Emirates. So that'd be 180,000. If you were going to book an award like that, is it worth paying $399? No. No, I wouldn't. To save 36,000 membership rewards points? Yeah, okay.

So I was thinking in terms of if you already had like, so I was thinking like Brex points, for example, where I wouldn't pay more than a penny for them, but membership rewards, yeah, that's getting close. Yeah. It's close. It's only close because if you were to save the 36,000, that's 30, it's a 36,000 membership rewards points at a value of 1.25 cents each, which, which is less than our reasonable redemption value, but that's the cash out value via Schwab until September 1st for now. So right now that's $450 worth of points. But of course, after the 1st of September, that'll only be like just under $400 in points.

So it won't be enough to make it worth it. But I wouldn't even like for that kind of saving, even at the 450 valuation, if that's how much you value your members rewards, like to save about 50 bucks and sign up for some subscription thing and hope that it works as advertised. Like that wouldn't be worth it to me. Yeah, that's probably true. That's probably true. All right.

Thumbs down. Thumbs down. If you are going to book a very expensive award booking like Steven Pepper, it could be huge post. Yeah. That he would have saved 55,000 miles if this had come out a week sooner or whatever for his itinerary and 55,000. Now we're talking like that's enough. And that was, that was right.

A one way first-class booking for two people. So if he had done round trip for two people, it could have been huge, huge savings. I mean, he saved a hundred, more than a hundred thousand points at a round trip so if you're going to book a round trip first class emirates award to almost anywhere really i think

it's going to come out to be worthwhile so and that's interesting to me that's interesting because you wouldn't normally think that these subscriptions these silly little subscriptions are worth anything most of the time i look at something like oh come on get out of here just trying to take more money for nothing but in this case it could actually save you a lot yep yep cool okay then that brings us to the main event main event time uh one card to rule them all that so that name goes way back both for frequent miler and for the main topic so So in frequent miler land, the, that was the name of the first post that I wrote that went, you know, went big. Like that was the most popular post I wrote in my first year of blogging, like by far. Um, and that one goes back to you, by the way, I think 2012. So I looked it up.

I was like, 2012. Wow. That's right. So so back then I had found that you could buy something called vanilla reload cards at Office Depot and you could pay with your Chase Inc card to get five points per dollar buying basically money that at the time you loaded onto these American Express prepaid cards. And so the idea was you're prepaying for money, which you'll then spend on these prepaid cards. And so you're prepaying in order to get five points per dollar. And so the idea was buy these vanilla reload cards with the Chase ink card,

and you are sort of indirectly getting 5X everywhere by putting all your spend on these Amex prepaid cards. So that was the idea behind the post. And back then, you have to understand, at that time, getting 2x in a category bonus was pretty exciting. The idea of getting 5x or nearly 5x for all spend was just completely unheard of back then. And so it was darn exciting. Now that that quickly changed when we stopped being able to buy vanilla reload cards at office supply stores but uh another thing that came out not that long

after was advertisements for a card that was in the works from if i'm remembering this right um there was a a plan to roll out a card called Wallaby. I think it was. Yeah. It was like Walla dash or dot B or yeah. Wallaby. You're right. Right.

Right. And the idea was they advertised it as one card to rule them all. And I felt like kind of ripped off because they were using my tagline, which of course, which of course I had borrowed from Lord of the Rings. So don't get too crazy out there. Lord of the Rings people just borrowed. Right. Right. Not me. Before my time guys, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Right. Right. Um, so, so Wallaby had advertised, you know, that this card was coming and, and that what it would do is let you buy things with this

one physical card and behind the scenes, you'd be charging whatever card you want to charge to. And so that way, if you had a card that was good for grocery stores, you tell it to pull from the grocery card. And if you have a card that's good for gas stations, you tell it to pull from the grocery card. And if you have a card that's good for gas stations, you tell it to pull from that one instead. That never came out. They hit whatever hurdles they hit and trying to develop that thing and it never happened. That's my shocked sound right there because I feel like we've heard that kind of concept now. I mean, back then, obviously, but now a couple of times where they've come up with this idea, but it hasn't worked out, right? Right, right. The next sort of group of things that I remember was digital wallet cards. This is where you had basically a little computer that shaped just like a credit card and works just like a credit card, but you're actually of your cards, real cards that you've stored on this

virtual or on this digital card, which are your real cards you want to spend with. And by swiping your digital card, it would just push the charge to the one that you want to spend with. So that was a really cool idea, but the timing was very unfortunate. The tech grew up at the same time that the US finally mandated chip cards, and the tech was all based on those magnetic strips on the back. So all of these companies tried to scramble and make their things work with chips, but it's a whole order of magnitude more complicated to make it work with chips. So that came and went. I've got a pile of those devices, by the way, collecting dust. In the electronics graveyard, huh?

I do. I have an electronics, a uh a little museum i keep in my house of of yeah that's right electronics of of days past and uh so you have a pile of those cards in the museum i i have at least a couple of them in there and i've got like my palm pilot in there and my garmin gps device things like. There's at least half of our audience that's like, what? Huh? Palm? What about a palm?

Yeah, I know that there's some people out there that are like, what is that even? What is that thing? Yeah. Well, we're not going to explain it. No, we're not. Google it. Google it. There you go.

Ask your, I don't know, Instagram friends. So I was going to say Snapchat, but I think that's kind of old. I think so. I don't know. I'm not sure. You'd have to ask somebody younger than me. So anyway, so the swipe thing kind of like aged itself out too soon. And so that decided to come out with a debit card that sounded just like the Wallaby card. I mean, the idea, at least that they advertised, sounded exactly the same to me. Never got off the ground. And so now I think that brings us pretty close to today. Yeah, there were a couple other. There was like zero card, I think, or something was again, the same idea where you're going to

get a digital card that you could just like, you know, press a button for which card you wanted to use, but again, never got off the ground. I think there were probably a couple others, but we can fast forward to now. Yeah. So now, yeah, now what's going on. Excuse me. So, so the curve card is a solution that actually is real and works, but it's real and works in the UK and in some European countries, I believe. to the Wallaby concept from way back when, where you use the curve card for all your purchases and you tell it which card that you've loaded into the system you actually want to charge. And it's even better than how the Wallaby was described in at least one significant way, which is it has a, do you remember what it's called? The rewind feature, you could go back in time.

Yeah, I don't remember. It might be called that, the back in time feature. Back in time, yeah, something like that. So the idea, this is awesome. So the idea is, you know, you went to a, I don't know, you went to some store and you used it and it was pointing at your, let's say your city double cash card to get 2% everywhere. But then you see that, oh, this place actually coded as a grocery store. So you go back in time and say, no, charge my Amex gold card to get my 4X for a US grocery store instead. And so that's how that somehow magically works,

except it doesn't quite work with Amex cards. So that example wasn't great, but- But then you start your City Premier card, for instance, because you get three points. City Premier, that's a better example. Swap that right out, right? So yeah, I mean, that's a pretty cool feature to have. And that's something that they've had for quite some time now in the UK. This has been around a couple of years,

right? Yeah. And it seems like the ultimate player two card. That's exactly what I was thinking. When you said you use the wrong card, I was thinking, no, player two goes to the grocery store and uses the blue business plus like it happened yesterday. And, uh, and you just want to change it, right? You want to fix it. You're you're like you know what i got an eraser here right right so of course by player two we're talking about spouse significant other whoever that that's not as into this stuff as you are right and so they don't know which card to use and you've told them you've labeled things but still they use the wrong card and instead of having a squabble about it right you just fix it you don't even have to tell them. No, whatever. No, fix it

right up. I mean, that sounds absolutely fantastic. So are we all going to have to move to the UK in order to get this card? What's going on? Yeah, we do. So let's do that. Well, to be determined, but they claim that they're coming out in the US and there's a waiting list. We published a post about how to get on the waiting list for it. And since it doesn't cost anything to get on the waiting list, you know, I figure you might as well, why, why not? And then if it actually materializes and you know, is useful, then, then you'll have a shot at getting it. We, we know very little about it. Right. I mean, we don't know if there will be an annual fee for this thing. We don't know if they'll support all Visa and MasterCard credit cards. We're pretty confident that they

won't support American Express, but don't know that for sure. There's way more not known than known. And certainly, I would be a lot more skeptical about whether they would actually bring it to the US market also a few years ago, if I remember right. And so I feel like the fact that they're putting out emails now encouraging people to get on the waiting list suggests that they believe they've overcome enough of the difficulties, whatever it was that killed Wallaby and killed the Google one and whatever, that they feel like they've gotten over enough of those hurdles to bring it out in the US market. So I'm kind of cautiously or optimistic about that. There you go. Cautiously

optimistic. That's a good way to look at it. And not only is there no harm in getting on the waiting list, there's a benefit because they say for people on the waiting list, you'll get 1% back for the first six months and all your purchases on top of your credit card rewards. So curve is also going to give 1% back. So, I mean, Hey, who doesn't want another 1% back on top of your city, double cash for 3% back everywhere or toss that on top of your, you know, whatever else it is that gets even better rewards and your bank of America premium rewards. If you're able to use that through this thing, then, you know, get 3.6, 2.65% cash back for six months.

I mean, hello, sign up. Right, right. It's a really clever promotion on their part, I think. I mean, you know, they might have to cap. I don't know. We'll see. They might have to cap how much people are sort of allowed to spend through it to get the 1% because we know some people. We personally know some people that are going to become millionaires out of that

if they don't cap it in any way. I'm sure they probably will. But I mean, that's a creative way to do a bank account bonus essentially, right? Because if they do cap it at anything, $100, $200, $300, it's like the same kind of thing as opening a bank account.

Only you have to spend a lot in order to get it. So they're not going to have to give the full bonus to most people. It'll just be us that they have to pay out whatever the full is. But yeah, I mean, that's super interesting. I think it's particularly exciting if that go back in time feature is enabled so that you can go back and change things. I mean, that would be a game changer. That would become truly the one card to rule them all, right? I mean, that would be something we haven't seen before, wouldn't expect, and would make it worth carrying that. Right. I mean, that would that would be something we haven't seen before, wouldn't expect and would make it worth carrying that.

Right. I mean, that's my hesitation, really. It seems too good to be true. But again, you know, they have been running this in the UK. And so, you know, it seems possible that it'll that'll work as as advertised. So we'll see. You know, it did just occur to me that we forgot one major player in the history of these one card rule them all, which is still around, but in hobbled form is PayPal Key. So PayPal Key is not a physical thing. You can't go to a store and use it, but it's a virtual credit card number that just like we're talking about here, you use sort of to front other cards.

And so you can just tell PayPal key, when I'm using you, point to my Citi Premier card or my Citi Double Cash or whatever, US bank thingy. And you do have to change it before each purchase if you want to keep changing it. So there's no back in time thing, doesn't work with Amex anymore. There's a bunch of specific things, like it won't work with plastic bill pay service anymore. So it's severely hobbled from how it looked about a year ago. Yeah. But. So, but similar ish idea. So that kind of gives us some hope, right? Because obviously they found a way to make a similar ish idea happen. So maybe curve will have the ability to do this because it's, it's going to

be the same kind of thing. The big differences with curve is that it will be a physical thing you can use in the store, right? I mean, a physical card that you can actually go to the store and use. And that's big. I mean, especially in places where you aren't, for some reason, able to use a digital wallet. And I don't think PayPal Key can be used with digital wallets anyway, right? I think PayPal Key is like online, basically. So that'll be nice. Yeah.

And the other thing about Curve is it's supposed to operate as a debit card as well, even if it's charging your credit cards as credit cards. And so that was the same with PayPal Key. And that's why they ended up blocking a lot of things like plastic bill pay service, tax payments and things. But at least there's a chance that for a while, maybe we'll be able to get in those, those tax payments and pay only, you know, a flat $2 and 50 cents or whatever the current rate is for a debit card, even for very large tax payments or 1% back and earn an extra 1% back plus your credit card reward. So, so my bet is, you know, if it works at all, it'll be for a limited time. So you'll want to get in on that while the getting's getting. As my bet is, if it works at all, it'll be for a limited time. So you'll want to get in

on that while the getting's good. As we often say, got to get in while the getting's good. You got to get in at the ground level at the beginning when there's still venture capital to burn before the people that are going to really push it hard, push it as hard as they're going to push it. So on that note, there's another similar-ish sort of a thing on the market that I think maybe you're not as familiar with, Greg, but I backed this on Indiegogo, a Kickstarter-type website, and just got this device last week. And then the app that you need in order to make it work came out this week. So this is the, you can't see, it's the, yeah, it's not going to focus. The OV Valet, I got to put it in front of my face. The OV Valet, which is-

You're going to have to describe it anyway to our podcast listeners. It looks like a, I don't know. It's a little key chain-y thing. It's a little rectangular key chain-y type of a thing. And so this is made by OV Loop. And OV Loop is a company that is run, as I understand it anyway,

and this is all stuff I read on Indiegogo, so feel free to do your own research. But as I understand it, it started by the people who created the loop pay technology that used to be in Samsung phones and in the Samsung Gear S3 watch. And what's interesting about that is those who are familiar with the history of this stuff

know that the Samsung Galaxy S3 watch and the older Galaxy phones had a capability to pay using your phone or your watch that's different than what most people are using today. Because today you have to have a terminal. Most people anyway have a phone where the terminal has to have near field communications and you tap your phone to the terminal. But Loop Pay was a little bit different in that you held your phone or your watch to the magnetic reader, the place where you would traditionally swipe a card. And Loop Pay essentially tricked the terminal into

thinking that a card was swiped through that magnetic reader. Whatever magic they do made it simulate a card being swiped so it would charge that. So that enabled you to pay mobile before Apple Pay and Google Pay were really that big. And so this OV Valet was created by the same people. And so same idea in that this little rectangular device that I'm holding on my key chain here is designed so that you can bring it to the payment terminal. You hold the button, hold it up against the payment terminal. Maybe, yeah, you see, I just messed up my microphone when I did that.

I don't know if you heard what I just heard. It sounded squeaky on my end. Yeah, so you see the interference there. So when you press the button, it simulates the card, simulates the swipe. And so the idea is the same kind of thing, that you could load all of your various credit cards to this. And then with an app on your phone, choose which card you want to charge and bring it to the store and just hold

this by the swipey part and charge whatever card you want. So that is, again, a very similar idea to curve. The difference here, obviously, is from my knowledge, anyway, there's no intention for the go back in time type of feature. And it's not a physical card. It is a physical device. But, you know, if you were going to buy something in some places, I could see getting a skeptical look from a cashier when you hold up this little tiny device to the swiper area. But it's kind of cool because they say a charge will run it for four months at a time. And supposedly, along with the app, you get this digital locker where you can save all of

your various membership cards, all of your credit card numbers, and supposedly all this crypto level technology, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that nobody can possibly access your data. And I don't ever put too much faith in all of those types of claims. But the idea is to have the one place where you can store your passport, your license, your credit cards, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's up to you. Do your own due diligence as to whether or not you'd like to do that. But what makes this particularly interesting to me right now, temporarily is this device just came out, like I said, backed it, I don't know, almost a year ago and it just came in the mail a week ago and, and the companion app that runs it only came out this week.

And so the first chance to use it was this week. And I was very disappointed because the way I just explained it is the way that this thing had been advertised. However, they have not yet gotten the certifications to be able to actually add bank cards to it. So you can't actually use this the way that I just explained it yet. Supposedly they're working on that. They're supposedly they're going to get certifications from Visa soon. And so then theoretically, you'll be able to add some Visa cards. I don't know if it's even going to be all banks. So I was like, oh my goodness, this is a total ridiculous waste. The whole reason I paid for this thing was to be able to use it the way I just described. However, it might actually still

be interesting for a while because right now, since they don't have the ability for you to add bank cards, instead, what they've added is a prepaid mastercard of their own, an OV mastercard, OV loop mastercard or something like that. And so right now, this only works with their proprietary card, which doesn't have any fee or anything to sign up for. You just sign up for it in the app and you load the card with a debit card. And so you load your prepaid MasterCard with a debit card in the OV Loop app, and then you use this device to go pay for stuff at places. And that wouldn't sound particularly interesting on its surface. And it's going to sound even less interesting when I tell you that right now they're charging a 1.9% fee to load their prepaid MasterCard. So that becomes even less interesting.

And you're like, well, 1.9% to load it with a debit card. You got to get out of here. But they have said that when the general release comes out right now, it's only out for people who backed it on Indiegogo and have the device. But when the general release comes out, they're going to have no fee to load it with a debit card. Now, I don't know if that means they're going to charge some sort of an annual fee for that feature. So I feel like maybe they are, but it may become more interesting than it is right now.

And of course, the reason I've spent all of this airtime talking about it is because you load it with a debit card. So run some tests this week and you can load it with the kinds of debit cards you would be interested in loading it with. So, uh, like those that, that your friend Simon might get, for example, perhaps that would work or yeah, exactly. Or those $200 ones that you buy at Staples or the keys to the kingdom that, uh, those

tasty vanilla flavored ones, maybe, right. There's all sorts of different things that can work. And right now, again, it's kind of hobbled because you can only load $100 at a time and it's a 1.9% fee. There's some rigmarole here. I don't know that this is going to be super exciting long-term.

And the prepaid MasterCard that they put on this, I think will only run as a credit card. So I don't think you're going to be able to, for example, buy a money order with this. And I can't imagine, even if it ran with a pin, I can just imagine trying to buy a money order by holding my little device up to the machine and the looks I would get from the cashier. But who knows, maybe that will change. So to me, it's intriguing. It's an intriguing idea that may or may not be worth anything because my Samsung watch can already do the same type of

thing. That's what I was going to ask you about is, is other than this loading a debit card feature, is there any difference in the technology and what you can do with this versus with those old Samsung watches that have the same capability? I know the new Samsung watches don't have this, but the old ones do. Well, there's a couple of things. So number one, theoretically, you can add an unlimited number of cards to this. Now I say theoretically, because they don't have any bank certifications yet. So right now you can't add anything to it. So I don't know for sure that that's going to be the case. And even if it is the case, if they only work with two banks or something, then it's not going to matter. But other key differences are, number one, hard to find the Samsung Galaxy S3 anymore because it hasn't been available new in a long time. Number two, this is cheaper.

This was like $69 on Indiegogo. I think it's supposed to be $99, maybe the regular price, so cheaper than a Gear S3. And number three, and this is probably the big one for people, for a lot of people, supposedly this will run for four months on a single charge and you know, your watch, you're going to probably have to charge every day or every other day or something like that. And so that is always kind of a pain to me that I'm like, Oh man, I forgot to plug it in last night and now I'm going out the door. So I bring it out in the car and plug it into the car charger, blah, blah, blah. blah. So that would be a big convenience for this. So I think you missed one other, and I understand

why you probably missed it. It probably works well even if you're an iPhone user. Yes. Is that true? Yes. They have the app for both Apple and Android, and that's a great point. Yeah. So for all the Apple people out there, this will be much better. Right. So with the other one, it was like theoretically possible. And I got mine set up so I could sort of use it even though I hadn't used an iPhone, but I still needed my backup Android phone to make changes and things. It was a pain. Right. Well, so long-term though, I think if they have the ability to load it with debit with no fee, this could become very intriguing. Now I say it could become very intriguing.

I don't know how hard you're going to be able to push that. I don't know as though you're going to be able to visit your good friend Simon and load all of your cards onto this at once or anything like that. Clearly right now they're limiting it quite significantly at the $100 loads and with the 1.9% fee. But I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued because if they get rid of the fee, even if I have to pay an annual fee of some sort, it'll come down to how much I could potentially load to it. And then is that convenient? Like what's the difference between just using the Simon card for whatever

versus using this? And because you can link a bank account to this, I think that there's probably some, I don't know, potential good uses. And if it happens to run like a debit card, then that will also be an intriguing use. Preston Pyshko Yes. Okay. Very interesting. Now, personally, I'm way more interested in what Curve comes out with in the US, but it does sound like there's some possibility. I'm definitely not convinced, but there's some possibility for OV valet curve

will be much more exciting if it happens. But the big difference, of course, is that OV valet is here and is somewhat working. So curve hopefully will be here. I got my fingers crossed on that. Okay. So then that brings us to the post roast you haven't written any posts this week so i'm not gonna roast you uh you've been on vacation

so i mean i'm gonna roast you for being on vacation man i got back from vacation and greg went on vacation right away uh no there's there's really no roast so all right uh so you oh you're gonna roast so you wrote a post uh you wrote a post about Air France sweet spots. I did. Guilty. And, you know, I was hoping to find some really, really sweet, sweet spots in that post. Sorry to disappoint. I apologize on behalf of Air France.

I mean, they were okay. No, actually, one thing I noticed, and you might want to go look, is I think leftover from the past, now I could be wrong, but I think it still said that it treated Morocco as Europe somewhere in that post. And I think that changed. No, Morocco is still part of Europe, but Israel is not. And maybe that was still in there. I'll have to double check. Oh, no, no, no. I think you had fixed Israel part. I thought when originally. All right. No, Morocco is not. And maybe that was still in there. I'll have to double check. Oh, no, no, no. You had, I think you had fixed Israel part. I thought when originally, all right. No,

Morocco is still, don't need still coding. It's don't need to confuse people. Morocco is still. Okay. All right. Good. Yep. Good. Good. Good. Okay. Send no, no roast, no roast. I got out of there. I see. I unroasted there. Very good. That was a defensive, defensive move. I turned the heat back down. So then that will bring us to the question of the week. And so this week's question of the week comes in via email from Ariel. You saw this one actually, but we haven't talked about it. So Ariel says, I love your blog and I'm wondering whether it's worth it for me to pay rent with a credit card. I always hear about the dangers of doing it, but the math sounds like it works out. I'm curious to get your opinion. My rent is $2,900. My landlord charges a 2.5% fee for using a credit card.

So that's an extra $72.50 per month. I was planning to use my Chase Freedom Unlimited. Then that's one and a half points per dollar. So I'd get $4,458 per month. And if you are points, ultimate rewards points are valued at 2 cents each. That's a value of $89 and 16 cents a month. Wouldn't that outweigh the $72 and 50 cent fee?

Appreciate any insight you can offer. Thanks again, Ariel. Yeah. I thought this was good, a good question to bring onto the show because it really highlights a very confusing topic, which is when you're talking about how much points are worth, at times you really have to differentiate how much they're worth for redemption versus how much would you be willing to like buy these points for if they were for sale. And, and in this case, like, and actually in all cases, that should be different, right? Because if you, if you knew that you were always going to redeem Chase Ultima Rewards points and get two cents per point value.

Right. Let's say let's say somehow that was like magically always the value you'd get. Right. Would you be willing? Let me just ask you, Nick, if there was a sale on Ultimate Rewards points, would you buy them for two cents each knowing, oh, I'm going to get two cents value? Of course not. Right. I mean, why would you do that? Why would I trade two dollars or two cents for two funny money things that I can only use for two cents? I mean, I'm not going to trade two cents for two cents, even if you're giving me cents that are usable anywhere. I'm certainly not going to trade it for something that I can't use anymore. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's my point. So in the, in the question that, that she's asking here, she's basically saying, I'm willing to buy those points for, you know, something less than slightly less than two cents per point, but she really needs to think about what actually is a good price to buy these points at.

And I would assert that unless you had a very high value award that you were trying to work towards, and it better be for better than two cents value per point, I think you should set that level much lower than two cents. You should be setting it less than one and a half cents each, somewhere closer to one cent each is, I think, reasonable for ultimate rewards points to say, if I'm going to make a trade-off between paying fees in order to get more points, you are essentially buying those points. And so think about what your buy price is. And like I said, sort of like as a easy rule of thumb, I would fix one cent per point value just because it's easy to do the math and it won't lead you astray in buying more points than you ought to, I think. Yeah, I agree. And there's a lot of manufactured spending techniques that will cost you less than one cent a point.

So paying much more than one cent a point, if you don't want to do any manufactured spending, I guess that's one thing. But if you're at all interested in that or would consider that, then paying what you're talking about paying here is just way too much. Because I did the math

and you're talking about paying 1.62 cents per ultimate rewards point. Now we keep a reasonable redemption value that's conservative for ultimate rewards points and conservative. And based on some actual real world indicators, you can look at our reasonable redemption values page and find out where we came up with our numbers. But our number is more like one and a half cents per point is your reasonable redemption value, which you can reasonably expect to get without much effort. Now, can you get two or three or eight or 25 cents per dollar? Yeah, I mean, you can.

But I think that to illustrate this more clearly, even then, and I think Greg did a great job with it there, but to illustrate it even more clearly is to say, okay, if you're going to pay 1.62 cents per point, how much does that mean that you're paying for various awards? And so for example, a category one Hyatt, if you're going to pay 1.62 cents per point, that's $81. Now that could be a deal for category one Hyatts. And for others, you'd be paying more than the cash rate if you're paying 1.62 cents per point. Or if you're looking at, for example, a business class award to Europe with ultimate rewards, probably going to pay somewhere around 70,000 points or so one way. So you're talking about $1,134 in fees you're going to pay for the points for a one-way

business class award ticket. That's not a great deal because a lot of times you can find round trip business class paid tickets to Europe in the low 2000s or even below 2000 sometimes these days. So if you're going to pay $2,200 and change for those points, if you're saving anything on your business class award ticket, it might not be very much. Now, in some situations, it could be tons. So it's not to say that it can't possibly work out. But I mean, you're going to really have to pay attention to things closely in order to make that work.

And that's not how I like to play the game. I wanna have a much bigger, easy to see outsized win. Like Greg said, if you're paying one cents a point, you're talking about $700 worth of cost for that one-way business class award ticket to Europe. And that's closer to a no-brainer to me. Anyway, closer, I don't mean necessarily always, but closer to a no-brainer.

So you wanna be one cent per point or less. I definitely wouldn't be paying two and a half percent to pay the rent. Right. Right. And so, you know, the places where I would most often look to do things like pay to pay rent is with signup bonuses. So if you need extra spend in order to get the, you know, $5,000 spend so that you can earn the a hundred thousand point signup bonus, then it's, you don't even really have to do the math because in that kind of situation, um, spending two and a half percent is, is not much in the scheme of things, how much, how many rewards you'd get if you wouldn't be able to earn, uh, spend that much anyway. Right, right.

And by the same token, if you're looking to book an award next week and you're 4,458 points short and your statement's about to cut and you're like, oh, you know what? I'm going to pay the $72 so I can get the points right now so that I can book my ticket to wherever it is. Okay. I mean, there I could say, all right, maybe that makes sense. You need to tap off. You need the points.

This is an easy way to hit that spend right now. Same kind of idea that Greg is explaining. Maybe it would be okay, but I wouldn't be doing it month after month at that price. Right. Right. Okay. All right. Best of luck to you, Ariel. Thanks for the question. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about today, and you'd like to read more about what we're talking about, you can go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook, join our Facebook frequent miler insiders group, wherever you're watching or listening to this, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button and give us your feedback. And maybe you'll be featured on a future segment. Thank you all very much for

being out there with us today. And we will see you again next week. Bye everybody.