Frequent Miler on the Air - Preparing For The End (of the year) | Ep128 | 12-11-21

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

Are you ready for the end? This week we talk about your to-do list to make sure you reap all the rewards you are due before the ball drops on New Year's Eve. 1:35 Giant Mailbag 5:46 What crazy thing did American Express do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/becoming-undead-and-grabbing-over-250000-points/ 9:57 Mattress running the numbers: Is the new Hyatt Bonus Journeys worth a mattress run? https://frequentmiler.com/new-hyatt-bonus-journeys-promo-earn-2022-points-per-2-nights-bonus-points-for-hyatt-cardholders/ 18:15 Main Event: Preparing for the end (of the year) https://frequentmiler.com/end-of-year-checklist-for-2021/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-airline-fee-reimbursements-still-works/ 1:01:25 Post Roast 1:04:35 Question of the Week: Can I use mobile check-in to pick up cheap elite nights? Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, preparing for the end. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, old man, listen.

Preparing for the end. When an elderly guy like you starts talking about that, people get the wrong idea. They might. They might. You missed a part of that sentence, Craig. Did I? What did I miss? Of the year.

The end of the year. That's right. There's a lot we got to do to prepare for the end of the year. And I'm not talking about buying people presents, am I? No, no. But if you'd like to do that, you know where I live, Greg. I do, but sometimes it's hard to keep track of where you are at any given moment, especially since we've been using these fake backgrounds on our video. So I can't look

behind you and say, oh, you're in Hawaii. It could be in your basement right now. You'd never know. It's possible. I'll go check after the show, just to be sure. Okay, make sure. All right. Just to check, yeah. Sleep with one eye open. All right, the end of the year. Preparing for the end of the year at the end. Okay. There's a lot of miles and points-ish things that we need to do. So we're going to talk about what we're planning on doing, where we've succeeded, I guess, in already taking care of things and where we've utterly failed, what creative ideas we have for taking care of those

things before the end of the year, and so on and so forth. First, we have the giant mail bag. Giant mail today is going to be based on memory because the actual giant mail was quite long and I don't really see any need to read it verbatim. The basic idea is this. Rita wrote in, he had a Sapphire Reserve card with 150,000 points accumulated on that account. And he decided to close that account so that he could open a Sapphire Preferred card and get the new welcome bonus on that. And so, of course, when he did that, he lost all 150,000 points. Now, he called Chase a few times to try to get this And, and he actually finally was able to get the points reinstated. And he thinks, and this is probably true that, uh, because he had contacted chase within 30 days, they were, they were able to kind of reverse the loss of the points.

The thing is that as we know, as has happened to me in the past, when I accidentally did this, if you, if you do this and you cancel a card and lose all the points, you have something like 30 days to reopen the account and get your points back. Now that's not what he did. He didn't reopen it, but it was probably because he worked within the 30 day window. But I thought this was a good story to tell, not really because of how to get your points back, but I think it's worth just mentioning how to avoid this situation altogether. You don't want to end up in that situation because most people that have ever ended up in that situation have not gotten their points back. So it's not easy.

And I think he got somewhat lucky, even more than someone. I think he got pretty lucky to have gotten the points back. And so don't count on that. Instead, keep it simple. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Just product change to a Freedom card, Freedom Flex, Freedom Unlimited.

Worst case, if you, for some reason, didn't want one of those, you could product change to the, oh, well, no, you can't. I was going to say the fee-free Sapphire, but that would also prevent you from signing up for the Sapphire Preferred. So yeah, product change to a Freedom. Even if you already have one, you can product change to a second one. So it's not a problem. And that'll keep all your points safe. They'll stay with that Freedom account. And once you open the Sapphire Preferred card, you can move the freedom points over to the Sapphire preferred to make them more valuable. So do that. Don't cancel your chase card. And that's

actually good advice in general, regardless of this point situation. Right. Particularly with chase, but with other issuers in many instances also, there's often not a reason to cancel when you can change to something with no fee instead. And with Chase, I think it's, there are some people that think that canceling, if you have a lot of cards, they think that canceling a card gives you a better chance at an automatic approval because it frees up some credit limit. Personally, I subscribe to the theory that I would rather have a whole bunch of cards with their, whatever their credit limits are.

So that way, if I go to open a new card and chase declines it, I can call reconsideration and say, right, can you move some credit from my freedom card? That's got a huge limit. Cause it used to be a Sapphire reserve. And now I don't need that anymore. So,

and often they'll, they'll do that and they'll open up the new card that way. So with chase particularly, I think there's no good reason to cancel a chase card. Just that they all have, I think they all have a downgrade path that has no annual fee, I think. All the Chase cards. Certainly all the Ultimate Rewards cards. Yeah, I'm sure there are some co-branding cards that don't.

Yeah, I guess the obvious cards probably don't. But many anyway do. And certainly, like you said, the Ultimate Rewards. So don't do that. And the co-brand said, the ultimate reward. So don't do that. And the co-brand cards, it's less of a problem if you cancel, you know, because you won't lose the points because the points are held with the partner, not with Chase. Right, right.

So really, you need to worry about that with ultimate reward. So don't do what that reader did. And don't count on getting lucky. Just downgrade. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. All right.

So then what crazy thing did American Express do this week? Yeah. American Express. They called me up on Saturday and told me I was deceased. So you are preparing for the end. I'm too late. Already deceased. It's too late to prepare. Too late. I'm already too late. Already deceased. It's too late to prepare.

Too late. Yeah. So I had tried to add additional users to a business platinum card of mine because they had an offer on them. Each additional user I added would add 20,000 points to my account if they spent $4,000 on the new card. This is great. I'll add a few new users. Why not? And so, you know, I did that.

I did it online. And then on Saturday, they called to say, well, we couldn't add your new users because you're dead. So I also added the users. I did not get the call telling me that I'm dead. Really? No, I definitely didn't. So the short version is that he claimed that when they looked up my information using my social security number, that it reported that I was deceased.

And so he advised me to go to my local social security office to prove that I'm actually alive and get this information on the records changed. Now, I was, to say I was extremely skeptical is an understatement. You know, there are so many other things that would have alerted me to my death. Before American Express noticed. Before American Express notices because I'm trying to add a business authorized user. At some point before that. I was so skeptical. But anyway, what I did was after that phone call, I logged in to the Social Security Administration website.

There's a way to log in as yourself. And I have to admit, there was nothing on the screen on my account that said I was alive. So I didn't have proof of life at that point. No, no proof of life there. It's not me you have to worry about in the basement, Craig. Apparently, it could be somebody even closer. Watch over your shoulder. But there was also nothing that said I was dead,

and there was a promise that when I get even older than I am today that a certain amount of money would be coming to me. So I figured that they wouldn't be promising that if they, if they thought I was dead. I don't know. My experience with government websites is that they're not always the most reliable, Greg. So I don't know. I don't know. It's true. But you know what, then it occurred to me that maybe, maybe he was confused and they actually had done a soft pull of my credit report. And maybe there's something on my credit report that showed that.

So I downloaded all three of my credit reports and searched for the words deceased, dead, expired, anything I can think of. But no, they all seem to think I'm alive too. So having done my research over the weekend to assure myself that I was actually alive. I, I called, I called Amex on Monday and, and actually they, they totally bought into my claim that I was alive and, and were willing to immediately open the new business cards. And they could not explain why.

They knew that I did get the call on Saturday about being dead, but they could not explain why. Why they thought you were dead. Right, right. They couldn't explain why they were allowing you to still charge money on all of your cards and pay them, despite the fact that you were too dead to add anyone else to spend on your cards. Yeah. No, they couldn't explain that at all. They hadn't bothered to close any of the active accounts. You know, all's well that ends well, in my opinion. I'm alive, feeling good,

and I'm going to get those business additional users. Well, very good. Very good. Hopefully they're all alive too. Hopefully. All right. Well, crazy craziness, but hopefully nobody out there is assumed dead while still alive. So, right. So then let's talk about mattress running the numbers, because if you're still alive, you may want to get out there and do some mattress running, at least, you know, kind of breathe some new life into you. So, or at least into your elite status or elite night earning.

So what's going on with Hyatt? What are they doing here? So Hyatt is out with their latest bonus journeys promotion. I wish they would change the name. Stop it. Hyatt. You know, I got the app notification bonus journeys is back.

And I was like, no, it's not. The new. Right. Right. They've been calling it bonus journeys for forever. And, but, but we got all excited about it a year or two ago when it first, first became like incredible. And now that they're still using that name and we associate it with that incredible promotion, it's, it's tough. This one is not incredible. The base level of it is basically during the promotional period, if you stay two nights, and it doesn't have to be in one stay,

it could be two separate nights, you get 2022 bonus points. So that's obviously based on the- Where did they come up with that idea? It's based on the year. 2022. I see what they did there. Yeah. So to make it easy, let's forget about those extra 2,000 points and just say you're getting 2,000 points for every two nights. So 1,000 bonus points per night, basically, if you stay an even number of nights during

the bonus promotional period, I think up to 10 nights before it maxes out, something like that. Then there's another component to it, which is if you're a credit card holder, World of Hyatt credit card holder, and you stay in one of, I think there's 10 cities. I don't know why they did that. Then you get an additional thousand points per stay. So the way to maximize that is to, of course, have one night stays. And then if you do an even number of stays during the promotional period in the right cities, you're going to average in, um, you're going to average 2,000 Hyatt points per night. Okay. So that's all kind of nice. Not bad.

I didn't mean 2,000 points a night. That's good. I mean, it's, yeah, it's good. Plus you learn something from the stay, right? I mean, you still earn your regular points for paying for the stay, assuming you're paying. If it's a paid stay. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep. And another thing worth mentioning is there is an existing promotion to earn American Airlines miles on Hyatt stays in select cities. And a lot of these select cities overlap. So, for example, I just happen to know Chicago and Nashville are two that have category one Hyatt's and overlap in both of these promotions. So it's possible to get a total of 3000 points per night. If you sort of count American Airlines points equal to Hyatt points, then you can add them up that way. So, so that gets pretty

interesting. I think when, when you add all those together. Well, but category one standard costs 5,000 points per night, right? So it's still costing you something. How is this mattress run worthy? Well, that's the question that we need to talk about. Is it worth? So if you do this, the American Airlines promo ends at the end of January. So if you do these 10 separate one night stays in January at a category one and book for 5,000 points per night, you're getting back 3,000 points per night. And, and,

uh, so, so it's costing you 2000 points per night or a total of 20,000 points in order to earn 10 elite nights in 2022. So that'll get you jump-started towards your elite qualifications or re-qualifications in 2022 for the 2023 elite year. So what do you think? Oh, let me bring up one other variant on this is that I've looked at, but I don't think is practical. The other variation is to wait until March when off-peak pricing is possible. And so category one hotels could cost as little as 3,500 points per night, and you wouldn't get the American Airlines 1000 miles per night, but you're saving 1500 points for the

booking. So that would be theoretically a better way to go. But I'm saying theoretically, because when I looked at these two category ones in Chicago and Nashville, there were no off-peak dates at all during the promotional period. So it's a theoretical good way to go, but a more realistic thing to do is the January 10 nights approach. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of interesting. It's a bit of what? A bit of a hassle though. So first you have to be in one of these cities, one of these qualifying cities that has a category one and matches both promos like at least 20 nights you gotta go 10 separate times to check in which is why i say 29 i guess it's not necessarily the truth if you have multiple

category ones you can switch between but otherwise you'd probably need to have a night in between right where you check out and then don't stay and then come back. So you'd need to like take most of January checking in every other day, basically. Right. I mean, yeah. So does that sound fun? Yeah. That sounds like a blast for, for, for not that much return. I don't know. I mean, if you live in Chicago or I don't know if Dallas was a, an overlapping city, but I think Dallas has a number of category ones. Also, if you live in a city like that, that has a bunch of category ones, maybe. I mean I'm going to spend 15,000 on my world of high credit card anyway, in order to get the annual free night certificate. And I'm going to get six elite nights from the spend. And then the 15,000 points from that spend is going to mostly cover another 10 elite nights or, you know, what are three quarters of that, right? So it's going to cover like seven and a half elite nights, so to speak

on top. So, you know, that 15 K spend is going to replenish your points for the stage you make in January. Then I'm like, I all together, if you play with the account, I mean, obviously there's better ways to generate 20,000 high points, but if you're going to spend it anyway, I could look at it that way and say, you know what? Yeah. It gets me closer. Cause then, you know, between the spend and the credit card, the five nights you get for having the credit card, the six nights you can get for the 15K spend, you know, all these extra, you'd be like, you know, a decent chunk of nights there. Right. Right. Yeah. So for me, no way. I think it's way too much work. I can't, I can't imagine driving out to a, you know, Hyatt house or whatever it is, Hyatt place every other night to check in and no, not for me. There's not any category one near me,

so I'm definitely not doing it myself. But I don't know. I mean, if I lived within a few miles of one, maybe, but that's going to apply to such a small group of people who live within a few miles of one and also value all of this. I still wouldn't do it. I don't think it's a good enough deal. Maybe if by doing that, I was coming out net even or net ahead with points, but I'm not. And so I'm spending a lot of time to get 10 elite knights. Are you going to get to 60 knights otherwise? Yeah. Well, I have the World of Hy high credit cards, so I can always do it through spend on there and I might pick up the business card as well to do a combo approach. Okay. All right. Fair enough. So if you've got a lot of spend, that would make sense. If you're

not somebody who can do a massive amount of spend, then I, I would, I'd probably take a few minutes each day to go do it. Okay. Well, that's good. That's good. When we have different opinions on these things and then listeners can decide for themselves, is it worth doing side for yourself? There you go.

All right. So then I think that brings us to the main event, the main event preparing for the end. Stop scaring me like that, Greg. I know you've already been dead once in the last few days. All right, slow down. Not ready to join you in the afterlife here. All right. We're preparing for the end of the year.

Of the year. Yeah. So there's all kinds of things that we need to get done. So I have a list of sort of categories of things and let's start with- You're checking it twice. Here we go. We're going to check it twice. Let's start with elite status. So most programs, if you're hunting elite status or you want to requalify for elite status, you've got to get it done by the end of December. This year, a number of programs have either rolled over status completely so if you had status already you're good to go for next year so you don't have to worry about it but if you're

newly acquiring status you generally still have to get it done by the end of the year american airlines is an exception they've moved the end of the year to be end of fe. So you have more time there, but, um, you know, and then, um, like one other example is, is, uh, Air Canada's aeroplan status match that a number of people did. There was an easy status match available. And if you want to, if you got matched to an elite status level and you want to keep that status into 2021, you have to fly a round trip with Air Canada before January 15th. So of meeting any criteria by the end of this year. So it's not particularly relevant to me right now. What about you? Yeah, so not me personally, but I just logged in as you were talking about all that to check

to my wife's Marriott account. She is at 46 nights, so she's four shy of platinum status. And we're going to be driving home this weekend and a good chance that we'll stop at a Marriott property that we can put her at 47. So she's going to be three short of free breakfast status. And she'll have a couple of free. I mean, she's got a couple of free night certificates now. She'll have a couple of free night certificates later. I don't know. I mean, should she mattress run the last three nights, Greg? Should I book like a four-night stay instead of a one-night stay on the way home? Yeah, that's tough because, yeah, I mean, you certainly, when using those free night

certificates, are going to want to be using it with a platinum account rather than her gold account, right? So, I would certainly be spending some time thinking about how to get that done if I were you. It's unfortunate that Marriott is not like Hyatt and that could be said in so many ways. But what I particularly mean here is with, with Hyatt free night certificates, if you had that same situation, she could just give them to you. And then, and then your, your, your, uh, nights would be under your account, your top tier elite status account. You can't do that with Marriott. So yeah, I would certainly be looking for opportunities to do those extra three nights. That's that's tough because you're getting to the end here.

We are. We're getting to the end is near. It's a, yeah. So on the way here, we stopped at a Ritz Carlton that was actually only 35,000 points per night. So I considered using a free night certificate because you know, we wouldn't get breakfast anyway with status, but then it was on MXF HR and it was like $249. So after the $200 credit with tax, it was like $80 out of pocket, free breakfast for $200 credit. So I was hoping to get an upgrade, though there weren't any upgrades available, which was true. There was nothing available in the app to book either. So, you know, we stayed there on the way down. I could see staying there again on the way back. I don't know, maybe use one of our free night certificates, even FHR night. I

don't know. I got to think about it, uh, and figure it out like in the next 24 hours. But I, I figure we probably should get her the rest of the way to status. Like you said, the problem is not being able to use those 35 K starts. Cause like so often I'll think about using one of our 35 K starts, but be like, ah, but I want breakfast or I want to try to use my sweet night upgrades. And so if we get her to 50, she can get some sweet night awards of her own. And, and then we can, uh, you know, cross our fingers and hope for an upgrade to actually clear with Marriott one of these days. So yeah, I guess we've got a mattress from that. Otherwise, from an elite status standpoint, no, everything else is kind of

buttoned up at this point, extended. I'm not going to bother requalifying for titanium with Marriott since they extended it anyway. And I don't really need another five sweet nights that aren't going to clear the extra 40 K certificate. All right. And then with, with Delta, you're at what gold status now or something? Yeah, but that's going to roll over. Right. So, you know, so I'm not, I'm not too concerned about that. I don't have enough qualifying dollars. I don't think for platinum status anyway. So even if I tried to make a run at enough miles for, you know, the, the qualifying miles for platinum status, then I wouldn't have the qualifying dollars anyway. So, uh, so I'm, I'm holding off on that and I may open a Delta card

next year though, because I've got a fair number of miles now that are going to roll over. And so platinum status is within reach if I go for a Delta card, but I'm going to wait until I'm sure that I want that platinum status. Cause you know Because after Delta kind of downgraded their certificates, so to speak, I got less excited about the regional upgrades. Well, the regionals are pretty much intact. So I wouldn't feel that way about those, actually. And it's the globals that got severely devalued. So I think, I don't know. I think it's worth, it's worth considering anyway. Yeah. We'll see, you know,

obviously it depends on your, on your flying patterns that you're likely to do, but I really love how they let you apply them to award tickets. It makes a big difference. Um, so that's, that, that's really nice. Um, okay. Uh, what about, do you have any, you know, choice benefit type things that you need to worry about? So Marriott's coming up for example, right? Marriott. I don't think I picked my 50 night Marriott benefit yet this year for a 50 nights at platinum status in my account. And if my wife makes it, she'll have to pick. So got to do that. I totally forgotten, totally forgotten until I saw a question in Frequent Miler Insiders

the other day, I think it was, about the Hyatt benefit at 40 nights. You choose either the 5,000 points or the $100 gift card. I saw you comment and say that you chose the $100 gift card and Steven Pepper comment and say that he chose the 5,000 points. And I thought to myself, I didn't pick either one yet.

So I need to do that. I think I'm going to take the points. Yeah. And in my case, I was actually talking about what I chose last year. I haven't last year. I received an email saying you reach 40 nights. Which one do you want to pick? I didn't get that email this year.

So, well, that's because we both had 60 nights like January 3rd. Right.. So if you did, no, that's not true. Oh no, you didn't. That's right. That's right. I did, but you didn't. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I did my, my concierge did send an email and ask what I wanted and I just never wrote back. And so, uh, so I don't know, I guess I got to do that. I got to get on that. And I think I'm going to take the points because the gift card doesn't appeal to me as much. I'd rather have flexibility. You don't want to take the experiences discount. I mean, they did bring back experiences, didn't they? I think I saw an email about that. No, I need to do my Marriott ones as well. And, you know, the 50 night one, I mean, the sweet night up awards are really the only practical choice. At 75k, I'm probably going to take the 40k free night, I guess, just because... Because you want another free night certificate. You're so excited about other expiring. Except the other ones are going to expire soon enough, I guess just because, because you want another free night certificate. You're so excited about other expiring,

except the other ones are going to expire soon enough. I guess the, I just haven't had good luck applying my, my sweet night awards lately. And, and I've had so many of them that I don't know that I won't have as many now though. They've been rolling over,

but I don't know if they're going to roll over again. Or did they? Anyway, I don't know. I won't have as many now, though. They've been rolling over, but I don't know if they're going to roll over again. Or did they? Anyway. I don't even know. We'll see. I don't even know where they all end now. So, yeah, we will see. Maybe they rolled over to the next year.

I think they did, actually. I think so, too. So, yeah. So it would be crazy to pick that instead of the 40K night since the other ones rolled over. Although the 40K night is soon going to be not as valuable as it used to be. Or more valuable depending on how you look at it because you can top it off with points.

Well, what I was going to say is it had the huge advantage over 35K certificates of being applicable to those category fives that were peak priced at 40K, which was like all the desirable properties when you wanted to go. And when they add the ability to top off certificates, then it becomes exactly 5k more valuable per night over the 35 K certificates. So it kind of sort of, no, I'll argue with you a little bit. Not, not really argue. I will, I'll say the

slight advantage is you can add 10,000 points, right? So you could book a 50 K property, down that way. No, I'll argue with you a little bit. Not really argue. I'll say the slight advantage is you can add 10,000 points, right? So you could book a 50K property, whereas those 35K starts, you won't be able to, oh no, you can add up to 15,000. You can add 15K. Nevermind, I take it back. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking you can add up to 10K. But I mean, if you have a property priced at a weird amount, like 52.5 or 55K, which is unusual, but I think there are possibilities with those off-peak combination with, I forget what they're called, those specials, then yeah, then it would be more valuable. That would be a pretty unusual situation. Until they eliminate word charts, then we might see maybe it'd become more valuable again, because again, you might be seeing those 53K properties

or whatever, and then you could use it for that. Yep. All right. So we're going to pick our choice benefits. What's next? Okay. Let's move on from elite status to Southwest companion pass. It's not really that we're reaching a deadline here as much as we've reached the point where this is the perfect time to acquire it. So if you sign up for new credit cards now, for example, and your statement closes, your first statement then ideally closes in January. And if you meet the spend requirements right away, then your signup bonus hits in January. And if you do it all right, you can then get enough points for, uh, the Southwest companion pass, which will let you add a competitive for free to all your flights for the rest of 2022 and all of 2023. So nearly two full years. If you start now, which what do you think? Are you working on it? It is exciting. Except every

time I think about the fact that I did that in late 2019 to have a companion pass for all of 2020 and all of 2021. And I haven't used it once. I'm bummed out about that, but of course that's the results of the pandemic. So once, once we're flying again, I intend to flex my miles and points more than I have this last year and a half or two years. So am I working on it? Not actively, but I'm hoping to be able to pick up some referrals and get some points that way. After your December statement cuts, it counts for Chase against the current calendar year cap of whatever, $50,000. I think they may have even increased it to $100,000 now. But it counts against this year's cap with Chase, but won't post to your Southwest account until January. So it's possible to double up on referrals, which isn't going to apply to most people. But if you have the ability to refer a handful of folks, then doing it after your December statement cut date is good because then you could double it up with any referrals you make next year. So hopefully I'll be able to do a

little bit of that and position us to get a companion pass. I've actually thought about a Southwest business card in order to earn a second companion pass now that I have two kids and one of them during 2022 is going to stop being a free lap infant. Not that he has been a free lap infant yet since he hasn't been on a flight yet, which is crazy to me. But anyway, you know, the timing is right. You're totally right. But to be clear about what you just said, you can't personally earn a second companion pass, but you're talking about when a couple is doing this together, they each get a companion pass so they can each add a free companion, which would be your children. That is true. Yes.

Thank you for being clear about that. A lot of couples do that. And that's a great way to do it. Since it's possible to stay with a companion pass for two years, you can alternate which, you know, every other year, the other person picks up the new card or cards, depending on how you're doing it, to get the companion pass. And then you'll still almost all the time have the two companion passes. Yeah, I mean, that would be a great way to play it. Now I'm going to say though, I'm at least mildly less enthusiastic about the companion pass than I have been for years and years. So we've had it for a long time now because of this variable pricing, the dynamic pricing that everybody has on award tickets, which, I mean, I guess if prices become really high, I'll be more excited about the companion pass again. But at the current time, awards domestically are sometimes quite cheap with whether it's American

miles or United miles or Delta miles. So it feels a little bit less valuable than it did in the past when everybody else was a minimum of a much higher price than Southwest. Now it's closer. Yeah. Well, and even if you're not comparing to others, if, if it's Southwest and the ticket costs you 5,000 points and so you add a free companion, you're only saving 5,000 points. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, so yeah, you're right. It's, it's definitely where it's most valuable is where the best deal is, is a much more expensive ticket or a lot of,

a lot of little ones. Right. So I think I'll probably go after it, but I'm questioning it really for me, the big question is, am I going to fly enough in 2022 to want it for the, for 2022, or should I just hold out and wait for 2023? Because I, you know, I'm not, not positive whether or not we're going to be flying a ton next year. Right, right. And for me personally, I just don't fly Southwest enough for it to make any sense at all. And I have enough trouble using up my Delta companion certificates that come with the credit cards. So, yeah, that's just not even a consideration for me. All right.

Next topic, free night certificates. And there's two pieces to that. One is earning them. So a lot of credit cards, you have to meet a certain amount of spend before the end of the year to earn the free night certificates. And the other one is spending them before they expire. Let's talk about earning them first. Are you working towards earning a free night with it with any of the cards yep the world of hyatt card so the 15k spend on that we're about 100 short so i'm gonna buy something today or you know tomorrow or soon anyway in order to meet that and get that out of the way before i forget so almost got the 15k done there and and for us that was also the welcome bonus because the 15k spend was required to earn the full welcome bonus which is a garbagey welcome bonus right now anyway.

But opened it because my wife was about to go over 524 and said, okay, well, time to pick that up. So anyway, we'll do that one. Not doing any of the Hilton ones because we didn't get targeted for the 8K for a free night. So we're not doing any of those right now. Just the Hyatt one. That's the only spend-based free night. So we're not doing any of those right now. Just the Hyatt one. That's the only spend-based free night certificate, you. Same exact thing. Well, except for the welcome bonus part.

I'm trying to finish the 15K spend on a Hyatt card. We actually have multiple Hyatt cards in our family, but I'm only bothering with one of them for the reason that you wrote in a post not long ago about that there are so many great spend, that I qualify for with Amex that, that spend going onto other cards is a huge waste right now, if it means one or the other. That's, that's totally it. You know, it was painful.

I contemplated whether or not to bother. And there was a large part of me that was like, let's not even bother because that spend right now, I mean, we were quite a bit short as of like, let's say a month ago, we probably had 8,000 left to go on that. And I was like, well, that 8,000 on Amex cards right now is at least another 32,000 Amex points with the plus four offers. And then with all the other authorized user bonuses and this and that, it's like, yeah, big opportunity cost to do that spend. Ultimately decided we had enough spend that it wasn't necessarily a this or that. So we went ahead and did it, but also because it was the two points per dollar, figured out we got to finish it off. We're close enough, but that's it. We're not going to do any more. And also because I think that certificate's only valid for like six months, right? And Hyatt hasn't extended the current free night certificates. And so I've got a couple of

category one to fours or one category one to four and a category one to seven right now that I was really banking on Hyatt extending and they haven't extended. So I'm a little bummed about that. I know a lot of people have been successful getting points out of it after it expires, at least with globalist status. So I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get some points at least for those, but I'm soured on the idea of collecting too many more free night certificates. Right. I think actually we need our fact checker to check this out because Hyatt does award like six months free night certificates, but I think that's for other type of things. Like, like maybe the, the brand explorer thing and, and the milestone award ones. I think the annual one is, is, is for a full year, but, uh, well, I know the one that you get from the anniversary is a

year. I don't know. There could very well be that the spend-based one is also valid for a year. I'm not positive. Yeah. I'm not sure either. Yeah. So, but Radisson, definitely not. I learned my lesson with Radisson. I did the spend for a few of those and haven't used any of them. I learned the same lesson a few years ago and ended up like not having an opportunity to use them. And that was, that was awful. Yeah. Okay. The next topic is, oh, well, so we talked about spending, but what about using? So Marriott luckily has moved out all the expiration dates to, I forget, June or something. June 31. And I think Hilton has moved out theirs as well to like June or July. But you still have Hyatt that has not moved theirs out.

And IHG moved the ones that were issued this year, but not the ones that were issued last year. So I know I have IHG certificates expiring at the end of this year. So I know I have IHD certificates expiring at the end of this year. And Radisson also, I don't think has extended. So we're potentially sitting on free night certificates with no idea how to use them. Yeah. Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. And I know we're not the only ones. IHD I took care of with a family member who did some traveling and I said, Oh, I, I got some free nights certificates that are going to expire. So I used a couple of those. In fact, I think I used one of the Radisson ones also on the same family member on the same trip. So I probably still only have two more Radisson free nights certificates.

Now that I think about it, but I have no use in mind for those. So, you know, ho, ho, ho, they're going to get gifted a Merry Christmas to someone. So I, yeah, probably someone on the frequent miler team. So I, I think that those are unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to use those. The IHG one that I have is extended because it was issued this year. So I'm okay there. The Hyatt ones, the Hyatt ones really burned me. Thanks Hyatt. Category one to seven for getting globalist status and not a chance to use it this year. Oh, a one to seven. It does. It does. You should have accidentally applied it to a cheap stage so that it'd be gone.

Right. Right. Right. Just alleviate that pain. Yeah. Who would have known? Rip the bandaid off early. No, that's really sad. I mean, so I don't know how many points they'll give you, but after it expires, since you're globalist, if you talk to your concierge, I'm sure they'll throw some points your way if you let that expire. But I know you'd rather use it for good value. I would rather use it for good value. My problem now is that like, I'm going to drive back home this weekend, like I said, and so probably end up staying in the DC Baltimore area. And there's just not a category seven Hyatt at all in that area. And then there's not even like a six or five that excites me all that much. I don't even know if there's a six. I think the

park Hyatt in DC is only a category five. So, um, and even that, you know, I've stayed and it's nice, but I don't know if it's worth going out of my way to drive into DC itself and stay there. So, uh, yeah. So, so I'm looking at probably not, you've got to get your money's worth and drive into New York city and park at the park Hyatt so that you the Park Hyatt. You get the parking benefit and just enjoy your free breakfast. See, now usually I would do that. That's in a normal year. That's what I would do.

This year, I don't think it's going to work, which is crazy because we always go to New York during the holidays, but this year probably just not going to work out timing wise. Bummer. Yeah. So I'm in a similar situation. I have two, um,

Hyatt certificates expiring and haven't figured out what I'm going to do with them yet. I think for the first time ever, there's a decent chance that I'll ask for points after the fact. Um, these are only category one to four though. So it's not nearly as painful and a couple IHG certificates expiring, which I have offered to a friend to, who can definitely use them. So, so those will go to good use and that's, yeah, that's, that's too bad. I, you know, I wish we had some better ideas for all that, but again, as we mentioned earlier, if you do want to give your Hyatt certificate to someone, you can actually give it to them. Hyatt will let you change, you know, apply it to their stay under their name, under their account and everything. So you have to call and tell them that you want to gift it, though, not that you want to reserve it in somebody else's name.

You have to tell them you want to give your certificate to someone. That's right. That's right. You don't have to call them. You could do it. Well, at least I've had luck doing it through high concierge in the past, although people have reported that they've since maybe limited how much they can do for you. So don't know about that for sure. I think that's the Twitter concierge that has limited, I think. That's what I meant. Yeah. The Twitter concierge. Yep. Okay. So, all right. So we got some free certificates to use the source subject. I'm sure everybody else does too. Best of luck. There's no magical solution. Most of those, there's no way to extend either. It's not like Marriott where you used to be able to call and call and extend them. And you probably still can do that with Marriott, but IHG, Hyatt,

there's none of that like one-off extending certificates that happens. So out of luck. Right. Okay. Next topic, travel credits. So these are where credit cards offer airline incidental fee credits or straight up travel credits or resort credits, whatever it is. I have a whole spreadsheet that I keep every time I acquire a new card that has these, I put it in the spreadsheet and put how much I'm expecting and I try to keep track of it that way. I don't always do a great job of keeping track of it. And I definitely do not do a good job of making sure to

use up these credits earlier in the year. So I'm sitting on quite a few, specifically in this case, those airline incidental fee credits from Amex. I have quite a few of those. Yeah. So New Year's resolution for Greg, use those earlier in the year. That's a good one. Yeah. I'm sitting on a whole bunch of those too. So, and in my case, actually the time, I think I should double check this, make sure that I'm right, but I'm pretty sure the time that I messed up

in buying the United Club certificate was, I want to say it was the end of last year. Maybe it wasn't. I think it was the end of last year though. So I think it was, and when I say that, I think Greg put in the post, I thought it was two years ago, but now I'm thinking about my balances on those.

I think it must have been January 31st of last year that I bought some United Club passes and the charges didn't actually post until January 1st, even though the club passes showed up in the account right away on December 31st and had a December 31st expiration. I'm questioning my timing on the story I'm telling, but at any rate, that's what happened. And so then not only did I not get the airline central credit for the calendar year in which I made the charge because it showed up with a January 1st date on my Amex statement, but then I had also started spending toward my credit in the new year because of course it counted towards the credit in the new year, which locked me in on my airline selection. So I got a double whammy on that. So I already had some progress. And I think actually, when I think back at this year, I was telling that story incorrectly because I was thinking that I've used some of my airline incentives and typically Amex will let you change your airline unless you've used some of the credit. And then often they won't. But I think I'm in that situation because I had United selected because of that old shenanigans. And I think I did some travel bank,

but not all of it via travel bank yet. And so I've got a bunch that I have to use with United. Right. Right. So I was going to talk about the travel bank thing. So for people who selected United, that's crazy easy, right? You just deposit money into your travel bank and use it in the future and Amex will pay you back for it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you say that all matter of factly, yes, it has continued to work. There was a period of time where it stopped working, but it came back and continues to work. So it's one of those things that isn't on the necessarily officially sanctioned list of things. So it's possible that it won't work,

but very likely that it will. And the nice thing about travel banking, if you're not familiar, is that the funds don't expire for five years. So it's not like one of those things where you're essentially buying a limited time credit that's only available for a year.

Here, you've got five years to use the travel bank credit. Right. Now with almost any other airline, if you don't have true incidentals to charge, you're stuck doing other types of tricks. And two that I think I've mentioned on the show before are similar. So one is where you, with various airlines, you could buy a ticket that is less than $100. It varies by airline, what that maximum amount is that will trigger the incidental credit refund. But if you buy that cheap airfare, you get the credit. And then you, you know, if you don't actually want to fly that when it, when it comes time to fly it, you can either cancel it and get a credit or change it to another, to another flight in the future that you do want to take that kind of thing.

It's sort of like getting, um, extending your, your credit for about a year. Because when you do that, when you cancel, you only have a year after that to use the credit from that flight. So that's one way. Another is with award tickets. So when award tickets have fees, that usually triggers these credits as well. And again, varies a bit by airline, but it does, it does. Uh, cause last I checked, I don't know if it's still true. It wasn't working with American airlines, which was surprising, but most others it does. And, you know, and because most of the airlines now allow free changes you could do, well, both of these are thanks to airlines allowing free changes. You can, uh, cancel, you can make changes and so on. What you do have to watch out for is just like booking something. Like let's say you book

something where you have like $200 fee charges and they both get rebated and then you cancel that award and the airline credits you back the $200. Amex has been known to then claw back the $200 that they gave you because they see that you are basically gaming it. And so, you know, try to avoid that type of situation. There you go. There you go. So, yeah, I mean, I have a bunch of them to use. So those are some of the ways that I will probably use at least some of the credits. If not all of the credits, probably between the things you just mentioned,

I imagine, at least on the Amex side of things. And keep in mind, by the way, so we have a post that's going to be updated shortly here with what works for triggering airline fee credits. And the thing to keep in mind there that I always say, and I'll say again, even though stuff will be relatively recent, is that if there's

a data point in there and there's no counter data point yet, that means nothing has yet changed, or at least nothing has been reported to us to have changed. And typically, if something changes, people do report it right away. So if it says it works, it probably works. I'd be pretty confident. But also keep in mind that Amex varies on the time they take to post the credit from these things. Sometimes, a lot of times, it's within like three days. But every now and then, it takes a week or two. So don't panic if you don't see the credit right away. If it's something that is in there as it works, especially if it's had recent positive data points, it's unlikely that you're the first negative data point,

just more likely that they're just slow on posting the credit this time around. So that's worth knowing. Can we go to the Chase one, the Chase Ritz card? Is that related enough? So we had a post. So the Chase Ritz card also has a $300 annual incidental credit. And that credit is interesting because it's not automatic. And I say interesting, a lot of people are like, oh, it's not automatic. You got to call in and talk to somebody and get them to manually process the credit or send a secure message. And so the list of things that are published to work are similar to the stuff that would be good with an Amex airline fee credit by the letter of the law. However, in experience, people find that lots of things in addition to what's on the official list work when you call in because it is just a rep manually processing

the reimbursement. And so we have a post about what works and it's not very updated. And part of the reason I've really struggled on whether or not very updated. And part of the reason I've really struggled on whether or not to update it, because part of the reason I haven't made more of an effort to keep it updated is because I feel like positive data points are not always easily replicable because it really seems to vary based on the discretion of the rep. I mean, do they just immediately think, oh yeah, that's a travel incidental and process the credit without even questioning it? Does it require a little bit of social engineering or what?

Because a lot of things have flown. Let's put it that way. A lot of things have flown. Yeah, I mean, we got an email, if I remember right, about someone who had had like a Marriott stay that they had charged and they called in and that was refunded.

And that's probably not going to happen for you. Probably not. I mean, unless you get lucky and get that same rep that just was new and didn't know what they were doing. Right, right. Most likely it was a rep that didn't fully understand it and didn't take the time to just read the rules of it and just thought, yeah, it's travel, just like Nick said. So yeah, so lots of things can work. And I've always, personally, I've always just secure message, but people have reported some creative outcomes with calling. So that might be worth it too, if you have, there you go, if you need it there. All right, let's move on to Dell credits. So the Amex Business Platinum Card offers $200 in Dell credits every six months. And so they also have been offering people 150,000 points to expand your membership. Not everybody's gotten this deal, but basically get another business platinum card and you get 150,000 points after $15,000 spend. And the net result is that I have like, in my family, like six business platinum cards.

So that's a lot of Dell credits. So Greg's sending me a really nice Christmas gift is what he's saying there. I got some Radisson certificates. We want to make a trade here, Craig. So, yeah, you've got a whole bunch of them to use. So what are you doing? I mean, lots of people want to know.

What are you going to do with it? I use mine just to jump ahead of Craig because I only have one of these to use. I used it to buy some Christmas gifts. So it was just, you know, something was on sale on Black Friday, stacked it with a portal payout and the 10% back offer. So I bought like $250, two Christmas gifts that added up to 250 bucks and net out of pocket was something like $25 after the two offers.

So that was easy for me. But what are you doing with $1,200 worth or something? Yeah. So I'd already spent some of it, but there's what I like to do with it and what I'm able to do with it. Okay. And let me talk about what I like to do and what I've done in the past, which is they sell Xbox gift cards. And they sell them, if you buy them one at a time, they give you 10% off using a promo code Xbox 10. And so if you go through a portal, you get the portal rewards, you get the Xbox gift card at a discount, and you even earn Dell rewards if you're signed up for the

Dell rewards program, buying these things, and then you can load them to your Microsoft account and use them for anything in the Microsoft store. So you're basically getting, let's say you went through portal for 10% off. Let's just make the math easy. And, and you're getting 10% off when you're buying them. So it's a, you know, let's say you're getting about 20% off altogether on these Xbox gifts cards that you were getting for free because the business platinum card is refund reimbursing you for them and then wait wait you don't hit me as an xbox guy greg and you just touched on it you know i'm not i'm not but uh about a year ago or so microsoft opened it up and the xbox gift cards are identical in every way to microsoft gift cards microsoft store gift cards so you load them into your microsoft account you use them for anything in the Microsoft store.

I bought a laptop. So, you know, it was a- Bought a laptop, but not from Dell, not a Dell laptop. Not a Dell laptop because I've bought a Dell laptop before and it was the worst lemon of a laptop I've ever had. Made that mistake. I'm not going to review that. Yeah, boy, I'm never going to do that again.

And I know that can't I'm not going to review that. Yeah, boy, I'm never going to do that again. And I know that can't possibly be most people's experience because they get great reviews most of the time, but I just got such a terrible thing and had terrible luck with their support as well. So yeah, I was not going to buy another Dell laptop, but I bought a Microsoft laptop, which has been fantastic. I really liked it. You do need to know that Microsoft will only let you load a total of a thousand dollars to the, to your gift card account. So that's the most you can spend towards something like a laptop,

but there's lots of things you could buy in the Microsoft store as well. Peripherals and, you know, tablets and things like that. One irony is that when it came time for me to renew my subscription to Microsoft Office, I wanted to use some gift card credit there, but the Microsoft store does not let you use a gift card to pay for subscriptions. Smart of them, right? Whereas Dell does let you buy Microsoft subscriptions. So one way or another, you're able to re-up your Office 365 or whatever it is. You don't get that extra 10% off. But yeah, yeah.

So that's what I'd like to do. But there's a sad side to the story, which is, uh, after you buy a certain amount of these gift cards, they, they start blocking your orders. And I got used to calling that Greg, how do you do that? I get used to calling and, and kind of, uh, getting them a reset the flag, but then it got to a point now, um, where they say they've reset the flag, but it doesn got to a point now where they say they've reset the flag, but it doesn't help. I still can't get any orders through. So now I have to buy regular stuff. And so, yeah, so, so for like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there were big portal deals for

Dell and I just bought all kinds of presents and miscellaneous stuff that maybe I can use. Maybe I can't just to use up all the, all the credits and worst case is I, I, you know, I get a whole bunch of membership rewards points because it happened to be the racket and portal, which offers an option of, of getting membership rewards points. So I did a lot of spend through there, get a lot of points. So yeah. And's good. Yeah. And then if you use your Amex card and you had done a referral on it, you got more points from that too. And like the points just piled up there, I'm sure. So, so yeah, that's, I think probably the way to do it.

Going forward, you know, I found plenty of gadgety items on Dell that I'm like, I don't really need that, but I kind of want it. So, uh, so there, you know, there are things like that, or, or I've been known to buy things. Like when I find a mouse that I like or something like that, I'm, I've been known to buy a couple of them knowing that one will die or get lost or whatever else. And then I can pull the next one out of the closet. Exactly. Uh, and things like, uh, you know, microphones, like earbuds, um, you know, a lot, a lot of little like gadgety things, even smartwatches they have on there. So all kinds of things that you can pick from. Not HP printer ink though, I found. So that was something I needed that I couldn't get.

Unfortunately. Got to go to the laser printer. I'm telling you, Greg, laser printer. But I read once that, that the, like they they're they're unhealthy that the they put some kind of dust in there that's probably true that's that's not healthy so i didn't really want to um yeah um i'm elderly enough right right right already thinks you're dead i don't need mx to become right anytime soon yeah true true all right so uh so then i think that brings us to the next. No, no, no. I was ready to jump ahead. That's not the end of it yet.

Is it? Dell credits. We still have more credits to talk about. So the last topic I wanted to mention. So I'm not trying to cover every possible thing. The last topic, it's kind of very specific, which is if you have a city rewards plus card, you get up to 10,000 points back on award redemptions each year. And so that means spending a hundred thousand city thank you points to maximize that benefit. I have no idea where I am with that. I don't know a good way of tracking it.

I haven't looked on my city account to see if it lists it anywhere that's easy to read. So I haven't done anything about it. I'm probably not going to. But if I was going to, I'd probably do the one to two choice transfer. Because I know. Speculatively, yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Because those points will almost always get really good value when you're doubling like that. And I've seen a lot of promising opportunities to use those choice points with both the Ascend Hotel Collection

and with Preferred Hotels. Even Cambria has some nice properties. So yeah, that's probably what I would do if I decided I needed to maximize that benefit. Interesting. What about you? No, I don't have a Rewards Plus, so I don't even have to worry about that.

I saved myself the whole problem. Not an issue for me. So one of these days, maybe we'll get around to downgrading something and picking up a Rewards Plus. But I don't even have to worry about that. I saved myself the whole problem, not an issue for me. So one of these days, maybe we'll get around to downgrading something and picking up a Rewards Plus, but no, not yet. So don't have to worry about that. But that actually reminds me though, there are some other calendar year things like the Sapphire Reserve travel credit done at the end of the year here and the Bank of America premium rewards, travel credits, calendar year. I think one thing that's maybe good to point out here is, are there any of those that are not based on December 31st? So many of those calendar year

benefits, you can charge up to December 31st and you'll get the credit for the year that you make the charge as long as the charge posts on December 31st, which are not like that, which are done. Right. Right. Well, prestige used to be an exception because it used to be based on the, your December close date as opposed to December 31st, but they changed it a year or two ago. So, so that one's in line. Sapphire reserve is not calendar year for those who signed up since something like 2017. It's for them. It's based on membership year.

The Hilton Aspire Resort Credit, I think, is membership year. So there are quite a few things that are more membership year rather than calendar year. What about December Statement Cut Date? Is there anything else that comes up that would be related to December Stat cut date? There probably are, but I don't know of any off the top of my head. I didn't think of anyone preparing my post on that topic. There you go. All right. So then that's that. Use up your credits before the end of the year. Was there anything else on that topic on the checklist? That's all I had. So I think it's time for our post roast. Post roast. Post roast. You our post roast. Post roast.

Post roast. Yeah. I'm nervous. Post roast. Well, you've been on vacation. So my roast for you is I haven't really enjoyed any of the posts you've published this past week. Not a one. You know, I'm laughing in part because of the funniness of it. And in part, because the way we republish things, I haven't checked, but I wonder if there's not something

that has my name on it this week. It probably is. It got republished because it was an old deal that came back alive. And so probably somebody just republished it and it still has my name. So maybe you... Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you trying to roast me? No, I'm not sure that you didn't like it. All right. So I post or so in the other direction now from me to you, I have a, I don't know if I want to call it a roast. It's like a, a bake or a sear, a post, a small, small nitpicky thing that isn't even really nitpicky. It's a, you'll see, you'll see. So we're just talking about all the end of the year things. One of the end of the year things is the Saks credit on the platinum cards. And that's a twice a year, $50, January, June, $50, July to December.

And you mentioned when you mentioned that the gift cards are, they don't work. And if you buy them online, that's true. They definitely won't trigger the credit. In-store, though, I think, anyway, we've had a number of readers report success getting the credit. Now, what you mentioned in the post and is why I'm sure you told people gift cards are not a good idea is that we've had reports from some people, and it hasn't been everyone. I know it hasn't been everyone, but we've had reports from some people about Amex clawing back on in-store gift card purchases, even months after the card was closed. So while you may indeed get away with it, so to speak, you may indeed be able to buy a gift card in store. There's a risk that it may get clawed back way down the road. Now, that said, there are plenty of people who haven't gotten it clawed back, right? Sure, sure.

So it's not necessarily impossible. It's just risky. So you know what I love about this roast is that I need to tell you about how I prepared my post. How I prepare my post is I look to see if we did a checklist post last year and you had written one. And so what I did is I copied most of the content over. And then I added some new sections and I updated things. So everywhere that I saw something was out of date or the very least changed the years that were listed on the things. But for the part about Saks, I thought it was right and left it as is. Got me to paste it as is. So I roasted myself there.

You roasted yourself. I love it. It's not necessarily impossible. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So Nick of 2020, you were wrong, buddy. You were wrong. It could work. It could get clawed back. Anyway, so that's that. That brings me to the question of the week. And the question of the week this week is a timely one that fits along with this week's discussion of end of the year things.

This is a question we've gotten a whole bunch of times, and we always get it this time of year. So I thought that this was a timely one, even though it's something we've probably talked about before. Uh, I'm sure in our frequent miler insider says I am one night away from Marriott platinum status, but I have no plans to stay at a Marriott for the rest of the year. Can I book a cheap award stay at a four points, check in and check out through the app, but not actually show up. It's a question that comes up this time of year every year, because there are always some people who are just a couple of nights away and don't have a hotel nearby. Is this possible? Uh, it is possible, but there've been mixed reports about whether or not it works and where.

So in fact, I have a friend who did something similar. He tried different properties around the world and found some of them worked and some of them didn't. So it's very risky. That's all I can say. If you're going to try that, you want to try it, I guess, early enough in the month to make sure that you have time for the credit from the stay to post and also understand that you may just be throwing points away because you may not get elite credit and you're not going to get your points back after you don't show up for your stay. So,

or your money, if you, you know, if it's paid, if it was a paid stay, exactly, exactly. So there's a lot of risk in that. I don't, I don't feel like it's worth it. Yeah. I wish we could, I wish we could give people like a more definitive answer. Like if you do it this way, it'll work, but I don't, if there is an answer to that, I don't know what it is. And same is true with like all of the programs basically. Cause I think at this stage, I think they all have probably, or most of them, major ones anyway, have an ability to check in and out through the app, but whether or not you're in a way with not ever showing up is like, right. Right. Your mileage may vary. Yeah. And I'll tell you my experience. So checking in on the app doesn't really seem to do much of anything, but getting the mobile

key seems to be like the key to like, you're really checked in at that point. But all the mobile key experiences I had recently have said, like, you have to go to the desk to sort of prove who you are anyway, before they release the key. So I don't think it's meant to work that way. But, but if it does, then obviously, you're not gonna be able to get through that piece of it in order to get fully checked in. And it's worth mentioning here, we didn't mention it before. And I we should have, but hopefully you continue to listen to the entire show. It's worth mentioning here, we didn't mention it before and we should have, but hopefully you continue to listen to the entire show. It's worth mentioning here, if you're doing a mattress person. And then I'm just not going to stay. You want to talk to somebody at the hotel, because in many situations, if they find the room is not being used, they will just check you out

and you don't want that to happen. So I've, I don't think I've ever had pushback from a manager when I've said, listen, I have a five night stay booked and my plans changed. I'm not going to be here all five nights, but I need the elite night credit. So I'm going to check in. Can you just not check me out, please? I don't think I've ever had a manager that said, Oh no, we have to check you out if you're not going to be here. And most of them are happy to do that. So, and I mean, I haven't even said anything like my plans change. I am usually just very upfront saying I need five elite nights. And so I booked this with no intention of staying. Um, you know,

can you just make sure that, that all five nights credit, um, and that way, you know, if they want to do something else with the room, I don't think they're supposed to, but they could, as long as they give you the five nights, that's what matters. Right, right. Exactly. So make sure that you, uh, if your mattress running anything that you're don't try and hide it essentially. Right. Right. There's no, there's no reason to, you might mattress running anything that you're, don't try and hide it. Essentially. Right. Right. There's no, there's no reason to, you might get some strange looks, but, but you're not doing anything wrong.

Right. Right. All right. So then I think friends that brings us to the end of this week's show. If you enjoyed this week's show and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox, since I won't be on vacation next week. So Greg won't be able to say the same next week about all of my posts. He'll love my posts.

I hope not. I hope. I really hope I won't be able to say that I didn't enjoy any of my posts. Me too. Me too, more importantly. So if you want to get on that email list, you got to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on social media. Join our Fre miler insiders, Facebook group, wherever you're listening to this, give us a thumbs up, a like, leave a comment, subscribe, enable the notifications. We appreciate all those things. It helps the channel out. And we will see you guys again next week. All right. Bye everybody.