Frequent Miler on the Air - Rakuten Visa is dead to us, Alaska joins OneWorld, and Virgin partners up

Episode Date: February 15, 2020

In this week's FM on the Air, Greg and Nick discuss: - The Rakuten Visa no longer earns 3X for gift cards. Is the card dead to us? - Alaska joins OneWorld. How bad is that? - Virgin Atlantic partners with Air France & KLM. We highlight the sweet spot awards that are now possible.

Hey, Nick, you ready for yet another Frequent Miler on the air episode? Yes, I am. It's the weekend. It's time for another FM on the air. I'm always excited to be here talking miles and points about what's going on in the world of award travel. So great to be here. Wow, you're enthusiastic. It looks like you're at looks like you're at home. Is that right? I am at home, which is unfortunate in so many ways because, you know, it's... Wait, why is that? You know, I always say that... So, my father was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York City. And so, I always say that my blood is tropical. So, I am like cold-blooded. I need to get out of here in the winter. And so, I tend to try to stay far from home if I can during the wintertime

because today's high is supposed to be like 17 here. And that's not even bad for here, but it's bad for me. So I've just been looking at these places and thinking I got all these points. I need to get away from here and somewhere warmer. And I was talking with my wife just I think it was yesterday or the day before. And she's like, you know, it's been a really mild winter. And I laughed because like maybe an hour before that, she was like, I really want to get away and go somewhere warm. Where can we go for a few days to get out of here?

So what about you? How have things been there in Ann Arbor? It looks like. Oh, yeah, it's just as bad. We're expecting a high of 20 today. And for, yeah, well, for our Europeanan audience they might be looking at that or listening to that and saying 20 that's very nice i should visit ann arbor in the winter time but no that's maybe not this is fahrenheit not celsius so in in celsius terms we're talking

about minus seven something like that so yeah no stay away from Ann Arbor in the wintertime, unless you're coming to watch our hockey team or something, but no, we got to get out of here. We were, as we've talked about before, my wife and I were planning to go to Singapore, which would have been nice and warm. Much warmer than Ann Arbor. Yeah. But we had to cancel that. So the coronavirus struck there and the meeting was canceled. So we canceled everything down. So how did that go? You just said you canceled it.

Did you cancel the flights or did the airlines cancel your flights? How did that all happen? I did. I'm actually still in the process of finishing that up. So you might remember on a previous episode, we talked about, I confessed that I had used Alaska miles in a really bad way. And that was part of the Singapore trip. And luckily.

You found redemption. I found redemption or reward redeposit. There you go. So I called Alaska and even though they didn't have a travel waiver for this particular thing, they made an exception for us without even having to beg or anything that just right off the top of the call. They were just like, oh, no problem. We'll waive that. And so they redeposited all the miles and refunded the taxes and fees. And so that was great. The other piece of it, our return was supposed to be on Cathay Pacific, which when I had called

a week or two ago to cancel, they actually, I ended up, I couldn't get through to the phone lines. They're being slammed on the phone. So, I tried their Twitter team and heard back from them after a day or two that they couldn't waive the fees because their waivers were good through the end of February and my flight was in the beginning of March. So luckily the waivers now extend through March. So I just need to contact them again and get that resolved. But so I don't think that'll be a problem at all, but that's good. Yeah. So now, yeah. So now we're going to California instead. Won't be as warm, but it should be, it should be very nice. I would take California right now. I would take it. I take Northern California. Not that I have anything against Northern California. I just think it's north, so it doesn't seem as warm to me. But I would take Northern California. I would probably take Oregon right now over, or at least parts of Oregon, maybe the coastal part over here, because I at least imagine that whole part of the country to just always be a little bit nicer, a little bit warmer.

Yeah. Oh, I think it is. I think it is. It's very temperate. So that should be nice then. So the good news was that Alaska waived the fee, even though they didn't have an official policy yet in place to waive the fee. So that's a good reminder for readers out there, listeners out there who might be sitting on travel plans coming up in the next couple of months. I know most of the US carriers, I think at this point have canceled their flights to China at least until like April or maybe May, depending on the carrier. Right. But some of the international carriers may still be flying. It's worth more than one call.

You know, if you get told no the first time, it's worth maybe waiting a little bit, calling back in again, because a lot of airlines have been pretty good about that even though there's a policy and a change fee and a cancellation fee, a lot of times it's up to the whim of the agent as to whether or not to waive that fee. And in the case of Alaska, I would probably expect that they just have an unwritten policy and memo out to agents to go ahead and waive fees on stuff like this because Alaska just typically has good customer service. But if you happen to call and get the cranky agent who doesn't want to waive the fee, it's worth saying, okay, thank you. Nevermind. Calling back again, trying again, because maybe you'll get Greg's agent the second time and they'll just waive the fee right off the top of the call without any need for argument. So that's a good reminder because, again, like I said, Alaska has really good customer service. But of course, talking about Alaska's customer service. We did get some new news about Alaska this week. What's going on there? Well, as you may have heard, the surprising news from yesterday, Alaska announced that

they are joining One World in 2021. And so they were set to sever their partnership, I think, all together March 1st with American Airlines. And now they're embracing American Airlines with open arms and joining OneWorld, expanding their code shares with American, expanding that partnership. You're going to be able to start earning miles back and forth on the two different airlines, crediting to whichever it is you prefer to credit to and reciprocal elite benefits and all of those types of things very soon. So all of a sudden, they've made a

complete 180 on the partnership with American. They're joining One World. So that sounds really exciting. Lots more airlines to use your miles with, right? Yeah. My first reaction was, oh no. Does this mean the end to their great partner award pricing? So the pricing isn't great for all partners. They have different award charts for every single partner. But even then, sometimes for different regions. Exactly. So some of them are spectacular, though.

And I'm scared that that's going away because I think that once they join One World, they're going to have to come up with a one worldwide award chart rather than this partner by partner award chart. And if they do that, I can't imagine them keeping some of that preferential pricing that they have in place now. What about you? Do you think there's any good news here? I mean, I think there's potentially good news because there are some one world partners that you can't book right now with Alaska miles that you'll be able to. So there's the potential for pricing to be decent anyway, and to have an opportunity to fly some nice airlines using your Alaska Miles that aren't yet available today. So that may be interesting. I also think that there's some

decent opportunity potentially in connecting region to region. Whereas I know probably most people listening book their flights from North America to other regions for people who piece together bigger trips. Alaska miles can be a little frustrating sometimes because, for example, I think you can't book flights between, I think, Australia and Japan, for instance. I could be wrong making that example up. But I don't think you can use Alaska miles on that specific route. So even though there are one world carriers, Qantas that flies that and Japan Airlines that fly that and Cathay Pacific that flies that, you can't use your Alaska miles for that and you will be able to in the future. So there's potentially good news. That said. To be clear, you can't fly Japan Airlines on that route. There might be other airlines,

and I think there are, where they have specific award chart items for that route. And if they do, then you can fly it as long as you fly the partner that's listed on that chart. But that does point out a potentially good, yeah, a good thing about the one world chart will almost certainly be, I shouldn't guarantee this, but it'll probably be zone based now where, where it won't be specific routes, but rather be, if you want to fly from this zone to that zone, here's the pricing. And so they should have everything covered. The other thing that we'll probably see, which I guess will be good news is the ability to mix partners on one award. Right. Right. You can't do that today. And that's frustrating right now

because even though Alaska is partners with American Airlines and they're partners with Cathay Pacific, I live somewhere that's not served by Alaska and I can't mix American and Cathay on an Alaska award because I can only mix one partner and Alaska. So that's a potential benefit as well for award travelers from the US, particularly for those of us that aren't based near an Alaska Airlines hub or an international hub.

Then, you know, you will be able to use American to connect to whatever your international gateway is to position on a single award. So that's potentially good news. Now, of course, of course, you know, what Greg is saying is absolutely true. They have some outstanding values on the award chart right now, and those are not going to get better. It's not going to get better than 55,000 miles one way to Australia from the United States, flying Fiji Airways with a stopover in Fiji on your way to Australia or stopping over in one Australian city on the way to another on the other side of Australia. That's not going to get better. In business class. In business class, right. In business class, 55,000 for that. Or 70 to get in business class in business class right in business class 55 000 for that we're 70 000 miles one way in first class from the united states to hong kong to johannesburg

on cathay pacific like yeah first class in first class for 70 000 miles it's not going to get better right no no no and i don't think that that's going to become the one world price like i don't right right that's the way it's going to go let's let's set up our our 2021 predictions right now right we're not going to be thrilled Let's set up our 2021 predictions right now. Right. We're not going to be thrilled about the One World Award chart if it comes out in 2021. Right. It's not going to be better than the current pricing. Now, it may give you some better opportunities to use Alaska miles because you'll have more partners with which to use them potentially.

But it's not going to be a better price. I hope that they keep the free stopover on one ways. And if they do, that'll certainly be a benefit of using Alaska potentially, again, depending on what the pricing is. And I also think that Alaska obviously is going to continue to have some of those ancillary partnerships. I can't imagine they're going to keep them all, but perhaps Emirates, perhaps they'll keep some of the other like Iceland Air type partnerships. And if they keep their charts for those partners the way they are, even though like they devalue the Emirates partnership, for instance, the Iceland Air one isn't too bad, if you don't mind flying an angle flat seat anyway to Europe, and it will be easier to earn Alaska miles. Even though Alaska miles are a currency that's great to earn right now with some

paid premium cabins on partners, being able to earn Alaska miles with all of your American airlines flights could be really good. So I think that that's the potential. But that does mean flying American airlines. Well, that's the unfortunate part. It's not all good news. But that would be a way to get me on American plane. At least this year, anyway, it'll,

it'll get me on some. And, and speaking of this year, then that brings me to, and Greg and I talked about this and I don't know if we agree. Cause we talked about this yesterday on the phone briefly, but I think this year is the year to go after Alaska airline status, especially if you're able to start crediting American flights to Alaska.

I think that this year is the year you want to go after Alaska airline status. And I think you disagree. What do you think? Well, so the interest in going after Alaska status to me is in the fact that now there's a new, easier way to get One World's Emerald graphic, whatever, whatever the precious gem that gets you into one world lounges, then there's a, there's a new way to do that. in actually earning the status from flying because again that probably means flying American which I don't really want to do but rather rather matching so those status match from Delta so I have top tier with Delta so I get the MVP gold Alaska status match very easily. And so when that, when that would be most valuable to me would be when I'm going to be traveling around, uh, where there's going to be one world lounges that I want

access to. Right. Right. So, um, that won't matter at all until they're part of one world. So you, you won't get access to the lounge is still the part, which is summer of 2021. So I'm thinking that the ideal time to status match is sometime in 2021. And we have to figure out like, how long does the match last? And I, I haven't paid enough attention to know,

to know that off the top of my head, but now I, now I will. I can help you with that. So after October 1st, the match is good for the entire next year. If you match before October 1st, it's only going to be good through the end of the current year. So if you match before October 1st of this year,

then you only have Alaska status until, I don't know, January or February, whenever it is that their status recycles in the beginning of the year. And then if you do it after October 1st, you'll have it for all of 2021. So I guess ideally you would want to wait until after October 1st if you are confident that Alaska isn't going to change their elite status qualification requirements, which they're likely not to do that this year for next year. But next year, I think they may change those elite status requirements when they enter One World because I think One World isn't going to want a whole influx of easy elites. And I say

easy elites because Alaska Airlines has relatively easy qualification criteria for their elite status. So their mid-tier status, MVP Gold, which they said in their email will get you One World lounge access, requires 40,000 miles flown on Alaska, rather, or 50,000 miles on their partners. Isn't that similar, though, to other one world airlines as far as getting to that mid-tier that gets you lounge access around 50,000 miles? I'm honestly not sure what the other airlines, what the case is with the other airlines. With American, I think it's more, isn't it? Well, I don't think so i so so american you get what they call gold which is everyone else's silver at 25 000 right and then i think you get their platinum or whatever the next level is at 50 000 i think and then and then pro is 75 and Executive Platinum 100 is what it is.

And so I think Platinum probably gets you the level, you know, One World Lounge Access level, probably. With one caveat, when you get One World or Star Alliance status with a US.S.-based carrier, that does not let you in to those one-world lounges in the U.S., I believe. Or at least it doesn't let you into American and Alaska. It hasn't. But of course, American was the only airline to offer that so far. So, I don't know how it'll work if you have a partner status. Maybe you do because I know that that's the case with American. And I think it's the same with United, probably. And then I would assume with Delta, too.

So I don't know. With Alaska being a partner, will you be able to get in because other partners are able to get in? I'm not sure. I imagine American has to be thinking that through, how they're going to handle that. But at any rate, I think that between the value of Alaska miles, so the fact that you're earning one mile per mile flown when you're on Alaska flights, at least, and certainly some huge bonuses on premium cabin travel, I think probably most American airlines flyers would be better off crediting flights.

Especially now that the partnership is back. Yeah. Right. Right. So, I mean, I know from a Delta perspective, but if you're flying American, you should be crediting to Alaska this year. No? Yeah. The only exception I'd say is if you fly American enough or One World enough to get executive platinum with American, then, you know, by switching to Alaska, you'd be giving up those upgrade, the global upgrades. I can't remember what they call them, but you'd be giving up those upgrade, the global upgrades. I can't remember what they call them. But you'd be giving that up as well as some other perks, I think, when flying American.

So that's something to consider. But then the other thing to consider is if you're flying enough for Platinum Pro, the 75,000, then you may want to consider instead crediting to Alaska because that would get you enough for the MBT gold 75k or whatever it is that they call their top tier status. So that may be more beneficial for you in the long run in terms of earning. Now, of course, we don't know what their deal is going to be in terms of partner earning when they join OneWorld. Right now, partner earnings are pretty good on a lot of partners, especially, again, in paid premium cabins. So if you're using chase points to redeem for British Airways business class or first class flights across the pond, you're just earning boatloads of Alaska

miles. Yeah. So because they still earn miles based on distance flown and because they offer multiples in premium cabin and they also offer multiples when you have elite status those combinations make it that sometimes when there are great deals on premium cabin flights you're basically getting back miles worth how much you paid right and you get to have a trip right exactly in a nice premium cabin yeah you know know, so it's fantastic when that all works out. Yeah. So, yeah, no, that part is good. And, yeah, I guess it gives you another.

But, I mean, that's true today, right? It is true today. You're right. But it is true, although the issue is that people who mainly fly American haven't had the ability to credit those to Alaska in a while now. Now, back when they did have the partnership, anytime I flew American, I certainly credited that to Alaska. And I had one year in particular where I had a lot of flights that I could book with basically anybody. And so I ended up booking most of them with American because I wanted the Alaska miles and I was able to hit one of the tier statuses. So I think that's worth considering because it may give you the ability to

get into those lounges and then it gets you some valuable miles. At least they're valuable for now. We'll see what happens in the future. All right, cool. Speaking of partnerships, though. I was going to say that wasn't the only partnership news this week. No, you wrote about big partnership news from Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic.

So Virgin Atlantic and Air France and KLM have joined a partnership. Now, some people might be saying, wait, weren't they already partners? Because it's kind of confusing because Delta is very close partners with Virgin Atlantic, and they've been partners for a while now. And they're, of course, very close with Air France and KLM through not just the Sky Team partnership. They have a very close partnership sort of directly with them as well. And so it sort of felt like Virgin Atlantic was part of all that because of the Delta connection. But it wasn't true. There was no way before to book Air France flights with Virgin or to book Virgin Atlantic flights with Air France or KLM. And so now there is. So you can book paid flights or, and this was the thing that suddenly happened. And I found it surprising how quickly they had it all working. You can now book Air France and

KLM flights with Virgin Atlantic miles. Incidentally, you could also do the other way. You could use Air France miles to book Virgin Atlantic now. So we have both. I wrote mostly about the first one. So I'll probably get around to writing about the using Air France miles at some point. But I found some of the award pricing very attractive. Not all of it. So some of it is similar to what you'd pay in Air France miles anyway. So you're not necessarily doing better booking business class with

Air, with Virgin Atlantic miles versus Air France miles. But that actually varies depending on Air France's whim of how much they're going to charge. They don't have a published award chart. And on the economy flight side, sometimes Air France is actually quite a bit cheaper than Virgin Atlantic for economy flights. But there's two places where there's a definite big value with Virgin Atlantic miles. One is flying around within Europe. There, the pricing goes as low as 4,000 miles one way. So that's similar to British Airways. So now you can, before you had the option, if you had British Airways points, to fly around on One World carriers, which was dominated by British Airways itself, but also Iberia and a couple others. But you couldn't fly SkyTeam cheaply before, but now you can. Because most of the flights within Europe that are SkyTeam are KLM

and Air France. And so you can get all around there, even to Northern Africa, I think. I'm not sure about that actually. For really cheap because of the short distances and it's a distance-based chart. Yeah. And that's exciting because flights within Europe are often cheap, but not always cheap. And so, you know, and I found that actually just last year that I kind of assumed that I would always find cheap European flights. But when I looked last minute, I ended up booking things that were much more expensive than what I anticipated, because paid flights were more. And so it's great to have a cheap option for those flights, a nice low mileage option. It sure isn't. Actually, and I'd argue even when the paid

prices are really cheap, there's an advantage to booking with points because you're not booking into that sort of extreme basic economy or you're not booking like a Ryanair type thing. So you don't have to worry about carry on luggage, for example, that's going to be included and you don't have to worry about, am I going to have to pay extra for this? So there are advantages to booking that way as well as I guess, change fees are probably, you know, I guess there's not a change fee issue when you're paying 20 bucks for a flight anyway. Right, right, right. Just go ahead and accept it at that point. But so anyway, just want to point out there are advantages to that. So I'm happy about that.

There are. And I don't know if this is the case within Europe at all, but I know that I ran into that actually on my 40K trip, on the 40K to far away trip that we did this past fall, because from Auckland, I flew to Niue on Air New Zealand. So tiny little Pacific Island, three and a half hour flight. And my flight was booked as an award flight. But I had my family met me in Auckland flew to to Niue with me. And so at least a couple of people were on paid flights or flights paid with, with chase points anyway. And so, uh, so what I didn't expect was that I ended up getting served a meal or at least they brought a meal and I, I didn't sit in whatever seat I picked. I don't know. We just all sat, we had like, you know, a bunch of seats. So, uh, so they came with a meal and like, you know, one person got And then the other people are like, what about my food? They're like, no, it's for you. Right, exactly. Exactly.

So the award ticket, you got the meal and the pay ticket didn't. So I don't know. So you'd run into that issue within Europe. But again, I don't know that you wouldn't because I don't know what those basic economy affairs are like versus award tickets. But sometimes it's worth considering the award ticket anyway, even when, you know. Right, right. And another thing to point out is depending on the paid price situation, basic economy thing, even if you have some sort of elite status, it might not help you. Whereas with an award ticket, the elite status will give you whatever you're entitled to. And what people

might not realize is you don't necessarily need elite status with the airline you're entitled to. And what people might not realize is you don't necessarily need elite status with the airline you're flying or the airline that you booked the flight with. So you might not have elite status with Virgin. You might not have it with KLM, but you booked a KLM flight with Virgin, but you do have Delta elite status. Well, you can apply your Delta SkyMiles number to that ticket and get some benefits. And I can't tell you off the top of my head what they would be, but you're getting something, probably a free check bag or something. So yeah, so that's all great news. Another sweet spot I found, and this applies to Air France premium economy, US to Europe.

There's two great things about it. One, it appears to be wide open from the airports I looked at in the US to France. They have tons of award availability and premium economy and it's really really cheap booking with virgin atlantic miles much cheaper than booking with air france so it's as it's as few as uh i think it was 22 000 miles one way and less than 200 in fees and so that's a, yeah, I mean, that's a good solid deal. I mean, maybe it's not as good as a really cheap, like fair sale, but if you can get that every day, even when prices are high, that's pretty awesome. So there is some seasonality to the pricing. So it does go up as high as i think 32 000 miles one way but uh it's not too bad they they don't have they have a set schedule that you could look at to see when when peak pricing is and it's

it's not like you know 90 of the year or anything like that right and having access to a lot of seats too if that's the case and you're saying it's wide open availability, if they've got a number of seats, that's potentially appealing for people who travel with families. It's certainly going to be many fewer miles then. And on flights that are five or six hours, that certainly may be plenty good for people who are looking to travel on an award ticket and not spend all of their miles and points on one trip or have to split up the family over multiple flights in order to fly business class. So premium economy could be a

really good option there. I know that that's becoming more and more appealing to me too, even though I even just at the point now where I have to book three seats, it's harder to find three seats in business class. So three seats in premium economy sounds pretty good. And those prices are pretty decent for what will surely be a much more comfortable experience than flying economy class, even if not quite a flatbed. Yeah. So for me personally, flying to Europe, I would like to, I like to fly business class to Europe because it's going to be overnight in most cases. And so I appreciate the lie flat bed situation. Coming back, flying premium economy would be totally fine. I mean, great. So, and it works out nicely in terms of award fees as well if you do the following. So,

if you use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta to Europe, not London, but to anywhere else in Europe that they fly on a nonstop flight, Virgin Atlantic only charges like 50,000 miles and $5.60 in fees. I mean, it's like nothing. It's terrific, yeah. And then coming back, coming back is where you can't avoid some taxes and fees. So when you're coming back from Europe, again, not London, you're usually looking at a few hundred dollars and fees. So when you're coming back from Europe, again, not London, you're usually looking at a few hundred dollars in fees. And what I found was that Virgin Atlantic is charging the same in fees on Air France in premium economy as they charge in

economy, both of which are about half the fees of business class. So by flying premium economy back, you're still spending less than $200, at least on the routes I looked at, versus close to $400 in business class, and you're saving lots and lots of miles. So I think that's a really nice way to go, class there on Delta return on air France in premium economy. Of course, for that all to work with your situation, you need, you would need to be able to fly from an airport that has Delta and, and to an airport on the return that has, that has air France. And so, you know, I'm lucky in Detroit, we do have both of those. So, I could do that. In Atlanta, you have both of those. JFK, you have both of those. I haven't looked at

what are all the airports that have those, but yeah. Yeah. So, there's probably a fair amount, at least on the East Coast and potentially some going out West. So, probably Chicago, I would assume. So, I think there's probably a fair amount of opportunity for that. And if you look at it with a family of four, let's say, if you're flying premium economy at 22,000 miles a person, you're saving over 100,000 miles on four tickets over business class. So that really starts to add up after a while. So certainly, I think that kind of strategy makes sense. The nice thing is that everybody's got access basically to both of those airlines

in terms of the miles because Virgin Atlantic and Air France KLM are transfer partners with basically everybody, right? Everybody except Capital One and Air France is partners with Capital One also. Right, right, right. So yeah, so that's great. So I do recommend whenever you're going to book these things, check out how much both Virgin Atlantic and Air France charge for the same flights because Air France is kind of random. And sometimes it's good pricing, sometimes it's not. But sometimes you will find them to be cheaper than Virgin Atlantic. So, so check them both and then, and then book and both of them, theoretically, you can book online. Um, I've run into problems with both websites at times where things aren't showing up or you get errors and they are France website or whatever. So you might end up having to call to, to actually book these things. Um, but at least you might be able to, by playing around with dates or whatever, find out what the pricing is, see if it's competitive, and then call to book it if you can't find it,

if you can't find and book it online. Anyway, I think that's great news. Yeah. And in my experience is phone bookings with both airlines go pretty smooth. So I found one is pretty good with both of those. It's not necessarily a problem if you have to call. So you're going to have to look this week then at using the Air France miles to fly Virgin Atlantic because I'm very curious about that and how it works out. So I'll be curious to see

your post on that this week. And then that kind of makes me think about the last couple of weeks here on the podcast. It's been kind of interesting because we've talked about topics, things have come up in discussion, and then we wrote about them afterwards so like this past week several of our posts were inspired by last week's podcast i know i i noticed that too so are we a so we were a blog for many many years and now we're a podcast too but are we becoming a podcast first so so this so this, this week, this week I wrote about, we had talked last week about how you could essentially buy Delta Platinum Elite status cheaply by signing up for two cards. And, you know, you could read, listen to last week's or, or, or read my post about, but I decided based on that conversation that this was worth fleshing out. And so I wrote a whole post on it. But that wasn't the only post that was inspired. You wrote a post following our discussion about freedom unlimited and why we didn't carry it.

You wrote a post about, well, who is it good for? And laid out different scenarios. And there's definitely situations where it makes sense and situations where it doesn't. Marriott travel packages. I wrote about how to extend them or get your points back. And that was inspired by a reader who emailed after listening to a previous podcast where I talked about crazy ideas I had for how to get my certs extended. And it turned out that the craziest idea of all I hadn't even thought about was just calling and asking and turned out that worked.

For the record, what I literally did was I booked a reservation for December, a seven-night reservation. And then I called and innocently said, I want to apply my certificate to that reservation, even though I knew the certificate was expired well before then. And they at first said, no, you can't do that. But then said, wait a minute, let me put you on hold. I'll talk to a supervisor and came back just a couple minutes later and was like, okay, that's done. So it's extended. So yeah, so that was completely inspired by this podcast and comment from the podcast. So my Monday post is going to answer a debate that we had last week. I'm not going to talk about exactly what that is because you can wait and see on Monday. I might have already taken the blog. I have to take a look.

And I'm going to add fuel to this fire, too. Are we a podcast first and a blog second? Because I was at the grocery store last week buying money orders with my visa gift cards from Simon Mall. And so I bought my gift cards and I turned around to walk out and somebody stopped me, a gentleman stopped me and he said, Nick. And I said, yeah, I didn't recognize him. I didn't know who it was. I just got done listening to your podcast. And I was like, it wasn't, I just got done reading an article on Frequent Miler. I am a reader. It was, I just got done listening to your podcast. And I was like, it wasn't, I just got done reading an article on frequent miler. I am a reader. It was, I just got done listening to the podcast. So see, we're getting recognized from the podcast first. And then, and then from, from the blog, perhaps

it was great running into a reader too, by the way. Love that. If you ever see one of us out, say hi, why not? It's always nice to meet people and talk this, uh, you know, miles and points a little bit. So, so, So are we a podcast first? Is that it? Well, you know. Plug gone away? Well, if we look at revenue. So the revenue from the podcast is zero.

Not the biggest driver of revenue around here. It's like keeping the lights on. Yeah yeah somehow our advertisers are not paying us much maybe because we don't mention them or give them any air time yeah right right it tends to be the way it is they do expect you to talk about them if they they're going to pay you for advertising i suppose right yeah but that said you know i i've thought about this at times i would be totally good with the idea of when something comes up that's interesting, like the Alaska Joining One world, like maybe we just jump on a call like this and hash it out before we write a post about it. We talk it through, we get each other's ideas, and then maybe write a little post and link to the video and the podcast in the

post. Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. You know, I think that when this question comes up here, are we a podcast first and a blog second? I think obviously we're a blog and we started the podcast here for fun, right? So we're having some fun with that. But I do think that one of the advantages of having the podcast and having this weekly discussion is that before this, Greg and I would see each other like three or four times a year, maybe at conferences. So the only times we actually talked or saw each other face to face, like, you know, I think I've talked to him on the phone like three or four times in the last three years. So, you know, we don't typically talk like this.

It's usually communication via email. So I think that the advantage of this format for us and also hopefully then for readers is that we do bounce ideas back and forth in real time. And I think that is useful for coming up with ideas and asking questions that we may not have asked on our own. So I think it's interesting that this podcast has hopefully obviously been something entertaining. We've had some good feedback here and there from readers. So hopefully it's been something entertaining for them. And hopefully it's also creating something better for all of us in the long run by having us bounce some of these ideas around. I think so. You know what? It's invigorating either way. Having these discussions makes the whole thing more fun than it was when we were just separate.

So the downside is you have to look at my face once a week. No, I don't. I don't because I have a note right in front of it. Actually, right now, they're only covering half of your face. I'm glad you worked out a solution to that major, major problem. So, we've talked about a lot of stuff, but we haven't even covered what we consider the main topic for today. Right. Which is, is the Rakuten Visa dead to us? Early this week, we got the news that the Rakuten Visa would no longer offer 3X points, 3X membership rewards points, or 3% back when buying gift cards through the Rakuten portal. And so that's really bad news. Bummer, dude.

Yeah. So just for those who don't remember what the deal is or was, the deal was this. There's a fee-free Rakuten Visa card, which normally when using it just as a regular Visa card, it only earns 1% back. But when you click through the Rakuten portal, the cashback portal, and you buy something through the portal, you not only get the portal rewards, but you also get 3% with the Rakuten Visa. Okay? You with me so far. So if you before, if you click through the Rakuten portal to giftcardmall.com, they were offering 1% cash back. The portal was 1% cash back for buying- No matter which credit card you use. Right. For buying Visa gift cards through the portal. And so if you went through the portal,

bought Visa gift cards from giftcardmall or giftcards.com, you get 1% in the portal. And if you use your Rakuten Visa, you were getting 3% with the Visa. And then that's been true for a while. But now what happened about a year ago is they introduced the ability to earn membership rewards points as rewards instead of cash back. And so if you change your account to earn membership rewards, you're getting a total of four, make sure that's in the camera, four points per dollar buying Visa gift cards online from the comfort of your home. And now the news is, wait, no, you'll still get the 3X. You'll still get the 3X on most things, but not from Gift Card Mall, not from giftcards.com, not from Raise, which is another gift card seller.

So that stinks. And for me, it means putting away that card for the most part. Maybe not entirely, but I have stopped recommending it to most readers. I think there are some readers where it makes sense, but it's mostly dead to me. And it weirdly makes my City Prestige card less valuable. prestige card less valuable okay whether Nick can figure that one out now you have me intrigued it makes your prestige card less valuable no I have no idea off the top of my head what you're talking about there so let me last air it I don't know if that's a secret post coming next week or if you're gonna run us through that what's no I thought you might be able to figure this one out i bet there are some listeners and watchers

who are like oh i know what he's talking about but but i don't expect most i i think this will be a pretty small percentage so if that if it's you that that has figured this out good job um here's here's the thinking right okay i Okay. I had been thinking, all right. So I had been thinking that the Amex gold card, which gets Forex at us grocery stores up to $25,000 to spend per year that I was not using it enough to be worth keeping once the next annual fee comes due. So given that decision, right? When I look at my city prestige card, the fact that it earns 5X for dining, I say, oh, that's 2X better than my next best option, which is the Sapphire Reserve card, which gets 3x.

So after I decide to cancel my gold card, my prestige card becomes 2x better for dining than my next best alternative. But if I decide to keep my gold card, then the prestige is only 1x better for dining. And therefore, it's harder to justify the prestige card's annual fee because I keeping because the ability to earn Forex at grocery stores now is more meaningful to me. Before I was earning Forex buying gift cards from home. Now, my best way to earn Forex buying gift cards is to go to the grocery store and pay with my gold card.

That's an interesting dilemma there. I mean, you took us on quite a little circle there and it almost makes some sense as you were talking. It almost makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Yes. But as you were talking, I was thinking, why wouldn't you still have been maxing out the gold card though? I mean, okay. Yeah. Because I know your answer to that is going to be because the Rakuten card wasn't limited. You could just keep doing it over and over again, right? You get 4X from the couch.

Why bother going to the grocery store? Well, my answer to that is twofold. Number one, because you're going to go to the grocery store to buy food anyway, so you may as well buy some gift cards while you're there and earn some extra points while you're there. And B, because I don't know how often you were cycling your credit limit with Rakuten, but at some point there has to be like a cutoff where that's either A, not going to be okay with the issuer or B, the payments aren't

going to post fast enough. The gold card is such an easy 100,000 points a year. I mean, there's grocery stores everywhere that sell those $500 cards with a $6 activation fee. So I feel like maxing that out is like a no brainer. It's easy, cheap points, isn't it? So I, well, I think that would be true if I was, um, maxing out my credit limit all the time on my Rakuten Visa. And I wasn't doing that. I wasn't buying enough to feel like I'd hit my limit with that. So the question is, is there incremental value? Was there incremental value for me to have the gold cards ability to earn Forex at grocery store for buying gift cards? I still value to some extent getting 4x by actually

buying groceries right i mean i buy a certain amount so so i do value that but um the extra value of of being able to buy gift cards uh i just didn't value because i i could just actually easier and i'll explain this in a sec i get, get 4X from my Rakuten card than with the grocery. And the reason is the grocery stores that we frequent don't actually sell Visa gift cards. And so I would have to do a separate trip to, uh, to pick up the, the Visa. So it was easier and, and, uh, you know, just doing it from home, super easy, but that's thing of the past. So, uh, so well on that note, so then should the Rakuten visa be dead? Should it be gone? Should we get rid of it? And should nobody carry it anymore? Now I'm going to disagree with you less than I thought I was going to, because you did at least say that you think that it may work

for some people and you wouldn't necessarily recommend it in general for most people, whereas you would have in the past. Now, I'm going to back up and say you would have recommended it. You mean for most people I'm asking, I guess. That's right. That's right. Anyone who wants to generate membership rewards points easily and knows how to liquidate Visa gift cards. Yeah. Right. And so for that purpose, obviously, I have to agree that the card seems dead. Although I say seems dead because I find that there are always surprises. Now, I don't know of a secret surprise here. So don't read in between the lines on me on this. But there are always surprises in terms of where you can find Visa gift cards and places that you maybe didn't expect before. So and places that you maybe not didn't

expect before. So I think that it's not impossible that there are other opportunities that you can shop through Rakuten and be able to pick up points. Do you know something I don't? I know I don't. I don't. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that with anything secret in mind. But even if there isn't today, there may well be eventually. Yes, yes, that is absolutely true. So I don't necessarily think the card is dead uh yet even if it's dead for the easiest most obvious option on earth um but i'm going to add to that and say that this card is still good to have for people who shop online at all now yeah yeah if you got the att access more card great but if you don't you can't get it so then this card you're

going to earn an extra 3x now greg's point is going to be that yes you're going to earn an extra 3x. Now, Greg's point is going to be that, yes, you're going to earn an extra 3x online, but Racket 10 doesn't always have the best payouts. And that's a good point, except that when you look at membership rewards points, your floor value has got to be 1.25 cents a piece, because you're probably going to redeem for more with partners, but you could always pick up a Schwab Platinum and cash out for 1.25 cents each. So you can cash that straight out, cash into a brokerage account. Yes, you have to have a Platinum card. Yes, you have to pay the annual fee. There's plenty of ways to beat that. We've written about that before. So 1.25 cents each, you're talking about that extra 3X, you're looking at 3.75%.

Yeah, you're calling it an extra 3X, but I think of it as an extra 1x because you could be using either the Amex Blue Business Plus or the Citi Double Cash to be getting 2x everywhere. And so this card forces you to go through the Rakuten portal to get that 3x, whereas with the other cards, you could go through any portal to get 2x. And so really the net incremental value is 1x more than you could get with another combination. And so the only time it's truly valuable is when the Rakuten portal has the equal or better than the best alternative rate. I'm going to disagree still. Because A, if you're earning membership rewards points,

those are more valuable than the rates at other places. So first, you need to at least recognize the fact that even when Rakuten doesn't have the best payout rate, they may still have the best because those points are worth more. They're worth a minimum of 25% more than whatever the payout rate is. That's actually a really good point. So replay what I said, but with in mind, when I say Rakuten has equal to or better than the best rate, I mean, factoring in that 25% extra. Great. Okay. So as long as we're on the same page there, that's half of it. Then the other half of it is going to be that it's only 1X more than, for example, the Citi Double Cash. And so if we compare it with the Citi Double Cash, for instance, the Citi Double Cash, you're right, earns two points per dollar. I love thank you points. But at the end of the day,

the max value you could cash those for if you were to cash them for cash is one cent each. So you're looking at 2% back, right? Whereas the max value on the Rakuten Visa, you're talking about three points that can be cashed in for 1.25 cents each. So you're talking about 3.75% back. So there's actually, I would say, a significant difference there in between what you're earning. So you've got that to consider. Now, if you had the Blue Business Plus, you could earn two points per dollar, but it's capped at $50,000 in purchases a year. I think the Rakuten Visa makes a lot of sense for resellers because I think that there's

a good opportunity for resellers to use the Rakuten portal for more value than what they'll get through other portals in many instances. And then if you're stacking it with that card, you've got the extra, that extra 1x certainly adds up over time with it being at a bare minimum 1.25% better than your next best option. I mean, 1.25% more, hello. I mean, if there was a card offering 3.25% back over 2% back, you'd be like, wow, it's an extra 1.25%. That extra 1x, I mean, it matters, doesn't it? All right. So we do agree that there are people where it makes sense to, and I agree about resellers, but I think that's got to be a huge, I mean, very small minority of our audience.

Would you, so let's say someone was asking you, someone comes to you and says, I buy a lot of stuff online and I'm looking to get a new credit card. What should I get? Would you? So Blue Business Plus, 2X everywhere. Doesn't matter whether you go through the portal or not. And a lot of online things, you know, just because they say they order online and not a lot doesn't mean whatever they're ordering is available through portals at all. 2x Everywhere does not count against 524, the Blue Business Plus. That's a tough, yeah, it would be hard for me to to debate that

that's a great point because it doesn't count against 524 and because a lot of popular stores i shouldn't say a lot of popular stores amazon you're not going to earn anything through racketing in most of the categories at amazon there are select categories where you potentially will but in most categories you're not going to be earning extra portal rewards through Rakuten. And then therefore, I assume not earning the 3X on the card. Right. Probably not. And certainly certain types of purchases. I know like Target, a lot of times Apple purchases are excluded from Target or from Macy's or this or that. So there are enough situations where, no, I guess if the average person told me that they spend a bunch of money online and they're looking for a new card, I probably wouldn't recommend this. So I guess I agree

with you in that sense. I feel like it's something that you really have to be kind of watching for the opportunities to maximize and know what you're doing a little bit. So I agree that it's niche, but I don't think it's dead. And I also think that it's worth considering in terms of the extra benefits. So we have purchase protection, price protection still on that card, which isn't available on most cards anymore. So there are some ancillary benefits of it too, that we just discovered and had written about a couple of months ago that I think still make it potentially worthwhile. And if you're able to earn extra rewards to the portal and still have price protection on certain types of purchases, that could certainly come in handy for people a

few times a year. And that's not going to appeal to the average online shopper who's not going to bother looking for a price protection claim. But if you're the kind of person playing this game, then you're probably the type of maximizer who is going to look for those opportunities. And I think the card is still potentially pretty interesting. I'm not going to, I can't argue that Greg is totally wrong that everyone should trash that, you know, everyone should have the card rather and use it all day long. I can't make that argument, obviously. But I think that the card still is pretty intriguing. I think that it's worth looking for those opportunities of other places that carry Visa gift cards that you may not have considered before. I haven't considered those places yet, but I'm kind of curious to see what they are now because I bet that there's another option or two

out there. All right. So I think we're in agreement then that if you have the card, don't cancel it because it might turn out to be valuable for certain situations. And if you're thinking of getting the card, just think hard about what the alternatives are. If you know that you're going to shop a lot through the Rakuten portal, then it's probably a good bet. And maybe you are someone who does a lot of shopping through that portal or knows that you are going to, and then it's certainly valuable from that point of view. And as Nick said, there might be gems that we'll find. Maybe you know of one where you can buy gift cards through the portal and it tracks appropriately well you know and and not even just that but then there are also those

limited time opportunities like we wrote about one i think i think it was this past winter with a life lock where they had i don't know something like 80 percent back via racket 10 and then you know right oh no i mean reacts i mean add one x you're right you're, add another 3X. I mean, add one X. You're right. You're right. Add one X. You're right. If you have not maxed out, add one X. And if you don't value those membership rewards points more than city thank you points, as much as I like city thank you points, you need to get your head examined. It's significantly better, I would say, than the double cash still. Yeah. So, I can hear the crowds, the audience clamoring. Clamoring. Well, there's a significant portion of our audience that's upset because we did not cover

feedback time. I know. I was kind of disappointed too. I realized at some point I was like, oh man, we didn't do reader feedback yeah so so i think i think what we're gonna do now is is we'll do feedback time and then question and then question time right after it yeah back to back let's do this you ready okay let's do it okay mog bma wrote mug MugBMA. I don't know what that is. Anyway, love these. So this was in response to our video of the last episode. Yeah.

Love these, but any chance you could put timestamps in the description for the start of each topic that is being discussed so we could quickly jump to a topic that might be especially of interest if we don't have time to watch slash listen to the whole thing. Hopefully would only take you about two minutes to do this and would make me and I bet a ton of other folks really happy. Well, thank you. You know, this is a piece of feedback we've actually gotten a couple of times and I totally think it would be nice to be able to do that. I wish I lived in the world that that mod BMA does where it would only take two minutes because if it did, then I would certainly do it. The issue is that in order to do that, we've talked about this and we've tried to figure out a good way to do it. And I would like to find a good way to do it. So I'm definitely open to this. I think it's something that would be an improvement for people who do want to skip around.

But the trouble is going back and listening to the entire hour podcast in order to find those timestamps and put them in means that it's another hour of work on the weekend. Right. Maybe a little bit less because we know what if we remember what the topics were, we can kind of keep scrolling around till we find it. But it's definitely more than two minutes. And I'd say way more than two minutes. If anybody wants to do these for us, you know, email it to us after, or put it in the comments of the video after we publish it,

then we'll add it to the notes of the video and the podcast. I actually don't know if we can change the podcast notes after the fact, but assuming we could, then we can do that. But it seems given, despite how much money we make from these, we're not ready to hire a staff to do it. And so the reality is I'm often uploading the video late at night before the Saturday morning post. And so, you know, it's all I can do to get it trimmed so that the beginning and ends that are us fooling around get cut off. And then I upload it and then Nick's got to prepare the podcast. And I just don't see us having time to do it.

Well, I think that's the thing. And I don't know, maybe there's something we can do to reconsider how it's done to make it work. But I think that Greg makes a good point in the amount of revenue that we're bringing in from the podcast. And it's not that it's all about revenue. It obviously isn't because we're doing this totally free for nothing. So it's obviously not all about revenue. But when you look at it, every podcast we've done has been about an hour, sometimes an hour and 20 minutes, and that it's not including all of the technical difficulty time that happens before it. So usually I'd say we probably all together have put at least an hour and a half, sometimes

two hours into just recording it basically. Right. And then, you know, there's the trimming of the video. There's whatever has to be done with the audio, downloading, mixing, downloading, uploading, writing the week and review posts. So altogether, you know, we're putting a few hours of work into into making this happen each week. So it becomes a question of, yes, like how much more time does it make sense to put into that? Though, at the same time, I do think there would be an improvement. So it's something I would like to do.

Just like Greg said, it's often that we're putting it together late. I'm putting my part together late Saturday, Friday night or early Saturday morning. So it's a matter of time. But it is something that at least I'll take that feedback into consideration because I know a lot of people are interested. To be clear, the reason I mentioned the revenue was that if we had revenue from this, then I could justify hiring someone who would, it's their job to do those things as well as the other technical things we do with the podcast, which would actually be very nice. So maybe,

you know, maybe we should start putting a Huggies ads in the middle of our, our podcast. Cause we know that everybody listening uses Huggies. So maybe that's the secret. Maybe Huggies is a big marketing but why not, right? Reach a new crowd of people that they're not currently advertising

to. You know the Huggies marketing team is salivating at the thought of getting into our podcast. If you make us a good enough offer, we will consider it. Let us know. Let us know, Huggies. We consider it. Let us, let us know. Let us know.

We're Huggies household for the record. Oh, good to know. I, that was just a total guest. Yeah. I think we really are. Oh, oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

I didn't realize you were just being a good, good, good advertise, uh, advertisement supporters. Huggies overnights. Huggies overnights. So, uh, so, okay. So thank you for the feedback. And we'll definitely, again, I'm going uh, advertisement supporters. Huggies overnights, Huggies overnights. So, uh, so, okay. So thank you for the feedback. And we'll definitely, again, I'm going to think about that. It's just a matter of sometimes deciding, do we want to post this quick deal now? Do we want to do this?

Do we want to do that? How to divide up the time. So something we'll, we'll have to look into. So good thought there. Now that brings us then to the reader question of the week, which normally these are a little bit spread apart, but this week we're condensing them all together. So the reader question of the week comes from Twitter. So this one comes from Twitter and it actually comes from last week's topic, which was making Delta Diamond or excuse me, Delta Platinum status through credit cards.

Because right now there's that unique opportunity we talked all about last week. Greg said you can listen last week to hear the discussion about how you could potentially get two credit cards right now, business and a personal, and essentially MS your way or spend your way to Delta Platinum status relatively easily. So listener Riot Nerd on Twitter asked this simple question that I'm curious what your thoughts on this are. If I don't have a business, is there any point in trying this? Because the path that Greg laid out, laid out how to do this if you opened the Delta Reserve, both business and personal. If you don't have a business, is there any point in trying this?

Well, okay. So two things. First, you probably do have a business, meaning there's probably something you do that can be considered a business and you could sign up for business cards just by picking the type of business as sole proprietor, use your name as the business name, then there's no requirements for setting up the business in any particular way and estimate revenue. And that's all you really need. Oh, and you can even use your own social security number as the business tax ID, or you could jump onto the IRS website and get a business tax ID for free in about a minute. So you probably could sign up for business cards.

And so you could probably do it that way. But let's say that you really don't have anything you consider a business. You're not hoping to write the great American novel. You don't ever sell things on eBay. You don't ever do any kind of consulting, helping out people with miles and points questions or whatever. And if that's true, then I would say before Greg even tells you the next part, you should consider doing it. If you're positive, you don't have a business at all, then why wouldn't you consider the possibility of creating a small business? I mean, all businesses are huge. Some businesses make very little money. Some businesses, like we saw Air Italy this week, lose $165 million a year. So it doesn't have to be

a $165 million a year business. It could be something very, very this something that you could even consider if you're not willing to sign up for business cards at all? So that means you're signing up for one Delta Reserve card and getting 20,000 MQMs as part of the signup bonus. And then you can get 15,000 MQMs with each $30,000 of spend. So then what you can do is, let's see, if you do $60,000 of spend, you would have a total of 50,000 MQMs. That would get you to Delta Gold status. You would need another thirty thousand dollars of spend to get another fifteen thousand mqms that would get you to sixty five thousand mqms which is only 5k away from

the plan i had which had you at 70k you need 75 000 mqms to get to platinum status which is the a really good level of status to have because there's a lot of good benefits as we discussed last week and you can google for my post about it google frequent miler by delta platinum status and you'll find it so uh is it worth doing? I mean, truthfully, it probably, it's only worth doing to anyone if you can actually benefit from Delta Elite status and you value those benefits highly, right? So let's start there. It's mostly going to be beneficial to people who are at Delta Hub that fly a lot, but- Again, not enough to have earned the status the old-fashioned way.

Right, right. And so, or you want to get a higher level of status that you'd earn the other way. So truth is, it probably, it might not actually to do it with one card be that much more expensive. Because if you think about it, the second card was costing you another $550. So this avoids that fee. And so the new fee involved is you're spending more. The old plan had spending 30,000 on each of these two cards. Now I'm saying you're probably spending, so that was a total of 60,000. Now I'm saying you're probably spending a total of 90,000 to get very close to the same level of results.

Oh, 95, it's the same. Well, no, because that won't get you the elite qualifying. Never mind. Yeah. But the other cost you have to consider in that case is that you're giving up the welcome bonus on the second card altogether. So not only are you giving up the NPMs, you're also giving up a large welcome bonus in terms of the number of redeemable miles. Yeah, Thank you. That's, that's a really important point because as I pointed out in the, in the post, not when we talked about it, but when you add up all of the redeemable miles,

you earn both from the signup bonuses and from the spend, the value of the miles actually just coincidentally completely offset the fees involved in the plan that I'd laid out. So the fees both for, so part of the plan for spending really big was to pay your federal taxes, overpay them basically, and do that right before you file your end of year taxes for 2019 so that then you'd get the refund check pretty pretty soon and so there's fees involved in using credit card to do that and then there was the annual fees and that total of fees was almost perfectly wiped out by the redeemable miles you get and when you do just the just the consumer you it won't work out that way you'll you'll be paying more in fees than um then you'll get back then you'll get back in terms of value of redeemable miles right

so then you really have to value the status benefits i suppose at that point yeah so so yeah so it it so it's not as great of a deal and again probably almost entirely because of the signup bonus you're giving up, but it's still an excellent deal. And you could also do things like you could get the Delta Reserve and the Delta Platinum, which has a very nice signup bonus as well. And with $25,000 spent on the Plat platinum, you get 10,000 MQM. So that's something to consider as well as you could still go with the two card approach. And maybe the math would work out as good or close to as good. I'm not sure I'd have to run the numbers. And it's worth considering that Greg's post and theory on this is assuming that you're basically

earning almost no miles from actually flying. And if that does describe you, then I think you're absolutely crazy to be spending towards status in the first place, because you're not getting any of the benefits, you're not going to utilize the benefits enough. So, so I think that if you are flying some on your own to begin with, then maybe it makes more sense, because maybe you're already earning enough, maybe you're already earning 25 or 30 or 40,000, but you're not earning enough to get platinum status with Delta. And so this can bridge the gap. And in that case, you might not need two cards in order to bridge the gap. So that's also something to consider, whether or not the two would even have made sense for you in the first place because you're already flying $30,000.

Absolutely true. One small exception is the person who flies a lot, but does it all on award flights. And so you still get the benefits of elite status when you're flying award flights, but you don't earn elite status from flying award flights. So so that's probably a very tiny minority, though, that that fits that role that, you know, so, so yeah. And again, it's true. Even if you're flying with Virgin Atlantic miles or Air France miles, if you're flying Delta, you can get the elite benefits as long as you put in your SkyMiles number,

as we talked about earlier in this episode. Right. So anyway, so, so the, so getting back to the question. So the answer is yeah, maybe. Was that helpful? Hopefully, hopefully it was. I think so. I think, I think, yeah, maybe it's the right answer.

I mean, I think that's the answer in the first place. Is it worth doing it at all? Absolutely. That's right. That's right. But you know what? When I laid it out in the blog post, it made even more sense to me than I thought it made sense when we talked about it on the previous episode. So read the blog post because I think it's actually surprising how much sense it makes for, again, for people who fly enough with Delta to enjoy the perks. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. All right. Well, that my friends brings us to the closing song of the day. So I think anyway, it brings us to the closing song, right? So,

so if you're enjoying this, if you've been listening along and you're enjoying this and you're like, oh man, I just found these guys, where can I find more information about all this stuff we've been talking about? The answer to all of your questions is not 42, but rather frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe. So that's where you want to go. Thefrequentmiler.com. Don't forget the T-H-E at the beginning. Thefrequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe. And that's going to have all the information you need in terms of where you can get this podcast in audio form or in video form, depending on how you found us in the first place. And of course, also how you can subscribe to our email list and find all of our blog posts each week.

So that's where you're going to find more about us. Yeah. Very good. All right. Well, until next time. Until next time. Thank you very much. And we'll work on those timestamps. Bye, everybody.