Frequent Miler on the Air - Rockin' Fine Hotels | Ep107 | 7-17-21

Episode Date: July 17, 2021

00:38 Giant Mailbag: Want more Ask Us Anything? See us on Youtube 2:24 What crazy thing...did Capital One do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-shut-down-my-account-and-gave-me-only-a-half-cent-per-mile/ 11:34 Mattress Running the Numbers: Marriott Homes & Villas stacking promotions for 57,000 bonus points https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-homes-villas-spend-2100-earn-21000-bonus-points/ 17:21 Main Event: Rocking Fine Hotels https://frequentmiler.com/searching-for-deals-through-fine-hotels-resorts/ https://frequentmiler.com/find-your-own-fine-hotels-resorts-deals/ https://frequentmiler.com/getting-the-elite-experience-without-elite-status-via-luxury-partner-programs/ 1:00:00 Post Roast 1:02:57 Question of the Week: A Chase rep said I have to wait a year to get a new Southwest card. Is that true? 1:06:53 How do you choose a shopping portal? Join our email list at: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder    

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event rocking fine hotels and nick is rocking out all right did not know we were gonna have a live music music on this show. That's where my singing will start and end. The audience is finally getting their money's worth. So that's good to hear. Okay. Before we get into our other topics, we have our giant mailbag. Drag it out.

Yeah. Today, today's mail comes from Ahmed, who watched our YouTube live Ask Us Anything program. And so on the last one, he commented, thank you guys. I would love more of those Ask Us Anything in the future. They are awesome and help us understand how things work in the best way. So well, you're in luck. You're in luck because we do it every other week. So we do, except for the week before last or so we did skip one. Yeah, we skipped one in there somewhere, but usually every other Tuesday, every other Tuesday. And they are, they are only on YouTube video. You know, So sorry for you podcast listeners out there. We have made the explicit decision not to podcast them. This show that you're listening to now is our podcast.

And so if you want to get some of that Ask Us Anything action, you need to step on over to YouTube. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel either way, even if you don't like listening, watching on YouTube just gives us some extra mojo, I think on there. It does. If you like us, might as well give us some more mojo.

We appreciate the mojo. Yeah, we do. While you're at it, sneak over to Instagram, like us over there and wherever, wherever you find us gives us extra mojo and that's a good thing. Okay.

Not that we don't already have plenty of mojo on our own, but we could always use more. Right. There is one area where we need more mojo, and that we'll discuss in the What Crazy Thing segment. Coming up momentarily. In fact, so soon. Right now, let's do it.

What crazy thing did Capital One do this week? What did Capital One do last week to me, to Greg? They shut me down. Ouch! What? Yeah. So, you know, a few months ago, I was wildly excited that they had finally accepted an application. I applied for that venture 100K offer and I couldn't believe it.

They approved me. So I wrote a post about it. I was like, look, they're being easier on approvals. I've tried year after year and never gotten approved for anything from Capital One. But boom, I was approved, went ahead and started just using it for my day-to-day spend. I literally did nothing strange with this card. I set up auto payments to pay my bill in full each month and just spent everywhere I needed to spend. And I did.

And it turned out that you did not believe it for good reason. That's right. So I did earn the 50K part of the bonus, not yet the 100K because that required a $20,000 spend. But I hit the 50K part of it. And so altogether I had about just short of 60,000 points or they call them miles, saved up. And boom, they just out of the blue, shut me down. Unbelievable. With no explanation, no reason? None, none. So I called and they said, well, a letter will go out to you explaining why, but the decision is final, nothing you can do. And not surprisingly at all, the letter came and just said nothing, really said nothing about why it just said because of either current or past transactions that they were uncomfortable

with for whatever reason. And surely they let you use your 60,000 miles and transfer those out somewhere before they shut you down, right? I would not have been that upset about the shutdown. I mean, it was annoying, but if they had just left my miles intact so that I could transfer them to a transfer partner or even cash them out for one cent each, which is how they're kind of advertised as being used, it wouldn't have been as upsetting, but the upsetting thing is they cashed out for half a cent each to my statement. And that's just inexcusable. So I do plan on, on sort of fighting this up the chain.

There's various ways I can go about doing that. And I will, and I'll, I'll write about, you know, my efforts there as, as we go along, but. Wait, and, and you're sure you weren't engaging in any kind of funny business here, Craig. I mean, there wasn't anything like you weren't doing anything at all that kind of shady. I mean, you are Greg the Frequent Miler, right? I know. I know. I mean, it's, you know, you would expect, well, of course he bought some gift cards or, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't buy any gift cards. I didn't do anything like, you know, Venmo, Venmo friends. I didn't, I didn't do anything.

I went through all of my statements like line by line to see, was that charge suspicious looking? Is that charge? Is that charge? And I couldn't, you weren't like getting a cash advance at a casino or like, you know? The best guess is that this has to do with me getting shut down for my Capital One 360 bank account about six years ago. And I was shut down because of just, I tried to do an external cash transfer and I'd accidentally used the wrong external account number the first time I did it. And when I tried again, boom, I was, my account was canceled back

then. So my best guess is now they, you know, the secret powers that be behind the scenes kind of woke up and figured out that they had approved someone who was on their blacklist. It was just too shady, too shady. Greg, do they know who you are? Right. Well, you know, that's part of what's crazy here in a way, because if they cared about their bottom line, they, you know, they shouldn't do things like this to people who aren't in a position to influence people around which credit cards to get, which bank accounts to get, and so on, right? Seems not. It really flies in the face of everything people say about bloggers getting

preferential treatment, right? I mean, everybody always thinks that, oh, you just don't get shut down because you're a blogger. Oh, you get all the special treatment because you're a blogger. And I think this kind of flies in the face of that, right? It proves that. Oh, I got special treatment. Your special treatment, right? Yeah. We're going to give you the half a cent each thing. Not even Jennifer Garner redeems her points this poorly, Craig. It's, yeah, that's rough. That's really rough. So, I mean, I'm glad that you mentioned the fact that you're in position to influence because, I mean, what does that mean? What should we do? I saw that a reader commented and said, we ought to add warnings to all of the Capital One cards or remove links to their products. Or, you know, should we put a warning in every single post? I wrote a post about

a transfer bonus. And I did mention that, hey, you know, the risk, of course, with Capital One is that you never know when they're going to shut down your account and take away all your points. So, I mean, should we be warning people all the time about this? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that's the question is what should we do? And, and, you know, on the one hand, I think we hear stories like this from people with chase cards, for example, and we don't go and warn people every single time we write about chase cards about that every now and then we might write about that. If, if they're doing we might write about that if if they're doing some kind of behavior if we're writing about some kind of behavior that might get you shut down but

um so it it doesn't seem right that just because i was the victim here that we should do this for everything but on the on the other hand i i have better evidence of what happened because it happened to me than I do when, when a reader sort of reaches out, out of the blue. Cause in those cases, you know, they might swear up and down and they're probably telling the truth that they didn't do anything suspicious, but we just can't know that for sure. But, but with myself, obviously I can. So, so I don't know. I mean, you know, it's, it doesn't, it is tough. It doesn't seem right to like put a warning on everything in my mind, but at the same time, I, you know, I, I struggle with it because putting a warning seems kind of silly. Cause you could warn people

about every single bank, every single loyalty program. Cause goodness knows everybody's, there's a horror story out there for everything. And you have enough millions of people, there's going to be a few stories like this, no matter what. But my problem here now is that suddenly, I feel very conflicted at best, to put it nicely, about recommending a Capital One product when I know that this could happen, and they could just wipe out all of the points. Now, while that's theoretically possible, I guess, with anybody, and like you said, we'll hear stories from time to time. It's always hard to know the details. In this case, I absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Greg didn't do anything wrong. He earned the bonus

and they just took away all the points. I mean, if that can happen at any time, how do I in good conscience tell somebody to collect Capital One points? That stinks. But on the flip side, you know from personal experience that people can go for years without any trouble. Of course. Yes. Yeah, because I mean, I have and I've bought a lot of gift cards. I mean, I've done plenty of assignment on my Capital One cards, never had an issue. So that's why I couldn't believe it when Greg said he got shut down. I was like, what? I know I hear about people getting shut down from Capital One from time to time. Usually people who had reason to be shut down, they knew what they were doing was wrong or would draw negative attention. I shouldn't say wrong. But I hear

I've done enough that I would have thought that for Greg to lose his account in the first three months would be pretty surprising. And then it turned out he didn't do anything at all. And so that just makes me think that could happen to Susie or Harry or whoever else is going to open up a card. And man, like that thought stinks. It does. It does. Flip side, we don't know how likely it is. Like, you know, probably very, just because it happened to half of the people on the show, half of the people presenting on the show, you know, it does not mean that you have 50% chance of getting shut down. It might only happen to one in a million.

I might have been the lucky one. Right. I mean, it's only happened to one third of the people who either work for frequent miler or are married to somebody on the frequent miler team who have a capital one card. Right. Cause I mean,

my wife and I both have cards. We haven't gotten shut down. So it's just great. It's just great. So there's, there's all kinds of ways we could make the denominator to come up with different fractions. So, okay. So you know what? We don't know what we're going to do. If you're listening to this and you have ideas, please reach out to us. Tell us what you think. How should we handle this going forward? And I'm not talking about me personally. I'm going to handle that myself, but I'm talking about how we present Capital One information on the blog. And so if you have ideas, let us know. There you go. Okay. All right. So that, my friends, brings us to Mattress Running the Numbers. This week, we got Marriott out with

a brand new promotion for its homes and villas. You can earn a whole bunch of points for booking a homes and villas property. You spend $2,100 plus, you're going to get 21,000 bonus points. So I think you told me Steven Pepper did the math on this, right? And it came out to what? 57,000 total Marriott points that you get with what? A $2,100 booking? Yeah. So, so there's a few overlapping promotions that are relevant. So another overlapping promotion is, is you get 10 X bonus Marriott points for, for these bookings. There's also a MX offer to get like $200 off. So it might end up being, if you could come up with an exactly $2,100 booking, it might end up costing you 1900 best case. And, um, and then of course there's like points you regularly earn

for a Marriott stay. And, uh, I don't know. I can't remember what else, uh, or whatever, all of those little tiny things that add up. So, yeah, I mean, he had 21,000 from the promotion, 21,000 from earning 10X by paying with a Marriott card, because Marriott cards learn the 10X and then- Right. So that's a good way, good part of the way there, right there. Exactly. Okay. And then he added in the points, germ base and platinum status and all the rest of those things, assuming you got at least platinum status with Marriott. And so altogether that comes out to about 57,000 points on a $2,100 booking. Right. Right. So what do you think? Is it mattress run worthy? Should you go out and book a $2,100 stay? This is after taxes, by the way. So that's actually a nice...

Yeah. Usually these promotions say before taxes, but this is after taxes, by the way. So that's actually a nice, yeah, usually these promotions say before taxes, but this is after. So this might really be like a $1,600 stay because goodness knows there's a ton of taxes and cleaning fees. Sure. Right, right, right. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a great deal. Should you book it even if you don't want the stay? Sure. To get your 57,000 points?

No, I'm just kidding. I was trying to hold a straight face as long as I could. No, no, no, no, no, no. 57,000 points isn't worth $2,100. I wish it were, but it's not. It's not. So for people to do the math in their heads, just think of it this way. The Marriott points are worth less than a penny each so you know even if they were worth a penny each 57 000 points is like 570 dollars and we're talking about spending 2100 so obviously it's not something you would do just for that however if you can find a uh a homes and villas property these are these are like vacation rentals, if you could find one that you actually want to vacation in and it's not priced exorbitantly more than on other platforms, like on Airbnb or on VRBO,

then this is actually a great deal. I mean, that's a huge rebate for, yeah, for, for that kind of stay. And then the $200, if you have an Amex Marriott card, That's a huge rebate for that kind of stay. And then the $200, if you have an Amex Marriott card, $200 on top of that with the Amex offer,

that's a little extra gravy there. Yeah. I mean, I wish this came out a little bit sooner, to be honest, because I was booking a rental and I was looking, I looked at some Marriott homes and villas properties and actually a couple of them would have fit my plans. And I was like, oh, that's not actually too bad. The pricing wasn't actually super inflated compared to other sites on a couple of the places that I looked at, but I didn't end up doing it because I was like, I'm not going to earn enough. And it wasn't better than my other options.

But now this would probably put that right, flip the balance the other way. And I probably would have said, okay, great. Cause we were splitting it with another couple. And so, you know, we would have split the cost and I would have collected the Marriott points would have been nice little boon. Too little, too late for me, Marriott. But yeah, if you're looking for a vacation rental, it's worth at least looking.

They're not always competitively priced, but sometimes they are. And don't forget an extra kicker here is that Marriott homes and villas do contribute your to elite nights. So if you're chasing elite status with Marriott, which if you had any status last year, it's easier this year because of they had this like rollover bonus thing.

You might be very close to that next level leads. So this might kick you up to platinum or, or titanium. If you know, so that would be, that would be a valuable extra if you're on the cusp of that next level, I wouldn't do it to get to gold or to certainly not to silver, but platinum and titanium offers some valuable perks. So it could make the difference between it being worth it to you doing still don't think it's mattress run worthy, but it's- No, it's not. Unless you could find like a 50 night stay for 2,100, maybe. Unlikely. I haven't seen anything quite like that. Unlikely. The frustrating thing to me about the way homes and villas works is that when you do the search results, it gives you prices, but

then you don't actually see the real prices until you click through. Because it shows you like the lowest price that that property goes for. And you got to click the property to actually see what it is for your specific dates. So that's kind of annoying to me because a lot of times I'll just skip over the ones that either look too expensive or I don't know, I guess I don't skip over the ones that are too cheap, but I skip over some of them anyway. And then I click through it. I'm like, oh, well, this doesn't fit my budget anyway. So I shouldn't have been wasting my time thinking this was one of my options and skipping something else. And so blah, blah, blah. It's kind of annoying, but it is what it is. You get your points and your elite credit. So it could be worth it for those things,

not mattress run worthy. All right. So that finishes that one off. So that brings us, I think, to the main event. Main event, rock and fine hotels. So we're talking primarily about fine hotels and resorts, which is an Amex benefit that you get if you are a platinum card holder. So that means if you have a consumer platinum card, like the regular platinum card or the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab platinum cards, you also get the benefit of being able to book these if you have a business platinum card or the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab platinum cards. You also get the benefit of being able to book these if you have a business platinum card. But if you have a business platinum card, you don't get the new credit, which is $200 back on these bookings each year, which all the consumer

cards get, all the consumer platinum cards get. We're going to talk about that, but we're also going to talk a little bit about some alternatives to fine hotels and resorts, uh, going on. But the first topic I wanted to bring up, because this comes up whenever we write about fine hotels and resorts is, is, oh, but it's a prepaid booking and I don't want to book that. And people have been conditioned to hate prepaid bookings. And, uh, do you want to explain why? I mean, I mean, I've probably contributed to that hatred hate prepaid bookings. And do you want to explain why? I mean, I've probably contributed to that hatred of prepaid bookings because I always

say, you know, who books a prepaid rate, right? Didn't I say that just on this show like a week ago? You probably did. Yeah, I think you did. Well, I'm going to book a prepaid rate now because so, OK, the differentiator here, the key distinction is prepaid doesn't always mean not cancelable and nonrefundable. And in fact, with fine hotels and resorts, very often prepaid doesn't always mean not cancelable and non-refundable. And in fact, with fine hotels and resorts, very often prepaid rates are still cancelable and refundable up until

whatever the hotel's cancellation policy is. That can vary, but most of the time it's 24, 48, 72 hours, something like that. If you're looking to stay in like the Maldives, it might be 30 days, but for the most part, it's going to be a couple of days in advance, just like the regular hotel cancellation policy. So they're still flexible. Prepaid doesn't mean non-flexible. The other reason that people have been conditioned to hate prepaid bookings is because we all think that if you book a prepaid booking through any kind of travel agency, you're not going to get any elite credit or hotel points or elite benefits, which is typically true with most, you know, any kind of Expedia, Priceline, Rocket Miles type of prepaid booking. However, it's not true with fine hotels and resorts bookings.

When you book through fine hotels and resorts, you do get elite credit, you do get hotel points, you do get elite recognition. So you get all those things, at least you should. Occasionally, a report of somebody not getting it, but sometimes that negative report, even if you saw somebody comment on the post this week that said they didn't get points. And then a day later they wrote back and they were like, oh, actually I checked my account and I did get the points. So people might just not have been patient enough to wait and see it come up, but you do get those things. So yeah. Well, I do want to mention that comment because the person who wrote in said that

they had called Amex and the hotel to ask about that and both told them that they won't get points. So it's one of those benefits that nobody understands, but it works with fine hotels and resorts. But it's worth mentioning, I don't believe it works with the hotel collection, which is the other program that's like that, that Amex provides. So you have to kind of keep that in mind that the hotel collection has those downsides of prepaid bookings, at least the lack of points and elite benefits, but fine hotels and resorts does not have that. Yeah. And if you just book through Amex travel.com, not a fine hotels and resorts property, just a regular prepaid hotel booking. You're not going to get elite credit and points and stuff like that for that booking either. It's just these fine hotels and resorts bookings that are handled differently somehow.

And so somehow the magic happens and you still get the points and the elite credit. And by the way, we're talking about prepaid rates because the credit on the Amex Platinum card requires you to make a prepaid booking. The $200 credit on the consumer Platinum cards is a $200 credit for prepaid fine hotels and resorts bookings. Most hotels, you can alternatively pay at the hotel and that will not trigger your credit. However, if you already used your credit and you're just looking to make another booking and you pay at the hotel, it's also worth noting that I have always found those bookings to trigger Amex offers because they are charged by the hotel property. So I've had- So you're talking about Amex offers that are like Marriott, spend $200, get $40 back.

Those kinds of offers. Those kinds of offers. I've always had those get triggered with fine hotels and resorts bookings as well, even though they often say that fine hotels and resorts bookings won't trigger them. Now, to be right, please do. So there's different kinds of Amex offers. And if you have an Amex offer for a prepaid hotel stay in general, then these should work even when you book fine hotels and resorts and prepay. But if you have an offer for spending at Marriott or an offer for spending at Hilton or Hyatt, those offers will not get triggered if you prepay, but they will get triggered if you check the box to pay at the hotel. So the other clarity thing is when you're booking one of these fine hotels and resorts,

you get to a screen where it asks you, which way do you want to pay now or at the hotel. And so if you're trying to earn your $200 credit from your platinum card, you have to pick now. If you're trying to earn like a Marriott Amex offer, then you pick at the hotel. So the other advantage of booking fine hotels and resorts and paying with your platinum card is you get five points per dollar. You get five membership rewards points per dollar. And so prepaid bookings on prepaid bookings. And so the this is sort of like a positive and negative. So five points per dollar is pretty good, but it does mean if you have like a hotel

specific card, you're not going to get the big earnings at checkout that you would normally get by paying with that card. So for example, the IHG premier card gives you 10 points per dollar at IHG properties. You won't have that opportunity to earn 10x IHG points on this day. Instead, you'll earn 5x membership rewards. But for the most part, your loss there is not going to be significant unless it's a really expensive stay, right? Well, it's time for a quiz. Okay.

It's pop quiz time, Nick. All right. So I'm going to give you some programs. You tell me what's the most hotel programs. You tell me what's the most hotel programs. You tell me what are the most points per dollar you could earn with your credit card if you had the hotel credit card. And then you tell me, is that better or worse than 5X membership rewards? All right. Okay.

Let's see. So let's start with a gimme. IHG. IHG. Well, I think that's not. Nope. 10. 10 points per dollar at IHG with your IHG

premier card. And so that's worth about 5% back. So if you value membership rewards points at more than one cent each, then the membership rewards points return is better than you'd get with your IHG card. Exactly. All right. Hilton. times 0.45, 5.6%. So as long as you value membership rewards points at more than like 1.125 cents each, then again, you're better off with 5X. So if you value your membership rewards points at a penny and a half each, like our reasonable redemption value or so, then again, you're better off with 5X than you are with 14X help. Yeah. As a little side on this one, I was thinking about this earlier that when Amex offers a 40% transfer bonus to Hilton, the two 5x Amex versus 14x Hilton, I think are about identical in that you can transfer 1000 A000 MX rewards to 2,800 Hilton. And I think it comes out the same.

So just kind of interesting that way. And that's when they offer that 40% bonus, which is not that unusual. All right, Marriott. Marriott. So I think, I think what is it? It's six, right? Six X. Yeah.

So I mean, six times, let's call it 0.8, 4.8% back. Yep. Looks like 5X membership rewards points is still better. It is. All right. Hyatt. Hyatt. Let's see.

Hyatt, I believe is four. Is that right? With the credit card? 4X. Yep. And so if you value Hyatt points at one and a half cents each, that's like a 6% return. I would still take five membership rewards points over four Hyatt points because membership rewards points are flexible.

I can transfer them to a bunch of different partners. I'd rather have five membership rewards points than four Hyatt points. So that one to me is the one where I think it would be reasonable to pick either way, 4X Hyatt or 5X Membership Awards. Just depends how much you value each one. I don't know. I mean, it's easy to get 5X with Chase. So 4, I'm like, eh.

Yeah, but... Super excited. If you're not into using membership rewards for high value air fair, air, airfare award, award tickets, airline premium cabin tickets for on airline tickets.

Yeah. Then there's really not a lot going on in the hotel space using your points. So I would value Hyatt more for that in that case. Okay. All right. That's good for that in that case. Okay. All right. That's good for that. That's like, okay, my good. You weren't going to ask me Radisson or something.

I was like, oh boy. Yeah. I don't know that often. I think it's okay, but I don't know. So anyway, yeah. So, so basically what we're saying here is that you're not really losing anything by, by earning five X membership rewards points on a prepaid booking. In many cases, it's better.

Okay. All right. So let's talk about that $200 a year credit. Are there ways to basically use it like a free night certificate so you could get a free night somewhere cool each year? Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of hotels that are less than $200 a night. So we highlighted some of them this week, first in my post about searching for deals with fine hotels and resorts. And the cheapest that comes to my mind in that post was I think about $111 a night, $109 a night, maybe, but then somebody commented with a place in Quito, Ecuador, that's $70 a night where you could actually get two free nights with your $200 credit even after taxes. And I've occasionally seen other places go that cheaply as well. So yeah, you can certainly get a free night, potentially even two out of a $200 credit in some places. Now, I mean, that's

going to depend on the time of year and the place you're going, but you certainly could get a free night out of that. And then you followed up with a post about how you can go about looking for those types of opportunities with some great tips on using Google to look around at dates to get an idea of when a hotel might be cheap. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, Amex will show you the prices. If you pick a specific date and location, it'll show you how much the prices are, but there's no price calendar to find, well, when is this hotel cheaper? And so I think a lot of people are left trying to guess, but an easy way that's much, much better than guessing is use Google Hotels and search for the hotel that you're interested in in there, bring up their price calendar and just find when that hotel is dirt cheap. And the prices won't match exactly, but

it'll give you an idea when fine hotels and resorts will be cheap as well. And the more I thought about this idea, so if you live near one of these fine hotels and resorts that occasionally is in the $200 price range, just thinking about how nice this is as an option to have a little staycation. Because first of all, if you have the time, you have that guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout. So, you know, it's more than just an overnight and get booted out. You could stay quite a while in the hotel. You might be able to check in as early as noon because it gives you that. And I have done that before. Yeah. I mean, it's not always available, but sometimes it is. So for $200, which will be rebated, you might be spending over 24 hours in there. Plus you get the $100 property credit that manifests in different ways.

But that means you could be kind of living it up to some extent while you're there. Free breakfast, which can be very valuable at some of these places. I mean, and then you're going to be earning all these points if it's a chain hotel. Right. So it's really, really attractive, that idea to me. Yeah. It's more valuable than it looks because if you take advantage, for instance, of a Hilton property, I mean, Hilton properties are always running these promotions for tons and tons of points. And so we frequently see opportunities where you'll be earning north of 30 points per

dollar as a Hilton member of any sort. And then depending on your elite status, you may be earning as much as 40 sometimes with their promotions, but even at 30, you're talking what? So 30 times a $200 ish rate around somewhere around 6,000 Hilton points, assuming no other promotions to stack on top of all of the other benefits, which is great. I mean, you could be looking at potentially getting yourself free dinner, breakfast, you know, maybe you're still there for lunch and you have some of your hotel credit left to use or something, depending on how expensive the place was for dinner the night before or whatever else you've chosen to order. Some places will allow you to take breakfast as in-room dining. I've had that before in some fine hotels and resorts places,

which is a nice luxury to kick back and relax. I know, for example, Delano and Las Vegas have stayed numerous times with fine hotels and resorts and always been able to take breakfast as room service there. It's a $60 credit, which has been plenty to order a nice breakfast for two people. So yeah, and that'll vary, of course, from place to place. And while it's $100 general credit at many places, some places, rather than $100 general credit, they might give you $100 spa credit, or they might give you a free airport transfer, free dinner, that sort of thing. So you do have to check the details. There are some places now, though, even offering $125 credit. So, um, so I mean, I think it's a terrific benefit where you get that $200 back, you earn hotel points, you get your a hundred dollar credit, your free breakfast, your late checkout. I mean, my goodness, that's a really nice free night certificate essentially. Right. I mean,

that's, that's a much nicer than average free night certificate. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's both, it's both, uh, way better and way worse. So the way worse part is that there's no guarantee your stay is going to be free. It's going to be hard. It's not easy, at least within the US, especially during the current travel boom to find these cheap properties. On the other hand, way better, because how many times do we wish when you have like, let's say a Marriott 35K certificate, do we wish you could apply that towards $35,000 of the $50,000 point charge for the hotel room? And then you just throw in $15,000 extra points. We wish you could do that, but you can't. So this basically lets you book any fine hotels and resorts hotel you're interested in.

You'll get $200 back, whether it's a $1,000 stay or a $200 stay. And that's really nice. And that's why I highlighted places that were up to around 250 bucks in my post, because it didn't seem to make sense to just cut it off at places you get for free. Because like, I don't know, one that pops off in my head that I don't even think I included in the post is I saw the Four Seasons in Bogota was $250 a night. And I was like, I mean, how many times am I going to stay at a Four Seasons? I'm not the kind of person who spends the money for a Four Seasons usually, but for $50 or $60 or $70 after tax with $100 credit and free breakfast,

hello, hi, Four Seasons. How are you doing? Why not? I'd be willing to do that. And I guarantee you, we have lots of audience members who would spend $400 for the promise of getting half of that back. So you can stay in some really sweet places with this. When I was looking at, they have promos as well.

And Nick referred to that a little bit where they have a promo page on Fine Hotels and Resorts that shows hotels that have like stay to get the third night free, for example. So, you know, you might be able to, you know, turn a expensive hotel. It'll still be expensive, but you're getting $200 back plus three nights instead of instead of two for the price. Some of them had like really high credits, like $300 credits, but those also tend to be the hotels that are a thousand dollars a night, not the, not the $200 a night hotels. Right. Which I mean, still, again, this is not a bad benefit. If that's the type of place you typically book $200 back. I mean, that's, that's still, why, why wouldn't you do it back? Right. I mean why not? Exactly. And I think it's worth, you know, mentioning the fact that they are typically luxury hotels.

So, you know, we're not, I know that people would love to see multiple nights at $50 a night or something like that. And you're not probably going to get more than two nights. And even that's a stretch. If you get really lucky, maybe you'll get one night or maybe you'll just get a discounted night, but it's going to be at a pretty nice place. These are usually pretty nice properties with a nice set of benefits. So if that's your thing, if you like luxury places cheaply, I mean, I was excited about this benefit from the get-go because I was like, oh, this is great. I'm going

to enjoy this. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to have a stay that I like that I probably would have booked anyway, and now I'm going to get 200 bucks back. So good, good deal. I thought, but let's talk about some creative, different ways of using these things. So first I want to talk about, I think you've had more experience maybe, but I want to talk about the way I've used fine hotels and resorts in the past, twice in the past, what I've done is there was a property I wanted to stay at that was on fine hotels and resorts, but I also had points or free night certificates for the same place. So I looked at the pricing for the date range that I wanted to stay, found one day that was particularly cheap price-wise,

and I booked the other nights with points or free night certificates. And the end result was different. So the two times I did this, once was a property in California. And they wouldn't let us spend our credits on the days that, that, that we were booked with points, right? Like, so we had to spend our, our property credits on the, on the day that it was booked with fine hotels and resorts. Another stay, they let all of our food and beverage credits across the stay count towards the, towards that, that fine hotels and resorts credit. So your actual experience is going to vary based on the specific hotel. You don't have any leg to stand on

if they don't want to give it to you because they're not supposed to give it to you outside of that particular stay. So that's how I've used it, but you've used it a little bit differently. Well, I mean, I've booked back-to-back nights. My wife and I have booked back-to-back nights, one night in her name, one night in my name. So they're separate reservations.

And then get to the hotel and say, hey, you know, get these two separate reservations. We just like to keep the same room. And so we've been able to have back-to-back nights with $100 credits that way. And so this would be great with that because you get the $200 back each and potentially get two nights in a row. Or if you find one of these properties where you can actually get two nights out of the credit, maybe four nights in a row rebated by this particular benefit, if you're able to continually, well, I guess you can continually back to back because they're prepaid. But at any rate, one night in one person's name, one night in player two's name,

get the credits both nights. The thing is, you do have to obviously make the reservation separately. And it's going to be up to the hotel how they want to handle that. I have heard that they're not supposed to give you the credit both nights. I mean, I think if you're booking in separate customers' names, in my opinion, I don't see why you wouldn't qualify for the $100 credit. But what I've always done in those cases is made sure to use the $100 credit on night number one and check out from that stay and pay it in full in the morning before checking in for the second stay. And I make that stop at the front desk to do that in order to avoid the trouble of it not working out at checkout. Now, if you're able to do it like Greg and talk to the property manager or something right up front and say, listen, this is what we're going to do. Maybe it'll all work out, but I've always wanted to avoid that headache and just kept them separate.

That makes a lot of sense to me. So one thing that people are going to be wondering about is that situation where you have multiple platinum cards in the family. How could we apply them to one stay? So there's different scenarios. Your scenario of how you could do it is by booking two nights back to back. And that's kind of obvious. You could do that on your own without any help from Amex. What if you have one $400 stay? Is there any way to do it? And there's no way online. Like you can't, when, when booking online as one single stay, you, there's no option to split the charge across multiple cards. Could you call? Cause another option to book the prepaid is call Amex. Could you just ask them charge half of it on this card and half on the other? That's a good question.

Do you know the answer to that question? You're just kind of posing half on the other. That's a good question. Do you know the answer to that question? You're just kind of posing it as a question. That's a good question. I ran out of time. I was going to test this before the show today, but I ran out of time. So we'll find out and let everyone know. But that's something worth exploring. I mean, that's particularly worth exploring if you have more than one platinum card in your own name, because you can book multiple rooms through fine hotels and resorts.

So you could book a room for somebody else and they could also get the credit and all the benefits. By the way, I've booked up to three rooms at a time myself with one card and each room got their hundred dollar credit and their breakfast for two. So you can book multiple rooms. However, if you got a bunch of platinum cards, how's that going to work out in terms of getting your credits? So if you could split tender, like you're talking about, you could have that one room and potentially call and split it over two or three of your own platinum cards if you happen to have more than one consumer platinum card in your name. Because otherwise, if you book the back-to-back nights in the same person's name, I don't

know exactly how that's going to go down at the property. Because these are prepaid, I would think you would still be able to get the $100 credit each night, even if you're like, let's say Greg has a Schwab platinum and he has a vanilla platinum. If he books back-to-back nights in his own name at the same hotel, are they going to give him the $100 credit both nights? I think that's kind of going to run property to property. I think you're going to have some properties that are going to push back on that.

I agree. I think if I was to do that, what I would do is go in expecting just $100 credit. And if I got $200, I'd consider that a bonus. It would be a little awkward though, if I only got a hundred for the first night and I actually spent the money at the hotel the second night, and then that leads to all kinds of issues. So there are advantages to booking it all at once. So if Amex on the phone will let you split the payment, I think I'd rather do it that way. Confirm that I can use my hundred dollar credit across the two nights rather than, uh, rolling the dice and hoping I can use it, um, uh, you know, twice. Yeah. There's some strategy there and figuring it out. Right. Cause if you don't think you're going to use the a hundred dollar credit a night,

number one, then you want night number one and number two is the single reservation. So you can get your a hundred dollar credit at some point. So, yeah, So yeah, I mean, that's a good point. So I would think that Amex would let you split Tender over the phone and split it over more than one card, right? I'd be surprised if they won't. And I mean, they might insist it's your own card. So like in the example you gave, they might insist that I use my own platinum, but I almost think that there's a decent chance they would let me also use my wife's platinum card, but I don't know. I'll find out. Maybe. And it's worth noting, by the way,

that this $200 credit is for existing cardholders as well. It's not part of the welcome bonus. This is an ongoing annual benefit. So if you had a platinum card already, you've got access to this. It's already live. You can use it for 2021. You can use your prepaid credit anytime now. You got to use it by the end of the year. This is a calendar year benefit. So you're going to want to make sure that you use it before the end of December. And then you'll get a new one in January. So you want to make sure that you take advantage of that as soon as you can.

Right. And, you know, so if you're getting towards the end of the year and you haven't used it yet, you can still book a hotel for 2022. And since it's prepaid, as long as you pay within 2021, you'll get that that money back. Which brings me to another idea for how to sort of creatively do this, which is, if you're getting to that end of the year, let's say you have a trip, you know, you're planning for June of 2022, where you want two nights, why not book the first night in December of this year, get the $200 back. And then in January, book the second night and get the $200 back. And so then you get back to back nights. Again, we don't know what

will happen with the hotel credits. So there's two different things. There's the hotel property credits, which offset things like food and beverage or spa, whatever the details are for that property that you might not get twice, but certainly the $200 back, you would get twice by doing it that way. Right. Which is still a good deal. So that's still not a problem. And if you are living on the edge and you want to book those two nights back to back and try and get your $100 credit both nights, I mean, the sneaky way to try to make that happen, I guess, is to just go and check out in the morning and then check back in. I mean, I say in the morning, you get 4 p.m. checkout. So you could check into a second room before you've

checked out of the first room, right? So if you don't mind moving your stuff, if you're like somebody who's just trying to like trying to scrounge up your credits and you don't really care about moving your stuff, you just want to get two nights and get the credit both nights, then wait until like three o'clock and check out a room number one and check into room number two. Right. Maybe. And in my experience, when you book a hotel with the same name on back to back, they they usually notice that and put them together. So I don't think that's too likely to work. They might. I mean, yeah, I've done that before, but not usually.

It's not my usual MO. So I don't know. You may be right that they may just automatically put it together. But anyway, so all right. So you could use it next year by booking a hotel now for next year. And I think that's worth noting that you could book your 2022 stays right now and get this

credit. So I think that's a really good use of it. That's a particularly good use, I think, all the time to be able to put a couple of nights together or a stay that's more meaningful to you to be able to book them like that. So there is a risk and, and here's why I would wait until December to do this is, um, if the next night books up and, uh, or just becomes much more expensive for whatever reason, um, before you, before January, when you go to book the second night, um, then if you cancel it, so then if you decide, oh, I'm just going to do this totally

differently and you cancel your stay, um, if so Amex might claw back the $200 because you wouldn't have actually spent, um, spend it in 2021 in this example. And in fact, that's in the FAQs that they might clawed back that they use different words in that scenario because you haven't spent $200 or more at prepaid fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection hotels. So that's an issue. That's definitely somewhat of a risk. Yeah. Because I don't know how likely it is, but at the same time, it's certainly possible. Yeah. One other, in reading the FAQs and just going through the Fine Hotels and Resorts program

altogether, one kind of little trivia thing that I discovered, I mean, maybe this is more widely known, but I didn't really know it, is that this is one place where using Amex points to book a hotel is not devastatingly horrible of an idea because you get one cent per point value. And the FAQ says, if you book with points in whole or in part, you still are eligible for the $200 credit. Yeah, that's a great point. I meant to bring that up because that's actually not necessarily so bad then. I mean, because then you're turning points directly into cash and getting a decent hotel stay out of the deal. So, yeah, I think that that's actually a non-terrible use.

Well, remember, you're still not getting the, you wouldn't be getting the 5X. Right. So you're still better if you have the option of cashing out points for a penny each or more, like with Morgan Stanley or the Schwab card, you're better off booking with the credit card and then sort of retroactively paying

by cashing out your points and applying to your statement. But yeah, but it's not horrible. So whereas any other hotel use with Amex gets you less than a penny a point value, which is no good. Fine hotels and resorts, one big downside. There's not that many of them where you want to go necessarily. Not necessarily. And I'm glad you qualified that because I'm always surprised. Somebody mentioned they couldn't believe there weren't any properties in Atlantic City, for instance, on our Facebook post. And I said, I am constantly amazed by the places where I find no fine hotels and resorts

options. And then also constantly amazed at the middle of nowhere locations that I've never heard of that have a fine hotels and resorts property. So it's very unpredictable. I mean, you may discover something totally new, or you may discover that there's just nothing in the place you want to go to. Right, right. So I could list out to you, I've memorized all of the fine hotels and resorts in Michigan. Okay, I'm done. There are none. I was about to be impressed there. Nothing in Detroit, huh? No fine hotels in all of Detroit.

Not a single one. There are two in the state that are the hotel collection, which is the other option for getting your $200 credit. But with the hotel collection, I mean, you could book just one night to get your credit, but you won't get any hotel collection benefits when you book just one because the benefits kick in with a two night stay. And as I said earlier, I don't think you'll earn hotel points, be able to get elite credit while you're in one of those days. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding. Yeah, I have not booked through the hotel collection before, so I'm not positive on that part. But to be clear here, because there

was some confusion when this benefit was initially announced, Amex has two premium hotel booking programs. So they have fine hotels and resorts, which is what we've been talking about for the last 20 or 30 minutes or whatever here. But then they also have the hotel collection, which are properties that are perhaps not quite as high end as the fine hotels and resorts properties, but still nice hotels. And they come with additional benefits through the hotel collection if you book a two-night stay. Whereas fine hotels and resorts has no minimum. You can book a one-night stay. The hotel collection requires two nights if you want the extra fancy benefits like the $100 hotel credit.

And I don't know. I assume it comes with guaranteed late checkout, blah, blah, blah. I can't remember exactly the hotel collection sector. I don't remember off the top of my head either. Yeah. So, so they do come with benefits similar to fine hotels and resorts, but with a two night minimum. So, so you got to book at least two nights. You're probably not going to get elite credit or points or elite benefits, which by the

way, rolling back for a second to find hotels and resorts, what happens with fine hotels and resorts if you'd already get breakfast because of your elite status? Do you get something extra? So like if you book a Marriott, for instance, where you've already got platinum or titanium status, so you would have gotten free breakfast anyway. Do you get something extra? Well, no, not really. So with Marriott, they have different rules about how you get free breakfast. And in some cases, and with a lot of brands, if you're eligible for free breakfast as a platinum lead, it's really an option as a welcome gift. So what you want to do is if you have free breakfast, thanks to find hotels and resorts and check into the Marriott, you want to say, oh, instead of that valuable benefit of free

breakfast every day, I'll take the $10 food and beverage credit or the thousand points instead. So it's not much, but at least it's something. You get something out of it then. Hilton, this is the one case where I think their current rule for properties in the US works out really good for elites, right? Because this year they're giving gold and diamond elites food and beverage credits instead of free breakfast. And so this way you can have your breakfast and eat it too. Right. Eat the cake too, I should say. And so this way you can have your breakfast and eat it too. Right. Eat the cake too, I should say.

There you go. You order a cake, you order dessert the night before, you go to the bar, order a drink and a slice of cake. There you go. So yeah, so there it would stack because of the way Hilton is doing elite breakfast, so to speak, or the food and beverage credit for elite members in the U.S. only. Whereas with other programs in general, yeah, it's not going to do you any good to have

elite status. Although I say that, and let me back that statement up, because even with your elite status, you may only be entitled to, let's say, continental breakfast, which at some properties is going to be defined as something really minor, like your muffin and a coffee kind of a thing. Whereas you're going to get a full breakfast with fine hotels and resorts. So typically that's going to be a dining credit that covers like a full, full breakfast and entree drink, coffee, blah, blah. And sometimes that might include room service breakfast, whereas the, uh, the elite one might not. Another thing is if your elite benefit offers two breakfasts and you have more than two people with you, then maybe you can stack them in a way by covering everybody for breakfast. True, true. All right. So, okay. So there's your elite status.

I just meant to bring that up before. So hotel collection, I mean, is it worth looking at the hotel collection properties or is there, I mean, there's still only two in all of Michigan, huh? Yeah, only two. I mean, I would still look at it as a way to spend my platinum credit. So I wouldn't normally be spending any time with it, but if I'm getting towards the end of the year and I just don't know how I'm going to use my $200 credit and I want to do a staycation in Grand Rapids or near Detroit, which are the two options, if I'm remembering correctly, then, yeah, I mean, it could be a nice way to overnight in one of those places. And again, I probably won't earn anything, but I still get that free stay. Yeah. And that's not bad. But now it's worth mentioning though, that fine hotels and resorts is not your only option. And in fact, if you want to stack multiple

nights, we talked about whether or not booking back-to-back nights through fine hotels and resorts might work. Another option, if you're booking at a chain property or actually any of these properties, really, is that you may be able to stack one night of fine hotels and resorts. And then if you're willing to pay for a night out of pocket, remember that most of the properties that are available through Amex fine hotels and resorts are also going to be available through Virtuoso, potentially through Visa luxury hotels, Visa Infinite luxury hotels. If you have a Visa Infinite, Chase luxury hotels, if you have basically almost any Chase card, you can book those properties, MasterCard lifestyle and travel. Again, basically any MasterCard gets you access to

that. And all of those programs have similar hotel credits and late checkout and that sort of thing. MasterCard is the one that's a little weird compared to the others. And then of course the different chains have their own preferred partner hotel booking programs. So you have Hyatt Preve and Marriott Stars and Luminous and Hilton Impresario, Four Seasons Preferred Partner, Peninsula Pen Club, Shangri-La's Luxury Circle. They've all got these different programs and we have a post outlining the benefits that you'll get at booking through those programs. And in some cases, it might be a better deal in general booking through one of those programs. Obviously, if you want to use your $200 fine hotels and resorts credit, you're going to want to book a night through fine hotels and resorts, but you may want to back to back that with a night book through one of these other

programs. Yeah, exactly. And of course, if you're in a situation like me where you want to stay in nice hotels, but there's none near you or none where you're going of the fine hotels and resorts, these other programs cover such a huge, you know, wide range of hotels that you're much more likely to find what you need if you explore those different programs. And so your post on that is an awesome resource. I think it is worth mentioning that you might be able to get the same property for the same nights a lot cheaper by going through other channels, even through the hotel's website directly, because you could use your AAA discount, if you're a government employee, a government discount, those kinds of things, uh, the hotel

might be running some kind of special that doesn't apply through those other channels. So there's a lot of things that could affect that, but it's also the case, um, that, that often the, these luxury programs have as good or close to as good of rates as you'd get elsewhere. And then it's just pure advantage to get all the perks that you get with it. Yeah. You know, and some of those programs have particularly good perks, you know, Hyatt Pervet, for instance, you get a one category room upgrade confirmed at the time of booking. So you book something just under a suite, you'll get a confirmed upgrade potentially to that next level suite if it's the next category up anyway, and it's available. I did that, for instance, at the Park Hyatt in Washington, D.C.

a year or two ago, where I booked whatever the room below a junior suite was and got confirmed in a junior suite right at booking, within a day of booking the trip. So that's a particularly nice benefit if you're looking for a meaningful upgrade. And Hyatt is not totally unique, but one of the few that offers that. I know that Shangri-La also offers the same kind of a thing. So you may at least get prioritized for a room upgrade if not being able to get one confirmed at booking with those particular chains. So I think there's some advantage of booking through those programs if rates are similar, or if you value some of those other ancillary benefits, because obviously the programs want you to book through their own thing. So they're going to probably treat you well

and give you access to decent benefits. Right. So I think this was a great time for you to update that post too, because with the boom in travel we're having domestically, I think a lot of people who are eager to travel have been sort of given up on the idea of saving a lot of money because there's hotels don't have any incentive to offer those kinds of great discounts that you normally find. And so if you're, if you've already sort of consigned yourself to, I'm going to be spending the money anyway, you know, look into these programs, whether you could book the same place for about the same amount, or maybe even just a little bit more might be worth it to get all those perks. And so between the property credits and the free breakfast and whatnot,

it can totally pay for itself. It sure can. Yeah. And in some cases, it even stacks with hotel promotions. I know Four Seasons, for instance, if they've got a promo on their website where it's like, stay to get a third night free, then you can stack that with a preferred partner program. So that's not, again, not the case in all programs you'll have to look, but some of them are particularly good. And I believe, I want to say Hilton Impresario maybe doubled the credit. I think it's maybe 250 this year. Maybe I'm misremembering that, but you have to take a look through because there are a bunch of them that have pumped up benefits. Maybe it's the double points is what it is with Hilton Impresario, extra points on bookings through

Hilton Impresario. And then you're going to stack that breakfast with your resort credit, just like you would through fine hotels and resorts. We said a moment ago and earn tons of hotel points in the process. So I like those. I think they're particularly interesting. I'm becoming more interested in them, although their value to you will really depend on where you're traveling and how much you're willing to spend, especially in the current boom. But I will say that at some point, this domestic travel boom in the United States will probably subside. And in past years, I've always found it actually easier than I expected to find decently valued properties, even in the United States through fine hotels and resorts.

I've often been like, oh, wow, there's a place for 150 bucks to find hotels and resorts. And I get $100 credit and free breakfast. All right. Great. You know, so keep an eye on it in future years. I think it's worth it. Right. For sure.

For sure. All right. So then I guess that brings us to the post roast. Post roast time. You're on vacation this week, Greg. So I'm light on post-roast material. Welcome back. Oh, right.

I'm back, baby. So I've got a roast for you, whether or not you have one for me. So you wrote a post about the topic we've just been talking about, about fine hotels and resorts. And you tried to sort of start a directory of hotels, which I think is a great resource. Hotels around the world that

are fine hotels and resorts that you might be able to find for that $250 or less within a night kind of number. And in the comments, some people wrote about finding deals in 2022. And you replied to one of these comments saying, I didn't actually look at 2022 dates. I didn't explain why, but my rationale at the time, at the time I was searching was that we have to put a $200 credit to use this calendar year. Yeah. I mean, doesn't that make sense? I mean, we do, don't we? You would think so if these weren't prepaid rates, but as we already talked about earlier in the show, you can absolutely spend $200 now for a hotel booking in 2022 and get the credit. So that was kind of funny.

That was ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. In hindsight, that was dumb. So sorry about that for my momentary slip of the brain there, but yeah, absolutely. And duh, doesn't it make sense? I mean, so many of us are full of free night certificates right now and probably not looking for extra free nights, right? and probably not looking for extra free nights, right? I mean, I don't know if you're anything like me anyway, you got more free night certificates and you're probably going to be able to use this year already. So, I mean, yeah, I think it's a terrific benefit that you could use this on a prepaid

booking for next year sometime when you're not going to have a million free night certificates expiring on December 31st. So, yeah, definitely. I'm going to now look, I was thinking I got to use this this year. And that was silly of me because of course I can use the next year. All right. Thank you.

You're right. You went okay. One zero Greg. And he's going to win the post roast because I don't have a post roast for him, but I do have a double question of the week. So we're going to do two questions this week for the question of the week to make up for it.

Let me just, Oh, you have another roast. I don't have another roast. I just wanted to mention that, that I, you know, yeah, I won the post-roast, but it's almost impossible for you to win the post-roast based on the, the scoring system you came up with last week. I got to have a shout out. I got to get a two zero. You have to get a shout out because last week when it was one to one, you told me I still want. You're right. You're right. I gave you, gave you the benefit of the doubt for the time you want a penalty kicks or

something. I think. I don't know. We've got, we've got a question in the week. Okay. So we've got two questions. First question this week came in, in our frequent miler insiders group. And so Cody posted a screenshot of a chat with Chase and said, is this true regarding the Chase Southwest card? And so Cody's chat with Chase.

I'm going to guess. I haven't read this, but I'm just going to guess the answer is no because it's a chat with a representative of any company anywhere. Chances are no, but go ahead. All right. So what Cody was asking the chat representative was about the application timeline. So Cody's essential question was, Hey, I'd like to apply for a chase Southwest card. I have a card now. All right. So,

or I just closed my Southwest card. I just closed my Southwest card recently. How long do I have to wait until I can apply again for a Southwest card? And so Chase customer service said you may apply for the card at any time. However, you may only get the new account bonus once the account has been closed for 12 months. So Cody's wondering, is this true that you can only get the bonus again on a chase card after 12 months have passed since you closed the card? No, as I said before, no, it's not true. I'm surprised by that number

because I don't even know where that one came from. I expected them to say 24 months or 48 months, which some cards have a rule about. It has to be that long since you got a bonus on the card. So I would have expected them to pull out one of those numbers, but no, 12 months comes from, right? They're just making it up, totally making it up, completely making it up. And that's why I highlighted this particular question because my goodness, I wonder how many people ask a question like that and get a totally made up

fictional answer that has nothing to do with anything and believe it because it's the bank telling him that, right? Right. Oh, it just happens all the time. It was like, is this true? And I was like, no, no, it's not. And we get that all the time where people write to us and say, you're wrong. And I know because I called, you know, And I spoke to the executive supervisor of the, you know, the executive department and the customer service placation, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we get that all the time, don't we? Right. So I kind of like this twist on question of the week for, you know, from now on, let's answer the question before we know what it is. Before we even know what it is. So what is the rule? So, I mean, people want to know if you close a card like that, we don't know, right?

We don't know exactly. We don't know exactly. What we know is some more informed chase reps have told people you have to wait till after the next statement closes after you cancel. But we know of reports, experiences where people have closed a card and a few days later have been able to open it. So it's unclear how quickly you can do it. I always tell people best rule of thumb is wait two or three weeks. I'd wait at least a week. I wouldn't probably push it sooner than that because, you know, maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. If you wait at least a week, probably you'll be okay. Uh, but, but the next

day or day after that probably is not going to work yet. So, uh, but certainly not, not any kind of 12 months. I don't know where they were coming up with that. It's got to be 24 months since you last earned the bonus on the card. And the key with chase is 24 months since you last earned the bonus, not since you last opened the card. If you have in your records, when you open the card, you can just throw that date away because it doesn't matter. All that matters is the date that you got the bonus. So if you're not sure when you did count three months from when you opened it and figure you must have probably gotten the bonus somewhere around then if you can't find it in your records, because you'll need to wait at least that long before you can apply.

But then, yeah, you can cancel and reapply within a week or two. Okay, so that was question number one. Question number two. Oh, we've got a double header today. Double header, that's what I told you. We've got two questions because I didn't do it. I wasn't paying attention.

Okay, we have two questions. We wrote a post about HBO Max because very briefly for a night, shopping portals were offering 73.4% back on HBO Max, which is ridiculous because an annual subscription starts at $99.99 and there was an Amex offer for $25 back on $99.99 or more. So once you got the 73.4% back plus the Amex offer, it was basically free to pick up HBO Max for a year. Wait, that's the ridiculous part, not the 73.4 number? Well, the combination. Well, yeah, 73.4, right? Right. No kidding. Like who came up with that idea, right? Well, I mean, I have a guess as to where it came from,

but that's neither here nor there. What matters is it showed up for like probably 12 hours at 73.4%. People clicked through and then the transaction initially didn't track. And so went days and days without tracking. Now, eventually people who bought through TopCash back and filed a missing cash back report have now seen that 73.4% pending. I bought the $150 subscription and got my $110 pending in cash back plus my 25 bucks from Amex. So it'll cost me a net 15 bucks for a year for the ad free, which is fantastic. It's amazing deal. So, so yeah, so, so we wrote about that and when we wrote about it in the comments, a couple of people mentioned the top cash back wasn't the only one. There was also this site called max rebates that was offering the same

73.4% cash back. And now I think this was likely in hindsight, a mistake. I think they meant to offer $11 back on the $15 subscription, which would be 73.4%. Okay. I think they really meant to do that because at some point they changed it to $11 back and then took it away altogether. So I think there was a mistake and there's, so, okay, I'll come back to that in a a second so Anita and our frequent miler insiders posted she was upset because she bought through max rebates and filed a missing cash back plane and max rebates said well you need a receipt number from HBO and she's like what do you mean a receipt number I mean I subscribed they didn't give you a receipt number there was no order number for this. Right. And so they wrote back and said, well, since HBO didn't give you an order number, we can't submit an

inquiry. So sorry, no cash back for you, essentially, which top cash back took a very different approach on that and looked right into it and got the amounts pending, whereas Max Rebates just was like, sorry, no money for you because we don't have an order number to follow up with. And in the comments on that post within Frequent Miler Insiders, someone said, mental note, don't use Max Rebates. I'd never heard of them before. Were people using them before this HBO Max offer? And that question led me to this week's second question of the week, Greg. How do you determine which shopping portals to go through? I mean, if you saw a deal like this at 73.4% back, would you pick TopCash back?

Would you go with some other portal? Because, hey, maybe nobody else is going there. So maybe it's got a better chance to go through. How do you pick which portals? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean, I don't think there's an easy answer for someone who's new to this. But, you know, for me, I always will opt for the portals that I'm familiar with, that I know have a track record of paying out. And Top Cash Back is certainly one of them. Rakuten is another one. Mr. Rebates is another one. I've never heard of, let's say max rebates, but I don't know, might be a little bit better of a payout than one of my go-to ones. And I'll still go to one of my go-to ones because there's more to it than just will they pay out.

The other issue is a lot of these portals have a minimum payout amount. So let's say you've accumulated $18 in cash back from a portal. Then you go and you want to get your cash back. It might say once you earn $25, then you can cash out. And so by concentrating your portal rewards within a single or a few portals, you have a better chance of being able to, you know, use them successfully in that way. But yeah. Do you have a different answer? No, I stick with the known knowns, you know, and that's, and how did they become known knowns? Because I had experience with using them. And so maybe max rebates is okay.

Most of the time I have no idea. But, but my, my two thoughts on this are a, I stick with the known knowns, the portals that I've used lots of times and, and top cash back. For instance, the one or two times I've had something that didn't track eventually made good on it. And now it took a while, but eventually they made good on it. And so portals where I've had that experience with, I'm likely to use them again.

Now I'm sure that there are at least eight listeners screaming at their device right now saying, top cash back, didn't pay me on blah, blah, blah. I know, it's just like Greg's account getting shut down with Capital One. There is a negative story about every single shopping portal out there. So I don't usually sign off on a portal altogether

based on one or two negative comments. However, what I'm going to say here is when there is something like this, 73.4%, where I'm like, wow, that's amazing. And I don't know if that was a mistake or not. I'm going to stick with a portal that I know has paid out in the past in this kind of situation. I'm not going to go with an unknown. So in this case, I definitely wouldn't have gone with a portal that I haven't used before. That's right. But so if you run into that situation, then you want to stick with the known knowns. But that's not to say I don't try new portals from time to time from time to time

I do. But the ones I usually stick with are the same as Greg's plus, in addition to the ones you mentioned, be frugal and shop at home have always been good for me in the past. So those are the other two that I've mostly used, but you're totally right. It's worth consolidating and just using two or three maybe rather than trying to use all of them. So, all right, hopefully that answers that question anyway. And so maybe people were using it, Charles, I don't know, but I wasn't, and I'm not gonna risk a huge payout like that

on a portal I don't know of. All right. No, exactly. If you enjoyed what you've been listening to today and you want to read more about, well, you go ahead. I'm glad to hear that, Greg. And I hope you're not the only one. So the rest of you out there, if you'd like to get on our email list, all you got to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, wherever you're listening to this, like it, give us a thumbs up,

or leave us a comment, subscribe, turn on notifications, please. It helps out the channel. So please make sure you do that. And you know, even if you're not watching this on YouTube, like Greg said, head over there, subscribe anyway. Why not? It's not going to hurt you. It takes two seconds. It's free and easy and it helps out the channel. So thank you guys very much for all of those things. And we will see you again next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.