Frequent Miler on the Air - Saving a languishing Marriott Travel Package cert, a first class booking mistake, and more

Episode Date: February 1, 2020

This week, Greg and Nick discuss: -What to do with a Marriott Travel Package certificate that is nearing expiration. -A great first class deal, the mistake Greg made in the booking process, and more regarding that new JAL first class route. -This week's juicy main topic: our unfiltered thoughts on Juicy Miles.

Hey, Nick, how's it going? Going great. How are you today? Doing well. Doing well. You know, I was thinking that maybe starting by saying welcome to Frequent Miler on the air wasn't really necessary because I'm thinking that most people know exactly what they're listening to or watching. Don't you think? I mean, I guess most people do i

you know i hope that a few new people find us now and then too so i guess it's you know good for them but i guess if you've chosen to click on it you probably know what it's called that's that's what i'm thinking exactly so so we shouldn't waste all kinds of time saying welcome to frequent miler on the air with and Nick. I mean, unless somebody is playing it on a boom box somewhere, do they even make those anymore? I'm not really sure. I don't know.

That dates me. I think, I think what they make now is that those portable Bluetooth players, right? Right. Right. I guess that's what it is. Yeah.

Nobody, nobody plays those out loud anymore though. So I guess, yeah, the only people listening are the people who choose to listen. So thank you. Thank you for choosing to listen. we won't insult your intelligence by reminding you what you're listening to exactly so we do have a juicy episode today as you know

we'll we'll explain that what he did there you'll see what he did right yeah but but but we're going to start with reader feedback. And I was looking at Apple Podcasts, and we consistently get really good reviews on there. Nice. Anyway, but we don't often get written reviews, but we have a new written review. So I was excited to see that. So I'm going to read it. Very good. I look forward to it. This is from Amazon Frequent Flyer. Amazon Frequent Flyer.

Amazon Frequent Flyer. Can we call you AFF? AFF. Why not? AFF says. AFF. Go ahead. What do you have to say aff says the most fun of my week reminds me of the tom and ray car talk show the click and clack brothers the click and clack brothers clicking clack brothers not only do you have fun listening to the two of them go back and forth, but I always learn something that I can immediately use. Nice. Nice. I'm glad to hear that. I have

no idea who the click and clack brothers are. I guess I missed that show. So now I'm going to have to look that up because I'm curious. I think from the tone of it, it sounds like it's a compliment. So I'm going to say thank you. That's glad you're enjoying i'm glad you're enjoying it it's a huge it's a huge huge compliment uh car talk you haven't listened to car talk i haven't listened to car talk am i making a big mistake i should be listening to car talk car talk is it's it's hilarious i don't think they're making new ones anymore but it's on uh public radio and they the the idea of the show is people call in with car problems uh and the two guys nicknamed click and clack um they they sort of solve the problem by asking or they figure out what's wrong with your car basically that's that's the uh you know right the summary of the picture of the show but

but the main thing is that these two guys are hilarious and so nice if someone actually thinks that we're anything like them i'll definitely take that i thought that was awesome um i'm a little worried about aff um if this is the most fun of your week. Well, you know, we'll work on suggesting some places you can go visit with your miles and points so that there's some other fun stuff. But no, I'm glad you're having fun. We're having fun. We have a good time.

This is the most fun you have all week, right, Greg? Well, obviously. But no, it is a ton of fun and and uh you know um so i'm glad i'm glad some listeners and and watchers have fun too yeah of course of course i mean that's the whole idea that's the point behind doing this kind of thing so people can enjoy it so i'm glad to hear you're enjoying it i'm sure you're mostly enjoying it because of greg's really poor predictions thus far but that's fine that's okay he likes that too he's glad that you're enjoying if my terrible predictions make for some some good listening that's great right and we already established the fact that if the rest of his predictions are wrong this year it's good for

all of us it's good not just from a comedic perspective right Right, right. So, speaking of having fun, I've been dealing with a Marriott travel package that's going to expire in July and don't know what the heck to do with it. What should I do? That's a very good question as to what you should do. And of course, it's a relevant question to ask because before this week, I think most of us probably assumed that you had to find a way to use it. Because if you didn't use it, everyone has been told that they'd only get 5 or 10,000 points back from the new travel packages. So, I'm sure that Greg has one of the old travel packages that got converted. So, for people out there who bought a travel package before,

oh, what was it? August 16th, 2018. Yeah, 17th, something like that, yeah. Something like that. So you bought it before August 2018, you had an old travel package. And if you don't know what that is, then this doesn't really apply to you.

But if you have one of those old travel packages, then at some point that got converted over to a new travel package. Now of those old travel packages, then at some point that got converted over to a new travel package. Now, the old travel packages, you could refund and get a decent chunk of points back. The new travel packages, you can't. So people have been told that they'd get maybe 5000 points back. But we found out this week, courtesy of Dan Steele's Dan, after excuse me, after being quite persistent about it, found that you can, in fact, convert that new travel package back to an old travel package and then refund it. Now, when I say

refund it, you're not going to get all the points back. You'll get 45,000 points plus the difference between your, the bottom tier of travel packages and the top tier of travel packages. So, somewhere between 45,000 and 315,000 points, depending on which category it is, which is not as exciting as it sounds. If you don't have one of these travel packages, you know, you spend a lot of points on it. So, it's not 315,000 points. It's not as much as it sounds like in the overall scheme of things, but it's better than not using it. Right. So sure. Sure. But so, so, but I can't, I can't stand the thought of getting that little value out of it, even though, even though, you know, I know we, all of us who got the travel packages back when we did, we did it because it was a great deal for the airline miles, which was a component of it. I guess it's still a component.

It's just today it's a bad deal for most people in most situations. But back then it was a component of it. I guess it's still a component. It's just today it's a bad deal for most people in most situations. But back then it was a great deal for getting airline miles. And if you had refunded the packages two years ago, you would have patted yourself on the back saying, you know what, I get a great deal for miles. But now that it's been two years, you're so far removed from that that you're like, okay, I know I got the miles, but now I don't want to lose the value of the hotel stay, right? Exactly. So I have a new Category 6 seven-night stay certificate. Category 6 is what?

Standard 50,000 points, I think? 50,000. Yep, that's right. And so, you know, seven nights of 50,000 points. Now, of course, there's the fifth night free so it's you know it's worth theoretically up to uh 300 000 points i wouldn't get nearly that much back i don't think no i can't remember exactly what i can't remember yeah um and it's worth even more than that if the hotel is in peak season now right because now it works during peak yeah peak as well yeah like a lot um

is 60 000 i think it's 50 i think um so so that's so that's why it's super valuable my problem is my wife and i have have tons of travel planned up until this thing expires, but none of it, it, you know, works for, for a seven night stay basically, or even a five night stay if I'm willing to throw away a couple nights.

So, um, well, you know, actually here's, here's the brilliant solution. This is what you do. Yeah.

You give it away to the employee of the year. Like it's just an end of year bonus yeah but steven would spend it on a category one and that would be even worse than you know getting a refund for a few points sick burn sick burn well done yes i mean your options at this point are to to you know pretend that you have a job where you could work from anywhere and go find yourself a nice category six somewhere where you could spend a week and you know you could work and enjoy it i think you could probably manage that because you're in a unique spot like that for most people though i guess what they're looking at is maybe booking it for someone else in their family which is a little bit of a risk because you'd have to put them down as an additional guest and hope that the hotel is cool with that and all the rest of that.

So it's not quite as smooth as it sounds, although it might work out fine. That's for sure. It usually works to do that. It usually works, yeah. Yeah. And I think you're going to find that to work in most of the United States for sure. And then hopefully even a lot of international places. So I think I have found a nice hotel. I found a Ritz Carlton in Florida that we can sort of squeeze in seven nights maybe.

But it's kind of awkward. But I booked it. I haven't yet applied the certificate. But that's not what you're hoping for. You're not hoping to squeeze that in. So I have two ideas. Well, I have two ideas that are both long shots, I think. I don't think it's going to work and I'll tell you why, but go ahead. Go ahead. So idea one is simply to attach my certificate to a reservation and then call the next day and say, Oh, I need to cancel that reservation. Can you, you know, uh, give me back the, the, the stay certificate and hope would be that that would reset the clock that I would have another 12 months.

Do you think that would work? No. No, I don't think it'll work. I mean, do you have a reason? Do you have a reason to think it won't work? Well, I do. And now right now, I'm second guessing myself on this. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, it's fun to be negative about Marriott and all and say that you're going to get bond void. And that's certainly a possibility. But, uh, you know,

the reason why I don't think that'll work is right. And now that I say it out loud, I'm second guessing myself. I'm going to go back and check this post now, but similar kind of thing happened to me in the sense that I used a one night 50 K cert from my Ritz card last year and I canceled the day. And then like months later I call, well call well i i went looking for the certificate and i didn't have it and i called and the short version of the long story is that even though i

canceled the stay that was associated with that certificate the certificate went into like marriott limbo somewhere like where it was still attached to the canceled reservation yeah yeah no i remember your post i don't remember the final outcome though well the final outcome was that they were able to unattach it from the dead you know ghost stay so to speak which they knew and it kept the same uh expiration date that's what i thought although yeah as soon as i started talking i said to myself you know i better check that post to make sure that i'm right and it kept the same expiration because i'm sure i would have covered that in there yeah part of me that's second guessing it now but i i'm fairly sure and i'm gonna i'm gonna find it here but uh i'm fairly

sure anyway that it kept the same uh all right all right well all right now let me lay on you my second idea all right second idea second idea is i find and i i did find one i mean there's probably a lot of these but i find a hotel that's scheduled to open like next month you know very soon right but it's not open yet and i book it for the very beginning of their their opening you know so have the seven nights as soon as they're bookable trusting that what will happen is they're going to send a, you know, an email or something saying they're not quite ready. And at that point I should have some leverage with Marriott to have something good happen. Right. Yeah yeah to get it extended again not impossible and

i should add here that if you read the post we linked to so we wrote about this whole getting a refund for marriott travel packages this week so you'll find that in the week in review post from this week um so if you're not listening to this now it's the one that's publishing february 1st uh so dan at dan's deals had a bit of a fiasco with his where the agent essentially accidentally canceled his stay and so it really wasn't even his fault that he couldn't use the certificate anymore um but but marriott ended up telling him that they'd extend it for another year so so it's not far-fetched to think that that might work where, okay, so the hotel mess is up and whatnot. And even if the first agent tells you, no, they can't extend it, it's certainly not inconceivable that you could reach out to

someone else at Marriott and eventually get somebody who will extend it for a year. Right. Or the best would be if an agent would say, well, I can't figure out how to do that. I'll just give you the points and use the points to book your future stay and uh you know then then it's all good but i had that happen once with ihg with with a certificate but yeah i've had that happen yeah week-long certificate i think that that's unlikely to work yeah yeah anyway i'll probably just stay at the property i found i mean that might not be a bad bad solution i i think that that's unlikely to work. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I'll probably just stay at the property I found. I mean, that might not be a bad, bad solution. I think that the possibility...

How about you? Go ahead. Do you have any that are about to expire? No, no, no. I used mine, so no. We're set with those. And I will say, though, that for anybody who is not aware, while we're talking about this whole getting your certificates extended, know that Marriott does generally, as a courtesy, extend your certificates for another year, for at least one year beyond their expiration, just by calling.

And they're going to extend it for a year from the day that you call. So now I'm not even talking about the seven-night cert annual free night credit card starts. If it's about to expire, call before it expires, then they'll extend it for a year and wait as long as you can, because that'll give you as much time as possible. I just called and extended one just recently here that was the day before it was set to expire. I called and I got another full year essentially and got the next certificate from that card. So essentially, it's back together. Which as an aside, if I remember right, Hyatt will give you points back if your cert expires and you call, right?

I think if you call before it expires, they'll say there's nothing we can do. And so, that one, that, I don't like that. I don't like that policy. Yeah, that seems very risky, right? Yeah, exactly. You have to wait till it's too late and then hope they'll, you know, they'll do this informal point kickback. But I do like getting points instead of extended. I think that's a nice option for those certs. Those are the credit card certs I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. Those other credit cards. Yeah. So, obviously, Marriott can do that. And even though the policy is for them to only extend it one time and not two. Right. I think actually your strategy of attaching it to a hotel that's set to open at some point

and that you are pretty confident isn't going to make the opening date, that might be a winning strategy. I mean, I guess it depends. If you can make your seven nights a day work, I guess that's good. You can make your seven nights a day work. But I think that the new opening might be more likely to to work out for you do you think it's worth me bribing the property inspector to have him or her delay it's running a week or two i don't even i don't even think you need to bribe

they're like no i don't need any extra money we're gonna be here a while i'm making making overtime for a while here thanks but we're okay uh yeah so so i i i did check by the way to see if my certificate had gotten extended for another year but i didn't write about it i didn't note that so i would assume that if if i had seen that it did get extended, my canceled one, that I would have obviously noted that in the post. So I don't think that booking and then canceling is going to automatically. I won't bother with that one then. So, hey, you might not have noticed, but last week for Frequent Miler on the air, I wasn't actually here it was steven oh that who was something different yeah so you know i just slightly different just in case you didn't notice i thought i thought i should let you know um no but uh know, we soldiered on in your absence. So where were you? What were you up to?

I was in Columbia in, in Bogota. Oh, very nice. And I went, um, I went with my mom. This was the first time my mom and I have traveled together. Um, since I was a kid, I guess I, I mean, probably, I mean, even then I think usually my sister was along. So, so it was a nice thing. She had done a cruise with my sister last summer. So we were looking for something fun to do and this worked out and it was a ton of fun. And, you know, I wrote about the hotel we stayed in, the Marriott i saw an autograph collection it looked it looked kind of cool i mean the rooms i think you said you didn't get an upgrade to a super large room but your corner room there uh i don't know the view look now i loved it i loved the room yeah i loved everything about the hotel actually that the um desk agents were so so so, I don't know, nice.

And like they would recognize you each time you come by. And everything was just really, really well done there. Let me ask you something. Did you find that to be the case in other places you were at in Columbia? Did the hospitality stand out beyond what you got elsewhere when you were in Colombia? Or did you find hospitality in general to be on a higher level than what you may have expected, I guess? Well, you know, I mean, the only other hospitality we really experienced was restaurants i guess and and uber drivers and i could say with assurance that

the uber drivers did not have anything close to the level of hospitality at the hotel so the hotel stood out then we did we did at least three uber and not one Uber driver even attempted to say hello. Oh, wow. I mean, this started before they knew we didn't speak Spanish. So I don't think it was a, you know, oh, I don't speak English, so I can't talk to them type of thing. But the worst was the one guy who had his headphones in the whole time and was watching videos while he drove down the road. It was absolutely terrifying. I don't know, no idea why that's a thing in Columbia. I don't know.

I've experienced that kind of thing a couple of times in different places, but the driving, I feel like, uh, I haven't spent as much time in South America as some folks, but I did spend about nine months living in Quito and Ecuador. And then I traveled a bit across Colombia and, uh, and in Peru and, and taxi drivers were adventurous in many of the places I was in in that region. So I could see that being a potential issue. I asked though, because I really, I spent a few weeks traveling through Colombia by bus over land. So I thought a good chunk of the country, I didn't get to Bogota, mostly because I only had a couple of weeks. And a lot of the travelers that I had talked to that Bogota mostly because I only had a couple of weeks and a

lot of the travelers that I had talked to that had been there and been in Quito told me that it was similar in many ways to Quito. And so I should try and see some of these other places because I had spent so much time in Quito. And the view, in fact, that you shared was really reminiscent of the view from my apartment in Quito where we had this great view of these volcanoes. It was just beautiful. So it reminded me of that. As soon as I saw it, I was like, ah,

that reminds me of where I lived. Um, but anyway, my experience in Columbia was that people were incredibly warm and welcoming. Maybe the most of, of any of the places that I've been so far, I felt like people were kind of over the top welcoming and in many respects.

So I was not surprised to hear about the warm hospitality. Yeah. You know, a friend told me that, that in, in her experience, she'll be at a restaurant or bar or something, and people will just come talk and want to practice their English.

We didn't have that happen at all. I mean, there wasn't anything cold or distant about people either, except for the Uber drivers. But no, I don't know if it was just the circumstance of where we happen to be or maybe when there's two people together, others are less likely to. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I always remember it stood out to me because we went into a store somewhere and it was in a smaller city. I want to say it was in like Papillon or

I can't remember. Maybe it was even in Cali or something. We went to a store and my wife was looking for something. I feel like it was like a cosmetic type product or something. I can't remember exactly, but we were looking for it and couldn't find it. And a worker asked if we needed help. Now we spoke moderately decent Spanish at the time. So we said no and explained what we were looking for. And she said, oh, it's at the other store kind of a thing. And we're like the other store. And she's like, yeah, down the street.

And we obviously didn't know. And she said, oh, you don't know where it is. And we said no. And she said, oh, come on, I'll take you there. And so like this worker from the store walked us out the door and down the block and into the other store to show us where on the shelf to find whatever it was we were looking for. And I thought it was like over the top. So we, and we encountered a few things like that. So I was just curious, but again, I didn't spend any time in Bogota. So I, I didn't have any experience there. How about food? Did you eat

anything interesting while you were there? I know you tend to like to do your food tours and stuff. We did. And we did do, uh, so my mom planned everything. And so she had booked us a private food tour and Young Woman took us around to a lot of the places that locals go. And we specifically asked for that of, you know, we don't want to go to the tourist places we want to go where, you know, where the locals go. And so went to a lot of really good places. I can't remember the names of half the food we ate, but one of the more fun, different things is she took us to a hot chocolate shop where this is like apparently a very standard afternoon snack type of thing that they do there where you order the hot chocolate and it comes with bread and cheese and you

you break up the cheese and you just drop it into the hot chocolate and to let it soften in there. And while you're waiting for that to soften, you dip the bread in and eat the bread, drink the hot chocolate, use a spoon to scoop up the cheese and eat it like that. You know, it was pretty good. Yeah. It was nice. It's like a strange combo, right? It's definitely a strange combo. You know, I wouldn't say I loved it, but it was very satisfying.

Like it really, you know, got rid of any hunger I felt and had me good to go for a long time after that so it's a good i don't know if nutritious is the right word for it but a little good filling snack i guess yeah so that that was pretty neat we i don't know we saw we saw a lot of things but um i don't you know i'll probably write up some of this stuff and and uh we'll get to that later yeah okay all right fair enough because i really want to talk about something a little more juicy your post today well no no i'm not there but this will lead this will lead into it all right you posted this morning about uh jl's first class awards being wide open between Tokyo and Sydney, Australia.

Right. Right. And that's, and by this morning, he means Friday, whenever you're listening to this. Yeah. Cause I don't know if it'll still be a thing by the time,

uh, probably not listening, but hopefully it will be. But yeah. So on Friday we, we, we've posted that there are wide open Japan Airlines first class awards between Sydney, Australia and Tokyo, Japan for 60,000 American Airlines miles. Right, right.

So and Japan Airlines is considered one of the better airlines for experiencing first class, right? I mean, I've never done it. Have you flown them? I haven't flown Japan Airlines in first class, right? I mean, I've never done it. Have you flown them? I haven't flown Japan Airlines in first class. I've only flown their regional business class, which was nice. And the service was fantastic. And I can't imagine what it's like first class international on a 10 hour flight. Everybody says that it's terrific. I mean, they're, you're, I think you're about to say one of the best first classes in the world. And I think that most people do hold them in that kind of regard.

Of course, as I was starting to think about that sentence, I was thinking to myself, they're one of the few airlines that's still flying a first class cabin, right? I mean, there's a limited number of airlines that do, and they've certainly always been known for doing it well. I feel like I consistently, I feel like, you know, you hear about Cathay Pacific crews being hit or miss, sometimes the service being amazing. I had some great experiences with them last year, but then I've also read negative experiences. I don't think I've ever read someone who said they flew that their first class cabin, the physical aspects of the cabin are the best in the world. But service, the food, the drinks, everything like that. Looks great. Sounds like they're all like the best of the best or very close to it. Right. Right.

Right. So obviously a great experience. So that's pretty exciting. I mean, it's very rare for any of the better first-class cabins to be available for two people almost at any time, let alone... Day after day for months at a time, yeah. Right, right. So, did you book anything? I didn't because I don't have any plans to travel to that part of the world like it's this starts in september they're starting this this aircraft

that has the first class cabin september 1st 2020 and so right now with american airlines that means you can only book between september and like december or something probably, right? Yeah. Yeah. So here's the interesting thing. So I wanted to, we do want to go to Australia. So I jumped on there to try to book for early January. And that's when I saw exactly that, that American Airlines doesn't let you book into January yet. Maybe they will tomorrow when it turns February. I'm not sure if they roll it over a month at a time or a set number of days in advance. But anyway, I couldn't book it. I was worried about the award space going away. I could, you know, I could see the award space from ba.com I went to first. And it was pretty wide open.

I mean, it wasn't like right at the holidays. It seemed to dry up, but, but a few days later it was, it was right back up. Yeah. Do you remember how many obvious that is? I don't know. I think it was just over a hundred, 103,000, something like that. Oh no.

Well, I might be thinking of a different search I did. I'm not sure. So it's certainly more obvious anyway than what American airlines is charging at the 60. Um, but, but you can't book it in January with American,

but of course it's a one world partner. Japan Airlines being a one world partner means that you could use British Airways obvious because that's a one world airline or any other one world airline. So then it's a matter of figuring out, well, who lets you book in January, right? Because British Airways does. Are they the only ones? I imagine they're not. So I jumped on Cathay Pacific's website and said, could I book it from there? And I did the search and I saw that they wanted 87,000 miles for that flight. I already had enough miles transferred in because I had booked a bunch of waitlisted awards for another trip we're doing. And that required me moving miles in so I could waitlist.

But they don't take the miles out of your account when you waitlist. You just have to have them there in the first place. So anyway, so I booked it from Tokyo to Sydney. I figured I have to jump on this now and then worry about the connection to Tokyo later. Now, it's worth mentioning before Greg continues on that, don't forget where you're going with that, that for anybody listening to this, you can't book one award using American miles from the United States to Australia via Japan because you can't transit a third region. So if you wanted to use American Airlines miles and go to Australia, this is only going to get you between Tokyo and Australia. You'll still have to book the, you know, wherever in the United States to Tokyo separately because they won't allow that on one ticket with American miles.

Right. And the other thing is that Alaska miles would be fantastic for this, but Alaska weirdly, and Alaska is partners with them, but with Japan Airlines, but Alaska has specific, um, you know, routes that they have, uh, that they sort of accept for each partner that their award charts have, have routes that they, that they price out. And if, if that route is not priced out in the award chart, you just can't book it through Alaska Mouth. So I didn't have that as an option either. But I was pretty excited about the idea. podcast where with Cathay, if you have a mixed cabin award, so you fly like half in first, half in business, and then what it does is it averages the award cost. And in some cases,

that can mean you could actually fly further for fewer miles. So my initial thought when I booked this was, well, let me just secure the booking. And then later I'll go back and tag things on in order to actually make it cheaper and also to get really where I want to go. Um, right before I do want to just say one thing right before I booked it, I looked into whether I could fly onward to, um, New Zealand, like in business class or even economy. Um, but I couldn't get the,'t get the website to price that. So I gave up on that idea. But more important to me was being able to get from the US to Australia. So in my mind, I was like, oh, this will be great. If I could get a business class flight to Tokyo than first class all the way, it should be cheaper than that 87K. Except what I forgot was, or I didn't realize until after the fact, is that the distance from Tokyo to Sydney

is not long enough to get to the longest distance, most expensive zone yeah award zone that they have on their award chart so adding adding a flight from the u.s actually does make it more expensive i also ended up completely striking out and finding any um well any that worked for me where business class was available to Tokyo right before first class was available to Sydney. None of those combinations would work for me. Weirdly, I found more first class available to even to Tokyo from the U S then I found business class. Hmm. I don't know what's going on there. Surprising, huh?

Yeah. Very, very surprising. Um, the other surprising thing is that 87 K number that I was charged for the Tokyo to Sydney route does not show up on any award charts it should be based on the distance flown it should be quite a bit more than that it should be uh at least a hundred thousand but because it's a partner of cathay's it should be like 105 000 if i know what i'm doing so i don't know where that came from um but but when you look that doesn't fit anywhere 87 just comes out of the blue i have no idea and i've seen that in some other searches too where partner awards seem

to be just priced at some magical numbers i i had thought someone i think it was Richard Kerr, had written that all of the partner awards were the same as the Cathay award prices plus about 5K. Right, I remember that too. I am not seeing that result at all. It varies. And sometimes the partners are cheaper than Cathay. And then this is an example where it would be. Yeah. cafe and then this this is an example where it would be yeah um so uh anyway i did find an award that works for me uh going from the the first one i found was going from jfk first class to tokyo

and then first class to sydney that sounds awesome right right that's so terrific that's a lot of first time flying it's a lot yeah um so it priced out online though at 135k 135k which is a lot more than 87k but when i thought about it the difference in price right i say that's like about a 47K difference, I think. Yeah. You know, I would be hard pressed to get to Tokyo even in business class at that price. So I thought, all right, that's a good deal, you know, to. And so I called. Well, yeah, because I tried to make a change online. It wouldn't let me change it online, the booking I already made. So I called you. Because you hopped right on that. You booked the Tokyo to Sydney right away.

Yeah, that's already booked and locked in. It turned out that may have been a mistake because if I hadn't had that already locked in, I could have just booked the JFK all the way through once I found that and everything would be good. Instead, what happened was I called Cathay and I was on hold forever. And I tried a couple of different numbers. Finally, I was just like, I just need to sit here and do other work until they answer. And that's eventually they did. And by then the flight JFK to Tokyo, that segment was no longer available. So, um, luckily, so I asked the, the agent, can you find anything from any, anywhere in the u.s and so she started with checking la uh and she actually found one pretty quickly that worked from la so it's not as ideal for me um going from la but i i was just like let me jump on this while it's there and and it's good

i can position la. Not a problem. But, you know, JFK would have been more convenient. But still, I'll take it. All right. So, you were able to lock in the first class from Los Angeles. So, I have it. Locked in. Two people. And at a time we really want to go in early January.

People first class from anywhere in the United States to Tokyo is already. I mean, that's tough to find, right? seats is tough no exactly exactly so yeah no i'm pretty excited about that now during all that stuff i i pulled up uh juicy miles at one point to see what it was saying about award availability and it didn't show me anything so that's actually why i switched to ba as british airways as my way of checking for the word availability for uh japan airlines so it was showing you nothing for january of next year which is farther out than the American Airlines calendar goes. So it's coming up with nothing just like American would come up with nothing. No.

No. OK. Not exactly. All right. So before this podcast, I went to look at what's really going on. I found a date in January that still had first class flights available. And I checked Juicy Miles to see between Tokyo and Sydney what it would show. And it didn't show Japan Airlines.

I'm sorry. It didn't show Cathay Miles as a way to book the flight, but it did find the flight, and it showed me I could book it with British Airways miles. All right. So maybe they just don't know about the Cathay partnership or something like that. I will say it was amazingly accurate.

It knew exactly how many British Airways miles and it got the taxes exactly right. Wow. You know, I haven't always noticed that to be the case. That's right. No, no. Right. So that's why I'm mentioning it. That's notable.

All right. Now it's going to get weirder though. Okay. All right. So remember, Tokyo to Sydney. notable yeah um all right now it's gonna get weirder though okay so all right so remember tokyo to sydney it was it knew about the flight and it knew you could book it with british airways miles right those are the tags is right didn't seem to know about cafe okay okay now it gets weird now i looked for a la to tokyo flight that was available and pulled it up in Juicy Miles. It did find it bookable with Cathay, but not with British Airways.

That's weird. Yeah. And I'm sure that you could see it on the british airways site then did you check yeah yeah yeah i could see it on british airways site and i could see it on cafe's website both of those flights i could right but it wasn't showing so what the heck is going on so what have you ever seen any weirdness like this yeah i have i ran into that with japan airlines and british airways specifically in fact where the flights were available. They were on BritishAirways.com. They weren't showing up in Juicy Miles. That's why, you know, we've talked a lot about Juicy Miles. And I've got some positive things to say about Juicy Miles is the best tool of its kind that exists. And that's totally right.

It kind of reminds me of the old democracy quote that always gets attributed to Churchill. I don't know if he actually said it. Something along the lines of, you know, democracy is the worst system of government ever created by man except for all the others. Right. Right. And it's kind of the same thing to me here in the sense that Juicy Miles has some imperfections where I have run into that kind of thing now and then where you get a false positive or more likely where you miss a flight that actually is available and it just for some

reason doesn't show up in the Juicy Miles tool. Now, that's not the norm by any stretch of the imagination, but it happens now and then right and and that's been my my main gripe with it um that that happens sometimes so it does and it means that you sometimes have to do some backup searches but the good thing is if you know what's going on in the game so to speak then you i'm sure immediately realize that when you saw it available with british airways miles you knew you must be able to book it with Cathay Pacific if it's really truly available and not some kind of phantom availability and the other way around. Yeah.

Right. Well, the truth is the first time, first time I pulled it up because I didn't see Cathay, uh, miles in the results. I didn't think it was there at all, but,

um, it wasn't until later i was like checking it really carefully that i noticed oapa is on there as a way to write it so um so i can't really say that i you know that i was didn't even recognize it it it was more that i knew enough to know this is a one world partner. British Airways has a pretty good award search tool, except when it comes to American Airlines flights or something. But, you know, so I knew that would be a way to check it. Right. And that's what I mean. You know, and it's interesting because there are a lot of things I love about it. Like I said, I'll talk more about that, I think, in a minute. But my frustration with Juicy Miles is that I feel like you need

at least an intermediate level to be able to make sure that you don't miss anything. Because otherwise, if you don't automatically know, okay, it's a one world airline, like you said, British Airways tool is usually accurate. So it must be available to other one world airlines. So then it becomes a question of, okay, well, does Cathay Pacific have a short booking or a shorter booking window like American? Or do they have the longer booking window? So if you don't know to even check that, then you might just assume, oh, well, it's available with British Airways, it's not going to be available with Cathay unless you're advanced enough to know that, well, maybe it is. Maybe it's just not showing up for some reason, or you already know that Cathay has a longer booking

window. And so I feel like it is mostly useful for people that have some knowledge or for people who have absolutely none in terms of award booking and would miss all of that altogether because they wouldn't know where to start and looking for it kind of a thing um and so my gripe is with the price point i think on juicy miles yeah yeah i feel like the five dollars for what is it five days ten days something like that ten dollars for five days maybe ten dollars the few days uh subscription model i i mean i think that does work for searching for a single trip perhaps i think thirty dollars a month is kind of pricey when you run into issues like that that's i mean when i look at it like 360 a year that shouldn't happen then right i mean except that obviously if it was easy to do,

somebody else would have done it already. Yeah. Well, the pricing, I mean, I think that, I think that, um,

vast majority of people should look at it as like, I'm going to use it for five days to try to try to find my, my award trip. And if they don't find their award trip in, in five days, they, they should consider if, if they, if they think they're getting value out of it, consider doing one month, one month, you know, and then I think you could convert your five days into a month. If you don't want to like spend the $10 and then $30, you know, you could just add on. I think so. Um, and then, you know, I, I feel like it, that's a good value for booking that one big trip

to Australia, to South Africa, whatever it is you're doing. Um, I think that's good value, but, but you're right. Uh, uh i i think the subscription model it doesn't make sense for most people like no it would make sense for an award booker like so much yeah yeah it really would for a living right yeah it totally would and you know it's it's kind of crazy because you would think well an award booker they know how to search everything on their own why would they pay for the tool well here's your answer because it saves you a lot of time. A ton of time. I use it a lot.

I mean, I use it a ton. I certainly feel like it's something that's worthwhile for me. And I was looking back through my search history today and I don't even know. It seems to me like the counter must have gone over the top and kept going. But I've got more than 2,000 searches in there top and kept going. But I've got like more than 2000 searches. Wow. There in my search history. So I've used it a lot and it has saved me a lot of time because I don't have to go and

search British Airways and then Cathay Pacific and then American and this and that most of the time, because for most situations, I'm not booking it like the actual just the leading edge of the booking window, at least not me in my life. So it saves me a ton of time. I don't know. How much have you used it? Have you used it a lot? Do you regularly use it? I use it a ton for just all the time.

I mean, we're very lucky that because we're affiliates with them, they've let us have free use of it. You know. Very lucky for that i mean i still yeah it's it's a good question like the question is even though i use it a ton would i if i didn't have it for free and knowing that i use a ton would i would i be willing to pay the 30 a month i don't know i i still think i would be more inclined to sign up for a month. I don't know. I still think I would be more inclined to sign up for a month at a time, you know, use it and then turn it off. And then when I have to book the next trip, but, but I don't know. Cause it, it does find things like this has happened to me several times where I use Juicy Miles and shoot, it happened for Columbia. I had searched United and American and Delta's websites, like sort of the usual suspects to see what was available.

And then I did Juicy Miles and it showed me that Avianca flights were available for awards. And United did not show me that. So I realized that just like many other airlines do, Avianca keeps some of the award availability to themselves. It's not all available to the partners as far as I can tell. So I would have never thought to pull up LifeMiles because it's much clunkier than United. And I thought I was seeing everything there was to see by looking on the United website. And same thing happened finding Cathay Awards. Same exact thing. cathay has award availability for their own flights that um their partners don't see and and i don't think i would have thought to

search through cathay's website if it wasn't for juicy miles showing me there was availability do you have any stories like that yeah yeah, yeah. I mean, just this week, I wrote a post about almost exactly that situation. Yeah, that was a great one. Yeah. Why don't you describe that real quick? Yeah. So I was looking for a possible trip to Europe. I was taking a look to see what was available.

And so I started at United.com because that's, you know, where I've often started before and searched a couple of routes. Actually, I started at United Truth Be Told because I have some vouchers to use. But at any rate, I did a little bit of searching and I said, I'll pull up Juicy Miles because that is typically my go-to for awards these days is Juicy Miles because it gives me a really good lay of the land. And one of the things I really like about Juicy Miles is that it checks so many different award programs. And the reason I like that is because sometimes you'll see, just like Greg said, you'll see like perhaps Avianca is holding back availability just for their members or like Aeroplan, for instance, has maximum permitted mileage between two cities.

And sometimes they might not see a flight as available that is available with other partners. But I know that Juicy Miles is going to search so many that I'll definitely find that and I'll see if it's available with Miles and more, if it's available with Asiana, then it's probably available with somebody else, et cetera. So it's been useful for that. So this week I pulled it up and I searched And I was interested in going anywhere in Europe. And so I looked up routes to Europe. And originally, actually, what set me on this course was Greg's post about using Virgin Atlantic miles to book Delta. So I started looking for

flights from New York to Europe on Delta. I figured, well, let's see where Delta flies in Europe. So I looked at flightconnections.com. I looked at the list of cities they fly to. And I figured, all right, I'm going to start on the left and work my way over. So Lisbon was the farthest west. So New York to Lisbon. Okay. I was figuring maybe I'll get lucky and find three seats for 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles each to fly from New York to Lisbon. And so I popped that into Juicy Miles. And when the result came back, I was surprised because it showed me that Tap Air Portugal had availability and that I could book it

with 35,000 Avianca life miles in business class, 35,000 per passenger. And there were three seats available at 35,000 miles each. I mean, 35,000 for business class Europe. Right. That's awesome it's amazing right so so i saw that and i my first thought was that must be wrong that can't they can't be right it must be a mistake because every now and then you run into these glitches with life or with uh with juicy miles like we were saying before there so i thought this has got to be a glitch and so i pulled up lifemiles.com and sure enough, it wasn't a glitch or it may have been a pricing glitch, but sure enough, it was pricing at 35,000 miles one way in business class

on lifemiles.com. And that's a great example of a situation where if I didn't have a Juicy Miles subscription, I would have gone to United and I probably would have found that flight available when I searched New York to Lisbon. I probably maybe would have seen it available for 70,000 United miles. And I would have known because I know the award charts that that means, okay, well, Aeroplan would charge 55,000 for that flight. And Avianca Life Miles charges 63,000 miles one way for business class between US one and Europe two. So I would have known, okay known okay well book the aeroplan for 55 000 because avianca is more expensive and united is more expensive aeroplan is my best bet

that's probably what i would have thought except thank goodness i got the gcl subscription and so i found it for 35 000 and and so i i didn't end up booking it we talked about it and just couldn't make uh dates work. And I ended up trying to make a decision before I wrote about it. But yeah, I just couldn't make it work out in the schedule well. But I was like, man, this is an amazing find that I never would have found if not for the fact that I was using Juicy Mile. I wasn't even looking at that point.

I was looking for Delta flights. I was just figuring that Juicy Miles has a much smoother search interface than VirginAtlantic.com. And I know that they see the availability that Virgin Atlantic sees, and they also see Air France. So even if for some reason, the Virgin Atlantic plugin is broken, so to speak, I'll see if it's available via Air France. And then I can go and fight with the clunky Virgin Atlantic website, if I want to. And something totally different came up. And that's happened to me a number of times because I, like I said, I've done over 2000 searches

and we've had Juicy Mile's capability here to use that for what, like a year, maybe? Not even a year, probably. Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe not. So, I mean, in 365 days, that's, you know, a few searches per day, every single day. And, you know, obviously I used per day, every single day. And, you know, obviously, I used it every day.

Oh, okay. Well, no, not literally. But if you look at 365 days and 2,000 searches, I mean, it's averaging quite a few. Of course, you know, do you find this that you end up doing a lot more searches partly because they differentiate business and first class you have to run separate searches if you're doing don't search for first class all that often but if you're doing okay so so for me when i'm looking for uh especially for domestic flights i often um there are especially with americans my Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. My phone thought I was talking to it.

Often, American will have their first class available for an award when they don't have economy available for an award. And so, I do like to check whether there's first class awards available. But it's very, very frustrating. Juicy Miles, I found this with going to Columbia that I might have this backwards, but I think it was Delta to see their first class cabin award availability. I had to search for business class awards in juicy miles and for American airlines, I had to search for first class. Oh, interesting. And you know, that, you know, I just, I wish it would, it just said, you know, premium cabin or something and just search for all of them instead of doing that. Cause's uh it would be very easy to miss it and and i often forget you know oh i've looked business but i haven't looked first or whatever but huh so have you noticed that with airlines other than american and delta uh well i think i mean the problem is it it it's sort of a domestic configuration problem where there's confusion between what first and business is.

And you see, I'm not usually willing to burn the miles on flying in business class domestically. So that's probably why. If I'm searching domestic awards, it's almost always economy class awards. So I'm not willing to pony up for the the business or first class domestically usually uh occasionally perhaps but not usually um but but you know it it's it's a good point that you you do have to kind of take that into account and also of course obviously there's going to be mixed cabin awards although one of the things i do enjoy about juicy miles is on the mixed cabin awards it shows you the percentage that's flown in

business or first versus yeah the lower cabin and that's nice I have actually found that to be inaccurate a couple of times most of the time oh really yeah it was odd it was the oddest thing from Auckland to Dubai to places in the United States it was like way off on the percentage it was showing me some mixed cabin stuff that had like something really short, like Auckland to, um, Bali and in business class and the rest of it was an economy. And for some reason it was saying 95% business. It was some weirdness like that. It was just with those, those flights from Auckland, oddly enough. But at any rate, most of the time it's accurate in terms of how much you're going to fly in business versus how much you're going to fly in another cabin. So that's useful, A,

because you can look at it and without having to look at the individual segments now, okay, there's not enough premium capital in that. I'm not even going to bother looking at what that routing is. You can know that right away. And also, if you happen to know one of these programs like Cathay Pacific or Avianca that averages out the price of awards, then it gives you an idea as to how much those crazy pricings might be. Although one of the things that I enjoy about Juicy Miles, and I got to give credit where credit is due, there are things that I've mentioned I wasn't happy with. But one of the things that I am happy with is I'm really surprised at how often it picks up these like pricing oddities accurate right no me too i can't believe it it knows like how does it know these things no i don't i don't know because you would

think that however this is built i mean i don't know i don't know what the back end of this looks like but i would have imagined that they would have taken like the most reliable search engine like united.com and you know scraped results from there and then just had the system do the math for how many miles that should cost if you booked it via miles and more or avianca or whatever else but clearly their system knew that avianca was charging 35 000 for that business class flight and and when you look up with avianca as an example of course if you know that they that they price your award based on the percentage you fly in business or the percentage you fly in first class of your overall award. So, in other words, if you put together a mixed cabin award that's part in first, part in business, or part in business and part in economy, then it prices out differently than the award chart and Juicy Miles gets it right every time. Yeah. So, it has to be getting the data

right from the airline programs it clearly does yeah for at least some of them from a number of i saw the same thing with you know i was talking about how cafe has sort of random award prices for partners but it looked to me even though juicy must didn't always find the awards but when it did that it was pricing them correctly and so there's just no way that they are calculating that you know themselves right it's not they don't have a published award chart for their partners anymore so somehow yeah right yeah and that to me is impressive and that's why the tool has been really useful for me in some regards i think it's been really useful in finding that kind of stuff that I wouldn't have found otherwise. That's one example that I thought was relevant for a lot of readers. So I wrote about it this week. But there have been a number of other instances where I found a flight that I just wouldn't have found otherwise because I wouldn't have thought to look at that particular source either because I didn't know it was going to price oddly like that or I don't typically search that site for availability or I didn't realize there was a flight between A and B on that airline. There's been a number of times where that kind of thing has happened to me.

So I really do like that. Although I also wonder, I don't know, am I missing things by being lazy and using Juicy Miles? Because, I mean, it's super convenient. It makes my life easier. It's a lot faster for searching awards, but is it making me lazy? Because in the past, I would go to all of the various sites. I would look it up, not necessarily a Tap Air Portugal one, but your situation with Cathay Pacific, I probably would have searched that on British Airways first, and then I would have probably started on American Airlines and other one world partners so i guess i probably would have found that via cathay pacific and i could see where somebody might have totally missed that if they've done your search and not seen those results i don't

well that one yeah i don't think with my uh columbia trip i would have thought to search life miles? I don't know. Maybe I would. Probably not. It's hard to know. Yeah. So, despite the problems, or maybe, despite the problems, people who are fairly advanced like us get a lot out of it. People who are very new to this whole thing, I think, I mean, I don't have firsthand knowledge of this, but I think you'd get a lot out of it because even if it doesn't show everything, which it doesn't, it's going to show you way more than you'd be able to figure out yourself, right? Yeah, way more. If you're a beginner, I feel like it's almost a no brainer like because you're never gonna like you get overwhelmed by all this stuff putting all the

dots together you'd never find all the possible options and search all the sites correctly and everything else if you're a beginner if you're a beginner i feel like it's it's well worth ten dollars for the five days if you're a beginner right yeah yeah i mean for booking let's say international flights i i still don't think i would do it for domestic i mean i would domestic just find out which airlines are going where you're going and and and check their websites i mean yes you can sometimes do better but i don't know it feels pretty rare to me. For domestic, it's probably not worth it. But for international, I feel like. You know, I'm saying that, but you can book your United flights with Turkish.

You could book from LifeMiles. Turkish doesn't show up in JuicyMiles. But LifeMiles, you could potentially book some United flights for $7,500 or even less. I think, what, $3,500 maybe is the cheapest nobody has found for a one-way with LifeMiles. So, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. I think what 3,500 maybe is the cheapest nobody has found for a one way with life miles. So yeah, I mean, that's a good point. If you just went to United and only looked at United,

then you might miss those opportunities. Those opportunities are a little bit more rare. I guess it really depends on where you're flying. I'd be more interested in this as a tool for finding premium cap and space on international routes though. and if you're, if you're a busy person, I could totally see where it makes sense. And if you're a busy person, I can totally see where

it makes sense. You know, this is my job, obviously, writing about this stuff and thinking about this stuff. So I'm constantly doing the searches. And so for me, it seems obvious, right, that, you know, I would use a tool like this search. And I have the time to be able to search separately. Also, on the flip side, you know, if you want to argue that I shouldn't use Juicy Miles, I have enough time to put into searching because it's part of the work that I do. But for the average person, they don't have the hours in the day to do the number of award searches that I might do. And so if you're looking to book a vacation and you don't have a lot of free time, then I feel like this kind of tool simplifies the process a lot. Yeah. All right. So I think we agree. It's flawed, but it's necessary for most people. I don't know if necessary is the right word, but there's just no other tool that does what it does. And so until there is,

if you need a tool that searches across all the programs, there's really nothing else that does that. I got a question before you move on from this thought, you ran into a situation this week where it was missing a Virgin Atlantic fly or an option you theoretically could have booked through virgin atlantic right so did you almost miss a possible flight no are you talking about the the the thing that happened where um a flight you're looking at air france exactly yeah no this wasn't a this wasn't a um a problem with Miles. This is a on the Virgin Atlantic website.

That's the first time I've seen that. So it ended up I didn't end up wanting to book that flight anyway. So, so I didn't get too hung up on it, but, but I did decide, oh, well, one of the things I wrote about last week was that you can now check partner awards for Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Atlantic partner awards by texting them to ask them to search for a word space for you. So I thought, well, maybe it's just the online tool that's not working. So I'll text them and see if they can see the word space. That was more than 24 hours ago. And I still haven't received a text back so i don't know what's going on there maybe i shouldn't have published that ability because maybe they're maybe they're slammed with with requests i don't i don't know i don't know because when i when i had done it before um the responses range from coming back within a couple minutes to about 20 minutes. Now, it's been too long.

That's too bad. But that's an interesting situation then where I was looking at it differently. But I guess in that situation, I don't know if you did it this way. Did you look it up through Juicy Miles? Is that how you found that it was bookable via Air France? Or did you just go to Air France? Oh, boy. Not even sure. I can't remember, unfortunately. I think I probably did. I probably did see it on there, but that's what I thought you had said. Yeah. When you told me about it. So, yeah, I mean, that's the kind of situation where if like, let's say in that

situation, there was a Delta flight and it was bookable via Air France. So, theoretically, it should be bookable via Virgin Atlantic, but it wasn't showing up on the website that's where a tool for me like juicy miles comes in handy also for me in the sense that well then i know i i could reach out to virgin atlantic whereas in the past i would have just taken the website's word for it and assumed that exactly bookable right right right the only reason you knew to be able to to text probably was that you had seen it there or there certainly are uh situations like that that i can imagine has it changed your like award search habits at all like the like when you approach a trip now like i mean i know you said you got a lot of travel plan has juicy miles changed the way you approach your searches like where did

you start your searches before juicy miles and what do you do now do you do you start at juicy or do you start at delta.com or well all right so so in the example in the example uh that we were just talking about where i had a specific delta fly i was looking at now that i think about i don't think i brought up juicy miles because in Because in that case, I know that you could either book it with Delta, or you could book it with a partner if the award's available. And so, my typical way, if I want that Delta flight, is I look at the price on delta.com and I look at the price on Virgin Atlantic and then I'm done. Um, in this case, for some reason, I looked through Air France and I don't remember, oh, I know why I did that because Air France actually has better prices than Virgin Atlantic

on very short flights, like very short flights and so this was this qualified very very short flight uh so so that's why i brought it up in air france and that's when i noticed i was like well what's going on here virgin atlantic said there was nothing air france is showing me three different uh two different flights one with uh coach and first and one with just coach so um yeah what's going on there i don't know yeah yeah interesting though so so when you so for domestic stuff then you still typically start at delta and virgin atlantic yeah usually for domestic stuff i I do it. Yeah, there I do usually start with Juicy Miles, especially if I know exactly when I want to travel, right?

If I have the dates set, then Juicy Miles is great because you could do the plus or minus one day and just say, I want to go from here to wherever. And, um, it's just, it's so much simpler, right. Than searching all the other possibilities. Now, when, when I,

it's more like, Oh, I want to go in the fall. That's a little different that then you have award calendars, like on American airlines, if especially if you start with the, uh, advanced United or even Virgin Atlantic for flying Virgin Atlantic or Delta. Their calendar sometimes works. So, yeah.

So, it kind of depends what kind of travel I'm looking for. How about you? Yeah, that's a good point because if I'm searching for a general time of year, I do often. See, my habit always was to start at United. And I don't know why that is, why I started at United over American and Delta. But that was where I always used to start my searches anyway. I think it's because of the calendar tool. Because I could see two months and get an idea of are there clusters of availability that's you know that's useful to me but now i almost always start at juicy miles because i'll do the plus or minus one day and i'll just keep going forward by a

couple of days at a time okay and uh and and so it's you know not quite as convenient as looking at a calendar but what i love is that i only have to look at one spot most of the time. So I find that that certainly changed the way that I approach those searches anyway. And also the lens through which I look at it, because I definitely before Juicy Miles, even though I knew Avianca had a program and this one had a program and that one had a program and these were all transfer partners. I would always look at the transfer partners secondarily. I would look first through American or United to see what was available. And then when I found something available, maybe I would look through a couple of the partners that I know. What I love about using Juicy Miles, my favorite thing, I think, is that it lists all of those partners that I wouldn't have thought to search individually. And sometimes you find some nice little gems in there.

So, uh, right. So that's, that's really convenient. you do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely changed the way that I go. All right. Award searches. Yeah, no, me too.

So do we have any reader questions this week we do we do have a reader question this week so really just trying to pull it up here well we've got a lot of reader questions i'm sure uh but there was one in particular and i'm just looking for apparently i moved my window i thought i pulled up a separate window with the reader question and then where'd it go okay it seemed to have lost it so i know what the question was and i know where i found it it was just a matter of if i can pull it up fast enough should we should we do two reader questions next week or do you think no no no no no uh so the the reader question which i'll i guess i'll improvise and uh and riff here so one of the things we didn't talk about at all today and i i feel like perhaps we i almost feel

like we should have except i'm sure that we're going to talk more about it next week is the offers on the delta credit cards changed this week quite significantly. So the annual fees went up on those cards and they had pretty interesting new offers. And so a member of our Frequent Miler Insiders group asked what I thought was a particularly good question about which card to get. And here it is. I got it now. So thank you for bearing with me. They said, do I get the Delta business gold or business platinum? And really this would apply even if you're looking at whether you're looking at personal or business. Do I get the gold, the Delta gold or the Delta platinum? The differences in bonuses and benefits work out to be this way over two years. He says, with the gold, you get 70,000 miles for a cost of a $99

fee. The platinum, you get 100 hundred thousand miles and a companion ticket for five hundred dollars so he said essentially with the platinum you're buying an extra thirty thousand miles and the companion ticket and you're paying he said four hundred but i guess uh five hundred dollars for an extra thirty thousand well i think i think it means four hundred dollars four hundred more over the night because the gold card has the first year waived is that right that's right and that's and then good yeah exactly that's okay that's why he's running these numbers exactly yeah yeah so so just for uh people at home so the the platinum card the annual fee has gone up to 250 a year so what what this person is saying is um in a two-year span james is his name james james uh is saying in it in order to

get so we should back up a little in order to get the full welcome bonus you have to renew at the end of the first year so basically you have to pay two annual fees with a platinum card so it's five hundred dollars in order to get the full bonus and you also at the end of the first year you get your first annual companion certificate which is a where you can fly a domestic round trip with two people you only pay for the first person second person only pays taxes. So you're looking at this because like with the gold card right now, the sign up on it, the welcome bonus is 60,000 miles. But then when you renew it for the second year and you pay the $99 for the second year, you get an extra 10,000. So you get 70,000 miles on that with the platinum card.

Yeah. You get 80,000 as the welcome bonus. And then when you renew the card, you get another 20,000, 30, or I guess it's 70 and 30 is what it must be is from what he's saying. At any rate, no, I'm sorry. It's 80 and 20. I'm getting confusing now, aren't I? 80,000 for the welcome bonus

and 20 when you renew it. So you're going to pay the annual fee two times $500 for an extra 30,000 miles over the gold welcome bonus and the companion certificate. Right, right. So, I mean, $400 is not an outrageous amount to pay for 30,000 delta miles by itself. It's not like, I wouldn't go out looking to pay that, but I'm just saying that you can get that much. Let me put it that way.

You could get that much value from it. It's not a good idea to buy it prospectively, but you can get that much value from it. But the question is, would you get enough extra value from that and the companion certificate. Another piece of the whole puzzle is that in the past, it's been the case that the companion certificates show up before the annual fee is due, and they stay in your account if you cancel the reason i'm mentioning that is you might be able to get two companion certificates with those two annual fees that's a big might because they have changed a bunch of things they might have changed it to where it doesn't show up till eight weeks after the annual fee or something like that. But up until now, that's been something you could do.

So that'd be in like year three you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So you'd be, you've paid for the second year. You've had the card now for 24 months. Now the third, yeah, the third annual fee is about to appear. But the companion certificate is already in your account now before the annual fee is charged, and then you cancel to avoid actually paying that annual fee. So, I don't know. Let's pretend that's not the case, though, and just say— I think that's a good place to start yeah is it worth it um i would say uh i would say if it if it was an either or

situation my my advice would be just go with the gold one because that's a clear, clear win without any cost to you. There's no risk. Whereas the risk with the platinum deal is you're sort of buying the combination of a companion certificate and 30,000 points for $400 and you might not end up using the miles for good value and you might not end up using the certificate at all. I have a lot of friends who often end up, you know, they expire after a year and then you're at, you're out of luck, um, or use it for very low value or something. So if it was either or, I'd say that. On the other hand, you could do what my son just did before these new bonuses kicked in, which is he signed up for both a gold and a platinum card. So you can do that as well.

Right. Which probably makes the most sense of the bunch. Because I don't, have we seen a better offer? I mean, I guess that's a loaded question. Have we seen a higher welcome offer on either of those cards? No. I mean, if you're counting the second year bonus part of it, we definitely haven't seen anything higher.

The first year, they used to have statement credits. I don't think the new ones have the statement credits. No, they don't. That's right. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. So the offers my son signed up for both had statement credits. The platinum one had a hundred dollars statement credit and the gold one had a $50 statement credit,

I think. So, so those were in the first year better. Plus they had lower annual fees. So all around in the first year, they were better. And then, but these are uh these are better longer term because

of the extra bonus when you renew right right so so the moral of the story then you're saying is that if you're just looking for one and you want it to be a safe offer where you know you're going to get good value the gold is probably the right pick i think so do you disagree i you know i didn't think i did until you talked it out for a minute and then so wait you thought you thought gold was right until i said gold was right and right and then i was like wait a second i can't possibly be agreeing with Craig. He's got to be wrong about these Delta cards, right? And spends 250 a year to keep Delta status. He's clearly irrational when it comes to Delta. No. The platinum card to me seems kind of crazy in the sense that I would never pay $400 for 30,000 Delta miles on the flip side. Like you said, I feel like even at a poor value on that, if you only get one cent per mile,

then you're going to get $300 in value out of the miles. So you're out a hundred bucks in that worst case scenario and you got a companion certificate. So long as you can put the companion certificate to use, you probably ought to get more than $100 in value. So I feel like the baseline is you're breaking even and probably you're going to look to use your miles at a better value than that. So I don't know. I'm also a little conflicted now because I wasn't looking at it this way before I read that reader's question. I wasn't looking at it in the sense of the $500 for the platinum card. What I was looking at is the bonus you're getting for renewing and for renewing at $250, you're picking up 20,000 miles and the companion

certificate. And I thought, well, that seems like a decent trade, you know, 250 bucks for the 20,000 miles and the companion certificate. And then of course, obviously, if you're picking up one of those cards, I would think maybe you're looking to get some help towards elite status and you're planning on spending and using that benefit to the ability to spend and earn MQMs. So I would think it seems like a pretty obvious renewal for somebody who's going to open the platinum card in the first place right i agree with that so but if you weren't sure i don't know you weren't sure you were going to open the platinum card in the first place there you get a little more difficult so the

the well not only that the the platinum card the offer it's a good offer if you just look at it on its own it's a good offer and i think you look at it on its own, it's a good offer. And I think you're right. Renewing makes sense for most people renewing after the first year. Um, but if you're saying I'm only going to pick up one card and it's between the gold or the platinum and presumably he doesn't care about the ability to earn MQMs through spend with the platinum just because the way the question was phrased i think otherwise it would have come up right

um right and actually if he cared about mqms he probably should be looking at the reserve card with 20 000 mqms which is right an insanely amazing bonus i i think um so yeah i mean i would say the gold is is clearly the better deal for someone who doesn't care about elite status because otherwise now we're back we're back to this uh doordash type thing right when you were like when you that was my first thought when you said oh you know paying 400 for 30 000 miles is not that bad i was like and 60 for doordash was a bad deal 60 for a 60 gift card was crazy right right so so james was it Was that who was asking? All right. So James, ask yourself, would you pay $400 for 30,000 miles and a companion certificate? And I think your answer should be no way. Yeah, probably not. If a salesperson comes to your door and pitches that.

Now this one I would say no. You'd be like, no, give me that $60 worth of food for $60. Right, exactly. Exactly. I don't want to pay $40 for some wishy-washy 30,000 sky pesos that I may not even find a good use for. And I may get excited about using them for like 1.2 cents a mile towards vacation packages or whatever down the road. So, yeah, I think I would not take the salesman up on that. So, yeah, I think I got to agree for Jamesames the situation i would say the gold makes the most sense i feel like in general the only reason to look at the platinum and reserve is if you're i don't know generally

speaking if you're going to be going after those mqms if you're going to be going after delta elite status i mean obviously delta miles can be used for decent value so i guess the the welcome bonuses might be worthwhile for anybody but i think most people yeah i mean i i think again i think the platinum offer is a good solid offer for most people who think they could use sky miles it's just not as good as the delta gold offer in my opinion yeah yeah that's that's my opinion about it so yeah but if you only want one wow we agree we do we agree we agree in the end and something related to delta at that so all right thank you for bringing us together this week we need to bring the show to a close then we definitely do yeah before we disagree on something right there it's

over and done so thank you guys all for being out there with us. If you'd like to see more about what we're talking about, the frequent miler.com is the website. So if you're not familiar, the frequent miler.com, you can find us on Facebook, on Twitter. You can find our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group.

If you want to join the group and discuss this stuff with other readers, ask and answer your questions. We always love to get your feedback and questions and who knows, maybe you'll be featured on reader feedback or reader question time in a future podcast that is true that could happen thank you very much greg always great having you here all right same same for you bye