Frequent Miler on the Air - The 2023 Bonvoyed Awards | Ep234 | 12-23-23

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

As we close out 2023, we take a moment to honor those loyalty programs that have dishonored their own members with the biggest snafus, most member-unfriendly changes, or other painful devaluations.  00:00 Intro 01:58 Giant Mailbag 04:51 Card Talk: Marriott Bonvoy Bevy & Bountiful cards https://frequentmiler.com/bonvoybevy/ https://frequentmiler.com/bonvoybountiful/ 10:41 What crazy thing . . . did Air France / KLM Flying Blue do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/amazing-business-class-to-europe-from-13500-miles-one-way/ 21:44 Award Talk: Bilt adds Avianca LifeMiles https://frequentmiler.com/now-transfer-bilt-rewards-to-avianca-lifemiles/ 24:48 Award Talk: IHG allows free point transfers between members....well, *some* members https://frequentmiler.com/ihg-offering-diamond-elite-members-free-points-transfers-to-other-members-but-not-the-other-way/ 27:27 Finnair Plus announces new award charts and info https://frequentmiler.com/finnair-plus-announces-award-chart-changes-to-take-effect-in-march-2024/ 38:19 Main Event: 2023 Bonvoyed Awards The Nominees.... 39:19: Marriott Bonvoys free night certificates https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-rules-for-extending-free-nights/ 41:19 Hyatt / MGM marriage goes bust https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-farewell-cheap-mattress-runs-status-matching/ 43:51 Wyndham vacates their high-value Vacasa bookings https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/ 45:41 Delta dumps their devastation https://frequentmiler.com/delta-elite-shortcuts/ 47:52 Chase guts their Pay Yourself Back program 49:07 Air Canada Aeroplan's Etihad alliance goes astray 52:00 Hotels.com becomes 5x less rewarding https://frequentmiler.com/huge-devaluation-of-hotels-com-rewards-new-one-key-program-only-giving-2-back/ 56:15 Nominee recap 56:42 Nick's pick for 2023 Bonvoyed Award 59:24 Greg's pick for 2023 Bonvoyed Award 1:02:41 Question of the Week: What is the best thing to do with 80,000 Membership Rewards points before we cancel Player 2's Amex Gold card? Music credit: Annie Yoder

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city this week it's time for mattress running the numbers ready for the main event the main event frequent miler on the air starts now main event the 2023 bon void awards oh we're gonna give a award to the loyalty program that was the most disloyal to its members in 2023. Why would we call that the Bonvoy Awards? We'll explore that a little bit. Yeah. Marriott Bonvoy is the namesake for these awards. And once they came up with the term Bonvoy for the rewards program, it quickly became a negative adjective describing any time you get poor treatment from a loyalty program, basically.

Then you say you were Bonvoyed. And so that is the origin behind the name of our Bonvoyed awards. Congratulations, Mary. You picked a memorable name. So this week, we'll talk more about that. But first, I want to remind you, don't forget first to like the show if you like it. If you like it, make sure you hit the thumbs up or the like button wherever it is you're listening or watching. Don't forget to leave a comment down below if you're watching on YouTube or leave us a review if you're listening in a podcast platform. And remember that we keep the show notes in the description. So we'll keep timestamps so you can find all the different segments. If you want to skip ahead to a specific

segment or you want to return to one later on, you can hopefully easily find what it is you're looking for. And we always also do include links to what we're talking about. So each of these things that we'll discuss today, each of the contenders for the Bonvoyant of the Year Award, we'll have a link to more information about them in the show notes. So you'll want to check that out. So now let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Today's giant mail. We need a little background first about today's giant mail. So last week, we talked about the awards that we want most, and we had a difference of opinion about whether Air France First Class, La Premiere Class is worth our bucket list. But regardless, and in that show, we said that the best way to book Air France First

Class is actually to book a business class award flight and wait and hope for a offer to upgrade for cash to first class. And in the comments of that post, as well as emails we received, we were told you cannot actually upgrade to La Premier, which is Air France's first class, from a business class ticket booked with miles anymore. And there were people linked to One Mile a Time who had a post in, I think, July of this year saying exactly that, that they had stopped allowing those upgrades. But then in the comments, Ben said, is this true? Some of the comments on the One Mile a Time article suggests that people have been able to upgrade award business class

tickets to La Premiere. So I looked at the comments and I saw, for example, this one from Sam Kim in the, again, this is in the One Mile a Time article. Sam said, as of December 2023, with no flying blue status, I've continued to get business class to La Premier upgrade offers from Air France. On Air France, book tickets for about $2,000 is the offered upgrade. So what Sam doesn't say explicitly is whether those tickets were booked with miles. He just says booked with, with, uh, so I assume he meant with miles, but anyway, the point is, uh, maybe what the jury is still out on that. We don't know. Exactly. Maybe you'll get an upgrade offer. Maybe you won't. Don't count on it. Of course, we always said you can't count on it. It's something that you may or may not get anyway.

But it sounds like it's maybe less likely than we thought. Yeah. Okay. Well, so we went from a we a culprit to a well, maybe not, maybe nobody really seems to know. But that kind of makes sense, right? Because I feel like why would they close that door entirely? They never had to offer an upgrade anyway. So they don't want to offer any upgrades. They can just not offer any for a while. And if they're like, oh man,

we've got three straight weeks where we only have one seat sold in first class. Let's open some upgrades these couple of weeks. So it could just vary. And that would make some actual sense. So I don't think that that seems too far-fetched. All right. So there's our mailbag.

Let's talk about this week's card talk. And for card talk, since it's the Bonvoy Awards, we've got to talk about a couple of Bonvoy cards, right? What better thing to talk about than Bonvoy cards? Right. Nothing says being Bonvoyed than the Bonvoy bevy and bonvoy bountiful cards beautiful beautiful uh bevy of cards uh so uh amex has the bonvoy bevy card and chase issues the bonvoy bountiful card so this these just continue the the trend of all the Bonvoy Bountiful card. So these just continue the trend of all the Bonvoy cards having names starting with B

and being completely unmemorable because how can you remember which is which? But anyway, the Devee and Bountiful cards are $250 a year, and they each give you a 50,000-point free night award, but only after $15,000 of calendar year spend. They each give you automatic gold status with Marriott, and they each earn six points per dollar for Marriott stays, four points per dollar for grocery and dining, but only on the first $15,000 of combined purchases per year, and two points per dollar everywhere else, pretty much like every other Marriott card. One thing that's unique with these

is that you get 1,000 bonus points with each paid stay. So yeah, so you get a few extra points that way um the other thing that's unique about this these cards every other marriott card that offers free night certificates you just get them every year on your anniversary and uh these require spend to get to get them at all so yeah so what do you think nick these the what do you think about this bevy of bountiful cards weird weird that's what i think is it's weird that you have this card that is this middle price point between a normal card that offers just an annual free night certificate for 100 bucks which is you know the the typical regular level whatever i couldn't tell you what the b words are for those

but uh but but there's that level of card and then there's the you know super luxury card the brilliant card so it's weird to have a card and so both the bottom end and the top end come with an annual free night certificate it's weird that the 250 cards don't come with that as such an odd thing you would think you'd encourage the spend at least on the cheap card, right? If nothing else, like on the $95 a year card, you'd think you'd want to make people spend for the free nice sugar. Don't get any ideas from me, all right? Listen, Chase, Marriott, you shouldn't do that. But if you were going to, why the 250 card? But that aside for a second, let's imagine that the target market for this card is probably somebody who stays at Marriott a fair amount. Right. So so with that in mind, the 15K calendar year spend might not be so far fetched because maybe you're staying at Marriott's enough that you're spending a decent chunk of that and getting your six X at Marriott's.

And the thousand bonus points after each paid stay sound like nothing to me because if we value them at a penny a point that's ten dollars worth of points right but right but if you stay at Marriott's a lot if you stay 50 nights a year at Marriott's legitimately that's like five hundred dollars worth of extra points every year except this isn't nights this is per stay well that's true they'd have to be one night stays wouldn't they for 51 night stays yeah you're right so not 500 worth so yeah so maybe you're going to come out like a hundred dollars worth of those or something yeah i i mean i don't i don't want the card there's nothing about it that appeals to me what do you think is it you find it exciting not at all i i think these are snoozers so so the the argument, I'd say, for getting

these instead of the $95 versions of the Bonvoy cards is that maybe you regularly stay at hotels that cost in the 60,000 point to 65,000 point range. And so you could use these 50K free night certificates, add points and stay in those hotels. But the problem is, I think if that's you, you're probably better off getting the Ritz card or the Bonvoy Brilliant card, both of which have these 85K free night certificates. And they also have all kinds of credits that kind of make up a lot of the annual fee. So I don't think that your net annual fee output will be as much as $250 with the higher price cards because of those rebates. And you're getting better free night certificates without a spend requirement.

So yeah, no, it's weird. So quick comparison point here, though, as you're talking, I was thinking about it and looking at the bonus categories, the 4X grocery and dining. I mean, some people might say, oh, well, I Gold card for the same cost and get the same 4X categories, but have membership rewards points that you can transfer to all their partners, probably for more value. Or you could transfer to Marriott if you insisted on it. Though, if you spent that 15K on this card, you'd also come out with the 50K free night certificate. So I guess if you were going to consider transferring your mx points to mario one to one which you shouldn't but if you might consider that then i guess this card maybe makes sense but that's a really imaginary dream world and if you're listening to the show

hopefully that's not you there you go all right so let's talk about what crazy thing this week what crazy thing did air france klm did Air France KLM Flying Blue do? Yeah, you know, I was on vacation. So all I know is I saw posts saying lots of other people wanted to go on vacation, too, for very few points. And Air France took those vacations away. Yes. Well, unfortunately. So there was an amazing business class fair sale on Air France. And so we were seeing awards initially. When we first published it, it was 13,500 miles each way to and from Europe in business class to a number of different cities. It was specific cities. And it was actually just from Canadian

cities. So the sale was from Canadian cities to Europe. Again, 13,500 initially, but then people found that there were even cheaper awards, some that were 5,000 miles each way. And then a reader commented to say that they booked one for just 1,500 miles one way in business class. And I assumed it was a typo when I saw that. I thought they just meant 15,000. And another reader responded and said, I thought this was a typo, but you really did mean 1,500 miles. And that's when I looked at it. When that responded and said, I thought this was a typo, but you really did mean fifteen hundred miles. And that's when I looked at it. When that comment came in, I was like, oh, it wasn't a type. Oh. And so, yeah. So lots of people rushed to book these. And oddly enough, they lasted for quite a while.

It was surprising how long this lasted, that you were able to book these flights for again as little as 1500 miles and two hundred and ninety dollars but when you say quite a while you're not talking like no weeks no no i'm not even sure you're talking days right no like but the better part of a day which i mean if you ever like okay so let's put this in perspective for anybody who's new usually air france flying blue would charge 50000 miles one way for like what's sort of equivalent to a saver-ish level award. So, you know, 50,000 is kind of the normal price when they run their promo rewards. We sometimes see opportunities maybe in the mid 30,000 sometimes.

And every now and then we have seen business class awards as low as like 15 or I remember one to Prague years ago that was like 12, five. So I mean, we have every once in a while seen something like that. But that's really special, because that's way below what most other people charge for a business class award. So 1500 miles was like, you know, an insane deal, like a once in a lifetime kind of a thing. So if that happens, when that kind of thing happens, usually it's a matter of like hours, if even plural, it's a matter of hours. And this was like all day and afternoon and into the late evening and maybe even the next morning this lasted. So much longer than I would have expected. But,

you know, it was all for naught in the end because lots of us booked these. And then Air France decided that they didn't really want to put them on sale quite that nicely, which, you know, is disappointing. And I'll come back to that in a second. But anyway, so they decided that this was a mistake and that they didn't actually intend to sell the awards for those prices. So they've canceled everybody's awards, almost everybody's awards. They haven't notified everybody that they've been canceled. I booked my family and I haven't received any word from Air France that our flights are canceled. I did pull up the app after people started reporting the cancellations and I saw that my flights are canceled, but I haven't received an email telling me that they're canceled yet. However, if you have flying blue, gold or platinum status,

then they are going to honor your flights. If you booked the 13,500 mile ones or more presumably, not if you booked the 5,000 mile or the 1500 mile ones, those are getting canceled for everybody, I believe. But if you have a reservation at 13,500 miles each way or more and you have gold or platinum status, they are going to honor that for their best customers, so to speak. But everybody else, tough luck. You're out of the miles. They are not out of the miles, but you're out of the award anyway because they're canceling it. And it's disappointing to me for a few reasons. Number one, they don't have an award chart.

So when I just said they usually charge about 50,000 miles, that's what we've all found from anecdotal experience searching lots of times. But the truth of the matter is they didn't want to commit to an award chart. So they got rid of it years ago. So they don't have an actual price. The price is whatever they want to make it. They can charge as many miles as they want. So presumably they can charge as few miles as they want to. And so I really get bothered when airlines get rid of an award chart and then try to claim it's a mistake. If you're not going to have an award chart, then the price is whatever you say it is. And deciding days later that you didn't actually like that price and you'd like to change it now that irks me because they won't like members always make that choice for free right so you

wouldn't if you had booked something and you decided three or four days later that oh you didn't really want to book that they'd charge you a cancellation fee usually so the fact that they're able to just kind of squirm out of it with no uh no penalty is something that just it annoys me even when it's these really cheap awards that I honestly kind of figured they would cancel. I didn't think that they would honor them. But still, I find it just bothersome that they handle it that way. But so be it. The good news here is that you are going to be able if you are the squeaky wheel, you'll get the grease.

And you are if you transferred points to air france in order to book these so if you transferred your membership rewards points or chase ultimate rewards points or whatever to air france to book these this is going to be one of those rare situations where you actually will be able to transfer those back to membership rewards or ultimate rewards but you're going to have to call air france and ask for it they're not going to do it automatically usually when you transfer points it is a one-way street. So I would have totally only transferred points in this case, if I could accept the fact that they were going to get stuck at Air France, if they canceled it, I'm really glad to see that at least they found a way to reverse those

and send the miles back. That's the good news, I think. Yeah. I thought that was crazy good. You know, I mean, it was crazy that they had these awards for so ridiculously cheap, but that was a mistake, I'm sure. them canceling them but same time i mean we all expected that and and uh i think that's really good that they're at least doing something in this case that something is allowing people to move their points back which is which is good that's you know the right thing to do in this situation it is i i temper my my uh my my kudos to them on that, though, a little bit. So the alternative is they wouldn't let you transfer them back, right? Because normally you can't transfer them back. And that would be really wrong. I mean, because in that case, they would have profited from everybody transferring points

because Amex is paying them for points and Chase is paying them for points. They would have earned something off of people transferring points to them and not given anything in return. So that would have been a really wrong way to handle it if they were going to cancel it. So, yeah, they did do the right thing. And I'm glad that they did the right thing. But I don't want to pat them on the back too strongly because they should have done the right thing. So so good job. But, you know, that was what you should have been doing. So if you're going to cancel these awards like that, and that's really what other programs should do. If they're going to cancel, they're going to try and claim mistake

and cancel, then they got to make people whole and let people transfer points back. Well, more than that, if a program shows award availability and then you transfer points and it turns out it was phantom award availability and it can't be booked, they should allow the transfer back as well. So there's a lot of situations just not just these canceled things that they should allow it

most don't so i still still give kudos to air france for this situation mild kudos air france mild kudos for me greg gives you the full thing but i just give you mild kudos all right so that is a crazy thing so if you booked that and you want to get your transferable points back please do call air france it's not going to cost you anything. The cancellations when the airline cancels your award, you don't pay any fee to get your miles and your money back. So that I assume will happen automatically. I don't think it has for people yet. I don't think people have gotten the points back yet, but you will.

And so then call them if you want to move them back. All right. That's the crazy thing. Mattress running the numbers. This week's mattress running the numbers. We've got an Amex transfer bonus to Hilton. So if you transfer, it's a 30 percent transfer bonus. So if you transfer one thousand membership rewards points, you'll end up with two thousand six hundred Hilton honors points. What say you, Greg, the frequent miler? Is this a great deal for most people, but it's not a bad deal necessarily. So here's the thing. Since Hilton often has sales on their points and you could buy the points for half a cent each,

transferring your Amex points to Hilton with the transfer bonus is kind of like getting 1.3 cents per point value for your Amex points. Because it's sort of like if you were able to cash out your Amex points for 1.3 cents and then turn around immediately and buy the Hilton points with that cash for half a cent each, that's how it would work out. That's not great. I mean, you can often do much better with Amex membership rewards points by transferring to airline partners and booking valuable award tickets. However, it's better than any straight cash out opportunities that Amex offers. The best you could do if you want to just straight up cash out is if you have the Schwab Platinum card

and you get 1.1 cent. And then there's a few ways to get 1 cent per point value when cashing out for cash. So from that point of view, maybe you're not booking airline awards and you want to do something valuable with your Amex points and you can use Hilton points. I think it's decent.

And you can sometimes get really decent value with Hilton points, especially if you book, for example, Fifth Night Free awards, then your points go further that way. So I'd say for most people, no, but I think there are people where this makes sense. Yeah. So I find the Hilton transfer bonus best for people who are looking for a way to get decent value out of their MX points specifically for hotels, because there's not usually a good way to use your MX points towards hotels. Transfers to Marriott and Hilton are not particularly good without a transfer bonus, and there's no other really good way. You could use your points through Amex Travel,

but you won't get good value. So this is a rare chance to get decent value out of your Amex points for a hotel. So if that works for you, if that's the way you want to use your points, then I think it can be a reasonable deal. Otherwise, I think you can get a better deal redeeming for premium cabin international travel

if that's your thing. So it just depends on what your thing is. All right, that's that. Now let's talk about this week's award talk. And for award talk, we got a if that's your thing. So it just depends on what your thing is. All right, that's that. Now let's talk about this week's award talk. And for award talk, we got a whole bunch of stuff out, starting with Built. What's up with Built? Yeah, Built has added a new transfer partner.

They already had a great collection of transfer partners, and now they've added Avianca LifeMiles. And Avianca gives you another option to book star alliance awards um and when i say another i mean they already had air canada aeroplan as an option um but in turkish and oh yeah and turkish um but uh avianca like aeroplan has no fuel surcharges are imposed on award bookings. So that's an excellent thing. And sometimes the award pricing can be considerably better than with Air Canada. So this is a really nice addition.

Yeah, and I think that the thing that is my favorite part of this is it makes your built points play nicely with your other points. So if you rent an apartment and you weren't currently earning rewards on your rent, then I just think it makes your built points play nicely with your other points. So if you rent an apartment and you weren't currently earning rewards on your rent, then I just think it makes sense. It makes more and more sense as built continues to build out the transfer partners to be earning built points also, because then if you're earning points with your MX gold card and dining and groceries and your Sapphire reserve on travel or whatever it is, whatever your strategy and plan is, journey points,

these are going to play more nicely with your other transferable points. Chase points are a bad example because those don't transfer to Avianca, but Amex membership rewards do. Capital One miles transferred to Avianca Life Miles. City points transferred to Avianca Life Miles. So now you can combine forces and use your build points with those other points when you want to book an Avianca award. So i really like to see that because that's a program i use a lot and and i think one of the major pieces of utility of the built program is that you can combine with lots of other

points churning on other stuff so and of course obviously the unique transfer partners like american airlines but uh but i like this because it's a particularly useful partner. And I'm glad that they're continuing to add generally useful partners. IHG aside, because IHG is in great value, most of the partners that they've added have been ones that are useful for people. So I don't need another program that transfers to, I don't know, like a Thai Royal Orchid, for instance, that I'm never going to use. I think Citibank's got them and it's not adding any value. So I'm glad they're not just adding partners like that, just like whoever's willing to take transfers, but rather to programs that we want to use. So I think that's good news. Yeah, absolutely. The people behind Built who do the partnerships,

they're big into... They're fans of using points for awards. They want to add the same programs that they want to use themselves. They understand that. They're hustling to try to make partnerships with the right programs.

I'd love to see that. That's a good... Very good ad. All right, but that's not all this that. That's a good, very good ad. All right. All right. But that's not all this week. What's up with IHG? We've got a lot of award talk this week. IHG.

So you know how Marriott and Hyatt and in a weird way, Hilton allow you to move points from one person to another with like no restrictions and no cost. IHG now is sort of dipping their toes into that world. Welcome to the party. Yeah, welcome to the party. I would like it if they partied a little bit more than this, but anyway, what they've added is free transfers from Diamond members.

So if you have top tier elite status with IHG, you could transfer to other people for free. Or if you have an IHG business rewards account, which by the way, you could get with like by clicking a button, log into your IHG account, search for IHG business rewards, and then click the button to join. I think once you do, it takes a while to enable free transfers, but anyway, it's worth doing. So here's what I don't like. So it's great. I mean, adding an ability to move points for free, good thing. Here's what I don't like. This idea that Diamond members can transfer their points out for free, but other people can't

transfer to them for free if they're not diamond, that's backwards from the way we want it, right? So my wife or other people have points that we want to use for travel, but we'd rather use them from my account that has diamond status right now. And so I'd rather be able to transfer their points to me for free than the other way around. But at least they have a step in the right direction. I get what you're saying there. And that makes sense from our perspective, my perspective too. But I think that probably, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the majority of diamond members probably travel a lot for business. And so they're frequently traveling and they probably have earned over the course of years of business travel more points than they're going to use anytime soon. And so I bet the

average member just wants to be able to use their points and like give them to a family member as like a, you know, a gift and say, Oh, here, you know, go on vacation. I'll give you a bunch of points. So I bet that this is something that they at least viewed as being a benefit for their most loyal customers that, okay, now you can go ahead and give those away to friends or family if you want. So I see why they did it the way they did it. But obviously, of course, like you, I would want to be able to receive them as the Diamond member because we're not earning more points than we're ever going to use. Although I imagine that there's a lot of Diamond members out there that are. So that's that.

That's IHG. But we're not done. No, we're not done. So next up, Finnair. So Finnair has been in our award talk before because they joined the, or are going to soon, join the Avios currency with British Airways, Qatar, Iberia. And so what happened now they they released information about what their new award charts are going to be right they did and also the the delay so this was initially expected to happen in January now it's not going to happen until March of 2024 but finnair Plus

will join the obvious currency so finna Plus, it's a little confusing because each of the airlines that use Avios as their currency still have their own frequent flyer program, but their frequent flyer currency is Avios. So it's kind of a little confusing in that realm. And it's not one, Avios isn't a loyalty program. It's a name for the points. And because they all share that same name for the points, you can move the points between different airlines that use those points. So it's like their own monopoly money that you can trade with other airlines that use that form of monopoly money uh anyway they are going to join avios in march 2024 and your finnair plus points if you have any are going to convert to avios at three

to two which is something i think we already knew. So no news there. That's what was planned to happen. But now we have an idea of what the award charts are going to look like. And I say award charts, plural intentionally, because there's not just one. There is an award chart for flights on thin air. And that award chart is bad if you were someone who's been collecting thin air plus points for a long time. It's going to seem like things get way more expensive when your thin air plus points become less valuable and some of these awards become a little bit more expensive. To those of us primarily collecting transferable currencies, it's actually not a terrible award chart at all, I don't think. So

thin air plus flights to Europe are going to be 30,000 points one way in economy, 30,000 obvious one way in economy, which is pretty much on par with what most other programs charge. It's not particularly exciting, but not terrible either. Business class 62,500 each way with very low surcharges. I think the business class surcharge on a transatlantic flight is going to be 100 euros one way, and obviously you'll pay the taxes but 100 euro that's i think a pretty decently low surcharge that's you know on the low end of what i would call moderate um so that's good news i think and 62.5 is particularly good if you consider the fact that we often see transfer bonuses to avios in the 25 percent range sometimes 30 we've seen 40 before so you know if you're able to get even just a 25% transfer bonus, you're looking at fewer than 40,000, right? Or yeah, 45. I can't do the math

that quickly. Not that much. You're looking at a reasonable deal anyway, 50,000, almost 50,000, a reasonable deal for a business class ticket. Of course, this is going to be just for a nonstop because you're going to pay more for each segment in most cases. So if you're going to travel beyond Helsinki, you're going to go to New York to Helsinki to Prague. You're going to pay for both the New York to Helsinki flight and the Helsinki to Prague flight. That's just an obvious feature or bug, depending on how you want to look at it. And that's the way the obvious program generally works. Although if you're flying to Finland or Northern Europe, they're not going to charge for the connection. So if you want to go to Rovaniemi

and you need to go to the Santa Claus Holiday Village that I recently visited, you wouldn't pay extra for the connection from Helsinki in that case because it's within Finland or Northern Europe. A little confusing there. Good news, they're going to guarantee award seats on their own flights. They'll guarantee at least four award seats

on flights within Europe and eight on their long hauls, but that's only two in business class. So you're looking at two business class awards and presumably six economy class awards on each flight. Still not bad. They're guaranteeing four economy and two premium economy and two business. Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I missed that. So the good news there is that there is at least a guarantee for a long time, it was really hard to find award availability on Finnair. They didn't have very much award availability at all for years. And then last year, they've suddenly had a decent amount, but certainly not every single flight. So knowing that you'll always be able to get two if you book

a year in advance or whenever the schedule opens, that's good news. So I think a positive there. And again, reasonably competitive award pricing to Europe. Some other highlights, they have various partner award charts now. So each partner has its own individual award chart, taking a page out of Alaska's old award charts book, which was surprising. I expected that everybody would be subject to a regular distance based chart like most programs that use Avios, but it's a little bit different. They're still basically distance-based E, just not on numbers. They actually named out different regions and routes and whatnot. But a couple of the highlights are Alaska flights, flights on Alaska Airlines to Hawaii from North America, 13,500 miles each way. And so that is what Avios,

we used to pay with British Airways Avios from the West Coast cities to Hawaii, but they increased that rate. British Airways increased that rate to 16,000 not that long ago. So this is like the old rate that you can get now through Finnair. So's good news and it does not specifically delineate that it has to be uh west coast flights it's alaska airlines flights now right now they only fly from the west coast to hawaii but if alaska were ever to open a chicago to honolulu route or something i don't have any inclination or or any information that indicates they would do that but if they did according to the award chart it would still be 13.5. So that could be good news, maybe.

They used to have some flights from a couple of other places, but it looked like just West Coast now. Anyway. Well, you know where it gets really interesting is if Alaska buys Hawaiian Air, then a whole bunch of new routes maybe open up. It's going to be hard to tell

what exactly will happen in that situation, but there might be opportunity there. Yeah, that could be really interesting. Good point. American Airlines within North America, 11,000 avios each way in economy class, 30,000 in first class. Keep in mind, you're going to pay by this segment, so you will pay more for each segment. But a couple of good things there, the 11K economy class, that could be good

for flights that would be long enough to have cost you more obvious than that with other programs. And 30K first class actually says first class, not business class. And so I wonder if in the short term anyway, while American Airlines still has three cabin first class, the way I read the chart, it looks like your Transcon first class flights would be 30,000 each way if they, of course, release space to partners. So you got to get lucky on that front. But 30k, that's pretty good for that flight these days. And you get first class dining and all that in the flagship lounge. So that could be a decent deal. American Airlines to North America, or rather from North America to the Caribbean or Mexico, 13K economy, 25K business. Again, reasonable deals that might be better than what you're going to pay with American

Airlines miles. Might not. You're going to have to check American Airlines too if you've got those miles, but certainly could be a better deal. And North America to, oh, American Airlines North America to Europe is 65K. So that's also a reasonably good deal now if american airlines has award availability on that it should be like 57.5 but you never know because american you know can charge whatever they want in their own flights so it's not necessarily going to be

a better deal with american airlines miles and again like everything else we've said so far if you get a good transfer bonus these become even better yeah and the last one we'll mention is cutter to and from cutter guitar way to and from europe 41 250 each way which is again roughly on par with what american charges i think american charges 42.5 on that uh route so a little bit less than what american charges and again yet better yet with a transfer bonus so uh so decent deals i mean they're not earth shatteringly good but they're reasonable in a bunch of those situations. Yeah, you know, I scanned through some of the award charts and there are some awards that are stunningly bad deals. Yes. But we just highlighted a number of them that seem to be more on the good deal side of things. What I like about this is that we now have an Avios programs, that would be very expensive and you

would look for other currencies to book it. And so there's going to be opportunities like that. So it's not like I'm super excited about any one particular thing here. It's just more that we now have another tool to use, or we will soon have another tool to use to get just the right award. And we'll be able to, um, as, as is the case today, look at the different obvious programs to see which one has the best deal for

any given flight and, and move your points to that one to book it. And, and so here's one that is very likely to have very different pricing for, in a lot of situations, um, both on the good and bad side. And so that makes it, you know, it'll be it'll be it's very interesting. And I think there'll be

some other sweet spots that we haven't mentioned yet that we'll discover through this. Yeah, you know, I'm excited about it, only because it isn't the same as the other Avios programs is exactly what Greg said. The alternative to this would have been they would have just had the same distance space chart that British Airways has and Iberia has. And that alternative would have been not interesting at all, because well, why what do I need that? I already have that. So this at least gives you something that's different. And again, it's going to be bad different in many cases, but at least there's some opportunity for it to be good different. And so that's better than just copying i have to say what one disappointment i had is

is when i saw that for their own flights they had uh very moderate fuel surcharges listed as what they would impose um i i had this like sudden hope like maybe if you book british airways flights through them you'd'd also have moderate fuel surcharges. And I know it's a pipe dream, but they don't explicitly say right now on their website what fuel surcharges will be passed along with partner bookings. But what they say about British Airways is that any flights on British Airways follow the British Airways award pricing. And I think that also means it follows British Airways surcharge pricing. That's what I think that probably means.

Very likely. Very likely. All right. That wraps up our award talk finally. And I think brings us to this week's main event. Main event time, the 2023 Bonvoyd Awards. It's the time that we've all been waiting for all year long because we love giving awards to the programs that mess with us the most so we're we're gonna identify which loyalty program was the most disloyal to its members this year we've got seven nominees for the bonvoyed awards for 2023 uh we're gonna read off the nominees uh describe a little bit of why they they are nominees and

then at the end nick and i are gonna pick our favorite which one are losers yeah you know which one which one was the most egregious uh award recipient right yeah all right let's get started with the list of the seven nominees first up bonvoy marriott bonvoy they bonvoid their free night extensions so up until recently it's been possible when when you have a free night certificate that's about to expire it was possible to call up Marriott and uh get it extended it often took six or seven phone calls but it could be done uh it seems like they've nearly completely, maybe 100% completely stopped that. I, in fact, just talked to a supervisor this morning trying to get a free night extended, and he just could not do it. The system would not let him.

He wanted to help, but no luck there. So, yeah, bad news with Bonvoy. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that stings. Stings, particularly if you had a prenatal certificate that was due to expire sometime relatively soon and you're just waiting in order to maximize the amount of time you can get out of it.

Ouch. Yeah, ouch. One of the things I hate most about this is like the Bonvoy program, their main advantage is just that they have so many quality hotels around the world that you almost have to deal with them. But they have so many annoying things about their program. They're constantly Bonvoying members. But this was one area where they had an advantage over the competition. None of the competition that I can think of will let you extend a free night certificate

for a whole year. And that was their advantage. And now they just gave up that advantage. So thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Marriott. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Clearly, Marriott just doesn't care. But yeah.

So it goes. Or they like winning these awards. It's hard to tell. Well, that's true. I mean, they do make an effort every year. They do. They do. All right.

And next up, Hyatt and MGM. They torpedoed their partnership. So their marriage went bust. And I guess, why are we mainly sad about that? Why don't you describe that, Nick? Well, I don't know if we are sad. I am sad about it for sure. I don't know whether you're sad or not. And maybe not everybody is. But the bummer here is that twofold. First of all, if you go to Las Vegas, it was nice having MGM as a partner because there are so many MGM properties on the strip. So if you could stay at any of them, you get Hyatt credit, you could earn Hyatt points on your spend, you could dine at different restaurants and charge it all back to your folio at one. And so all of that stuff was

really nice. And there are a lot of MGMs that are really cheap. And so this was a really cheap way to get high at elite nights by booking MGM properties. Even if you weren't going to stay in the MGM property, sometimes they were so ridiculously cheap. I mean, I think earlier this year, there were several times when I booked Excalibur for under $3 a night. And because there was a partnership, you could get gold status with mgm and so then you wouldn't pay resort fees and and if you drive you don't pay parking and things like that uh so that was really nice and and and then for a while remote check-in worked and so you know it was really cheap easy way to pick up lots of high Nights and unfortunately that died altogether so

even before the partnership died they stopped letting you check in remotely if you had a number attached to the account so that was a little piece of bad news there and then yeah they ended the partnership altogether in September in favor of partnering with Marriott so

we no longer have that great way to earn cheap Hyatt Elite nights and promotions and things like that. Any kind of promotion that was based on a number of nights or stays or that sort of thing. It was definitely a cheap and easy way to do pretty well on that. So disappointing. Also disappointing to not be able to have an easy avenue to MGM Gold status because previously if you had Hyatt Explorist or Globalist, you could match to MGM Gold status because previously if you had Hyatt Explorist or Globalist you could match to MGM Gold and then that could be a way to get a bunch of free cruises

all the free cruise stuff that we've talked about and so that's gone too so unfortunately bye bye to that one and hello to Marriott but we don't really know what that's going to look like even though the partnership was scheduled to be all unveiled by now I think they still haven't. So we don't

really know what that's going to entail going forward. So bummer there. All right, moving on. Next up is Wyndham. So Wyndham vacates their high-value Vacasa bookings. So we love using our Wyndham points to book Vacasa vacation Rentals for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. That still exists. The problem is that it used to be that you could book a stay where the cash rate was $500 per bedroom per night, up to that amount. Anyway, you could book up to that amount. They lowered that cap to $350. And so a lot of the properties that were bookable before are no longer bookable because they cost more than $350 per night. That includes that awesome, awesome oceanfront condo that I booked when I was in

Hawaii. I wouldn't be able to book that today with Wyndham Points. Yeah, that's a bummer because there were some places I really liked. And I went to Pigeon Forge area a couple of years back, and there were a lot of great looking properties there. We really enjoyed the one we stayed at. And that would have been right on the cusp of this $350,000 at the time I went. And certainly a lot of times a year when demand is higher, it would have been more. And so there's lots of times of year when I wouldn't be able to book that at all now. And that's disappointing too, because I figured I would eventually get back there with the kids as they got a little bit older because there's a lot of family friendly stuff there. So yeah, I'm bummed because it's still good. Let me back up and say it's still a good value. If you can

get a place that would have cost 350, for instance, a night with 15,000 Wyndham rewards points, that's still a very good deal. It's just not as amazing. And some of these awesome looking places that you could book before, it's just a bummer to see them go away. So yeah. Yeah. All right.

Next up, Delta. Delta dumps their devastation. This is going to take some explanation here. Whoa, what? That sounds like it's a good thing. It's going to take some explanation. So very high level. Delta announced this year that they were changing how you get elite status with their program. And they initially drastically, drastically increased the requirements to get to each level of status. So at that point, it seemed like they were bonvoying all their members who want to reach elite status. Then they had so much blowback

that they went completely the other way and and so they lowered the new requirements and they added like all these ways to get um boosts towards status that now it's going to be easier than ever to get status and so the people who are bonvoid now are those who would have gotten high level status just through like actual flying for example and now we're gonna have to compete for upgrades with the people who just get a few delta credit cards and get that same level of status so uh yeah so so they've been bouncing all around and i want to mention i listened to a little bit of last year's bonvoid awards and uh in in that in last year's Bonvoyd Awards, Delta had three separate nominations for Bonvoyd of the Year Award, but they didn't win. They didn't win at all.

So they made a new effort this year. Yeah. What I said when we realized that they didn't win was I said, sorry, Delta, I'm sure you'll try really hard to win in 2023. And, you know, I think their initial announcement was their attempt to win this year's Bonvoy Awards. And they found out that the blowback from doing that was worse than the benefits of winning the Frequent Miler Bonvoy Awards. So that's why they backed things off. Well done.

Well done. Okay. All right, Delta. You still made it still made your appearance so here you are welcome back to the bonvoy awards all right next up though that's not it no no it's not it uh next up is chase chase uh guts their pay yourself back uh program so uh used to be if you had this chase Sapphire Reserve card, certain types of purchases, you could erase them and get 1.5 cents per point value by doing that. And that was great because

people who like to basically sort of cash out their Chase points for 1.5 could get a lot of value from that. They lowered that to, I think, 1.25, and it's really just not worth cashing out your points at that level. So at least for the ultimate rewards cards, there's not much value in the Pay Yourself Back program anymore, sadly. Yeah, and there's not really as many categories i can't even remember what the current categories are but nothing that excites me particularly but you know there were times in the past where pay yourself back was useful on or usable on types of purchases you would have put on the card or or that would be dining or grocery yeah yeah i don't

know what the current ones are either because i don't pay attention because I'm not going to cash out for less than 1.5. Okay, next up, Aeroplan. Aeroplan's Etihad Alliance goes astray. So what happened here? So Aeroplan has a partnership with Etihad, and supposedly you can book Etihad awards through Aeroplan, and people did so. And people booked Etihad's first class apartments. And then those awards started getting canceled or rebooked on other flights. Weird stuff was happening with that.

But basically, people didn't get the awards that they intended. Aeroplan said they were going to fix it and they started fixing it but then those got canceled or something i don't know it's been a mess and in the meantime we we stopped we lost the ability to book like uh first class awards through aeroplan or business class too i think yeah yeah and and uh it's still a it's still a mess. I think you still can't book things and a lot of people's previous bookings are still in flux. Yeah, no, a mess is definitely the appropriate term there.

It is just an awful mess. So, I mean, at a high level, there's no longer an ability to book premium cabin awards through a Canada airplane. We have no idea if that's a temporary thing, a long term thing, what's up with that. But we know that you won't find any availability and you will through American Airlines still find some availability. It seems to be truncated there too, and now just within 60 days of departure, apparently, but we don't even see that for premium cabins you can book economy class anti-hat awards still through air canada aeroplan but not premium cabins so uh so at a high level that is already bad news because

that's a partnership that people you know want to have with their canada aeroplan so uh so oh that's bad news to begin with but yeah the total mess that they have made with these cancellations. So a lot of people, like you said, booked Etihad first class awards through Aeroplan. And yeah, they got canceled and then reinstated and then canceled again. And then they rebooked them on other airlines or said they were going to rebook everybody on other airlines. And some people were able to rebook and other people weren't able to rebook. And then some of the rebookings got canceled and oh my goodness, it's just been a constant mess. We've heard from people left and right who still don't have their itineraries fixed or things done properly. And then Araplan also made promises in terms of

what they were going to give people in terms of compensation because I think there were some Araplan points and so they were supposed to get that and a rebooking. But then we heard from people who were told by agents that, no, it's one or the other. Either you get rebooked or you get the points. And my goodness, it's just been one headache after another. I'm definitely unimpressed with Air Canada airplane on that one. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Last but certainly not least of our Bonvoy Award nominees is Hotels.com. Hotels.com becomes 5x less rewarding. So they used to have a program where every 10 stays, you'd get a basically credit for a future stay that was worth 10% of what you paid on those previous 10 stays. So it was sort of a 10% rewards program. And now they've moved to a new awards program where you

get 2% on hotel bookings. I mean, there is some good news there because they now are sharing a rewards program with multiple platforms, Expedia and several other things. And so all your bookings through these multiple programs all combine together and you can use them together. But going from 10% to 2% is a big, big drought. I don't need a calculator to figure that one out, right? I mean, that hurts. That's a huge devaluation if you're a Hotels.com fan, if you're somebody who regularly booked through them, which we often say we don't book through third-party online travel agencies much because if you book through a Hotels.com, you're typically not going to get elite night credit from the hotel program or any elite benefits, at least in a lot of situations. So I don't want to book a Hyatt or a Marriott or something like

that through hotels.com, generally speaking. However, A, if you're not loyal to that particular chain, that may not have mattered to you. And B, there's lots of independent properties out there you might be booking. You might want to book through hotels.com. And if that's your primary game, then this was a good rewards program. if you're a free agent you're like i don't want to just stay at marriott's or just stay at hyatt's i'm going to stay everywhere then it was a really good rewards program but you know unfortunately it's not anymore it's like yeah like it's a nice to get something back i guess if you're going to go there anyway but it's not a reason to book through them anymore.

You know what it did? It made some of the premium credit cards more appealing. So now if I'm going to book an independent hotel through a portal, I'm going to do it either to earn 10x points through the Chase portal with my Sapphire Reserve or 10x points through the Capital One portal or right now through, I guess, summer of 2024, 10x through Citi as well, if you have the Premier or Prestige card. So a lot of opportunities during 10x valuable points. And I would take 10x points in those programs over 10%-ish back in in hotels.com anyway um but now the difference is so much bigger it's uh it really turns me uh towards those programs instead yeah and it makes it so even if booking through chase

is more expensive as long as it's not like way more expensive it's still going to be a better deal it could be yeah for sure um all right so um before we get into uh nick and i saying who the winners of this year's bonvoy awards are i'm going to remind you who won last year last year 2022 nick's pick for bonvoy of the year was american airlines uh so american airlines had had uh gotten rid of award charts for their own flights and started doing all these, what were at the time called web special awards. And what was weird about that whole situation was even when prices were super low on American Airlines flights, they were not available to book through partner programs. So you couldn't book them with your British Airways Avios or your Iberia Avios or

really any of American Airlines partners. And so Nick was very much not a fan of that situation. For me, my pick was Marriott Bonvoy for ditching the reward charts for good and going to what we have today, which is awards costing, in some cases, well over 100,000 points per night. And it used to be capped much lower than that. So that was our 2022 results. Now, Nick and I are going to pick our 2023 winners. I'm going to quickly remind you who the candidates are.

There's Bonvoy. Bonvoy's free night extensions. Hyatt and MGM's marriage goes bust. Wyndham vacates high value Vacasa bookings. Delta dumps their devastation. Chase guts, guts,

pay yourself back. Aeroplane's Etihad Alliance goes astray and Hotels.com becomes 5x less rewarding. Who do you pick, Nick? My clear winner here is Aeroplan. I'm so disappointed in Aeroplan because the people that run Aeroplan are like miles and points nerds,

self-proclaimed miles and points nerds, people who understand this whole world. So they know that people were super excited about those Etihad first class awards. And clearly they weren't able to work things out with Etihad. And that part isn't entirely on Aeroplan. If Etihad first class awards. And clearly they weren't able to work things out with Etihad. And that part isn't entirely on Arrow Plan. If Etihad just wasn't willing to play ball, there's only so much that Arrow Plan can do to make them play ball. So I don't fault them for the fact that Etihad didn't allow this to happen. And in fact, I don't know this, but I wonder if the blocking of business and first class awards is a retaliation of sorts from Air Canada Aeroplan saying, well, fine, we're just not going to make those available. Maybe it's not the ETAB side. Maybe it's the Aeroplan side as a sort of a retaliation there. I didn't fix it. They just continued to break it over and over again, and they should have fixed this and made it easy and made sure all of the agents knew.

Because again, I feel like the airplane knows why this would upset people, and the fix, so to speak, was relatively easy. I say relatively because they promised Emirates bookings when available to people as a replacement without having to pay the additional Emirates price, and that's probably costing them something. So I can feel their pain there, but then they didn't even make that available to everybody who called, even though they were supposed to, and there were supposed to be points that were deposited, and not everybody got that, or some people got that and other people didn't. And it was just, it became such a mess. And we continue to hear from people all the time that their bookings,

now their rebookings have gotten messed up. And so they need to be reticketed and aeroplane agents don't know how to do it or say it's not necessary. And then, oh yes, it is necessary and blah, blah, blah. So it's just, it's messy and it shouldn't be. It should have been fixed and everybody should have been offered either rebook or cancel and whatever compensation should have automatically gone out so that people don't have to call and be told different things by different agents. So I'm disappointed that Aeroplan hasn't done better on that because I'm generally a very big Aeroplan fan and I love their award chart. I've talked lots about the crazy cool things you can do with it. I've booked some amazing Air Canada Aeroplan awards, but man, I would be unhappy if I had an upcoming trip within the next month or two, as I know many people do. And it's all up in the air

because Aeroplan can't get their stuff together and get these bookings fixed one way or another the way that they promised to do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So next pick is Aeroplan and Etihad's Alliance. My pick, this is hard. I mean, Delta would have had it locked up. Poor Delta. They keep trying year after year, but they would have had it locked up with their original attempt to Bonvoy all their members. But then when they walked that back, they lost their chance of winning this year's Bonvoy awards. There's always next year, Delta. There's always next year. Yeah. So I've struggled between Bonvoy, Bonvoying their free night extensions.

That really hurts. And Hotels.com becoming 5X less rewarding. I have to give the award this year to Hotels.com. Congratulations, Hotels.com. The reason I give you that award is even though I have these other channels, I can get 10x. I had finally settled on a routine way of booking independent hotels. I would find a portal that had some kind of bonus for hotels.com, click through, you know, logins so that I'm earning rewards from hotels.com and book through there.

And, you know, having one less sort of like difficulty in figuring out what's the best way of booking things, you know, it just, it was good enough at a good reward. So I'll just do it this way every time. And now they're just not even on my radar anymore. I keep getting great Capital One Shopping targeted offers. And so I keep earning Capital One Shopping money. And the various gift card options, it's a mixed bag. But Hotels.com is one of the options. And so I have found myself particularly interested now in booking through Hotels.com because I have access to these gift cards through Capital One Shopping rewards. And I'm not necessarily going to spend as much money through most of the other options through the redemptions there. So I've actually found myself

looking at booking through Hotels.com more and more because of that pile of gift card money, essentially, but certainly not because of the awards program. I don't disagree with you. So I don't know if things have changed, but in the past when I've tried to use Hotels.com gift cards, most of the properties I've tried to book book it wasn't an option to use those gift cards for those properties so i'm not sure you know why some are allowed and others aren't but at least back when i've tried it in the past that was the case so that's a good warning because you do need to check that in advance you need to go through like the booking steps and make sure that that's even an option before you redeem for hotels.com gift cards. So that's a good safety tip.

All right. So to end this segment, our winners of the Bonvoy 2023 Bonvoy Awards are Aeroplan and hotels.com. Congratulations to both. Well done. Well done. All right. Like well done in the case of like burning your food, that kind of well done. All right. So, so in the case of like burning your food, that kind of well done, you burned your, you burned your,

your, your, your members and, and Delta better luck next year. All right, Delta. I know you're, you're aiming for it.

Eventually you'll get there. You can do it. We have faith in you. Okay. So this week's question of the week, then I was kind of debating back and forth between two different questions but but because it's the end of the year and i keep getting similar questions to this we're gonna go with this one so bobby writes in and says uh love your show can't wait

for it on the weekends here's my question my player two and i both have the amex gold card his annual fee is coming due in january and we just aren't getting the value and keeping it he has about 80 000 membership rewards points sitting in his account. I know we can't transfer them to me. What's your best advice as to what to do with them? We're planning on downgrading his card too, so we're interested in an Amex cash back card. But we've heard from a lot of people. I just saw another message in Frequent Mailer Insiders yesterday who are looking at,

I think it's the end of the year, maybe people are taking stock of their finances and saying, okay, this card needs to go, that card needs to go. So if you've got like an Amex Gold card and you're like, okay, well, this isn't working for me. What's your best option to do with the points before you cancel the card? Yeah, this is really simple. Just make sure you have another card in your portfolio that earns membership rewards. And then when you cancel the card in your portfolio that earns membership rewards. And then when you cancel the gold card, all your points will stay. With Amex, your points stay with the person, not with the card. And that is different from the other programs, but that's how Amex does it. And so it makes it really easy. And as far as making sure you have another card,

you could either look for what has the best welcome bonus, get a platinum card or something like that, or go with one that's free and just keep it forever. So there's two choices there. You get the Blue Business Plus, which is a great option because it earns two points per dollar for all spend up to $50,000 per year. Or the everyday card, both of them have no annual fee and will keep your membership rewards points alive. So yes, absolutely. And by the way, I agree with, there's no, I don't think there's any reason to have two gold cards in a family unless you spend a tremendous amount at grocery stores. But otherwise, just have the one card and use that for grocery and dining. Yeah, it makes sense to initially get it for the welcome bonus. But yeah, long term, you're probably not going to want to keep it. So that's a situation

that I imagine enough people find themselves in. And with Amex points specifically, there is just, I think, very little reason. I can't think of more than one or two reasons why you would cancel your last Amex card and have to speculatively transfer the points because there's two cards, like Greg just said, that don't have any annual fee. They can keep those points alive forever. There's just not a reason to do that. Now, obviously, if you could get a great welcome bonus, awesome. But if you don't want to pay the $700 annual, if you don't want

to pay the $250 for the gold card, maybe you don't want to pay the $695 for the platinum card right now. That's fine. Just get a fee-free card then and keep those points alive and transferable. And the reason I say that is I can tell you which programs I like the most in terms of transfer partners, the places where I would transfer MX points very frequently anyway. But it doesn't make any sense to me, even my favorites, to transfer to those because the value in collecting a transferable currency is the flexibility, the fact that when you need an award, you can pick whoever has the best price and transfer to them. And so it doesn't make sense to me to give up that flexibility rather than get an Amex every day or a Blue Business Plus, assuming that those are

options. If you're in some weird situation where your house is getting shut down and you have to transfer the points out or something, or you somehow got a card and you weren't supposed to, or it's under separate membership rewards, there's some fringe cases maybe where you've got a need to transfer points out speculatively, but those are awfully fringe. For most people, there's no reason to speculatively transfer out your Amex points because you want to cancel a card you don't want to pay for. Just get a free one. Now, unlike many issuers, there is not a free product change option for the gold card. A lot of issuers, you've got some sort of fee-free card that you could product change

to, but there is no fee-free card you can product change to from a gold card. So you are going to have to open a new account in order to keep those points alive. If you don't have another card that earns membership rewards points, then you are going to have to open another card for that. And let me just add to that, you could downgrade to the $150 green card, but you don't want to if you've never had the green card before, because that will lock you out of getting a welcome bonus on the green card. And so, you know, I would say just cancel the gold card after you make sure you have another membership rewards card, and then wait until there's a great welcome bonus on the green card and and pick that one up to get the point is there i should know the answer to this question is there no family language on the green card

uh i don't know off the top of my head yeah that's a good i just that's a good point i might be wrong about that if they've added family language yeah i don't i'm not sure whether they have or not on the green card the gold and the platinum yes but i don't know about the green so anyway i so that that's what i just said i maybe maybe not but neither here nor there i just wanted to check and see if you knew but anyway the other thing by the way also with the speculative transfers is that then you put a clock on your points so like let's say the your player two in that case transferred the hundred thousand points to avianca Life Miles because they like Avianca Life Miles.

Well, now those points are going to expire in 12 months if you don't have activity in that Avianca Life Miles account. So you're going to need another account that transfers points to Avianca Life Miles within the next 12 months anyway. You're going to have to transfer some more points in if you're not going to use those points in full within the next 12 months. So again, there's just no good reason to speculate we transfer there. All right. Off my soapbox. That's the end of this week's question

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