Frequent Miler on the Air - The 2024 Bonvoyed Awards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep286 | 12-20-24

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Today we'll take a look back at the year and talk about what loyalty programs have done to us instead of for us. This is for the loyalty grinches! (01:07) - Revisiting a question we'd answered previously about whether or not several domestic flights a month would be enough for earning status. (06:18) - One reader has some information to share about the Atlantis property they booked now (before their Caesar's Diamond status disappears) for a stay in the future... Read more about booking the Atlantis hotel here. (10:12) - Flying Blue: Sends emails saying "Congratulations you are now a Flying Blue Ultimate member" (11:44) - IHG: Purchase EQPs. 120K price: $640, no... $800, no... $1000, back to $640... (16:27) - Nick flies to Mexico but doesn't leave the airport (21:12) - Greg and Nick forgot about Bilt Find our podcast episode about the upcoming Alaska Premium card here. (23:42) - Preferred Hotels: Greg's ongoing Preferred Hotel booking saga (29:48) - AA: Can now use miles to book Hawaiian flights from mainland US (31:39) - Aviator Silver companion cert ain't all that Read our Aviator Silver companion cert first impressions here. (38:14) - Hilton Aspire resort credit-eligible hotel list un-shrinks (39:40) - Marriott Upgrade Awards now clear five days out (again) (43:27) - Southwest: assigned seating Read about Southwest's upcoming assigned seating here. (46:31) - 2023 Bonvoyed Awards Recap... 2024 Dis-Loyalty Nominees... (51:38) - Chase & Capital One priority pass drops restaurants (55:56) - Virgin goes dynamic (59:08) - Virgin devalues Delta One to Europe (1:02:36) - Wyndham Vacasa devaluation (1:06:19) - BA & Qatar raise prices for short-haul partner awards (AA, Alaska) (1:09:54) - Etihad nerfs award cancelations and point expirations (1:15:43) - Bilt reduces Rent Day earnings to 1K bonus points (1:18:50) - Wyndham Biz kills free cruises (1:21:20) - Hyatt integrates Mr & Mrs Smith (1:23:14) - Final picks (1:30:20) - Why are there so many pop-up ads on your site?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the 2024 Bonvoyed Awards. We're going to take a look back at the year and look at what the loyalty programs have done to us instead of for us and uh we have a bunch of nominees to discuss and ultimately nick and i will pick each separately who we think was the number one grinch of the year in this this year's bonvoy awards you're I mean, one degree. Very good.

Oh man, we're going to get like a cease and desist now from whoever wants to write to that. Oh yeah, we're screwed. Shoot, shoot. All right. Anyway, so don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or you want to go back to something later on,

you can always find the timestamps in the show notes and wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like this video or podcast or give us a review, give us some stars, leave a comment. We always love to hear from you. So it's time to drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right, giant mail. We've got two bits of giant mail for the first one from Jeremy. I'm hoping, Nick, you can refresh our memory here. This refers to a question of the week that we answered. Can you kind of summarize what that was about and how we answered it? Yeah.

So, all right. So if we back up to the original question was someone wrote in and they basically said that they just took a new job and they're going to fly to Chicago probably twice a month. And so wanted to know from like an elite status points earning perspective, whether they should choose to fly American United or Southwest and our response, or maybe even somebody, maybe, maybe Delta was in there too, or whatever. It doesn't really matter. Our response was basically that you're not going to earn elite status flying to Chicago a couple of times a month with any of the major airlines. So either you just want to pick the one that's cheapest, or if you're willing to play all the

games, the loyalty point games for American Airlines are the easiest one to bridge the gap and actually earn elite status with. So you could use the shopping portal stuff that we've talked about at length in the past or credit card spend and stuff like that in order to earn loyalty points. So you could beef up your balance and end up with status and get upgrades and whatnot. But a reader wrote it. So we heard from reader Jeremy who said, you know, another thought is two trips per month is 48 segments per year, which means you'd need to be spending about $400 per trip to get United Gold and in turn Star Alliance Gold. If it's not a government job and they can pick flights or book last minute, that could be reasonable. And so that made me realize, I think we probably did miss the mark in hindsight on this, because I was thinking of it from the old school perspective of

you're not flying far enough for that to add up and be worth it in terms of earning status. But now that all the airlines basically determine your status based on how much money you spend, maybe it is plausible and feasible, especially if your plans are made relatively close to departure for your two trips a month. Maybe you could spend it up. Because the point that the reader here was making, that Jeremy was making, was that United Gold status, which is Star Alliance Gold, required 10,000 premier qualifying points over the course of the year. And so if you're flying twice a month to Chicago, to and from Chicago, you're talking about four segments every month times 12 months a year. So that's 48 segments, essentially. And that's assuming you're nonstop,

I guess, or 48 directions anyway. And so if you were spending enough on each direction, like 200, I think it comes out to $208 if you do the math in each direction. So $416 round trip each time, then you would earn enough points, premier qualifying points for United Gold status. And so that made me realize I haven't gone back and done the math on other airlines. But yeah, I mean, if your flights are about 400 bucks round trip, which is not unbelievable, like it depends on where you where you're starting from. But that's certainly plausible that it could be. Or if you're able to pick, you have a budget and perhaps you're able to pick a flight in a fair class. It's a little bit higher or whatever. Your employer doesn't really care. Then maybe you could earn elite status. And we had kind of dismissed it as though it really wasn't possible at all. And I think it might be possible with some of the airlines. Yeah. So it's actually a little bit better than you said, because if you qualify, you can qualify partly on segments flown. And so to get gold status, instead of, if you have at least 24 premier qualifying flights you only need 8 000

premier qualifying points rather than the 10 000 so it's it's not a huge savings but but it's some uh in how many points you need and so that even improves the math a bit as well so yeah so jeremy uh pointed that out and yeah i i, I think you're right, Jeremy, that it actually is worth looking at each of these airlines to say, what are the requirements? Will this style of flying get you there? Because if you're agnostic to which one you're going to go with and could get gold status or a mid tier or high tier status

from doing that. It probably is worth it. Yeah, I didn't even think about it that way. And yeah, and you're right. The point that Greg made drops the average cost down, I think if I'm doing the quick math right, to about 330 $332 per round trip, which is really, really plausible, depending on where you're starting in the US, that those flights could be that much. So yeah, then you have to compare everything. I mentioned United because Jeremy mentioned United and Star Alliance Gold, and that would get you lounge access when flying Star Alliance Airlines, not United. But when you're flying other Star Alliance Airlines, even in economy class, you get lounge access with Star Alliance Gold and some other small benefits. And so you have to kind of look at that and compare with American and Delta and what you can get in terms of alliance status.

But yeah, I thought it was a good point that it's possible. Absolutely. But that's not all we have for today's Giant Mailbag. We also have a submission from Eric. Eric wrote, Hello, team, and happy holidays. I was enjoying my dog walk listening to the Ask Us Anything from December. And during that question and answer session, you discussed the

Atlantis stay valid through Caesar's diamond status match through Wyndham. So that's my situation exactly. My status will be expiring at the end of February like everyone else's, and I've never taken advantage of the Atlantis benefit. I called the appropriate number to make a reservation and called again just to confirm, but both agents told me that as long as I make the reservation prior to the expiration of my diamond status, that I could travel after my diamond status expires, because once the reservation is made and you have the email confirmation that they will honor it and they don't ask you about your status when you actually arrive on property. So I don't think I was at this particular ask us anything, but it sounds

like someone asked about whether you could book now for a Atl Atlanta stay that's after your status expires, right? Yeah. So to be clear, Atlantis, we're talking about the casino resort in the Bahamas. And one of the benefits of Caesar's Diamond status is a quote unquote complimentary four night stay at Atlantis. I put the quote unquote in there because between the fee, the resort fee, and I can't remember what else. I think it comes out to somewhere between 60 and a hundred dollars a night that you have to pay. I can't remember exactly what the deal is. Maybe the, maybe it's parking and resort fee that I'm thinking of, whatever it is, it's not exactly free, but it's significantly discounted. So anyway, yeah, the question had

come in, can you book it for after status expires? And one thing I want to correct in what Eric wrote was that he said his status expires at the end of February. It's February 1st, the end of January. So Caesar's status runs through January 31st. And I wanted to correct that so that anybody listening doesn't think they have longer than they actually do to book this. So the end of January, January 31st, your status, that's the end of Caesar's status. February 1st, you'll be back down to whatever you either earned or Caesar's no status gold. Yeah, that's if you matched from something else like the Wyndham business earner card. Yes, yes, exactly. So anyway, so the question had come in, can you book it for after your status is set to expire. And I thought that you wouldn't be able to book that. They would only let you book through January 31st was what I thought.

Clearly, apparently I was wrong. And this was great news because I saw this come in from Eric and I said, Ooh, we've been talking about trying to do this Atlanta stay one of these years and we keep putting it off and not doing it. And I was like, Ooh, maybe we could still book this. My wife and I both have Caesar's diamond status. Haven't had a chance to do it yet. But now I'm really curious because if that does work, that'd be great.

I'm not at all surprised to hear that they don't check your Caesar status once you're on property because what do they care about your Caesar status at that point? They've got you. That was the whole idea was to bring you in the door. So that doesn't surprise me. I thought that the booking agents wouldn't book it beyond January 31st. But I'm glad to be wrong about that. So that's awesome.

That's great news. I'm going to plan a trip to the Bahamas. Yeah. And thanks, Eric, for writing that in. That's, that could be very helpful to many people. A lot of people, I'm sure. Yeah. So get on that sooner rather than later.

By the way, you have to call. There's a number to call. I don't know if we have that in a post or not, but in the show notes, if we do have a post about how to book the Atlanta stay, we'll link to that. You have to call during business hours. They're like Monday through Friday because you're talking to a specific agent at Atlantis, and it's like one department that handles this. So the hours were, I'm saying business hours Monday through Friday. I think they were even a little more limited than that.

We did try to call and book this once before, and it was just such a pain that we ended up not doing it. But I think if you didn't get through to the right person, it'll be easy. Just don't assume that you can do this at eight o'clock on a Friday because you can't. Right. Okay. Let's talk about what crazy thing this week's what crazy thing is. Is it a fipple header, Greg? We've got a fipple header today. We've got five crazy things. And so it's not a double. It's not a triple. It's not a four-pole. It is a Fipple header. Five crazy things. All right. So what crazy thing did Air France KLM Flying Blue do this week? Yeah. They sent emails to a bunch of people saying, congratulations, you are now a Flying Blue ultimate member now ultimate is their toppest top of the top tier elite status which gets you all kinds of upgrades and other perks and uh you know unlocks

the ability to use miles to book uh la premiere first class which you can't do unless you have platinum status or higher so all kinds of things, but it was just a mistake. Oops. Oopsie daisy. They didn't really mean to give you a free top tier status. So yeah, I think people who logged into their accounts didn't have the ultimate status. They didn't have the status.

People called in and were told, yeah, it was just a mistake. Yeah. Oopsie daisy. All right. So Flying Blue sent out a mistaken email. they're getting people very excited for no reason i was initially very disappointed that i didn't have this email now i'm kind of glad so that i didn't have to stress over trying to figure out whether or not it was going to be honored so i don't feel as bad about it now but i do feel bad for the people who got it and got excited because that stinks yeah oh well

all right on to our next piece of the fipple header what crazy thing did ihg do this week okay so ihg uh has a promotion which they did last year too where you can buy elite qualifying points and um so the idea here is that you can always buy points from IHG, and they're often on sale for half a cent each, which can be a good deal, just like that. But in this case, when you buy those points, they're elite qualifying. You need 120,000 elite qualifying points for diamond status, which then would get you free breakfast and other perks at hotels. So when it first came out, or at some point, a lot of people were seeing that it would cost $640 for 120,000 points. So if you think about, well, what does that mean? If you bought 120,000 points when they're on sale for half a cent each, it would cost you $600. So basically, they were saying for just $40 more, you can not only get that many points, but you'll also have diamond status for all of 2025.

So that seemed like a blisteringly good deal uh anyone who's going to be staying a few times at ihg properties could you know and could benefit from the breakfast you know what a great deal there um but then you know the next day people were logging in and saying no it's showing eight hundred dollars for the same number of points. So, okay, well, now it's $200 more than just buying the points straight up when they're on sale. It depends on your situation whether that's a good deal. For some people, it still could have been a good deal. So then after thinking about it a while,

people logged in to see what to buy at $800. And that was $1,000. Yeah, now we're pushing it. Now we're pushing it. Now we're pushing it at IHG. to see what what you know to buy at eight hundred dollars and now it was a thousand dollars yeah now we're pushing it now we're pushing it and um then last night as we're recording this and this morning um it's back down to 640 so i have no idea what it will be when is it tied to the price of bitcoin or what i don't know. I mean, you know, IHG sometimes does things just to get onto this crazy thing segment.

And so that might be what's going on here. So thank you. Thank you, IHG. And I'm sorry you get buried in a list of five crazy things. They were not counting on the Fipple header, Greg. They thought that they bought their way to the headline.

They thought they would get an exclusive. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry for that, IHG. So a quick question. Did you get targeted for this? Did you buy it? Would you buy it? I didn't look to see whether I was targeted because I had—

So that tells me whether you would buy it. I had a situation where I had a very large spend I had to do in a short amount of time, and I have diamond status secured through card spend. So yeah, so there's no reason for me to do that. But I actually thought about like, should I sign up for my wife? twice a year we use her free night certificates at, you know, and so it'd be nice to have diamond status for those days, but I'm kind of on the fence on, I don't know that it's worth it for that. Was she targeted? Do you know?

I didn't check. Didn't check. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I tried cause it's six 40. I said, well, okay,

I'll use the points eventually. I'll probably end up buying over time. I'll probably end up buying 120,000 IHG points anyway. So for 40 bucks more, I figured same kind of thing. I've got a free night certificate I'm going to use every year. And so just using that, I'd come out ahead on breakfast for my family of four. So I thought, oh, you know, this, this is good. I would do this, but I tried logging in and I was not targeted for it.

So yeah. And also to be clear, like I, she's not like Hilton, you know, Hilton does those half cent sales like every five minutes, but IHG, it's less often and they're often targeted, like how much you're getting discount. So the half a cent thing is not like a lock, in my opinion, you know, when you're when you want to buy the points. So I, at this, at the six 40 price, I think that's a good price for buying the points anyway, even without that. So, so I would, I would also think about it that way. If you're interested in the points and the status. Yep.

Yep. Pretty good. Yep. Yep. Good deal there. All right. So, and crazy though,

that the price is fluctuating. So if you, you listen to this and you log in and it's like a thousand bucks, maybe give it a day, see what happens. Because you never know. All right. What crazy thing next?

What crazy thing did I do this week? I did something crazy? Are you sure? Well, I think a lot of people would think it was crazy. You flew to Mexico and back and didn't leave the airport in Mexico. Well, until you got to that last detail, a lot of people are like, what's crazy? It's true. I didn't leave the airport in Mexico. Well, until you got to that last detail, a lot of people are like, what's crazy? So yeah, it's true. I didn't leave the airport. Yeah. So I took a little mileage run. Been a while since I've done it. Actually, I don't think I've ever done a mileage run because I've never really chased elite status or anything. But this, of course, was not an elite status

mileage run. But I was trying to get in an extra airline for the SAS challenge, the SAS Eurobonus Millionaire Challenge that we just did our million mile madness and flew 15 airlines in order to try to earn a million SAS miles. And unfortunately, I was still missing credit for three of the airlines. So I flew to Mexico for the day. Initially, I thought I might stay overnight, but my options to stay overnight were either to stay in Cancun, which would have been fine, but it was more expensive than I really wanted to spend for a solo trip by myself to like, what, sit at the pool for a few hours by myself? I don't know. It didn't seem worth spending hundreds of dollars or an equivalent amount of points for that. So then the other option was I can fly to Mexico City,

which seemed kind of appealing, and spend a night in Mexico City. And that did sound appealing. I've never been to Mexico City before, so that had some appeal to it. But by the time I got there, I wasn't sure that I was really going to be able to do or see very much. And also, the Hyatt properties where I'd want to stay were kind of far from the airport. And so it didn't seem perfect either. So then I found a third option, and I realized, oh, I could fly to Cancun on an American Airlines award ticket and then buy a cash ticket on Aeromexico from Cancun to Chicago and do my overnight in Chicago. So I started in Albany, New York at 510 in the morning and flew to Cancun, got to Cancun.

So Albany to Miami to Cancun, got to Cancun just after noon, close to one o'clock, I guess, maybe. And then around four o'clock, I flew Cancun to Mexico City, and then Mexico City to Chicago and just shortly over in Mexico City and ended up in Chicago. So that was kind of crazy long way to get from Albany to Chicago, that's for sure. But I have really good friends in Chicago, a friend of mine that I've known for, gosh, 25 years or so. And, and we used to go to Chicago a couple of times a year to visit. And of course, now that we all have kids, it's a lot harder to make that happen. So I don't get

to see him as often. So I thought it was a great opportunity. Once I saw, I can get to Chicago. I said, Oh, great. Let me text my friend and see if he's free on Sunday to grab brunch. And of course he's the type of friend that I can come out of the blue on, you know, like a Friday morning or whatever and say, Hey, are you free for brunch on Sunday? And he'd be like, yeah, of course. And so, uh, so that was great. So I got to a chance to spend some time with him and his family. And so it was a crazy trip in the sense that I didn't stop in Mexico, but not so crazy in the sense that I did get something good out of it instead of just sitting on the beach in Cancun or eating dinner by myself in Mexico city. I got to spend time with good friends that, uh, that, you know, was great to see. And hopefully you ensured that you're going to have all 15 of the required airlines credited for SAS to earn the million miles that the SAS promo is offering.

Hopefully. But I'm rolling my eyes because nothing has credited yet. Not Aeromexico, none of the three that I'm missing. And I just saw it like an hour ago before we recorded this somebody in frequent miler insiders reported that their 15th airline just credited and so they're gonna get the million miles and i'm like my goodness and i still don't have credit for you know maybe vietnam airlines or my air europa that should have been slam dunks yeah i'm like ah man it is frustrating and i keep checking like throughout the day obsessively. Anyway.

Yeah. All right. Let me ask you something. So you went to Chicago. That makes a lot of sense. See a great friend. Did you think about flying to Detroit? And I'm not asking because I'm hurt that you didn't visit me, but because your beloved Lions, Detroit Lions were playing the Bills that day, which was a huge game.

And you could have, had you come, you could have watched in person the Lions being the Lions. You know, as appealing as that sounds, I was okay with missing that opportunity. And of course, Craig means the Lions being the Lions because they lost. Although, of course, that said, if anybody's following the NFL this year, you know, the lions are 12 and two. And so I've been a lions fan since the, like the nineties. And so that means I was a lions fan the year they went Oh, and 16 and lots and lots of years with terrible records. So, so I'm used to seeing the lions lose a lot. I'm not used to seeing the lions win 12 out of 14 games. So, and that's with like all those injuries. I mean, most of the defenses are what they've pulled out.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Enough of us doing a sports show, I guess. Right. We're not a sports show. We're not a sports show. What other crazy thing?

What crazy thing did both of us do? Because we did something nuts last week, right? We did. We did. So we record earlier this week, we recorded a coffee break episode about Alaska's upcoming premium card coming summer of 2025. And during that show, I incorrectly said that there are no transferable points that transfer to Alaska other than Amex indirectly by transferring to Hawaiian and then to Alaska that way. And my excuse is that I'm an elderly guy. I forgot all about Bilt.

Bilt Rewards, of course, we've talked about many times that they transfer to Alaska. That was the almost better than even or good consolation prize when they stopped transferring to American. But anyway, so that, as if that wasn't bad enough, later on the same show, Nick said something about, well, basically the same thing, that there are no transfer partners and that Alaska wasn't planning on adding, you know, wasn't interested in becoming a transfer partner with anyone. Now we have, if you listen to the show, right, when it was published, you probably heard those incorrect misses. Um, but Carrie's chopped out those bits. And so if you listen to it more recently, you wouldn't have heard that. But anyway, that is crazy that I, I get that one of us you know forgot about bill but for both of us um

my excuse is i'm elderly i'm 57 my excuse is like greg is greg is contagious the elderly contagious right right i actually think nick has a better excuse um he we recorded this just when he got back from that um mileage run to mexico and chicago and and as before starting the recording he said he had gotten i don't know a couple hours sleep because you got in really late your united flight was delayed yeah it sure was yeah and snowstorm and all the rest of that so yeah i got in so it's true i hadn't gotten much sleep so i'll take that i'll take the excuse there i think you have a better excuse than i do yeah still pretty crazy that we both i can't believe that we both forgot about that but anyway so so they are a built

partner good there and hopefully we won't make any more crazy mistakes like that but if we do carry a worker magic behind the scenes and fix it for us so that's good to know we can hope all right so what crazy thing next was a fipple header that's only four things so far if i counted right so there's one more what crazy thing did did Preferred Hotels do this week? Greg, Greg, Greg, come on now. There's been a lot of craziness with Preferred Hotels. I told you last week or the week before, maybe both, that you haven't sold me on Preferred Hotels yet.

There's more craziness to come because this is getting a little muddy. This is actually an update to an ongoing saga of my booking with Preferred Hotels. So it's really just an update. So what I reported on last week's show is that I had booked a Preferred Hotel with choice points. And the hotel had contacted me and asked for a credit card for a deposit. And they ended up charging the full amount.

I called them and pointed out that I booked with choice points. So they reversed it. And I thought all was good at that point. Reasonable to think that. Yeah. What's happened since then is the person from the hotel contacted me again and said,

could I send them the confirmation email I got from Choice? Because they're trying to contact Choice to figure out why the virtual card that they had received wouldn't work, that they kept running it and they couldn't get it to work. So I sent them the confirmation, but there wasn't any information about who to contact if there's problems or anything. Not a number for the Choice accounting department at the bottom of your confirmation email? Nothing. department at the bottom of your confirmation email nothing um so um so then a couple days

later maybe the hotel uh called me again and said that they had tried calling preferred hotels they had tried calling choice choice um had no idea what they were talking about like choice couldn't find the reservation they said said, you know, we don't book preferred hotels. I don't know the scammer Greg the Frequent Miler. I don't know who he is. We heard Capital One shut him down, though. You probably shouldn't let him stay there. And anyway, so they were unable to find anyone who could help. And so, I was very hesitant. So, she was kind of saying you could, my choices were to, you know, just cancel it altogether or rebook it at the

cash rate which i definitely didn't want to do or i could try canceling it and rebooking it i wasn't sure if the word would still be available when i was talking to her it looked like it is but still um just to see if maybe they would get a new virtual card that would work you know that kind of thing so but anyway so i was hesitant to do all that. So instead I taught the person, I taught her how to deal with choice hotels when you're calling about preferred hotels. And basically the idea is when you call choice, the chance of getting someone who's even heard of the preferred hotels relationship is probably under 5% chance. And so when you call, the first thing you have to say is, do you know about choices,

you know, partnership with preferred hotels? If they answer no, then your choices are either, you know, let me speak to someone else or hang up and call again i mean you have to get someone who's heard of it then you have a chance of like you know making your way up the chain to someone who would have some idea of how to handle whatever problem you're calling about so that's what i instructed her about um i uh and then that was in the morning i didn't hear anything all day and so at the end of the day i wrote wrote back and said, any luck with this? Yeah. And they replied back.

I still don't know what actually happened, but they replied back saying, your reservation is all set. Apologies for any confusion. We look forward to seeing you soon. Well, I mean, that's good news. Yeah, probably. Most likely. I mean, worst case, even if they haven't figured it out, I have confirmation from the hotel itself that my reservation's all good. So I think I'm okay.

I wouldn't like to have heard from them. This was what the solution was, especially so that I could help others. Like, you know, tell other people, if your hotel's having trouble, here's what to do. So I did ask them for more information, but I haven't heard anything back yet. Okay. That was going to be your homework assignment. I was going to say, okay, so the homework assignment here is you need to figure out who they called and see if you can get that phone number. Or did they figure it out some other way? Did they realize they were running the too high of an amount because there's a negotiated

rate when it's booked through choice or something like that might be the right solution. But whatever it is, I hope to find out so that we can let, you know, everybody listening know that if you're in that situation, here's what to tell the hotel so that they can fix the problem. Yeah. All right. Well, a good news update update but hopefully we'll have even more to come on that another update hopefully next week we'll see so maybe the crazy thing there

is not preferred hotels but greg that i'm that i'm still batting away trying to get these uh preferred hotels booked with points the crazy thing is that you had to train the preferred hotels rep how to deal with choice. That's the crazy thing. And it's all accurate, right? I mean, that's exactly what you have to do. And great advice for anybody listening that wants to do one of these, you may as well just lead with the question, have you heard of this partnership with preferred hotels?

And when that person inevitably, the choice representative inevitably tells you they haven't, just hang up and call back again. Or like Greg said, you could ask to speak to somebody else but probably easiest just hang up and call again and keep rolling the dice until you get somebody who knows what they're talking about because you're not going to train the rep and in terms of how the relationship works or where explain to them that the partnership exists and have them understand it and be able to magically book it so don't waste your time with somebody that doesn't know. Just keep swinging at it until you get somebody who knows what's going on. Yeah. And it's useless to try to explain it to them.

Totally useless. Trust me, I know. Yeah. I mean, that's generally true, right? When you get a representative that doesn't know what you're talking about with really any program, anything, you're almost always wasting your time trying to explain to them something that they don't know because it's just not going to happen. Exactly. All right. Let's talk next about awards points and more. So awards points and more. First up, we've got some American Airlines news.

Yeah. So until recently, until very recently, so American has long had a partnership with Hawaiian Airlines, and you were able to use American Airlines miles to book Hawaiian flights that did not come to the U.S. mainland. So you could book, for example, Honolulu to Sydney or to Fiji or things like that. And business class, I think, was like 60,000 miles, a very reasonable price booking with American Airlines miles. But you couldn't book, you know, like from the U.S. to Hawaii, the U.S. mainland to Hawaii. Now you can. So something changed about their partnership or how American wanted to treat the partnership.

I'm not really sure what's happening behind the scenes. So that's good news for anyone with American Airlines miles. Sometimes Hawaiian, you know, if you're having trouble, well, if you want to go to Hawaii, of course, sometimes Hawaiian itself could be your best bet for award availability, but also flying onward to Asia or the South Pacific, sometimes going through Hawaii is a better route than going sort of more directly. Yeah, more availability anyway, for sure. At times to go via Hawaii.

I don't know about the availability from US to Hawaii. Quick question, because I didn't actually look closely at this yet. Are you able to book mainland US to, let's say, Asia as a single award, or do you have to book those separately? Because I know American generally doesn't allow, well, I shouldn't even say generally, oftentimes doesn't allow transiting through a third region. They have a whole bunch of exceptions to that. But so Hawaii is a separate region. Not sure yet. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Okay. All right. Next up, we've got the Advantage Aviator Silver Companion Certificate. So we talked about this previously. And so the Aviator Silver Companion Certificate. So we talked about this previously.

And so the Aviator Silver card is the version of the Barclays American Airlines card that you can only get by invitation. You can sign up for or apply for the Aviator Red card and then maybe get an invite or an opportunity to upgrade that to the Aviator Silver. Either of those cards, the Aviator Red or Aviator Silver, after you've spent $20,000 in a card member year, you earn a companion certificate that's valid for you and two companions. The companions pay $99 plus taxes each. Now that certificate doesn't come until after your anniversary. You got to pay your annual fee and it takes a bit after that. And so we knew that that existed, but I hadn't had one before. I don't think Greg had had one of these companion certificates from Barclays before. So I was

curious as to how it would work and how easy it would be to use. So I met the 20K spend. I've talked about that previously in order to get the certificate. Took forever for the certificate to finally post. So I had mentioned recently that it hadn't posted. My anniversary date was October 2nd and it finally posted December 17th. So about two and a half months after my anniversary. So I wrote about the timeline and my theory as to when it will post for you if you have an Aviator Silver. So you can check out the details of that in the post. But my first impressions of the certificate are essentially that it might save you some money, but it might not save you very

much and might not save you anything at all. It might not be useful at all. I was pretty disappointed. And I say pretty disappointed because in some ways it was better than I expected. So the Barclays Aviator Certificate is valid for most main cabin economy class fares, not quite all of them, but most of them, not on basic economy, no big surprise there, but basically any main cabin fair, almost any main cabin fair is eligible to use the companion certificate. So that seemed like good news. However, there's a couple of bad things. So first up, lots of blackout dates. So the blackout dates for this year, 2024, I think there were 50 of them for 2025. There's 53 for 2026, there's 56. So that's a lot of blackout dates when you look at the fact that the certificate is only valid for 12 months and

you have to complete travel by midnight of the day it expires. So you literally have exactly one year to use this certificate and they're blacking out like two months basically of time. And a reader pointed out that a lot of it was weekends. They pointed out that it was 12 weekends out of 52. So basically a quarter of the year's weekends are blacked out of using the certificate. And so that's, that's pretty lame for a lot of people. And I assume it's like over the holidays as well that it's blacked out. I didn't really look at that. So, so basically, you know, they're, they're blacking out the dates that, you know, the way to get the most value from something like this is when you, when you really want to fly during a time when prices are high.

And this is a way, you know, theoretically of just paying one high fare. And then the other two people that are with you are only paying $99 plus taxes. Um, but if they're blacking out all those dates when it's expensive, right. Yeah. I mean, the chance of getting good value from it seems slim. Yeah. Well, so, and I was a little even generous probably, and I wasn't particularly positive about the certificate and the post, but I was still probably a little generous because when you look at it, you say, okay, so out of 12 months, they're basically blacking out two months worth of dates that you can't use it.

So really you only have about 10 months to use it. And of course, when your certificate posts, you're unlikely. Well, first of all, you can't use it for travel within 48 hours. You have to book at least 48 hours in advance. So it blacks out the first two days anyway after it posts. And probably most people aren't planning travel, aren't going to book a flight within like a month of the certificate posting, right? I mean, like most people just aren't planning flights that close in. And particularly for me, because this certificate posted on December 17th, like what new flight am I booking in December? I already have my plans, my travel plans for December.

So then I look at it, I'm like, well, that kind of cuts off a month. And so, you know, depending on your situation, maybe that's true or maybe it's not true for you. But at any rate, it seemed to me like the total potential number of dates when you can use this are pretty slim. And then of course, you know, you can't necessarily fly on the weekend you want to fly on. So, so that kind of stinks. I did give some examples, though, I gave an example, where even on a flight that wasn't very expensive, you would still save some money with the companion certificate over the basic economy fare. Even if you would have bought the basic economy fare, I would have saved about $60 a passenger, but only about $60 a passenger

on what was a $266 round trip ticket for one passenger, or that was in a basic economy or $350 in main cabin. So you'd get three people in main cabin for about 60 bucks a person less than the cost of basic economy. So I mean, you'll save a little bit of money, not a ton of money. So, you know, don't get too, too excited about the companion certificate. Essentially, it could potentially be useful, but I would look at it more as like an extra. I wouldn't be counting on getting a lot of value out of it. We'll use it to good value. There's a particular trip I'm looking at where the tickets are like six, $700 a person and work with the certificate. So I would get pretty good value out of it. But, uh, but I think that that's just going to be so niche. Like I'm traveling

small airport to small airport. And so if that's you, maybe you'll save a bunch of money, but right. Right. I don't know. Most people won't. Yeah. My lesson from reading your post is like, you know, if I'm going to be use and just not even like worry about it expiring without being used. Cause I do not see myself pursuing it. I also hate that.

Like you can't, it doesn't allow upgrades for example. So if you have elite status or, or you want to pay for upgrades, you're, you just can't do it. Right. It's economy online.

Yeah. Yeah. It says that it's not a ticket, not eligible for upgrades. And it doesn't say only for elite status. I'm sure that based on the wording of it, you can't pay for an upgrade. online yeah that's it yeah it says that it's not a ticket not eligible for upgrades uh and it doesn't say only for elite status i'm sure that based on the wording of it you can't pay for an upgrade either and you have to call in order to book it you can't book it yourself online it's not like the bank of america companion certificates with alaska or the southwest companion certificate

you gotta gotta call in order to book it so that adds a layer of you know pain in the buttedness so yeah it's just not great. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that. So once I use it, I'll have some more details, I'm sure about how that process went, but initial impression is, eh. All right. Next up in awards points and more, the Hilton Aspire resort credit has improved, I guess. Yeah. Well, so, so we had reported a while ago that the list of eligible resorts that Hilton publishes had shrunk. A lot of hotels that people had been counting on were no longer on that list, but now they seem to have reappeared. So I don't know, did anything really happen here other than

the page getting changed? Like, do you think they were really invalid or just someone messed up and didn't have them on the list? Tough to say. Tough to say. But yeah, I mean, this is, honey, I untrunk the kids, I guess, because the properties that I noted a couple of properties that used to be eligible for the credit that weren't when the list came out, the new list came out. And those are the ones I noted are back in the list. And then I went through the comments on the post because there are a bunch of readers that lamented that this resort or that resort was no longer on the list. And all of the ones that people had mentioned are back on the list of eligible places. So Greg might be right. It might have been that all of them continued to

work and just the website was wrong in terms of not listing all of the resorts. Hard to say, but anyway, if you thought you weren't going to get use out of that benefit or you were disappointed to see a particular property no longer on the list of eligible resorts, you should recheck the list because it's changed quite significantly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. The next thing is Marriott. A little bit of good news. They didn't actually announce this, but it was buried in their terms and conditions, a change in their terms and conditions, that their nightly upgrade awards, which are things that you can get when you've earned 50 nights with Marriott within a year, or again, at 75 nights, you could pick five of these nightly

upgrade awards. The way they work is you apply them to a reservation if the hotel allows it. And then within a certain number of days before the actual stay, it starts checking to see if it can upgrade you. And you may or may not get upgraded to whatever you picked as your goal. So it was already not the best upgrade instrument available across the hotel chains, but I guess better than Hilton's upgrade instrument since Hilton doesn't have it. The bar is low there. Right, the bar is low. When you said you may or may not get upgraded, I was thinking to myself, you probably won't, but you may. I think it depends a lot on the property. Some are really good about that.

But anyway, they had, I don't know when, maybe last year, changed it from starting to check five days in advance to starting to check three days in advance. And so that was a little bit of a devaluation, sort of, except that, you know. Either way, it's not even guaranteed. You generally didn't get upgraded five days in advance anyway, so I don't know that it mattered. But anyway, it moved from five days to three days. Now it's back to five days, except if the property is one of these three brands, Edition, Ritz-Carlton, or St. Regisis then it's still three days in advance and gotta love this about marriott that like no matter what rule they have there are gotta have exceptions there are complicated exceptions and this is not quite you know breakfast level confusing but it's just absurd like what does it cost the hotels to allow the checking for upgrades to start five days in

advance to happen that they're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not good. You can't do it until three days in advance. I don't get it. Marriott just wants to make it clear that every rule has an exception. That's all they want to make sure every rule has got an exception. Come on, guys. Yeah.

Well, so the advantage of five days over three days, like my initial reaction was the same as Greg's like, what does it matter? You got to wait till the last minute anyway to know whether you're going to get a suite. So you can't use that when you really need a suite, right? Or whatever the upgrade is. The difference, I think, is that the cancellation policy on a lot of hotels is two days or sometimes three days. And so if it's checking five days in advance, I guess you have the opportunity to book a stay and maybe have another stay booked and say, okay,

well, if my upgrade doesn't clear, I'm going to cancel the Marriott stay. And so if it's checking five days in advance and you can take a swing for the first couple of days and see if the upgrade clears, like Greg said, I haven't often had one of these clear five days in advance anyway, but it does give you a couple of days for that to potentially happen anyway. So I think that's maybe the advantage of the switch. Actually, yeah, no, that's, that's a really good point. If a suite's really important to you, then that's exactly right. That, that, that's something you might want to do and, and exactly have that backup so that you can stay somewhere else if, if, uh, if it doesn't clear. Yeah. I could see like booking a suite with Hyatt,

like maybe with points or something like that and saying, okay, well, but I'm going to do this with Marriott too. And then I'll just cancel with Marriott if it doesn't clear or if it does clear, then I'll say, hey, I finally won on one of these suite upgrade awards and cancel Hyatt's day, so there you go. There you have it. Nice sort of change there. Speaking of nice changes, well, I don't know if it's nice necessarily, but another piece of news and awards points and more at the very least is Southwest has made some changes to their assigned seating policy or has announced some details of the changes coming to their assigned seating or the news coming with their assigned seating, I guess we should say, because assigned seating, of course, is not something Southwest has been known for for years and years. But starting in mid 2025, they're going to start

selling assigned seating for flights departing starting in early 2026. So we don't have specific details as to what date they're going to start selling seat assignments or what date they're going to start implementing them on flights. But expect sometime probably around summer 2025 for tickets are selling for travel in winter 2026. So that's coming at some point. And they announced some details for elite status benefits and companion pass holders. So a list members, that's the first level of elite status with Southwest Airlines are going to get standard upfront seating at the time of booking. So that's kind of nice. They'll get free seat selection essentially at the time of booking. So that's kind of nice. They'll get free seat selection essentially at the time of booking. So that's A-list members. And then they'll get access to extra legroom seats 48 hours prior to departure. So they'll have a chance to pick out extra legroom seats if they're

left 48 hours prior to departure. A-list preferred members can choose from any available seat on the plane at the time of booking. So A-list preferred is their top tier status. They have two tiers, is all Southwest. And so you'll be able to pick your seat at the time of booking. So A-list preferred is their top tier status. They have two tiers is all Southwest. And so you'd be able to pick your seat at the time of booking. That's nice. So you'd be able to pick an extra legroom seat, exit row, whatever it is that you want as an A-list preferred member. As a companion pass holder, your companion is going to get the same, whatever seating benefit that you have, it's going to transfer to your companion. So if you're a companion pass holder and you have A-list going to transfer to your companion. So if you're a companion pass holder and you have a list preferred status, then your companion is also going to be able to pick any seat at the time of booking. Or if you're a companion pass holder and you just book a more

expensive fare that comes with seat selection, your companion will also get seat selection. So whatever seat selection benefit you have as the primary companion pass holder, your companion will get too. So that's nice. Those are decent changes. And then there was a little bonus bit that was in some details at the end of the announcement that you had to click to expand and see. And that was some small changes to cancellation and change policy that were good, I think. So you can now cancel just one leg of a round trip flight. So if you book round trip and later decide that you don't want to take the outbound, but you do still want the return, you can cancel just the outbound. That's nice. One of the reasons

we typically book one ways is because that's usually a pain if possible at all. And so that's nice that you can do that now. Yeah, I like that because, you know, it just saves some work and, you know, booking a round trip instead of two separate ones and having to track the two separate PNRs and all that kind of stuff is nice. And like Nick said, I know I almost always book one ways because of this problem that if you want to make a change to one or the other, it might not be possible without rebooking the whole thing if you booked a round trip yeah yeah so that's nice they also in that announcement that little piece there it said now you can correct first and middle names on a ticket if you need to correct the first and the middle name that seemed interesting to me because like you know i guess if you can't fly and you have another family member with a different first and middle name. I don't know, maybe you can just change it. So that seemed kind of nice.

That's interesting, yeah. Yeah, somebody else with the same last name could probably have your ticket, I guess. And then also you could change your flight just for one person. So if you have a group reservation, so let's say I have a reservation for my family of four, let's pretend no companion pass to make it simple.

So I have a reservation for four people. I could change the flight for just one person online myself in the app or on the website. I could change just one person without affecting everybody else's reservation. So if I say, oh, okay, actually I can't fly the day I can fly out the day that my wife and kids are, I'm going to have to fly a different day. I could change just me. And so that's nice too. Good news. All right. some positive uh news out of southwest ish i mean unless you're against the whole assigned seating stuff i guess yep yep yep all right that brings us to this week's main event main event time the 2024 bon void awards let's uh

talk about who who is um the meanest grouchiest grinchiest loyalty program for 2024 but first let's recap the 2023 bonvoyed awards um so last year we we had a bunch of candidates i'm not gonna uh you know go through the whole list but nick picked aeroplanes eddie hutt alliance goes astray. So if I remember right, it was possible to book Etihad First Apartments through Aeroplan, and that all kind of went, like blew up and became a big problem. Yeah, and hasn't returned.

And the biggest thing was at the time, there were a bunch of people that had Etihad First Class Apartments reservations and Etihad just downgraded them and took them out of first class. And Aeroplan was basically not able to fix that. And so some people got offered a better or decent accommodation flying first class on Emirates, but that was really wonky and not handled smoothly. And then since then, you haven't been able to book first class on Etihad through Aeroplan.

So that's continued to now. So they were doing it last year and they've kept that up. Yeah, yeah, really unfortunate. My pick was hotels.com becomes 5X less rewarding. So they moved to that common rewards program with some other websites and so lost out on their, they used to have that thing where you stay 10 times and you got one free night sort of.

It was the average price of the 10 nights you spent. So that was unfortunate. That was my pick. Now, we also did an audience poll on the blog. And the audience, the top three of the Bonvoyard Awards from the audience, number one was Amex family rules limit access to the points parade. So Amex had throughout their product lines added these family rules where it would say like if you already had the platinum card, you may not be eligible for a bonus on this gold card or the green card or whatever. And so that really, depending on the order in which you sign up for things, especially could really limit how many points you could get through welcome bonuses with Amex. It could. Yeah. Yeah. That made sense that that was a pick. And in hindsight, maybe that

should have been a choice for one of us because that really was, I think, a big negative change. Although Amex rules typically often say you may not be eligible for the welcome bonus, which is different than you are not eligible for the welcome bonus. And a lot of people have gotten welcome bonuses on cards that they may not have been eligible for, but it turns out they were. So it's kind of a, I don't know, murky, murky at best as to that, but it probably does limit things significantly for a lot of people. So yeah, that was the audience choice. Yep. Um, I'm just gonna real quickly, the next two audience choices were, uh, Delta dumps their devastation, um, was number two. And that was about how Delta had announced big, bad changes to their loyalty program. And then they rolled them back, but some of the ones people hated the most, like

a limit to how many times you could use the Sky Club if you have access through the Delta Reserve card or a Delta Platinum card. They kept that just with higher limits than they initially announced. Anyway, a lot of people did not like that. Similarly, United people did not like. United devalued their awards kind of across the board. And so where they used to have quite a few competitive award prices for different routes, there's no more quite in the sentence anymore. There are few. They do have a few, but just a few. Yeah. My United miles are collecting dust. So that's unfortunate. All right. So those were what we talked about last year in 2023, but Greg,

it's 2024. Let's talk about what we have up for nominees for the Disloyalty Awards. Yeah. Okay. So first up of our Disloyalty nominee is Chase and Capital One. Their Priority Pass from that, or the Ritz-Carlton, or the Venture X, and your Priority Pass because you have one of these premium cards. If you go to a Priority Pass restaurant and try to use your Priority Pass, you're out of luck. Yeah, it's not going to work, and so that's annoying. Worth a mention, the Capital One Venture X business card also lost

access when it moved to the Visa. So kind of confusing. Capital One on some cards will occasionally change which network they run on. They'll go Visa, MasterCard, Visa again. And I think for the most part, they don't tend to switch over existing cardholders. It's just people who apply new. So people who still have a Capital One VentureX business that's a MasterCard, I think you still have restaurant access with Priority Pass, but people with a Capital One VentureX card that's a Visa, which is what it's been issued on for most of this year, half of this year, some of this year. If you've got it recently anyway, I think you've got a Visa Capital One VentureX business

card, and that one does not have restaurant access, which makes it super confusing because if you're in some sort of like Facebook group or whatever, you might see some people saying, oh, I got the Capital One VentureX business and it's got restaurant access. And other people be like, no, they told me it doesn't. And yeah, it's confusing for people that aren't up on the fact that they switch networks like that. So that kind of stinks. Worth a mention, if you do still want restaurant access, U.S. bank cards that have Priority Pass still do include restaurant access, though it's a limited number of visits per year. Also on this note, with Chase and Capital One losing access, if you're somebody who's used to using the digital card, the digital card, if you log in on the Priority Pass

app, it's only going to show you places that you have access to. So if you've got a Chase-issued Priority Pass, it's not even going to show what the restaurant options are if you're logged into the Priority Pass app. So if you're someone like me that also has a U.S. Bank Priority Pass, then you either want to log in with your U.S. Bank Priority Pass in the app so you can see all the options that might be available to you, or just don't log in at all on the Priority Pass app if you want to be able to see all of the Priority Pass options. So just worth a note.

Yeah, those are good tips. So what I did was I have the Altitude Reserve, which has eight visits a year. So I don't want to, in general, I don't want to use that at lounges because I also have the one that comes with the Ritz card, which is unlimited visits and unlimited guests. So what I did is I put my Priority Pass pass, like the digital pass, into my Apple Wallet. So that's something you could do when you log in on the app, if you have an iPhone, to the Priority Pass app. There's an option to send it to your wallet.

So if I'm going into a lounge, I use my Apple Wallet. But if I'm going to a restaurant, the idea is, I haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but the idea is I'll just use the app because I'm now logged in to my US bank card in the app. Smart, very smart. All right, that's a good one. So that's a great tip.

I don't see the option, by the way, to add it to Google Wallet on my Android phone. I just checked. So I don't see an option to add it there. I could take a screenshot, I guess. Then I got to find the screenshot. So that might be more difficult. So anyway, I keep that one logged into the U.S. Bank one personally because I have the

Altitude Reserve also. So I keep that one logged in. And you can see in your account how many times you visited. So if you like oh yeah i did that but i can't remember did i visit any restaurants this year or how many have i visited blah blah blah yeah well that's going to be in the app and of course if you keep logged into the one you don't want to use that lounges you could use the physical card at the lounges to to get in and and not worry about it and of course you could also log out and in but that could be confusing, I think. That's what I do. I keep the physical RITs.

So the priority pass for my RITs card is in my actual wallet. And so I use that physical card to get into lounges. And then I just use the digital one for restaurants. Makes sense. All right. So next up. That was the first disloyalty nominee. Next up, Virgin goes dynamic.

What did Virgin do to us? Well, they went to a fully dynamic award system. So whereas they used to have award charts for their own flights, now for their own flights, they no longer have award charts. They do still have award charts for their partner awards. But for travel on Virgin Atlantic, now it's fully dynamic. So you go to the Virgin Atlantic website and you look up the award and see what today's price is.

And that might change if you check back later on today or tomorrow or whatever else, it may be a different price Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, depending on which day you fly. So you don't know exactly what to expect anymore. So that stinks from a perspective of, you know, you can't plan it out and know what the award price is going to be. If you just want to fly a business class award from New York to London, there's not one price anymore. It's going to be whatever the wind brings in that day in terms of the price. So that's- Right. And some of the prices are like Delta prices. You could be seeing like 600,000 points one way kind of thing. And so some people are going to be really disturbed by those kind of displays but yeah and discouraged probably and then into thinking oh it's not worthwhile but go ahead what's your butt uh well so the butt and this

is this is a big button this is the reason neither nick or i are going to pick this as our as our winner of the disloyalty awards for this year is that they actually have a lot of uh really good price options as well i mean you see some dirt cheap you know business or economy awards to europe for example uh which way cheaper than before they also lowered the surcharges from these tickets so they used to be really really high they're not now like you know super low but they're they're more reasonable now than than they were before. And so there's actually quite a bit of good news along with the devastation there. Yeah. One asterisk or like little note, I'll add to what Greg just said is, you know, he mentioned you might see good deals to Europe.

And I just want to mention that, you know, when we talk about to Europe, we really mean to the UK with Virgin Atlantic, right? Because I don't think they fly anywhere else in europe so if you're looking to go to rome or milan or whatever else you're not going to find you'll only find air france klm awards to virgin atlantic which still have an award chart and are potentially a good deal but what greg is talking about specifically is flights to london or yeah edinburgh from the us and manchester but yeah but you'll also see i'm not really sure how they do this but you'll also see, I'm not really sure how they do this, but you'll also see like flights that are like Virgin Atlantic to London and then like KLM or Air France onward to Europe that way. So, so those are possible as well. I assume what they do is they take the Virgin Atlantic dynamic price to London and then just tack on the, you know, 8K or whatever it is for the, the Air air france or klm or um you know whatever other uh partner airline that that flies into europe interesting i've never seen that before so is that something they launched when they did the dynamic pricing or is that something you've

seen that even before yeah interesting i've only ever seen it when it's entirely on air france or klm so but i don't search virgin atl Atlantic that often. So that probably explains why Greg's seen it and I haven't. There you go. All right. Next up, Virgin Atlantic. Oh, Virgin Atlantic also devalued Delta One to Europe. Speaking of the sea, I said, I don't search Virgin Atlantic all that often. And this was certainly one of the reasons why I stopped going to Virgin Atlantic's website this year. So what did they do? How do they devalue these? Yeah. So for many years, you could book Delta One to Europe using Virgin Atlantic miles for only 50,000 miles and $5.60 in that direction in fees. So that was a killer deal um now they they they changed the point price so it depends where you're starting from in the in the u.s and uh and where you're going to in europe i assume also matters i'm not really sure about that but um but the point price can actually be a tiny bit less today um

so for example from detroit to paris or to amsterdam or Amsterdam or London well I'm not sure about London they have their own reward chart but to from Detroit to Europe it's 47,500 points so that seems like a good deal right well but there's been a little increase in the cash outlay right before it was $5.60. Now, that same flight, $1,027.80. What? We'll increase there. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's just, that's just, oh, man, inexcusable. And I do want to point out, though, this is a one-way problem, or the problem is just in that direction um from the u.s to europe because going the other way so for example flying from amsterdam or paris to detroit is the same 47,500 points and uh less than 300 euros in fees which is pretty much what I think they were doing before. Again, it's not cheap, but it's not outrageous, I guess, the fees there. So yeah, that 50K though, US to Europe, that old sweet spot is gone because of those surcharges are incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the Paris to the US is particularly attractive if it's at less than 300 euros one way, because the departure taxes from France now are pretty high. So whatever you book, whether it's Star Alliance or this or something else, if you're departing France, the taxes are probably going to be about 200 bucks no matter what you're booking through. So if you're paying less than 300 euros, it's not that much more to book an award through Virgin Atlantic if you're departing France anyway.

Right, right. Yeah. So it's going to cost a bit more points if you're going to West Coast US. On the other hand, this is also not something I'm going to pick as one of my top devaluations because Delta so infrequently

releases award space for Delta One to their partners, which is required for you to use Virgin Miles at all. So it's one of those things where it was like, it was more hypothetically a great award than something people could use very often. Yeah, you know, you get lucky every now and then, but it was really hard to find. So yeah, they could charge 10,000 extra dollars on something that it doesn't exist and it doesn't really matter. Right. So, yeah. So, all right. That's Virgin devaluing Delta one. It makes the list, but probably won't be top choice for us. Next up Wyndham. Wyndham Rewards devalued their partnership with the Casa vacation rental so what happened here yeah so so it used to be that you could book any well not any but you could book a vacasa vacation rental with windham points

for a fixed price of 15 000 points per bedroom per night and at that time it was limited to vacation rentals that cost $350 per bedroom per night or less. So basically that $15,000 per bedroom per night threshold was good up to $350. And that would give you, even at $300, that would give you great value for your Wyndham points. And that would give you a two cents per point value, even before accounting for the fact that if you have a Wyndham earner card, you get a 10% discount on those awards. So anyway, so what they did though, is they changed it up. They said, if the, if the cash price for your stay is up to $250 per bedroom per night, then that old pricing applies, $15,000 per bedroom per night. But if it's between $250 and $500, it goes up to 30,000 points per bedroom per night. So what happened was those places that cost between $250 and $350 doubled in price, basically.

The ones that cost more than that per bedroom per night weren't bookable before. So it's no big deal that they cost more. Right. Right. You know, this is an interesting one. This one won't be my pick either, even though it kind of stinks because it was such a specific slice that really got hurt here. It's just that slice of the properties that were between $250 and $350 per bedroom per night that, like Greg said, they doubled in price. But everything else is still a pretty good deal there.

And personally, I'm thinking I might buy some Wyndham points before the end of the year because right now they're selling them through the end of 2024. If you're targeted for the best offer, then it's 0.715 cents per point to buy points. And so if you don't have a wind and murder business card, that's basically $107 per bedroom per night for a vacation rental. That's not bad for a vacation rental up to $250 a night, right? And then the ones that are up to $500 per bedroom per night by the points for it for two 14. So you're talking half off. If you're able to get close to the top end of the range on a vacation rental, that's pretty good.

And then of course, if you have the wind and murder business cards, even cheaper, the points for a per bedroom per night is like less than a hundred dollars. Any wind and murder card gives you that discount. Not just the business one. Yeah. So, so yeah. So, so it becomes a real great deal also there were some really nice properties that before you might have wanted to book with points but couldn't because they cost more than 350 dollars per bedroom per night now at least you can uh you know even though it'll cost more but uh i you know so So it's really mixed news, basically.

There's definitely a component that's devalued, but there's also some good stuff there. So far, I feel like we're in a job interview where somebody is like, tell me about your weaknesses. And we're like, I just work too hard so far. I'm a perfectionist. I want to get everything right. I definitely front- front loaded in the list

um the the the disloyalty nominees that that i didn't really think would would win the prize here right right okay so so let's move on to something where there's mostly bad news i think and uh so uh so next up we got british airways and and Qatar raising their prices for short haul partner awards. And this mostly, for our audience anyway, probably mostly affects awards on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines because they increased the award rates. Yeah. In fact, in some cases, it's specifically them because they have rates specific to the Americas or to America. I don't know. Anyway, the point is like so

British Airways it used to be for really short flights and these this is just for an example because there were also good rates for flights more than 650 miles but for flights up to 650 miles previously with British Airways miles, Avios, it would cost 8,250 points one way. Now it's up to 12,000. That's for economy. Business class went from 16,500 to 24,000. But I didn't care about that devaluation because I was using my Qatar Avios, which you can, you know, even if you have British Airways Avios, you can use them on Qatar. And Qatar had a much better pricing anyway. So up to 650 miles, only previously only cost 6,000 Avios one way, or for business class, like regional first class, 12,500 miles. So that was fantastic, killer deal. The

next several levels of distance bands were also great deals, but they changed it all. So now the under $650,000 for economy is $9.5K. For first class is $20K. and it's no longer competitive with the best prices you can get with other programs booking uh alaska or economy or american short haul yeah that's too bad that's disappointing because i know that those were sweet spots for a lot of people for a long time um there are still other programs that you can book american airlines through like greg said that are good deals so that maybe limits the downside here because we see some really short american airlines flights now available via alaska for 4 500 miles one way which coincidentally that was the price that british airways charged like just a few years back right the shortest flights used to be 45 yeah yeah i don't even remember that yeah so um last few years

they've increased like you know but quite a bit right right right i mean the alaska thing is is great for those of us who have a lot of alaska miles um you know since they don't transfer from anyone um sort of yeah i mean right now currently still you can yeah right right but i'm how did i miss that i just walked right back i was thinking of the amex to hawaiian still to alaska i was not thinking about built still sorry bill uh so anyway uh yeah so alaska is out there and of course also if you really want to live on the edge and we'll get back to why I just added this qualifier, Etihad also has some good rates on American. I've seen them come up at 6,000 miles for instance. Yeah.

But, but remember Etihad is also the one where then when you, after you transfer, you go and actually book it and all of a sudden the price goes up and, and we're going to talk more about Etihad in a second. So anyway, but for those, those who have invested a lot in accumulating avios and use

them a lot for short haul awards, it's definitely a pretty significant devaluation. Agreed. All right. But I promised we would get back to why I added a little qualifier there on Etihad. And Greg's point was great that they do display prices incorrectly. And then you click through and find out it's actually more than what it said it was. So that stinks, but that's not it. That's not the only reason that Etihad's here. Etihad's here for bigger reasons than that. Yeah.

Why don't you walk us through this? All right. So Etihad has just absolutely nerfed award cancellations and they've added point expiration policy that stinks. So now your Etihad miles will expire after 18 months unless you credit flights to Etihad, right? I mean, that was one you picked up on, you noticed recently.

So an 18 month clock. Yeah, so it used to be 24 months and it used to be that any activity, spending miles or getting more miles, like you'd transfer a thousand more miles in from a program or whatever, that that activity, spending miles or getting more miles, like you'd transfer 1,000 more miles in from a program or whatever, that that activity would reset the clock for the 24 months. As is the case with many airlines. Right.

Most airlines work that way. And Etihad decided that that was too nice. So they changed it to 18 months and said the only way to uh reset the clock is to credit a flight to eddie hod so you actually earn miles it could be with a partner or eddie hod itself but either way that you earn some miles and that'll reset the clock and i you know the number of times i've ever done that is zero and i do i would not have to would not want to have to worry about that like you know oh my gosh i have to fly uh you know american airlines flight and credit to etihad just just so that my points stay alive right well you know

what though they're making it a little simpler for you because if you have if you book an award with etihad and you later have to cancel it you're unlikely to have many points left to try to keep alive. So let's talk about the award cancellation policy changes this year. So Etihad really made like the most punitive, I think, award cancellation policy out there just about, just about maybe, maybe there's one or two that are equally bad or worse. Yeah. So now- Iberia's not so good. Yeah. That's the one that came to mind. That was was iberia was that yeah so anyway if you cancel an anti-hot award ticket more than 21 days prior to departure you're going to lose 25 of the miles

that you used so just straight off the top so you booked a hundred thousand mile award it's going to cost you 25 000 miles to cancel so. So that's painful. And certainly on a more expensive award, ouch, that just continues to get really expensive. But that's if you're 21 days or more in advance. If you're between eight days before departure and 21 days, you're going to lose 50% of what you paid for the award. So half your miles just evaporate into ether. It really seems like they want to get rid of some miles here. If you cancel within seven days of departure. So within a week for departure, if you get sick, your kid gets sick, whatever, you know, something comes up at work and you have to cancel your trip, you're going to lose 75% of the miles that you 75%. So I don't even know why they're giving

you anything back at that point. I mean, I'd be pretty unhappy if I lost 75%. My goodness. But within 24 hours of departure, it's 100% cancellation penalty. So if you cancel within 24 hours, that's it. You just lose all the miles. You don't get anything back. There's not a fee you can pay to reinstate them. They're just gone. Right, right.

So if you don't want to have to worry about the expiration policy of your miles, what you want to do is wait until it's within 24 hours so you don't have any miles left right to worry nothing you gotta credit you don't have to credit anything now that last point is is actually pretty common a lot of airlines have that cancel within 24 hours and and you're out of luck policy but the rest of it is really unusual and really punitive um i'm very very much not a fan of those those changes and and they're kind of weird because you know and I feel like in the past five years like most like program changes involving those types of things have moved more in the positive direction yeah like like it's understandable they they also we didn't even mention they they raised a lot of award rates as well um because that's like a normal thing like

all programs are doing that it's it's this this this changing the expiration policy and and the cancellation rules to make them worse yeah uh yeah it's weird so weird yeah yeah that's so losing 75 if you cancel within seven days of departure really to me is the worst part i mean 50 25 they're all bad but the 75 within seven days departure is the one departure really to me is the worst part. I mean, 50%, 25%, they're all bad, but the 75% within seven days departure is the one that really hits me as why I just wouldn't book with Etihad because you don't know what's going to come up and happen. Did notice they have a fairly cheap change fee. I think it was like 30 bucks or 35 or something like that. So if you're less than 21 days in advance, it might make sense to pay that

fee to change to more than 21 days in advance, then cancel to get 75% of your miles back. It's a good point. That's a good point. But it's still not 100% no matter what you do. Oh, yeah. It just stinks. I mean, my goodness. At school pickup yesterday, the teacher brought my son out to say that, we're sending home gifts for parents today because they're dropping like flies so kids are getting sick and i mean that happens right goodness yeah cancellation penalty is terrible yeah yeah and imagine like so if you have it like a some kind of insurance that would cover it like how would they figure out how to value those miles that are lost? I mean, good luck.

Yeah. Good luck with that. Right. Yeah. So I don't, I don't book anything. Yeah. To add at this point,

mostly because of the policy, you know, out of a protest because of the policy. But yeah, I don't want to deal with that at all. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Okay. That's not it though. We can, we got a couple more nominees. We've got three more nominees built. We told you, we wouldn't forget about you again, Bilt. Bilt, you're in here. You reduced the rent day earnings to 1,000 bonus points. So, Bilt, every first of each month, they double the points you earn on spend.

And it used to be that doubling was capped, that you could earn no more than 10,000 bonus points. So for example, if you were spending on things that had no category bonus at all, on most days, you earn one built point per dollar on the first month you earned two and uh until recently you could spend um you could spend ten thousand dollars in the 1x category and you would get ten you would get a total of um twenty thousand points right because ten thousand of those points are bonus points and that's the cap now they've limited it to 1 000 bonus points um so it's almost like not even not even worth worrying about is it rent day anymore um you know it used to be you could you could really make um their elite program work for you by by doing all your spend during rent day earn enough

points to get like top tier status and then you were getting better transfer bonuses and things like that and now it's just like well you can't really optimize that way on there no no yeah so i like i'm not i'm not bothering to go after the bonus points on the first of the month necessarily anymore i mean if it works out to be um you know useful because i have something that i have to buy that day maybe but i but I'm not going to go out of my way for an extra 1,000 bonus points. And that's just the bonus points, right? So if you're doing dining, because you get double on everything the first of the month, apart from rent anyway. So everything qualifies because I think tax payments, they excluded now too. But anyway,

but that's kind of almost neither here nor there since you can only earn a thousand bonus points anyway. But the 6X on dining on the first of the month, up to a thousand bonus points though, right? So how much can you actually spend on dining? I think you could spend $333.33 to maximize that. So, I mean, it's not bad. If you plan on going out for a really nice dinner every

first of the month and using your built card you know that's good to get to get um 6x is great but the point is like the the amount of of bonus points you could get by optimizing rent day is now limited to a total of 12 000 points per year of extra points over what you'd get from normal spend. And that's just not a lot of points. No, it isn't. It isn't. I still think 3X dining over the course of the month is potentially interesting because of the transfer bonuses they've continued to run. So I still think that's potentially interesting, but yeah, rent day has definitely lost its appeal for the most part because of that. So that's potentially interesting but yeah rent day has definitely lost its appeal for the most part because of that so that's a bummer all right got a couple more though right

next up yeah next business card oh yeah so so what happened with the business card I think you should talk about this one Nick well so the wind and murder business card one of the benefits it comes with is Wyndham diamond status and for years now you've Well, so the Wyndham Runner Business Card, one of the benefits it comes with is Wyndham Diamond status. And for years now, you've been able to match Wyndham Diamond status to Caesars Diamond status. And that has made it possible to get a bunch of free cruises. So we've written about ways to match around, which have become more limited over time. And in fairness, I don't think I ever expected that it would last as long as it did or for as many cruise opportunities as it has. Because I think I i've mentioned recently i've taken like eight i think over the last couple of years we're going to be at 10 at least uh next year in free cruises maybe we'll get an 11th in before that's all said and

done and we didn't do virgin voyages we didn't do an opportunity with celebrity so i didn't get the one with princess so we didn't even get them. I didn't get every single one of them that was possible. So there's been tons of those possible. Unfortunately, though, Wyndham or Caesars or the pair of them have killed this. It's not going to continue to work because starting on February 1st, you're no longer going to be able to match Wyndham Diamond status to Caesars Diamond if your Wyndham Diamond status comes by virtue of having the Wyndham Diamond status to Caesar's Diamond if your Wyndham Diamond status comes by virtue of having the Wyndham Under Business credit card. If you earn Wyndham Diamond status the hard way by spending lots of nights in Wyndham hotels, then on top of having to spend lots of

nights in Wyndham hotels, which may or may not be a good thing depending on which ones you're staying at, you're only going to get elite status that way. But you could if you get it the hard way. If you earn your Wyndham Elite status by staying in Wyndham hotels, then you can still match that to Caesar's diamond. It's just those of us who are gaming the system as they may think by getting a Wyndham murder business card, we're not going to be able to do that anymore. So the pathway to free cruises is going to be really limited. It's going to be hard. You're going to have to gamble. And there's going to be like some, there are potentially some shortcuts uh and possibilities but not through the windermere business card anymore and that's

i think a big hit for a lot of people yeah yeah grinchy move windham and caesars my guess is it was probably caesars that led that that probably and in fairness like it makes sense it wasn't costing caesars anything for you to be able to match around for free cruises like that wasn't hurting caesars at all but but you know there are benefits you weren't costing Caesars anything for you to be able to match around for free cruises. That wasn't hurting Caesars at all. But there are benefits. You weren't paying – Caesars Diamond members don't pay resort fees, for instance, and there are some other small ancillary Vegas-type benefits that they're giving out and probably not seeing a lot of benefit from. Right, right. All right.

Now, the last Grinchy contender is Hyatt. So Hyatt gave up their small luxury hotels, their SLH relationship, and instead bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And I was so excited because Mr. and Mrs. Smith has so many great properties. And Hyatt, before their relationship with SLH, they shoved the SLH properties into the standard award chart. So you're able to use points to get outsized value. You're able to use your free night certificates. Well, they didn't do that with Mr. and Ms. Smith. Instead, they went completely dynamic. tied the points rate to the cash rate at values that are significantly less than how much value

you'll get from your Hyatt points in general by booking Hyatt stays. And so you just can't get outsized value from your Hyatt points for Mr. and Mrs. Smith State. So, yeah. Bummer. It is a bummer. It was so disappointing. So disappointing because SLH was a really good partnership and opened up a lot of really good possibilities. And I think we were all kind of hopeful because SLH was just a loose partnership.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, they bought, right? So, we thought that they would fully integrate this and this would be just like staying at a Hyatt and it's totally not. Oh, my gosh. They told me. I went to a Hyatt event where they said, you know, because we own Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the integration will be tighter. And I guess in a way that's true, but it's not in the way that I care about.

So just such a bummer no it really is it really is okay go ahead all right no i think that's the list of our contenders so so now we're at the the uh final part where uh nick and i are each going to pick our winners who was the most disloyal the the most grinchy the which which program bonvoid us the most? Nick, you're up first. I am going to not pick the one that I expect Greg to pick. So I won't even say which one that is, but I'm going to pick one that probably will surprise him a little bit, but not really. I'm going to pick Hyatt's integration of Mr. and Mrs. Smith as the most Grinchy of the year. And here's why. I think that was the most disloyal to members.

I think Etihad's award cancellation penalty stinks, but for the most part, for US-based members, who cares? It's bad, but it doesn't feel as disloyal to me as Hyatt taking their membership, which broadly has to work to be loyal to Hyatt. It takes effort because Hyatt is not everywhere you want to be. And so you may choose? I mean, it takes effort because Hyatt is not everywhere you want to be. And so you may choose to stay somewhere out of the way or even a little bit more expensive or whatever the case might be in order to stay loyal to Hyatt because they've got a smaller footprint. And then, man, they bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith and just integrated it in a way that really kind of feels like a slap in the face to loyal Hyatt members who've been collecting points and looking to use them via Hyatt's great award chart. So I think that stinks.

I also am particularly disappointed about this because of the news that broke this week about Venetian and Palazzo joining World of Hyatt. And here's why. Because the press release for the partnership with Venetian and Hyatt said that we would soon be able to use world of Hyatt members would be able to earn and use loyalty points, but didn't say anything about an award chart. Didn't say anything about where it fits on the award chart. And in fact mentioned that Venetian and Palazzo will be like new brand explorer options. So they're clearly not going to put them in with like unbound collection or with one of the existing brands. And I can only imagine that the reason for that is because they're going to follow the Mr. and Mrs. Smith pattern and make it dynamically priced. And I hope I'm wrong about that, but the integration of Mr. and Mrs. Smith

makes things like that possible because now they've created the expectation that, well, some things might not be on the award chart anymore. And that stinks because long term, I feel like that is a very bad sign and something that I don't want to see Hyatt go to a dynamic award chart. And, you know, of course, we've seen everybody else do that. So I think it's, it won't be necessarily shocking if and when they get rid of award charts and go dynamic, but it's going to be incredibly disappointing to those of us who have chosen Hyatt for years and years because of their great award chart and their great award system and benefits and all the rest of that. So if they start chopping away at those things or differentiating and making it complicated like Marriott, there's not going to be any reason for

me to choose Hyatt over Marriott because Marriott has a much bigger footprint. So if I want to put up with those types of headaches, I'll just pick Marriott or Hilton, right? I mean, some places everywhere I want to be. Yeah, if you want to get Bonvoy, Marriott's the place to go. Right, might as well go straight to the source, right? Go to the source, yeah. Yeah, so it's worth mentioning as an aside, or maybe it's not even an aside, it's right there with it, is that Hyatt also did this to their vacation rental type of properties. So they had these destinations by height or something like that that used to fit into the war chart

and it was a pretty nice setup and there were like all these properties like all over Hawaii, for example, where you could pay high standard rates and get into these like giant condos and things. And they moved that to, I don't even remember what it's called, but to a new thing

that's like um homes and highways is it no that's marriott okay yeah it's something like home like no homes and highways that's high that's a okay homes and villas is marriott anyway it's the point is they that's also dynamically priced and and so you know it it is weaseling its way in multiple places, this dynamic pricing that Hyatt has. And it has been bad for us on both. Now, I'm curious, before I say what my pick is, Nick, you said that you had a guess as what I'm going to pick. I'm curious. You've got to pick Etihad, right? I mean, because that's the other really bad one is the cancellation policy from Etihad. And like I said, it doesn't, to me, feel as disloyal, mostly because probably not very many US-based members have been all that loyal to Etihad's loyalty program anyway. So it doesn't necessarily feel all that bad to me, whereas Hyatt does. So I think you're going to pick Etihad though, because I mean, those cancellation policies are horrible. All right. I did not pick Etihad.

All right. Audience listening, say it with me. I picked Hyatt. Okay. All right. We agree. Wow. Hyatt, you broke my heart.

I was so, so looking forward to the Mr. and Mrs. Smith situation. I thought for sure you would do it right. You said to me you would do it, you would integrate really well, which to me means ward charts. Right, right. And you know how much the ward charts matter to us and how much we want to be able to, you know,

count on there being situations where we get outsized value. You know how much we want to use those free night certificates to good value. You came out with that new ridiculous, you know, unbound free night certificate where you need like 15,000 nights at Hyatt in order to get one of those. And it doesn't even work at Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Come on. Come on. Come on.

Yeah. Yeah. Hyatt, you did it. You out-bonvoyed Marriott, who didn't even make our list of contenders this year. Didn't even make it this year. You know, Marriott, I think we're numb to anything mariette does these days so they probably did some really bad things and we were just like yeah that's merit but hi we're not used to that um stop it yeah yeah it stinks it really is disappointing that it it's

happened this way we didn't expect that we were excited and i think it stings even more to have come on the heels of losing slh because like when they lost SLH, we were kind of like, yeah, that stinks, but probably it's going to be even better with Mr. And Mrs. Smith. And whoa, talk about the total opposite. Hilton picked up SLH and my goodness, if they picked it up and run with it and eaten Hyatt's lunch, because they've done really well with the way they've integrated SLH as a separate entity than the way that Hyatt has integrated Mr. and Mrs. Smith as something they own. Nuts. Right, right. So Hilton has eased the sting of losing SLH, but Hyatt, wow. Yeah.

Yep, yep. But we'll be curious to hear readers. So we're going to have to find out what readers think was the winner and see if they agree with us. And listeners and viewers. Right. I say readers. Yes. I mean, audience members. Thank you very much.

You're absolutely right. All right. I think that brings us to the end of this week's episode and the main event anyway. And to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week, my elderly brain might be forgetting if I've done this before. So if I have, then maybe we'll have to edit this out and do it differently. Nick, I'm the one with an elderly brain. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I'm telling you, it's contagious. So we got an email and it's not the only one we've gotten like this. We've gotten a couple in recent months like this. So that's why I think maybe I did this before. I can't remember. Here's the question of the week. Chris says, guys, you've got a great thing, but way too many pop-up ads on your site becoming harder and harder to use.

You bounce around from one pop-up to another, drives you back to the start of the page, making it difficult to read. Don't ruin a great thing. Support your need to drive revenue with ads, but don't make it unusable. Also out of all the websites you go to, I'm seeing a lot of tracking software, not a good thing. So Greg, what are you doing with the ads here? Yeah, I love that you brought this up, Nick. So, we do not allow pop-up ads of any form whatsoever, but somehow, somehow these malicious spammers or something insert some kind of code into ads and cause these pop-ups to happen under certain circumstances. And it's like playing whack-a-mole. Every time we're aware of this, we report it and the hosting company tries to, you know, shut all that down.

And, but then they find another way to, to, to have that happen. And so what we need is, is your help because these seem to creep in and like weird situations, like people, you know, maybe it's location based. It might be type of device. It might be certain cookies you have. I actually have no idea, you no idea what's going on. But what we could use is if you see an ad pop up over the whole screen or even over part of the screen, more than just on the side as static or more than just at the very bottom,

sometimes an ad will kind of move around a little bit.'s fine as long as it's not covering up any of the content um but if you see that please take a screenshot and send it to us at mailbag at frequent miler.com and and then we'll forward that on let us know what device you use what browser and anything else you think might be relevant um so that we could try to track this down and stop it because um we uh we you we give up a lot of potential ad revenue by not allowing these kind of ads, and yet they still sneak in, and that's really unfortunate. Yeah, that was the reason I wanted to bring it up, really, was because we get this kind of email every once in a while from somebody who clearly thinks that it's intentional. It's something that we've done in order to increase revenue. And like, it's the truth is so opposite of that.

So, I mean, the truth is that like, when you come to frequent miler, there's no pop-up that says, join our email list. And, and when I first worked for Greg, I remember he said, somebody tried to encourage him to add that. And he's like, I don't care how much additional revenue that might drive. It drives me crazy when I go to a website and something pops up telling me to join the email list or whatever it might be. So I'm not going to do that on my site.

And same thing with like video ads. Video ads would probably be far more lucrative. And that's why you see them all over the internet. But we've been pretty firm that we're not going to allow those pop-ups, pop-up video ad type things. And Greg's been firmly, and it doesn't matter how much money they're willing to pay for it. It's annoying. I don't like it, so I don't want it on my site. And so that's certainly not intentional. If you see something like that, it's not,

we're trying to increase ads and increase ad revenue. It's a mistake. Right. The rule is like, if I'm reading, if I'm coming to our site, I want to like the experience. And if something happens that I don't like, I don't want other people to experience that as well. And I hate it when I go to any website that pops anything up over what I'm trying to read or a distracting video pops up on the side even that is playing sound and things like that. In fact, yeah, that's another thing. If you hear any sound come out of ads, that is playing sound and things like that if in fact yeah that's another thing if you hear any sound come out of ads that is not intentional to you uh please do report that harder to take a screenshot of that but actually a screenshot might help because we might be able to identify which ad did that well and and that's a to reiterate something that greg said there too

is it's really important that you do send us the screenshot because you might think well you guys are on the site a thousand times a day you You must notice these pop-ups all the time. But the thing is like many ads are targeted, like Greg said, based on location, based on your browsing history, blah, blah, blah. So the ads that you're seeing, I might not be seeing at all, or I got one last week and I forwarded it on so that they could take a look and see, you know, which, which advertiser is this? Who is this that's sneaking that ad in and making it behave that way? But we're not going to see all the ads that come up just because that's the way ads work on the Internet. So you do really need to send those to us if you have them happen,

because we don't want those to be out there as part of the user experience. It's not intentional. So I just wanted to make sure people knew that that we're listening anyway. Great. OK, that's the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list.

Follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, where you can ask and answer questions like this. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for the giant mailbag or one of those annoying pop-up ads to report so that we can get that cleaned up and fixed.

You want to send that too? Send us a mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody.