Frequent Miler on the Air - The Best of Crazy | Ep171 | 10-8-22

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

All of the best "What Crazy Thing" segments in one place 0:32 Introducing new segment: "What crazy thing did Citi do this week?"1:33 Citi be 5x crazy3:09 Triple header: Everyone wants in3:48 Crazy Chase Hyatt offer4:16 Time to rename to "What crazy thing..."5:12 AA overpromises and underdelivers6:14 Choice fails to roll out terrible deal7:35 Hilton randomly gives out free nights8:19 Greg is now Natalie9:18 Nick's family launders their money (order)11:33 Capital One shuts Greg down12:56 Nothing says ultra-premium like Walmart13:46 Greg receives credit card bill due 52 years ago15:12 Amex tells Greg he is dead16:07 Greg attempts to kick the Capital One football again20:29 A virus has infected gift cards

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 best of crazy. Nick is on a cruise this week and his internet is awful,

so we weren't able to record a new show, unfortunately. Instead, we're bringing you the best of what crazy thing did fill-in-the-blank do this week. Enjoy. Citi has been on a rampage lately and doing things that don't make any sense at all. And so each week, they've come out with something kind of crazy, right? Right. So that's why we've decided to introduce a new segment, a new regular segment to this show called What Crazy Thing Has Citi Done This Week? I mean, they are just on a roll. Like the last few weeks, if you aren't following along, when everybody else has been kind of like pulling back on offers and pulling back on their advertising and pulling back on approvals and

everything else. Citi is like, hey, here's an increased offer on this card. And you know, here's better earning on that card. I mean, it's just the total opposite of what everyone else is. So I could tell you were about to, but I interrupted you. Why don't you do your DJ voice to introduce this segment? Ooh, ladies and gentlemen, now we introduce the next segment. What crazy thing has Citi done this week? That brings us next then to what crazy thing did Citi do this week?

Yes. So Citi, we are going to talk about Citi. So it's been a, we don't always talk about Citi, even though the topic is City I mean City is a trendsetter and that's the thing they're a trendsetter and crazy things they love crazy things every now and then they got to mix it up and toss in something crazy

just keep that trend going this one's fun because it follows on what started this whole segment which is over the summer they introduced a promotion with like 5x for online purchases with your city prestige card but they failed to tell anyone except bloggers about it including like their their staff right didn't know anything about it and so that's that was the

crazy thing that kind of i believe if my memory, that's what kind of kicked off this segment originally. But now they've brought back essentially the same promotion, a very similar one, 5X for online purchases. And now what's happening is actually they did send out emails to customers. I don't know if it was to all customers, but to a lot of customers. What it appears they forgot to do was inform their IT staff. I mean, they can't tell everybody. What fun would that be? Because readers are reporting that they're not actually getting 5X. Last time, everybody was getting 5X. They just didn't have any proof that they would if they spent the money. But now they're spending the money. It does not appear they're getting 5X. So didn't have any proof that they would if they spent the money but now they're spending the money it does not appear they're getting 5x so hopefully that'll get resolved i'm sure it will so that brings us to the next segment what crazy thing did city do this week

and it has been a crazy week indeed it has this is gonna be fun we've got we've got a triple header today a triple header michael you don't get that every week right no no i don't think we've ever done a triple header before everybody's getting in on it this week. Everybody wants in on what crazy thing this is. So the hot new thing, everybody's like, maybe we can get featured on the Frequent Miler. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? I'm sure, you know, the whole industry is abuzz trying to get in on our show. I mean, truthfully, just about everybody has at this point, right? I mean, Chase has been in there and Hilton's been in Marriott. Everybody's's been in there so they do seem to be chomping at the bit all right time for our next segment what crazy thing did city do this week so the crazy thing

that city did this week was lent their expertise to chase because Chase actually did our crazy thing this week. Chase came out with a really interesting spending offer on the old Hyatt credit card, not the new world of Hyatt credit card, the old Hyatt credit card. Well, that brings us then next up to what crazy thing did Citi do this week? All right. But before we get into the contents of that, I do want to say we decided to rename the segment. So many, many weeks, we don't actually talk about what crazy things Citi has done,

but what crazy things someone has done, like some business, some loyalty program, some credit card company. Last week it was IHG. The week before that, it might have been Amex. I mean, it's all sorts of different things, right? Right. So we're not changing it like entirely.

What we're doing is trimming it. So we're just calling it what crazy thing dot, dot, dot. We won't say the dot, dot, dot in the future. But, you know, when you hear us say what crazy thing, just imagine dot, dot, dot. Picture dot, dot, dot. That's it. All right. So with that background, what crazy thing do we have dot, dot, dot. Picture dot, dot, dot. That's it. All right.

So with that background, what crazy thing do we have on store this week? Welcome back, Siddy. Welcome back. What crazy thing did American Airlines do this week? Tell us all about that. Well, American Airlines decided to be really generous, and they spent days kind of putting out the word that they're going to give a holiday gift to all of the members.

Every member is going to get a holiday gift. All you got to do is show up, log in, click around, whatever in your account, and you're going to get a gift from American Airlines. So they advertised this and got everybody excited about, you know, what's the free gift coming from American Airlines? I mean, I could sense that some people were wondering, am I going to get free airline elite status? Am I going to get a global upgrade? Am I going to get something worth more than a dollar? And they were all sadly mistaken because, of course, American gave most people like 100 miles. 100 miles. So how far can you go? If you want to redeem an award ticket, how far can you go with that? I mean, you can probably taxi to the runway. That brings us then to something that's a little more

fun and crazy, and that's choice privileges. So choice privileges decided to get crazy this week too. They wanted to just sneak in an entry right at the cutoff time, so to speak, with a crazy thing this week. So what happened with Choice? Right. So Choice lets you redeem points at very poor value for gift cards. And so they sent out an email saying, great news, you now get more value. So you can redeem for fewer points for the same value gift cards. And so Steven clicked through to check it out and found out that it's not actually working. So you'd still pay the old amount. But not only that, the new amount, it's still a bad deal. So to advertise a bad deal and then not actually

have it working is pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy. Hey guys, you can, to advertise a bad deal and then not actually have it working is... Pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy. Hey, guys, you can get a terrible deal here. Click through. And then you click through and you're like, wow, that's not even as good as the deal that they advertised. That's right.

You know, I mean, to their credit, maybe the tech people who had to implement it were like, no one's going to click through this. This is a terrible deal. Right, right. Why should we buy? It could very well be. It could very well be the answer. They said to the marketing people, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're like, no one's going to click through this. This is a terrible deal. Why should we buy? It could very well be. They said to the marketing people, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got this. We know how many people are clicking through on this. Don't worry.

So what crazy thing is the next segment up today? So what crazy thing did Amex do? Because Amex got a little crazy this week, right? In more ways than one, really. Right, right. So Amex, a couple things going on there, it seems like. One is that people with certain Hilton cards who downgraded last year from the Hilton Aspire, which gives you a free night each year, have been randomly getting free nights in their account.

And it's not even at time that would normally get them if they had kept the Aspire card. So some crazy... It's just like a happy 2021. Thanks for downgrading your card. Here's a free night certificate. What? What crazy thing did First Tech Credit Union do this week.

Right. A regular on the show first. First time for First Tech, I think. First Tech has a nice, easy referral bonus. We posted about it and used my referral link. And whenever someone meets the requirements and earns their $100, I also get an email saying congratulations. So I've gotten a few of those. And let me read you what the congratulations email says.

It says, you and your friend have earned a $100 reward, Natalie and helped a non-profit in your area well congratulations natalie thank you thank you at this point on this show you've been called an elderly guy an evil blogger and now natalie what crazy thing did nick's wife do this week? Yeah, really? Yeah. Putting her on blast here. It's not Citibank this week. Yeah, I wish I wish Citibank was in the news this week, but but it wasn't enough. It was so close. Citibank, like Citibank, you're within like an hour and a half of making it this week. And then well,, you know, and I only say what crazy thing did Nick's wife do this week

because I know she won't listen to this. So that's the only reason I can get away with saying that. So you might want to whisper it because if someone's like playing this on the radio and the next car over or something, they're going to hear it. She's going to hear it.

Not me. Some other guy named Nick's wife probably did something. So, all right. What happened? Tell us the something. So, all right. What happened? Tell us the story. So, you know, we haven't been doing a lot of manufactured spending because of the whole pandemic. And there's not a place to do it easily within our town.

But my sister-in-law has been doing some shopping with Instacart, rather. So she's been going to grocery stores a bunch. So she's taken Visa gift cards for us and converted them into money orders now and then. And so today, as we record this today, she dropped off a money order at our place so that we could deposit it. So my wife took the money order and put it in her back pocket. And my wife is often doing a lot of the childcare during the day because I'm working on Frequent Miler. And so she's got her hands full right now with a five month old and a three-year-old. And so things are a little crazy around the house, a lot of noise, a lot of commotion. And of course, all of a sudden the five month old spits, spits up all over her. I mean like epic,

epic purport. She calls me down from upstairs and yells my name. I'm down. I'm like, oh my goodness, like what a mess. And she said, oh, I just spit up over there on the couch. And then now all over me, I guess he's full, blah, blah, blah. You know, we're getting a little bit of a laugh out of it. Right. Which was a little bit of a laugh. But then, of course, obviously, all those clothes had to go in the wash, including the pair of pants. Oh, no. I was surprised at how quickly a money order can dissolve in the washing machine. You literally laundered the money. Laundered the money order. Right.

Exactly what every banker is worried we're doing. What crazy thing did Capital One do last week? What did Capital One do last week to me, to Greg? They shut me down. Ouch. What? Yeah. So, you know, a few months ago I was wildly excited that they had finally accepted an application. I applied for that venture a hundred K offer and I couldn't believe it. They approved me. So I wrote a post about it. I was like, look,

they're being easier on approvals. I've tried year after year and never gotten approved for anything from Capital One. But boom, I was approved, went ahead and started just using it for my day-to-day spend. I literally did nothing strange with this card. I set up auto payments to pay my bill in full each month and just spent everywhere I needed to spend. And I did turn it out that you did not believe it for good reason. So I did earn the 50 K part of the bonus, not yet the a hundred K because that required a $20,000 spend. But I hit the 50 K part of it. And so altogether, I had about just short of 60,000 points, or they call them miles, saved up. And boom, they just out of the blue, shut me down. What crazy thing did American Express do this week, Greg. Yeah. So Amex, you know that they're super high-end platinum cards recently became higher end by they raised the annual fee from $5.50 to $6.95. And to make up for it,

they added a whole bunch of coupons. They basically said, you'll get rebates for this, that, and the other thing. And what they did crazy this week is they added two more coupons. And the one that I want to talk about is you now get a rebate for signing up for a monthly subscription to Walmart Plus. What? What? Walmart Plus. Does that say ultra premium to you or what? So then what crazy thing did?

Cardless do this week. So Cardless. So Cardless. What's Cardless? They're the company that's crazy every week just because of their name. Because what does Cardless do? They make credit cards, like physical credit cards. But they're called Cardless. That makes sense. Right, right, right right right mark we've talked about that before yeah but that's not what we're

joking about right now um this week last week i guess um i have a manchester united card from cardless and i got an email from them about paying my bill and i'm gonna that seems reasonable that doesn't sound crazy. That's not crazy yet. I'm going to quote exactly. I wrote it down exactly part of this email. They said,

don't forget your online payment for your Manchester United by cardless card is due on December 31st, 1969. That's how old you are, Greg. Failure to make the minimum payment by the due date could result in negative reporting to the credit bureau. I am in trouble.

Preston Pysh, Jr.: That's interesting. I like it. I like it, Carlos. You're going to toss them a little challenge here. You're not going to make it easy. Greg Fossum, Jr.: I don't know where they got that. Preston Pysh, Jr.: Forget about those three easy payments of 1999.

We're going to make it one really hard payment. Greg Fossum, Jr.: Right. three easy payments to $19.99. We're going to make it one really hard payment. Right, right. Can you imagine if I had any balance on there? It's almost 52 years that I'm late on this payment. All right. So then what crazy thing did American Express do this week? Yeah. American Express, they called me up on Saturday and told me I was deceased. So you are preparing for the end. I'm too late. I'm already deceased. It's too late to prepare.

Too late. Yeah. So I had tried to add additional users to a business platinum card of mine because they had an offer on them. Each additional user I added would add 20,000 points to my account if they spent $4,000 on the new card. This is great. I'll add a few new users. Why not? And so I did that. I did it online. And then on Saturday, they called to say, well, we couldn't add your new users because you're dead.

What did Greg the Frequent Miler do this week? Yeah. So Greg decided, you know how Capital One approved me last year for a venture card? And I was so excited. I'm sure we talked about it on the show. And then a few months later, they canceled my venture card and gave me only a half cent per point of the miles I had collected so far. Yeah, it was really rough. Obviously, you were manufactured spending and that's why they shut you down, right? You would think so, but no. I was very careful to only use that card. I was using it as my everywhere else card, just normal spend. And I literally did not buy a single gift card with it. I didn't do any kind of weird stuff that anyone would look at and say, oh, that's suspicious activity. Nothing like that. They shut me down. Didn't give me any real explanation for it. I tried a bunch of different approaches to kind of reverse the decision or at least get them to explain what

happened. No luck at all. So you would think I'd be done with Capital One forever, right? I mean, it would make sense. That's one of those times when it might make sense to be like, I'm going to take a stand here. No capital one, no more of you. Or at least to be afraid of even trying. I mean, come on, they redeemed your points at half a cent each. So basically you earned 1% back on all of the spend you put on the card one time around. Now, I mean, what kind of a glutton for punishment would try to drink from that trough again? Apparently this glutton would. So this time, so the Capital One, the Venture X 100K offer with also the $200 kicker for vacation rentals, it's coming to the end this coming Monday. And I had to make a decision.

Well, I didn't have to, but I wanted to make a decision about Capital One before that good offer went away. And I'd been thinking about this for a while. Like, yes, I'm not personally going to try for a Capital One card again, but could my wife get one? And would they hate her as much as they hate me? And why? They shouldn't. They shouldn't hate Mrs. Myler as much as they hate you. Lovely woman. She's much nicer in all ways than me. So come on, Capital One, you've got to like her. So yeah. So she applied for the VentureX card, was instantly approved. So we will then go forward, hopefully earn the 100,000 point bonus and hopefully be able to use it towards good value instead of getting canceled again. Careful, careful. Don't say we will earn it, Greg. You don't want to get your

history, your tarnished history on our end. He will earn the bonus and enjoy the points. Let's not make her guilty by association with the riffraff. All right. Right. Right. Right. Good point. So the scariest thing for me is that one of the great benefits of the VentureX is that you can add authorized users for free and they get good perks like Capital One Lounge access, their own priority pass and so on. At some point, I'm going to want her to add me as an authorized user. And that's when I feel like that's when bad things might happen. So we'll see. I'm going to put off that day as long as is reasonable. Right. And I read that in the post. And when I saw that,

I thought, well, I mean, so what's the plan here? Because Capital One requires a social security number to add an authorized user. So she's going to have to enter your social security number. They're clearly going to be able to match that up with, oh, this is somebody we don't want. Now, I don't have any data points as to whether or not that means they'll shut down her account, but that's certainly a possibility, right? So you're going to like redeem all the points before you do that or just take your chances. Maybe what I'll do is have her transfer all her points to you before we do that. And then hope that they don't trace all the way down the line.

I like that idea. I want to try, right? I don't know if I really want to be associated there. It's not a good idea? I don't know if I really want to be associated there. It's not a good idea. I don't know if you do either. Well, that brings us to what crazy thing did Staples do this week? What? Staples? Staples got crazy?

So, as you know, we all go to Staples to buy gift cards because we bring in our Chase Inc. card that gets 5X at office supply stores. A reader wrote in saying, just walked out of a Staples store, the general manager was pulling all of the Visa and MasterCard $100 and $200 gift cards. He said he had an email in his hand that said there was a virus attached to them and to pull them right away. Oh my goodness, a virus attached to the Visa gift cards. Yeah. So, you know, so this is like breaking news because, I mean, we all know that viruses will mutate and find different ways to transmit. New hosts.

And this has got to be the first documented case of virus mutating at the point where it's actually carried on a visa or mastercard gift card i mean there have probably been cases of like on uh waffle house uh gift cards but i don't think that would explain a lot that would explain a lot you