Frequent Miler on the Air - The Naughty and Nice Episode

Episode Date: December 28, 2019

Greg and Nick discuss their picks for the best and worst happenings in the points & miles world in 2019. Join us to hear our opinions about Citibank, Marriott, AA, Turkish, Simon Mall, and more.

Welcome to Frequent Miler On The Air with Greg and Nick. This is the first ever Naughty and Nice episode. Today we're going to talk all about our Naughty and Nice list. Each of us produced a Naughty and Nice list for 2019. Which, you know, miles and points things we thought were particularly bad and that went on our naughty list and which things we thought were really good and went on our nice list. So we will get to that in a moment. But first, we're going to do reader feedback time. My favorite segment of the week. Well, that's because it's the only segment other than the talking segment so far, but

my favorite alternative segment, but we're going to have two of those this week. So we're going to have a question at the end, but the reader feedback is going to lead us off. Okay. So this is not technically feedback as much as information that a reader contributed. And I thought it was really good information and worth sharing. So this is kind of long. So bear with me as i read this and then we can discuss it briefly this is from parts unknown last week we we talked about me having not having signed up for the aspire card i think we've talked about that a number of times parts unknown says you guys didn't mention it so just putting it out there, when you're over the five-ish Amex credit card limit, you can always apply for another Amex credit card. And yes, you will get denied, but you can recon the denial and cancel the excess cards as part of the recon to get approved.

For example, if Greg had jumped on the zero annual fee Aspire and applied, yep, he would have been denied. But then Amex usually calls you, or you can take it upon yourself to call in and recon, that is, ask for reconsideration, the denial. Why is this useful? Because the original terms for the application are what's enforced. In this case, the zero dollar annual fee, first year annual fee. And you have at least 30 days to complete the recon. He could take a few days or weeks to think about what cards to dump, then lock in the Aspire.

Also useful if you're at $2.90, I'll explain that in a minute, but are towards the end of the 90 days. This runs on a little bit. I'm sorry, he says, you're towards the end, and the 90 days will run out before the recon window closes. Same situation. When annual fees are about to go up, a card is about to be discontinued, a unicorn link appears, etc. It's always better to apply and figure out the rest of it later. So yeah, so basically what he's saying is, and this is

especially true with Amex, there's no downside to applying and kind of getting your name on the waiting list, if you will, for approval for that card. And you can even decide later whether you really want it. And that works when you already have five cards in your, five Amex credit cards, because they'll usually automatically deny you for the sixth one. And there's literally no downside, because there's not going to be a hard pull most likely not going to be a hard pull it's a of course not a guarantee but generally speaking there's not a hard pull when well actually no there would be no hard pull period because it

when they deny you right yeah when they deny you right so that i i don't know is that yes that's certainly true based on anecdotal experience that I know. Is that a universal truth? I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether or not Amex would agree that that's a universal truth. But that certainly has been true as far as I know. Yeah, if you get denied, there's no hard pull. Right, right.

And so, that business about the 90 days, that has to do with how many cards they'll let you sign up for in 90 days that has to do with how many um how many cards they'll let you sign up for in 90 days and so you know he's basically saying if you're if you've already signed up for two cards with amex within a 90-day period and you're you're in that last stretch and here comes this amazing offer like the first year no annual fee Aspire card, which for new listeners, it no longer exists. It was out very briefly. Very brief. A few hours. But I should have, we all should have jumped on it and decided later whether we really wanted it. And I thought that was a great point. So thank you, Parts Unknown, for mentioning that and

pointing that out. And next time I'll do it right. Yeah, that was a terrific point. And next time I'll do it right. Yeah, that was a terrific point. It reminded me of a mantra from from slick deals for my reselling days. When I was buying and reselling a lot, people would often say buy first and ask questions later, you know, like when you saw a great deal, and you knew that it was a great deal, buy it and you can always return it or cancel your order or whatever else later on if you decide that it isn't going to work out for you. But you know, don't wait, because especially in the internet age, if you wait, things will die before you get a chance to get in. And and I think that this is really a great example of that, in the sense that you would be able to apply first and then think about it later on and say,

you know what, I'll just let that one go if you decide you don't want to cancel any of your cards, but then obviously you have the opportunity to do so if you want. So like you said, there's really no downside. That was, I saw that comment also, and I thought that's a brilliant point, not only for the rare unicorn situation of the Aspire link, but also the 290 I thought was good too, because if you're at two already in the last 90 days, and there's a limited time offer that's about to end before your 90 days is up, you're not out of luck. You could apply and then if you're like at 75 days and the offer's ending tomorrow, you could still apply and just wait a couple of weeks before you call in for the recon. So that was a brilliant idea. Great play, I thought. Yeah, exactly. Is that limited to Amex, that kind of play? I can't think of another situation that's like that, but I'm...

Well, you know, hard to say, but you have usually, I think, 30 days, I think, with all of the major issuers to recon. So, I think you would theoretically have that. Now, would that recon still work with like a Bank of America and their 234 rule if you apply too early and then you recon when it's not too early anymore yeah you know will they still do it or with Chase 524 will they base it on the situation at the time you applied yeah yeah I'm really not sure that it's interesting to know that with Amex it works that way but I don't know if it works that same way with other issuers because everybody's got their rules. And I think, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've just always assumed this, but I think, for example, with the Sapphire rule that you can only have one Sapphire bonus every 48 months, I think if you apply before 48 months is up, you'll get instantly denied, right? I'm not sure, but yeah i i but then if you recon after like if you recon you apply 20 days too early and then

you recon 30 days later will it work i'm it seems likely it would work but i don't know now most other banks besides amex you're you are likely to get a hard pull so there's it's not a totally safe thing but still a hard pull isn't that big of a deal i think it gets way overblown when people talk about hard pulls these days, actually. And when people complain about the fact that, for example, Capital One pulls three bureaus. And I mean, I know they do. And I know that's kind of annoying compared to banks that don't. But at the same time, I feel like the expense of a hard pull is overblown these days, especially with the number of speed limits in play.

It's just not a big deal. I totally agree. Yeah. So we agree agree great feedback thank you parts unknown so exactly exactly so let's move on naughty and nice naughty and nice who was who was naughty this year greg was naughty so my version of naughty my my top actually i think we each only had one naughty identified, whereas on our nice list, we each had several. So my naughty was Citibank for dumping their travel and purchase protections from all their cards, almost all their cards. I hated that they had been going in the right direction on some other things, and boom, they took away these benefits that you find everywhere else to some degree. And so, they went from actually having close to the best of those things to not only bad, but absolutely nothing. Yeah. Right.

What is all that about? It's crazy, right? I mean, especially on a prestige card, a card with such a high annual fee to have totally eliminated travel protections. I mean, I thought it was crazy that Amex didn't have better travel protections on the Platinum card. And they have long had the emergency medical evacuation coverage that's been the best in the business in some regards, but not when it comes to flight delay or cancellation or baggage and that sort of thing. I thought that that was long crazy. When they instituted the 5X on flights, I was like, but why would I ever book a flight on my Platinum card? Didn't really make sense to me. However, Amex, I think, got the memo on that

because travel protections are coming soon. I just don't understand how Citi thought they could compete in that space without travel protections on their premium travel cards. Yeah, and that we haven't seen major new benefits announced to replace that. That blows my mind. At least across our portfolio. You know what? I lied earlier. I did have a runner-up. Naughty.

I forgot. Two naughties. Yes. My second, my runner-up is dynamic award pricing, which is something we are seeing that, you know, United has copied Delta, I'm sorry, in removing award charts and saying the award price is whatever you see. And American now, the award price is whatever you see and american now they've snuck in this this dynamic award chart

with their with their web special awards right do you agree that's yeah that's sort of what happened they still have their award charts but now you you log in and when you do a search on the web you see great deals and incredibly bad deals and everything in between. And I put it there. The funny thing is I've been as close to an apologist for dynamic pricing as you could be because I actually think that it often is helpful to people who

are not experts in the game. That dynamic pricing, you're more likely to get average value. But I reached a point when doing award searches that I got so frustrated between American United and Delta where, yes, they have these special great deals, but you don't know when to look for them. The only way to know is if you happen to stumble upon it or you happen to read a blog post about some particular thing. They're not out there. Yeah, well, you can't count on them. So at least when you had award charts and you have like a saver level, you know what you're looking for.

You know that like if I can find saver award availability, this is going to be a great deal. Now you just don't even know. Is it worth checking the AA.com website? I have no idea. So it's frustrating me like crazy. Yeah. You know, it is. And the funny thing, though, is that I was, as you were talking, preparing myself to argue, you know, I've kind of gone the opposite way. I have been a big critic of Delta and dynamic award pricing for the last couple of years. And I feel like the institution of dynamic pricing is beneficial for two groups of people. A, people who primarily travel domestically.

Because I think that we're seeing, like you said, much better chances to get consistent value out of your points and much award prices that more closely correlate with flight prices. Now, that's not good for you if you happen to be based in a market where flights are really expensive. But if you happen to be based in a market where flights are reasonably priced, award seats really haven't made a lot of sense for a lot of years. That's, I think, part of the reason why the Sapphire Reserve was so popular when it came out for the 1.5 cents per point in value, because you were oftentimes getting a better value by booking your flights using points for a paid fare than you were for an award ticket. Whereas now I think there are more opportunities to get decent value, or at least comparable value to what you would get with the Sapphire Reserve when you're booking award tickets through the airline. The problem is, like you said, that it's impossible to know

when and where and which locations, and it's not necessarily going to line up with where you need to travel. I mean, if you have a need to travel somewhere, like I was just talking to a friend a couple of hours ago, that's looking to travel basically on a set route once or twice a month, and would like to get a travel credit card in order to be able to get award tickets. And it's a much harder question to answer. I told him, you know, it'd be much easier for me to tell you the cards that you should get if you want to fly to Hong Kong in business class, or you want to, you know, go to Europe every summer or something like that. Like, those would be easier questions for me to

answer than which card to get for domestic flights flights because it just totally runs the gamut. However, I think that dynamic pricing is also good for people like us that are willing to hunt for value and people who have a lot of flexibility. And if you're retired and you have the flexibility to fly when it's cheap, you are already going after dynamic pricing when you were booking cash tickets before you started booking award tickets. So it's the same kind of thing as when you were searching for cash tickets, only now you can get a decent value out of your points. It is, except tools like Google Flights don't work with the awards. So when there's the... It's hard to compare. Well, it's hard to compare. It's hard to do an open-ended search like you could do with Google Flights. So Google Flights, you could go on there and say, I feel like going to Asia. Show me what flights are good price and I don't even care when

it is. That's very true. But are there a lot of people using that functionality? I feel like people are constantly surprised that Google Flights does that. I use that all the time. You probably do. Do you think there's a lot of people that are putting in asia i think most people are putting in i want to go to bangkok and or tokyo or wherever it is and they're searching for a specific but even even if it's that if if they're not if they're not searching for particular dates you know you could use google flights to set alerts for when the price goes down there's just so many things you can do in there. Whereas right now, American Airlines might have a web special.

They might have a web special if you log in tomorrow and look for it. We just don't know. And it might be, and this is true with Delta and American, it might be that if you didn't happen to do the search as round trip, you're not going to see a better deal. But to do the search as round trip, you're not going

to see a better deal. But if you do it as round trip, then you will. And I don't know, I'm just finding it. That's annoying. And that's really annoying, I think, for the average consumer. I think for the person who's going to hunt for value and enjoys the thrill of the hunt, I think that there's more opportunities to get a great deal. You know, you look at one that we haven't written up for Frequent Miler yet, but today American Airlines has had a web special to New Zealand for 52,000 points each way in business class, 104 round trip is what it is. And that's an amazing value. It's really hard usually to get any availability for saver awards to New Zealand to begin with. and being able to get business class for those long flights or 104K round trip is an amazing deal. So if you're the kind of person that enjoys the thrill of the hunt, you're going to look for those things and set alerts and subscribe to instant emails and notifications on Twitter or Facebook or whatever else.

You're going to be able to get much better values now than you were able to get before. And I think that to some extent, the dynamic pricing gives the airlines the freedom to be able to price flights lower and at what might be a better value than before when they were set with this price and that price for the Saver Award or the Anytime Award. Now they can charge a heck of a lot more for the people who are willing to pay whatever the cost is. And maybe that will make some of those lower end flights a little bit better for us. Maybe it's an overly optimistic view, but I think that there's, you know, obviously American has shown us this year that there can be some amazing values from those web specials. Absolutely. By PH way to New Zealand and economy class. I mean, crazy. By one way across the United States.

And you know what? I don't disagree with anything you've said here. I think it was just frustration in this sort of like, I don't know how to go find these things myself. Yes, I can wait for Frequent Miler or others to post these deals, but I have some places I want to go and those aren't the deals they're posting. How do I get there? Is it worth logging in?

And that AA's new interface I find really, really unpleasant. It pops up this window that, I don't know. I don't know how to describe how annoying that is. Does the trick to the old interface no longer work? Does it still work? And if you don't know what i'm talking about if you i'm gonna have to i think it does but i don't think it works with business class web web uh savers that could be and that's what i was going to say i i did know that there was recently a web specials that that didn't show using the old interface but does show using the new. So that could be the

issue there. Yeah, I mean, definitely, if you're looking to plan a trip to a specific place, and you're looking for the best price, that has become much harder if you're looking with the domestic US carriers. Although on the flip side, I don't typically prefer to fly those internationally anyway. It's just when I'm flying domestically that I'm flying the American, you know, the US-based carriers. So, it doesn't really affect me so much for those international searches. It's more so annoying for domestic searches because you can't also, you can't count on being able to use partner miles to take those flights because you have no idea what's going to show up as a saver award and what's not anymore. And in fact, I've been working to try to replicate it

because I told Greg privately recently, but I have not yet been able to replicate this with other cities. But I found an award recently that wasn't available at a saver level through United that was available on the Turkish website. So I've been curious to find others like that. And I haven't been able to find other situations like that. But I'm curious if there will be some opportunities like that. But the pain is that you just won't know when you're going to find those things. They're just unicorns that you're going to have to, you know, weed through the haystack to find. So I'll agree that that is fairly naughty in the sense that it makes things annoying, but also kind of nice. And then it gives us a chance to fly to New Zealand for 5,000 points in economy sometimes or 52,000 each.

That's totally fair. And I almost wish that we had put both on the list. Put this on the list in both. Yes, exactly. I think long term it's going to be naughty. Right, right. Let's move on to the next naughty. You put Marriott Bonvoy, but you didn't really give examples you have a legitimate beef with Marriott overall? turned into a easy to say made up word that that says you're unhappy with them which is the

i got bond void is are are you just riding the whole i got bond void riding that wave and riding the wave buying into the negativity there that yeah what is it what is it that's so bad about what Marriott has done in the past year that, and I'm not talking individual hotels. There's always going to be individual hotels, right? Do you really think that Marriott Bonvoy deserves a place on the Nautilus? I do. I do.

And I think that there's a key point in what you just said there in that I don't think that individual hotel blunders are something to blame the entire chain for. And obviously, there have been individual hotel blunders, and there have been plenty of stories about this hotel bonvoyed me or this happened. I didn't get that upgrade, et cetera. So those things matter less to me in an overall perspective of how is Marriott Bonvoy, because those are just examples of bad service, which you might get anywhere in any chain at any time. So those things I don't think are key. But to me, Bonvoy belongs on the

list for a few reasons. First of all, they're not doing anything to make sure that properties within the overall umbrella, or I shouldn't say not doing anything, that almost buys into it too much too, they're not doing enough to make sure that properties within the Marriott fold are really following the spirit of the program. We found multiple instances where individual hotels will put up messages about how they don't upgrade elite members right on the Marriott website. And that's supposed to be a benefit of the program, of your loyalty, of spending 50 or 75 nights a year that you could potentially get an upgrade. And they'll just say flat out, we don't upgrade anybody right on the website, right from the get-go. Don't expect your elite benefits here, guys.

We're not going to respect them. And not only does Marriott not tell them, hey, no, listen, that's part of the program that you guys are benefiting from by being part of the chain. They let them do it on the website. I mean, come on, how blatant is that? So that to me is something that displays Marriott's disregard for its loyal members. And that's such a small thing that if they're allowing that, then what else aren't they really enforcing the spirit of? And I think that the breakfast situation really is something that

doesn't make any sense to me from a customer perspective. And obviously, there's been plenty of customers that have been unhappy with the fact that you never really know or you do know with certain chains. And if you look it up in our chart ahead of time, you'll know where you get breakfast and where you don't. But it's just a confusing system for the consumers. And I think that not creating a consistent experience is something that Marriott is responsible for, for sure. They're the biggest, so obviously they have a lot of properties to try to police to keep things consistent. But if you're not going to provide consistency to the people who are providing you with 50 or 75 nights a year or more, that seems

like you're underperforming for such a big chain with so many resources. I feel like they should be striving to do better and to do better to fix those things when people point them out. Whereas I feel like Marriott has had a very a view of things that where they've minimized the problems and the complaints rather than responding to them and embracing those opportunities to either make a change or make a good customer service safe. I don't know. What do you think? You disagree with me, I think. I don't disagree with what you just said. I mean, I agree that it would be great if they would go a lot further to enforce consistency. They made a big blunder, I think, last year in when they defined

the program and did not standardize things like breakfast benefits. That was ridiculous. But I see that as last year, not what they did in 2019. Well, no, they're still just performing poorly with it, I think. And I think we see examples of hotels that are not really following the spirit of what free breakfast, I think, probably ought to be. But beyond that, then also there's the dynamic pricing that they've instituted, which, okay, it's not dynamic pricing. The peak and off-peak pricing that they've instituted, obviously, is going to create big swings. I think it's particularly naughty. They belong on the naughty list for the fact that it changes every month. So you never know. You got to keep checking your awards. That's annoying to not get the price that you expected. Also, I think they belong on the list for the fact that they are enforcing these ridiculous cancellation policies on a number of properties that are 45 days, 60 days, 90 days. And if you make a cancellation of your award booking,

rather than forfeiting your points, you get charged the cash rate. That's ridiculous. A lot of these places can be hugely expensive. And it doesn't make sense to me that you wouldn't forfeit the points that they were willing to accept as payment for that room. Instead, you're out thousands of dollars. I just can't think of another industry where you pay with one currency, and then they switch it up and charge you some other way when you cancel. Actually, that's a really good point. That's insane. Do we know of people who that's actually happened to?

We do. Okay. I was wondering whether it was a written policy but not actually what they did in practice. No, they didn't. But they're actually doing this in practice. Yeah. Yeah. And that to me is just another indication of how little regard there seems to be for loyal customers. And that's disappointing. And I say that as somebody who is about to have my 75th night in a Marriott this year. Well, of course, not quite all of them were

in a Marriott, I guess, because I did get 15 nights from the credit card, but a lot of nights in Marriott this year, and I'll probably spend some nights in Marriott next year as well. So I'm not exactly voting with my wallet in the sense that I'm still giving them my business in part because it's so easy. They're everywhere I want to be, and they know that. And so I guess they don't think that there's a need to treat customers as well as I think they should.

Now, all that said, there obviously are great Marriott properties. I've had some fantastic Marriott stays this year. So I don't mean to make it sound as though I'm completely anti-Mariott. I had some amazing Marriott stays. I know you've had some great Marriott stays and good experiences from the loyalty program as well. So it's not all bad. But I think they belong on the naughty list

because I don't think that they've done much that's been nice. What have they done that has not been naughty? Yeah. Well, you know, combining two massive programs is, there's a huge hurdle there and a lot of obstacles to overcome.

And they inherited a number of spg properties that already didn't honor elite benefits and they had to figure out what to do with them in some cases they they have i think uh forced those those properties to do things they've also forced those properties to open up awards at the standard rates right that's something that most people didn't think would happen they actually somehow achieved that so i think there actually are quite a few good things the other thing from from the point of view of someone who is long marriott elite, not Starwood elite, they really upped the game for Marriott elite status. So they took a lot of the things that were good about the SPG program and pushed them onto the legacy Marriott properties. Not everywhere. I agree. I'm also not happy about how courtyards give you $10

instead of free breakfast. But a lot of places that it used to be, you couldn't get upgraded to a suite. Now you can. There's a lot of places where there's a lot of things that you can do now and benefits you get as an elite with the program that you wouldn't have gotten before. And so those things are really good. But you won't get those things at a Ritz, for instance, because you're not going to get lounge access. You're not going to get breakfast. And I don't think you get the upgrade there either. Right.

So and that to me is just that inconsistency is the part that I think puts them on the naughty list still. And you're right. They definitely did combine two really complex programs, but they also took like three years to do it. So, you know, I would have thought I think the merger really and the frustration over the merger, you're right, is a 2018 thing. But I would have thought that things would have been pretty well ironed out by the time they put it all together. And in some ways, it's been great, like you said. And I think that it's worth repeating the fact that the ability to book those really high-end places that used to be lots and lots and lots and lots of star points that weren't even on the

award chart was definitely a really positive change. But I said it before and I'm going to say it again. I'm nervous about how that's going to go in the future. Now that they're adding this North Island Seychelles property, that's not going to be on the award chart. I'm concerned that there are going to be other properties that no longer on the award chart either. We'll see. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but Marriott hasn't given me much reason this year. I feel like to be extra optimistic about that, though, of course, I say that as someone who stayed at the St. Regis Bora Bora, so I should probably shut my mouth and say, you know what, it's been pretty good overall.

I'm going to mention one more nice list thing, even though it started out as a naughty list thing regarding Marriott, is you might remember that in February, I think it was, when our elite status from last year ended that the people who are supposed to get platinum status because of the ritz card did not but they worked really quickly i think it's true once once it was a known problem yeah

they were quickly i think they i think some people were manually going through accounts and fixing that problem and you know yeah it was bad that they got it wrong but it's impossible to get all those little things this was a really specific weird thing that you anyone in the in the company can be excused for not knowing what should have happened in that case right and uh so once it was you know came from up high that hey this is wrong fix it they did so anyway that's true that's a really good point that was big i i totally agree with you a lot of a lot of reasons they belong on the naughty list but i think there's also good reasons for being on the so nice list so now that we talked about a couple of those naughty things, a big question that probably comes to a number of readers' minds is, how did we both leave American Airlines account shutdowns off of our naughty lists?

Like we just went through Marriott, we went through some of these other things. American Airlines has been shutting down accounts and canceling award tickets for people that they feel have abused the credit card reward system. And so people have been stranded. Some people that were mid-trip in other parts of the world at the holidays, perhaps trying to get to their family to visit them for the holidays, been stranded without a ticket. How did that not make your naughty list, Greg? Yeah. Well, I'm curious to hear why it didn't make your naughty list, Greg. Yeah. Well, I'm curious to hear why it didn't make your naughty list, but I will tell you why I think why it didn't make mine. And the reason I'm saying I think is that

I don't really remember my thought process. I have to go back and say, here's what I think I was probably thinking at the time. And what I think I was thinking at the time was that I was trying to list things that are fairly significant changes to the state of the miles and points game, as opposed to a single event that happened. And now having said that out loud, I actually do think this was significant change in the miles and points game, not because of what happened to those individual people and accounts, which was awful,

but because it's the first time we've seen a loyalty program take retribution for something that happens in the credit card space at least as that i can remember and right we don't want to see more of that no and if we do we just don't know what's gonna happen that's it's gonna be potentially a very ugly world if that goes on. What about you? Why was it not on your naughty list? What were you thinking? You know, from my perspective, I thought about it. And I thought, you know, this is obviously a significant event.

And I didn't think about it from the perspective Greg just mentioned. And I think that from that perspective, it totally did belong on the naughty list. My thought process behind it was that the way that they went about doing it was not very nice. But at the same time, I think that the people who are opening lots of American Airlines credit cards under different mailers knew that it was something that they didn't want. That American Airlines, that is, and that Citibank, perhaps, maybe that's a stretch. American Airlines didn't expect you to open up one credit card after another, after another, after another. That can't have been a surprise for anybody who is opening tons of cards. So I didn't necessarily put it on AA that it was particularly naughty. Now, that's not to say that I think that the people who are opening the cards were naughty either, but I think that they knew they were exploiting a loophole. And so, as we said last

week, when you exploit a loophole like that, you know that there's some risk. So, I didn't necessarily feel like it was something that I could say AA was naughty for shutting down accounts for doing something that I think anybody you explain that to outside of the miles and points world would have been like, that's not a reaction from AA that's completely inappropriate. You would think that probably a program might do something like that if they felt like they were exploited and it was within their terms. And that's not to defend AA again, but at the same time, I didn't think it was a particularly naughty reaction for them to protect their program from people that they felt like were exploiting their program, whether they're correct or incorrect. And that's not to say Citi doesn't have some blame in that.

I think they should have a huge part of the blame in that. But I didn't think it was something that put AA on the naughty list. Now that you said what you said, I totally agree because AA taking that action, I feel like is something that has been big enough within the loyalty space, within the miles and points space, that there have to be other executives that have seen that or other loyalty programs anyway that have seen that and taken note and thought about it a little bit. And that could be a game changer. I don't necessarily think that it will be, but I think it certainly could be if the loyalty

programs themselves start taking action against customers that they feel like are abusing the credit card game, because that could be a really ugly world, like you said. Yeah, it's certainly a significant milestone in the miles and points space, whether or not it portends bad things will depend on how other programs react, right? Right, right. And I hope that it doesn't become known as an important milestone. True, right. But it just seems that way at the moment.

But yeah, I mean, so I think that that's something that for sure was a big piece of news this year and was certainly on our minds, but didn't make the naughty list for those reasons anyway. Yeah. All right.

Enough of being curmudgeons. Let's talk about what we liked. What was on the nice list? Which we both had way more things on the nice list than on the naughty list. We're nice guys, so... Makes sense. We'd be optimists.

Yeah, we're optimists. We like nice things, and we like to reward or thank programs that do nice things and we like to reward or or you know thank programs that do nice things and i i picked as my top nice the same company that was the top of my naughty list which is city bank so even though city bank took away all of those even though they took away all of those valuable purchase and travel protections, they also threw us a heck of a bone with the Citi Double Cash card. So the ability to transfer one-to-one Citi Double Cash cash back to Thank you points is a game changer in my mind. And I just think, wow. They changed the state of the game before they did that was that for uncapped rewards,

one and a half points, transferable points per dollar, was where you're at. Now, true, Amex had a 2X and has a 2X business card, but that's capped at 50K spend, which still is a lot. It's a great card for that, but this has no cap. As many points as you earn, you're getting 2X. You can transfer them to thank you points. And then if you have a premier prestige card, move them to loyalty program. So huge. Yeah, that is amazingly big. That is so nice, especially when you consider the fact that Citi does have some decent transfer partners. They don't have as many or not necessarily as useful

a range as Chase and Amex do, but they still do have some excellent partners in there. Obviously, this year, we've talked a lot about Turkish Miles and Smiles. And so that's been huge for people who've been able to take advantage of that. And the ability to then manufacture or create enough points for domestic awards for like less than $4,000 spend is pretty terrific. And it's not that you couldn't have done that earning 5x perhaps at an office supply store with a Chase Inc. cash card. But this is something you can use anywhere. And so you could use on all of your everyday spend and get pretty darn good value, both from a baseline perspective of the ability to cash out the points and from a transfer partner's perspective where you can transfer to some useful partners and get some great awards. That's definitely huge. I think that is an under-talked about

development. I think that there's not enough discussion really in the blog world about how huge that is. Right, right. Also, it's a MasterCard. Right. And so that means you can use it in places like plastic. So bill payments. If you have bill payments that Amex doesn't allow through plastic, MasterCard allows them all.

Mortgage payments, just anything that plastic allows, you can do with. MasterCard allows them all. Mortgage payments, just anything that plastic allows, you can do with your MasterCard. And so paying, you know, 2.5% to get 2x rewards, that's not a bad, you know, it's not something I would necessarily do if I was already flush with points, but if you're

not, I would. Yeah, I mean, 1.25 cents a piece, as long as you got a decent use in mind that might not be a bad deal at all and uh and and that's on the expensive end of things so i totally agree with you there that you know that for being the expensive form of ms so to speak or the expensive way to generate points that's still a pretty decent deal uh earning 2x everywhere also since it's a master card i believe you could pair it up with the Simply Miles thing that Steven Pepper has written about, the new American Airlines initiative,

where you can link up if you have an aviator card, I think it has to be an aviator card, right, that you link that up to earn extra bonus miles with card-linked offers. And some of them, he showed this week, have some incredible deals going through the 31st of the month because they are giving you five X, whatever the rewards was. And, and I think that the way it's written, I would have assumed it was just an extra five X in the miles, but actually some of those offers are offers that are, you know, a few thousand miles at a pop. Like I think the BJ's membership, BJ's wholesale membership was 3,000 miles that people were seeing and they were actually getting 15,000 miles for signing up for a $55 membership or the wag.com one that was 10 bucks and you're getting 10,000 American Airlines any MasterCard. So you could link those to your city double cash and pick up some nice points on the double cash while you're also generating American Airlines miles. So I think that that's another benefit of it. So yeah, I think that was huge news. And it's kind of gotten buried because there are some other great pieces

of huge news this year, too. I think that, you know, obviously, Rakuten and what has happened there with membership rewards points, the ability to generate lots of membership rewards points through a shopping portal. Which is my second thing on the nice list. Now, how does that make it second place instead of the Citi Double Cash? Don't you think that was bigger? Or maybe it don't? I don't know. What do you think? No, that's a great question. So to complete the sentence, though, about the Rakuten portal is that they change to where they allow you to earn membership rewards points instead of cash back. Sort of very similar to the double cash situation where you can choose one or the other, transferable points or cash back, and Rakuten allows it. But to be clear with the C double cash, you kind of have your cake and eat it too, because you're earning points that you can use for cash, which you can convert to thank you points.

Whereas with Rakuten, you have to pick one or the other and your account is going to be one or the other. Good point. Very good point. Now, I did think when I started the list that the Rakuten thing would be on top. Why did I choose Citi Double Cash on top? It was a close call. Part of the reason is simply so I can have Citi at the top of both the nice and naughty list because that's the kind of thing I do.

But I also think that the Citi Double Cash change has more impact to a much wider audience so it's now a the city double cash is a great starter card for people getting into the game who just start off just saying what's a card that offers good rewards everywhere and then might later be interested in transferring to other programs and such and then they could could get the Premiere and make it more valuable. So I just think it has wider applicability. There's not as many people, I think, or my guess, that are interested or even understand what portals can do for you. So, yeah, that's why. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. But Rakuten was huge. Certainly this year,

the ability to earn membership rewards points, the ability to sometimes earn 10x or 15x on different merchants, especially the fact that they've included hotels sometimes in those. Marriott was in there for 10x a number of times earlier in the year, though that seems to have chilled out. But we're still seeing IHG at 10x, sometimes 12x, sometimes 15x. That's amazing to earn that many membership rewards points on a paid stay on top of your IHG points. Yeah, it really is. is that you know when i first started blogging as frequent miler portals like the airline portals or the chase ultimate awards portal having 10x rewards was not that uncommon back then but these days yeah you know getting miles or points at 10x except for things like magazines and stuff is

is pretty unusual whereas the racket portal does these promotions all the time i mean it's very very common to get 10x or more on a huge number of stores and including not just the ones you've never heard of but the but the big guys right and so yeah i i just think it's it's a game changer both because of the portal and because the associated credit card that earns 3x for anything that you shop through the portal and pay for with the credit card. That's 3x on points currency as their rewards. Right. Can you think of any example of that? I don't think so.

That's, yeah. You know, way back when, I think it was Expedia used to give you thank you points, but that was way before thank you points were useful things. Right, right. That's about the only thing I can think of. That Sears credit card and the thank you points also maybe, because I think you were able to earn the points and convert them and get thank you points, maybe. But yeah, generally speaking, I can't think of another situation. And I think what's particularly notable about it is not only are the payouts as good or better than the best we've ever seen in many cases from airline portals, but then you add on top of that, that they're transferable points. You're not stuck with one airline's miles. I mean, that's just

an amazing value. And even if you want cash back, if you have the Charles Schwab card, you're getting 1.25 instead of one for each point. If you had to cash back. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, it's just an amazing, amazing benefit that people should be taking advantage of and using it. And remember, if you're listening and you haven't been paying attention all year long, if you are earning cash back right now, you can change your preference to earning membership rewards points so that in the beginning, you weren't able to convert your account, but now you can. So if you were earning cash back, it's easy to change that over. So I think that definitely was a big piece of niceness that I didn't include

on my list. Right. Now, my third nice item was the only thing we had in common that any of us had in common, which is Simon Mall being MS friendly. They're friendly to manufactured spenders like openly welcome welcoming us us in putting a little check box on their form and and saying as long as you check that box we know what you're doing and we're happy with what you're doing and then adding gift cards visa gift cards loadable to $1,000. They just recently announced to us that the $1,000 gift cards are going to continue indefinitely. So previously they were announcing it a few months at a time. Now they're saying basically that the experiment went well. We're going to keep doing it. So that's awesome.

It's also, we talked about the Citi Double Cash. These two things kind of go hand in hand in that Citi Double Cash. Because Simon Mall doesn't have necessarily bonus categories, like it doesn't show up as a bonus category for most credit cards, you want a card that earns high rewards everywhere. You can't use that Amex Blue Business Plus because no Amex cards will earn rewards buying gift cards at Simon Mall anymore. So Citi Double Cash has got to be one of the best cards you can use for buying these gift cards.

For sure. For sure. And as I said in my blurb about why Simon was so big, I really think that in any year in which the other things that we've included here to talk about on the nice list didn't happen, I feel like this would have been the story of the year. In fact, I think if you just break it into pieces and say, okay, an outlet that sells Visa gift cards approached a blog about manufactured spending and said, hey, listen, we want to get people in here manufactured spending. We're happy to sell you Visa gift cards. Come on in.

I think that would have been a huge piece of news. If anybody anywhere, whether they were welcoming MSers or not, was selling $1,000 Visa gift cards with a $3.95 load fee, that would have been a huge piece of news. And if there was an ability to buy $25,000 worth of gift cards in a single stop in a single place. I forgot to mention that one. Yeah. If that happened, I think that would have been huge news. Putting all of those in one package, that just blows my mind. You know, it's incredible because of the volume you can do at Assignment Wall so quickly and relatively cheaply. I just think it has a lot of appeal.

Those $1,000 cards are much easier to deal with from a liquidation perspective for people that are liquidating via money orders. And also for people who are making tax payments and that sort of thing, because you can obviously pay a lot more using those $1,000 cards. So I think there are a lot of great benefits there. And that in itself would have been the story of the year, I think, most years. So that I think was hugely nice. And they've been so welcoming about it. I've been in a number of times this year buying gift cards. I've been to more than one mall and I've emailed to ahead of time or called ahead of time to let people know that I'm coming. And when I call

and tell them how much I'm going to buy, they have the cards ready to go. And it's a very simple process. So it's been great. Certainly a nice, easy way to do your MS. Yeah. So you can now take your Citi Double Cash, buy 15 of these $1,000 gift cards all in one shot. I'm sorry, but, well, yeah, and get 30,000 thank you points, and that's enough for two round-trip tickets to anywhere in the U.S., including Hawaii and Alaska, because of your number one nice.

That's right. Because of my number one nice thing, which I can't believe that neither Greg nor Steven had this as the top nice thing of the year, because I just can't imagine anything being nicer than Turkish Miles and Smiles charging 7,500 miles each way for United Saver Awards within the United States. Anywhere in the US, 7,500 miles and $5.60. That to me was by far the miles and points story of the year, the nicest thing out there. Now, it's become a little complex because in the beginning, we were able to make those bookings over the phone, and now you can't make those bookings over the phone. You'll have to email or get lucky and find the awards you're looking for online. But still, the pricing on that is just amazing.

The ability to manufacture the points so cheaply, what Greg just talked about. You can walk into a Simon Mall, and if you've established a relationship with that mall so you you can buy more than 10,000 at a time, you buy 15,000 at a cost of less than $60 for the cards. And then whatever your liquidation cost is, you know, anywhere from maybe another 15 bucks or something, uh, on top of that 60. So you're talking like for $75 in cost, plus your time manufacturer enough points for two people to fly around trip to Hawaii, to, you know, wherever it is that you're looking to fly, Alaska, regular domestic flights. It's just changed the way I look at things. And in fact, the companion pass has been really valuable and important for me for years. And it is reducing in importance to me because I know that I can book these United flights for

7,500 points. Now, obviously, that's relying on United Saver availability. We didn't know what was going to happen when United switched over to a more revenue-based system, a more dynamic pricing system. But so far, there seems to be decent economy class availability still. So for domestic awards, that is just huge. We haven't seen anything that cheap. I don't know. And as long as I've been into miles and points, we haven't seen anything other than British Airways super short haul flights for 4,500 points. I haven't seen flights can't be changed or canceled, whereas Turkish charges 25 bucks to cancel a flight and redeposit the miles. So, it's also very easy to cancel these cheap awards. So, that to me was definitely a really nice thing. How did that not make your list? I've been waiting for that question. How is that not as nice? And I'll tell you the truth is I can make up reasons, I guess. I could say, well, they're hard to book. I really wanted business class, but United never releases business class awards.

But no, the truth is I knew you'd have it on the top of your list. So I wanted to pick other things. Other things. Fair enough. Fair enough. But I wanted to pick other things. That's all. Fair enough. Fair enough. But we can agree that that was super nice this year. It absolutely belongs at the top of any list. If you weren't participating in the naughty and nice list, I would put it up there.

Would it have been number one? Maybe. I don't know. I wish I had done that exercise to think that through, whether it would have topped the others I had put on the list. And I guess for somebody who's in a Delta hub like you are with Delta elite status, maybe it's not as big of a piece of news as it is for those of us who are either free agents or live somewhere that's well served by United. But I think that for most people still, that's a huge story. There is just no question. It's huge. We can all agree.

It deserves to be high, if not top, of the nice list. I agree with that. But we are not done with nice things. What else is nice? So you also listed, and I thought about putting the SoFi deal. Mm-hmm. listed and I thought about putting the SoFi deal. And I think the only reason I didn't put it is because I already had several nice things on the list. And I, you know, I just marked it a little bit lower than those. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think SoFi belonged on the list this year because

they ran an amazing promotion and have still continued having a great product that's easy to use. I've been using it quite a bit. And so I think they belonged up there because A, they offered the opportunity for people to very easily in their pajamas, if you're playing in two player mode, make a few hundred dollars in cash that was, again, easy and fast. And then if you were able to explain that to a few other friends and family members, it was even more cash in your pocket. Again, with very little effort, it was something very easy for anyone to do. And not only that, but they also happen to offer a great product. I just took my first withdrawal from an ATM the other day, actually. And so I took money out of the ATM, I went up to pay for something. And before I walked out of the door, I had a notification on my phone saying that I had been refunded the ATM fee. It was a $3 ATM fee. And the notification

already popped up. And I logged right in to take a look at it. And sure enough, it realized that I took out $63. $3 was a fee. So they credited me back that $3 right away. Wow. So yeah, it's a great card to have because it does rebate those ATM fees. I haven't actually written a quick tip about it. And I should this this discussion reminds me that I also read on the blog out and out that they are also refunding the 1% fee from from Visa for for international transactions. So that fee also is getting rebated. So there really are no foreign transaction fees on taking money out of the ATM abroad either.

So I think it's been a very easy deal for a lot of people that, you know, it was beneficial. And now, so it's not as great as before, but you can still get free money, right? You can. You can get a few bucks for the SoFi money product, and then you could still get free money, right? So you can get a few bucks for the SoFi money product, and then you could still get, what, a hundred bucks? A hundred bucks on the investing side. Invest. That's not, I mean, that's really good. Now, you do need to put in, you have to

deposit into your investment account a thousand dollars, right? Yeah, you don't have to actually invest the money, but you have to deposit a thousand dollars into the account. So your thousand dollars will be sitting there not earning interest on the investment side, yeah you don't have to actually invest the money but you have to deposit a thousand dollars into the account so your thousand dollars will be sitting there not earning interest on the investment side but you don't actually have to buy any stock with it and then the bonus now is is in the form of stock so you'll get a hundred dollars worth of stock now get a hundred dollars worth of stock and then you could move that thousand dollars to your sofi money account if you want it back in cash that's usable or out to any bank account. Right. Or to be able to earn interest on it on the cash side, because I think the interest is still 1.6% on that side, which isn't industry leading, but it's great for a checking

account that has no fees, no minimums, no requirements and rebates ATM fees everywhere. It's a pretty solid rate from that perspective. So yeah, I think you could just move that money over right away there. I haven't seen anything about a minimum amount of time that the money needs to be on the investment side. Another side benefit that I've found is that in some cases, when you open a new checking account at various institutions, they often have a direct deposit requirement. And we talked about recently how sometimes a transfer from some other type of account will trigger the direct deposit bonus, even though you didn't actually make a direct deposit. And I had opened one recently where I took money from my SoFi investing account and deposited it in a brand new checking account. I pushed it from my SoFi account to a new checking

account and I got the bonus for the new checking account as though that was a direct deposit from an employer. So that's a side benefit too. And as I went through data points and doctor credit for that, I noticed that in a lot of cases, deposits from brokerages do tend to trigger the direct deposit requirement for various checking accounts. So I certainly intend to try and use the SoFi investing side to do that more because that seems to be something that may work. So I certainly intend to try and use the SoFi investing side to do that more because that seems to be something that may work. So there are a number of benefits. Yeah. Easy $25, easy $100 in stock if you still want to go after that. Yep. And then your last nice list item is the Hyatt and SLH partnership. And this one surprised me. Which then was a runner up on mine as well.

You know, I didn't print it, but that's something I'd considered is what I mean. Yeah, I didn't expect to have that one in there, to be honest, because I wasn't particularly thrilled with the partnership when it was announced because I don't, I'm not somebody who generally looks for boutique hotels. I prefer consistency. One of my issues with Marriott earlier was that they're not consistent enough. I prefer consistency and I view hotels that are not part of that cookie cutter sort of image as potentially being less consistent. But my first SLH stay this year was fantastic. A number of the properties look really good and the benefits you

get at the SLH properties are better than the benefits you would get at Hyatt if you're not a globalist. If you're not a globalist at Hyatt, you're not going to get free breakfast, your late checkout best you're going to do is 2pm as an explorist. But you can have absolutely no status with Hyatt and get free breakfast each day at SLH properties, no need to consult a chart as to whether or not you're going to get free breakfast, you get late checkout, you get a potential room upgrade. So basically, you get the benefits of elite status without actually having to be loyal. And so I think that that is a big piece of news. And some of those properties have looked really amazing as of late.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm excited. My wife and I have bookings at two coming up. And so, you know, I'm sure I'll be writing about them soon. But I prefer boutique type of properties. I like it when they're smaller and more personal, you know, where the people running them are people that might recognize you from day to day if you're there for a few days and where you'd recognize them and have conversations about the neighborhood or whatever. And so, yeah, I like that a lot. And, you know, even though it wasn't SLH, the place that I booked with Choice Points in Princeton reminds me of that kind of thing. And so, all of my SLH experiences so far are other places that make

me think that SLH is going to be really nice. But I'll let you know really soon. You know, so many of the SLH properties get great reviews, though. And, you know, when you look them up on different platforms, you'll see great reviews from a number of different platforms on so many of those SLH properties. And not all of them are top tier Hyatt properties either. Some of them are in the middle tiers and still look like great places to stay. So they're definitely worth a look. I have to say, I originally my fear with these was that they were going to ruin the Hyatt award chart, that these properties were now, you know, in a higher

tier, some of them are 40k a night, whereas previously, the top tier of Hyatt had been 30. And my fear was that that means everything from Hyatt is going to slide up a little bit on the scale and become more expensive. But luckily, when they they instituted their peak and off peak pricing this year, we found that that that didn't actually cause the big blow that I expected. So I think that that has turned out to be pretty good. So I agree that that is something that belongs on the nice list. All right, cool. So let's cover Stevens quickly.

One of his nice list items is a really good one. I thought unexpected signup bonuses. So he mentioned, for example, the Hilton Aspire. He got in on that first year no annual fee deal. Right. The expired Aspire deal. He also got in on the fact that the United credit card became available to people that were over 524 if they were targeted

within the app or logging in to their United account. So he gave those two examples. He had very personal examples I guess. I don't think he was coming from the point of view. I think more of ours were like

things that impacted people very widely um i wouldn't say either of those were that way but there were certainly nice surprises for him and for a lot of people who who got in on those things yeah yeah definitely those are those are two big stories from uh like you said that for the people that were able to get in on them especially that aspire Aspire link, I mean, that was hands down one of the most amazing deals of the year. So, yeah, the people were able to get in on those certainly did well. And I think that it was interesting to look at the fact that Stephen, his naughty list also was pretty personal in the sense that I think the thing that topped his naughty list, if I remember correctly, was himself for procrastinating on things in a few situations. And, and I think that it's also good to reflect a little bit on the mistakes that we've made throughout the course of the year too, because certainly,

you know, I make my share of mistakes too. So, so I think that was an interesting perspective to have looked at the naughty and nice list instead of looking at, at just what the major programs did, but how we have, have interacted with those things.

Yeah, no, I found that interesting too it was a surprise when i read it i was like what do you mean yourself but it makes it makes some sense the the he had two more things on his on his nice list he was one of the people who got the free american airlines executive platinum status because of having Hyatt Globalist. And he also, as people who got that found out later, did get the four global upgrade certificates that you get as an American Airlines executive platinum. So he's sitting pretty.

He got quite the Christmas present from Hyatt, you know, thanks to the partnership with American. For sure. It really is making me wish I had decided to go with Hyatt this year instead of next year. Well, you know, and it's worth mentioning, I've read more and more stories online of people who dropped an email to their concierge, globalists who dropped an email to their concierge and got the call that they were, they were eligible for that. So if you didn't get targeted for that, it's worth at least sending an email there. You know, it's not going to hurt you to send an email to your concierge and say, Hey, listen, I heard about, you know, this deal. Am I targeted for that too? And see, I don't know that that's going to make you targeted, but I know that if you don't, and you haven't gotten a call, you're not probably going to get one at this point so you might as well give it a shot yeah i think

it'd be crazy not to not to yeah exactly i mean i guess there's some chance that this is a once per account thing so maybe so maybe there's an argument to say wait until next year because i'm going to be flying american airlines more next year something along those lines but but here's the counter to that we don't know that this will ever happen again ever yeah this might just be a big gesture to sort of celebrate the the this partnership between hyatt and american and and a and a way to thank their most loyal customers across. And we just don't know. Now, on that point, let me ask you this. Doesn't this belong on the naughty list?

If you are someone who has earned your American Airlines status the old-fashioned way by flying American and spending money on American Airlines, and now you have to compete for upgrades with these people like Steven Pepper that probably haven't flown American Airlines all year long and now suddenly have four of these system-wide upgrades to use and are going to be on that upgrade list. Isn't this something naughty on AA's part to give away status like that? No, no. We live by all these loopholes and workarounds and shortcuts to elite status and to other things. So if we start punishing, you know, because all the programs are at the edge of their seat waiting to see what we say about them. So we don't want them thinking that shortcuts to elite status are a bad thing. We like them.

Right, right. And even if you're an American Airlines loyalist that felt a little miffed by that, you got to remember that those are the kinds of things in this space that exist that are exciting opportunities. Maybe that particular one didn't work out for you if you're a longtime American Airlines loyalist, but the ability to match your Hilton status to Wyndham status and get Caesar's Diamond status or something like that. Those opportunities out there exist and they're exciting and good and beneficial for all of us. So, yeah, I think that that is a nice thing, even though I made the argument for the executive platinum folks out there who are a little unhappy.

Yeah, I understand that. But it's the same thing as the person who paid full price for their business class flight and they're sitting next to someone who got it for free, right? Right. Right. Absolutely. And that's why we play this game so that we can take advantage of those. So we can be the other guy who got it for free. Exactly.

Sorry. Sorry, guy who paid more. I appreciate you paying more. Yeah. Now, finally, Stephen had on his nice list Marriott. He really likes the fact. So, he lives on the road, basically, right? Right.

And he loves this off-peak pricing. So, he found a Category 1 that was off-peak and stayed there for a month or so. I don't remember his example, but he stayed there a long time for almost nothing, thanks to the off-peak pricing. So he liked that. Yeah, and I think that that's a really good point. The off-peak pricing came in handy for me, too. I booked one five-night stay where I wasn't going to stay all five nights because I was able to do it for 20,000 points. So I was able to pick up five nights towards elite status by booking a five night stay. I was originally going to book a one night stay for 5,000 points. And I decided that for 15,000 points more, it was worth picking

up the four elite nights that way, which in hindsight, I probably would have done a meeting if I had run into that situation before you publish the post about booking them online for $100. But I still also don't feel too badly about picking up Elite Nights that cheaply. And it certainly does intrigue me. I've long thought about what it would be like to live in an IHG Point Breaks property or in IHG Point Breaks properties for a year. Back when they were 5,000 points, I thought it'd be pretty interesting to spend an entire year in those 5,000 point per night properties. So I do like the idea that Marriott has those very cheap category one off-peak prices. Unfortunately, I don't think

peaking off-peak is a good thing overall, but it's great if you love those low category properties. Yeah. Now, lest we be too nice on Marriott, I think going back to the conversation about that we love elite shortcuts, just a reminder that they did a grinchy thing by announcing that they're getting rid of the Marriott meeting benefit where you can get 10 elite nights for meetings. that a little bit last week but i just thought it was worth mentioning here that you know we don't we we're not gonna we're not gonna give them a pass because steven and you got some off-peak pricing right right they they still have some naughty things going on so they do they do that was grinchy of you grinchy i love that word it's grinchy if you marry that. We don't appreciate that. It's an appropriate word for this time of year anyway. It is. It is.

I'm hanging out of that one. Yeah. So those are naughty and nice, right? That is our naughty and nice discussion. So what else do we have? That brings us then to the reader question segment of today's podcast broadcast, right? Where we're going to now take a look each week at a reader question and try and answer it. My favorite part of every show starting now.

Now. So I'm going to ask the question or I'm going to repeat the question and let Greg answer it. And actually in this case, I'll probably have something to add to it too. But this is a question that came in actually like just before we started. I had one in mind and then I changed it at the last minute because somebody asked this question just like minutes before we started recording this. So here's the question. And it was on Greg's post about manufacturing Delta Elite status in 2020 and beyond because of the changes that are coming there, which aren't necessarily relevant to the question. The question was, what about the

cost of MSing? I'm going to read this as he wrote it. So what about the cost of MSing, particularly the liquidation costs? That brings me to a larger question that's been irking me. Oops, I just lost it. How does one like you plan all of this MS along with all of the other MS ventures, 15K for Hyatt Knights on the Hyatt card or for the one Hyatt free night category one to four cert. In addition to MSing Hyatt Globalist, maxing out the benefit on the Radisson card for free nights with 30K spend, Chase Freedom rotating categories and everything else.

How do you do all that? I can see that Simon Malls are making it easy to get the cards and I see your post on MSing, but how the liquidation workflow happens still baffles me maybe a more detailed discussion of this can be done on fm on the air so how how how does someone uh first of all what are the costs of liquidation for a huge scale ms like that and uh you know and how does the workflow go in terms of manufacturing spend in large quantities?

These assignment cards can be bought 10,000 at a time. If you create a relationship with your local mall, you can buy 25,000 in a shot. But what's the workflow on the liquidation side look like? Yeah, well, I mean, unfortunately, a lot of people ask me what I do, and there's almost nothing that I do that will help you. Right? So, just to give an example, a lot of what I do with my spend, it doesn't involve buying gift cards at all, involves making payments through plastic.

And because of my position as a blogger who's written a lot about plastic, I have a nearly inexhaustible supply of fee-free dollars, which means that I can pay bills through plastic without any fees, as as those free-for-you dollars are around. You have $250,000 worth of bills to pay each year? No. Right. But that's one outlet. That's one example of the type of thing that I can do that doesn't help readers. That's true. There are techniques that have been told to me in confidence about how to manufacture spend that I'm not going to share and and so there's i don't do so so i don't go and um use gift cards to buy money orders

i don't go to to walmart and do and bill pay my credit card so those are two things that a lot of people do so you know when they're doing them i i think actually you do do some of that right so it'd probably be better for you to talk through that workflow i mean i'm sure i could talk through it but well i thought the question was interesting uh and i will talk about that uh for a second here too but i thought the question was interesting and greg's answer is interesting for for a couple of reasons one the, the person was asking because Greg has written about manufacturing Delta Diamond Elite status, which requires $250,000 worth of spend now. And then there are a number of other things that clearly Greg probably MSs in order to do. And so somebody was wondering the obvious question, how do you do that much? And I think that even though Greg has noted before that there are certain things he's been told in confidence that

he just can't share publicly because he's been told those things in confidence, I think that that piece of information is key for people who are looking to ramp up in knowing that there must obviously be some of those opportunities that exist. And so I think that that piece of information, even though on the surface might seem like it's not valuable, is very valuable. Because not only does that make me know that there's a way to MS a quarter of a million dollars a year that doesn't involve buying money orders and depositing them, but it inspires me to want to be creative and figure out, well, okay, what can there possibly be? And I think that when it comes to the MS world, things change. And tomorrow, the techniques that

I use might all go out the window, and then I'll be forced to find something else. So I can tell you how I'm doing it right now, but that could change. And I might have to look for something else. And I think that the fact that there are obviously other avenues that people aren't talking about is something that tells you, well, look for ways to experiment when you see an opportunity. And a good example that was low scale was the one that Stefan recently wrote about at Rapid Travel Chai in using the United, what was it? I can't think of what it was called, the United Go Card or something like that. United had unveiled a debit card that you could load up to $2,500 a month with gift cards, basically. You could

take $2,500 in gift cards and load it to this debit card every month and earn something like 60 or 70,000 United Miles a year very, very easily and liquidate very, very easily. But it was one of those things that he saw the fact that they introduced this debit card that was loadable and said, hmm, can I load that? Where can I load it? How can I, is it possible that I could use gift cards to do that? And surely when they introduced that card, that was not what they expected people to do. But it was something that a person who's thinking outside the box can find a very easy, low cost way to manufacture spend. So I think that that piece of information, while it may not on the surface to everybody listening, seem like what

they wanted to hear. I think that it should be something that you want to hear in the sense that you got to just keep your eyes open for those things. And you might discover something we haven't found. That's a good point. And here's another thing I can sort of talk about in a general way about how you can think about these things. Let's say you want to manufacture spend with Amex cards. That's harder than with MasterCards and Visa cards for various reasons, right? Simon Mall being one big reason why it's harder because you can't get points or sort of credit for your spend with an Amex card at Simon Mall. But if you can find another way to manufacture spend with Amex cards

that might have a fee higher than what you want, but that's easy, what you could do is look to pay the fee that the Amex card requires, but then earn cash back with MasterCard or Visa cards by, if you have, let's say, well, example, our Discover card, the Discover first year 3%, you can do that all day long and get three percent cash back and use that to offset the let's say it was two and a half percent on the amex i didn't you don't even have to do as much ms if you if if you are earning more cash back as a percentage than you're spending

in the fees on on the amex side you don't have to do as much of that MS to offset those costs. Right. Right. Yeah. With some arithmetic there, some mental math, and you can justify those costs a little bit. So that's certainly something to consider. Now, on the more traditional money order and deposits and all the rest of that kind of perspective, I think the key is finding places where you can do it, which is going to vary by location. So you may be in a location where there aren't very many places. However, you got to look around and see where do they sell money orders. And one of the easy tools to do that is to just go to the Western Union website and look

and see which places around you sell money orders, because you might be surprised. There might be some places that you didn't realize sell them that sell them. So, and I don't say that because there's a secret to be found there, but recently I was visiting family and discovered there were a number of other places. There were some places I knew sold them, but there were other places that I was like, oh, wow, I didn't know that they sold them too. So that gave me another location to go to, to kind of, you know, spread out the love and buying the money orders. And then there's the fact that you want to figure out where the limits are. And so, for example, I've found a number of grocery store chains where I can easily buy buy 6,000 between the two of us and just, you know, in a few stops, then four stops like that, then we've liquidated 24,000 in cards. And that's typically what I would buy at a time at Simon, because I don't want to deal with a partial card because you can only spend up to 25 period, including the activation

fees. So I just buy 24 at a time in order to make it the math simple. But, you know, we just recently bought 24 each and liquidated them in a, you know, it took us probably a couple of weeks because we were just doing a couple of stops, you know, a stop here or there by ourselves. But we've done that a number of times this year. And in fact, in a day, we've been able to liquidate north of 20, you know, with just again. So what's a typical, how much do you typically spend in fees for that liquidation step? Good question.

So it varies by chain. Now, when I'm at home, the grocery store chains around me charge a dollar for every $500 money order. So for me to liquidate a $1,000 gift card usually costs $2. And that's on the expensive end, but it's easy. I know I can buy three at a time. There's a city nearby where there's tons of one particular grocery store chain where I know I can buy three at each one. So it's a simple, fast liquidation, making a few stops, doing a loop. Now it does take some time. I say fast, it's not fast in the sense

that I'm not done with $24,000 in the same amount of time that it takes me to buy $24,000. That's obviously a very quick stop on the buying end with Simon, and it is slower on the liquidation side, but relatively decent. So that is on the expensive end. Now, when I pass by Kroger's throughout much of the southeast of the United States, most of them charge either $0.88 or $ or 98 cents for a money order. Varies in location, but in one city anyway where I've done plenty, the fee is 88 cents for a thousand dollar money order if you're a member of the loyalty program. And I often find that I don't even have to type in my loyalty information. They just automatically do one behind the counter because you don't earn fuel points or anything on that anyway. So

that's good to me because Kroger then isn't seeing how many money orders I'm buying. So that doesn't bother me one bit. But at any rate, I know I can buy three at each store. I know that there are a couple of other grocery chains. There's several within one of the cities I visit pretty often. And so I'll bring lots of gift cards there and kind of make my rounds that way. So I'll buy $3,000 at a cost of $0.88 each. So we're talking less than $3 to liquidate $3,000 in cards. The activation fees on that $3,000 in cards cost me $12. So we're talking about $15 in cost for $3,000 in one stop. So one stop to buy and one stop to buy, um, one stop to buy and one stop to, to buy the,

to buy the cards, one stop to buy the money orders. So, um, it does take some time though, like I said, 48,000 that we recently liquidated. I mean, that, that took, took a little bit because we did have to make a few stops, but I usually try and pair those with things that I'm already doing. So, um, it does take time though. And oftentimes people will talk about, you got to consider the time cost and is that worth it? Do you want to spend your Saturday when you could be, you know, kicking around, you know, the soccer ball or playing basketball with the family or having a cookout or whatever else going around and buying money orders? And, you know, the answer may be yes or maybe no. It depends on how you're going to use the points.

Yeah. And I think it's important because we're having this conversation to talk about how many things can go wrong in this whole process. True. Because, you know, it's not all easy and safe. So, to start with, the credit card you use to buy the Visa gift cards, the company, the card issuer might shut you down. They'll see the pattern of use and say, we don't want you as a customer anymore. We might shut you down. They'll see the pattern of use and say, we don't want you as a customer anymore, we'll shut you down. That's not as common, I think,

as the bank you are loading the gift cards to. I mean, the gift cards. The money orders. When you're depositing money orders to a bank, they're looking at it as suspicious activity. They may have to file suspicious activity reports, which in itself is not really a problem. The problem is if they have to keep doing that over and over, they're going to get to a point where they say, it's not worth it. We're not getting any value out of you as a customer or not as much as it's costing us to all the work and the,

and the risk involved in, in, in, in this, um, you could, you could buy a bunch of gift cards and your liquidation methods might dry up. The store suddenly might stop allowing you to use gift cards as debit cards to buy the money orders

um they might stop selling them all together there's all kinds of things that could go wrong right on that side gift cards might not work we've had situations where people buy gift cards and and they're they're empty or or or a hacker or someone has has drained the money off them that or some gift cards don't work in some locations and do work in others. So you have that issue too. There's just so many different little things. Or when you're buying the money order, have you ever had the tape run out and then they can't print it and that causes a cascade of problems? Yeah, I have had the machine malfunction though

and they had to refund me in cash. Even though it had gone, processed his debit, they refunded me in cash, but it does take time and that's annoying. And certainly I've run into long lines before where you walk in

and I look at the line and I say, it's not worth the time I'm going to spend on that line. So I'm going to have to make another stop a different day. And let's not also forget two big risks that don't get talked about a lot, but A, the fact that you're walking around with a lot of gift cards. I got to tell you, the last time I went to a Simon Mall, the lady couldn't have been louder about how much we were buying. And I was looking around thinking, I don't need everybody and their

mother to know how much I'm walking out of here with in what will eventually cash. That will be $24,000. Yeah. No kidding. We walked out of there and like literally got in the car and we were like, could she be any louder? You know, it sounded that way. So, yeah, I mean, that is a risk. You're walking around with a lot of money in cash that A, you know, if I were to get robbed on the way out would obviously be an issue and be um just losing things if you misplace like one of those cards that's gonna totally wipe out any rewards you've had for a while and a sort of way out there one but we've heard stories about this is where police have pulled someone over for an unrelated thing and they see all these gift cards.

Yeah. If you have them out where they get seen. It's suspicious. Yeah. Right. And for good reason. And you have that same risk on the liquidation side where I was buying money orders the other day and there was a person behind me, the next person behind me in line that I was a

little concerned with the way he was kind of looking over my shoulder as I was putting in the pin. Not that he was going to steal the pin from the cards, because obviously, the cards were going to be empty, but he seemed extra interested in my transaction. So I took a couple of laps around the store on my way out before I left. And so, you know, because I'm walking out with, again, what's essentially cash and, you know, a decent quantity of it. So there are some risks. So it's not for everybody. And it's important to mention those risks, because it sounds like it's all rainbows and sunshine. And it's not always rainbows and sunshine. There have been a lot of rainbows and sunshine in my life this year, but it's not all rainbows and sunshine. So it's worth keeping that in mind. Yeah, we just we need to be responsible before sending people out doing these kind of crazy things. That's true. And I think that the point that Greg made about how a liquidation avenue may dry up

is something that people definitely need to consider. You need to know that if you walk out with 10,000 in gift cards and suddenly tomorrow you can't liquidate them the way that you planned, A, that you have the money to float that to be able to pay for it, and B, the ideas in terms of how you're going to get rid of those and get your money back if your preferred liquidation option dries up. And in my case, there are a number of different chains and places where I buy money orders. So I'm fairly confident that I'll find another place. And I'm also willing to get in the car and drive a few hours if I have to and stay in

a category one Marriott for 5,000 points and use up some of the point profit that I'm earning in order to be able to liquidate for a day or two if I have to. But I, again, I'm accepting those risks and I also have to accept the risk that maybe tomorrow something big will happen and we won't be able to liquidate them anywhere easily. So I'm going to have to come up with other ways to do it. Uh, so I think that those are things that are, that are worth keeping in mind. All right. I'm going to end with my hope for next year's Naughty and Nice list. Okay. What do you want to say? I'm hoping that next year's Naughty and Nice list, the top of the list,

will be the Simon equivalent, but on the liquidation side. some body some organization some money money order seller some some payment process or whatever we'll step forward and say we like you we'll take a piece of that pie and we're going to help you liquidate that stuff and we're going to take a small fee and hopefully it'll be a small enough fee that it'll still be worth doing and i think that it's worth paying a fee as long as it's not too high um if it means avoiding a lot of those problems we're talking about probably can't avoid all of them but if we can avoid a lot of them make it so that can you imagine how awesome it'd be if you could go to simon mall and buy your 24 000 worth of gift cards and and then drive across the street to um ms here are us and uh you know feed feed the 24 000 into a machine or something and and

pay your credit card bill for sure and you know, you know, I should, we should have, you know, we're almost done here, but we should have also mentioned the fact, and so I'm going to mention it now, that another thing you want to do on the liquidation side is when you do have, after you have those money orders and you need to deposit them somewhere, you also need to consider structuring. And you should Google that and look at it and know that you're not structuring because MSing is not a crime structuring is, and it's worth mentioning that for people who are new to this and haven't put any thought into this or any research yet, that if you're going to be making large money order deposits, you need to

know what structuring is and avoid doing it. So I think that that piece and also the risks, another piece that doesn't get mentioned is if the bank where you're depositing those money orders shuts down your account, that's surely going to tie up your money for a while, too. So enough doom and gloom, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned that, too. But it would be awesome next year to see that on the list, the ability to just walk across the street, so to speak, and liquidate for a reasonable fee. That would be amazing. Yeah. So I know it's a pipe dream, but that's what I'm hoping for.

We're hoping. All right. Are you ready for the goodbye song?'m hoping for. We're hoping. All right. Are you ready for the goodbye song? I'm ready for the goodbye song. All right. Yeah. I don't remember how it goes. You'll have to leave. And thank you guys all for being out there with us today. If you're watching us on Facebook or on YouTube, you can find this in podcast form and all your favorite podcast formats. And if you're listening to us in the podcast form and you'd like to see us, you can find us on YouTube. Of course, if you'd like to know where you can find out more about

everything we've talked about, go to thefrequentmiler.com. So that's thefrequentmiler.com. You can find us on Twitter, Frequent Miler and on Facebook. Don't forget, check out our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can connect with other people and ask and answer questions about all this stuff we've been talking about. So thank you guys very much for being with us. Thanks, Greg. Look forward to seeing you guys all next decade. All right. That's right.

See you next year. See you next decade. Bye, everyone. Bye-bye.