Frequent Miler on the Air - The single best deal of the year | Ep235 | 12-30-23

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Between those deals we have identified and those highlighted by readers, which was the single best deal of 2023 in the points & miles space? This week, Greg and Nick consider the contenders and crown a champion.  00:00 Intro 01:14 Giant Mailbag 05:45 Card Talk: Amtrak Preferred Card https://frequentmiler.com/amkworld/ 10:24 What crazy thing . . . did Bilt Rewards do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-rent-day-promos-75-150-transfer-bonuses-to-flying-blue-virgin-ihg/ 14:44 Earning Bilt elite status https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-rewards-will-double-elite-status-thresholds-in-2024/ 26:15 Award Talk: Choosing a Marriott 25K Cert, 17K points, or something else 32:08 Award Talk: Can't cancel? Then change. 34:39 The single best deal of 2023 35:20 Virgin Voyages cruise deals with points https://frequentmiler.com/virgin-voyages-7-night-european-cruises-for-only-62k-points/ 37:38 Bilt's Hyatt Globalist fast track https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-globalist-fast-track-through-bilt-rewards-for-rent-day/ 39:56 Bilt's 100% transfer bonus to Air France / KLM Flying Blue https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-rewards-get-100-transfer-bonus-to-flying-blue-may-1-only-new-promo-rewards/ 41:33 Bilt's 75-150% transfer bonus to Virgin https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-august-rent-day-up-to-150-transfer-bonus-to-virgin-atlantic/ 42:46 Marriott Homes & Villas 40K bonus with 4 nights (and no minimum spend) https://frequentmiler.com/incredible-marriott-promo-earn-40000-bonus-points-on-a-4-night-stay/ 44:47 Choice Privileges College Gameday deals https://frequentmiler.com/choice-privileges-offering-college-sports-experiences-bookable-with-points/ 50:00 Capital One Travel Sale (Flights and hotels for pennies) https://frequentmiler.com/get-flights-for-pennies-capital-one-travels-incredible-sale-for-cardholders/ 51:40 Capital One Shopping $200 referral bonus for both sides https://frequentmiler.com/both-sides-now-get-30-when-referring-to-capital-one-shopping/ 54:16 30x Lufthansa Miles & More miles per dollar spent https://frequentmiler.com/wow-lufthansa-miles-more-is-giving-30x-miles-on-booking-com-reservations/ 58:20 Reader contributions https://frequentmiler.com/90k-offers-now-available-both-online-in-branch/ 01:04:26 Greg's pick for Deal of the Year 01:08:25 Nick's pick for Deal fo the Year 01:14:49 Question of the Week: Is Nick out of his mind? Music credit: Annie Yoder

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 miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the single best deal of 2023. Nick and I are going to review the great deals that happen in 2023

that are sort of points and miles related. And we'll debate which do we think is the single very best of them all. Yeah, I mean, from two guys who like to hunt out deals, we'll see which one we pick if we agree or if we disagree. What feedback we take into account that we've gotten from readers. So we'll find out where that all goes. All right. Don't forget, if you're listening to this, if you're new to the show, don't forget that the timestamps are always in the show notes.

So if you want to skip around or you want to come back and listen to something again, you can easily find the timestamps by just scrolling down to the show notes wherever you're watching or listening to this show. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget, if you like the episode, hit the like button. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us some feedback. We always love to hear from you. And so, you know, don't forget to do those things.

All right. Let's drag out the giant mailbag. Dragging out the giant mail. All right. Today's giant mailbag requires a little backstory. This past week, Nick wrote a post called The Backstory, How Nick Got Into Miles and Points. It was a fantastic read. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. And in the comments of that post, there was so many, so many very complimentary replies or comments on there,

complimenting Nick, complimenting the Frequent Miler blog, the podcast and everything. So thank you to everybody who wrote in. And I just picked out a couple to read out. And I tried to not do the ones that were too gushing, but the ones that made me. Good, good, good. Keep me down, grounded on earth there. You know, before you even read them, I got to say that I was totally like taken aback with the comments not at all what i expected when i wrote the post so i i wrote the post because a reader asked about how we got into this and i wrote him back and and explained this

is you know how i got into it and and so they wrote back to me and said that's really interesting i think other people would be interested too you should write a post about it and i was like okay maybe uh but so i didn't i didn't expect the response that it got at all and i really really appreciated it so thank you yeah it was really heartwarming to read all the all those comments so uh again thank you everyone who wrote in um i'm gonna call out a couple uh mark wrote in and said nick thanks for sharing i've been been following your podcast with Greg now for about eight months. So glad I have. Your free cruise techniques have paid off for me. I submitted my Caesars Rewards Diamond and MGM Gold to the cruise lines and wow just got back from an 11 night holland america cruise have an 11 night princess cruise booked in february and a seven night virgin voyages cruise in june all thanks to your advice thanks again for all you do to help us out wow that's awesome that's awesome

four cruises four cruises in the space of like a year it sounds like right and and not just little cruises he's talking about multiple 11 night cruises that's that's amazing yeah okay then who's your flyer says i love this story so much don't tell greg but i love your content on here so much due to the family travel angle fm simply wouldn't be the same without you uh bad news who's your flyer i i read that comment so i didn't tell him you told him who's your flyer you told them you loved it uh not my fault uh yeah but but but good i'm glad you like it i'm glad you enjoyed i'm glad people have been able to take advantage of some of the stuff we've written about you know i said in the post that i wasn't sure whether or not i i was going to apply in the

beginning because i i wasn't sure i could do the job justice and legitimately i was nervous because i loved frequent miler and i didn't want to like break something and ruin it and do a bad job. So it's awesome to get feedback from people that they've enjoyed what I've done, because, you know, that was certainly I didn't know that I'd be able to do it in the beginning. So so I very much appreciated all the positive comments. Thank you guys very much for that. It's been a lot of fun. Next time, I'll time it out a little bit better, though, and get that post out like, you know, a couple of weeks before the annual review.

You know what I'm saying? We just waited a little bit too long. Right, right, right, right, right. You know, in that post, a lot of people mentioned the chemistry between us on the show and how good our chemistry is. And I have to say that when, when I hired Nick, it was because I first did these email interviews, basically, and we did it down to four people. And then I did the equivalent of Zoom calls.

So back in 2016, I guess is when we talked, it was Skype at the time. So you look that up in Wikipedia. Young kids have no idea what we're talking about. No, no. it was Skype at the time. So you look that up in Wikipedia and, uh, Young kids have no idea what we're talking about. No, no. What, what, what? So there's something before zoom. Um, and I have to say it was, it was about a minute into our conversation that I could tell the chemistry was just right. And I knew I was going to hire him. Uh, I had to complete that interview and whatever other interviews we had on the docket. But I probably talked too long from there. Right.

I should have just shut up and been like, OK, quit while you're at it. Right. Yeah. I started a waiver on my decision about about 72 minutes into the interview. But oh, fun times, fun times. Well, it was a nice little trip down memory lane. I'm glad people enjoyed it. All right.

That brings us next up to card talk. So this week card talk we've got the amtrak guest rewards referred mastercard so the amtrak mastercard what's up with this readers have been chomping at the bit asking us more about more information about this listeners want to know what about that amp no we we've never heard anyone ask about this card. But you should if you live along the rail somewhere, right? Because it's not necessarily a bad card to have. If you ride Amtrak, it has some things going for it. So it has a $99 annual fee. It earns three points per dollar for Amtrak purchases, two points per dollar travel, dining, transit, and ride share, and 1x everywhere else.

Now, I have to say that the points are actually worth a lot towards Amtrak travel. So you could use them for other stuff where the points aren't worth much at all. But towards Amtrak travel, they're worth between 2.5 and 3 and just under 3 cents per point. So when you're getting- That's not a typo, like almost 3 cents a point. Yeah.

So when you're getting 2X for all travel, dining, et cetera, that's up there. That's over 5 cents per point value, per dollar spent value. So yeah, that's pretty darn good. Other features of the card, gives you a 5% point rebate on when you book Amtrak travel with your points. It gives you an annual complimentary companion coupon. This is for round-trip travel. And it gives you one class upgrade each year, one station lounge pass each year, and 20% rebate for onboard food and beverage.

And it also gives you 1,000 tier qualifying points towards elite status for each $5,000 spent in a calendar year with a limit of 4,000 tier qualifying points altogether. So that's if you want elite status with Amtrak. Now, I'd say elite status with Amtrak used to be more interesting to me because they used to have this feature where you could transfer to choice privileges at a very uh rewarding transfer ratio and um you needed elite status to like unlock the ability to do a lot of that um that no longer that transfer no longer exists so um so if if you want amtrak status it's probably because you actually ride amtrak a lot and want to get whatever treatment that gives you. Yeah. So so anyway, pretty rewarding card for those who ride Amtrak for everyone else.

Yeah. Well, you know, I know what you do with it. You know, the thing about Amtrak is that I rarely ever take the train. I love the idea of taking the train. I like I want to travel more by train. It just never works out to be convenient or make sense. And you know, like the idea is nice, but with two young kids in practice, it's not so practical. But I but but I've taken a couple that I really liked. I took one from Los Angeles up to San Luis Obispo. And it was beautiful along the coast there. So there are some great, I'm sure some fantastic train rides to be had around the country. And every now and then I find myself in a situation where I'm like, oh, man, I wish I had some Amtrak points because I would like to take this train and I can't or I have to pay for it.

And so there's been quite a few times when I wished I had them. It used to be possible to convert JetBlue miles to Amtrak. Not anymore, unfortunately. And so they do have a shopping portal. And so I have earned some every now and then I'll choose to go through the Amtrak shopping portal just to pick up a few points so that I can accumulate some to have them because they are so valuable per point. You don't need a ton of them in order to be able to buy a train ticket. So I like it if you live near a train or travel somewhere, have some idea of traveling by

train. Like you said, it doesn't probably make sense for, well, it doesn't make sense for anybody who's not going to ride the train ever, but, but you know, if it's something you kind of have in the back of your mind for some day and you've got lots of other cards,

so it's not preventing you from getting another card you want, then it could make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And when the welcome bonus is high, which it isn't at the time we're recording,

it could be worth signing up, you know, just to get the points and cancel after a year. And then you at least still can keep the points and use them whenever the opportunity arises to ride on Amtrak. So yeah, very good. There we go.

Perfect. So this week we're going to skip over mattress, running the numbers and move right into what crazy thing, because we've got a crazy, crazy week, or at least a crazy day coming up hopefully you're listening to this show when we first publish it because what crazy thing and on an award talk all in one what crazy thing did built do for rent day january 1st 2024 yeah this this uh upcoming rent day is incredible. They have transfer bonuses to Flying Blue, which is the Air France KLM program, Virgin Atlantic, and IHG. And like they did previously with the transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic, for example, on a rent day, you will get a bigger transfer bonus depending on

your elite status level with built. So if you have no status with built, you get a 75% transfer bonus. So right there, this is fantastic. You get to choose between transferring your built points to Flying Blue or Virgin. I wouldn't even bother with IHG. IHG points just because they sell them so often for half a cent each, it's not worth transferring to IHG even with a big transfer bonus. But to be able to transfer to Flying Blue or Virgin with a 75% bonus and without any status with built, that's a great deal and and the reason i'm you know more even more excited about it than these past transfer bonuses is because this time you get to choose in the past it's always been one particular one and even then

it was amazing but now you get to choose between these two now it gets better if you have elite status with bill and we'll talk in a second second about how people can get elite status with built. But if you have silver status, it becomes 100% transfer bonus. So that means if you transfer 1,000 built points, you get 2,000 airline miles. With gold status, it becomes 125% transfer bonus. And with platinum status, 150% transfer bonus. And with platinum says 150% transfer bonus. So yeah, transfer, let's say you had 100,000 built points. You'd end up with, let's say 250,000 like Air France KLM flying blue miles. That's incredible. That's nuts. I mean, that would be enough for me to fly my family of four when I find, you know, like the equivalent of save or space on Air France to fly my family of four to Europe in business class and still have enough left over to book like another business class ticket, you know, one way. So from 100,000 built points, that's that's just absolutely nutty and incredible. Now, of course, you know, we'll talk, like you said, a little bit more about the elite status thing in a second. But it's just amazing to look at these numbers.

Other programs historically have offered transfer bonuses to various partners, 15%, 25%, 30%. We've seen 40% every now and then to a couple of airlines, not even to all of them. That's pretty rare. But Virgin Atlantic, I'm remembering 30%. Maybe it's gone higher, but 30% is typically the highest. I think that goes. I think that's right. And Air France KLM, I think usually the highest we see is 25% from other airline programs. So 75% is just absolutely insane. That's not a little bit more than everybody else. It's a lot

more than everybody else offers It's a lot more than everybody else offers in terms of a transfer bonus. And it turns your earnings from built into a really generous thing. If you've been earning one point per dollar on your rent, and you can suddenly turn that into 1.75 airline miles or two airline miles or more, that's probably a nice change if you weren't earning anything on your rent before. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say Air France, Flying Blue was a good, not great program even before.

But recently, they reduced their award rates for some key routes, including between anywhere in North America and Europe for when their saver award space is available for only it's now only 50,000 points one way. And like I was previously out of Detroit seeing 70,000 points one way. So that's a huge reduction in cost of the awards. And then this idea that your bill points can become so many of those is crazy. For 2023 people and before that, people earned elite status with build based on how many points they earned with build. And 25,000 points earned within a calendar year got you to silver status, 50,000 got you gold, 100,000 got you platinum status. Now going forward, that's changing. So now you'll be able to earn

status with earning points like before, or with credit card spend. And these two aren't sort of additive. The way you earn is one or the other. And from the point of view of earning elite status by earning points, it's basically doubling and actually worse than doubling for gold status. So it goes up to you need to earn 50,000 points for silver status, 125,000 for gold status. That's where it's more than double. And platinum status is double at 200,000 points you have to earn. As far as spend to get to these elite levels, though, 10K spend in a calendar year to get to silver status, 25K spend to get to gold status, and 50K spend to get to platinum status. So that's a little bad news, but they're promising to introduce new elite benefits that will probably be interesting to look at.

But we don't have any details yet. Yeah. So now the 50, 20 or 10, 25, 50 spending thresholds, if you pay rent, does that count towards those spending thresholds? It does not. No. Yeah. So this is you got to spend 10, 25 or or fifty thousand on other purchases on a built card. Is that feasible, do you think, to spend that much? And how would you go about it? I mean, you don't rent. So how would you go about doing that? Right. Well, my plan is actually unchanged from before because I do want to I earn platinum status this year.

This is my first year with the bill card and I earned platinum status. And so I'm very excited about this transfer bonus. And, but I want to keep it. And my plan is actually unchanged from what my plan was before. Because my plan before was every rent day, when they double the rewards for points, my plan was to spend $50,000 across the year. So a little bit over $4,000, I think it is per month, like on the first of each month. And the types of things that I would use that I would spend it on are taxes. So I have estimated taxes I have to pay every quarter. That's actually a big expense for me owning my own business. So there'd be a little bit less

than 2% fees, but I'd be earning two points per dollar. So it more than makes up for that. Doing Kiva loans is another category of things. Donating to charities is another one. Just paying miscellaneous bills on the first of each month are all things that I was planning on doing anyway. It's kind of funny because based on the old plan, the idea was, well, I'll spend about $50,000 in the calendar year because double that will get me 100,000 points. Well, now I'm still going to spend 50,000. I'm still going to earn a little over 100,000 points.

I'm still going to earn platinum status, but it won't be for the same reason. The reason I'll earn platinum status is how much I spend on the credit card, not how many points I earn. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So and so you're still going to go forward with that plan to spend that, even though you don't know what the elite benefits are going to be in the new program? Yeah, because if these kind of transfer bonuses keep popping up every now and then, as they've

been doing every couple months, every two or three months, we've been seeing these amazing transfer bonuses. I think earning two X rewards and, and having the opportunity for a hundred and 50% transfer bonus makes it like earning a 4.5, uh, you know, airline miles per dollar on the, on that spend, which is amazing. That's incredible. Yeah, it is. And in fact, it has me considering the card. And I'm not paying rent either, but it has me considering the card

for the same kind of reasons. Because even if I don't hit the 50, let's say I only hit the 25K, which is feasible paying things that I normally pay too. So even if I only hit the 25K and I get the 125% transfer bonus, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep too much over that. That's still going to be an incredible return on those purchases that I have to make anyway.

And then I'll do some dining for sure. You know, some six acts on the first of the month and some three acts. I've been actually debating lately. Like, I should probably just be getting a bill card and using that instead of my MX gold card. Because, again, if they continue these transfer bonuses, which let's be clear, we don't know that they're going to. But but if they do, then the return becomes pretty amazing in terms of, you know, what you can earn for your spend. Now, you know, I got to say, we don't know that they're going to continue these transfer bonuses. But my thought and this is just my thought, like Nick, the observer,

not like somebody who is clued into anything deeper with built, but if they had these two that they knew they could do at 73 partners that they knew they could do at these huge transfer bonuses, why wouldn't they spread them out and do one in January, one in February, one in March, or something like that, right? I mean, if they did multiple of them at once, I think they must think that they're going to be able to continue this in some way with some of their partners. Now, for all I know, they had to do it all at once for some contractual reason or something. I have no idea. There could be deeper reasons as to why all three were at once, but I take it as a positive sign that maybe we will continue to see these things. So I don't think you're nuts going after status. You know, it might be that they did it all at once in order to

reduce the chance of people leaving them because of the increased elite thresholds. Could trick people like you into spending on the card. Trick people like me. Yeah, exactly. Or another way of putting it is remind people like me how valuable the elite levels can be and so not run away with the doubling of the point-based way of earning. So yeah, it'll be so interesting to see what happens in the future. And obviously, if we don't keep seeing them, then we would change our behavior going forward. It's not like we, it's not like, you know, this decision to spend $4,000 a month is set in stone and it won't change. I could change that any month I want and that's fine. So, yeah, well, it's, I don't, you know, it seems to me like this is accelerating.

You know, they did a, they did a hundred percent transfer bonus to Hawaiian a while back. That was the first, I think, airline that, that they did anything like that too. They haven't brought that back maybe because people haven't been very excited about it. I'm not sure why, but now that we know that Alaska is trying to buy Hawaii, if they did bring that back, would you, would you speculatively transfer in the hopes that those points become Alaska miles? Let's, let's hope that that's not February or March rent day. Let's hope that that's pushed out a little bit so that we can have a better idea as to what's going to happen before that rolls around. But, you know, actually, let's hope for towards the end of the year. So if I am going to get the card, I can actually have elite status by the time that kicks in.

But, you know, I'm hopefully optimistic here because I've said a bunch of times now, Bilt's done things that I haven't expected. I wouldn't have expected a number of the transfer partners that they have. You know, you told me about Bilt before it happened. I wouldn't have expected them to get a bunch of these transfer partners on board. I wouldn't have expected a number of the promotions they've run, including these incredible transfer bonuses. And so I don't know what to expect from the elite program. Maybe it'll be a nothing burger, but I have to think that if they're increasing the requirements that much, hopefully there's something good coming. We'll find out what it is, but I'm cautiously optimistic at this point, I'd say.

Yeah. And I've said this on previous shows, and I'm just going to say it again. If you get the bill card hoping for one of these giant transfer bonuses to Hyatt or American Airlines or United Airlines, that's not going to happen. They allow one-to-one transfers to all of those, but it costs them a lot to do that. For those transfers, they're not going to give you more. I guarantee it. I hope they prove me wrong, but they're not going to. That'd be nice, but yeah, very unlikely. I mean, obviously, foreign airline programs have more incentive because they need the access to the American-based consumers, right? I mean, American and Hyatt and United, they already have access to US-based consumers and the access to the American-based consumers. I mean, American and Hyatt and United,

they already have access to U.S.-based consumers and the chance to sell their miles to banks in large, large, large sums. Whereas these foreign programs, they would like to be able to get that access. So obviously they can probably offer a better deal, I would assume. So, all right, that's that. It is pretty crazy. Hopefully you're hopefully you're

listening to this before January 1st, because those huge transfer bonuses we've spent all this time talking about are only available one day, just January 1st. So my final question on this before we move on is, would you transfer speculatively? If you, and we always say that you should wait until you have a use for the miles or points before you transfer. And generally when there's a transfer bonus, we tell people don't transfer unless you have an award, you're ready to book. But this is different because these numbers are a lot bigger. So tell me, would you advise someone to speculatively transfer all their points to Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic? And if you would, which one? I think it's very, I think, yes, I would transfer to Flying Blue. I wouldn't speculatively transfer to Virgin. So Flying Blue just has a lot more general purpose uses. They have fly to many more places that Virgin Atlantic does to and from London, which all the routes go

to and from London. And now you can use Virgin to fly Flying Blue, to fly Air France and KLM at good rates. But there's just so much more, I think, that you can do with Flying Blue miles. They're more of a general purpose program in my mind than Virgin, where there's a few sweet spots that are really good. I think the funny thing is that those, like the general, I have the same feeling about Flying Blue, but interestingly, it's not really for partner redemptions in general that I think of Flying Blue, right? So it's still for redemptions on their own metal, which is generally what your Virgin Miles are going to be most useful for because it's not that Virgin doesn't have any sweet spots, but they're very limited and they rely on partners to

release availability, Delta that don't. So it's hard to get great value out of the Virgin points unless you get lucky and Delta or ANA opens up the award availability you need. Whereas Air France seems to have pretty wide availability on their own flights, or at least decently, respectably wide availability on their own flights, or at least decently, respectably wide availability on their own flights. And like you said, far more destinations and manageable fees. So, yeah. Okay.

All right. That's crazy thing. Let's talk a little bit about a little bit more about award talk. So we got a couple of quick award talk snippets here. So I had a bit of a conundrum this week in trying to figure out the best way to book a Marriott property. So I needed an overnight at Newark Airport. And so I zeroed in on the Renaissance Newark Airport Hotel, which, you know, keep an eye out for whether or not that was a mistake. But we'll we'll see. So that particular hotel was going for about $200 for the night or 17,000 Marriott points.

So I could use 17,000 points to book it or I had a Marriott 25K free night certificate that I could use. Now, obviously, the 25K free night certificate could be used to book a room that costs up to 25,000 points per night or it could be topped off with up to 15,000 points to book a room that costs up to 40,000 points per night. So Greg, what would you do in my case? Would you use the 17,000 Marriott points and hold out for a better use of the 25K free night certificate or use the free night certificate or just pay cash for the room? Yeah. So personally, I tend to have problems with the free night certificates, especially now that Marriott's no longer extending them in that I hate having to worry about will I use them in time before they expire? And so if someone were to offer me 17,000 points for if I had a 25K certificate, I think I would take that,

you know, because the points I could just use any time for any purpose. And so this is kind of like someone offering to exchange the points for the certificate. So I think I would do the certificate. You know, I struggled with this. First of all, I should say that I thought that the certificate was newly issued. So I thought I had a full year to use it. As it turned out, when I went to take screenshots and things to be able to write about this, I realized I was incorrect about that. And my free night certificate is scheduled to expire in a few months and I don't have another use. So I still actually, as we record this, haven't yet booked it. I'm going to be leaving for the hotel right after this and I haven't yet booked it. but I'm going to and I'm going to use the free night certificate

because it's going to expire so soon and I don't have any travel plans where it'll fit in. Plenty of travel plans, but nothing where it's going to fit in between now and expiration. So I think I am going to use the certificate, but boy, I debated. I went back and forth on what the best thing to do was. And part of the hesitation for me is, like you mentioned, the fact that Marriott these days with the wrong reservation, so to speak, I use it now on a reservation I could have booked for 17,000 points, and then it comes up that I hit a situation where I'm going to be out 35 or 40,000 points. It's hard for me to part with that many points for a one night hotel stay these days, because there's not a lot of reasonable ways to earn Marriott points anymore. So replacing those points is basically buying them or spending it for a return in general. So yeah, I hesitated for a bit. Ultimately,

I agreed, though, I'll use the free night certificate to get it off the books, so to speak, at a decent value because I could buy the 17,000 points back. If I were to use the points, I could have bought them for $170. Instead, I'll use the free night certificate and kind of effectively save myself 170 bucks, which is double what I paid for the annual fee, because I have the old Marriott card that costs $85 a year. So I doubled my money, so to speak. I guess I'll just be happy with that. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to throw in a little story about why I will always take points over certificates, even if it's fewer points. A while back, I had booked a Marriott stay for the end of this year. I think it was actually December 31st. And it was a perspective that we thought maybe we would do this, maybe we wouldn't,

I don't know. I used a 40K free night certificate that I got from having 75 nights with Marriott. And I forgot all about having used the certificate. Of course, because I had applied it to this day, Award Wallet didn't tell me that I had a free night that was going to expire. If I looked in my Marriott account, I didn't see this free night until about a few days ago. I canceled the stay because we realized, oh, we're not actually going to be doing that trip after all. And this 40K free night certificate appeared in my account and it was going to expire very, very, very soon, the 31st. And so, yeah. So now we're scrambling to luck. We're probably going to do a little like staycation nearby, but I just don't need that headache. Yeah, you know, that's

definitely a problem. And that's why I thought this was a newly issued certificate, because it popped up in my account and I was like, oh, I've got a new one, I guess. And then I realized when I looked at the expiration date today, oh oh no, I had that attached to a reservation in Istanbul that I canceled a couple of weeks ago and I was in a hurry and I hadn't been back in my Marriott account again since. And so I hadn't realized that I had used the 25K cert on that reservation.

So the same exact situation almost, except I have a little bit more time to recover and use it. And that's my hesitation. There's one situation where I think maybe I could use it, but what if the kids get sick and we have to change plans and blah, blah, blah. I might as well just use it tonight and be done with it. But certainly I did think about it anyway for a little bit.

So that was my conundrum this week. And so I'm accepting slightly less than optimal value on my 25K cert, but still good compared to what I'm paying for it. All right. So you have something else for award talk? Yeah. So twice, just within the past few weeks, I've gone to cancel a hotel stay only to discover I was within the no cancellation window. This happened once with hyatt and once with ihg and in both cases like if i canceled i would have owed something like the cash rate even though i had booked both of these with points

and so i had a sort of conundrum but i did something i've done before successfully, which is what they don't allow is canceling with no fee. But what they do allow is changing the date with no fee. So I moved both of those reservations out to the future and then canceled without any problem. And so just something I like to mention every now and then that is possible. It saved my bacon here twice just in the month of December. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That saved me once a couple of months ago, too, on an 85K, Mary, at Freedise Certificate.

So I was glad that I was able to make the save there. Yeah, that's a great tip. And by the way, I should have mentioned one other thing. And this applies to that type of idea as well as to what we were talking about a moment before that. This week I created, or two weeks ago, I created a spreadsheet actually to track all my stuff in general, my platinum card, annual airline incidental credits, and my business gold card monthly $20 credits and all the rest of that. I created a spreadsheet so I can keep track of what I've used and what I haven't. And one of the tabs in that spreadsheet is my free night certificates. And so in there, I'm including the information about which reservations I've used them on.

So that way I can see whether their future reservations are passed so that hopefully I won't run into the same kind of a situation again that you just described where you end up going to cancel and then realizing, oh, shoot, I have a certificate that's going to expire in a couple of weeks now. You never know. Things could come up last minute where you could change plans. But at least I would have seen that at some point in advance, hopefully, hopefully, as long as I remember to consult my spreadsheet. So yeah, that's a good idea. I just wish there was some way to make that automatic. Yeah, the way the way a word wallet just works automatically to tell you when things are about to expire but it's just not smart enough and i don't blame it uh for knowing about that

situation where you've already booked then cancel it yeah yep very good all right let's get into our main event we've been talking here forever let's get into the main event craig all right it's main event time the single best deal of 2023 there were a lot of really fantastic deals in 2023. So we're going to march through them, talk briefly about what each one was. And then Nick is going to say what his pick for the 2023 deal of the year is. I'm going to choose mine. And then basically it's going to be a fist fight. And we're going to pick the single best deal of 2023. Let me grab my brass knuckles here. Okay. Hey,

no, no, no brass knuckles. That was in the terms and conditions. Come on. Okay. All right. So our, we got to talk about our nominees, right? We're going to talk about the nominees for deal of the year. So first up we've got Virgin cruise deals. So of course, as mentioned in the giant mailbag segment today, that Virgin Voyages or Virgin Red really has offered Virgin Voyages cruises several times this year. And so Virgin Red is a loyalty program that's sort of separate from Virgin Atlantic, but it's easiest to just think about it as one thing because the points all pull from one pool. So Virgin Red is the overall overarching virgin loyalty program. You can use your Virgin Atlantic miles to do all sorts of stuff. And one of them occasionally is

to book Virgin Voyages cruises. Now, this redemption is not always available, not even close to that. Every now and then they run a promotion for it. And twice this year they did. One time they offered Caribbean cruises. A five night cruise was 80,000 points for two people or a seven night cruise was 100,000 points for two people, or a seven-night cruise was 100,000 points for two people. And then later they offered European cruises from Barcelona and Athens, and those were 80,000 points for a seven-night cruise for two people. And those points rates included everything. I mean, that's your food and your entertainment,

your non-alcoholic beverages, Wi-Fi, gratuities. You don't pay any, no taxes. That's it. It was the 80,000 or a hundred thousand points, depending on which cruise you booked. So, uh, so that was a pretty terrific deal for two people. Really terrific. And you got like balcony rooms too, right? Yeah, you sure did. I mean, it's not like you're getting stinky, you know, internal rooms. This, yeah. A great deal. I, I would have loved to have taken advantage of it. The timing didn't work out. In these cases, Virgin, these cruise deals tend to be like very limited time. Like you have to

travel by the state in the few months in the future kind of thing. Yeah, they do. But the nice thing timing wise is that they both coincided, I think, with 30% transfer bonuses from different programs so that you could have booked these for effectively like 62,000 points for the 80,000 point cruises to get a seven night European cruise and a balcony cabin on Virgin Voyages for two people for 62,000 points and no cash out of pocket. I mean, that's a pretty amazing deal. When you look up the cash prices on those cruises and you're getting a great, great deal for your points. So that was very good and solid for the people who were able to take advantage. Like you said, you did have to be able to kind of plan sort of last minute within a couple months before departure anyway.

Yep. Yep. All right. What's next up? Uh, the built Hyatt fast track plus the Hyatt second quarter promotion. You remember this one, Greg? I do. I do. So I already had Hyatt globalist status, so it didn't matter to me, but it mattered to a lot of our listeners and readers that Bilton Hyatt had teamed up to offer this fast track to globalist status, Hyatt's top tier status. And do you remember the details of that? Yeah. You needed to do 20 nights. You needed to get 20 elite nights within 90 days. So you had to actually stay 20 nights at Hyatt properties within 90 days. And it was a specific 90 day window. I want to say it started April 1st or May 1st, whenever the rent day was and went through whatever three months after that was more or less. And so you needed 20 nights. And the nice thing is that this coincided with a Hyatt promotion where you got

3000 points back for every two nights stayed. That window didn't quite extend the full 90 days, but it was the majority of the 90 days of that promotion. So, so you got basically two out of three months, a little more than two out of three months where every two nights you got 3000 points back. So, so, uh, 10 times if you know, cause you did 20 nights for the challenge to 10 times, 30,000 points, uh, back on 20 nights and global status was a pretty fantastic deal, especially for anybody who was able to mattress

run their way to Las Vegas, because there were some really cheap nights. If you had MGM gold status, which of course MGM and Hyatt no longer have a partnership now, but they did earlier this year. So you could book some nights. I booked some nights at Excalibur for three bucks a night, literally done all in three dollars a night, where every two nights I was getting 3000 Hyatt points and inching closer to status with the built fast track. So so that was a terrific deal for a lot of people who were able to suddenly get global status. It was suddenly within reach for a lot of people. It's just not within reach because normally it requires 60 nights a year. So 20 nights in a short time span during a time of year when some people were traveling certainly made it, I think, pretty attractive for a lot of people. Oh, for sure. And then people are seeing they're getting room upgrades, they're getting free breakfast, they're getting free parking on awards days.

There's so many great benefits with global status. So that's just terrific. Very good. All right. Next up, we had a built transfer bonus. So we just spent a lot of time talking about a built transfer bonus. Well, earlier this year, they had a transfer bonus to Air France KLM Flying Blue, and that was one of the earlier on ones. And so that transfer bonus was actually 100% across the board.

Didn't matter your status with built. Everybody got 100% transfer bonus from built to Flying Blue, and they combined it with some great Flying Blue promo rewards. Flying Blue promo rewards is their monthly promotion where they put certain routes on sale, usually for 25% off, either an economy or business or sometimes both. It varies from month to month and how far out you're able to book. But Bilt somehow finagled it so that a bunch of their cities with a lot of their customers ended up on the list. So they were able to get a whole bunch of really good promo rewards deals that became even better with 100% transfer bonus. Yeah, yeah. This was a amazing, amazing deal when it came out. I don't think we could believe it because we hadn't seen, except for the transfer bonus to Hawaiian and to IHG before that, we'd never seen a 100 transfer bonus to a really good valuable program and the fact that they married this with better than usual promo awards was uh really a super solid combo yeah yeah it was well done good nice nicely strategic there that wasn't the only transfer

bonus that built offered this year though so our next nominee for deal of the year is also a built promotion, three of them in a row here, built the we had the built Hyatt, one of the built transfer bonus to Air France, but they also had a transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic. And it was up to 150,000 or rather, excuse me, up to 150% transfer bonus. So exact same structure we just described earlier in this particular show where it was 75 transfer bonus for people with no status 100 for people with well what's the next status silver silver status 125 for gold or 150 for platinum status uh that's again built reward status so anywhere between 75 and 150 transfer transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, which like we already, we just said that our minds were blown by 100% transfer bonus, 150%. I mean, that was just laughably incredible.

Totally incredible. Yeah. status at the time. And if you got in on one of these virgin cruise deals that we mentioned, how cheap those virgin cruise deals would have been with this combination would have been incredible. But yeah, it's a really remarkable transfer bonus. So it's going to be tough picking the winner, but we're not done with the list yet, are we? No, a whole bunch of other things. Marriott Homes and Villas had a promotion earlier this year, and you were able to take advantage of this one, I think, right? I did. I did. So they came out with this bonus where they'd give you 40,000 bonus points for a four-night or longer stay with Marriott Homes and

Villas. And there was a period in time, it was only about like three days long where you could book these things and get the bonus. And there was no minimum spend requirement. They came out with similar promos later in the year, but they had very high minimum spend requirements. But this time there was no minimum. So I wanted to earn some more Marriott points. And I also wanted to get 75 nights under my belt with Marriott. So I'd get titanium status and United silver status because of the partnership with United. And so I booked three, four night stays. Each of these stays was about $200. So you could think of it as buying Marriott points for about half a cent each, but also getting for each of these days, I got the four nights of elite credit and

so easily got to my 75 nights because I already had a lot of nights with Marriott. Yeah. So, I mean, that was pretty lucrative for people who were able to take advantage. And certainly if you valued the elite nights, I think it was obviously a very good price on the points. I think most of us, if we had the opportunity to buy Marriott points for half a cent each, would be in for a large quantity if we could. So that alone was good enough. And then if you also value the elite Knights, that did make it pretty much a no-brainer, which of course means that I didn't get in on it because I didn't have any brainpower dedicated to that that week. So there's no brainer, which, you know, of course, means that I didn't get in on it because I didn't have any any brainpower dedicated to that that week. So I there's no brain here at all going on because I'm going to end the year slightly short of platinum status with Marriott.

So I'm going to down a goal next year. You were probably free cruising at the time or something. So my mind was free cruising, that's for sure. So, uh, so that was our Marriott promo next nominee is the choice privileges college game day experiences. Now I haven't really heard you talk at all about these. Have you followed these at all? Did you check it? Uh, just a little bit. So I was very excited. The first time these came out, there was a, uh, university of Michigan one and it sounded terrific. I jumped on to see if I could buy one, and they were all gone. And that was, yeah. And by the time I heard about the next one that was available, they were all gone. So it's one of those things that it sounds like a great deal,

but you have to be one of the few to jump on right in time and buy right away. But what are these all about? I don't remember enough to be able to describe them. Yeah. So Choice Privileges has had a bunch of these college game day experiences where you trade Choice Privileges points in exchange for tickets to college sporting events, typically basketball and football games. They've had some hockey and some wrestling, but it's not just tickets to the game. These packages have been pretty chock full of cool stuff. For instance, I'm just looking through a few of them now I pulled up. So there was one of them here recently, University of Alabama.

So it was two club passes into a club room with food and drink provided to pregame visits to the bench to watch the warmups, your parking pass, $100 gift card to the team store, a two-night hotel stay, $750 per person travel voucher, which comes in the form of a $750 Visa gift card times two, because these are packages for two people, for 225,000 choice privileges points. So you're talking $1,500 on Visa gift cards, plus two nice tickets to to the game plus being able to you know hang out at the bench before the game and and a two-night hotel stay on top of all that for 225 000 points i mean it's pretty incredible great great great deal yeah and some of them included things like a shoot around with the basketball coaches or you know the chance to run out with the team through

the tunnel or a field pass during the game. I mean, some of them were pretty awesome experiences you wouldn't get otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. Choice really should, you know, release a bucket of these to podcasters before. Just try them out, right? Be able to kind of really speak to how they work, you know? Right. How are we supposed to talk about these if they're all gone by the time?

All I know is they're sold out all of them. You know what? I have good news for you though Craig there are two Michigan basketball ones that are still available as we are recording this though really not neither one of them are as good as what you're going to want them to be but uh but yes there are the two lower lower level tickets for basketball uh game against Michigan State in February as we're recording this you get pre-game tour of the Michigan Basketball Practice Development Center pre- pregame photos on the court parking pass, a hundred dollar gift card, unfortunately, 250,000 points. So, Oh, ouch. Yeah. Not a,

not a, not a great deal for that one. Yeah. And that's the thing. They really vary. Some of them are huge like that. And then others like the university of Minnesota had a hockey one that came with $750 a person for 150,000 points. So, I mean, that included attending warmups and watching a portion of the hockey match from ice level and a hundred dollar gift card and a two night hotel stay. So some of them included way more value than others. So that that's certainly been a big piece of it too. That's probably why you, you just skip right past the university of Michigan ones on the most recent one, because they weren't particularly exciting compared to some of the others. But it's worth keeping an eye out because some of these have been absolutely

incredible deals if you have choice privileges points. And certainly if you're transferring from city, remember city thank you points, transfer one to two to choice privileges. So that University of Minnesota hockey one I just talked about, that would have been 75,000 city thank you points for $1,500 of Visa gift cards, a two-night hotel stay, $100 gift card to the team store, and all those, like two tickets to the game, the all-inclusive captain's club in that case, watching part of the game from the ice.

I mean, that's all stuff you couldn't normally buy. Right, right. For 75,000 points. And the University of Michigan one doesn't have any gift cards? No. Not even like $25 Dunkin' Donuts or something? $100 gift card to the team store. $100 gift card to the team store.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd be happy to get some Michigan stuff, but $100 I could probably get maybe a t-shirt. Well, that's what I'm thinking. You probably know where you can get a University of Michigan t-shirt if you need one of those. So, yeah, I mean, the quarter of a million points for that one or 125,000 city thank you points, not as good.

But it's worth checking these out. So if you're listening to this and you're like, what? I want some more detail on that. Remember, we always put links to more information in the show notes also. So you can go down to those timestamps and look within the timestamps and you'll see links to more information about all the things we're talking about here. So that was the choice privileges college game day. The reason that that one honestly is not going to end up getting picked as deal of the year, I'm sure is because it was just so limited. Like Greg said, the best packages, there just weren't very many of them. And they sold out even before like we had a chance to try

and buy them before we even posted them. So you don't know that I'm not going to vote for it. You don't know that. You're right. I don't. I definitely don't know that. I am predicting the future, which has never been a particular strength for me. So don't count on that. All right.

Next up. Next nominee, the Capital One Travel Sale. Capital One Travel ran an incredible sale this fall. Did you take part in this sale? I was now I was off cruising. And mean, mentally. Yeah, yeah, I was involved in something or other and didn't have time for it until it was gone. Yeah, well, so Capital One Travel ran this deal where there were discounts that varied by location and airline. So it was anywhere between 50 and $200 off of various hotels and flights and the hotels. It was like city specific. So it was anywhere between $50 and $200 off of various hotels and flights.

And the hotels, it was city-specific. So it'd be $200 off a hotel in Nice, let's say, or $50 off of a flight to Miami, or $100 off of a Tap Air Portugal flight. They were kind of random things like that, but there were tons of them. And you could use each one of them once. And the cool thing about this deal was that there was no minimum spend requirement. There was no, like, you need to depart the United States to use this, or you have to book a round-trip flight or whatever. So you could actually book stuff that costs, like, nothing, like literally $0.00 or just pennies after the discounts in some cases. So lots of people got some phenomenal deals, some free flights or very close to free flights or free hotel stays or the Capital One Premier Collection stays that cost them dollars or pennies and included all the

Capital One Premier Collection benefits. So that was pretty incredible because there were so many of them and they were legitimately good deals. Yeah, I wish I had been able to take advantage of it, but I didn't. But yeah, no, it was good stuff. Got to be a VentureX cardholder, I think, to have taken advantage of it. All right. Capital One is not done. Capital One makes two appearances in this year's list because Capital One Shopping had the referral promotion of the year, probably this year with their Capital One Shopping referral offer. Recently, they offered a referral bonus of, are you listening out there? $200 for each side when you referred somebody to Capital One Shopping

and they spent $10 through the portal. Now, Capital One Shopping does not require a Capital One card or a Capital One account. It's just the name, Capital One, surely for the marketing prowess that that brings. So, or maybe prowess, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Maybe not as strong as what they think. But at any rate, $200 for both sides on a $10 purchase was just a fantastic promotion. Now, imagine you're somebody new that signed up. Let's imagine I signed up through a referral link. Now, this was just a fantastic promotion. Now imagine you're somebody new that signed up. Let's imagine I signed up through a referral link. Now this was a targeted referral promotion. So not everybody had a referral link for this, but many people did. So if I signed up through the right

referral, I can make a $10 purchase through the shopping portal and earn $200 back on a $10 purchase, which is nutty enough. But a lot of people when they signed up, so maybe I signed up and I got that $200. And then in many cases, I also got targeted for the $200 referral offer. So then I could refer player two in my household so that she could sign up for Capital One Shopping. And when she spent $10, she'd get $200 and I'd get $200 for referring her. So that's $600 between two people on two $10 purchases. It was just absolutely incredible. Yeah. Fantastic. My wife, unbeknownst to her, did this deal. So did my in-laws. And she did spend the $10 through the portal. She hasn't gotten the $200 yet. Oh, really? Oh, our whole family got the $200 bonuses. There were several of us that got $200 bonuses. So I say several of us. I didn't because I already had an account and I was not targeted for the $200 bonus. But other folks in the family did end up being so fortunate. So it worked out really well. Yeah, we got our bonuses. And again on just small, easy purchases. So you do a $10 giftcards.com

order for instance. And as long as they don't cancel it, which is kind of a pain with giftcards.com, uh, then, you know, he would have earned your 200 bucks. So, uh, that was pretty cool. A lot of readers have reported success. And there've been a few that have said they haven't yet gotten their referral bonuses, but there've been so many that have gotten it that I'm very confident that you'll get your 200 bucks. So that was a pretty good deal. And I think better than a pretty good deal. Really, really good deal. And finally, well, maybe finally, I don't know, will you want to add anything else? But the last one that I had in the list this year was 30X Lufthansa miles and more miles per euro spent on bookings through booking.com. So booking.com is a hotel booking platform. You can earn 30 miles per euro spent. So like 26 or $28, uh, somewhere in that range

miles per dollar spent rather. Uh, so lots and lots of miles for your money, uh, but miles and more miles. So is that interesting to you? Only slightly. So there are some really good uses for miles and more miles, but the problem is if you don't earn enough, there's so few ways to get those miles. So if you don't earn enough from this promo to do what you end up wanting to do with those miles, I don't know. You're kind of out of luck. It's not a problem that I wanted to have. And so I would have done this if, I don't know, if all the stars aligned and I didn't have like really good alternatives for booking. But that was not the case for me. Yeah. You know, I got derailed while I was writing the post about this because I hadn't considered it for exactly that same reason. I was like, I don't want to end up

with like just a few thousand miles short of whatever it is I need, or not even just a few thousand miles, but enough for one passenger, but not the other three. And then you have to be on separate bookings. Maybe if you're able to do it, it just seemed like more headache than it was worth to me. So I kind of ignored it initially. But then I got looking at it because there are a couple of stays that I have planned next year that are likely at non-chain properties. And I started doing the math and I was like, oh, well, actually, I could earn enough for a one-way Star Alliance business class award to Europe. And so I could book separately from the rest of my family and just have two PNRs because we do frequently fly business class to Europe, but usually at least once a year anyway. So it seemed to me like it'd

be fairly easy if I could earn 56,000 miles or more. And I figured out that $2,100 in hotel bookings would trigger the $5,600. And so it's possible. It's still a few days before the end of the year as we record this, and I haven't yet made any bookings. But I'm considering that because if I can earn at least that 56, then I think it's likely-ish that I'll be able to make use of that. And keep in mind also they run their mileage bargains every month, I think. And so numerous routes can be had for, well, when the United States destinations are on the list anyway for 55,000 miles round trip and business class to Europe. However, that comes along with their high surcharges. So not quite as good of a deal as it sounds. I'd rather be using that on other Star Alliance carriers or a lot Polish if you're able to. Sometimes I think they're on the promo list, the mileage bargains from what I read.

So at any rate, it could be good if you got a lot of boutique hotel stays coming up or you're just a free agent, you don't care about elite status or elite benefits because of course you're not going to get those things when you book through booking.com. If you don't care about those things, then it might be worth taking a look because you're not necessarily locking yourself in. Check the cancellation policies. Most of the bookings I've looked at through booking.com can be booked as flexible rates. So you're not necessarily having to commit right now. You may have to pay up front and then deal with getting a refund later on if you cancel. But it's on my radar. It wasn't until I went to write this post and then all of a sudden it was. So it's something I have earmarked to look

into. So I laughed when you said you were looking to see if you would earn 56,000 miles or more. What you didn't say is 56,000 miles or more of miles and more miles. True, true. Good point. Yes. So and you can earn up to 150,000 per account, by the way. So you can't earn more than that per miles and more account, but you can earn more than 56,000 miles and more miles.

All right. Moving on. Anything else you want to add to the list, Greg? There are a few other good suggestions from readers. What do you think? Yeah, so let me mention some of the reader contributions here. American Express, no lifetime language offers. We've seen a lot over the past several years, actually, not just this past year.

We are trying to talk about deals that were unique to 2023. So I'm not really sure that I would include the Amex No Lifetime language offers. Agreed. Yeah, they were awesome. They've continued to be awesome. But the points parade has been marching for years now. Yeah, yeah. Another one that a reader mentioned, which I thought was a really good one, is how Chase

Inc. Cards, the Inc. Business Unlimited and the Inc. Business Cash Card have had 90,000 point offers at the same time as you can refer someone. If you have an ink card and earn 40,000 points for the referral and they'll learn the 90,000 points, uh, welcome bonus. So if you refer like within your family, you're talking about 130,000 points for these actually fantastic cards that have no annual fee and can earn you lots of Chase Ultimate Rewards points. So I think that is a good contender.

No, it is a good contender. I had a friend a month and a half ago who reached out randomly out of the blue. I hadn't talked to him in a long time now, but he knew that I, he knows that I, what I do and knows a little bit about miles and points, not a ton enough to have like a Sapphire preferred. And he's had the Southwest companion pass before, but not like not a regular player of the game, but reached out and said, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about getting a new card for big purchase coming up. I think maybe I want to get an Amex card. What would you recommend? And so I gave him some options. I knew that he had some some ultimate rewards earning cards. So I gave him a few of the Amex options.

I said, these are the Amex cards you might want to consider. You know, alternatively, you may want to consider an ultimate rewards card because that'll play nicely with the points you've got. And, you know, these are either the Freedom Unlimited current offer on that's pretty good or the, you know, an ink card could be a good fit. And I know he owns a business. So I know, an ink card could be a good fit. And I know he owns a business. So I explained why I thought that could be a good fit. And he wrote back and he's like, yeah, the ink card does make sense. I want to get that card. And so I was able

to refer him and earn 40,000 points, just answering an email and helping a friend out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, fantastic deal. Um, yeah, nothing more to be said there. There's no downside to that deal. A couple others that were mentioned really in the same breath is LASCA and JetBlue status matches that came out for Delta Elite. So this was Delta had announced their devastating changes to their elite program. And very quickly after that, if memory serves, JetBlue, I think, first hopped out of the gate with a very attractive status match. both of them followed the same formula, which was you would get matched just by showing your Delta status and Delta recent history. But if you want to keep that match status for a whole year, for all of 2024, all you needed was a credit card. So either a JetBlue credit card or an alaska credit card depending on which match you're talking about so that would that's the part that's really incredible i mean having status matches that are like 90 day challenges are not unusual

having matches that last for a whole year that's really really really unusual. Alaska matched from Delta Platinum status, which isn't Delta's top tier, but Delta's Platinum status all the way to top tier MVP 100K if you have the Alaska card. So I got in on that. JetBlue has multiple tiers to Mosaic 3, which is second to top tier, and matched Diamond to Mosaic 4, which is their top tier. My wife got in on that. And as we've talked about before in the show, one of the benefits of that top tier is these blade helicopter transfers from New York area airports to Manhattan. And so that was a blast to take advantage of that thanks to that status match. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. And I didn't think of those and I was disappointed in myself for not having thought of those because I think those status matches were huge for the people who were able to take advantage. If you had Delta elite status, those were huge offers that wouldn't ordinarily require either a, a lot of flying to get, or B, like you said, even if an

airline offers a match, usually airline matches are a challenge of some sort where you got to fly still a lot within a short period of time to keep status for a year, uh, to not only get your status, but then get some of those really cool benefits like that right out of the gate with just the credit card. Yeah, those were a very good deal. So that should have been on my list, I think, when I concocted my list. So good suggestion there from readers. All right. So we've nominated all of the best deals of the year.

Quick recap. It was the Virgin Cruise deals, the built Hyatt fast track, plus the second quarter promotion, the built a hundred percent transfer bonus to air France KLM flying blue, the built 150% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Marriott homes and villas, 40 K bonus for a four night stay choice privileges, college game day deals, which I know you're itching to vote for the capital one travel sale,

the capital one shopping $200 referral for both sides. The 30X Lufthansa miles and more with Booking.com. The Inc. 90K bonuses with the 40K referrals or the status matches for Delta, disgruntled Delta elites to either Alaska or JetBlue. So those are our nominees for the 2023 deal of the year. Greg Davis Keene, let's say you, what was the best deal of this year? Yeah, it's so tough.

There are so many great deals here. You know, as far as the one that probably impacted most of our readers and listeners, or more than the other ones, and I'm just kind of guessing here, was that Bill Hyatt fast track. We know so many people that jumped in on that and benefited from that. So that has a strong, there's a strong argument for that one. Um, the Alaska status match, the JetBlue status match, those, those are incredible. Um, I could easily argue for either one of those. Um, a lot of these other ones, you know, we're, we're kind of limited, like, like, so the, the, the, um, shopping portal thing, really great, but, but you're not going to do better than $200 or, I guess, $600 for a couple, that kind of thing, which is really good, but it's still kind of capped in that way. Then I get to these two built transfer bonuses, these monster transfer bonuses. The Virgin Atlantic went up to 150%, and the 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue,

plus having these great Flying Blue promo awards at the same time. I would have given my vote to the Virgin one, but you needed elite status to get to 100% or better. And Virgin, to me, I think is not as widely applicable for whatever you want to do as Air France Flying Blue miles are. And the Air France transfer bonus was applicable to anyone, 100% transfer bonus. I've got to give it to Bilt, 100% transfer bonus, Air France Flying Blue as my number one pick for the deal of the year. Wow. Wow. So even though, I mean, not everybody rents, Greg. Not everybody has a use for the card.

I mean, how do you earn a meaningful number of points if you're not a renter? There's no signup bonus on the credit card. Like, come on, how applicable is this? How do people even earn enough built points for that to be a blip on the radar and matter? Well, you know, first of all, a lot of people do rent and they can earn points that way. Built has a number of other programs for earning points with their dining program and stuff like that. But how I earn points is I have the credit card. And even though I don't rent, I find it valuable.

The first of every month, they double the rewards. So instead of getting 3x dining, you get 6x dining. Instead of getting 2x travel, you get 4x travel. And when combined with these frequent transfer bonuses, it's more like getting twice that number. So it's almost like getting, on the first of the month, almost like getting 12x dining in a way, if you're willing to transfer your points to the particular programs that they allow. I've been very happy with Air France Flying Blue Miles lately. I've had a lot of use for them. And so that particular transfer bonus really excites me. And earning points through built credit card spend is more interesting to me than ever, thanks to deals like that. And I should say as an aside, the only reason we didn't have on the list the January 1st

built transfer bonus to your choice of Virgin or Flying Blue or IHG is that that's in 2024. So that'll be a nominee for 2024 awards, but it didn't qualify for this year. Yeah. You know, so great points, all good points there. If we were to go with the People's Choice Award, then I included a poll at the end of my post about the deal of the year and gave people the chance to vote on the deal of the year.

And the far and away winner so far, as we record this, 36% of the vote is going to that built Hyatt fast track. And that shouldn't surprise me because a lot of people have never had a reasonable path to Hyatt Elite status. And so this 20 nights in 90 days is something they have occasionally offered for people that work for certain companies. And sometimes people have been able to call in and just ask for it and get the fast track before. But most people probably don't know that that even exists and may not have gotten a yes when they've asked about that. So this was a rare chance to get Hyatt Elite status with not very many stays. And the last time we saw a shortened path to Hyatt Globalist status, which was during the pandemic, it was

wildly popular, again, because this is just not something that frequently exists. So I'm not very surprised that that came out on top. And it also didn't require having any built points. You just needed to be a built member, which is free. Anybody can join. So there was like no bar to entry on that. So it makes sense to me that that was the People's Choice Award, at least on the people that voted, which is a minuscule percentage of the number of people that read our posts. So I don't really know if it's representative of the way that most people feel or not, but that's what I'm going to call the People's Choice Award anyway. I found it very interesting that the second most popular choice with 15% of the vote was the Virgin Cruise deals.

Now, those were very good deals. So I'm not surprised in the sense that it wasn't a good deal. It was a very good deal. But what surprises me more is that the 150% transfer bonus to Virgin was only 7%. That was one, two, three, four, the fifth most popular based on the voting. So that was far down, even though the Virgin cruise deal was the second most popular thing. And those people who got the 150% bonus, if you were able to parlay that into a cruise, which I don't know if they lined up so that you would have been able to book one of those this year. So one of those things where maybe you would have had to have speculatively transferred and hoped that in the future they offer one of those cruise deals. But those two things play together, I think.

So interesting that there are two separate things. But I think if you add those two up, people that were interested in one might be interested in the other so that that goes to show it. But I think from my perspective, like you said, I just I look at a lot of these and a lot of them are capped or limited in ways where, you know, there aren't very many of the college game day experiences or you're not going to get more than the five or six hundred dollars or whatever in the Capital One rewards, which is awesome and would be a contender for deal of the year in a year where there's not a way to get more than $500 or $600 in value out of a deal. But in 2023, if you had a bunch of built points, then the upside was huge at 100% transfer bonus, just absolutely massive. We've used that 100,000 point number a few times already.

And if I had 100,000 built points, that would have been enough again, to fly a family of four in business class to Europe for me, especially when you consider that Flying Blue offers a 25% discount on child tickets too. So my kids' flights would be even cheaper. So that to me is just pretty incredible. And again, I think built is interesting because it is appealing more and more to me even though i don't rent in the beginning i thought well if you rent this makes sense but it doesn't really for everybody else but with these promos it's making more and more sense to me on a wider scale and one of the things that excites me is that they keep coming out of the box like this and so if they if they do that now then what's going to come next i don't know and and you know

is our chase and amex feeling the pressure today maybe not but over time that's going to come next? I don't know. And, and, you know, is our chase and Amex feeling the pressure today? Maybe not. But over time, that's got to apply some pressure eventually, you know, with somebody anyway, to say, Hey, why can't we do a different deal? Do something differently. So so I'm excited to see that. I think it's really good. So yeah, I think that was pretty broadly applicable to anybody who had built points. And I know there are a lot of people that probably don't and that don't find built relevant to them and hey that's totally understandable uh but for anybody that did have built points that was such a good deal uh you know for anyone that had them that i feel like that has to be the deal of the year i agree and even though some of these don't appeal like the delta status match thing that doesn't apply to me at all but i can

recognize that that's a fantastic deal for somebody with delta elite status same thing here this deal didn't apply to me because i didn't have enough uh built points at the time for it to you know make any sense for me to do a transfer but i i'm excited for the people who are able to take advantage yeah i and i think that sums it up well that that that it's exactly, we're, we're picking the, the, uh, bonus or the, the deal of the year that, that offered the most spectacular upside and, and it, not necessarily the one that applied to the most people, I guess, as a way to think about it. Um, it is interesting though, that the poll results showed things that do apply to more people. That is like, so for example, the Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Cruise deals, yes, probably very few people

listening actually have points in their Virgin account. But I bet you most people listening have points in some transferable currency so that they could transfer to Virgin and book a cruise deal if they wanted to. So it kind of makes sense that that would be interesting. And of course, anyone could have done the Hyatt fast track. And for the record, the Air France 100% bonus was the third most popular at 14%. So it was close. It was close to the Virgin cruise deal, one percentage point difference there. In fact, one vote different between the two of those so uh they were very very very close for second place behind the hyatt fast track based on again the poll results just so far as we record this i'm sure it may have changed by the time we publish so am i

am i understanding correctly that we picked the same winner we did we agreed there's no fight what no no fight i tried to fight a little bit and make you support why you picked that one. Yeah, but no fight. Oh, man. We're going to have to we're going to have to refund everybody's money who came to see a fight. There's just nothing there. Sorry about that. It's I was there to argue.

That was a fantastic deal. I didn't see what there was to argue about. So. So there you go. All right. You win. I win. We both win. That was a fantastic deal. I don't know. I didn't see what there was to argue about. So, so there you go. All right. You win. I win. We both win. That brings us this week to this week's question of the week.

So this week's question of the week is, am I out of my mind, Greg? So. Absolutely. So I booked some Spirit Airlines flights this week. Well, there you go. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, there's more. There's more. So first, very briefly, there's a folly that I'm only going to share not for the to get into the whole story, but just to share it so that somebody avoids making the same mistake. I booked two directions and spirits. So I booked there and a back separately. It's two

separate one ways. So the outbound, I booked using my altitude reserve card so I could use altitude reserve points through US Bank real-time mobile rewards. Because if you have the altitude reserve and you pay for a qualifying travel charge, you get a text message that says, hey, you have this many points and you can use them at one and a half cents per point to offset this charge. If you'd like to do that, text back the word redeem and they have redeem all in capital letters. And I've done this once or twice before already. So I'm somewhat familiar with the process. So I got that text message as soon as I booked the Spirit Flight and I typed redeem in capital letters the same way that they had typed it in capital letters and hit send and nothing happened.

And I knew from the past that I got a confirmation of that. Okay, what's going on here? And so I waited a couple of minutes and I scrolled back in my message history to see that, yeah, before it has told me that it successfully happened. But the last time I didn't type redeem all in capitals, I just had the R in capital. So I was like, well, maybe the capitalization makes a difference. So, okay, all right, I'll try again. So I type redeem this time with just the first R capitalized or the only R capitalized and the other letters capitalized. Nothing happens. Now, I use a Google voice number, so I'm typing through Google voice on my phone, but nothing happens for a while. And I'm like, all right, well, I can go to my email and reply to the email. And maybe that'll do it. Maybe it's having a hard time because it's getting

routed through my phone. Maybe it's showing my cell phone number instead of the proper number. Of course, I haven't had that problem before. But OK, so I go to my email and I type redeem and I reply there. And then like a minute later, I got the message saying, congratulations, it's been confirmed. So OK, good. Apparently Apparently the email is what did the trick. I thought we were all set and good to go there. And then about 10 minutes later, I booked parking through spothero.com and paid the $66 or whatever that I had to for parking. And I got a text message from US Bank asking if I wanted to redeem points. And of course, I didn't because in that case, it only would have been one cent per point in value. But wouldn't you know it, just a little while later, I got a confirmation that my redemption had been successful. And I went online and sure enough, it redeemed to the 6,600.

So that was my second charge. So now I'm thinking that the next qualifying charge may already have a pre-redeemed redeem in there. So I'm hesitant now. You need to book a flight or something right away. Right, right. Or buy something really cheap that's going to produce the real-time mobile rewards text message. So my safety tip there is don't type redeem more than once. Also, in your US bank account, uncheck everything but travel from the real-time over-reward settings because you don't want to redeem for less than 1.5. That's a good point. That's a good point. All right. So then the second piece of this story,

which I'm going to try and shorten because I know we've run long today, is that I switched my airline, my chosen airline on a business platinum card to Spirit Airlines so that I could use my membership rewards points to book a Spirit flight and get the 35% rebate that's one of the benefits of the business platinum card. So in other words, I was going to book a flight that costs $630. And so I would redeem 63,000 membership rewards points and get 35% of the points back and pay a net of about 40,000 membership rewards points for my family of four. So I got online, I chatted and I asked to change my chosen airline to Spirit Airlines. And I did that on a card where I had already used the $200 airline incidental credit

on a different airline this year. And it was no problem. It was fine. The chat representative was able to change that. They always tell you that it could take up to 48 hours for the change to take effect. And in this case, I was booking only a few days ahead of the flight. So I wanted to know, how will I know if it has taken effect before 48 hours? And the chat rep told me, and I'm skeptical about this, but they told me that as long as in the benefit section of my account under the airline 35% bonus, as long as it said Spirit, I'd be good to go to book. And it almost immediately did. So I still waited until the next calendar morning or next calendar afternoon to get on the phone. Because you have to book over the phone in order to use your points for Spirit.

Because Spirit flights don't show up on Amex Travel. So if you pick Spirit as your chosen airline, you got to call Amex Travel. So I call Amex Travel to book the flight and feed the the agent all the information and you know the frequent flyer numbers and ages and they give me the quote tell me how much it is now i should back up and mention that on the outbound booking i joined the spirit savers club because it just made sense with the discount i was getting to join the savers club uh on my outbound flight so that gives me access to better pricing if i book on spirit.com. But you can't access the Savers Club rates if you book via Amex Travel. So via Amex Travel, I was going to pay $630 for a flight that I could have paid $565 for if I booked it at Spirit.com.

So I'm already overpaying by a little bit in order to use the 35% airline bonus. But I figure that's fine. I want to use up some membership rewards points. Not the end of the world. So, okay, we get everything set up to book. And he quotes me the price. And it's $630-ish, $620, something like that, that it's supposed to be. Tells me how many points it's going to be, how much of the rebate I'm going to get. Confirms everybody's information. And then goes ahead and puts through the charge, needs the four-digit code for my card does that. And as I'm waiting, I get an Amex fraud text message saying, did you just try to charge $710 on your card number at Spirit Airlines

Direct? And I'm like, well, hold on. That flight was 630. And yeah, I did try to charge something. How am I getting a fraud alert when I'm calling Amex Travel? How does that result in a fraud alert? I already had to verify who I was and everything. So how does that trigger a fraud alert of all things? That blew my mind that I got a fraud alert. And then I was like, well, wait a second. So I read it out loud to him and I say, well, this is $710. And he just quoted me, he had quoted me 620 actually, it was 619 and change. So it was $90 more that I'm getting a fraud alert that my card got charged for this amount. And that's not how much he told me. Not how much spirit airline said.

So he like kind of pauses and fumbles a little bit. He's like, Oh, Oh, Oh, yeah. He's confused. And I, and he can see what I'm talking about and he knows. And so puts me on hold forever. And this turns into a 45 minute phone call. And at some point I'm like, has it been charged? Because I don't know if that charge went through because I didn't immediately say, yes, it was me because I didn't want to spend $710 at that point. I should just, you know, I could pay the 565 to Spirit or I'm going to stay at an airport hotel tonight. If I actually went to Newark airport

and bought my ticket from the Spirit counter, I'd save another $20 a person. So, uh, cause you pay less in fees if you buy at the airport. So really I could buy that flight for four 85 at the airport. I just didn't want to wait that long. Hey, Nick, is this story going to end on this calendar day? I'm going to try. I'm going to try. Okay. All right. Just, just asking. So so anyway long story short he uh he he comes back and tells me i can cancel if i want or he'll give me the 90 back like just like as an apology even though spirit changed the price supposedly amex will credit me the 90 difference i'm like are you sure about that he puts me on hold for a long time again comes back and and swears that i am only going to that i'm going to get the 90 credited back and swears that I am only going to that.

I'm going to get the ninety dollars credited back to me and that they're only going to redeem the sixty two thousand points or whatever it was they initially said. And I'm going to still get thirty five percent transfer bonus. So we'll see how that all plays out. Am I crazy to have used or to have chosen Spirit as my airline for the Amex and Sonoma credit since I couldn't just book this online myself? Yes. spirit as my airline for the amex and senado credit since i couldn't just book this online myself uh yes i mean from the outset my answer was you're crazy and and nothing that you have said since the last 10 minutes in that long story has changed my opinion about wow wow yeah so so i like it when the question of the week is so easy to answer yes well that was a i certainly felt like i was crazy for having chosen that. That was a silly decision.

I should have just gone to the airport and bought the ticket. Anyway, so the moral of the story is don't choose spirit as your chosen airline on a business platinum card. Stay safe out there, kids. All right. So we are at the end of this week's episode. Thankfully, I'm done talking about that. We're at the end, Greg. Okay.

It's time for us to go. So I got to let you go. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for a giant mailbag, you can send that to. Send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. This is our last show of

the year, ladies and gentlemen. So we're looking forward to seeing you in the next calendar year. Happy New Year, everybody. Bye bye.