Frequent Miler on the Air - Triple dipping credit card coupons | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep330 | 10-31-25

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

In this episode of Frequent Miler on the Air, we'll reveal a trick for booking 2 people at single-person award rates, Wyndham & Vacasa are breaking up and breaking our hearts, and we'll talk about how to triple dip towards thousands of dollars in credits.Giant Mailbag(01:11) - Our listener uses a second browser to grab two seats at a low price...Card News(04:56) - Wells Fargo Autograph & Autograph Journey: Transfer 1 to 1 to JetBlue(07:49) - PSA: Grandfathered Sapphire Reserve cardholders (pre June 23): start using your new coupons. (Read more about this here)(08:58) - Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select card has a limited-time Turo benefit; $30 per rental, up to $180 in the next 12 monthsCrazy Thing(11:47) - Hilton makes their crappy promo slightly less crappyMattress Running the Numbers(14:41) - Hyatt: Earn 3K bonus points per night at Hyatt Vacation Club properties(Read more about this here)Caution: Resort fees are NOT waived for Globalists at Hyatt Vacation Club properties(Read more about this here)Bonvoyed Triple Header(20:07) - T-Mobile ends autopay discount workaround for credit cards (re: Biz Plat $10/mo credit) (Read more about this here)(24:22) - Increased Air France / KLM Flying Blue taxes and fees ($489 one-way departing Paris)(Read more about this here)(26:40) - Wyndham/Vacasa endingRead more about this here: https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-rewards-vacasa-partnership-ends-december-1st/Main Event: Triple dipping credit card coupons(33:46) - Double dip vs Triple dip vs Trip dip variation(38:14) - When cancelling/downgrading, the annual fee may be refunded/waived depending on when you cancel or downgrade:(41:20) - Read more here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/annual-fee-refund-rules-for-each-card-issuer/)(41:40) - Amex Consumer Platinum examples...(44:02) - Coupons are not really worth face value(47:45) - Chase Sapphire Reserve examples...(50:30) - Citi Strata Elite examples...(54:37) - Delta SkyMiles® Platinum examples...Question of the Week(58:32) - Is there still value in keeping the Bilt credit card?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. In today's show, a trick for booking two people at single-person award rates. Wyndham and Vacasa break up and break our hearts. And we discuss how to triple dip towards thousands of dollars in credits. Frequent Miller on the air starts now. Today's main event, triple-dipping credit card coupons. More and more credit cards are coming with big annual fees, but also lots and lots of valuable

coupons. And if you plan your strategy right about when you apply for these cards and how you use these coupons, it's often possible to double-dip the coupons in your first year of card ownership, but towards the end of the year, it's even possible to triple dip. and we'll get into the details of how to do that, and we'll give some examples of how lucrative it can be. Double dipping for coupon clippers. Lots of alliteration opportunities here today.

So we'll talk more about that later. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes by expanding the description box. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this, leave us a review, leave a comment. We always appreciate hearing from you. So thank you for that. Now it's time to drag out this week's giant mailbag.

Giant mailbag time. Let's see what's in today's giant mail. Today's giant mail comes from Vernon. Vernon writes, I had a great travel hack I used the other day. I was attempting to book a flight from Savannah, Georgia to Madrid, Spain. The issue was if you keyed in two seats on American and business class, it came up with 77,000 miles per ticket, which, as an aside, is not that bad for business class, but Vernon was not pleased with that. He wrote, if you priced one seat, it was only, 65,000. I also checked on Alaska Airlines, but Alaska only had one seat allocated from American for the flight to Madrid for 55,000 miles. And when I booked that one seat on Alaska, the American flight jumped up to 92,000. So backing up a little bit again, he's talking about that the American Airlines flight he wanted was bookable either through American Airlines or Alaska Airlines, but he can only get the best pricing if he booked one seat. and trying to get two for himself and his spouse caused the price to jump up. All right, moving on.

Here's his solution. Open a second browser, key both flights in, one on American and one on Alaska, hit both submissions at the same time and see if you grab two seats, both at the lower price. Lo and behold, it worked. Alaska at 55,000 points, and American at 65,000. Beat the system. Oh, well done. Congratulations, Vernon.

Ding, ding, ding. I feel like there should be a bell for that. Yeah, that's a great feeling when that works. Though we should mention, that doesn't always work. So it does work sometimes. There's times when probably both of us have been successful with that before, but not always. So in some cases, you may just have to book that second seat for more. A couple of thoughts on this.

Number one is a great point that oftentimes if you split up your group, you may be able to pay fewer miles. And we've talked about that before, how sometimes, because they'll just price at whatever the lowest bucket is that has the number of seats you enter available. Well, that's not even always true, but generally speaking. So like as a family of four, sometimes I'll search for two and see how much two costs because I might be able to save some miles booking two at the lower price first. But I just kind of corrected myself because we had talked a while back about how flights from Atlantic City I was looking up at some point randomly.

And the price for one ticket was as much as the price for two tickets. That sometimes happens as well. Yeah, that happens. So you do have to do some different. searches. And then the last thought is that, of course, you have to be okay with being on separate PNRs. Now, in this case, the savings was pretty significant. If I'm doing my quick math, right, I think you've saved over 20,000 miles anyway, maybe even a little bit more than that. So, you know, not bad. That's a pretty good savings. 30,000, I think, almost 30,000. If I just did the quick math better the second time. And at that point, I would probably book them as separate tickets, too. But some people would prefer to be on a single PNR so that if something goes wrong and, Grite can tell you all about what can go wrong with American Airlines flights, then at least you're on the same PNR. Yeah.

With American, what can go wrong will. So for a small difference, like if it was a 10,000 mile difference, I might just book them both through the same program, just to have a slight piece of mind. But at 30,000, I probably would have done the same thing Vernon did. Yeah. And it's a great hack, especially, I mean, sometimes the, there might not be two seats available at anything approaching a low price. And so to be able to get two seats at a low price

is fantastic in those situations. All right, very good. Good job. Well done. That's right. Let's move on to this week's card news. Several things up this week. First up, Wells Fargo is finally out with a new transfer partner. The Wells Fargo journey cards, autograph and autograph journey cards,

rather, have transfer partners, as you may recall. Up until now, it's been Air France, KLM Flying Blue, the Avios programs, Avianca Life Miles, and Virgin Atlantic, and then, of course, also, choice privileges one to two. Now they've added JetBlue to the mix. So they have one more, and that's nice-ish. Yeah, no, I mean, it's pretty good. JetBlue is a decent program.

They have a number of partners where you could use their points, and, of course, you could use their points for JetBlue itself, and they have no change or cancellation fees. So that's good. So, you know, I think that's a nice little win for Wells Fargo. They also, it's a one-to-one transfer, which is nice because not all major programs transfer one-to-one to JetBlue. For some reason, a couple of them are worse than one-to-one.

And so seeing one-to-one come out of what today is still a minor transferable points program is a nice thing to see. Yeah, it is. Keep in mind, though, our reasonable redemption value for JetBlue points is 1.3 cents per point. So that's not terrible, but it's also not typically going to yield an opportunity for outsized value for your Wells Fargo points, whereas other issuers or other partners may. Though on the flip side, if you're looking to fly domestically on JetBlue, it may well be your best option for that. And like Greg said, they do have some partnerships that can be useful. They have expanded access in some cases to awards. So I I could certainly see where it could be beneficial. I think Wells Fargo still has a long way to go toward making their transfer partner program interesting and widely relevant. They do. It's not a long list of transfer partners.

In fact, you could tell because Nick read them off. We wouldn't do that with most programs because the lists are usually too long. But still, a good step in the right direction there. I need to look into getting one of those cards so that we can talk more authority. authoritatively about authoritative. Not authoritarianly, all right, careful there. So Wells Fargo needs to get a few more transfer partners before I get interested in getting it.

So you need to get the Wells Fargo card for sure. I need to get it. Wells Fargo, if you remember, it has a superpower, which is you could transfer as little as one point. I don't know any other program that does that at the top of my head. And so, you know, if you're a few points shy, an award and you could transfer from Wells Fargo. That's great. So really like that. And I'd love to I love to see them making that better and better. Yep. Agreed. Okay. Very good. Next up, we got a quick

PSA. If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card that was open prior to the June 23rd changes. So you've got an old grandfathered Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Reminder, you can start using your coupons. You've got a whole bunch of coupon credits to use. Yeah, you do. So you've got the coupons for the edit hotels, which is their version of fine hotels and resorts. You've got their dining thing, which is called Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables. You've got stub hub credits. You've got free Apple TV Plus. You've got a free single subscription to Apple Music. And you've got a Peloton discount. So those are all newly enabled on your account. So take advantage of those. Ideally, the ones that you're going to use them before the end of the year, because then most of those credits,

We'll reset in January. Yeah, that's the biggest thing. And we'll discuss that a little bit more when we get into double and triple dipping coupons, but that's the big thing. Several of those are calendar year credits. So you want to make sure you use them this year before you lose them because then you can use them again next year. So get on that if you have not started planning yet.

And then finally in card news, we've got the city advantage platinum select card has a limited time tour benefit. You get $30 back per rental up to $180 over the next 12 months. So this is somewhat reminiscent of the Turo credit on the Strata Elite card, I guess it is, right? No, the globe card, right? Oh, the globe card, the globe card. You see, that's how much I care about the Turo credit. But I couldn't even remember what card has it.

My goodness. So how do you feel about the Turo credit, Greg? Oh, I don't care about it at all, but I'm not a Turo user. But for Turo users, I think that's great. And the nice thing is, well, if you already have... have this, I think it's $95 platinum select card and you're trying to decide,

is it worth upgrading to the globe $350 card? Here's another blow against that and save your money because you've got the TURO benefit at least for the next 12 months. So that's nice. It gives you more time

anyway to decide whether you care about that globe card. And if you're listening to this and you're like, Turo, what's that? It's sort of like the Airbnb for car rentals. You can borrow people's cars and pay for them. And so it's, it's an alternative to the major rental companies, which some people find quite useful in certain scenarios. I have only used it once in the years that it's existed. So I don't get wildly excited about this. The other thing to mention that Stephen pointed out when this benefit launched on the Globe card, is that there are very frequently card-linked offers for Turo's. So check all of your other,

like, Amex and Chase cards and what. not because there's pretty frequently a number of $30 credits out there. And you'll also want to then take into consideration, okay, which credit card offers the best insurance for the rentals? So if it does it all with Turro's rentals, which I'm not sure that it does, actually. I say that out loud. Where I think this could be a big win is someone in a city where there are cheap turro rentals available, you don't have a car, but you occasionally want a car just for

the day, you know, $30 per. for rental, that that could probably, you know, take at least half off the rental if it's, if it's not too pricey. So, yeah, that could be a really useful situation. Yeah, great point there. Or if you have a specific need for a specific type of, like, you need a pickup truck to pick up something at Home Depot or whatever it is that you don't have, you know, it could be useful for that kind of thing, I imagine.

Especially because with a major rental company, like, you're always kind of gambling as to whether or not they're going to have the car that you're reserved, right? Like, sometimes they do. That's definitely true. Yeah. So, whereas with Toro, you would know which cart you have. So, all right. That's our card news.

Next up, what crazy thing? What crazy thing did Hilton honors do this week? So Hilton, they made their crappy promo slightly less crappy. So if you remember, they have a seasonal promo where you get 2,500 bonus points on every stay. Now, not every night. stay. Well, it was 1,500. It's now 2,500. And so it was crappy because if you think about how little Hilton points are worth, our reasonable redemption value says they're worth currently 0.41 cents per point. But even if you say, well, they're often on sale for half a cent a point,

so I'm going to peg them at half a cent. Fifteen hundred points is only $7.50 of value. per stay. So the whole stay, you know, it could be a 10-day stay and you're only getting $7.50 worth of points. $2,500 is not making it like that much better. Now you're talking at most $12.50 or at our reasonable redemption value, just over $10 of value per stay. This is worth calling out because Hilton used to regularly have double and triple point bonuses where you would earn a ton of points because you're getting 10 points per dollar as base and then you're getting double or triple that.

This is not that. No, but they increased it by 66.666666%, Greg. I mean, it's a huge bump over what they were offering. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah. Kudos to Hilton for adding another four bucks worth of points to the promotion. Yeah, there you go. I saw this and I thought to myself, it's like, based on our reasonable redemption value,

It's an extra $4.10 worth of points, and that almost covers a coffee that I would order at Starbucks, almost. So, thanks for that. Appreciate it. So, yeah, hopefully we see a return to those double and triple point offers, because without those, I just, this isn't moving the needle. You know, like, okay, you can register, but it's not going to make me choose a Hilton over something else. Promotions, right, right. Promotions are supposed to make people, like, say, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to book the Hilton instead of the, the IHD property, but not, you know, in this case, I mean, I guess they're counting on people

having no idea what the value of the points are. And just, oh, over, over 2,000 points. Wow. Right. And I mean, if it's a really cheap one night stay, maybe it will move the needle, I guess. But, you know, anything more than a really cheap one night's day. And it's like, it's $12.50. You know, you could buy at the points for $12.50. They're worth more like $10 and change. so not a not moving the needle for me all right that's that we we beat that one all the way there so that's gone mattress running the numbers let's talk about mattress running the numbers because hiat is out with a completely different promotion they really are so you can earn 3,000 bonus points per night much more valuable points at that but only at hiat vacation club properties and only up to a

maximum with 30,000 points you have to register by March 22nd so March 22nd of 20th 26, and it's eligible for stays completed between November 2nd and March 29th. So that's November 2nd, 2025 to March 29th, 20206. But it is eligible for either paid or award stays. So if you have a stay coming up at a Hyatt Vacation Club property, you'll want to make sure that you register because you might as well get your 3,000 points per night. Unlike Hilton, that's kind of worth something. It really is.

I mean, that can definitely move the needle. I mean, you've got a significant number of points. Again, yeah, I mean, I'm saying 3,000 points is significant where I just before said 2,500 points wasn't significant, but these are a completely different type of points. You know, Hyatt points are worth in the neighborhood of, what, four times? What Hilton points are worth? A little more.

Yeah. A little more than that. And so not only is it like more than four times as valuable, just at the face value of 3,000 versus 2,500, but it's per night. So five nights stay, multiply all that by five, and it's very good. So high-end vacation club properties are like their timeshare property type of things that they also rent out like hotel rooms, so you're more likely to get a living room, you know, proper living room, sometimes wash and dryer, that kind of thing. so it's more like renting a condo but it also it doesn't have all of the same rules

about like benefits that you'd get if you have elite status for example so if you have high a globalist you're used to getting free breakfast you're used to getting your resort fees waived and that neither of those are true with these days so you know temper your expectations, I guess, I should say, here about those kind of things. But, you know, these can be really nice places to stay and getting that big of a bonus for the stay, I think is really good. Yeah, based on our reasonable redemption value for high at points, which is 1.8 cents per point. It's like $54 a night that you're getting back in extra points. That's on top of whatever you already are earning for the stay, of course. So, but, I mean, $54 a night, now that's

a number that might move the needle for me, you know, whereas the, what was it, $10 worth of points for the whole stay at Hilton is not moving the needle, $54 worth of points per night might make me choose Hyatt over an Airbnb, for instance, if I were comparing. And obviously, it's going to depend on price and location and lots of other things. But it's enough of incentive, it's enough of an incentive to make me at least look at the Hyatt Vacation Club property if I'm looking for that type of thing. Oh, absolutely. Is it worth a mattress run? Do you think it's worth finding a cheap property on points or are paid and doing it just so you get the points and the elite nights out of it? Probably not. You know, $54 worth of points. I don't imagine you're going to find

many Hyatt Vacation Club properties that cost any less than that. Maybe there's a place somewhere overseas with really cheap places. But in the United States, at least, they're generally going to be quite a bit more expensive than $54 a night. So you're going to be paying quite a bit more. Now, I hesitated a little bit because you said the points and the elite night credit. So, you know, then it kind of depends. If you're in a situation where the elite night credits are going to make a difference at the end of the year, and this represents enough of a rebate, maybe.

but that's again a maybe and it would still have to be a really inexpensive high at vacation club property which i don't know i haven't come across one of those yeah i think it's very unlikely you're going to find anything where it's mattress run worthy enjoy your vacation and and you know be satisfied that you're getting elite nights and you know all these bonus points that's great but um to think it would be worth the cost so when i first saw this promo my first thought was ooh, often in places like Arizona in July or August, places are really cheap for cash because it's way too hot there. But this promo is well, you know, passed done by then. So during the winter months, most of these vacation club things are in, at least in the U.S. or in warm areas.

They're in Florida, Arizona, places like that. And so they're going to be priced high during the winter months when this promotion is active. And any that exist in wintry places are probably in ski areas where they're not going to be cheap either at that time of year. So I'm sure there's an exception. Let me know where it is. But if you're out there, you're like, oh, no, but there's a really cheap one. I'd be happy to hear all about it. But yeah, generally speaking, not worth it for a mattress run.

But like you said, nice return if you're already taking a vacation. All right. Let's move on to this week's Bonvoid triple header. Ouch. Triple header time. That's exciting, isn't it? Well, no. It's painful is what it is. Painful. Is that the word you were looking for? If you're excited by that, I guess, then yes, it's quite exciting this week. So first up on the Bonvoy stuff for this week is T-Mobile. T-Mobile has closed a loophole. So they've ended the auto-pay discount workaround that I've been using for the last couple of years. So they have an auto-pay discount. I think it's $5 a line up to eight lines so you can get up to $40 a month in auto- auto pay discount with T-Mobile, and for the last couple of years, this is a relatively recent

change where they required that you set up a debit card in order to get the auto-pay discount. Now, that's long been the case, I think, with Verizon, but T-Mobile only added that within the last couple of years, so you had to set up a debit card, but the workaround was that if you just paid in advance, like if you paid before your bill generated, then it would just give you a credit that would carry forward to the next month or if you paid your bill before it was due with a credit card, then the auto pay would run for $0 on the day that the bill was due. So there were workarounds to use a credit card and then have a zero balance when it was time for the auto pay. And you'd still get the auto pay discount. They've ended that now. So if you make

any payment with a credit card, it takes away the auto pay discount for your next bill. So that's a huge bummer for people with those business platinum card $10 monthly credits who have this auto pay discount because it's going to just reduce the value or eliminate the value of those depending on how many lines you've got. Yeah. Now this hurts you, doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does because T-Mobile had so many promotions to add free lines during the pandemic. I've got nine lines on my account. So I max out the full $40 a month auto pay discount. And so now using those $10 business platinum monthly credits. It wouldn't make any sense if I had one or two business platinum cards.

I would be paying more, essentially, for my bill because my bill would go up by $40. We currently have five business platinum cards in my household. So if I use all five of those, I'm going to still come out $10 ahead of the auto pay discount. That's not very much. So that really reduces the value of those credits for me, though I still have cell phone insurance, whereas the debit card that I had attached to it anyway wouldn't have had cell phone insurance. So that's worth something also.

Going forward, I guess we start to cancel business platinum cards eventually, I don't know what I'm going to do. Like at what point do I switch to using a debit card and what debit card do I use? Right, right. We'll have to start paying attention to do any of these debit cards actually have cell phone insurance.

Maybe there are some that do. And it's just something that I've never, paid attention to at all because why we'd use the debit card, but now they're encouraging us too. So AT&T also, I don't know, maybe a year ago or two, started making it so that you had to pay with debit card or direct from your bank account in order to get the $10 monthly auto pay discount. And but at least as of last time I did this, the workaround of of waiting until they cut the bill and then just proactively paying with different business platinum cards was still working. So let's hope they don't learn something. Let's hope both

T-Mobile and Verizon and whoever else is doing this don't learn anything from T-Mobile. Right, right. Hopefully it doesn't spread. That's the idea. I do know that the point debit card used to have cell phone insurance. That's long defunct. But I feel like when that card came out with that benefit, readers commented with a couple of other debit cards that had cell phone insurance. So now I'm going to have to go back to those old posts and read through the comments and see what I can find because, yeah, that's, I'm wondering if Wells Fargo, because they seem to have good coverage on all their credit cards. Credit cards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll find out. All right, that's the first bit of Bonvoy. Next up, Air France, KLM flying blue has jacked up

the taxes and fees when departing certain places. So this does not affect booking awards. Booking awards. Thank you. Yes. The taxes and fees on award bookings. This doesn't have much of an effect on departures from the United States, but departures from Europe have gotten significantly more expensive than I recall the last few times I've looked at awards as much as $489 one way for Paris to New York and taxes and fees. And obviously, a chunk of that is made up of actual taxes, but not $489 worth. That's quite a bit in search charges. That's, yeah, that's a shame. I hate seeing this. You know, as you said, luckily, it's not everywhere yet. It's not all possible routes. Unlike, you know, I don't know, like British Airways, which, again, it's not all

possible routes, because if you fly like a short distance from London to Europe, they don't impose big taxes, but for almost all long-haul routes, you know, BA charges out the wazoo. Hopefully, I mean, I don't know, Air France, KLAM might be on a slippery slope in that direction. Yeah, it's unfortunate. And I flew Air France a couple of times already this year on awards that I booked last year that I paid far less in taxes and fees for than what I'm seeing on some of those routes now, particularly Paris, departures from Paris, Amsterdam, Germany, quite high. and I'm sure some folks out there will say, well, yeah, Germany and France have higher departure taxes, and they do. And that's fair. You will pay higher departure taxes from those countries through most programs. It's just that now it's significantly higher via flying blue than it was before. Like I said, 489 one way from Paris to New York, 452 from Frankfurt to New York, versus, you know, I think you paid 313 last year from Athens. And that seemed a little higher than what I typically remember paying, usually more in the $250 to $300 range. Some of the

This is also currency fluctuation probably, but bottom line is, if you want to book an award ticket through Flying Blue on Air France or KLM departing Europe, it's going to cost a little more. Yeah, yeah, that's a shame. All right, but we're not done with our triple header, are we? We are not. No. This one's heartbreaking. We got an email from Wyndham this morning as we're recording this. And so, as an aside, kudos to Wyndham for getting the Thursday news in time for us to get it in the show.

I've complained in the past about how big news in this area in points in Miles world tends to happen Thursday while we're recording the show. It's too late for us to get in there. So kudos for emailing us early. But it's bad news. Their partnership with Vacasa is ending. So as you probably know, Windham points have for a while, you've been able, you've been able to use them to book Vicasa Vacation Rennels. And then Casago, I think it's called, bought Vakasa. And the ability to book Vakasa Vacation Rennels with Wyndham has become rocky. It's become very

difficult since then. And now they notified Wyndham that they're actually pulling out of the deal altogether. And so what's happening is you can still make reservations. through the end of November. As long as your checkout is no later than January 31st of 26. So you have a very short window to still book and stay. They say all existing reservations will remain intact and are expected to be honored. So if you already have a reservation for later next year, it should be good. Although I would be a little worried about what might happen there.

They do say that they'll try their best to make up for it if something goes wrong by finding you a Wyndham property or something. And they say that you can still modify existing reservations through the end of November, but only if the checkout is by the end of January. So it becomes, if you make any modifications, the rules follow the same as making a new reservation, basically, that it has to be checkout by January 31st. big bummer there, Nick? What do you think? Yeah, huge, huge bummer because that's certainly one of the reasons why I've enjoyed collecting wind and points is for the possibility of booking Vicasa vacation rounds, even though I haven't booked a ton of them yet. I have used them several times. And so I was actually in the midst of planning a trip to Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg area next summer. And now I'm too late because that's not going to happen by January 31st. So I was counting on using a Vakas. are hoping to use a vicasa anyway in that area. We'd stayed there a few years ago and enjoyed it. And we're going back with more family members this time around. So a vicasa seemed like it would be perfect.

But unfortunately not going to be. I think an important point to make here was your hesitation about whether or not reservations will remain intact. I mean, the wording to me was particularly salient here. All existing reservations remain intact and are expected to be honored. Well, they're expected to be honored. to be honored, that is certainly not making any promises. And that's probably fair because, you know, they, Wyndham certainly has no influence after January 31st, right?

I don't know how much influence they even have until then. And truthfully, Vakasa and Casago doesn't have that much influence. These are independently owned units that owners can do whatever they want. They could take them off the market. So, you know, it's definitely the case that you might not end up with your reservation after January 31st. But the good thing is Wyndham's, apparently from the email we got aware of that possibility

and says they're gonna try to do something to make it up to you, basically. Which is great. I mean, and that's good service. And it kind of demonstrates the difference between the two sides, right? Because Vicasa was certainly, I'm gonna say certainly not willing to give a promise there

that it would be honored that they would have come you somewhere else, you know, like, like you said, if the owner pulls out of the program or the rental can't go, can't be rented for some reason, something gets damaged, they certainly aren't making any promises to try to reaccommodate you, Windham is. And so that speaks volumes there, but yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so this is, this is a big bummer. It's coming from the, you know, the Vakasa side of things. I do have to give, you know, credit to Windham for, not just for, emailing us in time for the show, but also this was the most well-thought-out email as far as like listing exactly what will happen with new reservations, existing reservations, modifications

or reservations. I've never seen anything, any kind of communication like that from any loyalty program that was so well-thought-out and so clear. There was no marketing speak. There was no, there's nothing suggesting this is actually good for you. Right, right, right. No, absolutely. Huge kudos because not only, like you said, did they not try to spin it as a change we're making for our members or like try to bury it at the bottom of an email where they talk about how you can earn, you know, 2,500 points per stay or something, you know, whatever. Like, they didn't try to do any of that. They instead tried to be very clear, obviously, about how it's going to happen and anticipate the questions that people would have. Well, can I change my

booking? And when do I need to check out by what's going to happen to my existing booking? They they clearly anticipated the questions that people would have and proactively answered them and let us know before it ended with time still for people to book something if they wanted to rather than just telling us, sorry, it's over, you know, if you didn't book already too bad, or making us have to try to find out in the terms and conditions. I feel like not all loyalty programs are this transparent. So Wyndham does deserve the kudos you're giving them there. Right. The only sad thing is It's too late to take advantage of the overlapping promos from Wyndham and United to exchange your Wyndham points for half as many United Miles, which you may remember I dumped all of my Wyndham points for United Miles, thanks to those overlapping things. And it would have been nice to have learned about this while those promos were still available so that people who are like, well, forget my window points now, would have an out.

but oh well yeah yeah i mean i i i i don't fault windham as much for no i don't fault them for that it's just it's just it would have been nice i agree bad timing situation really i'm i'm sure they didn't plan it like let's wait to tell anyone tell everyone until the promo's over right i don't think that was the intent at all right yeah and by contrast i held on to my wendom points silly me so so that's that all right that wraps up i believe all of our bonvoid stuff for today and brings us to this week's main event. Main event time, triple dipping credit card coupons. When you apply for an expensive new credit card, it usually comes with all kinds of credits,

discounts, vouchers. We're calling all those things coupons benefits that are often tied to a calendar year or tied to like six-month period, January through June and July through December, or sometimes quarters and sometimes monthly. And all of those things, if you time your applications right, you can make use of more than one year's worth of coupons in the one year you have your credit card. So the point is, like, you might sign up for, let's say,

a brand new American Express Platinum card because you see a huge welcome bonus that you want to get, but you plan on canceling or downgrading it after a year, well, you can use, if you time it right, you can use all the coupons that come with it twice or maybe even three times for many of them before you cancel so that you only pay the one, the first year annual fee. Yeah, and that can be really valuable. In fact, we can, we'll run through some examples of where you can really take great advantage to that. Yeah, yeah. So just some terminology, I guess. So a double dip with coupons is where you apply

mid-year, like any time mid-year, you use the coupons that are available this calendar year, and then starting in January of next year, you use the coupons that are available for the next calendar year. And then when your 12 months are up, when the next annual fee shows up on your statement, you cancel the card. And that's how you double-dip. You're getting all those calendar year coupons twice. And just as an aside, when you apply for a new card with a welcome offer, always keep it for at least the 12 months until the next annual fee shows up because credit card car companies really hate when people cancel, get the welcome bonus and cancel before that.

Sometimes they'll even claw back your points or may bar you from getting welcome bonuses in the future, that sort of thing. So you should always wait at least the 12 months. So that's a double dip What I said just before Triple dip is where you apply Let's say early in December And hopefully you get the card right away

You use the calendar year coupons Before December is over So you use it this year Then you have all of next year to use The calendar year coupons again And then in January of the year after that You use them right away Use the coupons right away

And then you cancel the card or downgrade to a cheaper or no fee card. And that's a triple dip where you could get as many as three years' worth. A variation of a triple dip is where you apply, let's say, in November. And you do what I just said. You use the first year coupons this year, use the second year coupons next year. But you actually pay the annual fee, let's say in December of next year. And then in January, after that, you use the next year's coupons, but then you downgrade,

ideally to a no-fee card if that's available or to a much cheaper card. And what will happen usually is they will prorate a rebate, a refund for you of the annual fee. So you would have paid for the full 12 months in that third calendar year, but you'll get back either 10 or 11 months, depending on how you time it, worth of the annual fee. And so that's sort of a variation that gives you a little more time to go. And it dawned, I mean, as you were talking about the triple dip variation, that one relevant piece we left out on the triple dip before the variation was that the reason for the reason for different timing on those two things is that you won't necessarily have

to have paid a second annual fee. You get to use those credits three times without having had to pay for the annual fee again yet. So let's discuss what that looks like. So when you're thinking about canceling or downgrading, the annual fee may be refunded or waived depending on when you cancel or downgrade. So for instance, with Amex, if you cancel within 30 days of the statement closed for the statement in which your annual fee was charged, they will waive that annual fee.

Yeah. And if you've already paid it, they'll refund it. And Chase is similar, at least the listed rule is similar, that it's within 30 days. But people are reporting that you actually, in practice, have 41 days from the statement close to cancel and get your full annual feedback or have it waived. The city also has a 30-day rule. City is a little bit weird, though, because when you, if you're doing this with a city thank-you card, you're not going to want to cancel if you have any thank-you points left, because canceling will mean you lose your points. So you're going to want a product change, and this is where a city is different than the others in that when you product change, it takes a while for the product change to actually get fully processed such that they would refund your annual fee.

So usually it's going to take long enough that you're probably going to get a pro-rated refund of the annual fee, you know, 11 months of it or maybe just 10 months, depending on timing, rather than the full annual fee refund when you product change in January with a triple dip. Yep, very good. So that helps you kind of plan things out. And that's why we said with a triple dip, for instance, if you were to apply for, let's say, an MX card in December and use the calendar year credit for the current year. And then in January, use the calendar year credit again.

Then the annual fee will get charged in the following December, a year after you've opened the card. But you've got 30 days. So you've got into January of the next calendar year where you could theoretically cancel or downgrade and get that entire fee back or waived if you haven't yet paid it. so you get a chance to use the credits again without having to be out the annual fee. So if you want to be able to take advantage of those benefits before your fee is due, then that's a good opportunity. Now, keep in mind, though, that this is going to vary by issuers. So there are other issuers that, like for instance, Capital One, I think it's difficult.

I took a look at Dr. Credits resource on this. And I think it's difficult to know what they're going to do. I think once the annual fee posts, I'm not sure that they will give you a refund. So it does vary a bit. But those three issuers that we talked about here are the ones where it's most common to try to do one of these double or triple dips. Yeah. And Nick mentioned doctor of credit. That's where we got all of this information from.

Check out their blog post called annual fee refund rules for each card issuer. And we'll have a link to it in the show notes. So definitely don't, you know, make huge. decisions based on what you just heard but check out their post and I think they keep it pretty well up to date so as things change and things do change hopefully they'll update that and so you'll be able to get the latest information there there you go all right so let's look at an example let's talk about an example of what this would look like and we'll start with the amex consumer platinum card which has an 895

annual fee now typically if you open that new the welcome bonus is going to easily offset the 895 annual fee for the first year and so going to be worth more than that. So that essentially takes care of the cost of the card. And then you've got all these major airline fee credits. So if you opened in December and you did the triple dip that we're discussing, you could use the $200 airline fee credit three times, December, then in the new year, and then the following January. Hotel credit, that's semi-annual. So that's a little bit different. You'd actually end up being able to use that four times if you did this triple dip for $1,200 in credits there. Resi credit, you'd get $6.00. You'd get $6.00.000. You'd get

Six quarters out of that, $600. Lulu Lemon has a $75 quarterly credit. You could use that six times, so that would be $450 of Lulu Lemon credit. Sacks has their semi-annual $50 credit. You could use that four times, so that's another $200. Now, Uber is monthly, $15 most months, $35 in December. but you could do that for 14 months because of the way we're talking about this. So that's $250 of Uber credits, digital entertainment credits.

Those are also monthly up to $25 a month times 14. That's $350 of credits. So if you maximize all of these credits, you're talking about $3,650 in credits with just having paid just one-year annual fee. which is pretty incredible. Yeah, that's wild. So, and then if you decide you don't want to keep the card beyond that, you'd only be out that original 895 that was, again, already offset by the welcome bonus.

So that's a ton in credits with a triple dip. So with a strategic opening of the card at the right time of year, you could do really well. Even with a double dip, you wouldn't get quite as much as we talked. You'd still get quite a bit. So there's a lot to be had in credits from these. However, we don't really look at it as being $3,650 worth of value, right?

We don't value these in face value. Yeah, that's the thing. So that's a great big number, $3,650, but it's not as good as cash number. You're not magically getting $3,650 in your pocket. What's happening is you have to actually use these things. You have to find, like, fine hotels and resorts, hotels where you're going to get the $300 credit. You have to eat out at resi restaurants. You have to shop at Lulu Lemon, shop at sacks, and so on.

And so in practice, you might end up spending more than you otherwise would. Let's say, fine hotels and resorts. Maybe you would have stayed at a, you know, a $400 hotel. But instead, you stay at a $500 hotel in order to get $300 back. And that looks like a good exchange, but your savings is really $200, not $300 from that. You might spend more eating out or eat at restaurants that aren't your favorite in order to use your resi credits. You might, you probably will, buy stuff you don't need from Lulu Lemon or Sacks. And, you know, there's more and more.

more like digital entertainment credits, that's up to $25, but if you use it for a service that costs $1995 a month, you're not using the full $25 a month. So anyway, it goes on and on. There's all kinds of reasons why these coupons aren't really worth what's face value, but it's much easier for us to talk about these double and triple diffs using the face value numbers and will trust you, the discerning listener, to adjust in your head, say, well, those credits aren't really meaningful to me. So take out that, you know, those $400 there. I'm not going to, or $450, I'm not going to use Lulu Lemon credits, for example. Yeah. And to be clear, when you look at our best offers page and see our first year value for a card, number one, we don't take into account

double or triple dipping. So that's not included in the first year value when you look at cards on our page. And also, we don't value every credit. Like, for instance, I don't think we assign any value to the Saks Fifth Ave credit on the MX and Tumor Platinum cards. It's not included in the first year value at all because it's kind of a harder one to use, not as broadly applicable. So we try to be relatively conservative in our first year value of cards, but you could see how, you know, you could potentially get quite a bit more than the value that we list with a double or triple dip. And so, you know, that $3,650 number, even if you only valued that at 30%, that's what, like, $1,200 or no, nine, yeah, over, over a thousand anyway, sorry, $1,200 be more than that, but be a third.

But anyway, it, a lot. You could obviously get a lot of value, even if you don't value those credits very much. But like Greg said, we'll leave that up to you to figure out how much you value them or which ones to not value while we talk about a couple of other interesting double or triple dips. Yeah. First, I just want to complete what Nick was saying about our first year value estimates on our, on our blog, where we show the card, every credit card's estimated first year value. Not only do we not include all credits, but we only use a percentage of the face value as in our calculations. And if you hover over the first year value, you could see exactly what dollar value we, assigned to each credit and it's usually significantly less than the face value. All right. So we talk through the platinum example triple dip. Let's talk about the Chase Sapphire Reserve. So that one, $795 annual fee, again, as will be true with pretty much every rewards credit card. If you get a

first year big welcome offer, that's going to more than offset the annual fee, even when the annual fee annual fee is this big. So the coupons are all upside if you're only keeping the card for a year. So of the major credits that the Sapphire Reserve offers, you've got the travel credit, which is $300 per membership year, that one's going to be tough to double or triple dip. So I'm just going to count that as just flat $300. There's also a new one in 2026 for $250 credit for certain hotel bookings. It's not clear whether that's going to go past 2026. So I'm also going to just say, all right, that's not a double or triple dip. That's just flat out $250. But then when you get down to the edit, which is their hotels one, which you get twice a year, you could triple dip that

once to get that four times in total for $1,000 in credits from the edit. Their dining credit, Sapphire Reserve exclusive tables, you get $150 twice a year, semi-annual. So that becomes four times you can use that credit, and so that's $600 you can earn. And StubHub also is semi-annual, $150 credit semiannual times four, $600. So all that adds up to $2,750 face value for all these coupons. Yeah, you know, it makes December a great time of year. to consider these ultra premium cards because you do get that opportunity for the triple dip and it really significantly increases. So even if the welcome offer isn't as good as it was

in, say, September, the ability to triple dip the credits could make the welcome offer or make the card overall more valuable in December than it was in, say, September. Yeah. Now, with both the Amex Platinum cards, hotel credits and Chase Sapphire Reserve's hotel credits, You can book in December for a stay that's much later. So you might be thinking, well, I don't have travel to do in December. That's fine. You can be booking for much later in the year. And if you don't mind lending Chase or MX some money, you can make multiple reservations.

If you're not sure which one you're going to take, make multiple of them. You'll get the rebate. And then, you know, later next year, as it gets closer, your stays cancel the ones you don't want. I'm mentioning that now because city is different. Oh, yeah. So City has the $595 annual fee on the city strata elite card. And that one has a few credits here to consider. First up is the hotel discount. And we word that differently here than on the others because it is a discount. You get $300 off on a hotel booking of two nights or more rather than a rebate. It's a discount. And that makes a difference. Because unlike what Greg just said, where you could make, let's say, two or three bookings through final hotels and resorts or the edit so that hopefully you would still keep your credit intact, even if you canceled one of them. With this, you're only going to get this credit on whatever the first booking you make is.

But you could use that three times. You could use it December, next year, and January the following year. So you could get up to $900 in those discounts as long as you've got that one firm planned stay to be able to book it with. You get the splurge credits, $200 a calendar year, so you could use that three times for $600. The Black Lane Private Chaufer is $100 semi-annually, so you could use that four times

before the fee would be due again, potentially. So that's $400. So the total headline number here is $1,900, which is significantly less than the platinum and the Sapphire Reserve, but still a significant amount of money. It is. It's a significant amount of money. And in city's favor here, the hotel discount doesn't require you booking expensive, you know,

find hotels and resorts or the edit type of hotels. You can book any hotel that's available through their hotel booking platform as long as it's a stay of at least two nights and you get the $300 off. So in that way, it's much easier to use because, I mean, I know personally a lot of places I travel don't have hotels that are available through Amex's platform or chases where you'd get that rebate. So that's a thing in cities' favor. We already talked about how a discount is not as good as a rebate, but still. The splurge credit is very easy to use because you could use it for a lot of several different things,

including like any spend on American Airlines, Best Buy. I can't remember what the other ones are. But, um, yeah. And, and so I think that one's pretty easy to use black lane, whether or not you could use that. I mean, the way I see it is it's like, um, you know, maybe you were going to, um, get a 60 or $70 or $70 Uber ride. Instead, you get a $100 black lien ride, um, for, for free or somewhere in that range. So it's not going to save you probably the full amount that.

face value but it's still if you need rides a few times a year it shouldn't be that hard to use this theoretically so anyway that was a really long way of saying that in a way I think I think this city strata lead it's it's kind of easier for most people to use those coupons there's only a few they're they're pretty easy to use and the only the big caveat for me is that in order to book a stay in December, you know, you have to have firm plans for next year or whenever your stay is or else you're just going to lose that $300 when you cancel that stay. Yeah. But if you had to stay to book in December, you know, something near term that was very firm, then, you know, it could be

a great deal. And I think out of these, the only one that you would need to devote any real mental bandwidth to using in terms of the calendar timing is the Black Lane one, because the splurge credit and the hotel discount could be used all at once. So that's, that's Greg's point in that these are way easier. There's far fewer of them and they're easier to use in one shot. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So this whole technique is not limited to just these ultra-premium expensive headliner cards. I'm going to give an example of where you could do this with the Delta Sky Miles platinum card. So that's a $350 annual fee card. You know, you could apply and hopefully earn a big welcome offer from that. And the card offers a companion certificate

each year upon renewal. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. It also has a hotel credit, $150 Delta stays credit. So this is just any hotel book through an Expedia-like interface but that's branded with Delta. You get $150 back on any booking. It doesn't have to be two nights or more. And with the triple dip, you could do that four times. So that's $600 back in hotel bookings. It also offers $10 monthly for Resi, $10 monthly in ride share. If you do that 14 times with a triple dip, that's $280 altogether. So all together, you're talking about $880 in rebates plus potentially a companion certificate.

So when the second year annual fee comes due, you should be getting the companion certificate deposited into your Delta account somewhere around that time. If it happens in time for you to be able to cancel the card and not pay the second year annual fee, great, because that certificate, once it's in your Delta account, is going to stay there. And to use it, you just need any American Express card. It doesn't have to be a Delta American Express card and doesn't have to be that Delta American Express card. any amex card to pay for the first person and the companion's taxes in order to use the companion certificate if it takes a while longer like so if you get past your 30 days to cancel before the certificate appears then you could do the modified triple dip and then you can downgrade to hopefully

they let you downgrade to the no fee delta blue card and that way you'll only pay ultimately a prorated amount for the month or two that you had the card before the companion certificate was issued. So you'll want to check out our posts about the Delta Commandant Certificate to see whether it's something that would be valuable to you. But it's possible to use it for some very expensive flights, like flying round trip from mainland U.S. to Hawaii, for example, is the type of thing you can use it for. And so that could potentially save a ton of money. Yeah. And as we discussed with the prorated annual fees, if you kept the card for two months, then you would receive 10 twelfths back of the $350 annual fee. And you'd be charged 10.12th of the annual fee for the card you downgrade two.

Although, of course, if you were downgrading to the blue card, that'd be 1012th of zero. So you wouldn't pay anything on the prorated annual fees. So that would work out particularly well. And I really think that this could be a great tool for people who are hotel-free agents. between the hotel credits on these cards and the hotel credits available on some of the ultra premium cards and some of the other cards out there today. If you don't care about elite status and elite benefits and earning hotel points, you could get a lot of your stays covered potentially with the various coupon credits that exist.

You really could or save a lot off those hotels. And if you think about it, especially doing this with airline cards, you could be using the welcome bonus from these airline cards to pay for your airfare and then these coupons to pay for your hotels. So you're getting a lot of your travel covered by applying for cards strategically at the end of the year. Very good. All right, my friends, I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in via email. So it came in from Mark and Mark says, I was very excited and jumped on the built credit card last year, seeing value in the number of transfer partners, mainly a new way to get

points for Hyatt, beyond Chase. And we talked about that. And since then, they've added more partners, max out the transfer bonus to Alaska. Mark maxed out the transfer bonus to Alaska when that was offered as a rent day promotion. So that's all good news. But Mark goes on to say since, I've seen a steady decline in uses of the built cars and ways to earn. They took away using it for taxes and limiting the number of points you can earn per month on rent day. I think he means on the first of the month and I don't rent. So with that, do you see any value in keeping this card? Is there a way of getting good value that I'm missing? Basically, Mark wants to know, does it make sense to keep the built card if you have used a bunch of your points? And now you're sitting on the card and saying,

well, does this still have a spot in my wallet? What do you think? Yeah. Anytime you're you have that thought about a no annual fee card, which this built card is, you have to be thinking about what's the advantage of canceling versus the disadvantage, the possible disadvantage. So every now and then with even no annual fee cards, they gain some powerful benefit that they may not have had before and suddenly you may be very interested in it. or, you know, or maybe built rewards overall might gain some, you know, powerful new benefit where earning one, two, or three X with the built card would suddenly be, look better to you than whatever your alternatives are with other credit cards.

So I would not even consider canceling the built card. again it has no annual fee so there's there's really no upside to canceling it yeah you know apart from i guess the the simplification of things if you want to not have to track so many cards i guess you want to simplify your life and have one less thing to track but i think a parallel example that goes to gregg's point here is that in my household for instance we've got a number of chase cards with no annual fee some some ink cash cards with no annual fee the freedom and freedom unlimited card with no annual and they don't all get used regularly. And so some may say, well, you know, I'm not using it.

I may as well cancel it. But I'm glad we didn't because now they all have those Instacart credits. And, you know, that was something that didn't exist a year ago. But now we're getting like, I don't know, $100 and change a month in Instacart credits, which Instacart's less valuable for me than it is for a lot of people, but we're still using them. And so and getting, you know, at least a decent discount on groceries. So that's something I wouldn't have. seen coming or thought about and didn't exist a year ago. Now, we don't know anything like

that's coming to the built card. Maybe nothing interesting will happen. But like Greg said, there's no, I don't see an upside in canceling a card like that personally. And in my case, we're actually going to start using the built card more for dining overseas, where MX is less likely to be accepted. We get four points per dollar on the MX gold card. But I'm happier to earn three built points than I am three city or chase points because I still maintain access to the ability to transfer to Hyatt and I get some other better partners. So personally, I'm actually going to start using the built card a little bit more now on international trips, I think. And the only reason for more than I was before was because I just wasn't before. Actually, I misplaced it at home

somewhere. I didn't even know where we put it. So because I hadn't been using it. And I just got it replaced and put it in the wallet for for travel. So I am going to be using it for dining, but I totally agree with Greg that in general, the cost benefit analysis of canceling a new annual fee card is low. Some people will think that maybe you have a better shot at instant approval with certain issuers if you get rid of some of your cards. And maybe that's the case if you've got a whole ton of cards. But generally speaking, I don't, I try not to cancel any no annual fee cards. Yeah, same. All right. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week,

you can go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe, join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media, join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions like this and get lots of different opinions every day, every hour. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to again give this a like or a thumbs up. If you've got a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a comment that you'd like to be considered for the giant mailbag. You can send that to mailbag. Send it to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travel and Ten podcast.

Together, myself and my co-host, Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travelin'10. Join us at voyescape.com. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking, and thinking about travel. Not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful.

On the Frommers Travel Show, we explore the trends, people, and ideas shaping how we see the world. If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at Voyescape. dot com.