Frequent Miler on the Air - Which Delta card is best? | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep242 | 2-16-24

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

In this episode, Greg gives Nick a lesson in which Delta credit cards are best (and which are best for a smattering of different goals.) His ultimate conclusion might surprise you. (While Greg schools Nick on this topic, you may notice that Nick's audio is a little subpar. We apologize for this and we're troubleshooting that for next episode.) (01:25) Cheryl is back! (Mail Bag) (02:40) Whitney has a question about our "Mastering Avios" episode 241 (Mail Bag) Read our Mastering Avios Episode 241 post here... (09:20) Greg gives an AA Executive card update (Card Talk) Find the American Airlines Executive Card episode here...  Learn all about the AA Executive Card here...  (17:10) T-Mobile Magenta status is mostly a nothingburger (Crazy Thing) Read our post on the T-Mobile Magenta status here... (24:05) Turkish devaluation is real (Award Talk) (26:26) Nick talks about his AA elite status mad dash (Award Talk) Read about Nick's mad dash to AA elite status here... (29:13) Greg talks about his Alaska match (Award Talk) (31:58) Greg talks about his experience booking JetBlue Mint to London (Award Talk) Read more about Greg's JetBlue Mint experience here... (40:19) Which Delta Card is Best? (Main Event) (40:31) Overview of Delta cards (40:38) You might remember our episode on Delta's Big Flip-Flop | Ep225 | 10-21-23 Find the Delta's Big Flip-Flop | Ep225 here... (41:11) Delta Gold Card OverviewFind out more about the Delta Gold Card here... (41:49) Delta Platinum Card Overview Find out more about the Delta Platinum Card here... (43:21) Delta Reserve Card Find out more about the Delta Reserve Card here... (47:23) Coupons: Are any Delta cards free after rebate? Best card depends on what you value... (00:58:56) If you value Delta miles... Find out more about the Amex Blue Business Plus card here... (01:03:32) If you value free checked bags... (01:04:08) If you value the companion ticket... (01:04:54) If you value elite status... (01:08:43) If you value Sky Club access... (01:14:17) Conclusion: The best Delta card may not be actually even be a Delta card... Find Greg's post about which premium cards he's keeping and which he's canceling here... (01:15:30) “What happens if you apply for a credit card and then immediately after the offer increases? ” (Question of the Week) To subscribe to Frequent Miler content, visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/. And to submit a comment or question to our Mail Bag or Question of the Week segments, email us at [e-mail]  

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, which Delta credit card is best? As you may know, Delta credit cards went through massive changes recently.

And so we're going to discuss which one is best for you, including it may not be a Delta card at all that's best for you. Even if you want Delta miles or if you want Delta Sky Club access, we'll get into all of that in today's main event. And you know how they say mother knows best. Well, in this case, Greg DeFruco-Miler is your mother because Greg knows best when it comes to which Delta card is best for all of us, myself included. So I look forward to learning which one would be best don't forget that you can go down there. You can check out the notes and see the timestamps. So if you want to skip ahead to a specific topic or you want to come back and return to one later on, you can always find that in the notes and wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like leave a comment. Give us a thumbs up. Share it with your friends and family. We always appreciate that. It helps other people discover the show. So thank you you let's drag out this week's giant mailbag

today's giant mail is giant we've got two submissions today to cover um first uh you have to remember last week we had a giant piece of mail from from a player two and player two asked us to mention cheryl weatherington's over and over, and we refused to do that, even though. Cheryl Wetherington is not going to get mentioned over and over again. No, we would not do that. That would be wrong, as much as we like Cheryl. Anyway, Cheryl wrote in and said, I cannot tell you how hard I laughed when Carter shared this with me. You gave me the gift of laughter on a really terrible day as I am in the ICU with my mom. Your timing, as always, was impeccable.

You know Player 1 is spending lots of time talking about Frequent Miler when Player 2 starts listening, and he's definitely learning all the Frequent Miler ways. Thank you again. You guys are amazing. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear we brought a little sunshine to your day. So I'm happy to hear that. Glad to give you a laugh. And hopefully, Cheryl Wetherington, we can give you another laugh or two.

Exactly. All right. Moving on. The next piece of mail comes from Whitney, who sent in her mail in response to last week's podcast on mastering Avios, where we talked about various ways of getting great reward flights using Avios. That was episode 241. And Whitney says, 51,500 point off-peak redemption for business class on Iberia West Coast in Madrid should not be overlooked. That rate itself beats most, all maybe, of the competition for business class to Europe from the West Coast. The difference between 51.5K and 34K is only 17.5K, so 17,500 miles. I think we would all be raving about the ability to fly across the country

in the US for only 17,500 miles in business, especially lie flat. That is basically what you're getting, plus the convenience of a nonstop all the way to Europe, and thus ability to get a good night's rest when you book Iberia from San Francisco or LA to Madrid. A couple of those benefits with the frequent transfer bonuses from one of the major transferable currencies to one of the Avios programs. And I'd say you have a semi-hidden gem. I recently grabbed two business class tickets, Madrid to San Francisco for the end of May at these off-peak rates. With a 30% transfer bonus from Amex, I only had to transfer 78,000 points, which is only slightly more

than the Aeroplan partner rate for a single one-way business class ticket from the West Coast. And she adds, yes, I know, life miles would only be 63,000. Still a great deal. So what do you think? Yeah, I mean, oh, that's incredible.

I mean, that's great feedback from Whitney and a good point that I don't often think about the West Coast. Sorry, guys, just because I'm not located out there. So I don't I knew that it was about 50, but I couldn't have told you probably off the top of my head that it was 51. Five, because I just don't tend to search awards from Los Angeles to Europe because I'm going to go to Europe. I'm going from the East Coast since I live here. But that that's a really good point that that is probably the second best value anyway. I guess if you were able to find Star Alliance round trip, you could pay 88,000 round trip with ANA,

but you gotta worry about surcharges and a lot of partners and whatnot. So this is arguably the best, easiest deal if you're able to find availability anyway from the West Coast. And yeah, I mean, 51.5, you're right. That is a really good deal, especially if you do consider it the way that Whitney did. I love that comparison that if you were able to get that connector across the United States for 17.5

in life at business, you'd be really excited about it. I mean, we've certainly been excited about the fact that you could have booked United through Turkish for 12.5. Now it's up to 15K if you are able to find availability across the country. But this eliminates the need to connect anywhere to get to Europe. Yeah, I mean, that's a great redemption. Awesome with a transfer bonus. Then it's really impossible to beat with a good transfer bonus. And I said before, and I'll say again, that the off-peak dates for Iberia are much better than what you would expect. I mean, you hear off-peak and you might think,

oh, well, I don't really want to go to Madrid in January. But here Whitney says that she booked the end of May. I mean, that's a good time to be going to Madrid. So a lot of the summer actually is, of course, some of it's peak, but there's a good benefit also that is off-peak usually. So it varies a little bit from year to year. But yeah, great redemption. Great point.

Good piece of feedback. Tim, Tim, where are you at? Tim's our West Coast guy. Tim, you're supposed to keep us in line. Let me throw in a couple of others. We lost Turkish 45K one way between US and Europe, but there's still two 50K opportunities that are out there. So one of them is Air France KLM Flying Blue. So 50K flat rate, now award availability for two is going to be tough to find, but I Delta releases Delta One from the West Coast to Europe, which they do every now and then from Seattle, then you can book through Virgin Atlantic for 50,000 points one way. So there are at least two deals that are about the same as what Whitney was talking about. And both also have good, often have transfer bonuses from transferable points as well. So anyway, so that's, those are three really good options, I think. That's a good point. And it's worth a mention with Delta, you'd be stuck with just whatever the non-stops are. And I don't know off the top of my head

where they fly from Los Angeles and San Francisco and Europe, but whatever the non-stops are. And I don't know off the top of my head where they fly from Los Angeles and San Francisco and Europe, but whatever the non-stops are, that's it. Now, the Iberia pricing is only valid on the non-stops to Madrid also. But the difference is that if you include a connection on Iberia beyond that, you'll pay some more Avios, but you can do that. Whereas with the Virgin Atlantic Delta suite spot,

I don't, you can't mix a, with an Air France flight or something. Actually, you can. You can. Oh, you can? Yeah,, with a, you know, with an Air France flight or something. Actually you can, you can. Oh, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, so if you, if you flew to, um, you know, to Amsterdam or Paris and then onward to another place in Europe, they would tack on the Air France or KLM flight for very small additional price. There you go. I stand corrected. There you go. I've never seen it come up in my search results. That's because you never found the first part. Never find Delta one. Yeah. I the first one yeah that's the hard part there's no there's no doubt about it that's definitely the hard part but yeah so there you go you can

potentially still connect and get a decent deal also right right um and again that connecting option is probably only going to show up if the if flight from the US is to Amsterdam or Paris, because that's where KLM and Air France are based. If you're going to some other city, then the chance of having an onward SkyTeam flight is pretty slim. Right. So you're probably going to have slightly more luck. Again, this is all based on getting pretty lucky to find availability on the flights you're up to begin with. Exactly. Slightly more options on Liberia if you do find that long haul available because they have a decent network out of Madrid or Barcelona.

So a tip there. Definitely want to keep our eye on. Let's skip over. We are. We're doing card talk this week. Right. What do we have for talk this week? Yeah.

I have an update on the American Airlines executive card. So we did a full show about the new executive card, American Airlines executive card back in July of 23. And that was episode 212. If you want to see the full details there or listen to the full details there. And just as a quick reminder, the card is $595. It gets you into the American Airlines Admirals Club when you're flying to an airport that has such a thing. And it also gives you boosts in loyalty points towards elite status. So if you earn 50,000 loyalty points, just having this executive card gives you a 10K loyalty point boost and another boost at 90K. But that's just a brief summary.

It also has some rebates for Grubhub and rental cars. And so I just want to talk about my experience. I got the card several months ago. I got it just before that 100,000 point offer died. So I got it in, I don't know, late summer 2023. And I want to talk about how I did with the rebates it has. I've only used the Admirals Club access once, and that was fine.

Although Admirals Club, I'm used to Delta to delta which fine has kind of a strong word to use yeah i mean it's really pretty i went to the one at laguardia and it's very pretty club but the food options at least the free food options are so limited you know i'm so used to delta sky clubs now where they have full buffet, basically. You can easily plan to have a meal at a Delta Sky Club. You have to kind of scrape by at American Airlines Club. Anyway, that's not what this is about. So one of the rebates the card offers is $10 a month for Grubhub. Nothing special there. I've just been using mine to order a pickup lunch locally in Ann Arbor each month. It's sort of like once a month I treat myself to something that's nearly

free because usually the lunch is a bit more than 10 bucks, but that's been a nice little thing. I'm getting good value from that, I think. And a little more interesting, the $120 rental car lowest rate I could find for a pay later rate. And just as an aside, we often talk about how good AutoSlash is. AutoSlash did not find this rate. And I think what happened, I could not get AutoSlash to find off-airport pickups for this particular rental i i assume it normally can but i'm not even sure about that i've used it for off off the airport pickups before but okay so for some reason some reason i couldn't trick it to look for off airport in my case um whereas costco going directly through costco did fine and um i do have to credit auto slash though for

me finding it because the rates that the best rates they showed me were Costco. And that was what made me think to go through Costco. Anyway, so it was a $93 rate and the card did automatically credit me the $93 after I paid it. And when the bill, when my credit card bill settled. What I did not get a rebate for was the tolls. So the tolls showed up in my credit card statement as e-toll Avis. So not as Avis, but e-toll Avis. And so that did not get rebated.

It makes me think that in the future, if I know I'm going to be going through tolls, like at least Avis has an option where you can pay a little extra to cover. I don't think it actually covers the tolls, but it covers like the fee that they tack on for the tolls or something like that. Anyway, so that might get more of it credited back through the credit card if you do it that way. Interesting. So anyway, that's my experience using the rental car credit. And then I want to mention one other thing. There's a hidden credit I didn't know about that is that if you have Citi Gold, which I have, it's sort of a long story why I do, but I have Citi Gold, which for ongoing use, it requires

$200,000 of investments with Citi. Citi does have like, you can put retirement savings and stuff there. So you're not like really paying to have that money there, except that you do have to have that amount available to keep it long-term term but you can get it for free even without that anyway um if you have city gold i automatically got 145 credit as just a relationship credit just for having the card and having city gold which the prestige card the old prestige card you also get a credit each year for having city gold uh so it's nice to see that there's this hidden credit with the executive card too you know why wouldn't city advertise that as a way of getting people interested yeah in city gold and and these cards like why wouldn't they tell people that

that's something that exists right right i actually when when the executive card changed to its new structure, I called Citi. I called several people at Citi and asked about this relationship credit to see if it still existed because I could not find anything online about it anymore. And I finally got someone who kind of knew about the credit but said that it was no longer in effect. So I can't promise that it'll work for everyone it's possible that you have to have already had city gold when you sign up for the executive card to get this credit i don't know but um interesting there you go good to know very good to know you know the the whole rental car thing, I don't even I don't know what the best way to handle that is, because a lot of places nowadays don't have toll booths. And so you're just like they're taking a picture of the license plate. And I don't know. But I've gotten hit with several of those toll charges lately that I know are inflated over what they should have been.

But I've just paid them and moved on. So private these days. I usually just, I'm usually just like, eh, it's easy and I just don't worry about it. But yeah, if it's going to, if you're going to worry about the being charged more than you should, then yeah, it's really annoying. Yeah, yeah. One of those things. Well, a bigger mistake was when I rented a car for the wrong day last week. Whoops.

Showed up a day late for that one and had to scramble for a new rental. So I booked with budget last week myself, actually, for the first time in a long time. Did you use your AA executive card to pay for it? I didn't have it. So this just goes to show that if I had had it, that card would have cost me $100 less this year. But anyway, OK, so the executive card has some interesting benefits there, or at least some good stuff to talk about. I'm glad that we know how that works and also how it doesn't work. So good stuff there. Right. I'm glad that we know how that works and also how it doesn't work. So good stuff there.

Right. Let's talk about crazy thing. So this week, crazy thing did T-Mobile do? So T-Mobile came out with their magenta status that promised all kinds of great things. Yeah, they did. Yeah. So things like you could rent a car from dollar and not have to fill

up the gas tank and not be charged to refill the gas tank. Right. Right. That sounds awesome. That would save me time trying to like hunt around. How many times have I had to hunt around looking for a gas station by the airport or like missed the turn and it takes me an extra 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And then I'm starting to cut it tight on the flight. I mean, ah, man, hate that part. So that's not awesome. Yeah, so Nick, you put this into our outline and I assume you put it in here because it's so crazy good, this deal, right?

Is that what's going on? Unfortunately, no. So no, the crazy part is that they went to all this trouble to like spend however many millions of dollars they had to spend advertising during the Super Bowl and whatnot. And really, it's mostly a big nothing burger. So the Hilton discount, Stephen wrote a post this week about how the Hilton discount is not a discount over what you could already get just by going to Hilton dot com. It's exactly the same as the prepaid nonrefundable rate.

So they call it a T-Mobile rate. They put a little, you know, something in there so that Hilton will know that T-Mobile sent them these customers, but you're not paying any less than you would have already paid if you just went to Hilton.com. So that 15% discount is absolutely nothing. It's not a discount over what you already had available to you, which, I mean, that's kind of crazy to advertise it as this hot new benefit, though, right, I will say they are giving you silver status. So you do get Hilton silver status if you didn't already have that. Now, of course, if you listen to the show a lot, you know, you could get old status with a credit card that costs $95 a year or diamond status with a card that

costs now 550 a year. So Hilton status is not terribly difficult to get. But if you didn't have any already, you pick up a few extra points per dollar spent at Hilton status is not terribly difficult to get. But if you didn't have any already, you pick up a few extra points per dollar spent at Hilton and the ability to book a fifth night free. So it's not totally nothing, but it's pretty, pretty close to nothing. So yeah, not much help there. Just as an aside, remember that the Hilton consumer card went up to, I think, 150, if I'm remembering right. Oh, right, right, right. I said 95. I think the business card is still around 95, but I bet you anything that that's going to go up sometime soon.

They're going to couponize that thing and increase its price just like they've been doing with all the other co-branded cards. I guarantee it. I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. But I will say one thing that makes the T-Mobile discount even worse than it looks. So I've remembered something that's even included in his post about how I didn't really expect that the hotel discount was going to be something better than what you could already get. Because his goal here in marketing to T-Mobile's like 100 million customers is to get people

who are not booking direct to book direct, right? like 100 million customers is to get people who are not booking direct to book direct, right? I mean, they want to get people who are booking via Priceline and Expedia and Hotels.com to stop doing that and just go to Hilton.com and don't compare, you know, comparison shop with other hotels and whatnot. So their goal is not really to give a discount. It's just to get more customers. So it makes sense to me that they wouldn't offer a better discount to T-Mobile necessarily because they're going to win by getting more people rather than by getting people to spend more. So anyway, I think the part that makes this worse than it even looks, though, is that for somebody who wants to book that prepaid nonrefundable rate and had no Hilton Elite status, you go through a shopping portal. And usually shopping portal rates for Hilton are better for people who don't have any Elite status.

So you could get a few percent back through a shopping portal going to Hilton.com without the T-Mobile rate. But I imagine that if you click through from T-Mobile to get the T-Mobile rate, you're not gonna get the shopping portal cash back. So T-Mobile probably is, and you're not getting it. So you'd be better off going through a portal.

All right. So the Hilton benefit is a nothing burger, but that dollar rental car thing, that sounds awesome. You know, it sounds awesome. And it's not necessarily as bad as the Hilton one. It matches the best public offers that you'll find. So for instance, taking a number of searches with auto slash. And by the way,

I should mention that when you were mentioned the confusion over the airport, non-airport, there is a tab you have to select on the homepage for a non-airport location. Maybe you still didn't find the one you were looking for, but, but you do have to choose whether it's an airport or non-airport,

like in the first step when you're looking for a quote, but at any rate, I used auto slash and I used the T-Mobile search engine. And I found that the price through T-Mobile for dollar exactly matched the best price I found through auto slash for a pay later through price line rate on auto slash. Now, auto slash also frequently offers prepaid rates that are cancelable up until about 48 hours in advance that come up at a significant discount, sometimes a really significant discount. It was not as good as those rates. It was only as good as the pay later price line rates. And in general, if you've got like some sort of a corporate code or you can go through a shopping portal, you can probably do better than whatever this rate is that you're getting through T-Mobile. But if it's like a one-day rental where you're not going to earn very much shopping portal cash back anyway,

and your corporate code is only going to take a few bucks off and you know you're going to use a full tank, I mean, it may end up being slightly better than any other option. So it's not totally a nothing burger again, but not better than what you would do through AutoSlash. All right. And finally, there was also in an initial email something

about Hertz electric cars. Well, I didn't even. So the deal there was you can return the electric car without having to charge it similar to the dollar, you know, not having to fuel up a gas car with Hertz. You could rent an electric car and not have to charge it before you return it. And I didn't check those rates. I assume it's probably going to be the same thing as dollar. I didn't check that though. I did recently drop off a car at JFK and I went to the closest gas station and I was like waiting in a line down the street to get into this gas station thinking, oh my goodness, this is crazy. And then I realized all the cars in front of me were Tesla's and kind of out of that line. And there was no line at all for a gas pump.

But there was a line literally in the street down the road for the charging stations. All right. Well, T-Mobile magenta to avoid that line then when returning your Tesla. It might be worth paying a little more to not have to charge it up. I don't know. Yeah. So, yeah, I have no idea how long those people were there because they had like two charging stations and like an endless line of. Anyway, so that's the crazy thing for the week.

We're skipping over mattress running the numbers and getting into a word talk because we got a couple of things to talk about in a word talk. First piece of a word talk is bad news. Turkish has unfortunately obliterated its old award chart in general. So the devaluation that we thought was coming did come, in fact, and award prices increased drastically for most partner awards. And Turkish's own awards, not just partner awards. Yes, they increased significantly, not as drastically on Turkish's own awards, but still more than you want them to increase anyway, though, if they have more availability for their own members, which is yet to be seen, I think, then maybe there'll be situations where booking on Turkish metal will be still somewhat competitive,

but booking partner awards through Turkish is basically not going to be worth it at all, except for those domestic awards. So the awards to Hawaii and Alaska and around the United States are still a good deal through Turkish, even though they cost more. So now it's 10,000 miles each way in economy class, or 15,000 miles each way in business class domestically. So if you want to go to Hawaii or Alaska or somewhere else in the United States, they will frequently still be your best option. Now there are times for shorter flights where maybe Avianca LifeMiles is going to have the same deal or Air Canada might be slightly better. But for those long haul flights, Turkish will still be the best way to book them if United offers availability to partners, which is, of course, the big if. But if you wanted to

go to Europe or you wanted to go to Asia or you wanted to go from Europe to Australia or any of those other sweet spots that existed on the Turkish award chart, you'll need to get a DeLorean and go back in time to before February 15th because you're not going to want to pay the new rates. Yeah. Yeah. That's boy, that's a shame. But, um, same time. I mean, the fact that the, uh, deal to Hawaii is still so smoking good, if you can find it, uh, that's, that's a bit of a relief. And that's a promise. I mean, I I mean, I would have thought, I mean, I think when we published it, people probably thought that it wouldn't live much longer beyond that. And we published that 7,500 each way to Hawaii that it used to cost

in 2019, in July of 2019. So I'm pretty surprised that that continued on for four and a half years after that, and then only increased a tiny bit. Right, right. So clearly, whatever, you know, led them to this devaluation, it wasn't that, because they would have made a dramatic change to it if it was if it was the Hawaii deal that that killed it. Right. All right. So let's move on. So you wrote a post about your mad dash for American Airlines elite status. Can you just real quick tell us what happened? Mostly I'm just mad. Nick is mad. Watch out, everybody.

It didn't work out. So I was trying at the last minute to to qualify. I was on the the American minute to qualify. I was on the American Airlines Instance Status Pass. They had a brief promotion for Hyatt Globalist members where you could get four months of Platinum Pro status, and then you had to earn X number of miles in four months in order to keep it. And I realized I wanted that so I could match to Turkish Airlines status to get Star Alliance Gold. And so I made a mad dash in the last week of January of january because i had to earn the number of points by february 1st for my fast track four month window and a bunch of the things just

haven't posted so i did the t-mobile home internet deal and the miles from that haven't posted yet the order attracted zero dollars i'm thinking maybe it won't show up until 60 days have passed blue apron same thing it says you have to keep the account for 45 days in order to get the miles I'm thinking maybe it won't show up until 60 days have passed. Blue Apron, same thing. It says you have to keep the account for 45 days in order to get the miles. And so I'm thinking that the miles aren't going to show up until after 45 days. And that's a bummer because I really wanted to get status now. But the good news, slightly good news, is that there were a couple of people that commented that said that they had similar situations where the miles didn't post until after their window was done, but their status did update.

So I think I will get the 42,000 miles that I needed to keep Platinum Pro status until June. I think I'll get them eventually. They probably won't show up until about March or maybe even early April. And so maybe I'll get Platinum Pro then until June 1st. So it's going to be like really limited in value to me, especially because I wanted the Star Alliance Gold like right now. So and that I can't get because Turkish will not match my American Airlines Platinum status to Star Alliance Gold.

So that hasn't worked out, unfortunately. So the moral of the story there is if you're looking for quick American Airlines miles because you're trying to qualify before March 1st, before the end of this current year, the Motley Fool and Million Acres deals, those posts right away. The USA Today, I didn't put this in the post, but the USA Today and sweat or small things that are like a dollar trial, those posted right away. But giftcards.com has not posted at all. And several people commented to say that their giftcards.com has not posted at all. And several people commented to say that their giftcards.com orders have not been tracking through American Airlines. They have to follow up every time. They have to wait until 15 days have passed before they can follow up. So those

have not posted or tracked yet. And obviously T-Mobile, Home Internet, and Blue Apron take a long time, apparently. So if you're in a hurry, those are not for you. Yeah, yeah. All right. Next up, I'm going to mention really briefly the Alaska status match I did last year from Delta to Alaska. I got MVP gold 75K status for the rest of 2023 when I signed up.

This was a special match they were offering for disgruntled Delta elites. And the deal was that if you got a Alaska card or if you had one before the end of 2023, that they would bump the status all the way up to 100K status and you'd keep it for all of 2024. So January comes and I'm not seeing any status at all, let alone being bumped up to 100K. I thought, okay, well, maybe end of January. A lot of programs are slow to update their systems at the beginning of the year, so I'll wait till the end of January. February comes and I still have no status. That's true for both me and my wife. No status at this point. And so I called, well, first I tried Alaska's Twitter team, but they were very busy with

bolts falling off of planes and doors. Well, parts of their planes falling off. So they never got back to me, but I eventually called and talked to a very nice rep who had to put in a ticket. She could see that I was supposed to get, my wife and I were supposed to get a hundred K. And so she put in a ticket and about a week later, I finally got, I actually got an email saying, congratulations, you've earned 100K status. So if you're in that position of you did the match and you had the card and you don't have status, make sure to give them a call and do use the system that says to call you back when they're available, because holding during this time is probably not going to get you anywhere anytime soon. I should mention, by the way, this has popped into my mind the last several times I

stopped talking like a second too late, that when you want more information about any of the stuff we're talking about, we mentioned, I know before that you'll find links in the show notes, but for anybody not familiar, frequentmiler.com is where you can go to find this stuff. So when we talked about the American Airlines Executive Cloud, for instance, you can go to frequentmiler.com is where you can go to find this stuff. So when we talked about the American Airlines Executive Cloud, for instance, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash AA exec, and you'll find that link in the show notes. But same thing for all of these other things we're talking about. We've written posts about all of these things. Greg hasn't probably written one yet about the update to the Alaska status match, but the core information behind how that worked, of course, is on the site. And so you can always find more information about this stuff at frequentmiler.com.

Yep. Yep. All right. Another thing about status matching for disgruntled elites was JetBlue offered that. And I talked before about how my wife and I used that to fly JetBlade helicopter for free from JFK to Manhattan. And another feature of having JetBlue Mint, high-level Mint status, is that we each got these move-to-Mint certificates. Now, when the status match first happened, those move to Mint certificates were like you would pay a fixed number of certificates for an upgrade from economy to Mint, which is JetBlue's business class. But in the intervening time, they've changed it to where now you have to pay some number of certificates, up to four. But the nice thing is you get that upgrade

confirmed at the time of booking or whenever you apply the certificates, unlike the old ones, which didn't clear until 24 hours at best ahead. So there's advantage and disadvantage. Anyway, we have a upcoming planned trip to London. And so my wife is going for work. She's getting paid back for economy travel. So the perfect opportunity to test out these move to mint certificates. We book JetBlue Economy and use the certificates to fly live flat business class in both directions is the idea. Now, it gets a little complicated. I had four move to mint certificates and my wife, who has higher level status, had a total of six certificates. All right. So we had 10 between us. So if we wanted to move to Mint in both directions, that meant that we could basically pay three certificates each in one direction and two certificates each in the other direction. That was our budget, basically. Or four in one, I guess, in the two directions.

But paying only one certificate for an international upgrade would be extremely rare, if possible at all. So here's the thing. That all sounds great, right? And in fact, economy prices were good. Business class seats available for paid were wide open so that wasn't an issue um the issue is that there at least currently is no way to see how many certificates it's going to cost you until after you book it so i book a ticket is, cancel, book another one. Exactly. So you do have free cancellations, whether you book with cash or points.

And you can apply these if you book with points, by the way. And so I booked a whole bunch of flights. We only had so much. We had to be there on certain days for her work. So there were only so many flights I could actually look at, but I booked a whole bunch of combinations. And as soon as you book it, an option comes on the screen to manage this flight. You click it and then a little button shows up, move to mint. So you click that and it shows you how many you need, or it shows you that you don't have enough. And so I was easily able to see how many were needed on each of those. And so I went through all the possibilities. I figured out which ones had three in one direction and two in the other. I made a big mistake. I was only doing these dummy bookings for

one person. And if you book for two, the price to move to Mint could change and in fact did. So it turned out that I didn't have any options where it was three and two. What I found was four and two. And so my wife had enough for her, and I had enough for myself for One Direction. And so then what I did was, to solve this problem, what I did was I got onto Cutter Avio's website and looked for a word availability on either of the flights to London or from London that my wife would be taking and found that I could book, I forget exactly how much it was, around 70 something K. 74, I think, yeah. Yeah. To book the JetBlue Mint flight with Avios.

So I did that. And for my economy flight, I booked... So it was the JFK to London flight that I booked with Avios. So for my economy flight, round trip was a little bit cheaper than one way. So I booked Detroit to JFK, open jaw, London to JFK, and then JFK to Detroit. That was my round trip that I booked. And then I have the separate Avios booking to connect the dots. One last thing to just point out, if anyone's booking JetBlue with Avios, a couple little

tips. I ran into errors or problems with the website booking it, so I switched to the app, which worked really well, really easy to book the award through the app. The other thing to know is they don't automatically give you a confirmation code that JetBlue knows about. So the trick is to the app also has a chat option. Chat with a rep. Ask for two things. Ask for the JetBlue confirmation number.

They can give you that, no problem. And also ask them to put your JetBlue number onto the reservation, which they can also do, no problem. And then the reservation shows up in your JetBlue account and you can then pick your seats because otherwise there's no apparent way to pick your seats without either one of those two things, the JetBlue confirmation number or having your JetBlue account on the reservation. If you have either one of those, you can pick your seats. Having both is just sort of a little insurance policy, so you could get it in two different ways. Very good. Fantastic. So interesting that you mentioned the booking reference thing.

Now I can't remember because I thought that there was another way that I found it. I just took a look because I booked one of these myself. And I don't remember chatting in order to get my JetBlue reference number. So I was trying to see if maybe there is. And I just couldn't find it. Yeah, I looked really hard. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you did.

And I don't immediately see it now. So that's not really of any use to anybody. Sorry for interrupting with that thought. I thought I would see it there, but I didn't. So anyway, yeah, well, good. That's that's mean, that's really interesting and it shows how out of the box you think. I actually, I'd love to read that in a post form because I think the open jaw aspect of it too is, is particularly interesting. Like you got to think outside of the box to solve the problem there. And I think that sounds like it was a really good solution for that. Yeah. Yeah. It's

funny you say that. Cause I remember like while I was doing it, it's like, Oh, this is, this is a actual fun puzzle to try to solve. I've got this many upgrade certificates and you know, here's the parameters and how do I do it? And Oh yeah, I have this other tool over here that I'd almost forgotten about, which was the obvious. So yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty fun.'s pretty fun if you get into this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to get in deep to like that. Quick question. So you mentioned you had four and your wife had six.

You had 10 between you and you were looking for something where you were using three in one direction, two in the other direction. Can you combine forces with them like that? Because you're both on the same booking, I guess. If you book on the same booking, yeah. Yeah, you just combine them all oh cool very good yeah excellent all right well again reminder more information about that will be popping up at frequent miler.com but

now it's time for it's main event main event time all right we're going to be talking about which delta card is best and uh let's start with a overview of the Delta cards. So, well, actually, let me back up a little bit, which is the reason we need to cover this. Again, we've talked about Delta cards in the past, but they changed drastically recently. And we touched on that in a past episode, but we're going to go a little deeper into it now. And I think that there are certain Delta cards that are really good depending on your needs. So first, an overview. There is a blue, Delta blue card, which is fee-free, but there's no noteworthy perks on that card. So we're not going to be talking anymore about that one.

What we are going to be talking about are the gold, platinum, and reserve cards. So the gold cards, and when I say cards, plural, each of those has both a consumer and a business version. So I'm going to be abbreviating and just talking about gold, and that means both of them, for example. A gold card is $150 annual fee. It gives you priority boarding, a free check bag, not just for you, but for you plus up to eight other people on the same reservation. Gives you 15% off award flights. And it gives you a $200 flight voucher when you spend $10,000 in a calendar year. So, yep.

Moving on to the platinum card. This is the SkyMiles platinum card. $350 a year. So, yep. Moving on to the Platinum Card. This is the SkyMiles Platinum Card. $350 a year. All the stuff the Gold Card has, except it doesn't have that $200 flight voucher. But it does add an annual economy companion certificate, which you get each year upon renewal. And previously, these companion certificates were only good for flights to the lower 48 states, but now they're going to be good for flying to Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America. So they've gotten much, much more powerful than they were before. And for those interested in elite status with Delta, the SkyMiles Platinum Card adds a $2,500 MQD head start towards elite status each year. It lets you earn MQDs with spend, but at a very poor rate. You get one per $20 of spend. And it gives you elite light status. So if you don't have elite status at all,

you'll get on the upgrade list for Com uh comfort plus or for uh first class but you're going to be way way way way way way way way way way down the list there so basically you need to be on an empty floor it's just you on the flight yeah i mean at the gate if the if the if the digital screen showing showing the upgrade list has room for 100 people, you're not going to be on that screen. That's how far down the list you're going to be. Just to give you an idea how likely your upgrade is. Okay. The reserve card, $650.

But it includes all of the platinum benefits, SkyMiles platinum benefits, plus you get Delta Sky Club access. Now, and this is when flying Delta, same day. I should note that starting in February of next year, of 2025, it'll be limited to 15 visits per year. They're really day visits because you could visit multiple Sky Clubs in the same day. Anyway, it also gives you four guest passes per year. So right there, so $300 more than the Delta Platinum card, but you're getting Sky Club access for yourself plus four guest passes. If you value Sky Club access, it's obvious. I shouldn't say obviously, but $300 isn't, to me, a bad price to pay for all that additional, again, if you value Sky Club access. It gives you Centurion Lounge access when you're flying Delta.

That's American Express's premium lounges. Gives you an annual first class companion certificate. So it's like the one that you get with the SkyMiles Platinum card, but this one lets you book, you could book economy, but you could also book first class and pay nothing but taxes and fees for your companion.

It also gives you elite stuff like the same $2,500 MQD Head Start that the SkyMiles Platinum card gives you. This one, if you want to spend your way towards elite status, makes a lot more sense. It gives you one MQD per $10 rather than per $20 of the Platinum card. So it earns twice as many medallion qualifying dollars as the SkyMiles Platinum card does. And it also puts you on the upgrade list if you're not elite. It you ahead of those platinum card holders so you're not as far down but still don't don't expect much from that don't expect much from that i have a quick question for you on the math here if if you didn't have any cards

that offered access to delta sky clubs i know you like sky. Which would you be willing to pay to get into a Sky Club? To be able to get in once or for like the whole year? Like one time. No, yeah, one time. One time? Oh. One day, you know, one day. Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, that's so hard because like I feel like I value it more than I might be. I'm kind of a cheapskate sometimes. And so the idea of paying $50 to get into what might be a crowded club to get, it no longer feels like free lunch, right? But prepaying, I'd pay a little bit more. Yeah, so I don't know. That's a hard one to answer.

Yeah, I asked just because, I mean, like you said, at first glance, it sounded to me too, like, wow, 15 visits and it's an extra $300 a year and four guests, so 19, let's call it 20 for easy math. So you're looking at what, well, I said easy math and it's not that easy. It's 10, 15, 15-ish dollars a visit, right? And, you know, for you and then each of your guests, the four times you can bring a guest.

And I mean, 15 bucks, I guess that's probably better than what you're going to do if you're buying food somewhere else in the terminal. Not a guess, it is. Yeah, yeah, it definitely is. It's definitely a better deal. Would I pay $15 for a great temple mint? Am I gonna use it all?

10 and plus four. You have to ask yourself that question, I guess. But I think that the nature of the companion certificate, the ability to book first class with it, if you can find the availability to use that, and certainly the ability to spend towards elite status, when you mix all three of those things together, then I can see the extra $300.

Yeah, we'll get into more of the value later. status. When you mix all three of those things together, then I can see the extra $300. Yeah. We'll get into more of the value later. Right now, we're just doing an overview. Overview. So that's an overview of the three types of cards. Now let's talk about coupons. So when they increased the price of all these cards recently, They also added what we're calling coupons, which are basically when you pay for certain things, you get a rebate. You get a limited rebate. First one is Delta Stays. This is basically a Delta website for booking hotels. I think it's powered by Expedia, So your experience is going to be very similar

to booking through Expedia. And basically, the consumer gold card gives you $100 credit per year, the SkyMiles Platinum $150, and the Reserve $200 per year in rebates on these hotels booked through this platform. Business cards all give you $50 more than that. So $150 for the gold and so on. And now you must prepay. If you want to get this credit, you have to prepay for your hotel, but you don't have to book a non-refundable rate. You could book a refundable rate and then we'll see what happens if you cancel. Like, would they claw it back or not? You know, probably would if you don't already have another refundable booking for the future book. But times throughout the year that I end up booking a non-chain hotel that using these credits should be very easy. I wouldn't value them at full face value because I probably could get a better deal booking through some other direction. But when I've looked at prices, they're not off from what I've seen elsewhere.

It's just that sometimes if you log into Expedia, you might have a special members-only rate that you wouldn't get through this, as an example. Okay. Rideshare, $10 a month for spend on Uber, Lyft, Curb, Revel, or Alto rideshare services. Now, I know you've only heard of two of those. Well, I think we wrote, did we write a post to Revel a few years ago? I just saw a Revel car like two days ago coming out of New York City. And my wife was like, what's that? And I was like, maybe I just read about it.

Signed up with a bunch of referral codes in order to get a whole bunch of referral credit that we never used because we just never saw it used for a while. But I guess if you're in one of the cities that have those other services, maybe it's interesting to you. Right, right. So each of those other ones, other than Uber and Lyft, are limited to certain cities within the U.S. I believe they're all US-based. But if you're visiting LA or you're visiting New York, I could totally see putting my Delta card in as the default card for one of these curb, revel, or alto service or all three and just pulling them up because if I need to have a short ride somewhere and it costs even 2020, I'm getting that ride for $10 kind of thing. So I could see it used that way.

With Uber, personally, I have so many Uber credits from other Amex cards that I would rather use those credits than use a Delta card to pay. And Lyft, yeah, I mean, it just seems like a pain to switch to the Delta card, which is not the best card for earning points when booking with Lyft, to switch to that just to get $10 credit when the ride is probably going to be much more than that. I don't know. I don't know how often I'll use that. But anyway, Uber Eats does not work. Reloading your Uber credit does not work. Reloading your Lyft credit does work, but it's a minimum of $25. So it's like a 40% discount, I guess, on the $25 loaded to your Lyft credit.

So I tried that out. Yeah, so those are the rideshare credits. They also added Resi dining credits. So any restaurants that are listed on the Resi platform, you don't have to book them through Resi. You just have to go to one of those restaurants and spend with your Delta card. Now, these coupon things, you have to pre-register with Amex to be eligible for these rebates. But once you've done that, you're eligible. And the Platinum card gives you $10 per month at these resi restaurants and the Reserve card, $20 per month. In my family

right now, I have two SkyMiles Platinum cards and two Reserve cards. That's going to change once the annual fees come due, but that's what we have right now. I went into a local restaurant last week and bought $60 worth of gift cards and paid $10, $10, $20, $20 and walked out with a $60 gift card basically. And I used it at another one of this local chain, another one of the restaurants later that same week to get it all at once. So anyway, yeah, so that's not too hard to use if there are restaurants that you frequent that have Resi. Yeah, and I'm going to repeat, you kind of jumped over it, but don't forget that you do, I guess, have to enroll in these, right? I mean, you mentioned it and you said once you enroll, you're set. But I've a couple of times now forgotten to enroll in something that I didn't realize I had to enroll in and not realize until after I didn't get the credit that, oh, this is one of the ones you have to enroll in. So don't forget to go into your Amex login

and pull up that card and then hit the benefits section, go through and hit enroll on anything that needs to be enrolled in. Yeah. Check that before you start going to use these. That's a great point. I think Amex even has like a button or a selector saying, like to show you all the things that you need to enroll in. And so you can limit your view of the benefits to those

and make sure you're just signed up for everything that you might remotely be interested in. All right. So I want to say again, we've talked about in many other shows about how I don't think you should value these types of rebates at full value. Like you wouldn't pay, you wouldn't prepay a hundred dollars to get a hotel credit, $100 hotel credit that you may or may not use, right? That would be crazy. Why would you prepay for that? But when you're paying an annual fee, you're basically prepaying for this benefit. So if you value it at full face value, it's like you've prepaid the annual fee in order to get this $150 or whatever it is. Anyway, so what should you value these things at? It really depends on how easy they are for you to use them and get good value

from them. I'm not going to tell you how you should value each of these, but I just want to kind of make that clear. For me, I highly value the the Delta stays because I think I would, I'm going to use them in real life very easily with, with very little thought. Um, I, I don't value them at face value, but, um, you know, maybe like 75, 85% that area. Um, it's even a bump up because it eliminates some of the mental work of like comparing 18 different ways. If you know, the price is about the same. I feel like I might even value like a little higher than, obviously not face value, but a little higher than I would other things if what you say is true. If the price is usually about the same as what you get through

hotels.com, well then I don't have to compare hotels. Just eliminates one of the options, yeah. This cashback and that cashback and this portal and that one and well, yeah. Right. But it is taking away your ability to go through a portal and earn extra rewards. So you've got to remember that. Don't get me wrong. I don't often book non-chain hotels. So that would have much less value to me than it would to you. Right. Okay.

Rideshare, that one I just... It's one that I might use occasionally, but I just don't value it at all. It'll be like a bonus if I ever get that, but I'm not going to think in advance oh that's worth this much to me not at all um resi i don't know it seems so piddly the ten dollars or twenty dollars a month that um to go to restaurant but i'll use it so i probably i probably valued about half somewhere around there um but anyway um the reason i want to say that is i did a sort of a

mental exercise of like are any of these cards free after rebate um meaning if you fully value if you value the rebate at full face value are they free after rebate so that's why i had to have that long uh sort of disclaimer saying don don't value it at full face value, but what if you did? And so the gold business card, you have $150 annual fee, $150 hotel rebate. So boom, just it's free after rebate if you fully value that hotel rebate. The consumer card only has $100 hotel rebate. so that one is not free after rebate. Platinum business card, $350 annual fee, up to $440 in total rebates between hotel, rideshare, and resi. The consumer card up to $390. So both of those are better than free

after rebate. So that's a pretty good argument for the platinum card if you value those rebates for sure. The reserve business card, $650 annual fee, $610 in rebates. So you're still $40 out of pocket, and you're an additional $50 out of pocket with the consumer card. So a total of $90 out of pocket but um and your additional fifty dollars out of pocket with the consumer card so a total ninety dollars out of pocket with those of course you are getting sky club access and all the other perks that the card gives you so um but it's still not free after rebate so really what you have are both platinum cards and the gold business card are can be free

after rebate if you fully value the rebate. So I thought that was just a fun mental exercise. It is, it is. And like you said, if you value some of the other perks, then I think it's even more interesting because the Delta Stays credits, I'm not particularly excited about because I tend to book chain hotels and I want elite benefits and elite credit.

You're not gonna usually get those things when you book through a third party like that. However, they're not nothing either because it's not like there's no price at which I would give up the elite earnings and the elite benefits, right? I mean, it can't be ridiculous if the stay is going to be free

versus paying $100 for it. Well, I mean, then it's worth something to me to not have to pay the $100. So I look at those and I say, well, those are pretty decent rebates. And so then if you also value, I think the Delta Platinum card with the companion certificate, between the companion certificate and the hotel credit, even if you don't value the others, like the ride share and the res here, I think just those two things could probably justify the annual fee. It is really compelling. And if you're at all interested in elite status, getting that $2,500 MQD boost as well. Wow.

That's a really good combination. All right. So let's get to the whole point of the show, which Delta card is best. And it depends on what you value so here here is here's my take on all these and nick's gonna jump in and say why i'm wrong on any given one um if you value delta sky miles if that's your goal of having a delta card is to get delta sky miles first i'd say why um delta skyiles are not particularly super valuable. You could get around one and a half cents value per point, yes, but you're very, very rarely going to get far outsized value from

them. So rethink what you're thinking. Priorities. Yeah, rethink your priorities but after thinking if you rethink and you still say yeah i love my delta sky miles then i think the best delta card for you to spend on is not a delta card at all but the amex blue business plus card which earns 2x everywhere for up to 50k of spend per year so you and then you could transfer points from amex to delta later right um that's probably true i mean keep in mind you would also have to pay an excise tax right when you transfer yeah because amex charges you a fee to transfer to domestic us partners so you do but you per dollar spent but you're you're earning twice as many as the Delta cards.

And so that small excise fee won't even come close to accounting for the loss of one whole mile per dollar with a Delta card. But that is a really good point. You can think of it as being more like a 1.95-ish earning. Instead of 2X, it's 1.95X or something like that because of that transfer cost. Yeah. But there are Delta cards that might make sense if you want to earn from spend. So the Delta Gold card, because you earn a $200 flight credit with $10,000 spend, that $10,000 spend is not only earning 10,000 miles. It's also earning the $200 flight credit, which if you fly Delta enough is probably very close to face value for how much you would value it. So that's a pretty good return on your spend um and finally it is i mean when you put the two together right because that's

like two percent basically face value anyway it's two percent so on top of if you're getting one and a half cents per mile out of the miles that's a decent return on 10k spend three and a half percent on and this is the like unbonus spend you I'm not talking about where you earn 2x or 3x with Delta cards, which each of these cards, by the way, do have some category bonuses like that, but they're so poor compared to what many other cards offer that that's why i haven't even talked about those and and here i i don't think you should be making any decisions based on those uh or category bonus so you can find if if if you know one of these delta cards offers you 2x at grocery stores then and you're interested in that you should be looking at like the amex gold card which earns 4x membership rewards at grocery stores and go for that instead, for example. All right. I digress.

The other card to spend on, consider spending on is the Delta Reserve card. If you highly value elite status because you're going to be earning not just the miles, but also one MQD, Medallion Qualifying Dollar, per $10 spent. Another side benefit of spending on it, I can't imagine doing this myself, but you can earn unlimited Sky Club visits with $75,000 spent. So even when they start kicking in that 15 visit limit, you'll overcome that limit with $75,000 Delta Reserve spent. So where I could see that being useful, someone who's super into elite status is going to spend big on their Delta card anyway for the elite status, then an extra little perk is having unlimited Sky Club visits. Yeah. So let me read between the lines here. So what you're saying is it's not worth spending

on a Delta Platinum card, right? And they're not good for- I don't see any use case for that. Because if you want to earn the MQDs, it's such a waste. You're getting half the MQDs as with the Delta Reserve card. And if you want the miles, as I said, get an Amex membership rewards card, either the Blue Business Plus, MS Gold.

There's others that have other category bonuses that might fit you better. Very good. All right. What if I value having free checked bags, though? Maybe if my main thing, I mean, I always travel to kids and my wife always needs a huge bag of toiletries that we always check at least one bag. So sometimes two.

What should I get? So that's easy. The Delta Gold card, $150 a year. If you get the business version, you have the $150 hotel credit to make up for that annual fee. And then you're getting free check bags. And that's great for your whole family, as long as you're traveling together on the same ticket. So you could easily, even without the hotel credit, get that much value. What if you value those companion tickets than platinum card? I mean, it's so easy, especially if you think about how much flights to Hawaii can cost, or to the Caribbean, or to Central America. Those can be really expensive. And so if you can get two for the price of one, I mean, that's huge savings. If you want to be able to book first class, the Delta Reserve is what you'd want to do with those. But for me, I'm very happy with buying the economy. And then because my wife and I have elite status, we can hope for upgrades to first class or at least to comfort plus. Excuse me.

Now let's get to elite status. What if you do value elite status? Okay. So Platinum card is good because it has that $2,500 MQD head start. It also puts you on that upgrade list we talked about way down at the bottom. But the reserve card is better because not only do you get that head start, but you get the ability to spend towards elite status at a better rate. And you also get higher on that upgrade list if you're not elite. But if you highly,

so that's if you value elite status, but what if you highly, highly value elite status? You should probably be thinking about multiple Delta cards. It's possible, for example, to get both the SkyMiles Platinum consumer and the SkyMiles Platinum business card, and then you'd have $2,500 MQD headstarts from both of them, 5,000 MQDs, which in 2024 gives you silver status right off the bat before you've stepped flight on a plane. If you add a Delta Reserve consumer card, that's another 2500. If you add a Delta Reserve business card, that's another 2500.

So you're talking about 10,000 MQDs gold status in 2024 before you step foot on a plane. And so then if you're looking for platinum, elite status, or diamond, you are so much closer by having these cards. And so again, obviously having four of these cards is going to cost you a lot. So that's why I said, if you have to highly, highly value elite status to make it worth it, or highly, highly value all these perks and rebates,

because, you know, in truth, the value of these perks and rebates do, you know, add up to more than the face value of the annual fee if you really highly value them. I would not normally... In most cases, people probably shouldn't be thinking about two reserve cards, though. I think just because having two people... Sorry, having one person have two ways of getting into the Sky Club, it doesn't really get you much more,

although you do get four more guest passes. So anyway. Yeah. So I think the other caveat that you're missing there is when you say, if you highly value elite status, you may consider two, three, or four. If you highly value elite status, and you're not going to get there obviously with your regular activity, because, you know yeah

you don't need if you don't need the extra $2,500 head starts then there's no sense in paying the uh you know the annual fee probably i mean like greg said the rebates and benefits might be worth it to you but uh but you have to decide whether that's going to be worth it then because you don't want to get these and then way overshoot your requirement for elite status then then you got a question okay well should i really prepaid for the benefits on that card yeah yeah uh and i guess we should mention too these are all credit cards amex has a limit of five or six credit cards that they allow each person to have um and uh charge cards are different cards like the platinum or gold card are

separate those are pay over time cards as they're called pay over time cards is what amex likes to call them uh they have a something like you could get 10 of those and something like five or six of credit cards so anyway pointing that out just because you might not be able to get four delta cards even if you wanted to because if you've got a marriott card that's a credit card if you got a hilton card that's a credit card um plus card that's a credit card yeah you're already hitting up against your limit very quickly yeah yeah all right finally okay all right finally oh finally if you value sky club access if that's your primary thing you would think i'd say well definitely get the reserve card but i'm gonna say maybe get the reserve card uh because the other one to consider is not the sky miles platinum card but the regular amex platinum card which there's multiple varieties

of that but that's a 695 card and also gives you Sky Club access when flying Delta. It doesn't give you guest passes. It won't next year give you as many Sky Club visits as the Delta Reserve card, but it'll give you 10. And it has a whole bunch of different rebates and things than the Reserve card. So it's really going to depend per person. We don't have time to get into that comparison, but as to which one is better for you, but it's just worth you taking a look at the platinum card. You can go to frequentmiler.com slash,

I don't know, we'll put a link for like, slash go slash Amex platinum and you can find information there. Yeah, that's a good solution for that. So frequentmiler.com slash go slash Amex Platinum. And you can find more information about which one of those might be best for you. So awesome.

Yeah, you know, when I look at all of this, I feel like I probably at some point here should consider getting the platinum uh the platinum business i think i mean i think the gold business would probably be close enough to an easy win especially if i flew delta just one time over the course of the year now i i often don't fly delta one time uh but the platinum card would would then probably cause me to fly delta because of the companion certificate it would probably save me something or Delta because of the companion certificate. It would probably save me something or be a decent option.

Now, my family usually flies Southwest when we fly domestically, so I don't often fly Delta domestically. But those companion certificates, especially as airfares have continued to rise, I feel like every time I look up airfare, I'm just shocked at how much it costs to travel domestically. So I feel like some of those companion certificates, if my wife and I each had one of those, that could be pretty valuable. I mean, you know, if we found a $400 round trip, we pay for two of those 800 bucks for our family of

four, paying $200 a piece for a round trip domestic flight or flight to, you know, if we found that price to Hawaii, I guess it'd be pretty amazing. But, uh, but yeah, you know, I think we could certainly do pretty well with a couple of platinum ones, uh, platinum business cards, because of course the business version has the better Delta stays credit I've learned from listening to everything you've said. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's a really good point. And, uh, just caution that if, if you're considering something like that, remember that those companion certificates don't come when you first apply. You don't get it until you renew the card at the end of the year, and then you'll get it each year upon renewal. What you can do, though, so if you signed up now, and you can probably qualify for the bigger welcome bonus on that platinum business card.

And at the end of the year, when your annual fee comes due, check to see whether your Delta account has that companion certificate in it. Once it does, you're actually free if you want to downgrade to the gold card. You can do that and just pay that lower annual fee. You'd still have that companion certificate to use for that year. And then, of course, unless you re-upgrade near the end of that membership year, you won't get another one the next year. But theoretically, you could keep upgrading and downgrading to keep the annual fee lower. Interesting. Very interesting. Well, so I mean, I think that the moral of the story there, well, actually, what I wanted to say was that I think in the first year, it's generally true, probably, right? Back me up on this or tell me I'm wrong, that the welcome bonus is probably going to, by itself, outweigh the cost

of the annual fee on any of these cards almost all the time. For sure. Yeah. So the cost of the annual fee on any of these cards almost all the time for sure yeah so the cost of the first year is nil basically because you're going to get way more usually exactly it's worth paying for the first year because of getting you know the 60 000 100 000 points depending on on the card but the you know the more expensive cards tend to have the higher bonuses yeah so i mean i think if you find a time when the bonuses are elevated, any of these cards could make sense initially for the first year. Really, today's discussion was more focused on long-term value for these. You're going to keep one of them.

And I look at it and I say that I probably could get decent long-term value out of a Delta Platinum or certainly out of a Delta Gold, as long as we flew one time each year where we were to check a bag between that and the Delta stays, I'd be ahead of the game. So maybe a Delta Platinum business and then downgrading it to a business gold until I decide that I need the perks of the Platinum again, wouldn't be a bad strategy, but I don't know that I'll pursue it right now. It's not on the docket. We don't have any Delta trips planned coming up, but that's something to keep in mind anyway. I feel like that could be useful one of these days.

Yeah, yeah. And for me, I had a post about, will I keep or cancel my Delta cards? And for me, when I analyze them, under my situation, it looks like the business SkyMiles Platinum card is the right pick for me. All right. Real quick summary of the recommendations. The best Delta card may or may not be a Delta card at all. If you're mostly interested in earning Delta SkyMiles, consider the Blue Business Plus Amex card, which is not a Delta card.

If you primarily want free check bags, look at the Gold card. If you primarily want a companion ticket and or a boost for elite status, look for the Platinum card. If you're interested in the SkyClub access and the ability to spend towards elite status, the reserve card is for you. If you're not interested in elite status, but you do want some Sky Club action, consider the Amex Platinum card, not the Sky Miles Platinum, but the Amex Platinum card as another option

besides the reserve, and you may or may not prefer that one. That's a great summary, and it's an interesting summary, because I think that if you asked a random person what the best card for Sky Club access is or what the best card for earning Delta SkyMiles is, they would have assumed a Delta card. So I think those actually show some out of

the box thinking in terms of what might be best is not necessarily the obvious answer. So well done. Well done there. All right. That wraps up our main event, I think, and brings us into the question of the week. So my question of the week this week actually comes from me because we've had a number of people ask recently about issuers matching offers. And so what happens,

we're going to start general and then maybe we'll get a little more granular, but what happens if you apply for a credit card and you apply now and then next week the offer increases to a much better offer or two weeks from now or whatever, all of a sudden the offer on the card you just opened is far better than the offer that you just got a week or two ago. Will they do anything to match that? What can you do? Does it vary by issue or how do you get the better offer?

Yeah. First, let me say that the offer that you have by default when you apply is the offer that was in effect the time you click through, whatever you saw on that landing screen that it was offering, that's what you are eligible for if you take no other action. And I want to point that out because it goes the other way too. We get questions about, you know, oh, I applied last week for, you know, this 150,000 point offer, but now all they have is a hundred thousand point offer. Which one am I going to get? Well, if you applied while it said 150,000, that's what you're good for. But this question that Nick's asking is the opposite is like, oh shoot, I applied before. Now the offer's gotten better. What can I do? And it's always a good idea to reach out to the card issuer and ask.

Say, hey, there's a public offer that's better than what I signed up for. Can you match me to that? Chase often does that. And not always, but often. So it's very much a good idea to do when it happens with any Chase card. I don't know about the other issuers. I would say that it's been a long time

since I know Amex at least used to not do it. Sometimes you could get a supervisor to give you courtesy points, you know, but I don't remember them matching. There've been some success reports. Cause that was always my take on Amex too, is that they, they never do it.

And then I said that at some point in the post and, and I had several people who were like, Oh no, they match for me. And so, so I, it just goes to show that you have to ask, if you don't ask, they definitely aren't going to do it. You're not going to get the better offer if you don't ask.

So you might as well ask, because even if you think the answer is no, give them a chance to tell you yes, or the option to tell you no. So yeah, with most other issuers, I think you're probably out of luck. I mean, at Barclays, I don't think I've ever heard of them matching anything. Capital One, somebody did mention that they got an offer match from Capital One once, which blew my mind because I wouldn't expect that. And I'm only aware of like one data point. Yeah. Well, that was probably when Capital One canceled my account and took back my points.

They probably had extra points to give to someone else. They gave you a few extra to throw around. So yeah, you're probably not going to get matching there. But usually the rule of thumb with Chase has long been within like 45 days. I think if it increases within 45 days, don't quote me on that because who knows, but then usually they've been good at matching. However, now let me add an extra element. So the moral of the story in there, the answer was that it's always worth asking. So you may as well call or send a secure message and ask if they'll match the better offer. Now, what happens when it's a targeted offer? So we recently saw some people have been targeted for an Amex business platinum offer of 200,000 points after 15K spend standard offer on that card i think is 120k after 15k spend i think we've had a link at times on our best offers page uh maybe still due to 150k after 15k spend but there was recently a targeted offer for 200,000 points after 15k spend and a

reader had just applied under i think the 150k offer and, will they match me to the $200K offer? In that case, obviously, you may not know the answer, but what would you expect? Well, I think what I would expect it was depend whether that person was targeted for that offer or not. So if that person was targeted for the $200K offer, then yeah, I would think there would be a reasonably good chance of getting matched to it. But if not, it seems very unlikely to me. Yeah. So when it's a targeted offer like that, unless you can show that you were targeted, they're probably not going to match it. Very unlikely.

Oh, and Citi, we didn't mention before. Citi historically was good about matching. They matched a lot of times on that. Right. Yeah, I forgot about that. Years ago ago sometimes even offers that you couldn't widely find online they kind of like go against the uh the grain and do their own thing march to the beat of their own drummer um i think they used to require you to

fax in like the request or something weird like that yeah way back when yeah it was it was crazy so uh so yeah usually if it's a targeted offer, unless you can show that you're targeted for it, probably not. Now here's one that I ran into recently. I referred my wife for a specific Chase card that had a 75K welcome offer and she was approved. And the next day in the mail,

she got a mailer offer for a 90K offer on the same card. So what do you think? You think you get that matched? I would definitely try. I would think that would be pretty likely. It was sure enough. Yeah. Like you said, it was definitely worth trying. So I figured, well, yeah, I might as well give that a shot and ask. And sure enough, they wrote back and said, yeah, once you complete the spend, send us another secure message and we'll credit the difference in points. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, always is worth keeping an eye out for and taking a swing at it. I've often said you don't hit the balls you don't

swing at. So you've got to take a swing and give it a shot. There's very little downside to asking. So. Right. Right. As an aside, you know, I forget to do this myself, but it can make sense in your bank accounts to check the box, allowing promotional mailings because you otherwise might not get that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, and so that, you know, and also, you know, if you do have one of those mailers, it's worth considering, well, am I better off referring? Because like in our case, for instance, I got 40,000 points when I referred my wife, she got the 75,000 and then we were ultimately able to match to the 90,000. So you may consider where

how the math works out best for you. So good luck with that. All right, that's the end of this week's episode. If you enjoyed this week's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you wanna go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can join our email list,

follow us on all the various social media. Don't forget wherever you are watching or listening to this show, please like it, give us a thumbs up, leave some feedback. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for the giant mailbag, you can send that to Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.