Frequent Miler on the Air - Winning the Alaska x Hawaiian Airlines Merger | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep273 | 9-20-24

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Alaska has announced that their merger with Hawaiian Airlines is complete! So what are the details, and what does this mean for us? We'll discuss this in today's episode. (01:36) - What's with the stupid virus pop-up on our website? (03:40) - Greg's update on the Pacific Northwest Points Travel Festival and some of the folks he met (09:04) - Read about 10-year old Walker's first place win at the USA Mullet Championship here! (11:57) - Learn more about the next Points Travel Festival here. (12:50) - Big offers from Delta, Amex Marriot, IHG and more... Read more about the Delta card offers (up to 110K miles) here. Read more about the Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business Card offer here. Read more about the new IHG card offers here. Read more about the Ink Business Unlimited 90K offer here. (25:22) - Read "The Points Parade marches on thanks to a new round of targeted 250K offers" here. (30:00) - Read more about Amex Uber credits here. (31:39) - Read "Downgrade paths: How to keep your card but break up with your annual fee or find a better fit" here. (33:14) - Read more about buying groups here. (33:39) - Chase 50% transfer bonus to Marriott through 11/15. Learn more about this transfer bonus here. (37:15) - Rental car deals with Avis and National... (42:42) - Citi Transfer bonuses through Oct 19 Learn more about Citi's 25% transfer bonus to Avianca here. Learn more about Citi's 25% transfer bonus to Leading Hotels of the World here. (44:28) - Hilton adds over 100 additional SLH properties Read more about Hilton's 100 additional SLH properties here. (46:59) - In case you missed it, you can find our "Debate: 30% Amex to Hilton Transfer Bonus. Should we do it?" Coffee Break Ep26 here. (47:26) - Read more about the Alaska / Hawaaiin merger green light here. (47:54) - Quick facts (48:20) - Earn and redeem miles across both airlines (early 2025) (48:31) - Single loyalty program coming (Details mid 2025) (49:09) - Huaka'i by Hawaiian (for Hawaii residents) (50:16) - Seamless miles transfer (52:14) - We still have questions! (57:39) - Listen to Podcast episode 269 about the Alaska / Hawaiian merger here. (1:01:39) - What are the short term opportunities to consider? (1:03:27) - Combine Alaska miles into one account for free! (1:06:10) - Apply now for Hawaiian Airlines cards before its too late...orr wait for better last-gasp offers? Learn more about the Hawaiian Airlines personal card here, and the Hawaiian Airlines business card here. (1:25:43) - A reader used their Amex Platinum to pay for the tax on an award ticket, then got a charge for trip delay. Doesn't this card already have travel delay covered, though?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, winning the Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines merger. Alaska has announced that the merger is done.

It's a finished thing. Now all that's left are the details. And in the details, we're going to see some opportunities such as, you know, should we be signing up for Hawaiian Airlines credit cards now before it's too late? Should we be transferring points? Should we be moving to Hawaii? Those kind of things. And we're going to discuss that, give our answers to those questions in today's main event. Well, Greg's going to give his answers anyway, because I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. I'm legitimately looking forward to this discussion because I have some decisions to make and I want Greg's input as to what I should do. And then I

want people to chime in and tell me if he's right or not before I make a bad decision. So we'll talk more about all of that later on today. But first, don't forget that you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or return to something in the future, just expand the description box so you can find that. We also always have links to more information to posts that we've written about the types of topics that we cover here. So make sure you check the show notes for all of that.

Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the video or like the podcast, leave us a review, leave us a comment. Again, let us know what you agree with, disagree with, love, hate, whatever it may be. We love to hear from you. All right, that out of the way, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right. Today's Giant Mail comes from me. I've got two topics. First one is the stupid virus pop-up. Some of you who browse our blog may have unfortunately noticed that now and then a thing pops up pretending that there's, I don't know, a virus or something on your computer and to install something or other to fix it. Obviously, don't do that. We are aware of it. The technical team at Boarding Area, which is our hosting

service, they are working on it. But last I saw it was still happening occasionally. So sorry, that is terrible. But as I said, again, don't install anything. And this just goes in general. If something pops up on your screen that you're not expecting and it says uh you know install this to to fix what what's wrong that's a really really bad idea don't install it good good advice good safety tip there don't click on it don't right now don't even look too too closely in its direction a couple a couple other things on this so first greg said now and then this is happening and what he means is now and then like recently this is a recent development not something that we you know experience often with our site so number one i just i don't want you to think that if you keep reading frequent miler every now and then you're gonna virus pop up that's hopefully not the case because you know

we are working to figure out whatever is causing that number one number two it's not that we made some change and like move to some advertiser that pops up shady stuff or anything like that it's nothing we've done it's just something that's wrong somewhere and we're working to get it fixed so certainly not anything intentional on our end or any change that we made that we're aware of anyway uh so so hopefully that'll be fixed soon and this will if you're listening to this in the future you'll be like what are they even talking about i've never never seen anything pop up like that because hopefully you haven't and won't. But that we wanted to recognize it for the folks that

experience it and are like, what's going on here? Is there something wrong with Frequent Miler? We hope not. We're working to get it fixed. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's not all we have for this week's mailbag. I got something more positive and interesting. All right. All right. So a couple weeks ago, I went to something that's called the Pacific Northwest Points Travel Festival.

I had no idea it was called that. A friend invited me to come to a sort of points and miles get together in Seattle. And I agreed to talk at the event, but it was really he asked me questions while I answered them. But it was a lot of fun. And I met a lot of great people there. And I want to bring up a few conversations. First, a shout out to Dan from Microsoft who approached me and mentioned that apparently on one of our shows, we talked about how Bing, the search tool Bing, was not finding our website. It could find our YouTube videos and podcasts, but it couldn't find our website no matter what we tried to do. And apparently during that conversation, Nick said, if anyone from Microsoft is listening, please fix this.

Well, Dan was listening. And so Dan sent a message to the Bing team. And he tells me that the Bing team replied that apparently our site had been marked as an untrustworthy source or something like that. What? So it was deliberately- You got those virus pop-ups, didn't they, Greg? It was deliberately being hidden. Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe it was our bad predictions for this year

and last year that sent it over the edge. I don't know. But they agreed immediately that it shouldn't be categorized, our site shouldn't be categorized that way once they investigated it. And they're working to fix that. So it seems to be an ongoing process in that now our homepage and a few pages will come up if you do searches, but definitely not as many as should appear yet. But Dan says he's going to keep on them until it,

until it looks good. So one day Bing will catch up with Google. One day. Yeah. Thank you. Dan, tell your Bing friends, your Bing friends. So thanks a million for that, Dan. Oh, we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Uh, next up, I, I met so many great people, uh, afraid to mention too many of them because then I feel like I'll be leaving people out. So thanks to everyone who came up and talked to me. I love talking to each of you. But I am going to talk about a few things that I talked about with some specific people.

So Candice, it was great talking to you. Candice told me about her visit to Kalala Island, which is an SLH, a small luxury hotel have to look for three days at a time in order to book it. But her warning is that three days isn't enough. She recommends doing five days. Basically, getting there for day one is a chore. You actually are going to want to get there. You're going to want to get to the regional airport like the night before, and then they'll fly you to another place. And then they'll take you on a little boat across choppy waters to the island. So that's day one. And then day two would be great. But then when you check out after day three, after the third night, you leave really early in the

morning to reverse that process in reverse. And so she says, do five days. So that was good to hear and good to hear that she enjoyed it so much. Now, that leads me to Mark. Shout out to Mark, who I told him the story about uh kalala island and he said oh when you guys were talking about that on a recent podcast i thought you were saying koala island and he didn't know what koala island was so there you go that's an easy mistake to make there i totally get it they sound pretty much the same lala not koala yeah so that's c- C-A-L-A-L-A.

Some things just get lost in translation. I mean, and you know, we're looking at it, you know, because we're referencing a couple of notes. So it wouldn't even have occurred to me how it sounds. So that is funny. Very good. Well, good. I'm glad to hear Kalala Island was a good stay for you.

I've been intrigued by it it at least since it launched with Hyatt a while back. So curious about it. Always good to hear good things when, when places live up to the hype. So it totally makes sense that three nights wouldn't be enough. There's a couple of places like that. I think with SLH where the transfer is part of the, the booking, so to speak. And so you would want probably more than three i would say almost any place like that if you're going to the maldives it's going to be a similar situation where you wouldn't want to go just for three because you're going to waste a portion of a day anyway flying to the island that you're going to be staying on or taking a speedboat or whatever and then again you know in reverse so

so places like that yeah i think that's a really good tip that three nights probably isn't going to be enough. Yeah. Yeah. And last but definitely not least, shout out to the Seattle paddle, Walker Castle. This is the youngest podcast fan I've ever met. Walker is Candace's son. So Candace is the Kalala Island person and he's 10 years old and says he's a big fan of our show. Wow. Awesome, Walker. Good to hear from you. Now, why did I call him the Seattle Paddle? Because he placed first in the Washington State, well, in Washington State, in the USA Mullet Championship. I don't know what that is, Greg. You're going to have to tell me more.

So a mullet is a hairstyle from the 80s. I'm familiar with a mullet. Yes, I live in the countryside. And so there are competitions for, there are mullet competitions. Interesting. So he was a winner in his age group and he called himself the Seattle paddle in that competition. Seattle paddle, I like it.

I like it, Walker. Very good. Very good. Now, his mom says that, I asked her about like, well, what does he like on the show? And he says, or she says that his favorite segment is matches running the numbers. She says, we've been inspired to take some spontaneous trips and stays because of it. And he's currently looking forward to a Hyatt mattress run in Las Vegas at the Rio, in particular because there's a few claw machine arcades there that he's been dying to visit.

Very good. I like it. I like it. Going to be a lot of fun. So I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad the Seattle Paddle is out there. I've got a picture in my mind now with the name Seattle Paddle and knowing that you won the mullet competition. So one of these days, I hope I get a chance to meet you and see if my picture matches,

but congratulations on that Walker. And, you know, I mean, congratulations on getting ahead of the game. Cause if you're listening to frequent miler on the air now, I can only imagine where you're going to be in another 10 or 20 years. I can't imagine where you're going to be. I'm curious. I'll be very curious to hear what you end up doing and where you end up going with this game when you become old enough to get cards of your own. Yeah, seriously, that's awesome. And if there's any

even younger listeners out there, please give us a shout via mailbag at frequentmiler.com. We'd love to hear from you and tell us what you like about the show. And it honestly, it surprised me that young listeners are interested. In fact, we joked about it once

about a guy who said he forces his family to listen as they're doing car trips. But I'd love to hear from you. And so please do shout out to us. And lastly, on this whole overall topic of this event that I went to, I want to apologize for not letting people know in advance I was going. It occurred to me later that I should have mentioned on the show in case anyone from that area wanted to show up and I would have loved to meet you. Next year, they're doing it not in Seattle, but in Vancouver on September 6th of 2025.

I can't say yet whether or not I'll be there, but hopefully someone from the team will be there. Tim lives in the Seattle area, which is not far from Vancouver. He wasn't, ironically, at the Seattle event because he was in Europe at the time, which I guess was an okay excuse. But if you're interested, you can go to poinstravelfestival.com and we'll put that in the show notes. And there's probably going to be a way to, they say they should have the event up for sale. I don't think it's very expensive by September 30th, but either way, you could check there for the latest news about the event if you're interested. Very good. So that's pointstravelfestival.com. Cool. All right. So card news. Let's talk about cards today. We got some big new offers out on the Delta cards. So you can earn between 80 and 110,000 miles with just one card, depending on which of the cards

you apply for. Of course, there's the gold, the platinum, and the reserve Delta cards. So those offers certainly may be worth it just for the miles. And we do often say that Delta miles are limited in use. It's hard to find good partner award use cases with Delta miles. Not impossible. Greg's written about where you can still get great value out of Delta miles. But I think the general consensus is that most people are likely to use delta miles for domestic flights on delta metal. And there you're looking at getting more than a penny per point in general. So, you know, these are offers that are worth easily $800,000 or more, depending on how you use the points and which card you get. And they come with decent benefits, right? So, I mean, you like the Delta cards, right?

Yeah, I mean, if you're a Delta flyer, they're definitely worth, it's worth having at least one because of the discounted awards and, you know, of course, you know, free check bags and things like that. But they have, as you get up in the, you know, to the Platinum card and the Reserve card, they have some really good benefits like the companion tickets and other things. So definitely worth checking out if you're a Delta flyer. And even if you're not, these offers are big. I mean, even if you're

only getting one cent per point value from your Delta miles, you're talking about a lot of free flights with these offers. So good deals there. If you're interested in elite status, the status boosts that come with the Platinum and Reserve card are huge. I mean, you could get two of these cards and have Delta Silver status this year. And then you could even do that JetBlue status match

that we talked about, I think, in a coffee break and have JetBlue status for over a year as well. So some great opportunities there. Very good. That's not all the big new card news this week, though. We've got other cards with increased offers, too, like the Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business card now has an offer to earn five free night certificates, each worth up to 50,000 points.

So each valid for a night that costs up to 50,000 points. So each valid for a night that costs up to 50,000 points. Though, of course, remember, you can add up to 15,000 additional points to a free night certificate with Marriott. So five free night certificates after $8,000 spend in six months. So the six month spending window there should make the $8,000 spend not an insurmountable hurdle for most people. It's a little over $1,000 a month that you have to spend on the card in order to earn the welcome bonus. And five 50K free night certificates could certainly be quite valuable. I mean, I think our first year value on that is well over $1,000, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it can be absolutely worth a lot. One thing to know, you can't do the fifth night free type of award when you're using a free night certificate. So that's a downside to it. Positive, I guess, is that, um, so it used to be one, one concern I had

with these in the past was that a lot of Marriott stays that I'd want to do were like charge around like 40,000 points, somewhere in that range. And so you'd be wasting, so you wouldn't be getting the full 50,000 points per certificate value if you're using it for a 40,000 points stay. The good news is a lot of those hotels that I used to book for 40K are now over 50K. So you'll get the full value. I get to add some points, yeah.

Yeah, the other caveat to always think about when you're considering a card that comes with multiple free night certificates instead of coming with a points bonus is that those free night certificates expire in a year. So you have to be a year from the day they're issued. So you have to be sure that you're going to be able to put them to good use within that year. And that's a little risky versus a points bonus where the points aren't going to expire as long as you keep some activity with the program and keep the credit card open, you're going to have your points. So points are better from that standpoint and from

the standpoint of being able to use them for a property that costs fewer points without giving up any value or a property that costs more points, et cetera. But if you can find a good use of the free night certificates, if you're willing to commit to that, you have a bunch of flexibility, you're going to look around for a good opportunity. I mean could be a monster offer five free nights at 50k could certainly be a really really good value yeah yeah for those in the michigan uh chicago area the in a bay harbor that i talk about a lot tends to be around 50 50 to 55 000 points a night in the summertime um and so i think it'd be a great deal to set up some alerts and do like, you know, maybe a couple, like a three-night, you know, long weekend stay somewhere in the summer

and another two-day stay kind of thing and enjoy northern Michigan in its glory in the summertime. So that's an example how you could get really good value from that. But that's not all of the five free nights. IHG is battling with their own. IHG Premier Card is offering five 60K free nights. So it's better than 50K. Totally debatable in this case. Very debatable. Well, why? Why is it debatable? Well, the biggest thing here is that the certificates are not top-offable. You can't add points to it. And so if you want to stay at a place that costs 61,000 points, that certificate will not apply. And so that to me is just a huge bummer. It is. I mean, there's also the fact that IHG points and Marriott points are not of equal values. So you are likely to get better value out of using a 50K free night certificate for a Marriott

property that costs 50K than out of a 60K free night certificate for an IHG property that costs 60K. Of course, somebody's going to say, oh, but wait, I did. Yes. Okay. Probably there are some scenarios where they're equal, but in general, based on our reasonable redemption values, at the very least, I think you'll do better with the Marriott three-night certificates. I mean, our reasonable redemption values for the two are very close, actually, but the range. So if you're cherry-picking awards, like the top 20% of awards, you're going to get much higher value with marriott than with with ihg at least of the properties that we uh collected data from uh for computing those yes and i guess when i when i was also considering ihg points worth less than our reasonable redemption value because of the

fact that they sell them for half a cent each at least sometimes sometimes. And so if you're able to buy points at half a cent each, then those 60K free night certificates are about $300. Essentially, you can buy the points and then have all the flexibility. So anyway, they're both worth considering if you are a fan of those chains. So five free nights certainly could be very valuable either way. Just keep in mind the same caveats. They expire in a year and the IHG ones are less flexible in the sense you can't add points. Yeah. But that's not it.

No, it's not. And more exciting if you're in IHG, I think, is the IHG Premier Business Card, which has an offer out for up to 200,000 points. So the way it's structured is you get 140,000 points after 4K spend within three months, an additional 60,000 points after 9,000 total spend. So the first 4,000 spend counts towards that. 9,000 total spend in the first six months. I like 200,000 IHG points way more than 560K certs,

even though 560K certs are theoretically worth up to 300,000 points you know because why yeah hi craig bad math points don't expire uh points aren't uh limited to 60k or less properties um you don't lose anything when using points towards a property that costs less than 60,000 points. And you can do fourth night free. So either of these cards, by having it, you can get fourth night free on IHG award stays when you book with points, not with certificates. Points are worth just way more than the certificates for those reasons. And if the Inn at Bay Harbor ever switches over to IHG, get ready for Greg to sing a different tune. It's going to be like, five three-night certificates, you could say at the Inn at Bay Harbor. No. Yeah. And they'll charge 61,000 points per night. They sure will.

They sure will. Actually, I think it's a very interesting point that you could use these with the fourth night free too, though, because then you know presumably be able to book a property that costs what so 360k almost 70 65k about yeah 65k a night for four nights with the 200 000 points so that's there you go you know that's pretty close to equal and you don't have the expiration or the restriction for it to be only 60k it's's that 61K price that Craig's saying you're going to be in luck with the points. So, yeah. Also, the way she does her fourth night free is fun in that they're actually erasing maybe the fourth night is an expensive Friday night, just for example, it could easily be worth way more than 300,000 points.

Those 200,000 points, way more than- Yeah. Yeah. The 50, then the 60Ks. Way more than 60K times five. Yeah. Whatever that comes out to be. Very good.

Yeah. All right. So a bunch of new card offers, and they're not the only ones. There's also the Inc. Business Unlimited offer is available 90K and that's a card with no annual fee. We've talked about the Inc. Business Unlimited card before. That one requires 6K spend in three months. So that's another interesting offer. Now, you know, we mentioned, I think we mentioned both the IHG offers and I'm not sure if we mentioned the spending requirements. Did we have the 4K in three months for the free night certificates on the Premier and 4K in the first three months on the business also? I don't know if we mentioned that. Yeah, I talked through the business, how it's staggered and everything. How would you rank that? Like, if you're looking at the Delta cards, you're looking at the Bonvoy business card

and the IHG cards, and now this Ink Business Unlimited is also out there with the 90K offer. How would you rank that comparatively? Yeah. I mean, great question. Of that collection, you know, I love my transferable points. So if I didn't have a specific use in mind, the, the ink business unlimited, the 90 K offer would be what I would gravitate towards definitely because it's a transferable points that you could use for all kinds of great things, including Hyatt and so on. Um, and, but, you know, so the

rest are really dependent on knowing that I have like ideas in mind that, you know, Delta, I am going to be, I'm going to be flying Delta. So I want to use, I want to get those points so I could use those rewards. And then obviously Marriott and IHG depends on that you have plans to say it, Marriott and IHG properties. And of course those free night certificate ones are even further limited and saying like, you wouldn't get the Marriott five 50K free nights if you're planning to stay at a, at a, uh, you know, Ritz Carlton Maldives, because that's going to cost over a hundred thousand points every, every night. And you wouldn't be able to use those certs at all there. So that's, uh, those are the kind of considerations I'd have.

Yep. Absolutely. I think that's all good points. Also keep in mind, like if I'm comparing points here, if I say the 90k Inc. Business Unlimited offer versus the IHG business 200k IHG point offer, right? Keep in mind that you could cash out the 90k points through Chase for $900. And that's enough to buy 180,000 IHG points when they put them on sale for half a cent each. So it's not quite as many points, but you have the flexibility to, if you really want IHG points, if you don't need the full 200,000,

you could buy the points you need when you need IHG points, but also retain the flexibility to combine those with points earned on another Chase Ultimate Rewards card and transfer to Airlines or transfer to Hyatt where you can get five nights at, you know, I don't know, category four, at least anyway, with, with those points transferred one-to-one to Hyatt. And in fact, you'd be six nights at a category four with that number of points. So I, I would say that Inc. Business Unlimited is fairly compelling comparatively, but. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, actually that's a, that's a fantastic point.

All right. Speaking of points and speaking of amazing offers, Nick, you wrote a post called the Points Parade marches on thanks to a new round of targeted 250K offers. What's the deal there? I continue enjoying marching to the beat of their drum. So I was poking around in my account because I had some big expenses coming up. And I found in the menu cards, you all business cards that I had targeted offers on both the business gold and the business platinum business gold of 200k business platinum 250k. And so they both required big spend, but I was in need of more Amex points. So I used a bunch over the summer. I needed to replenish. So I got myself another business platinum card. And I say another because, of course, I already have a business platinum card.

I already have a couple of business platinum cards. But the offer was there in my account. It does have the lifetime language. It says you may not be eligible if you have or have had this card before. But key point there, it doesn't say you are not eligible. It says you may not be eligible if you have or have had this card before. But key point there, it doesn't say you are not eligible. It says you may not be eligible. And if you're not eligible, we'll let you know before we process your application, which is, in other words, the pop-up. If you're not eligible, then you would presumably get the pop-up. But I went ahead and it pre-filled most of my information, had a button to accept this offer.

So I clicked accept the offer. And my application wasn't approved right away. It took about a day in order to get the email saying congratulations on your new business platinum card, you've been approved, blah, blah, blah. And based on past experience, that means I will get the welcome bonus. I didn't get any notification that I'm not eligible. So that means I should be eligible. And again, I've had a couple of business platinum cards already. I have a couple. I had a couple at the time that I'm not eligible. So that means I should be eligible. And again, I've had a couple of business platinum cards already. I have a couple. I had a couple at the time that I accepted this offer. So it was accepted for the record under a business that I already had a business platinum card with. So that did not stop me from getting the card again and should not stop me from getting the welcome bonus again. It hasn't in the past. Yeah. Yeah. So I was inspired after Nick wrote

this post to look up this offer myself and my wife and son did the same. And we all had the offer available. You know, after logging in our accounts and looking where Nick's post says to look, we all saw the 250K business platinum offer, and we all three tried applying it. So I think probably to see this offer, you already have to have a business card with Amex. I'm not actually sure about that, but in all three of our cases, it let us fill in the application details from from another business card that we already own doesn't have to be a business platinum but another amex business card that we already have so filling out the application was super fast you didn't have to go searching for the right business type and all that stuff it just used whatever i we already had in there and uh in uh

for uh my son and i we both got the pop-ups and just canceled out of it. My wife didn't get the pop-up though, and she was instantly approved. So that's pretty exciting because, I mean, yes, it's a lot of spend, $20,000 spend. But after making that spend, even at earning just one X on that spend, you know, we're talking about having 270,000 new Amex membership rewards points, which is just crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Right. I mean, that's an incredible amount of points. So I couldn't turn down the chance at a quarter of a million points, especially because like I said, I had some expenses that were going to get me a large chunk of the way towards that, that type of a spending requirement. Just to Greg's point about having

existing business cards or not, I was able to check with someone who does not have any Amex business cards and they do have offers for the business platinum and business gold, but they're just the 150K and 100K offers, not these 250 and 200. So I think Greg might be right that you might need to have an existing business card with Amex to see these increased offers. But at any rate, you can see the post. It's got more detail about where you can look to try to find these offers. And if you do have them, then obviously you have to consider whether or not it's worth dedicating that much spend to one of these offers. But I think they certainly, I think they are. I mean, a quarter of a million points is going to be a nice point parade coming my way. And of course, that will beg the question

as to what I should do about this whole Alaska Hawaiian thing that we're going to talk about today, knowing that I've got some more points coming in the not so distant future. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. A couple more small things to mention. Amex Uber credits. There's some negative news there. If you have a personal Platinum card or a personal Amex or an Amex card for payment for your Uber ride or Uber Eats purchase. What we don't know yet is whether we'll still be able to stack multiple credits together for a single order. If you can, then this shouldn't be a big deal. If you can't, then I think that's going to severely lower the value of those credits for most of us. Yeah. I mean, that's going to be a huge bummer. That'll totally change things on

my side in terms of keep or cancel with some of the cards that we have in our household, because I only really use those Uber credits now because they stack together. If it's only like 10 or $15 at a time, I'm just not likely to place multiple orders every month because i can't get it at home so i only use it when i'm out and about in an area where they have it and be able to use it all in one meal that that is the entire value of that for me right now so we'll see how that goes i'll be really disappointed if you're only able to use one at a time but at the same time i won't be shocked if that's what happens. Hopefully, it'll just be that you have to have that Dynamics card toggled on for payment if you have an overage. We'll see. We'll report back and let you know when we know

more sometime after November 8th. Yeah, there you go. Last thing in the card talk section, I just want to remind people that when we talk about all these great new offers, at the end of the year, you're going to be faced with a dilemma. Do you pay for the annual fee again? Do you cancel the card or what do you do? And we like to recommend downgrading if possible so that you don't have an annual fee or you have a lesser annual fee. And Nick has a great resource out there on the blog that's called Downgrade Pass, How to Keep Your Card But Break Up With Your Annual Fee or Find a Better Fit. So just a reminder of that resource that's out there. That's a good one to remind us about.

And actually, that kind of reminded me of something I meant to say about the business platinum 250k offers out there that's just going to go kind of against the grain of what's in that post that Craig's talking about in that I'll be talking about canceling instead. But funny enough, one of my business platinum cards is up for renewal like in a couple of weeks here. It's actually I think the annual fee just posted. And so I have to decide whether to keep or cancel it. And of course, now that I have a new business platinum coming with another 250,000 points at some point here, I'm probably going to cancel that existing business platinum that is up for renewal. I probably won't pay for another year of that right now. So that

was one thing I wanted to mention that I probably won't be keeping all of the old ones that I had. And because I did mention having a couple already, and I won't probably keep a few of those moving forward. And then the other thing I didn't mention when I said I have a couple of big expenses coming up that should be most of the way to the spend. The other thing I should have mentioned is, of course, we're coming into the time of year where if you do buying groups at all, which we talked about on last week's show, and we have a resource post out about buying groups, this is the time of year when there tend to be more deals for buying groups. So opportunities to buy and resell things make a little bit of a profit as we approach the holiday sales season.

So that's another reason why I was confident that I could probably get the spend done at this time of year over other times here. That made the offer more compelling to me right now than it would have been in like May. Totally. Makes sense. Yep. Okay. That brings us, I think, to Mattress Running the Numbers. This week's Mattress Running the Numbers, we got a new Chase Marriott transfer bonus.

And we were all excited about the last one. So I'm sure you're all excited about this one right and not so much uh so it sounds great 50 transfer bonus from chase to marriott through november 15th and the reason we're not super excited about it well one reason is that in august i think was we had a 70 transfer bonus so this is lesser the uh And then the other reason it's not so exciting is that it actually depends what you compare it to, to decide whether it's exciting. So if you consider that our reasonable redemption value for Marriott points, meaning that the median value you're likely to get if you're not cherry picking awards is about 0.7 cents per point. So with a 50% transfer bonus, that's like you're going to get about 1.05 cents per point value with

your chase points, which is really bad. I mean, you should be getting a lot more than that with your chase points. Now, that's not necessarily the right comparison, though. If you cherry pick awards just a little bit, you can easily get around 0.88 cents per point, which also happens to be around the price that Marriott frequently sells their points on sale in that like 0.85 to 0.9 cents per point range. So if you use that as the comparison, then your chase points are worth 1.3 cents per point uh with this transfer bonus so yeah yeah yeah exactly we wouldn't yell at you or or admonish you for doing that but also we wouldn't be excited about doing it ourselves i think that's a good way to put it. It totally could be the right thing for certain situations, but yeah. Now, what if you're in the situation where you see an award,

you want to book it, you need more, and it's very high value. You'd be getting great value for your Marriott points, and that does happen, by the way, and you need extra marriott points so your options are you know transfer one to one from like amex for example or uh or buy points if they're not on sale at the time they usually cost 1.25 cents per point each so if you're if your best option is to buy them for 1.25, then this is like getting 1.87 cents per point value from your chase points. And that's suddenly really decent. So I think that ultimately, it depends what your options are for getting the points if you have a very high value award. Yeah, I think that's a great point. If you need points now for a high value award and your best alternative is paying 1.25 cents per point, then yeah,

you'd probably want to go ahead and do the transfer bonus if you're getting enough value out of your points that way. So if that's your boat, then sail on and go ahead with the transfer bonus. I wouldn't speculatively transfer points to Marriott at a 50% bonus. It's not worth that at all because I wouldn't have enough confidence that you're going to get better value out of your points that way than you would with many of Chase's airline partners. Or keep in mind, you can still transfer one-to-one to Hyatt and get pretty good value in a lot of cases. So I would be pretty hesitant to consider doing or not even hesitant. I definitely wouldn't do that speculatively. But otherwise, in the situations Greg mentioned,

I think it makes sense. All right. That was this week's Mattress Running the Numbers. Let's talk about points and award talk. We got a couple of car rental deals coming up this week or new car rental deals to discuss that might be worth taking a look at. So Greg, why don't you talk about the Avis deal? Yeah, I don't usually pay a lot of attention to Avis because their rewards program, in my opinion, is not great, but they have a nice promo out, which is rent twice for two days and get a free rental day. Big caveat there is you have to have preferred elite status with Avis. Luckily, that's pretty easy to do. If you have United Silver status or better,

then you have automatic Avis elite status. A lot of credit cards give you Avis elite status, including the Amex Platinum cards, the United Infinite card, the United Club Business card, the Sapphire Reserve card, and so on. So, you know, check out your, especially your premium cards to see if they offer anything like that. The rentals have

to be paid and certain discount codes are excluded. You have to rent, register and then rent before or by February 28th of 2025. And then the biggest condition I think worth noting is that the free day is only valid through May 18th of 2025. Yep. Very good. Well, I mean, that's potentially a good deal there. National, though, not one to be kind of outdone is out with a promotion also. And I think I'm more excited about the national promotion personally for a number of reasons. So Nationals promo is to rent and get double credit, essentially. So you'll earn double credit on qualifying weekend rentals. So you got to register and you have to rent between September 19th and December 16th. And the key here is that

they have to be a weekend rental. And what they mean by that is you have to pick it up on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday and return on a Sunday or Monday. So it's a one night minimum, you know, one day, one rental day minimum, but you have to have a Saturday keep in there. So if you rent on a Saturday, you can return on Sunday and you'll get double credit. So that's great. Qualifying rental, again, has to be picked up between September 19th and December 14th, returned no later than December 16th. So if you're picking one up at the end of the window, make sure you're returned by December 16th. And it's got to be midsize or larger.

But then you'll get your double Elite Night credit or double. I keep saying Elite Night credit. Your double credit with Nationals program within 14 days of your rental return. So that's pretty good because you'll get a free rental day faster. So how many rental days are required in order to earn a National free day? It depends on your level of status with National. I know at the top tier, the Executive Elite tier, it's five rental credits gets you national free day depends on your level of status with national. I know at the top tier, the executive elite tier, it's five rental credits gets you a free day. So with this promotion,

if you've got that top level elite status, then three one day Saturday rentals would get you a free day. Now that's not probably enough to make it worth going out and doing this just for the free day. Probably not. But there's a couple of things I like about national free days. Number one, they're valid until December 31st of the year after the year in which you earn them. So if you earn one this year, it's valid until December 31st of next year. So a much longer window of that being valid. And then the second thing I like about them, of course, is that when you apply them, you can apply them to a one-way rental. And because unlike some rental companies, some rental companies add a one-way fee on top.

And even if you use a free day, you'll still pay the one-way fee. With National, it's different. They bake the one-way fee, so to speak, into the daily rental rate. So when you use a free day on a one-day rental, you can really do a one-way for free or close to it. Sometimes there's a couple dollars in airport tax, and that's a really good deal because one-way rentals are often quite expensive. So I probably won't go out and rent national days just for the fun of it, but certainly this would lean me towards renting with national because I would get to a free day faster. Yeah, I agree. And I just like their program better. I mean, I don't like that you're not really rewarded for longer rentals. You know, you get one credit for small

rental or a medium rental. But what I love about this promotion is that it's just adding to the regular program. So if you're working towards a free rental day, this helps get you there faster instead of it being like a separate promotion that you have to think about tracking separately. Like they used to frequently do those one, two free promos, which were great, but I found them hard to like keep track. Cause it wasn't shown in the same place as you saw your progress on the regular thing. And so I like that. To answer your question before, I believe it's people without executive elite status, I believe, need six rentals to get a free day with national standards.

So if you're starting from scratch, it would take three Saturdays. Yeah, which is essentially the same either way, since you'll need five, an odd number, even with top tier status. So essentially either way, three. But yeah, so good deal. Good deal. And certainly one that if and when I do have a couple of needs to rent a car this year. And so I will probably be looking to rent with National because of this promotion. So yeah, totally.

Good deal there. All right. That's that. But then we have a little bit more on points talk city's out with transfer bonuses what are the new transfer bonuses with city yeah both of them are through october 19th uh one is a 25 transfer bonus to avianca life miles which uh we see those kind of things pretty regularly so that's pretty cool um and nick loves his life miles. So consider that.

I mean, it takes some of this thing out of the recent evaluation, right? Because they have decent deals still. And 25% transfer bonus makes them really good deals. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, I said we see these fairly frequent, but the truth is to life miles, I think we usually see lesser like 15% or whatever. So that's true.

So this is actually pretty good um i'm more excited about uh 25 transfer bonus to leading hotels of the world so uh the the um normally city points transfer to leading hotels of the world five to one and, uh, LHW points are worth around 8 cents each. So that, uh, five to one, uh, transfer, the normal transfer gives you about 1.6 cents per point value with your city points. But with this 25% bonus, you're getting four to one transfer and that's giving you about two cents per point, uh, value for your city points towards leading hotels of the world. And that's excellent. I think we'll do another, like maybe a coffee break show about that transfer bonus to dive

in further. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually something that I probably won't do because I don't have a ton of city points, but it's interesting. It's certainly going to be worth its own coffee break. So you'll want to stay tuned to our channel and make sure you're subscribed to get notifications when we publish new stuff so that you'll find out when we do publish that coffee break. And in other hotel

news, Hilton has now added another 100 SLH properties to its platform, or at least is in the process if they aren't all completely done yet. As we record this, they're adding another 100 properties. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was 102 is the total count, but they're at around 400 now, total SLH properties. They didn't give us a list of the new ones. So the list that's out there is all of them. And so I tried to see what was new, which is really hard to do, not having memorized the old list. But if you remember back, the guy who runs the Hilton Honors Program had asked me which SLH properties we were excited about. I'd given him a list, and all but one of the ones that were on my list appeared in that first big round of SLH, supported SLH. The one exception was the Sellers Hohenort in Cape Town, South Africa,

which I loved that stay, but it wasn't on the list. I wasn't that upset about being on the list because I didn't think it would offer a good value for Hilton points because the property usually costs somewhere in the $300 to $400 range per night. And usually we see with Hilton points, like it's the way high end ones, the $1,000 a night properties where you get great value. So I didn't think this would be a great value use, but it's now on the list. And I looked at it, it's available for 50,000 points a night when standard rooms are available. A random night I looked at would be $350 cash. So that's 0.7 cents per point value for Hilton points, which it's not amazing,

but I'll tell you what are good. Our reasonable redemption values just under 0.5. So, so that's pretty darn good. Almost 50% more. Yeah. And so if you think of it with the current and frequent 30% transfer bonus from Amex points to Hilton, that gives you a 1.8 cents per good. And so I'm pretty excited to see that on there. And I'm sure there's lots of other really good ones on there as well.

And if you're excited about that or that sounds interesting to you and you're like, oh, I need to know more about this, then you should go back and listen to our Coffee Break episode number 26 that we recently published, which was a debate about the 30% Amex to Hilton transfer bonus. Should we do it? And we talked about whether or not we should, or you should and why or why not. So you'll want to listen to that episode because that has a lot more information about this whole Hilton SLH partnership and what we think about whether you should take advantage of the transfer bonus to book these or not. Absolutely. All right. That my friends brings us to this week's main event.

Main event time. Winning the Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines merger. Boy, Alaska announced all of a sudden that the merger is complete, meaning that I guess it means the agreement is complete and there's no more barriers to it. And so it's legally in play. The announcement included a lot of, well, fluff, but also some really good, useful details as well. I have a list of bullet points here. I'll try to run through these quickly.

So expanded global access. I think that's just talking about because there's two airlines now, you could get to more places. You can purchase flights on both sites. Okay. Alaska lounge members can now access Alaska lounges when flying Hawaiian airlines. Great, but very limited use there. Now here we get some more interesting things. Okay. Earn and redeem miles across both airlines starting early in 2025. Expected, but not, you know, we're still not at the exciting part. A single loyalty program is coming. So that answers a question about whether they'd keep their loyalty program separate and just sort of like have the points in common like the Avios programs do? Or would they just have one program? They're going to have one program, but we're not going to know details about it until mid 2025.

So I think we're looking at late 2025 as the earliest that that'll actually happen. Which we kind of expected it would take a while for them to integrate programs. We thought that it would probably be a year or maybe two years before they're able to integrate all of We thought that it would probably be a year, maybe two years before they're able to integrate all of that.

Yep. Yep. And they introduced, this seemed kind of out of nowhere to me, but a program for Hawaiian residents called, why don't you pronounce that one, Nick? I thought you were. Our pronunciation would not be good on this. So there is a program for Hawaii residents. It's H-U-A-K-A apostrophe I.

Is it O-O? Hawaiki? I don't know. We're not sure. Sorry. We apologize. Hopefully somebody can let us know because we appreciate our pronunciation being corrected. So it's a program for Hawaiian residents that offers some specific benefits for those who

live in Hawaii. Yeah, yeah. And none of the benefits are going to knock your socks off, but it's much better than nothing. You get 10% off one booking each quarter. You get a free check bag. You get sort of to be determined exclusive network wide deals each month. And they hinted at even better

benefits for Hawaiian MasterCard holders. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get further down on this main event. But perhaps the most surprising thing. Now, I said before, we expected it might take a year or two for the loyalty programs to merge. And I think that when we expected that, I hate to put words in Greg's mouth, but I think both of us expected that at some point, you might be able to move miles back and forth between the two programs. But we figured that point would probably be, I don't know, next year, year after. It'd be a long time. We really didn't know. Turns out it's going to be a little bit sooner than we expected, right? Yeah, this is amazing.

The announcement says later this month. What? Yeah, looking at the calendar, it's already late in the month as we record this. And as the announcement was made, I mean, I guess it was mid-month. But it means within two weeks, you're going to have that ability to seamlessly transfer miles between the two programs at a one-to-one ratio for no charge. And that's pretty exciting for reasons we'll talk about soon as well. Finally, last bullet point, status matching. For those who have status in either program, you'll be able to match across programs later this year. And probably a little more exciting for those seeking status

is that you'll be able to earn status for next year based on your combined elite qualifying miles. So if you have earned some elite qualifying miles over on Hawaiian and you're working towards your Alaska, then that's going to help you. Those will be counted together. So Nick, you and your family, since you just earned a bunch of Hawaiian qualifying miles, you might want to think about this, what you're going to do.

Totally. Totally. It's really going to make me have to consider it for a number of different reasons. But one of which is because we do have a trip or two coming up where we could fly an American and I could book a revenue fair. And now do I want to do that and credit to Alaska? Because I'm going to be halfway to the first level of elite status. There's a lot of questions going on in my mind, but we've got other questions that are probably more broadly applicable and pressing for everybody. And so the first question is going to lead into my questions later on. What is going to happen to Amex membership rewards transfers to Hawaiian Airlines, Hawaiian Miles, which is now going to be part of the Alaska program.

So if you're not familiar, Hawaiian is an Amex transfer partner, one-to-one. So if you've got any of those Amex membership rewards cards, membership rewards points earning cards, you can transfer one-to-one. So if you've got any of those Amex membership rewards cards, membership rewards points earning cards, you can transfer one-to-one to Hawaiian. And now since we'll be able to seamlessly transfer to Alaska, essentially it turns Alaska into a one-to-one transfer partner of Amex membership rewards points. So, I mean, first of all, what's going to happen there? Is that going to stand? Is Bank of America, which of course has the exclusive credit card agreement with Alaska Airlines and is probably the reason why Alaska has never been a transfer

partner of most of the major transferable currencies, is Bank of America going to let that stand? What's going on? Is that going to continue? So I think there's, what, maybe three likely scenarios here, or we could debate how likely they are, but here's three scenarios. One, we lose the ability to transfer Amex to Hawaiian on or before we're ready to merge programs, either like when the announcement happens or maybe we actually keep it all the way until the programs merge. I think that's a reasonable scenario. Of course, it's possible that we lose it anywhere in between those two as well. But in terms of talking about time periods where it might happen, I think we're talking about before the end of the month or before, let's call it mid next year, because that's when they said

the announcement will happen about the merging programs. Or maybe it'll just continue indefinitely because they'll work out some agreement where they'll be allowed to do that. I think those are the three sort of big picture scenarios worth considering. I have an opinion about what I think is most likely, but I'm interested first, Nick, if you have a thought. Threw me under the bus with that one. Oh my goodness. Well, so I'm nervous that the first one's going to be it, that it's going to end before they enable the points transfer, that that's just an unannounced thing, that Amex will cut Hawaiian out

because they have to, because whatever's going on with this agreement. I'm worried about that, but I think if I were betting, and maybe this will change by the time we're done with the show, but if I were betting, I think I would bet on it continuing until mid next year, whenever the programs become one program. And I think that then they may cease to be an Amex partner. I think there's definitely a non-zero chance that it just continues on because they did say from the beginning that they intend to continue marketing both brands separately. And I think that makes sense from a marketing standpoint, because when people are talking about going to Hawaii and thinking about going to Hawaii, at least if you're not located on the West Coast, Alaska probably is not a word or term that comes to mind when you're thinking about getting to Hawaii, whereas Hawaiian Airlines surely is.

So I think from a marketing perspective, it makes sense for them to keep both airline brands, even though it's going to be one program and under one ownership. However, so if they keep that, maybe they will just keep the two mileage, not the mileage programs, obviously they're going to combine, but maybe they'll keep existing agreements. So maybe Amex will continue on with Hawaiian. I think that's a non-zero chance, but I think it's more likely that this is going to end middle of next year.

So I think if I had to pick one of them and place my money on a bet, my bet would be that Amex transfers will continue until mid next year. But I'm not sure that I'm confident enough about that bet to miss the chance to transfer now. Right, right. And that's exactly my feeling. I believe that it's going to continue until the programs combine. In fact, I would bet, I'm not sure I'd bet much, but my bet is that when they announce so mid next year when they announce the details

of the programs merging, that they'll also announce that Amex is going to lose the ability to transfer to Hawaiian. I think that's when we'll find out about it and it'll happen at once when the programs actually merge. Yeah. I mean, so there's a risk for those who haven't transferred their Amex points already to Hawaiian. So I transferred while the transfer bonus was in place um until in through the end of august i transferred uh just short of a million points to get 1.2 million or close to that um hawaiian miles he placed a big bet i placed a big bet and so far it's paying off i mean you hit the jackpot right i get i get one

to one transfer to alaska which is exactly what i wanted so that's huge but for those who didn't do that yeah it's it, it's a risk to wait. Absolutely. But there are downsides to, we'll talk about that in a minute. Okay. So- One other thing I want to mention, I think I mentioned this on our Alaska. So we did a whole show about the Alaska and Hawaiian merger already. And you can go back and listen to that episode if you want to hear more about our thoughts. And one thing I did say was, well, maybe, maybe they're going to keep it indefinitely. And maybe this is a way for Alaska to tap into the ability

to sell miles to a transferable currency program. So, you know, maybe they will keep this indefinitely. That's not a, I think there's a non-zero chance that that continues on because I'm sure there's a lot of money to be made in selling miles to Amex. So, you know, maybe it will continue, although I bet Alaska is going to want more than what Amex is willing to pay. But non-zero chance it continues indefinitely. Yeah, non-zero chance. But my bet is still on that

when the merger happens, it'll be gone. But that's just, again, what I'm betting on. The other big question in a lot of people's minds is what's going to happen to the Hawaiian Airlines credit cards? And I want to point out something for those who think maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it'll continue on indefinitely as is. And I think we also in that previous show discussed that possibility. The FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions for the Merger, says, I have the Hawaiian Airlines credit card. Will my card be canceled? The answer is your Hawaiian Airlines credit card will continue to function as it does today. As of now, there are no changes to the Hawaiian Airlines credit card program or your cardholder benefits. I'm just pointing that out just because the language clearly leaves open that there will be changes, or I think changes are likely. And that doesn't mean that the cards are going away, but it suggests that the fact that things are as is for now is very much a for now. for the mileage program where it's going to be Alaska, you know, Alaska Magic Miles and Hawaiian

Magic Miles. And so it'll be whatever the Magic Miles is, there's gonna be a Magic Miles credit card, because they're not going to want to lose the ability to market to Hawaiian customers, for instance, by calling it the Alaska credit card, because it would seem probably weird to somebody flying on Hawaiian to get an Alaska credit card, right? So I bet that the credit card will be branded with whatever the new mileage program name is in the long run. And there's a definite non-zero chance that then it's a Bank of America card because Alaska does, I think they had recently renewed their agreement with Bank of America, if I remember correctly. So long-term, yeah, I think those cards are probably not going to be around. But whether they stick around, whether you keep your card, I mean, it may be that Barclays hangs on to existing customers in perpetuity. We don't know.

So at any rate, probably that you're on the clock, I'm guessing. If you want to get one of those cards, the clock is ticking. So you probably want to consider it sooner rather than later, I think. Although we'll talk about maybe why you might want to wait in a minute here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it just occurred to me when you said they're going to come up with a name for a common name.

I agree with that. That's that seems very likely to me. And you're probably magic miles. Well, magic miles. That's as good as any, because I was trying to think of one that could at once invoke thoughts of Hawaii and Alaska and, and, you know, Aloha polar bear or something, Miles. I don't know.

Nothing comes to mind. Polar bear, Miles. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it would be. But all right. Well, I mean, there's an opportunity for them to come up with some sort of an interesting name that surprises us.

And speaking of opportunities, let's talk about the opportunities that exist now that we know more. I mean, we had speculated on a lot of things before, but now we have a pretty clear picture of what's going on overall, even though there's a couple of question marks we just mentioned. We've got a much clearer view now than we did just a couple of weeks ago. So what are the short-term opportunities to consider? Yeah. Okay. So first elite status, I'll mention briefly, we talked about that Nick recently flew a long haul on Hawaiian in business class. And so he probably earned a decent number of qualifying miles that way. He could, if he doesn't already have an Alaska card, get one and spend his way to additional elite qualifying miles on Alaska side. And

because he'll have qualifying miles on both sides, you know, that's an opportunity to get to status quicker. He also mentioned he could credit like American Airlines flights to wine. Well, he could also credit to Alaska and he could just, you know, look at which one. That's what I meant. Yeah. That's what I meant. Crediting to Alaska. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure you can credit domestic American flights to Hawaiian, but you can to Alaska

because they're a one world partner. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly something I got to consider now. I just earned 13,200 Hawaiian miles. Each member of my family, all four of us earned 13,200. That's more than halfway to the first level of Alaska elite status. MVP requires 20,000 elite qualifying miles. MVP gold is 40,000. So more than halfway to MVP. Now do I have to consider booking some flights that I can credit to get

myself the rest of the way to MVP when this merges? I didn't in a million years consider that I might end up close to Alaska elite status when I made that move. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. And there's probably others out there in similar positions where you could be flying Alaska, Hawaii, or either one of their partners in order to get towards elite status. So that's pretty neat. All right. Here's the one I'm excited about, the opportunity that should present itself. Remember, we've talked about account, my wife has a bunch of Alaska miles. My son has a bunch of Alaska miles. I should be able to very soon, once the ability to move points is up and running, move my wife's to her Hawaiian account, move my son's to his Hawaiian account, and then move all of those points to my Hawaiian account. And then move them seamlessly to my Alaska account,

and boom, I've just combined all of those miles for free, and that's great. Yeah, so again, to review what Greg is talking about doing there is the other family members have Alaska miles. They need to first, once this capability comes online, first move their Alaska miles to Hawaiian because both his wife and his son have hawaiian airlines master cards right so um no but i do and my son does and as

long as i do i believe i can receive points for free from from anyone okay there you go so then then they can move to greg's hawaiian then, of course, ultimately, he wants them in Alaska because, of course, Alaska miles are more broadly useful. There's a lot of good sweet spots that are worthwhile there. So then he can move them all into Alaska. So I think that's a great strategy for combining miles. And if you're right, I'm going to have to double check on that. But if you're right now that you can also receive them from anyone if you have the credit card for free. That's a really interesting point for me too, because one of my sons has like 20,000 Alaska miles on top of the 13,000 and change miles he just earned on Hawaiian. So if I could get all

of those into my account, that's another 33,000 miles that can end up in my account. So yeah, I mean, the ability to play the shell game there and move them around to combine your airline miles, especially in a valuable program like Alaska, to find a way to combine household miles. I mean, that's golden. That's great. Especially also, I was talking this out with my wife yesterday, because they said, well, if we each get the Hawaiian consumer and business card, that's 140,000 miles each that we could have and put them all together. And that's 280 in one account on top of the miles that we could have and put them all together. And that's 280 in one account on top of the miles that we already have in Alaska and the miles we already have in Hawaiian,

which is all stuff that we talked about on that previous show, except that I assumed that this was going to be far enough in the future that I wasn't feeling the pressure to jump in right now. But now that it's happening like this month, it's much more interesting. It really is. Yeah. It's no longer theoretical. This is real and it's happening. So of course, the next opportunity to talk about is buying for those Hawaiian Airlines cards. Get the offers before it's too late. We don't know how long they'll be available to sign up new. I mean, could be forever, but it could be very limited time or more likely medium amount of time. The strategy there, though, is a tough one, I think, because let's say the Hawaiian Airlines cards are going to go away next year when the merger is completed, just for the sake

of argument. I could totally see the bank, and these are kind of offered by Bank of Hawaii, but through Barclays. So I'm not really sure which bank I'm talking about when I say this, but I could totally see the bank wanting to sign up as many people as possible now before it's too late. And then maybe offering some other card to transfer people to once they lose that particular business. But if that's the case, we might see better offers than we're seeing now. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly something to consider.

I thought the same thing when I saw the news. I was like, oh, are they going to make this sort of last effort to get as many new card holders as possible? Because obviously, the more card holders you get, the more potential for profit long term. And like Greg said, even if they know already that they're not going to keep the Hawaiian card forever, if they think they can product change you to something else and maintain your business, that could be worth a little extra to them. So yeah, I think it's unlikely. I think it's unlikely that that's going to happen, but it's not impossible. Unlikely, but not impossible. I don't think I would wait for better than the current 70K offers personally. Do you think

that's likely enough to hold on? Am I wrong? Well, so here's the thing. If you don't need the miles near term, I think that it's very unlikely that we'll lose the ability to sign up for Hawaiian cards very soon. And the reason I think that's very unlikely is because of that Hawaii resident program that's going to give you better benefits if you're a cardholder.

That's clearly designed to get more people signing up and why they would do that now if they thought it was about to be gone seems unlikely to me. So I think that they're invested in getting more people signing up and I actually think that bigger welcome bonuses are reasonably likely.

I'm not saying it's a slam dunk, but I'm saying it's reasonably likely. That said, current offers, as long as they're around 70K, I haven't looked at what they're at right at the moment. But if you could get around 70,000 points, I certainly wouldn't think you did a bad job by earning 70,000 points from those welcome bonuses. The most we're likely to see is maybe 100K offers, but even more likely 80, 85K. And so it'd be pretty minor what you're losing out on. So I think that you make good points there. So I think there's a decent chance that you're correct on that. I guess my question mark here or the doubt, if you saw doubt on my face when Greg said

he doesn't think that they would introduce those Hawaii specific benefits if they weren't going to keep the card around for a while. I think it's a really good point. The thing that I made my face twist a little bit is that I know that there has long been a Bank of America, or rather a Bank of Hawaii branded Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard that's only open to Hawaii residents. And so I think it's possible that that will stick around for Hawaii residents because those benefits are specific to Hawaii residents. I'm thinking they might be specific

to the MasterCard that is only available to Hawaii residents. So I'm- Okay. Really good point there. More dubious. And the Bank of Hawaii branded one is still issued by Barclays, but it's branded with Bank of Hawaii on it. And again, you can only apply if you live in Hawaii, I believe anyway. At least that's what I recall it being in the past. So we'll see. We'll see. Maybe Greg's right, but I think there's some reason to doubt that piece of it. But overall, I mean, I got to imagine that Hawaiian and Barclays have an agreement that lasts X amount of time that probably costs a lot to get out of. So maybe they're going to have to continue issuing

it for a while because of the way the agreements work. So, yeah, we'll see. Well, we'll see. Sorry, we can't be more definitive on that one. Now, the last opportunity, of course, is around transferring points to Hawaiian so that you could get Alaska miles. Now, you know, as we mentioned briefly, Alaska miles, in our opinion, are much more valuable than Hawaiian miles. And so it's exciting that we have at least a short-term opportunity to transfer points

to indirectly to Alaska. Alaska, there are no other bank-issued transferable points programs that transfer to Alaska. The only other option is BILT, which transfers to Alaska, or I guess you could do Marriott 3-to-1 to Alaska, but that's not a great transfer ratio. And so it's pretty exciting. We could do 1-to-1 from Amex to Alaska right now. There is a small excise tax you have to pay to do that. So the question is, do you do it right now if you're interested in that? Or do you wait?

Do we have to hurry and do this before the ability to combine points is turned on? Well, that's certainly my question. My fear is that if they do end the transfers from Amex to Hawaiian, when transfers from Hawaiian to Alaska become possible, boy, I'd hate to miss out on the chance to move some Amex points to Alaska now. Now, let's back up real quickly and say, okay, why does it matter? I've got the ability to transfer to lots of different airlines with Amex, and there's lots of airlines that have good sweet spots. So why do I care so much about this specific scenario? We always say

don't transfer speculatively, right? So what are we even talking about transferring speculatively? And the reason is because Alaska does have a some good sweet spots in their award chart. Those of us that live on the East Coast have some options to fly to Europe in business class for 45,000 miles, certainly or 60, depending on how far you're going. But there are some options for 45 and either 45K or 60K is a very good price for business class to Europe. And it's even better when you consider the fact that Alaska allows a free stopover on

a one-way award, because then you could visit two different places for the cost of one award. And that's not the only sweet spot. There are other ones that are also still pretty good that maybe aren't the best price ever until you start considering the value of adding a free stopover on a one-way. And then if you like to build complicated trips, and goodness knows I do, then Alaska becomes even more appealing. And I assume that's why you already transferred over a large chunk of your points. Those are a big reason, but also sort of more generally, with the One World Alliance, you have a lot of programs where I wouldn't want to park a lot of points. They all have their little sweet spots, but American Airlines is really the only one of the others besides Alaska that I'm like, yeah, I'd want to park a lot of points there

because they are so generally useful. They have free changes and cancellations and all that. And the points don't have a hard expiry at any point, anything like that. Alaska has all those benefits too. And American, you can't transfer from anyone to get to American miles, but Alaska, now we can. And so Alaska is an excellent alternative to American Airlines for those kind of things. In some cases, it's much better, like with the free stopovers. In some cases, like if you want to book first class, it's not nearly as good as American, at least for partner awards. So it just depends. But I think of it as one of those programs where I feel really good about having a stash of miles for some day compared to, and there's not a lot of programs where I feel really good about that. This is one, and partly it's because too, Alaska redid their award charts so recently that a major devaluation soon seems unlikely. Whereas American, we're just waiting

for the shoe to drop on their partner awards, which haven't devalued in so many years. And it seems unlikely that it, it seems likely that an American Airlines devaluation is coming. I don't, I think we've got a few years with Alaska. Yeah, I agree. I think especially with the increased scrutiny that the merger brings to, I think it's even more likely that we won't see, like you said, a major devaluation come soon. So I think there's some safety, which is a rarity. And I say, I think, because of course, we don't know still, but we're reasonably confident that Alaska is going to be a safe place to have your miles for a couple of years anyway

to get pretty good value out of them. So, yeah, I mean, do we wait? Like, do we wait for a potential transfer bonus? Because we just saw a recent transfer bonus. Amex had a 15% transfer bonus to Hawaiian that ended on August 31st. I'm sorry, 20% that ended on August 31st. So, like, are we going to see another one of those? Should I hang on and wait and hope that I can get even more value out of my Amex points

and potentially have a time when I actually need to use them? Because right now, I don't have a near-term need for Alaska miles. So should I hold off on transferring to Hawaiian? Do you think we'll see another transfer bonus? Yeah. So, you know, the first part, should you hold off, depends on what do you think is likely to happen about Amex's ability to transfer. And so I said earlier, I think it's most likely

going to continue until at least mid next year. If you believe that and you don't need your Alaska miles soon, then why not wait and see if there's another transfer bonus? Now, Tim, when he wrote the post updating it about the merger details, when the details came out, he wrote, I can't imagine we'll see a repeat of last month's transfer bonus. He can't imagine it. Flip side, I can. I can totally imagine it for similar reason as I was saying why I could imagine bigger credit card offers. I could see that the programs want to earn the money from Amex. So Amex pays them for those miles when you do those transfers. And so they may want a lot of people transferring because it's a cash infusion basically for that program. And if they know the Amex thing is going to be going away, they're going to want to get as many people transferring

before that happens as possible, theoretically. And so if that's true, I could totally see new ones. I could see bigger ones. I wouldn't imagine more than 30%, but I can imagine a 30% coming. Do I think it's very likely? No, I think it's, I'm going to throw out some probability numbers that are totally off the top of my head, but just because I feel like people need some guidance. And so, all right, the chance of the transfer, transferability continuing till mid next year, I think the probability is very high. I'd put in the 85% range for that. The chance of a transfer bonus before it's too late, much lower. I'm going to say 30%, but at the same range as the top range

of the transfer bonus that I think is likely. Interesting. Well, you know, that's interesting to me. So part of the reason I'm hemming and hawing over here is because I'm considering what to do. Because in my household, we've used a lot of points this year to a couple of big trips, really big one that I wrote about recently during the month of August. And so I've used a lot of points over the last year. So now I'm sitting in a situation where we've got like around a half million membership rewards points, which is lower than I like to be. It's a little low for comfort, which I was happy to now pick up a new business platinum

card and have another 250,000 coming along. So I would feel a little bit more of a cushion. However, now I'm looking at it and saying, okay, well, I've got the major trips for next year already booked. So I don't probably have a near-term need for my transferable points, even though I want more than I currently have because I like to have cushion in case a great opportunity comes up. I don't have a near-term need in mind for my Amex points, and I've got another $250,000 coming soon. Should I transfer points now and how many to Hawaiian to make sure that I get some

points moved over before the capability moves away? Or should I wait? Now, if I think Greg's right, that there's an 85% chance that this hangs on, then yeah, of course, it makes more sense for me to wait because I may come up with a use of membership rewards points between now and whenever those transfers end next year. That makes me wish I had my Amex points instead of having already committed them to a program where I can't get them back to transferable again. So if I think his 85% is right, I should probably hang on. And I think it's worth mentioning that if he's right about that 85% probability that these transfers continue on, then I think also I would have to consider, well, was that part of the calculus here? Was Alaska counting on some of this money that Hawaiian brings in through transfers? And if they were, I could totally see it being worth, like Greg said, putting a little extra money into it on their end in the form of a better transfer bonus between now and then just to accept that cash infusion. I mean, why not take advantage of that while they can? That could be a smart play. So I think if Greg's right about the 85% chance of the transfers continuing on to next

year, I think I would probably put the probability of another transfer bonus even a little bit higher because they might as well take advantage of the money that they can earn from that because goodness knows airlines do make enough money from selling their miles to the banks and Alaska is limited and that they don't have any major transferable currencies. They've got built but not nearly as much money probably coming in from built as they would have from an Amex membership rewards points transfer bonus just by virtue of the volume of cardholders. So if I'm going to take Greg's probability, I think maybe it's worth hanging on and waiting for a better transfer bonus.

But man, I've been sitting here hemming and hawing the last couple of days. Do I take a couple hundred, few hundred thousand points and empty out a bunch of my membership rewards in case I can't by the end of this month, in case it goes away? So you think I should hang on? I think you should hang on. I think you should hang on? You think I should wait, Craig? I think you should hang on. I think you should hang on. I think because you let the 20% thing fly by. Well, because I figured that probably it wouldn't become Alaska miles for another year or two.

And I was like, well, I don't need them right now, but I'm going to need them at some point. And I don't know if I want to wait two years to have Alaska miles. If I knew last month that I was going to have them, the ability to move to Alaska today, then yeah, I totally would have taken advantage of that transfer bonus. Big mistake. Yeah. I, I, I think, I think you'll be, I think you should wait. And it's easy for me to gamble with Nick's, uh, Nick's points, but he'll be thanking me

when that 30% transfer bonus comes around. Well, you know, the, the one thing that gives me some solace here is that we could just open the Hawaiian credit cards. So that's my, and I would feel okay. Like if the transferability goes away, I'd be bummed that I didn't get more points in there, but at least I would have another nice, healthy infusion of Alaska miles. So should I get those Hawaiian cards now? Or do you think there's a better offer coming? Where would you put the probabilities there? And again, I know that you don't know, and we're totally just making numbers up here, but make up a number for me.

Help me make the decision. What do you think? I'm going to put it at a 40% chance that we'll see some increased offers before the opportunity goes away. Yeah, okay. So I wouldn't put it at even odds. So 40% or less, I'd say. I would more recommend for you, Nick, to maybe at least try applying for the business wine cards now that won't touch your credit or anything, and then maybe roll the dice on the personal ones,

something along those lines, just so that you can hedge your bets. Yeah, and when he says won't touch your credit, he means won't affect my 524 count because they won't be reported to the personal bureaus. So yeah, I think the business cards make sense to get now. I totally agree with that strategy. I think that's in fact, what we will probably do is get those business cards.

So then my final question is this one. So, all right, we've each got a little over 13,000 Hawaiian miles right now, and you need 20,000 miles with Alaska for elite status or the first level of elite status, the MVP status. So about 7,000 miles short. So a round trip to Hawaii would basically cover that. Now, my wife is an Alaska Airlines business card holder, so we've got a companion certificate. So I took a quick look

at Google Flights here a second ago, and it looks like from New York, we could do a weekend trip to Hawaii for around $500 round trip for one ticket. So with two tickets, a little bit over 600 bucks round trip. Should we go to Hawaii for a weekend at some point in order to, presumably, if I'm able to earn one-to-one, which, I mean, I could fly Alaska for that price, by the way, the prices that I was quoting. So I would earn one mile per mile flown. So that would make up the difference for us both to have MVP status for about $600 on a mileage run to Hawaii. Should I mileage run to Hawaii, Craig? You know, if you were anyone else, I'd say, well, no. I mean, you don't fly Alaska enough for it to matter. You probably have, I think you have American Airlines status.

I do. So you could use that for when you're flying any one world carrier. So that's ridiculous. But for you, of course you should do it. That'll be great content for the podcast and for the blog. Absolutely. You love Hawaii. You can earn some of those aloha polar bear miles with that trip. So yes, do it. He says yes. He says yes. We'll see what the missus has to say about flying all the way to Hawaii for a short period of time. But but yeah, it crosses my mind that it could be interesting nonetheless.

And the reason I say that, of course, is because if you have the Alaska Airlines cards and you have the associated companion certificate, which if you've had the card for a long time is automatic. And if you've only gotten it in the last couple of years, last few years here, then you have to do six K spend in order to get it. But the thing that makes those particularly interesting is that both people flying receive full Alaska Airlines mileage credit. So even though the companion ticket's only a hundred bucks, the companion also earns the miles. So we would both earn the miles and the status. But like Greg said, it's probably unnecessary, but also kind of fun. Well, let me know when you're gone. Maybe I'll go. Maybe I'll go too. I think I'm somewhere close to earning go. Maybe I'll go too. I think I'm somewhere close to earning 20K status for next year too. So there you go.

There you go. So maybe we'll be on a mileage run to Hawaii one of these days and record a show from there. All right. Well, I think that probably wraps up our main event, right? And I think that's about the end of that. So that brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week was one that I found interesting, and this is going to be kind of niche, but nonetheless, for those of us that like the game, it'll be interesting to learn a thing that may or may not be applicable here. So somebody writes in and says, I've been a daily

reader of the blog for a few years. This is my first mailbag question. I recently used my Amex Platinum to pay for the tax on an award ticket. I noticed a charge for travel delay for $9.95 two days later. I searched your site, but didn't return anything. If there's a post on this, please point me there. Question is, doesn't Amex Platinum already have travel cancellation and eruption insurance and trip delay insurance covered? What does this travel delay coverage cover? Should I call them to dispute this and unenroll in it? Do you have any idea what this is all about, Craig? I don't. I'm hoping you do, because I don't think you'd bring it up,

just assuming I would know the answer here. No, I wouldn't have in this case. Sometimes there are times when I do that, but this was one where I did not. But rather, I looked at it and when I first saw the question come in, I thought to myself, this person must have checked a box to buy travel insurance. So, that was my first thought. During the checkout process, oftentimes there's a box that's like, insure my trip for just whatever it is. And so, I was thinking they must have done that and just bought the travel insurance through whatever airline. And so, I thought that's probably the most likely thing. Then I went back and I was thinking they must have done that and just bought the travel insurance through whatever airline. And so I thought that's probably the most likely thing.

Then I went back and I was like, oh, man, let me give it a Google anyway. Let me Google the phrase like Amex 995 trip delay charge or something along those lines. And I came across some old threads on Reddit and Flyer Talk. And so apparently, if I'm correct, and this isn't apparently because like Greg, when I saw this, I did not know about this. So this is what I've picked up in a little bit of Googling and what I assume is the case. Long ago, the Amex Platinum card used to come with a benefit that my understanding is that when you bought an airline ticket, they would automatically charge you $10 for trip coverages. Baggage insurance is what most people seem to refer to as a 995. They call that a benefit? They call that a benefit because they would automatically recognize that you're buying an

airline ticket and you must want that insured. So apparently this was a benefit that some people have been grandfathered into. So my guess is that this person writing in has an old platinum card of some sort that had this benefit turned on when they got it. And surely, yeah, they advertised that as a benefit. Hey, you can get trip delay coverage. You don't have to do anything. It was just automatic. I can't believe that that was advertised as a benefit, but apparently it was. And the more important thing here for you to know is that, yes, it is possible to turn that off. So I think what I read is you have to call Amex Assurance, which is Amex's travel insurance arm in order to get it turned off. But I'd probably start by calling the number on the

back of your card and just talking to somebody from Amex and seeing if you can turn that off there. So you're right. The Amex Platinum card should come with automatic trip delay and baggage insurance and all that. Although I don't know for sure whether that applies retroactively if you've got one of these old cards that used to charge you $10 a pop for trip coverage. So you may want to double check what your card does cover with an Amex wrap and better yet, get it in writing, do it through chat or through an email or something, a secure message type of a thing to get in writing as to what your card does cover, because I'm assuming that it is an older card. And there are some older cards that stick around for a long time and may have different benefits. So worth checking on all that. If it were a new

platinum card, then yes, I'd be very confident that that's all included. At any rate, if you don't want to get charged 10 bucks every time you buy an airline ticket, then definitely give them a call and ask them to turn that off because you don't need to have that. And I would hate that because I like to book awards and things like that that I may cancel later on. And I assume that they do not refund your $10 when you cancel your ticket. So it seems like a horrible benefit to have ever offered. But yeah. But also along the lines of asking to have it turned off, I mean, just ask for it to be credited back to you too. They should be able to do that pretty easily, I would expect. So that's really interesting. I didn't know anything about that. It's amazing what a little Googling can

uncover. I noticed you didn't Bing it because of the problems with Bing. I'm sorry. After all of your help, Dan, I should have Binged that one. I'll make sure to Bing something for next week. But no, I unfortunately put that one through the Google machine. But good to know that when you do see odd things like that, sometimes there are odd grandfathered benefits and sometimes they really are good benefits on old cards. So it's worth knowing what your card has or doesn't have and how that can sometimes vary from the current iteration of the card because there are other cards where that'll be the case too, where if you have a really old one, you may have some benefits that a new one wouldn't have. So I thought it was worth

mentioning for that. And for anybody who does have an old platinum card that makes narrow line charges like, what is this $10? Well, there you have it. Apparently it was a old benefit of the car. So that brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, you can follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group to discuss this type of stuff all day every day. And wherever you're watching or listening again, don't forget to like this show, give us 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 that you'd like

us to consider for a giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Aloha, polar bears. Well done. Well played.