Frequent Miler on the Air - Wringing value from United miles | Ep228 | 11-11-23

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

United Mileage Plus is an extremely popular program, but how can you get the best value out of the miles? This week, we talk about using flexible awards to your advantage, cheap intra-European awards, the Excursionist Perk, and a lot more. 00:00 Intro 01:20 Giant Mailbag #1: Can we get a Delta-free podcast? 02:35 Giant Mailbag #2 03:48 What crazy thing . . . did Delta do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/deltas-window-seat-shop-of-horrors/ 06:46 Card Talk: United Quest card https://frequentmiler.com/uaq/ 11:33 Mattress Running the Numbers: Citi transfer bonus to Accor Live Limitless https://frequentmiler.com/50-transfer-bonus-from-citi-to-accor-live-limitless-get-1-6-cents-per-point/ 17:34 Award Talk 18:00 Bilt adds Marriott as a transfer partner https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-bonvoy-added-as-bilt-rewards-transfer-partner/ 19:40 Marriott's secret award chart https://frequentmiler.com/marriotts-secret-award-chart/ 23:03 Marriott Choice Benefit changes https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-say-quiet-part-out-loud-with-new-upgrade-award-enhancements/ https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-choice-benefits-now-give-1000-off-mattress-bed-rather-than-40/ 29:24 Book JetBlue with Qatar Avios https://frequentmiler.com/book-jetblue-including-mint-with-qatar-avios/ https://frequentmiler.com/uh-oh-did-qatar-create-a-new-jetblue-award-chart/ 35:56 Main Event: Wringing value from United Miles 37:00 First up: the bad stuff 40:20 Higher award prices, but not bad value 41:40 Best uses of United miles 41:46 Dynamic pricing can work in your favor 44:35 Free changes and cancellations 48:55 Cheap intra-Europe flights (from 6K miles) 50:04 Sao Paulo to/from South Africa for 50K miles in business class 50:40 Fly across the length of Africa for less than 25K in economy or 50K in business class 52:15 United Excursionist Perk https://frequentmiler.com/maximizing-and-understanding-united-excursionist-perks/ https://frequentmiler.com/saving-thousands-of-miles-with-united-excursionist-perk/ https://frequentmiler.com/united-excursionist-perk-maps-visualize-regions-to-optimize-awards/ https://frequentmiler.com/leveraging-the-united-excursionist-perk-to-save-miles/ 57:42 Question of the Week: Will a bank extend the minimum spending requirement period? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, ringing value from United Miles. United doesn't necessarily have the most valuable miles out there,

but there are good ways to get great value from those miles. We will dig into that in today's main event. It's going to be fun because United does have some great sweet spots. Although, like you said, I don't usually think of them these days apart from using their site because it's got a good search tool. But then it's because I don't have a lot of United miles. And a few times lately, I've regretted that I didn't have enough United miles. So we'll talk more about that a little bit later. But first, I want to remind you that if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to hit like, subscribe, enable notifications, we appreciate all of those things. And remember that we keep the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip over a section, you don't

really want to hear one or you really want to hear another, you want to go back and listen to something again a second time in order to totally take it in or remind yourself of a detail. Just check the show notes wherever you're listening to this or watching the show. We always have links to those different timestamps. So check that out. So let's get into today's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail. We've got two pieces of giant mailbag all right today's giant mail we've got two pieces of giant mail today first comes from Tom Tom says podcast 225 90 about Delta podcast 226 card talk is about Delta cards podcast 227 guess what card talk is about Delta cards again. Can we get a Delta-free podcast someday? Oh, gosh, I hope so. Well, Tom, apparently not because we just talked about Delta reading your mail. So, yeah.

So, you know, I guess Tom is maybe not the biggest Delta fan in the world. And I, I can understand, uh, people are not always into Delta. And so it's understandable to want to get into some other things. Um, but, uh, just, just for fun, I hacked into Tom's computer systems. And what I did was I made sure that every single podcast he gets from now on will be a Delta podcast. But for everybody else, there will be plenty of non-Delta content to go. So no worries there. All right. Let's get into the next piece of giant mail. Next piece is from Lee. And Lee says in the podcast, this was last week, you said that the reserve card will afford 10 Sky Club visits per year effective 2025. Wait, wait, wait, Craig, are you talking about Delta again? Delta. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. Only Tom is hearing this, by the way. All right. Remember, you know, I hacked into Tom's system.

So if you're hearing this, you must be listening from Tom's computer or phone. Okay. Based on the revised benefits, it will be 15 Sky Club visits per year effective 2025, or did I misunderstand? No, Lee, you did not misunderstand. We goofed. I goofed. when Delta first made changes and announced changes to Sky Club access for 2025, they said that the Delta reserve card would offer 10 Sky Club visits.

That's what I said last week, even though I knew full well that they had changed that to 15. So Lee, you're right. And thank you for that correction. Well done. Thank you very much for that. All right.

So now that we're done talking about delta we can move on to this week's what crazy thing so greg tell me what crazy thing did delta do this again just for tom what crazy thing did delta do delta opened the window seat shop at JFK and online with a promo to earn MQDs. Those are dollars towards elite status, basically. To earn MQDs between November 14th and the 30th of this year. You earn one MQD for every dollar spent. That's not crazy at all. What's crazy is the timing of this year. You earn one MQD for every dollar spent. That's not crazy at all. What's crazy is the timing of this. So as we get towards the end of the year, Delta flyers are seeing in

their Delta accounts how many MQDs they need to reach the next tier of elite status. And so they're on the lookout for ways to earn more MQDs. Along comes this promo just in time. But the promo, you have to be careful and read that the promo, the MQDs count towards 2025 status, which means that you're not going to get those MQDs until next year. In 2024, they'll start to appear in your account. They won't help you at all right now. So if you're, you know, a thousand MQD short of status right now, don't go, you know, running to the to the what is it called again? The window shop of horrors to to buy a thousand dollars worth of stuff. It's not going to help you this year. It'll only help you next year. Window shop of horrors. worth of stuff. It's not going to help you this year. It'll only help you next year.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Well done. Well done, Delta, except not. Yeah, that is nuts. When I saw the email, I kind of ignored it because I don't really pay attention to Delta status, but I definitely made the assumption that it was to earn MQTs for this year, just based on my quick glance at it. And I can't be the only one. So so, yeah. So even though Tom hates Delta, doesn't want us to talk about Delta, I think it's important to mention that because I feel like a lot of people are going to be really upset when they find out that the overpriced stuff that they bought that they thought would earn them elite status isn't going to do it. Yeah, yeah. That's nuts. You know, some readers pointed out, well, it does say in big letters that it's for 2025 status, but I promise you that most frequent flyers do not understand that, what that means,

won't notice that. You know, you're focused on getting MQDs now. You see an opportunity to get MQDs now. People are going to miss it. And I'm surprised that Delta wants to confuse things like that. That's just crazy. Me too. It seems like to be a fly on the wall for all of the angry phone calls they're going to get on people who earned MQDs in November and they're not going to count until sometime next year. Like I just, oh man. Right. I feel bad for the customer service

people fielding those calls. Wacky. All right. Yeah, wacky stuff. Crazy, crazy. All right. So that brings us to this week's card talk. And for this week's card talk, we're going to talk about the United Quest card. Yeah. All right. The United Quest card is the United's mid-tier card. So it's annual fee, $250 per year, which might sound a lot for an airline card, but you'll see it has some good perks to make up for that. The card earns 3x for United spend and 2x for all other travel and for dining and select streaming services. And then of course, 1x everywhere else. If you're into

earning elite status, it earns 500 PQPs for mere qualifying points per $12,000 spend. That's a lot of spend to get only 500 PQPs. But if you're really, really into United status, maybe it's worth it. Some notable perks. $125 in credits for United purchases each card member year. So just by using the card to purchase United tickets, you'll get $125 back. You'll also get up to 10,000 points back, 10,000 United miles back per year. When you book two award tickets, Flying United, you'll get 5,000 points for each of the first awards that

you book each card member year. So before we talk about other perks, we're talking about for regular United Flyers who both book paid travel and award travel, talking about pretty much getting the cost of the card back in the form of a rebate, $125 rebate and 10,000 miles back as well. All right. Some, some other perks, uh, first and second check bag free. Uh, you do need to pay for the flight with your United card, uh, to get that perk. So that's, uh, that's too bad. That's unusual for a, uh, airline card. Usually you don't have to's unusual for an airline card. Usually you don't have to do that. Most of the airline cards, you just get a free check back by having it.

Like if you have an American Airlines card, it just prints on your boarding pass that you're a cardholder. And so that's all you need. And you'll get your free check back. And that's unfortunate because, of course, you could use another card that earns a category bonus on travel that earns as much or better than the United card does. For instance, if you use the Sapphire Reserve, you'd earn three ultimate rewards points per dollar, which you could transfer United if you really wanted three United miles, or you can transfer anywhere else and you'd get better travel protections using the Sapphire Reserve. So it's too bad that you have to use the card to pay for your flights. But

then again, if you're booking a domestic flight, I don't worry as much about travel protections often when I'm traveling domestically because I figure I could probably get myself a hotel or whatever if I need to in most situations. Right. And plus, most international flights include check bags anyway. So it really isn't that hard of a thing. For me, it'd be more about remembering to do do it because I use my Safra Reserve card for travel just as by default. But, you know, then again, I'd be using, if I had this card, I'd be using it for United flights because of the $125 in credits.

So, you know, I think it works for most people who have the card and travel United. It also gives you $100 global entry fee credit and 25% back on United in-flight purchases or in the than $125 right there. So you're going to buy one United Cash Ticket and redeem for two awards per year. If you get even 1.25 cents per mile out of those miles, which is pretty regularly possible with United Miles, then you're talking about basically getting the annual fee back between the two 5,000 mile rebates and the 125 bucks. So if you also get

some free check bags or any other benefit out of holding the card, then that's just kind of icing on the cake. So I think if you fly United a fair amount, if you're going to pay for at least one cash ticket a year and redeem miles twice a year for a flight on United Metal, then yeah, this is probably the best of the United cards to have. In my case, it doesn't make sense because I don't pay for a United flight every year, nor do I redeem miles for United awards every year. I mean, there are times when I do, but not again and again. So it's not a long-term keeper for me,

but for a regular United flyer, I think it almost becomes a no-brainer. Yeah, totally agree. It's a good solid card for a regular united flyer but for for people who don't fly united enough i wouldn't want to spend 250 for it exactly all right so that's wrapping up that let's talk about mattress running the numbers this week for mattress running the numbers we have city out with a brand new transfer partner a core live limitless i almost said the club of core because that was the old name. And then I just remembered.

Oh, no, they changed that to Accor Live Limitless, Live Limitless, whatever they want to call it. You have a transfer bonus going to Accor, to ALL through November 30th. Normally, it's two city points to one Club Accor point. Is that right? But with 50% bonus, you'll get basically transfer a thousand city points to get 750 Club Accor or rather Accor Live Limitless points. Tell me, Greg, is this interesting? Is it worth it? Is it any good? What's going on?

Yeah, let me let me explain this. First of all, in the intro, you said that city has a new transfer. You're right. You transfer bonus transfer bonus. Thank you. OK, so Acc core points are worth two euro cents each so so the normal transfer uh from city to a core uh gets you basically one euro cent per city point in value that's the normal uh. And one euro cent is worth right now about 1.07 US cents. So

it's not a good value without the bonus, that's for sure, because getting only 1.07 cents per point value from your city points, you could do way better than that. With the 50% bonus though, you're looking at 1.6 cents per point value from your city points. Points do expire after 365 days of inactivity. So you have to keep that in mind. If you want to just transfer for some day, you might have to transfer a little bit every year until you actually use those points up. So just something to keep in mind. A core points there. I now understand. I think I said this wrong on a past show. I now understand there's sort of two ways to redeem the core points. One is and this is what I've said before, and I thought it was the only

way. One is to, as you're checking out of your hotel, when you go to pay the bill, you could redeem your points for a discount off the bill at that rate of two euro cents per point. It turns out they also have the ability to let you redeem points when you're booking online in advance. So you can redeem in advance as well. So that's pretty good. It's actually more flexible than most points. Most points you can't redeem as you're checking out of the hotel. So this gives you two options. Yeah. So so solid value for your city points. Yeah. And I think the interesting thing here, there's two interesting things.

I think interesting thing. Number one is that you can obviously book whatever room you want and get that same consistent value out of the points. So if you need a suite or you need a larger room or whatever it might be for your needs, well, you can do that and still get the same value. Whereas a lot of programs, if a suite is even possible to redeem with rewards, it's not necessarily at a consistent value. Hyatt obviously offers good opportunities

to redeem for suites. But even then, depending on the cash rates, it's not always a good deal to redeem for a suite. Whereas you're always gonna get a pretty good deal at 1.6 cents per point in terms of what you're getting going to get a pretty good deal at one point six cents per point in terms of what you're what you're getting in value out of your city points. So that's number one. And for family travelers, being able to redeem for suites is nice and not having to hope for availability. That's number one. Piece number two about this that I like and find

interesting and useful for the average person is that you don't necessarily need enough to cover the entire cost. So, you know, if you only have enough points to cover half the cost of the room, fine, you can reduce your cash costs by 50%. You can't do that with many other programs. So, you know, that I think also makes this interesting. And then actually, the third piece, which kind of goes along with that is the ability to redeem your points at good value towards whatever else you charge to your room, you get a massage, you order room service, whatever else you're still going to get again, that same consistent 1.6 cents per city point if you take advantage of the transfer bonus. So I actually think this one's pretty interesting. I think I've twice in my life stayed in an Accor

hotel, so I'm probably not going to do this. But if they're anywhere where you need to be and you have a lot of city points, I think this is pretty reasonable. I would generally rather redeem my city points for good flight rewards, but I think this is a pretty reasonable use. Yeah. You know, Accor owns Fairmont now, so that's something that probably a lot of listeners are at least somewhat familiar with the Fairmont brand. But it's true. Most of Accor, brands are not in the U S and North America. They're, they're more around the world. Many, many in Europe.

And one of the things I agree with everything you said, Nick, one of the things I find very interesting is, you know, Citi had just come out with the transfer to leading hotels of the world, to LHW. And there, the usual value of Citi points is 1.6. So it's very interesting that this transfer bonus comes out right on the heels of that and gives another opportunity to book hotels at 1.6 cents per point value with your city points. I hope this is a trend that's going to continue. I think that would be a great addition to, you know, cities program if they somehow either make this transfer bonus permanent. City, are you listening? Please do. Or introduce other ways of getting 1.6 uh value for hotels would be would be nice i i think that's terrific yep very good all right so that was

matroni the numbers let's talk about this week's award talk we've got all kinds of things to talk about with related to awards this week um first up actually let me just preface and say it's going to be almost all marriott all the time in today's award topic almost as bad as delta oh right all right but we've got to get through this uh built they wait why am i talking built if it's all about marriott what's going on're talking about Marriott. What's going on? Because they've added Marriott as a transfer partner. So you can either transfer your built points one-to-one to Marriott or 20,000 built points to 25,000 Marriott points. So essentially you're getting a 25% bump in, not a 25%, yeah, 25% bump in the

points transfer when you do it in 20K blocks. And really quickly, is that worth doing? No, probably not. No, don't do it. Don't do it. Marriott points aren't worth as much as you could easily get from any other built transfer partners. Transfer instead to Hyatt. If you're doing hotels, transfer instead to any number like American or Turkish, or there's just so many good airline programs that Bill can transfer to. Yeah. I wouldn't generally do it either, but actually for a different reason, partially because of what Greg said, but partially because you could buy the Marriott points for what they're, I think they're on sale maybe right now as we speak again for nine tenths of a cent per point. So why would I use those valuable points like Greg said that can be transferred to other partners when I can do that?

So even if you have a good Marriott redemption, I just booked one this week where I was getting two cents per point in value out of my Marriott points, but I still wouldn't transfer built points for that. I'd just buy them at nine tenths of a cent per point if I really needed more of them and keep my built points for all of those more valuable uses. So yeah, don't transfer built to Marriott. Okay. So why are we so down on Marriott? Because they gave up their award chart and just started sort of randomly raising prices, moved to a dynamic pricing model, it seemed. Wait a second. I read a really interesting post this week from some guy who said that they still have an award chart. Right.

So that's what we want to talk about is behind the scenes, they still kind of have one. They still categorize the hotels. So it used to be the published award chart showed categories one through eight, but now they have categories one through nine. And what it is, is that there's a way of seeing on the website by looking at the source, the page source, what category a given hotel is in. And that can also tell you with some experimentation anyway, what the possible range of award prices are for that hotel. And we've published a chart that shows what the sort of likely range is for each category. And I'm saying likely because these are just the observed, like, you know, people have seen as high as this amount or as low as this amount, but it's really just a

sort of fishing expedition to figure out what is the secret award chart, but we just know it's there really. But we have a, we have a good stab at it on the website now, thanks to another website that found this and did the hard work we just reported on it. So check out that post for details and a link to the originator of that award chart. I think that's super interesting because at the very least,

it gives you an idea of whether there's any hope of being able to use your free night certificate at a certain place, right? Because maybe you've seen it. I mean, there's a couple of properties I've been looking at lately that are like always 102,000, 101,000 points where I can't quite use my 85K cert. So I'd love to know whether that's ever going to be possible or not. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It also shows sort of at the other end of the scale, some categories, categories one through four,

if they're peak price, so if they're always at the top of the scale, you can use your 35K free night certificate plus points in some cases, because you're allowed to add up to 15,000 points for any hotel category one through four, which is the same. The same is true for a 40 K certificate or a 50 K certificate that those are the only categories that are, you're guaranteed to get. And I found that interesting that moving all the way up to a 50 K free night certificate doesn't guarantee access to more hotels. I mean, you probably will get access to more as long as they're not peak priced,

but you're not guaranteed more. So that's also useful to know, though, for planning purposes, too, because, right, like, like, I know I have a 35k certificate coming soon and there's a hotel I'm looking at and I've been worried, oh, are they going to, you know, stretch beyond where they're going to be too many points? Like, is there a chance that they may increase by a few thousand points more where I won't be able to use my certificate? Obviously, they might get hooked up between now and then, but being able to see this information tells me, okay, well, it'll be okay

as long as there's an award available, then it will be within that 15,000 points, right? So that's really useful. Really useful knowledge. It sure is. That's not all. Okay, now, it's not all for Marriott. For those who have elite status,

you may know that once you hit 50 nights, you get to pick choice benefits. And then again, at 75 nights, you get to pick more choice benefits. And there've been a couple changes to the choice benefits. First up, Sweet Night Awards have been renamed to Nightly Upgrade Awards. So they were not renamed to Bodacious Bedroom Bumps or anything like that, that we predicted.

Nightly Upgrade Awards. What's happening there? The good news, I guess, is that some of the brands that used to be exempt from being used with the Sweet, what were called Sweet Night Awards, are now, what's the opposite of exempt? Zempt. They're now zempt. They're now zempt. Officially endorsed. So that includes Ritz-Carlton edition and some others. So that's good news. They are now stressing that you can use them for not just suites, but also premium rooms.

And the reason I phrased it as they're now stressing that is that's not really a change. That was true before as well. So it's just them acknowledging that really, that it was, I guess, poorly named before. Now the bad news is that previously, the Sweet Night Awards, they wouldn't even start looking for your ability to upgrade until five days before your stay.

Well, they reduced that to three days. What what what's going on there, Mary? I mean, so we've criticized Marriott for for waiting until five days before, you know, compared to like IHG, you can confirm 14 days before you know compared to like ihg you can confirm 14 days before hyatt you could confirm the year before whenever you book the thing uh what's with that i don't know why they're going in the wrong direction uh you know what they are i don't agree that that's the bad news here so and here's why i don't think i've ever had a sweet night award confirmed five days in advance like anytime they've confirmed, it's always been probably three days or sooner anyway. So to me, it's not a big functional

difference. Like it's the difference in what's possible, but not really a functional difference to me. I think the worst thing was just them really putting in words that, hey, they don't have to offer sweets anymore. Now you can use them for premium awards, which you're totally right, was always the case. You could always use them for like a corner room or, you know, like a slightly premium. But but because they called them a sweet night award, I think it at least probably encouraged some hotels to be like, oh, OK, we got to offer a suite for this. Whereas now it kind of puts an official writing. Hey, hotels, you just offer whatever you want. You don't want to offer a suite. No problem. Just offer a corner room or whatever else. It gives them the green light to not offer suites like, you know.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I think which is the possibility. They had announced before, or at least they had leaked before, the idea that they were going to be paying hotels more for when these are used. And why that would be good news, if that's true, is then more hotels will allow them. So right now, it's not just the Ritz-Carlton's and the additions of the world that don't allow them. It's any hotel that doesn't want to offer this capability doesn't have to offer it. And that drives me nuts. So one of the places I regularly use my Marriott points and free night certificates is the Inn at Bay Harbor in Northern Michigan.

And way back when I was able to use Sweet Night Awards to confirm a window, a window, a lake view, which is what I want. You ruined it for everybody, didn't you? I ruined it for everyone. I don't actually care about the suite. I'm usually just there with my wife. What I is the lake view not the parking lot view and uh if if this will encourage them if they're going to get more for it and so it'll encourage them to bring that back um then then i'm pretty happy um so all right so yeah that i think that's a good contrary point. So change is coming to the suite rather to the nightly upgrade awards, as they will be called very soon.

So that's all our Marriott news. It's fit to print real quick. It's not. It's not. What? Oh, my goodness. One more change. Right. The choice benefit change benefits. You want that Marriott bed? You want that Weston heavenly bed? Previously, there was a choice benefit to get 40% off. It's now changed to $1,000 off. So if you could find a relatively inexpensive bed that you want, $1,000 off may be a lot more than 40%. But then watch out for hefty shipping charges. It's going to wipe out a lot of that. I don't really see any great value there, except for those who are really into Marriott beds. I don't know. You know, I feel like I've enjoyed some of them before, but the thousand dollars off isn't really a thousand. I think it's the key point.

The hefty shipping charges you're talking about. But what do we find? Like three hundred dollars and change in shipping charges. So, so you know you're really talking about maybe 650 off so it's back to all well i mean you're going to be paying the shipping anyway so it is thousand dollars off what you would have paid uh without it um although it doesn't it doesn't uh combine with with sales and and other discounts So from that point of view, it's not really $1,000 off. I agree.

Well, I guess what I'm saying though, is that if you, well, okay, you're right. You're right. If you were going to order it from them, you're right. You would pay it either way. Nevermind. Nevermind my point.

All right. So now I think we're done with Marriott. You can get $1,000 off of that if you want, but we're done. For the rest of the show. We're putting that to bed along with the $1,000 off. Let's talk about Cutter Avios.

Cutter Airways Privileged Club, Avios this week launched a new capability to bed along with the thousand dollars off let's talk about cutter obvious cutter airways privilege club obvious this this week launched a new capability to book jet blue flights with your cutter obvious or qatar obvious or however you want to pronounce you you've done the whole how to pronounce uh i'm not even gonna step into your qr obvious how to how to redeem your obvious through that program from that country in the Middle East that nobody seems to be able to agree on the pronunciation of. So this is exciting news, right? It was at first anyway. So Qatar has a distance based award chart and

it makes it would make some JetBlue flights very inexpensive with points. In fact, we were seeing and people were booking as low as, I think it was, what, $38,750 or something like that. Avios, so that's cutter points, for one way between Boston and Dublin, Ireland. So that is a dirt cheap award price. A lot of people booked it, but that was just that one day, I think. And then someone said,

ooh, what's going on here? Yeah, they took that ability away. I mean, it was about 12 hours or so-ish, I think, that it was bookable on the website. So when we first posted, if you read my first post and didn't check, didn't see the update, then when I first posted this, I said that they were going to be probably high surcharges because JetBlue has really high surcharges on their flights outside of the United States within the United States, no surcharges, but on their flights to Europe, if you look it up and you'll

see there's really high carrier imposed surcharges. but on their flights to Europe, if you look it up, you'll see there's really high carrier-imposed surcharges. However, they weren't adding those on the website. I didn't even realize initially you could book these right on the main homepage, but you could book some of them on the homepage, like the Boston and Dublin, and the taxes were only $10.10. So it was 38,750 avios, which you could combine your avios. So if you've got British Airways avios or Iberia avios or Aer Lingus, you can combine those and use them in one shot. So it was a fantastic deal.

But yeah, they then took those airports out altogether so that you couldn't find first. Initially, they took them out so you couldn't even search them. And then they put them back in and said, OK, you can search them. But the JetBlue flights weren't showing up anymore. And then there was a manual booking process. And there they took them back in and said, OK, you can search them. But the JetBlue flights weren't showing up anymore. And then there was a manual booking process. And there they took out the airport codes for Paris and Dublin and Amsterdam so that you couldn't search those routes for a while. And when they finally put them back, it looks like they increased prices substantially, like 78,000 Avios one way instead of the 38,750 one way on that Boston to Dublin route. So it seems that this is going to be mostly sort of a nothing burger, although even at the 78,000 obvious one way, if Boston to Dublin and

New York to Paris and Amsterdam remain at that 78,000 obvious one way, if you get a transfer bonus of like, let's say 30%, right? I can't even do that math right off the top of my head. So I'm going to have to pull up the calculators. But $60,000. Suffice to say, it can be a reasonable price with a transfer bonus. Yeah, with a 30% bonus. Yep. Yeah.

And there are frequently transfer bonuses to some Avios program, if not all of them. So you might get a transfer bonus to British Airways, and then you can move those points to Qatar, for example, to book something like this. Now, we should stress, though, as we're recording this, we don't really know. So the website claims it's $78,000 for these flights to Europe for business class one way, but it seems weird because of the published word chart. There's no $78,000 anything in the published word chart. There's no 78K anything in the published word chart. So we don't know. Is that the new price? Is that another mistake? Is that really what's going forward? So we'll let you know as future shows what the real deal is. But right

now, this is a developing story. Yep. Yep. Yep. Good point. Glad you mentioned that because we definitely don't know what's up. But however it shakes out, it's one to keep an eye on, though, I think for sure, because JetBlue's mint, especially to Europe, looks like a really nice product. And then, of course, domestically, it's very highly regarded also. So keep that in mind. Do you want to hear a sad story about that little deal that was temporarily available? Tell me the sad story. I was trying to organize a trip with a friend, a friend's family, to Ireland. And so, you know.

Wow, that's perfect. Yeah, so I texted her. I was like, 38,750 points one way. Let's book this. And at first, she's like, oh, okay, I'm going to look up dates. And later in the day, I texted her saying, we really need to get on this. I don't think this will last beyond today. I actually, like it was such a good deal. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Greg. You made a prediction, didn't you? good deal i saw like everything was here here's the other part it wasn't just award space that was available it was like all right every day pretty much was available so that was just not

sustainable i knew that um and i text her thinking i would get something back soon i forgot that she was in south korea at the time so she was asleep so i didn't and so it got really late so it was like i don't know 11 p.. or 1130 p.m. By the time I remembered, like, oh, she's not you know, that's why she's not answering. And by then I was just like too tired to like book anything. And I'm just like, all right, I'll just take a chance and go to bed. But I don't think it'll be here tomorrow. And it wasn't. I did text her that. Anyway, that's a bummer. was right well yeah you know it's funny because i i booked it for my family of four uh under the same sort of a thought

as you you know i told my wife about it and we were planning on getting to europe differently and it totally changed like i had to go back and redo the entire plan for the trip after that because it it messed up other things that we were going to do. So I had to spend a whole bunch of time doing it. But I said, you know, I don't think this is going to last. This is pretty incredible. It's the best deal we're going to get. It's going to work out to be a lot better than what we were going to do otherwise. So it's worth the reorganization and the shuffling and we should do it today. And she was a little bit like, do we have to? And I was like, no, no, no, we have to figure this out like now because I don't think it's gonna last and we did so uh so i mean i i hit the jackpot on that one but there's plenty

of times i've been on the other side of that so you gotta jump good for you yeah lucky i'm glad you got in lucky for me all right let's get into today's main event today's main event ringing value from united miles. Yeah. All right. So United, there are many ways to get United Miles, first of all. So obviously there are several United credit cards and you can get the welcome bonuses or get points from spend. But also there are tons of chase cards that earn ultimate rewards points. And if you have the right chase cards that you can then transfer those points to multiple airline or hotel partners. And one of those airline partners is United. So you could transfer one-to-one from your chase points

to United. Also built. If you have built points, you could transfer those to United. Do not expect a transfer bonus from Chase or Built to United ever. Transfers to United are very popular with both programs. They're never going to do anything to encourage more of those, I promise you. So one-to-one is what you're going to get. Before we

talk about wringing value from United Miles, let's talk about some bad stuff. Let's talk about that wr that value out of you. So United has a dynamic pricing, so they can price whatever they want for their awards. They don't have an award chart anymore. And so, you know,

you, you get, you're going to pay whatever they, they ask for basically, if you're using your United miles. And what I hate about that, I'm going to say is if you only search once, it might give you the impression that prices are X, whereas maybe you just happen to search on the expensive day and you search tomorrow and all of a sudden they're going to be Y. But you might be discouraged and put off a United miles if you search at the wrong time. So keep in mind that because of the dynamic pricing, we don't like it because sometimes you're going to get a really bad deal,

but I don't like it also because sometimes it's going to give people the wrong impression, whether it's that the program is more competitive than it really is or less competitive, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. And the,

how do I say this? The, the, the dynamic nature is only somewhat dynamic. So you're going to see the same top prices often, especially with partner bookings. But there's still variability that I can't explain. And so I don't know exactly what's going on there, but regardless, even when the partner pricing is fairly fixed, it has gone up multiple times. And most recently, if I remember right, was this past summer of 2023 when they raised their international partner award pricing quite a bit. As a result of them doing that, they have higher award prices for

most flights, many flights, I don't know, most routes, I should say, than some competing programs. You'll often get better award prices with Air Canada, with Life Miles, certainly with ANA if you book round trip, and certainly with Turkish. The latter two do pass along fuel surcharges though, which can make them less of a good deal in certain circumstances. So yeah, so those are some negative things. But even when their award pricing is high, that doesn't mean that using the miles are a bad value. So I came up with a specific Sydney round trip, and I looked for business class when United had their saver level awards available in business class that they wanted. United wants 200,000 miles and $200 round trip for that flight. Let's look at the value of that. So you can do that for a lot less with some other

programs. For example, ANA would charge 120,000 miles, not 200,000 miles. But if you compare to cash prices, so United for that same exact flight wants nearly $13,000 for that round trip business class flight. So you're talking about over 6 cents per point. Again, even though this isn't the best award price you can get. Or if you look for as a different comparison, what's the best business class price I can get, nevermind it flying United or nonstop. If you're willing to do stops, I was looking at $6,000 roughly for the round trip, but that's still over 3 cents per point in value for United miles. So that's very good. So that's an example of what I mean by even bad pricing could give you good value. Right. So the point there is that you can get good value out of your United miles. They're not necessarily going to be the best

award price in terms of compared to other award programs that you could use for the same exact flights. However, even when you're getting a high award price, you're still getting great value out of your miles. So so United does offer that. And so if you're earning a lot of United miles because you fly United a lot for work and maybe you did get a couple of credit card bonuses along the way, you can still do pretty well. And we should also mention, and I think this is going to get, well, you know what? I was going to mention something else about why you may still want to book via United, but I see we actually have that in there.

So let's keep going. So, all right, we agree that you can get good value out of them. What are the best uses of United Miles? Okay. So even though I sort of put down the dynamic pricing before, sometimes that works in your favor. So you can look for economy flights for as low as 5,000 miles one way. So that's pretty darn good. And when they have award sales as well, you can look for sometimes get really good value from your points.

Another sort of category of ways in which you can get great value is with sort of real world use. So what do I mean by that? With United, if you're booking, let's say an international trip, maybe the flights that you found that are the international legs don't depart from your local airport. By using United Miles, that gives you access to United flights to connect to the departing airport. And so you will often find opportunities to get better connecting itineraries using your United miles than you would with other Star Alliance carriers, for example. And to bolster that, if you have a United credit card, that opens up more economy United award space for you. So those flights to get you, like for me to get from Detroit to Newark or to Chicago to get that better international flight, that little leg to get from Detroit to Newark or to Chicago to get that better international flight,

that little leg to get to Newark or Chicago is more likely to be available because I have a United credit card. And you've got to include the value of that when you're looking at the cost of awards. Because let's say you found an award from Chicago to Sydney. It was your Australia example, let's just say. And for 200,000 miles, you could get that. As an example, I'm not saying you actually can. I'm just saying, let's pretend that that were the case. Well, then in the real world, you would have to get

yourself a separate ticket from Detroit to Chicago. And so you've got to add that cost into your overall redemption if you don't have the ability to get the connector. And so I think the fact that you're booking with United Miles, you probably can include that connector, is what Greg's saying, from Detroit to Chicago. And if you have a credit card, it makes it even more likely. Whereas if you're using ANA at 120,000 miles round trip from Chicago to Australia,

you might have to figure out that way to get to Chicago separately. And so there's additional costs involved with positioning. So this eliminates some of the positioning costs and also the positioning stress, right? If your flight gets canceled or delayed or whatever else, you don't have to stress about it when it's all on one award. So there are some advantages there in terms of why you might want to use your United Miles. Absolutely. Plus just being sure that you can check your bags all the way through and just the whole thing makes makes things a lot less complicated when you could book your whole trip from one program. Here's the biggest thing to me that it's hard to put a like sort of a financial value on, but United has free changes and cancellations to all awards. And to me, that's huge.

I love that I am often looking at award flights, not really sure. I see something, looks good, maybe want to book it, but I'm not sure. I'm still working on my other plans. With United, I just won't even think about it. I'll just book it if I have enough United miles and worry about later if I'm going to cancel it or not. So that's awesome. It is. And this week I updated our, we have a post, a resource post about changing cancellation fees. And I updated it. And by the time this podcast publishes, I'll have republished it. So you can go back to the blog and find it.

And I learned something interesting. Not only do they offer free changes and cancellations, which, by the way, the major U.S. programs all do offer free cancellation in many situations, but not necessarily all. If you're on a Delta award that originates outside the United States, you are looking at change fees in a lot of cases or cancellation fees. With United, you don't have that on any of their awards. So that's definitely a positive. If you're somebody that books complicated things or one ways where you might book one direction from abroad to the United States, you still don't have to worry about

the cancellation fee with United, which is awesome. And I didn't realize you get your miles redeposited even with a no-show with United. It's $125 fee. If you forget to cancel your award or something happens and you don't get to the airport in time and can't cancel it in time for some reason, you can still get your miles back. I mean, $125 is not cheap, but that's much better than losing your 100,000 miles or whatever it might be. So I learned that I didn't realize that they had that $125 no show fee. So that's, I think,

another positive here. So yeah, I feel like this is why I often find myself wishing I had more United miles because there are situations where I'd love to book a backup that I can change or cancel for free if I find something better. Yeah. Yeah. And all of these things we've been talking about are also why I love United for booking positioning flights. So let's say I've booked with some other miles, a flight from Chicago or Newark or wherever, somehow I have to get to that airport before the flight. And what I like to do is book multiple ways that are freely cancelable. So for example, last time I did this, I was flying out of DC and that if that Delta flight had any problems, I would instead take that United flight and still get as the, basically the backup flight. And, um, and, and, and in that case, since Delta worked out fine, I just canceled my United flight and got back the miles and done.

It's, it's just a really good currency for the positioning flights. Yep. I agree. That's definitely something that I, I, that's the reason I often want it for those positioning flights, uh, where I know I can cancel it. And sometimes I'll book an award. Like I tend to anecdotally find better award availability out of Washington, D.C.

I don't know whether there's any pattern to that or not, but I find that pretty often. And I'm about an hour flight from Washington, D.C. So that's not terrible. And it's actually not that much farther to drive. It takes me three or four hours to get to the New York City airports. It takes me five, five and a half to get to Dulles. So it's like it's something that I could potentially do if I have to. But I would usually rather book a positioning flight of some sort. And so maybe I'll start with an award out of D.C. And I want a positioning flight because I think I might take that award. But then later on, I find something out of New York City and that's closer for me. So I'll book that New York City award. And if my positioning flight to D.C. was through United, it's an easy cancellation. So so I like that a lot. Absolutely. And you can also do this sort of thing within Europe because United has some good pricing for intra Europe flights as low as low as 6,000 points we've seen.

It seems like random to me. I haven't figured out what exactly the pattern is when you're going to see those really low prices, but they're there. And so that's terrific. Now, I know that there are low-cost carriers where you can get it's so cheap on cash, you might say 6,000 miles is not great value, but consider that this is fully refundable. So plans change. You're not going to see that with those low-cost carriers.

And often these are like regular economy, not sort of the equivalent of basic economy. So you're probably going to be able to carry on a bag for no extra fee, for example. Maybe select your seat. And also because that $6,000 value is more consistent on the routes where it's available, you may get it the day before departure, whereas you're not going to get a Ryan Air flight that's cheap the day before departure. So they can come in handy at the last minute too. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm going to mention one very, very specific sweet spot with United Miles. I've mentioned this before on the show. You can fly between Sao Paulo, Brazil, and South Africa for as low as 50,000 miles one way in business class. So this seems to be a route

that just when United increased their partner award pricing, they forgot about, I think. Yeah, I mean... I can't imagine there's that many people redeeming on this route, so it's probably a shame. Well, exactly, exactly. It's not a big loss to them if a few people do. So still, that's a nice use. You can also fly across the whole length of Africa for, uh, less than 25,000 points

in economy or about 50,000 points in business class. So this would be with United's partners. Uh, you could fly all the way from, you know, the Northern most tip to the Southern most, uh, uh, bottom like to Cape town or Johannesburg. And, and, uh, it's going to be around that price if Save Reward Availability is there. So that's pretty good. And that's pretty good. But of course, like a lot of the other things we've said, you can find other partners that charge less for those things. And so like ANA,

we mentioned before, and ANA charges 30,000 round trip in Africa. So just a few thousand miles more and you can get a round trip. And of course000 round trip in Africa. So, you know, just a few thousand miles more and you can get a round trip. And of course the carriers in Africa, at least, uh, Ethiopian doesn't have any surcharges. So I don't, I don't know for sure about Egypt air and South African airways doesn't have any surcharges that I know of. So, uh, so you may have some other options. Life miles also going to be pretty good in most of those cases. Uh, but like you said, it's pretty good value and even better in a minute when we get to the Explorist perk, I think is really where that stands out.

But we'll get there in a second. Let's talk about the next thing here you have on here is expensive awards. Oh, well, I actually already talked about this earlier that even awards like 100,000 points to Australia or New Zealand can offer great value compared to cash rates. But if you're starting with transferable points, you can probably transfer to another partner that would give you an even better value. Well, let's talk about that Explorers perk, because I think the Explorers perk, can you explain that in a simple way?

I'm going to try. So Explorers perk is designed to let you visit multiple cities when you're flying internationally. So the idea is, let's say you're flying to Europe from the US and you book a roundtrip flight, let's say, Sweden and you want to fly back from, I don't know, from Portugal. What you can do then is add a free one-way flight between Sweden and Portugal in the middle of your trip. So basically it's going to price like a straight up round trip business class, but you're getting that flight across Europe for free. And so the Explorer's Per as like a part of the world that's that's away from where you started. So in my example, I just gave you started in America. And so flying across Europe is something you could do. You can't go across soon. So you can't fly even from like Madrid to Casablanca, even though that's not that far. Those are in separate zones, so you can't do that as part of the Explorers perk.

And, you know, so there's various rules like that. But overall, it does mean you're basically adding a free flight in there other than any taxes and fees that would be incurred. Yeah. And so there, I feel, I feel like that could be quite useful in the right situations, especially for somebody in this, as you were talking about it, I was thinking about, I wonder if I can make this work. Somebody who visits Europe more than once in a year, you might be able to book a one way during part of your European trip, during the first trip, and then book the second part of that round trip during your later trip to Europe sometime down the road and get yourself a free trip within another region in the middle somewhere. You'll have to check out, Greg's got a post about this because it's really hard to explain, I think, in a couple of seconds

without showing some examples. But definitely, this could be worth it. It could be a good deal. Not an amazing deal, but a good deal. Right. Let me give another example of where you can get really good value. Let's say you're wanting to go to Africa. Mid to South Africa is the biggest zone that United has, where you can use your excursionist perk across the zone. And so just one example is let's say you want to visit both South Africa and the Seychelles. So you want to have a beachy vacation and more of a whatever, a safari vacation in South Africa. You could fly, let's say, from the U.S. to Johannesburg, stop there, go to Kruger and do your safari and then fly on to the Seychelles from there. That part's going to be free and then return home from the Seychelles.

And so that'll all price as a single round trip and you won't be paying extra for that flight in the middle. And you can get a little bit more creative because the award needs to begin and end in the same region, right? But it doesn't necessarily, you don't necessarily have to connect the dots the way that, so the way Greg's explaining is the way it's intended. But if you read the post, you'll see that you don't have to connect the dots quite as smoothly and you can get that flight to the Seychelles for free, uh, by being a little creative anyway, with how you play the tail end of the award. Absolutely.

Um, you can, and, and, and, uh, I don't want to confuse things by trying to explain how far you can trick it, but just a really, really simple example of making the trip I just gave a little more interesting is fly into Cape Town, then take like the luxury blue train from there to Johannesburg and then do your free flight from Johannesburg to the Seychelles or one of the many islands that are along the East Coast, or maybe even you want to cut back all the way to the West Coast of Africa, the sort of Central West Coast. There's so many things you can do and make really a big, big trip out of this one round trip award. Yeah. And actually it's within Africa is exactly where I'm thinking about using the Explorer's perk now that we're talking about it. I'm like,

because there are some really good ways to use that. And flights within Africa can be really expensive. So if you're planning a trip to Africa, it could pay off to check out the Explorers perk and put some thought into how you might be able to leverage it. Because if you're looking at cash prices, you'd be really surprised sometimes at how much relatively short flights within Africa, or certainly how much longer flights within Africa can cost if you're booking with cash. So worth digging into the Explorers perk more, I would say. And there'll be a link to the post about that

in the show notes, just like there'll be links to lots of the other topics that we've talked about. All right. I think that wraps up our main event with ways to get great value out of your United Miles,

to ring value out of your United Miles. So I think that means it's time for this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week came in from a friend of mine, actually, a friend of mine that has very recently gotten into credit card rewards and kind of dove in headfirst, asking me lots of questions about different things like manufactured spending and this and that. And so I got a question from her this week that I thought was an interesting one. I'm trying to back up to see exactly how she wrote it because I know I was going to paraphrase. I'll just paraphrase. She asked me, so I missed the spending window by a few days or I missed the spending window on a Capital One Spark card. So she'd opened a Capital One Spark card. She didn't get the spend completed.

Now, she had a reason for that. She had had the card in PayPal, and somehow when she was using PayPal at checkout, it looked like she was using the Spark card, but it was sending the charges to a different card, is the short version of the story. So she thought she had put enough spend on the card, but as it turned out, she didn't,

because those charges went to the wrong card. So she actually called Capital One and confirmed with them that, yes, she was already three days outside of the end of the spending window by the time she figured out that she hadn't met the minimum spend. Is there any chance that Capital One will extend the spending window so that she can meet the minimum spending requirements and earn the welcome bonus. I feel like this is a trick question because the obvious answer is no, banks don't do that. But for those listening to the podcast, Nick is grinning away over there. And so I'm thinking maybe she doesn't know that there's a loose connection to Greg Davis Keene via her friend and and because Capital One was certainly turned her down if they'd known about that. Right. Well, for sure. Sure. Thank goodness. And I go on six degrees to Kevin Bacon

and Greg, the frequent mylar, otherwise we'd all be in trouble. All right. Dish it out, Nick. What's going on? Yeah. So I told her exactly what you were thinking and exactly what anybody else was thinking when they heard she missed the spending window. You didn't even probably need to listen to the rest of the question there to be like, oh, yeah, no, that's a rookie mistake. And unfortunately, we've all probably made it or almost made that mistake once before. And yeah, no, there's no bank is going to extend it. The first actually, she didn't tell me it was a Capital One card initially. She just asked about our banks, you know, are willing to extend the spending window. And I said, well, which issuer? Because I thought maybe it was a

Chase card. And Chase historically has actually offered 115 days to meet the spending requirement. Now, don't confirm that or don't take my word for it on that. Send a secure message and make sure I ask them when the ending date to meet your spending requirement is. But historically, I think the official end date has been like 115 days, a little bit longer. So with Chase, it's more than the 90 days they advertise. But if they told you, you missed the window.

Then you'd be done. You'd be toasted, right? So my first question is, which is your? And she said Capital One. And I think I laughed out loud. I mean, this was over Messenger, thankfully. But I think I laughed out loud. I mean, this was over Messenger, thankfully. But I think I laughed out loud. It was Capital One.

And I was like, well, unfortunately, you're probably totally out of luck. So no way Capital One is going to extend it. I said, but that said, I mean, they definitely won't if you won't ask. So go ahead and follow up and ask and plead your case. But no, you're probably just going to be a lesson you're going to have learned this time. And wouldn't you know it, she made me my words because she followed up with Capital One, explained it, you know, got escalated to supervisor kind of a thing. And they said they were going to do a little investigation and get back to her some sort. And sure enough, wouldn't you know it, several days later, they got back to her and said that

they would give her another 13 days to meet the spending requirement and earn the welcome bonus. So, so sometimes it pays to be somebody who doesn't know it all. Right. Because like, like I would have just not even probably tried. Right. Cause I would have been like, no, there's no way they're not going to extend that. Right. But because she was a newcomer, of course she was like, well, can we get this extended? Will they offer me a grace period? And thankfully she had that in her because that got her 13 days to meet the spending requirements. So it just is another good reminder that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And if you don't ask, you definitely won't get. So you may as well ask even when you think the answer is going to be no, it's always worth asking. That is really, really good to know. And now I feel kind of dumb, like how many other issuers is Capital One the only one that would do that?

Do they have the single best customer service of all the banks? Blew my mind. It hasn't been my experience. Right, right. Clearly not. Yeah. Blew my mind. I definitely thought there was absolutely zero chance that this was going to work. And, and, and I, my first thought was to

be like, yeah, no, it's not going to happen. Just tell her now, like move on with your life. But then I was like, well, you may as well ask. And I'm so I'm glad I didn't give her bad advice and say, there's no way I'm glad that I told her you may as well try because you know, if I had presented that differently, maybe she wouldn't have, and she wouldn't have gotten her 13 days. So, and it wasn't even that much that she still had to spend whatever it was. It was relatively easy amount to, for her to meet, uh, some way or another. So, uh, so yeah, ask, always ask. I, I often tell people you hit 0% of the balls you don't swing at. So you may as well take a swing and try to hit it. And sure enough, every now and then you'll hit the jackpot. So that's our question of the week this week.

That brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this stuff and you'd like to get more of it in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again. That's 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 where people are constantly asking questions and sharing tips. So that's a good place to converse about this stuff. And if you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future episode or a question of the week you'd like to be considered for a

future episode, you can send that to. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.