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Welcome to the Frequent Miler Week In Review series. Every weekend we recap what you might have missed from around the web. Enjoy!
This Week Around the Web
As you may know, I’m currently on a round-the-world trip. The first part of my journey was from Newark to South Africa. Booking that with United Miles proved to be a challenge thanks to the tons of phantom Ethiopian/Lufthansa award space shown on United.com. Live and Let’s Fly writes a helpful post this week on How To Eliminate Risk When Booking A United Award by checking for the phantom menace before transferring your points. (And thanks to Matthew for his previous post on how to get the excursionist perk to work that helped me include a free one-way from Johannesburg to Maputo by adding a domestic leg in the US several months down the road! For the record, it took me no fewer phone calls than it took him — but I eventually got it to kind of work thanks to his advice!)
Next up, can you churn Discover’s double cash back? I certainly wish I had bet more on Discover’s double cash back promo, as everything did get doubled at the end of year 1 for me. But can you do it again? Doctor of Credit has a nice piece claiming that it sure seems possible — though we won’t have definitive data points for a few more months.
IHG has a nice benefit for Rewards Club members that I had noticed in my account (but had shamefully ignored!). Out and Out covers the details of using IHG Rewards Club for some free Kindle First downloads — more for elite members, such as IHG Credit card holders.
Finally, Gary Leff writes a very interesting article this week about the opportunity for Hyatt Platinums to gift themselves the chance at 4 club upgrades come March 1st. I’m going to one-up that and say that current Platinum and Diamond members could also gift a household member the Explorist status that will come with 4 club upgrades by visiting a casino and linking Mlife accounts following the advice in the original Points, Miles, and More article and Gary’s subsequent analysis. As a Diamond member myself, I’m planning to do this with my wife if we can get to an Mlife casino before March 1st.
Enjoy your weekend!
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[…] View from the Wing then expanded on the idea by suggesting that it may be possible to gift Hyatt Explorist status to a spouse. We covered both of these topics in our This Week Around the Web post. […]
Thank you so much for the shoutout, Nick!
I don’t see why you would need to get to an Mlife casino before March 1st. Just make sure you match your Hyatt status to Mlife before March 1st, and you’ll have Mlife status until October. So, visit the casino before October to take advantage of “gifting status”
Nick,
Thank you for the share!
– Points, Miles, and More
Nick, thanks for the shout-out!