That incredible American Airlines SimplyMiles 240x was ultimately honored. Did Greg get in on the deal? How hard did he go? Why didn’t we highlight the 240x offer at first publication? Do we regret not highlighting it sooner? On this week’s show, we look back at the decisions we made and lessons learned from the 240x promo. Interestingly, we recorded this week’s show before American confirmed that the deal would be honored, so ultimately everything worked out as well as we hoped in the end.
Also read on in this week in review for more bucket list redemptions, earning points and miles for paying your taxes, and more.
00:50 Giant Mailbag: A personal story
4:27 Giant Mailbag #2: A glance back at some predictions
7:32 What crazy thing…did Chase do this week?
12:32 Mattress running the numbers: When does the new Chase Ink Business Premier make sense?
18:47 Main Event: 240x Post-Mortem
55:50 Post Roast
56:55 Question of the Week: Can you use Amex’s Plan It feature to split payments and trigger two Fine Hotels & Resorts credits on a a single hotel stay?
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This week at Frequent Miler
Incredible: the 240x SimplyMiles deal is being honored!
Can you believe it? American Airlines and Mastercard have worked it out and the incredible deal to earn 240 miles per dollar donated to Conservation International is going to be honored. Kudos to American and Mastercard for getting it done and congratulations to all those who got in. Keep in mind that it may take up to 15 business days before the base miles begin to post (and perhaps longer for the bonus) and SimplyMiles doesn’t send any sort of confirmation that a deal has tracked, so the next step is just to wait — but you can get excited while you wait because this is going to be huge.
American Airlines SimplyMiles Complete Guide (common questions answered)
With the incredible 240x promotion being the talk of the town, we have seen a surge of interest in the American Airlines SimplyMiles program. Many readers have had questions about who can sign up, how the offers work, how long it takes for miles to post, and more. This post covers the key details so you can get to know this program that is on the rise. Note that SimplyMiles will only become more relevant in 2022 when these offers should begin to yield not only redeemable miles but also Loyalty Points toward elite status. (Note that transaction have historically been backdated to the date of purchase, so even if the recent SimplyMiles offers don’t post until 2022 they probably will not count as Loyalty Points for elite status earning).
AwardWallet no longer tracking American Airlines miles
Unfortunately, you won’t be automatically tracking all of your newfound American Airlines AAdvantage miles with AwardWallet. That’s because American Airlines has apparently demanded that AwardWallet not only stop tracking AAdvantage accounts for mileage balance, expiration, award tickets, and more, but they have also apparently demanded that AwardWallet remove all AAdvantage data that they had. If you had previously connected AAdvantage accounts, they have likely been removed. The good news is that you should be able to add AAdvantage as a manually tracked program. There isn’t a workaround like what they have with United and Southwest, but at least you should be able to keep your AAdvantage numbers in a safe spot. As someone who manages accounts for multiple family members, I’ll be glad to at least keep their numbers nearby.
Nick’s all-time favorite award redemptions
A Comfort Inn in Rome? A Category 3 Hyatt? A hotel that was a Radisson? I wasn’t initially sure that the places I remembered most fondly would resonate with readers or that I would have enough to say about them to even write this post, but writing this one brought me back to places, times, and the kind of priceless memories that are made possible by playing around in this hobby. Looking back, I can’t believe all of the incredible redemptions I’ve made and I look forward to what’s yet to come.
Bucket List Flights Bookable Now
This post has aged interestingly: Greg highlights a few of his bucket-list dream flights that are bookable with points. He notes that the New York to Frankfurt route in Singapore suites is the old suites, but in the time since publication we have heard that Singapore will be offering the new suites on this route from March 27, 2022. It looks like Greg’s first class booking is getting an upgrade! See this post for which route has easy Emirates first class availability in its new product and which points to use to book Oman Air first class also.
Delta Choice Benefits: Which to choose and when
Have Delta Platinum or Diamond elite status? It’s time to choose your choice benefit(s) and this post can help you decide what makes sense. After my experience with Greg’s Delta Diamond global upgrade certificates, I feel like I’d have a hard time choosing anything that isn’t an upgrade cert, but Greg offers analysis on each option and reasons why you might get outsized value out of several of them.
Pay taxes via credit card 2021/2022 edition
It’s that time of year: fourth quarter estimated taxes are due soon and you might as well make them rewarding. In this post, Greg lays out what you need to know to make paying your taxes as rewarding as possible. Do note his update about slow refunds: some readers are still waiting on the refund of overpayments from last year, so beware if you are considering paying more than you owe.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on this week’s last chance deals to be sure you take advantage of them before they are gone.
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I like the blog, I like you guys, BUT stop with all the pictures of you guys mugging for every post. How did that work for Emily MMS? once in a while, fine, good. But this is too much! Sure Nick is HOT, but enough mugging for the camera, it has worn out it’s welcome……and MORE PEPPER PLEASE.
I’d like to think I’m a pretty devoted reader of FM, but I totally missed this 240x deal. I chose not to read the article just based on the title: “5x on SimplyMiles offers (awesome deals).” I suppose the “awesome deals” part was supposed to trigger me to read on, but I remember thinking “meh, 5x on simply miles, big whoop” and not clicking on the article. Then I flew to a conference on Sunday and was super busy for a few days before realizing I missed out on this on Thursday.
Even though I consider myself a pretty avid reader, the reality is that a lot of things come out each day from your blog and my other primary miles/points related twitter follow (DoC), so I just scan the twitter headlines and decide if I should read on or not. In this case, I interpreted the 5x to mean what 5x normally means (get 5x per $1 spend through SimplyMiles), which isn’t enough to move the needle these days. I understand that it would’ve been hard to fully describe what you meant by “5x” in the title (“SimplyMiles offering 5 times normal bonus spend” or something like that?), but I will cast one vote for wishing you had posted “SimplyMiles offering up to 240x on spend!”
The reason for this is two fold:
1) I rely on FM to be a no-nonsense blog that isn’t in the game to get referral bonuses and promote credit cards (etc) that put more money into your pockets. This is what brought me to your blog and has make me a HUGE proponent of your content to everyone I talk to about miles and points. While I understand your reasons for not promoting the 240x headline, this does feel like the first time that FM has held back info from its readers. There have been plenty of other “too good to be true” deals that you’ve immediately reported in the past, and while you occasionally get criticisms from curmudgeons about killing the golden goose, I’d say the vast majority of your readers jump to defend those decisions. So, to me, the way you reported this news seems like a break from the norm you’ve set, and goes against part of what has created a very loyal base.
2) I think the argument that not reporting this deal to protect it from the whales while giving the average reader some extra time to cash in is backwards. If you’re a whale, that means you’re probably financially independent and have the time to read through articles more. If you’re an average Joe working a job or two and raising a family, you don’t have much time to do that and rely on the headlines even more. Those of us who have been in the game for a bit know the really good deals come and go quickly. Realizing this, I would argue that we don’t necessarily need more time to cash in, but instead we just need to be made aware of good deals as effectively as possible when they come up. We find the time to cash in on good deals when we need to, but otherwise don’t have the time to scan every article to be sure we’re not missing out. So to me the whale argument is speculation without evidence.
To be clear, I’m not upset with FM. I’m definitely a little bummed that I missed this deal, but I love the blog/podcast/website/etc. and you have made me tens of thousands of dollars worth of points over the past 2 and a half years. I am so thankful for that, and so thankful to have such an honest resource I can turn to about everything miles/points. The respect I have for your blog is part of the reason I am giving such a thorough response since I know you really consider your reader feedback. My take here could be wrong, and I’m just one person, but I vote for always leading with the biggest story in a deal and then leaving it up to your readers to follow through.
100% agree with all the above – the Deal of the Year shoulda been published in the same forthright & fair manner as other posts or will cause readers to wonder in the future what other info is being concealed or manipulated
disagree. Browsing twitter headlines is not how this works. you want these types of deals, it requires and active approach.
Regarding information release: you might be overthinking it a bit out of well intentioned caution but also erring on being on the paternalistic side. I think if you present the findings along with your deliberations that would cover all the bases – get the word out with thoughts, cautions, disclaimers. Someone is going to break these findings and I would rather it be your team backed with your integrity.
Take care, Greg!
I’m in on a very modest amount. I’ve read a lot the past week on devaluation and how much MasterCard is paying AA for the miles? According to other sites (posts), AA has probably over 1 trillion miles on the books. So if this CI deal went down for say a 100 billion miles, then 10% devaluation could be in order to equal out the books. According to how much you value AA miles, you could see your points start to approach United and Delta. Not there but approaching. Also with the new AA program coming early next year, AA has the perfect time to tweak the books if necessary.
The other front is how much MasterCard paid? Question I don’t remember if AA went to MasterCard, Citi or Barclays for $$$ selling points like Delta did Amex? If MC was in the mix, then be assured that played into the negotiations. If I had to bet, point selling to American Express (Delta), Chase (United) or AA to the above group is no more than a 1/3 of a cent if that much. That’s a number I use as my basis on credit card worth (net = annual fee less cash perks I can use @ 2 years annual fee) vs SUB. Obviously I’m looking for a low number.
Greg. Just wanted to wish you symptoms that stay nothing more than mild and a speedy recovery. Your car should be good now.
Wow you guys went in with a lot. And on a gamble too. Even if I was 100% confident on the payout, I wouldn’t have gone in for $5k. I have too many other miles and points floating around and AA is bound to make a big de-evaluation in the next year or two. I guess since travel is your work and hobby it could make sense. But I hope the average travel hacker isn’t dropping so much cash – at least not without being sure they have their finances all in good order.
That’s a totally reasonable stance.
In my case, there were a couple of big factors. First, I am incredibly fortunate to have the liquidity. In this case though, that liquidity kind of comes from one or both of two fronts.
First, for the past couple of years, my wife and I have done around $5K each year in bank bonuses (I’m talking bonuses for opening new checking and brokerage accounts. I view that money as sort of a “slush fund” of found money to be used when something crazy comes along (like this deal). I feel pretty good about the idea of turning those checking and brokerage bonuses into more than a million miles.
A second piece that I didn’t talk about anywhere but probably should have is that I redeemed a decent chunk of Membership Rewards points for a Schwab deposit before the ratio dropped from 1.25c to 1.1c. I could view this as having “bought” American Airlines miles at a rate of about 3 miles for every 1 Membership Rewards point (at the 1.25c valuation). Getting what effectively feels like 1-to-3 transfer to American Airlines is plenty acceptable. That’s to say nothing of the effective conversion of the cash back sitting on our Bank of America Premium Rewards card that was earned at 2.625% (an effective 6.3 American Airlines miles per dollar spent here) or the Alliant Cashback Visa, etc.
Moving forward, my pile of American Airlines miles may encourage me to redeem more Membership Rewards points for Schwab deposits. That’s because if faced with a price that is a similar number of miles, I would be foolish not to use the American Airlines miles that I acquired at a cost of 0.416c per mile over transferring from Membership Rewards points (whether to Asia Miles or Iberia or whatever). Obviously that will be very situational, but my point is that this very cheaply acquired set of miles allows me to hold on to more valuable currencies and/or convert those more valuable currencies to cash and be far ahead.
That’s some funny accounting since I’m explaining the same $5K coming from multiple places, but my point here is that this was a position where the miles were so cheap that it gave me good reason to acquire them and cash out other rewards.
I’m not arguing that it “made sense” or certainly not that it would make sense for everyone, and I definitely can’t argue with anyone who questions the wisdom of investing so heavily in a program that could devalue at any time for any reason. I certainly did weigh the risk there, I just figured that even if they double the price of every award I will still be in a not-terrible spot.
Since I have a family of four now, the miles I’m getting will realistically only cover two or three international round trips for my whole family. Don’t get me wrong, that’s amazing for the price, but I’m saying that I didn’t buy so many that I’ll be sitting on these miles for years to come. At least I hope not.
Thanks for the in-depth response. It is of course a very personal decision how much to spend on travel and how much you’re willing to “gamble” on AA. It’s certainly possible in this hobby to make money but most of the FOMO and outsized value seems to come from the luxury travel. I’m sure it’s also what draws a lot of clicks. But I hope people are seriously monitoring their overall finances, of which credit cards and travel may only be a small part. I appreciate you both sharing what you actually did yourselves and how you all talk about the “joys of free”. But I like to think of it more as the “illusion of free” or the “joys of getting a discount”.
Take 10k donations of average 10k = 100M$ by the time everyone got on board.
That comes to 240x10M = 2400M = 2.4 billion Miles – value at 1c = $24M.
All we need is to find out how much was donated to Conservation in Dec 2021
That will give us an idea of the damage to Mastercard – who I presume bought at 0.8c (like Citi)
The charity likely pays AA at least 0.5c – so AA made money no mater what and with continued devaluations will pay out very little
@Greg The Frequent Miler @Nick Reyes the Spark Cash annual fee is now $150.
I think you guys walked exactly the right line. In hindsight it is easy to say that maybe you should have done X or Y. It is very easy to forget how critical people would have been if it had not worked out.