When the Paze crazy hit this week, I bought a handful of gift cards from Newegg. I first focused on gift cards that could easily be combined in a digital wallet of some sort, but I also bought a handful of cards that weren’t so easy to track and store. I made it a point to search my inbox for them, print them out, and put them somewhere to keep them top of mind.
While I was organizing that, I stumbled on a really old email thread with some gift cards I had gotten from a different source almost a decade ago. In that case, the gift cards were from a referral promotion, not gift cards I had purchased with cash. The email thread was marked as unread. When I opened it, I found links for gift cards to retailers like Amazon and Target. I checked the gift card links, fully expecting that they wouldn’t work since the company from which I had earned them long ago went out of business. Much to my surprise, the links worked. Sure enough, I discovered several hundred dollars worth of gift cards that I had completely forgotten and had been buried years deep in my email inbox.
I am embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t better organized, but it was a great reminder that this hobby requires organization. Whether you’re buying gift cards, making speculative travel plans, keeping track of due dates, making minimum spending requirements, or considering whether to keep or cancel, it is imperative that you stay organized. Luckily, there are some tools you can use to keep aspects of the hobby well organized. I’ve been making much heavier use of TripIt to keep track of all of my travel reservations. I’ve been using AwardWallet for years to track award balances. Travel freely is an excellent tool for tracking the cards you’ve opened, your progress toward minimum spend requirements, and the date by which you should consider whether to keep or cancel.
Those are certainly a few great tools that help keep me organized, though none of them would have kept my gift cards from becoming buried in my email inbox. I lucked out in finding them before they were inevitably dropped off in a mass deletion, but hopefully the fear of letting that happen in the future will keep me more active in making sure to use gift cards as they are acquired, so as to avoid repeating the same mistake again.
On the blog this week, Wyndham shocks the (miles and points) world by refreshing its credit cards and launching a premium card contender, Greg comes up with a crafty way to get his mom into the lounge, I stacked the Edit with the best price, and a lot more.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
Wyndham cards refresh: New premium card, new welcome offers, new benefits, and new & changed earning rates for new applicants
Wyndham has long been known for its crazy math (when it comes to shopping portal promotions), but is expecting customer uptake on a $395 premium Wyndham card their craziest calculation yet? I think it’s safe to say that absolutely nobody saw a $395 Wyndham card coming, nor a refresh to the entire Wyndham card lineup. This one totally blindsided all of us, but in a pretty interesting way.
Existing cardholders get to keep their benefits, though some folks will find components of the new cards compelling enough to switch over whenever Barclays makes it possible to upgrade to the newer versions. While Wyndham is by no means a universal fit, it is certainly interesting that Wyndham launched a number of products here that will have much wider appeal than we could have possibly expected.
Wyndham’s intriguing new card lineup | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep363 | 6-19-26
Still not convinced about the Wyndham refresh? If you had to place a bet between Greg and me as to who would be most intrigued by the $395 Wyndham credit card, which would you expect to be the one of us who is most likely to be most intrigued? On this week’s Frequent Miler On the Air, one of us tries to convince the other about the Wyndham card. I suspect many folks may be surprised at which of us it is and how convincing the argument turns out to be.
Chase Sapphire Reserve® vs Sapphire Preferred®
Chase has been fine-tuning its card lineup, with the complete revamp of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card last year, followed by a surprising shake-up with this year’s refresh of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. You might be asking which card is a better fit for your needs and lifestyle.
Prior to the refresh of the Sapphire Preferred card, this was a pretty easy answer: the Sapphire Preferred was probably best for most people. However, with the change to the transfer ratio to Hyatt and the addition of some solid new bonus categories, the calculus will change for some. That said, the Sapphire Preferred is still probably the better fit for more people, in my opinion. In this post, you can read more of the argument and decide for yourself which is the better fit for you.
Delta Sky Club® dilemma… Morgan Stanley to the rescue
Greg recently ran into a dilemma that many of us have probably faced: a family member who wouldn’t be eligible for lounge access. The solution here was a pretty good one, provided you have or are willing to get a Morgan Stanley Platinum card. If that isn’t applicable for you, another potential solution would be to look for an authorized user offer on your non-Morgan Stanley Platinum card.
Amex sometimes offers select cardholders a bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points for adding a Platinum-level authorized user on an Amex Platinum card. That can be worth considering if you value the points at more than $0.01 per point. Greg’s solution was better since it was free, but if you don’t have a Morgan Stanley platinum, the next best solution would be adding them as a platinum-level authorized user.
Recent wins and an unforced error with Capital One Shopping
I’ve been using shopping portals for many years, since long before I worked at Frequent Miler. I got into product resale well before I even thought about miles and points, and shopping portals represented a big piece of my early returns. I was therefore long used to using a wide range of portals, though over the last few years, I have used Capital One Shopping more than anything else. That’s been because of very large targeted offers which often times far exceed what I can get through other portals. I’ve included a few of my wins from the first half of this year in this post, along with some nuggets of wisdom that they gave me. I also shared an unforced error where I should have known better, but ended up missing out on the easy win.
Paze in a daze: No more gift cards from Newegg
Speaking of easy wins, in what will quite possibly go down as the deal of the year, a new digital checkout wallet came on strong with an amazing offer to get $10 back on $10 or more, up to $100 back on each of your eligible cards. This includes a huge range of credit cards across the major issuers. Since Newegg sells many different $10 merchant gift cards, this essentially amounted to free money for those willing to put up with the potential hassle of $10 gift cards. The best play was to buy gift cards that don’t suck (note that this post is somewhat out of date, but a lot of it holds true), which means those gift cards that you can easily add to a cumulative balance, like:
- Uber gift cards
- Disney gift cards
- Lyft gift cards
- DoorDash gift cards
Unfortunately, Newegg stopped taking Paze for gift card purchases, so this one is dead in that regard. On the other hand, each of your cards should still be eligible for $10 back on $10 or more if you’re able to add them to your Payze wallet, and that can still be a great deal if you need little things from Newegg, Sephora, or the other merchants that accept Paze.
The Edit by Chase Travel℠ price match success….sort of
One of our major complaints with the edit by Chase Travel has been that pricing just often isn’t competitive. Sure, the Sapphire Reserve card comes with up to $250 in statement credits twice a year for The Edit bookings of two nights or more, but if booking through The Edit costs you $250 more than booking elsewhere, then you’re not actually saving anything at all.
Good news on that front, in that Chase has rolled out price match to select consumer Sapphire Reserve cardholders and all Sapphire Reserve for Business cardholders. That makes it possible to stack The Edit benefits with the best available rate for the hotel that you’re looking to book. I was particularly surprised that the inclusions don’t need to match up, so while the edit guarantees you a complimentary breakfast for two and a property credit of $100, you can compare against a rate that does not include those things.
That said, in my case, the agent who approved the claim said they were doing so as a one-time exception because while we had prepaid through Chase Travel in order to take advantage of statement credit benefits on the Sapphire Reserve card, the comparable rate on the direct hotel website did not require prepayment. They did still approve our claim, and we did get most of the difference in cost back. Just be aware that you’ll probably want to submit a price match claim against a booking site like Hotels.com or Priceline that will allow you to pre-pay the rate.
Chase Travel℠ / The Edit: Best Rate Guarantee | Coffee Break Ep110 | 6-16-26
On this week’s Coffee Break, Greg and I discuss that Chase Travel best rate guarantee claim, why we think it’s terrific that it’s available, and whether we think it’s likely to last into the future.
Should you close your credit card after the first year? A checklist of things to consider
Newcomers to the hobby might wonder whether they should keep all the new cards they open or how to decide which cards to close. In his latest post in his beginner series, Stephen explains how to decide whether to keep or cancel and what to consider doing before you cancel if you decide that it isn’t worth keeping the card open.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on this week’s last chance deals to make sure you grab those ending soon.
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Twice today I tried to post here, but your insanely overloaded pages caused Page refreshes that wiped out my posts before I could send them. You may want to think about reducing the very large number of ads on your site so readers aren’t disconnected.
I look at FM daily on my antiquated phone and have never had a problem like what you’re describing. In fact, I barely notice ads on the site at all.
John Power… you really should try Max Power… “there’s three ways to do things; the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!”
A few years back I had a stack about an inch thick of V/MC GC from OD/OM and was.cleaming up.- I typically wrote remaining balances with a sharpie. Occasionally I would forget.or get interrupted or distracted before completing a transaction.
I.almost tossed the “dead” cards – I was planning on going to Costco the next day to autodrain the small $3-7 balances – I was shocked I actually had $300-$400 on the cards im larger amounts.
So now I keep.all my old.GC till I can chexk.by autodraining
I love TripIt, but have a bit of a warning there. I recently discovered that TripIt uses a blacklist of internet address to filter incoming traffic. No surprise there, because that is pretty common. What is unusual is that they will block all access to your account for 12 hours if you try to access them from an address on their blacklist even a single time. No warning, just immediate 12 hour block. And like most blacklists theirs has lots of false positives. I discovered this the hard way after I tried to log in while on an international trip found my account blocked for the rest of the day. It turned out that my VPN (a very common VPN service) uses some addresses that are on their blacklist. My access was restored the next day, but a few days later I was blocked again for the same reason.
I contacted TripIt support. They tried to be helpful, but they confirmed that a blacklist address would trigger a 12 hour block and they really couldn’t tell me how to avoid it except to try different VPNs, etc. I really need access to my account when traveling, and as any traveler knows you’re just gonna be connecting from all kinds of places when traveling internationally. So sadly I concluded I might get blocked again at any time so I cancelled my Pro account with them. They did prorate the fee, so that was nice. It’s a shame because I really like their service, but I’m going to use Wanderlog and see if I like it better.
Nick, I saw this above: “If you had to place a bet between Greg and me as to who would be most intrigued by the $195 Wyndham credit card, which would you expect to be the one of us who is most likely to be most intrigued?” I think you may have meant to say $395 instead of $195.
You are correct! Fixed, thanks. The sentence would still hold true if there were a $195 card, I think :-). It’s definitely $395, though!