A trick for cheaper business class awards, Chase incorrectly denying bonus points and a new Hyatt brand (Saturday Selection)

Chase is incorrectly denying cardholders Sapphire Preferred welcome offer points, Hyatt buys a new brand and a trick for booking cheaper business class awards. All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to each article are embedded in the titles).

Chase error withholds Sapphire Preferred welcome offer bonus points

Applying for Chase cards can be sort of like learning a new board game with too many rules…or trying to order credit cards from the Soup Nazi. The most notorious is the “5/24 rule,” which makes it difficult (though not impossible) to be approved for many Chase cards if you’ve opened up more than five new personal cards across all issuers within the last 24 months. There’s also the “24 month rule,” which means that you aren’t eligible for the welcome offer on a card if you’ve previously received the bonus for that same card within the last 24 months. Then there’s the Marriott cards, where determining your eligibility for a new card is like solving multiple Rubik’s Cubes…while juggling. The Sapphire Preferred (CSP) or Sapphire Reserve (CSR) cards have yet another “family” rule: if you’ve previously had either one, you can only get the welcome offer for another Sapphire card if you no longer have either card AND if it has been more than 48 months since you last received a welcome offer for the card. Got it? Well, apparently Chase doesn’t.

Travel on Points has reported that some folks noticed that there wasn’t a bonus tracker showing up on their new Sapphire Preferred card’s online account and contacted Chase about it, only to be told that they weren’t eligible for the welcome offer because of the 48-month rule, even though they had never had either the Reserve or Preferred card in the past. Upon escalating, they were informed that there was evidently a coding issue affecting June CSP applications…right at the time the card had an elevated offer. My guess is that most folks that issue is affecting have no idea yet…and Chase will have quite a mess on its hands sorting them out once they start hitting their minimum spend in July, August and September.

A trick for cheaper business awards through Alaska Mileage Plan

Before Alaska Airlines joined the oneworld Alliance, it had a charming mishmash of award charts that covered redemptions on all of its various partners. Its rewards program, Mileage Plan, negotiated earning and redemption charts individually with each partner as they were added – which in some instances created extraordinary value and in others was laughably extortionate. As part of joining oneworld, the airline moved to a new, “unified,” distance-based chart which was supposed to standardize pricing across most partners. This created a whole new set of winners and losers, but we also wondered at the time if we’d see some fun pricing anomalies once the mammoth integration process began. Thrifty Traveler recently uncovered a brilliant one, where a transatlantic business class flight becomes cheaper by adding an economy connecting leg on either end, be it in Europe or the US ( this is known as a “mixed-cabin itinerary”). We’ve seen this sort of attractive pricing on mixed-cabin itineraries before, LifeMiles being a good a example, but it contradicts how Mileage Plan normally handles things: pricing a mixed cabin itinerary at the same level as one entirely in business. It’s hard to know whether this is a new feature of the Mileage Plan award chart or just a temporary glitch, but regardless, it can make some already tasty European award prices downright delicious.

Hyatt buys me and all and, yes, that’s a hotel brand

Hyatt has been on a bit of a rollercoaster in Europe over the last few months. Long-criticized for its limited footprint across the pond, it had hoped to solve it through partnering with Small Luxury Hotels (SLH) and the German-based Lindner Hotels AG (as well as the purchase of a swath of all-inclusive resorts). This gave the chain an impressive group of properties across the continent, a situation that unfortunately soured when SLH spurned Hyatt for Hilton Honors. Hyatt tried to maintain its European presence with its purchase of Mr & Mrs Smith, another SLH-like consortium of independent, boutique-y hotels. That’s been, um, less-exciting than originally hoped. Now, Hyatt is diving even further into the depths European vacations by purchasing Germany’s me and all Hotels from the Lindner Group, which is currently part of its Joie de Vivre (JdV) Portfolio. Let it be known that I’m not a big fan of brands intentionally using all lowercase in their names, so I’m starting out a little wary. But, “me and all” seems particularly egregious…what in the blazes does that have to do with the English language? The branding is a bizarre mixture of hipster “cool” and tech-bro corporate speak that seems unusually obsessed with being “digital” and creating a “warm” environment for “co-working.” Oh, and dogs and rock stars. Regardless, these hotels were already available through World of Hyatt; quite often at mediocre value. Hopefully Hyatt owning them outright will improve the redemption math…it worked out well with Mr & Mrs Smith, right?

Fiji Airways has a new awards currency and it’s…AAdvantage miles?

In our 2024 Predictions for Points, Miles and Travel, the Sultan of Savings – one Stephen Pepper – predicted that we’d see airline programs continue to consolidate. What he was looking towards was not the expansion of airline alliances like oneworld or SkyTeam, but rather something along the lines of Avios, which now houses British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, Aer Lingus, Finnair and Vueling in one currency. Stephen felt like he was unfairly denied a point for predicting the same thing in 2023, as Finnair announced that it was joining Avios, but the actual integration didn’t happen until 2024, so he took the same prediction out for another drive in 2024. I think that Stephen was expecting another Avios partner, but he still hit the nail on the head with an unexpected union – Fiji Airways will be adopting AAdvantage miles as its award currency sometime in 2025. Astute readers will “point” out that Fiji has never actually had its own currency – its own customers historically couldn’t earn Fiji miles on Fiji flights. Instead, it encouraged its customers to earn miles by crediting its flights to partners. Now, in lieu of developing its own loyalty currency, it’s simply adopting AA’s (Stephen, you still deserve a point). IAG, who owns British Airways, has certainly found it “rewarding” to gather other independent airlines under the Avios umbrella. I’ll be interested to see of AA wants to exploit the same AAdvantage.

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