Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Chase Ultimate Rewards announced the coming addition of an official transfer partner in Air Canada Aeroplan, but that’s not where Chase news ended. This week, we also learned of a couple of “secret” Chase transfer partners that might be worth a look. On this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, see us discuss whether or not any of this is a big deal and why the average reader/listener should care. All that and more below.
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This week at Frequent Miler
Chase’s Secret Transfer Partners
If you read this blog, chances are good that you’re very familiar with Chase transfer partners like United and Hyatt. Perhaps you can even name all of Chase’s 1:1 transfer partners. Even still, I’m willing to bet that before seeing this post, you couldn’t name Chase’s South American transfer partner. That’s because they don’t have one — at least not directly. But there are a couple of indirect partners that we have previously ignored. Most are still ignorable, but at least one may be worth a look.
Amex Purchase Protection to the rescue
I broke my phone. No, not that one. I broke the new one I bought to replace that one after getting it fixed from the time I broke it about two months ago. I swear I’m much less accident-prone than the past two months would have you believe. The good news is that I’d bought the new phone on my new Amex Platinum card — and they completely refunded my money without hassle. Read all about how it worked in this post.
What is Delta elite status worth (now that award changes are free)?
Regular readers will know that my answer to the title question here is “not much to me”. However, your mileage quite literally may vary. Read Greg’s update to this resource and ask yourself the key question: how much cash would you be willing to fork over up front for elite status? There’s your value.
LATAM Pass: A sweet spot to South America hiding in Chase’s secret transfer partners
Having been revealed as one of Chase’s secret transfer partners this week, the LATAM Pass program became a topic of intrigue. A reader had tipped us off to some good values. While partner awards didn’t turn out as expected, some routes on LATAM metal price really nicely — and availability, even on the usually tough Easter Island route, is amazing.
Big savings with CVS CarePass + ExtraCare
I went into this post thinking that Greg had finally fallen off his rocker because I just didn’t see him cracking open pharmacy rewards in such a way as to make them exciting, but by golly he kind of managed to do just that. I still haven’t signed up for CVS CarePass, but this post definitely made me think about it — and I still might do it.
Walmart Manufactured Spending Policy Memo: “That activity should be stopped”
The sky has fallen and the world has ended on this day that shall live in infamy…..or this is just like the ten thousandth time we’ve heard about an anti-MS memo at Walmart. I rolled my eyes a bit at the hubbub over this. Surely some stores will become harder/impossible and you’ll occasionally run into the person vying for employee of the month. On the other hand, given that this memo doesn’t represent anything new hard-coded into the register and given my many hours of experience with the general laissez-faire attitude of the average Walmart cashier, I just don’t see this memo moving the needle much. This makes it clear that recent restrictions were implemented with an eye toward saving time, so I’d think that those going in with one card looking for one MO are at least somewhat likely to continue to fly under the radar. Time will tell.
Hotel Revival Baltimore, Joie de Vivre (Hyatt). Bottom Line Review
Stephen had the fortunate accident of being moved for a night to accommodate an NFL team and he ended up at what looks like a nice boutique-style hotel in Baltimore. I’m usually not huge on the boutique style, but something about this place just looked quirky and inviting. After reading Stephen’s bottom line review, I’d probably check it out (particularly if room rates are high given that it’s a Cat 2 hotel).
In updated resources
PayPal Key virtual “master” card: Unlock the power of all of your cards [Update: Paypal kills Amex support]
The latest update here is that Amex cards will no longer be an option for making payments with your PayPal Key.
Chase Transfer Partners: Convert Ultimate Rewards Points to Hotel & Airline Programs
You can always find information like transfer partner guides on our resources page. This Chase transfer partner guide was updated this week to reflect the addition of the newly-found “secret” indirect partners.
Amex Airline Fee Reimbursements. What still works?
As we approach the end of 2020, many readers have been asking how to use their airline fee reimbursements. As such, we gave this post its latest update this week and readers sounded off with their latest data points in the comments. There are plenty of things that work and keep in mind that even though Amex makes you pick an airline in January, they’ve also been pretty good about letting people change on request (particularly through perhaps not exclusively if you haven’t yet used any of your credit.
Airlines eliminate change fees: Quick reference chart [Delta waives award change fees on all routes from North America]
Good old fashioned competition continues to heat up the war on change fees. The latest casualty is change fees on Delta awards originating in North America. Cheers to that development.
COVID Credit Card Enhancements Ultimate Guide (Added Chase free money & Amex Plat travel discounts)
The latest additions aren’t necessarily new, but they are definitely worth keeping in mind. If you haven’t yet made a call to Chase, get on the horn today.
That’s it for this week. As always, check out this week’s last chance deals.
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Could not find a post where you mention pooling household Chase points. It used to be so that you could add someone’s account online and move points to that card as long as that person was in your household. It seems that no more can you just add the account in the Combine Section of Ultimate rewards. The “add a card” option is gone – at least from my logins and my wife’s. But I did call Chase and they manually added my wife’s Sapphire card to my combine points screen and I was immediately able to transfer to her (you used to have to wait a day).
“ I just don’t see this memo moving the needle much”- Nick.
Now it is showing like a pop up on the screen , to look out for MS activities . Dont generalize , it may be BAU for few/many, but certain locations have clearly implemented the new memo/policy .
Anyhow death of Metas is the actual blow than this Memo. Check with your contact @ Simon , whether are they planning to change the card issuer to USBs or not , if possible
Regarding the IHG free night – I used mine Dec. 7th and was rather surprised to still see the new one show up that expires next August. Nice!
I’ve been trying to apply for a Chase card several days but constantly get a “Application Unavailable” message from their web site (multiple browsers/systems).
I finally called and the lady since they are having issues with the application system and it may be back up Monday or Tuesday. Geez, as a computer person I do find it strange a major company would have multiple days of outage of something like this. At a minimum revert to a working version.
I had initially assumed it was something related to doing this on an iPad but when it didn’t work on a computer it convinced me to call.
Which card? I just clicked through from our Best Offers page to a handful of Chase cards and I had no trouble opening the application pages for any of them. It would seem more like a cookie issue of some sort on your devices. I do hear that you’re saying that you tried multiple browsers and at least two different devices, I’m just not experiencing the same (unless it is an issue with one specific card and I didn’t happen to have tried that one, which is why I ask which card).
Chase Freedom Unlimited. I was looking for a card that gives me more than 1 point for everyday purchases. And since it has no AF this seemed the best fit for me.
I click on “open an account” (after I log into chase) then “credit cards” and eventually Freedom Unlimited.
Just happened again.
I resorted to applying as a guest but while I was able to submit it, I now get a decision will be made in 7-10 days. I’ll give it a couple of days and then will call in.
I have a bunch of chase cards although have been canceling a few but haven’t applied for a new one in a while so 5/24 shouldn’t be any factor, I think!
Thanks.
Can you include transfers in and out of Amtrak in your charts. Some of us like to take trains!
An hour and 10 min of podscast about points?? haha. I know it is covid times but still… who has time for that?
Any chance you guys can do a simple run down so we can quickly read about it?
For my part, I enjoy spending an hour or two with Nick and Greg each week and was disappointed with their short-lived attempt to make the podcast shorter. The podcast is generally just an elaboration of one or more of the featured stories on the blog so I think you can hit those instead of listening if you prize efficiency of delivery over the community feel of the podcast.
There are multiple ways of making the podcast faster if you’re complaining about length. Multiple people enjoy the length of the podcast. They’re also nice enough to include timestamps. Use them. World doesn’t revolve around you bud.
Stop your complaining. Some of us actually enjoy the lengths of the podcast. Listen to it at a faster speed or don’t at all. Get over yourself.
I can certainly understand that not everyone will want to spend an hour and ten minutes listening to a chat about points. On the flip side, as a few comments below have noted, we received consistent feedback from listeners that they preferred the length as-is when we tried shortening the podcast, so we’ve stuck with the current format as that seems to be what is popular with the majority of our growing number of listeners.
And as others have noted here, we do include timestamps so you can skip around if that’s your preference. Further, many platforms enable you to listen at an increased speed, which can reduce the length of time spent listening. The timestamps and the first paragraph of this week in review post each Saturday morning is the simple run down. If you want more detail about the topics we discuss, you can decide from there whether or not you’ll want to listen.
Also as Larry notes here, the podcast is usually an elaboration / discussion of a couple of key topics from the week on the blog (understanding that not everyone dives into every post and different people enjoy consuming information in different ways, so the podcast provides another platform to stay on top of the stuff we find most interesting / noteworthy each week). Every now and then our main topic may be something we haven’t written about (just last week it was why American Airlines miles have become more desirable and ways to accumulate more of them, which we hadn’t written about), but most of the time it is the topic we found most interesting from the week.
Hope that helps you get what you’re looking for.