Paze lives, a complex new card, Priority Pass’s questionable math, and more (Around the Web)

The Frequent Miler team makes an effort to collect interesting posts from around the internet to periodically share for readers who may have missed them. In this week’s collection, we’ve got a great list of the options that still exist for Paze, an almost comically complicated new credit card, a negative and perplexing change from Priority Pass, and a lot more.

Paze Spend $10, Get $10 Back Offer – What’s Left (Non Giftcard Options, More Added)

The first few days of the aze craze were a wild blur as so many credit cards were offering up to $100 in credits, $10 at a time. Many folks rushed to use as many $10 credits as possible, scooping up gift cards while they were still an option.

While most of the easy gift card options are now long gone, Doctor of Credit has a very good resource post with information about all of the options that still exist. If you’ve still got a number of cards eligible for Paze credits, you’ll want to check out this post for a good list of the different ways you can use those credits. With the big Domino’s nationwide 9.99 “any pizza deal” going on, I picked up a stuffed-crust pizza before the World Cup final.

British Outpost In Europe, Gibraltar, Becomes Effectively Part Of Schengen Zone On July 15, 2026

Earlier this week, Gibraltar and Spain ended border controls. Now, if you arrive in Gibraltar by plane or ship, you’ll go through both British customs and Spanish customs at the port of entry. That means you’ll need to meet the requirements for the Schengen Zone when entering Gibraltar. I don’t imagine this will be much of an issue for most readers of this site, and in some cases, there may even be some benefit to going through both protocols in one place if you’ll be continuing on. Loyalty Lobby has the full scoop.

Bidding war launched as easyJet dumps Castlelake, accepts offer from Apollo

There’s a bidding war for easyJet, with a new bid coming in from an American company that is likely to continue to operate easyJet as an airline rather than breaking up the fleet for aircraft lease operations. I don’t know the long-term prospects for easyJet, but at least for now, it looks like it may continue operating as is if the deal goes through. The British blog Head for Points has more detail.

NEW: Get Gold status in ALL Accor with The Platinum Card from American Express (in the United Kingdom)

Also from British blog Head for Points is a story about Amex Platinum and Business Platinum Cards in the United Kingdom, adding Accor Gold status as a Platinum Card benefit. While it isn’t uncommon for Platinum Cards in different countries to carry different benefits and different transfer partners, one could hope that this might spread to the United States with Accor becoming a transfer partner and offering status for US-based Platinum Card holders. We don’t yet know whether it will happen. Once again, you’ll find very different benefits on the Platinum Cards in South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other places. This is not at all a definitive indication that we’ll see any change in the United States.

Friday: Bilt Disappoints, Coverd Gives Bilt a Challenge for Most Complicated Program, Wyndham Disappoints, Random Numerology, and Capital One Spark Cash

In the recent press release covering the Coverd credit card, you can find the following quote: “traditional credit card rewards have become outdated with complicated points systems … Coverd aims to change that with a transparent rewards model”. Now go read this post from Miles Earn and Burn for a hearty laugh at what that looks like.

Dave Ramsey Says Only ‘Broke People’ Chase Airline Miles. He’s Wrong About Credit Card Rewards

View from the Wing responds to a claim I frequently see Dave Ramsey make: that wealthy people don’t use credit cards or care about frequent flyer miles (and/or that “nobody gets rich with miles”). Dave Ramsey has some core tenets that make sense: spend less than you earn to get ahead; avoid buying things you can’t afford to buy outright. But I always have to shake my head at how firmly he will stick to a principle that doesn’t make sense. If you can afford to buy something, why wouldn’t you take that something and also the rebate that comes with it? He wouldn’t buy the house and turn down the garage, would he? The fact that he can’t make space for the thought of using miles to reduce the amount of money spent on travel in order to increase the amount of money one has available to invest just feels dishonest. There’s value in recognizing what you can manage well and what you can’t, but the idea that nobody can both manage finances and take advantage of spending rebates (whether credit cards, coupons at the grocery store, or the old-fashioned mail-in kind) is flawed.

Priority Pass Just Got Worse — Its Own Airport Lounges Now Charge Extra For Showers

I was recently taken aback when I used a Priority Pass to access a Minute Suites and was charged a $5 cleaning fee, as though a clean private room wasn’t the entire product they were meant to be providing. I paid it once, but won’t pay it again.

Now, View From The Wing covers the fact that The Club Lounges, which are owned by the same parent company as Priority Pass, have begun charging Priority Pass customers to use the shower. As Gary points out in the conclusion, this isn’t about volume business (after all, the number of people who can possibly take a shower in an hour probably doesn’t make up an amount of money that moves the needle). Rather, it is about discouraging folks who they expect to be unprofitable customers. A guest staying in the lounge long enough to shower is also probably there long enough to eat and drink enough to make for an unprofitable customer. The one thing I wonder is whether keeping that customer out of the shower, where they are only costing you hot water and a fixed labor cost to clean the shower, is the more profitable play than making them sit in the lounge, where they can eat and drink your profits. I guess they figure that most won’t eat and drink more than the labor cost to clean the shower, but I’d love to see the math on that.

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