Quick-Fire Q&A from Jan 2024 Ask Us Anything

On the first Wednesday of every month we run an hour-long Ask Us Anything session live on YouTube. With such limited time to answer your questions, we always receive far more questions than we have time to answer. I’ve therefore started doing a supplemental quick-fire Q&A based on questions we received during that most recent Ask Us Anything session.

Speaking of which – you can watch that latest episode here:

For these quick-fire Q&As, I constrain myself to one or two sentences for each one. In many cases I could expound more lengthily with answer, but being more brief means more questions can be answered. If you have any suggestions, advice, tips, tricks, etc. for any of these questions, feel free to reply in the comments to help the readers and viewers who submitted the questions last week.

Finally, if you have specific questions that you’d like help with, our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group is also a great place to ask those.

1) Do you think Virgin book with points cruise deal will come back this year

I have no idea if this will happen, but seeing as they ran a couple of deals last year I wouldn’t be surprised if they run it again at some point in 2024. Whether it’ll be at the same level of being such a great deal is another matter.

2) Need to cancel Amex Platinum soon. Is there a way to prevent Amex from clawing back FHR credit? Maybe by booking FHR hotel, getting the credit, downgrade to Green, cancel the booking and cancel Green?

I’ve never tested that, but I’d assume you’d still get it clawed back. You know what they say about assumptions though…

3) Do you have any advice for how to be in a good position to receive a retention offer?

No clue I’m afraid. On the one hand, it could make sense to put some spend on that card as that might help them see you as a valued customer rather than someone who earns the welcome offer and then does nothing with the card. However, if they see you as someone who frequently uses the card, perhaps they’d think you’d be bluffing about canceling.

4) ​I get signing up for Amex Platinums for sign up bonuses, but why keep them with a such high fee?

A few possible reasons:

• Ability to refer from more cards that earn Membership Rewards points
• Additional spending bandwidth
• Authorized user spending offers
• Able to get more value from the benefits than the annual fee

5) Interested in the Business Gold before the fee goes up, but 10k in 3 months is a biitttt of a stretch. Any recommendations or just wait and see what happens in the future?

I can’t imagine the spending requirement will be changing much on the Business Gold.

6) Any predictions on new Chase travel partner bonuses? I see JetBlue and Air Canada expire 1/10+15

You can check the list of past transfer bonuses in the ‘Expired’ section on this page. Based on the last couple of years, the prospects of any worthwhile Chase transfer bonuses before April aren’t great. However, past performance is no guarantee of future results and all that.

7) Any thoughts regarding the Hyatt changes for Milestone Rewards? Love the changes, wonder if you guys have seen any ways to maximize?

I know some people understandably weren’t fans of the Guest of Honor changes, but the Milestone Rewards changes were pretty much all good news. I don’t think there’s really anything to maximize there, other than the fact that you earn an elite night credit when sharing a Guest of Honor stay which could be handy if you need an elite night credit for the next Milestone Reward.

8) Buying flights with points thru the Business Plat isn’t talked about that much is that one of the best deals for domestic travel?

It can provide good value, but you have to be booking business or first class unless the airline you want to book in economy is your choice for the airline fee credit.

9) ​Living in Atlanta and being a Delta hub, why is it hard to get cheap international airfare deals unlike NYC or other major cities?

Because Delta. It doesn’t feel like they have that much interest in offering low airfare deals that you can find with some other airlines. Also, NYC has far more airline and route options which can help drive down prices.

10) Can you give the 3 or 5 nights certificate from Marriot Boundless SUB?

Not officially – you can see the rules here.

11) W​hen deciding whether to keep or cancel a premium card, how much value do you place in keeping the card open to stay on the bank’s good side, e.g. potentially staying out of Amex pop-up jail?

Personally, very little – if any. I’ve thankfully never hit Amex popup jail other than for cards where I’ve already had them, so I’ve not had to give that much consideration. If you’d be paying annual fees for x years on one or more cards in the hopes of getting back in Amex’s good graces, how much money are you willing to sink into that before calling it quits if you’re not getting good value from those cards already?

12) To what do you attribute the massive increase in points package sales during the recent “Daily Getaways” promotion? Choice and IHG also sold through very quickly and for the first time.

I was surprised by how quickly those sold out too and it meant I missed out on a package I wanted as I’d expected to be able to buy it later that day. I don’t think there was a reduction in packages available, so perhaps points brokers saw some kind of value in the packages?

13) My request to undo the point transfer to book the December mistake fares was denied by Air France – they claimed they had no access to my credit card. Any recourse or successful data points?

I believe there were some data points of people succeeding with this, so it’s worth trying again and hoping a different agent is willing and/or able to help. This Award Wallet post had a little more about that.

14) It seems like the Venture X card is in its honeymoon period now. What benefits do you envision drying up in the near future? Where do you think it will level out?

I’d say a more likely change would be an increase in the annual fee to something like $450 rather than them reducing benefits. A potential change if Capital One Lounges end up being crazy crowded over the next year or two would be for them to limit how many times you can access the lounge each year.

15) Do you think Hyatt will have a different status match partner to replace MGM?

I’d say unlikely, but the MGM-to-Marriott change seemed to come out of the blue, so who knows. If there was some other kind of opportunity like that, it’d likely be a more niche partnership and so not as widely useful as the MGM partnership was.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.