Milenomics² Podcast Episode 201: News, The Best Thing Going With Amex?, and End of Summer Trip Planning...

0:22 Etihad Launching Boston Flights (OMAAT)

• 4x weekly, starting March 2024
• 2 cabin plane (Business, no First)

10:32 Transfer Bonuses

• 50% Chase UR to Marriott Bonvoy through Sept 30, 2023
• 25% Amex MR to Hilton through August 31, 2023
• 15% Amex MR to Avianca Lifemiles through August 31, 2023

13:27 Business Gold 130k Link (check slack)

• Sam: P2: pending and then about 10 minutes later: approved
• Sam: Had closed 2 cards recently (poor/no retention offer discussion)
• Had to call in for recon on my app. Rep saw the closed cards and put the app back in.
• 1 day later approved.
• With employee cards these are very strong cards.

21:07 Amex Personal Platinum Saks Credits Not Posting from Early July

• Thought I was such a genius going in-store and buying a bunch of $50 physical GCs and reselling them
• A month later the credits still haven’t posted
• Pinged them on chat and was told 6-8 weeks is typical (a few days is actually typical)
• I’ll wait and see but so lousy to have something like this just not work, and I don’t think it has anything to do with round GC denomination purchases
• Will follow-up…

26:31 Ongoing Amex Clawbacks

• Sam: P2 hit finally.
• ONLY Fluz on this card.
• One transaction at ‘Kroger,’ seems like it could be this
• Does this change anything moving forward

30:06 Fluz Talk

• 1 Time Visa refund process: Taking forever
• Utility of cash loads with Amex 20,000 employee cards

35:28 Going in heavy with amex '6x everywhere' employee cards

• For years now Amex has been dangling employee cards with healthy bonus offers at us.
• While not as lucrative as some past offers this current group has some benefits.
• Notably the best offers in the past necessitated a lengthy (and possibly awkward) phone call to add up to 99 users.
• These offers are 100% online and besides activating them are very asynchronous.
• With fluz cash loads these are equal to or better than .5 cents per MR.
• I'm going all in on these, adding to all cards I can. Will end up with 50 or so.

43:10 Booked: 5/8ths of the Way Back to Japan

• Previously booked 2x BOS-NRT in Business using AsiaMiles
• A couple weeks later 1 more opened up, didn’t book it
• A week later an additional seat opened up, booked it
• So I have all 4 seats on the outbound before any space opened up for booking with AA/Alaska
• I really don’t think they would have released more seats if I hadn’t booked the 2 initially, seems like they monitor and dribble more seats out
• Also booked 1 seat on the return
• Question is: Where to go in Japan this time besides Tokyo?

49:52 Booked and Canceled: End of Summer Disney World Trip

• Had outbound airfare (Delta award ticket) and Disney World hotel booked
• Was even planning dining reservations
• Everything was cancellable so I did when a more scarce opportunity presented itself the weekend after…
• Discuss: When everything is so cancellable without penalty, plans change more than ever. Is this a good thing?

54:00 Booked: Bermuda for Labor Day Weekend

• Stayed at St Regis Bermuda last year and liked it, but was really impressed with the Rosewood Bermuda
• Roundabout opportunity popped up to book into one of the fractionals there, a 4 BR 2,500 SF villa
• Airfare expensive that weekend: $1,000+ pp roundtrip in Economy on the only direct flight (JetBlue)
• Nice development: Have been able to capture JetBlue fare drops (to travel bank) on JetBlue’s site even for tickets booked through Amex Travel

01:10:35 New segment: 10 years ago today.

• Here's some news from 10 years ago as if it was happening today.
• The home improvement card is no longer working to buy money orders or load bluebird at Walmart. (Link:MMS)
• This card was great because it could be purchased with an ink bold at office depot and OBC at CVS to earn 5x/5%. Since the death of prepaid gift cards at office depot this was a zero fee option.
• It was a strange card issued as a Discover debit card and restricted to retailers who sold home improvement goods. (Restriction based on MCC coding)
• Recently added a pin option to the card which is what led to use at WM money centers.
• Plenty of great information on flyertalk about this prior to it being picked up by MMS and FM still worked after it “died”.
• FM had a tough loop where he's buying these, registering them for online use, and buying Sears GC through the UR portal and then using those Sears GC again to buy goods at Sears (again through the UR portal) for 15x at Sears. Even this seems dead.
• Soliciting listeners to help figure out what MCC codes work with this. These kind of limited retailer cards will never catch on!
• Bloggers killing deals…..and Sears 🤣