Milenomics² Episode 196: A Southern CA Meetup, Fluz News and More

0:21 Meetup: US Open Golf Tournament in Los Angeles

• Wednesday June 14 (practice round) and Thursday June 15
• Tickets are surprisingly affordable at resale (relative to list price)
• Sam and Robert will be there Wednesday, Robert Thursday
• Bring your Amex card!
• See you at the Trophy Club?

06:36 Fluz News

• Gift Card Balance
• June 15 Gift card balance starts
• Jul 1 Cash balance converts to GC balance
• .3%-.75% increase in cost to load some cards
• Increased Deposit Fees for certain cards
• New Visa/MC BINs
• “Time Saving Enhancements You’ll Love”

16:11 BofA Premium Rewards 60,000 Offer (US Credit Card Guide)

• 60,000 after $4,000 in 3 months
• $95 AF not waived
• $100 per calendar year air incidental
• Pair it with Elite card for 20% off airfare booked with points through BofA portal

18:24 Delta Pay up for RefundableMain Cabin  fares (with Same day confirmed change)

• Paying with cash you’re (now? always?) presented with an option to pay for a refundable cash fare.
• I like this–on low priced options it was just $50
• Higher priced flights seem to be $100-$150 (I like this less)
• BUT these allow same day flight changes.
• So is the move to buy the cheapest flight that day, with this premium and change…. With a backup somewhere else if there’s no space? (cancel if so)
• Or is this just too much involvement and bringing cash into the game we don’t want to bring into the game?

25:21 Amex Personal Platinum $200 Fine Hotels & Resorts Credits

• If it's a [relatively] sure thing that they don't clawback on reservations cancelled after closure, how do we play it?
• Does it ever make sense to use it as intended? Let's explore this...
• For a card you're about to close and you haven't used the credit this year it seems clear: Book a trip you don't intend to take and cancel it after closure.
• What if you're going to close early next year? You can't book 2024 stays yet but you should be able to later in the year. So I think same still applies: Book then cancel after closure.
• But what about a card you might keep open with the right retention offer? Like the Schwab Platinum. Maybe that's the card to put a stay you might actually use on. Because you're not going to be able to avoid clawback on cancellation. Unless this credit too has calendar year forgiveness.

Follow Up:

30:28 Experience with United’s new Family Seating policy

• Some fanfare (link) about this came up recently.
• United has said they’ll open seats for families and if not you can change flights to something else
• The return from LIH I booked was my first experience with this. A very full flight with only  Economy plus ($149+/pp) or Preferred seating ($45+/pp) available.  When I went to select seats I was greeted with “we’ve made room for your family:

• Except this only opened 3 seats for my family of 4. That meant 1 of us wasn’t able to sit in the same row unless I paid $50 for the seat.
• The policy says they’ll open adjacent seats together, so I should have expected this I guess. But basically no better than before because I still had to tweet and get help to put us across a row (which did eventually work).

36:33 Automated miles tools for myprepaidcenter (link)

• With daily drops of $400-$600 and the looming changes to fluz the issues with MCGC have frustrated many of us
• Chads been hard at work and has an update that helps with tokens and myprepaidcenter
• Can't help reconcile old cards (but does show the date the card was added!)
• Just great stuff and I think it'll help me do more volume.

38:29 Western Union Apologizes for Delayed Payment 20 Months Ago

• Subj: “We sincerely apologize”
• “Our records indicate that due to a technical issue, there could be a delay in the availability of the funds for your transaction and/or in case you requested a refund. Our technical teams are urgently working on expediting the resolution.” (ha!)
• This was from a payment in September 2022 (20 months ago)
• I went back and looked and the payment appears to have gone through just fine
• They gave me a one-use promo code so I sent a fresh payment for $2,500
• We could really use more WU promo codes

40:01 Add a Day: Modify existing Vacasa booking after Cancellation Window has passed.

• After all the bookings were done we decided we wanted to add another day to our upcoming Hawaii trip.
• Except the booking window for the Vacasa/Wyndham booking to be cancellation has passed.
• So I called the friendly reps in Canada and… asked nicely to add a night on the end
• I was told it needed to go to the “back end team” to manually add the night, and it is not guaranteed.
• I was quoted “48 business hours” (6 days), but in less than 1 day the reservation was updated and points taken from my account!
• Great news: adding a day I don’t need to fly Southwest anymore!

44:10 Cape Rey Carlsbad Quick Review

• 3 phone calls over multiple months.
• Ended up with “We’ll see you tomorrow and hopefully something will be there”
• I did get a Diamond upgrade ahead of time on the phone the day before. This may have made a difference since I was checking in on Saturday of a very busy weekend
• But by the time I arrived no suites were up for sale (They were still being sold the day before)
• So my best guess is they sold these at check in Friday.
• When I got there the “hotel is completely sold out, but your room is ready”
• Overall I enjoyed the hotel more this year than last. The fit and finish was better than I remember it and they’re back to Daily housekeeping (without needing to ask for it).
• Lots of Southern CA people on display this year.
• Did not eat on site at all this time. Local places we enjoyed: Black Rail and Coya Peruvian Seceret