M² Episode 148: Getting Going on 2022 -- Happy New Year!

0:30 Check What’s Still Working

• Is Fluz okay?
• Has Plastiq changed?
• Citi Robot Lady okay?
• Amex upgrade/AU/employee bonuses?

15:45 *Calendar* Year Resets

• Amex Incidentals (more on that below)
• Chase Ritz-Carlton $300
• Citi Prestige $250
• BofA Premium Rewards $100

16:30 *Cardmember* Year Resets (ie, don’t worry about these Jan 1)

• Chase Sapphire Reserve $300
• Hilton Aspire Resort $250
• Capital One Venture X $300
• Amex Old Blue Cash $50,000 cap
• Good round-up here from DoC (link)

18:00 Amex Incidentals

• $200 Business Platinum Dell credits per 6 mo
• $50 Personal Platinum Saks credits per 6 mo
• $200 Platinum (Personal/Business) Air Incidental credits per 12 mo
• $250 aspire travel credit. (Calendar year)
• $10 Business Platinum Wireless credits per month
• Personal Gold/Platinum Uber Credits per month

34:50 Spend Targets Reset

• Amex Personal Gold Grocery $25,000
• Amex Hilton Free Night Certificate $15,000 (Surpass, Business)
• Amex Delta Spend Towards Status

36:00 Check What’s New

• Any new Amex referral/welcome bonuses/Offers?

36:30 Difficulty in doing anything not Amex right now

• Citi Premier Double Dip was planned for Dec. When my P2 24 month clock reset.
• Debating adding another $4k/$4k in minimum spend right now.
• Is this worth doing right now or after things die down a bit?
• One nice part about Amex dominating the plays right now: time marches forward and we’ll be in a better position with other banks when time comes to apply and use them.

41:30 Q1 2022 5x Categories

• Chase Freedom: Grocery, eBay
• Discover: Grocery Stores, Fitness clubs & Gym Memberships
• Citi Dividend: Amazon.com and streaming services

42:40 Housekeeping

• Time to move brokerage accounts around for bonuses/uplift?
• Time to close out old accounts. HSBC? SoFi? A signup bonus isn’t completely earned until the bonus has been consolidated, and a useless account has been closed.

News

46:50 AA Simply Miles Posting

• The highs, lows, and stress of whether this will pay out
• Joked about it last week but how seriously do we need to worry about the Providence of our AA accounts?
• Example: I have brokered miles out of the account I used to credit these and I have more than one AA account in my name.
• Would you be comfortable booking AA flights for others out of this account? What about for someone who had their AA account shutdown? Just hypothetically. ;)
• Congratulations to everyone who got in on this, hopefully it all goes smoothly

What We’ve Been Up To

52:50 Cancellations

• Japan Metal for February, booked with a variety of currencies
• Alaska: Online, easy, instant, no fees.
• JAL: Online, a little confusing, instant, nominal fees.
• AsiaMiles: Have to chat, and expensive $120 per (x5) to cancel. No Covid waivers unless the airline cancels the flights, even if tourist travel isn’t permitted due to Covid. Will wait and hope for a cancellation or more lenient terms.
• Boston - Los Angeles in January
• Extended family enthusiasm evaporated after a recent subpar trip to Disneyland, so trip scrapped
• Delta: Flight time changed enough to force a refund through Amex travel. Miles came back as statement credit, but this was the flight that didn’t trigger the Amex 35% rebate. So rather than accepting 1 cpp Sam encouraged me to reach out and ask Amex to instead revert these back to MRs. That way I could either cash out at 1.1 cpp through Schwab -or- book again with 35% rebate (and this time get it right!). I wasn’t going to hassle with it but this was a painless 10 minute call w/Amex. Agent patched it up right away and my MR balance increased by 240,000 instantly.
• AA: Complete opposite experience. I [perhaps foolishly] cancelled thinking I’d get a voucher I could use for the next year. Not so fast: Flight Credit needs to be used for travel that commences 1 year after booking! I booked this in February 2020 so I only have 2 months to use these credits, and they’re name-locked: The worst kind of travel credit. Pinged AA on Twitter: Pound sand. Called Amex: Explained there was a flight time change. Less than 4 hours: Pound sand. Explained that I booked First and got Business on a 3-cabin plane: Pound sand. Asked to convert Flight Credit to more flexible Trip Credit: Pound sand. Really bugs me that “no change fees” results in “rapidly expiring voucher”. Wish travel credits, like GCs, didn’t have expiration dates.

1:08:40 Booked: Phoenix in February

• Never placed such importance on cancellability
• Booked AA First for 45,000 pp one-way when flights were $2,600 pp one-way, $1,600 pp one-way in Economy
• Booked Hyatt Andaz Scottsdale for 25,000/nt, called to apply a Suite Upgrade Award. Phone rep bungled it and converted it to an $12,000 all-cash stay! Patched that up with a subsequence call. Hyatt reservation details are so difficult to discern: Can’t tell when there’s trouble.
• Twitter HyattConcierge response times are > 24 hours lately and “my” Hyatt Concierge is slow to respond and hasn’t shown an ability to handle even mildly complicated situations. Requested a new one through Twitter DM.