Thanksgiving weekend deals I'm taking advantage of

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I know my readers are being bombarded by sales this weekend, but I want to point out 3 travel deals I'll be taking advantage of this weekend. This list isn't exhaustive, but it's the ones that have struck me as worth jumping on because of the incredibly outsized value:

  • Two roundtrip tickets to Germany (from select Air Berlin destinations in the United States) for $999. Travel between January 1 and March 31, 2014. Dates are somewhat limited, but they do price out at or below $999 – for 2 passengers!
  • Up to 2 nights at the Radisson Blu Warwick Hotel Philadelphia for $19.26 per person, per night, plus tax. I stayed at this hotel back in July for two nights using 44,000 Club Carlson Gold points, with the second night free thanks to my Club Carlson co-branded credit card. At the time they were in the process of rebranding from a Radisson to a Radisson Blu property, and this deal is celebrating the completion of that transition. The location is truly unbeatable, located right off Rittenhouse Square in the heart of Philadelphia.
  • I'm making some last minute New Year's Eve plans, so I'm closely eyeing the Hotels.com Black Friday sale website since I hope to be able to make some reservations in downtown Portland, OR, right around New Year's. Right now I'm seeing nightly rates around $100, but I'm holding out to see if their sale will bring that even lower.
  • In the same vein as the above, I'm also interested in Marriott's Cyber Monday deal, since there are a number of Marriott properties in downtown Portland that would be great for New Year's Eve. I assume there'll be blackout dates, but hopefully I'll be able to put together some dates on one side or the other of New Year's Eve to make the trip work.

What deals are you taking advantage of this weekend?

Tis the season: $5,000+ in free* spend

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I mentioned last week before my trip to Chicago that I was planning on exploring the technique outlined in this Flyertalk thread. As a holiday promotion, the American Automobile Association is offering no-fee gift cards. While they sell both American Express and Visa prepaid gift cards, the Visa cards are most interesting because (like virtually all Visa and MasterCard gift cards) they are PIN-enabled. That means you can use them with any of our favorite liquidation techniques: Walmart and grocery store money orders, bill payments at Walmart, Gobank loads, Bluebird loads, and others. They probably will not work with postal money orders, since those purchases are coded differently.

The Deal

Here’s what you need to know:

  • You need to have a AAA membership;
  • AAA is regionally organized, and not all regional branches are participating in the no-fee promotion;
  • Even among those that are participating, not all branches sell the Visa gift cards which can be PIN-enabled – some only sell the less useful Amex cards. These cards aren't useless, in case you want to front-load your spend in order to meet a minimum spending requirement or bonus spend threshold, but they can't be liquidated as easily or cheaply;
  • There are many reports of people being unable to purchase additional gift cards after about $5,000 in purchases. Since the gift cards are registered to your AAA membership, it’s easy for the issuing bank (in this case Metabank) to know who is purchasing the cards. However, the more family members you have, the more you can take advantage of this promotion;
  • To enable the PIN functionality, you need to call the number on the back of the card. You don't need to login to their website to register the card; it's already registered. You only need to call in, follow the prompts, and set your card's PIN number.

My Experience

While I was in Chicago, I went into the AAA location on North Michigan Ave. I asked if their location was participating in the no-fee gift card promotion. When she confirmed that they were, I asked to purchase 4 Visa gift cards for $500 each. She then took my AAA membership card and spent 4-6 minutes filling out a number of forms on her computer terminal. She then asked me for my form of payment, and I handed her my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, since it's my most lucrative card for unbonused spend categories.

The purchase went through for exactly $2,000 (no purchase fees), and the points have since posted to my Barclaycard account. In fact, they've even been redeemed for a travel charge that was about to roll off my account.

I liquidated the 4 Visa gift cards by purchasing 2 Walmart money orders for $0.70 each (doing a split transaction to use 2 of my 4 gift cards for each money order), meaning I paid $1.40 for $44.44 in value.

I won't tell you that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in fact, opportunities like this come up fairly regularly, as my readers know. However, it is a great opportunity to get closer to your travel goals (or just earn 2% cash back) at virtually no cost to you.

Pointshound, Amtrak, Skiplagged, Updated signup bonuses

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I'm heading to Chicago for a long weekend tomorrow, so updates might be spotty for the next few days. There's one newish technique I'll be checking out while I'm there, so watch for that update this weekend or early next week. In the meantime, here's a rundown of some quick hits which probably don't deserve their own blog posts, but which I wanted to bring to my readers' attention.

Pointshound Points Posting

I wrote a few posts back in July when Pointshound first launched their "double up" rates, which allows you to earn both bonus airline miles through Pointshound and elite qualifying nights and regular points with many of their hotel partners. These stays also qualify for hotel promotions. 

My feeling was that if you were planning to book through your hotel's website, and Pointshound offered the same nightly rate with the same cancellation policy, you may as well also earn a few hundred airline miles for your booking as well. I also was the first to reveal a simple technique for instant Pointshound Level 3 status, earning around twice as many miles per night on "double up" bookings, and somewhat more than that on standard (non-double up) bookings.

I haven't written about Pointshound recently because, frankly, my airline miles didn't post, and I wasn't interested in sending any more business to a sub-par operation. It was a good idea, but if they couldn't implement it correctly, I was fine waiting for someone who could (Rocketmiles is currently making a run at part of their market segment).

Imagine my surprise when I got a stream of e-mails on November 7 notifying me that my points had posted for 5 separate reservations. To be clear, these were "double up" reservations for August 30 - September 2, 2013. By my math, that means my points posted 9.5 weeks after checking out (in fairness, I did receive my "double up" hotel points and elite night credits for the stays immediately; just not my Pointshound airline miles).

So who knows, maybe Pointshound has managed to get their act together. File this under developing...

Amtrak Bonus Points with Google Wallet

I love Amtrak Guest Rewards points, which I value at between 3 and 6 cents each, depending on my planned redemptions (making them easily one of Chase's most valuable transfer partners). So I can't help but pass along this opportunity to earn 500 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for linking your AGR number to a mobile Google Wallet account.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell you do need to own a smartphone, download the Google Wallet app, and add Amtrak Guest Rewards as a loyalty program to the app. All this takes a few minutes and is about as much fun as you would expect. You can unlink your AGR account once your points post, however, and they are worth between $15 and $30, depending on your redemption. To put it slightly differently, you would need to spend $250 on Amtrak or book 5 one-way tickets to earn the same number of AGR points.

Skiplagged for Hidden City Ticketing

There is a whole world of travel hacking that I simply don't have the time or patience to master. It involves things like fuel dumping and "hidden city" ticketing. The former technique is too complicated to explain here, but the latter is simple: sometimes it's cheaper to book tickets to places you have no intention of visiting, which happen to have stopovers in the city you actually intend to visit. As long as you don't check bags (which would be checked to your final destination) you can just leave the airport at your "intermediate" destination.

You can save real money doing this, but domestic airline tickets typically aren't expensive enough for me to spend time checking every possible permutation of hidden city ticketing.

Skiplagged is a new website that aims to take care of all that mindless searching for you, and it's going to become a regular stop for me, along with Kayak and ITA Matrix when I'm searching for paid flights. Their homepage has some examples of hidden city ticketing that you can book today, if you're so inclined, that offer (in some cases) substantial savings.

Updated Signup Bonuses

Here are a few updated signup bonuses you'll find on the site:

As my readers know, I don't receive any kind of bonus, referral credit, points, recognition or anything else of value if you sign up using these links, which are not connected to me in any way, shape or form. I provide them only as a service to my readers.

On the other hand, if you find the blog helpful, consider buying my ebook, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto, leaving a review on Amazon.com, and telling your friends and family about the site! It's the only advertising I have and it means the world to me.

Updated Hyatt Point Density Charts

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Part of the purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for analysis of loyalty programs so my readers can easily compare the value offered by credit card signup bonuses, seasonal promotions, and manufactured spending. To that end, one of the first projects I undertook here was my analysis of hotel "point density," comparing earning rates under different circumstances to the points needed for actual hotel night redemptions. Since Hyatt recently announced a devaluation to their program, increasing the cost of some awards and introducing a new award category, it's time to update my analysis of their point density.

As a reminder, here's Hyatt's current award chart, valid for bookings made through January 6, 2014:

And here's the new award chart, for award redemptions made beginning January 7, 2014:

As you can see, the devaluation hits properties in Categories 5 and 6, as well as those in the new Category 7 (for now these are some of the premier Park Hyatt properties, including Paris, Milan, Sydney, and Tokyo). For redemptions at those specific properties, Hyatt points just got much less valuable: 30,000 points will be needed where only 22,000 are required today, a 27% devaluation in the value of Hyatt points.

The purpose of a point density chart is to show the rebate value of various activities. This chart shows the pre-devaluation spending required to generate free nights at each Hyatt category:

So a Hyatt Diamond elite putting their Hyatt stays on a Hyatt co-branded credit card today needs to spend $2,316 at Hyatt properties to generate a free night at a top-tier Hyatt property. As you'd expect, post-devaluation that number goes way up:

This clearly shows the extent of the devaluation: the same amount of Hyatt spend that previously earned a free night at a top-tier Hyatt now only earns a night at a Category 5 property!

If you liked this post, you can find a similar analysis of a number of other competing loyalty programs at my page dedicated to Chapter 6 of my ebook, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto.

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again

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This weekend I went on my mileage run to Lima, Peru, thereby ensuring I'll be Platinum Medallion next year for (probably) the last time. If you follow that link you'll see my airtight logic that by using my (non-mileage-earning) Skybonus award ticket to fly to Chicago this coming weekend, I could use the money I saved to fly to Peru, earning 3 times as many Medallion Qualifying Miles and securing Platinum Medallion status with Delta.

Platinum or Diamond Medallion status is almost essential for securing low-level award tickets, both domestically and internationally. I regularly use the free award rebooking benefit to rebook legs from "medium" to "low" level (now called "standard" and "saver").

While that's all well and good, thanks to the recent Skymiles devaluation, Alaska Mileage Plan miles are so much more valuable than Delta miles (even for award tickets on Delta flights) that that's where I'll be focusing in the future.

All that being said, this mileage run was pretty horrible. While I was seated in Economy Plus on both my international flights and the one domestic flight on which I wasn't upgraded to First, the Atlanta-Lima route was being operated by an extremely old 767-300ER. One of the lavatory doors would not latch so when it was unoccupied the door was literally swinging open and closed with the motion of the plane (right at my seat, 19B). As I walked through BusinessFirst (no OpUp for me, unfortunately) I saw a personal video device Scotch-taped in place.

On the other hand, the service was attentive and the food was perfectly edible in Economy.

The most stressful part of the run was the unwillingness of the staff in the Atlanta airport to print out my return boarding passes. It ended up not being a problem since I had them printed at the gate in Lima. There is absolutely no conceivable reason for this restriction, but I couldn't find anyone in any Sky Club or at the customer service counters who was willing to print out my boarding passes – even though I could access them on my own computer, and was already checked in for my return flight. The Delta Sky Clubs in Atlanta also happen to be in a "transitional period" so their business centers do not have the ability to print documents. All in all it was an absurd set of circumstances for what is otherwise my favorite domestic airline.

In any case, if I ever feel the need to go on a mileage run again, I'll make sure it's short, domestic hops.

The Cure for the Common Devaluation

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By now I presume my readers have heard about the devaluation to the Hyatt Gold Passport program, adding a 7th hotel redemption category, making room upgrades many times more expensive, and increasing the cost of redemptions in the existing award categories.

Devaluations suck, especially when – together with United – they affect some of the most historically lucrative transfer partners of Chase's flexible Ultimate Rewards points.

That's one reason why I don't stockpile miles and points, and neither should you. I never get tired of telling people that the least valuable point is the one you don't redeem. While you can insulate yourself from inflation somewhat by focusing on flexible points currencies that you can deploy strategically, as a hard and fast rule your points will never be more valuable than they are today. Even supposedly "premium" cards like the Citi ThankYou Premier recently underwent a 7% devaluation when they reduced the value of ThankYou points from 1.33 to 1.25 cents each when used for paid reservations.

Besides redeeming your miles and points whenever and wherever you can, there are still three ways you can fight devaluation while you're designing your travel hacking strategy.

Bonus Categories

Bonus categories are designed by credit card companies not to make money hand over fist, but to incentivize use: to make sure their card is "front of wallet." We take advantage of these bonus categories by manufacturing spend as cheaply as possible and redeeming our points as lucratively as possible.

If you carry cards with rotating 5% cash back categories, be aware of those categories, and max out your manufactured spending in those categories whenever possible. This year alone, one person carrying the Chase Freedom, Discover it, and Citi Dividend Platinum Select could pocket $525 in cash at a cost of $82.95 taking advantage of just drug store and gas station bonus categories. That may not sound like travel hacking, but having an extra $442.05 in cash lying around is enough to buy a roundtrip ticket or two in many domestic markets.

If you have a little more liquidity, then take advantage of unlimited 3% cash back or 6% in paid airfare by making Kiva loans using a US Bank Flexperks Travel Signature Visa, or 5% cash back (capped at $2,000 in spend quarterly) with the US Bank Cash+ card.

Gas stations (like 7-11) that continue to sell Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, PayPal My Cash cards, and PIN-enabled Visa and MasterCard gift cards will let you earn lucrative points faster: the Chase Ink line of cards and the Chase United Business Explorer card both earn 2 points per dollar spent at store locations coded as gas stations.

Grocery stores are one of the remaining common bonus categories that is easily hackable, if your local grocery stores sell PIN-enabled Visa or MasterCard gift cards. Those cards can be used to load Bluebird or Gobank accounts for free at Walmart, or used to purchase money orders or make Walmart bill payments.

Signup Bonuses

The principle that your points will never be more valuable than they are today applies equally well to signup bonuses. If you aren't working on lucrative bonus categories, start thinking about what upcoming trips you'd like to take, how you might want to get there and where you might want to stay.

For example, back in April I applied for the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa because I was planning to visit Portland for 3 nights before my brother's wedding. I would never apply for that card speculatively, but I knew that I was getting precisely $684 in value from the signup bonus (since I wanted to stay in downtown Portland), which made it a no-brainer.

Likewise, I just advised a colleague to take advantage of the Chase United Explorer personal card, since there's an available offer for 55,000 United Miles after adding an authorized user and meeting a very reasonable minimum spending requirement. He travels to Poland every year and spends upwards of $1,000 on paid tickets; a few Vanilla Reload Network reload cards later, he took care of his coach ticket for the year.

My travel hacking strategy is skewed heavily towards taking advantage of the cards I already have: the American Express Delta Business Platinum card for its bonused spending thresholds, the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard for 2.2% cash back (on travel redemptions), the US Bank Club Carlson Business card for 5 Club Carlson points per dollar (and last night free on award redemptions), my Citi ThankYou Preferred card with 5 points per dollar at drug stores (for 2 more months!), and my US Bank Flexperks Travel Signature Visa with 2x at gas stations or grocery stores each month.

But that doesn't mean I won't take advantage of a lucrative signup bonus, if I see immediate or near-term use for it.

Cash

The ultimate hedge against award chart devaluation is cash. It's the first chapter of my book, and I personally have an overall cash-heavy earning strategy. Besides the 2.2% cash back Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard I mentioned above, I also manufacture spend on my 2% cash back Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express card.

For mid-tier and lower hotel redemptions, cash back is strictly superior to using the co-branded credit card of any hotel chain besides Club Carlson (where mid-tier hotel redemptions – for 2 nights! – require just $6,600 in spend).

Even for award nights at top-tier properties, the calculus cuts towards cash back: to manufacture a free night at a top-tier Marriott property using the Marriott Rewards credit cards, you'd need to spend $45,000. At an average cost of 0.75 cents per dollar in manufactured spend, you could net $562.50 in cash for the same amount of spend on a 2% cash back card. There aren't many places in the world where you'll spend more than that on a single hotel night!

Co-branded airline credit cards pose a slightly more nuanced problem. If you are able to consistently redeem your miles for domestic flights at the 25,000 mile level, then a fixed $187.50 for domestic roundtrips (at 0.75 cents per dollar in manufactured spend) may be a decent tradeoff for $312.50 in cash (on a 2% cash back card), especially if you live in a relatively expensive market.

On the other hand, if you chose to manufacture cash instead, you might find that you were willing to pay slightly more for flights at more convenient times, on your choice of airline. Plus, those flights would themselves earn frequent flyer miles, giving you a rebate against the total cash cost of your flight.

Finally, your co-branded airline card's annual fee further decreases your net value from manufacturing spend on that card instead of a free, 2% cash back card.

In short, lots of bloggers will tell you to earn and burn, but I am here to tell you don't earn unless you intend to burn.

Further Reading

Unsurprisingly, I'm not the first blogger to touch on these topics. Here's my roundup of the best hits from around the web (caution: most of these blogs mercilessly shill credit cards):

Delta Devaluation Blog Fight: Willful Mendacity edition

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Instead of enjoying my weekend,  here I am shaking my head at some of the rhetoric coming out of Boarding Area since Friday's bonus Delta devaluation (introducing "interim" redemption rates for travel between February 1, 2014 and May 31, 2014).

First a quick roundup: 

  • One Mile At A Time asserts: "I think that anyone that cared about the value of their miles likely left Delta a long time ago."
  • View from the Wing piles on: "the miles are worth less than in other programs and...the people running the program are, in my view, completely untrustworthy."
  • Delta Points shoots back:  "they are both flat out wrong in this case."
  • View from the Wing makes fun of Rene:  "of the 20 reasons he offers, only a small few are directly related to the frequent flyer program."

The problem with all the participants in this little spat is that they're willfully confusing three different issues:

  1. Is Delta Airlines a good airline?
  2. What is the value of 1 SkyMile?
  3. What is the value of the Delta SkyMiles frequent flyer program?

Trying to answer all three questions along one axis is just going to confuse your readers (and in this case, the bloggers themselves seem pretty confused). 

Is Delta a Good Airline?

Delta's isn't just a good airline, it's the best domestic US carrier. Most of Delta Points' arguments fall into this category:

 

1) They were almost ALL on time and worked
2) Almost all of the reps I interacted with were TOPS
3) The wifi worked on almost all the jets
4) The seats were comfortable
5) The Skyclubs are fine and reps are good there
6) When issues came up I was taken care of well
7) The phone app, while slow, works
8) The seats are being upgraded to nice full-flat seats
9) The food is good
10) The drinks are good (if they get rid of Woodford I will cry)
12) The partners are good
13) The routes and frequency are good
16) Pilots are well trained and professional
17) HUB airports flow well
19) @DeltaAssist works and works FAST
20) Compensation for issues that do come up.

 

      View from the Wing begrudgingly acknowledges these points: "Delta is a good airline, and it has an awful frequent flyer program...in saying they’re good I am grading on a curve (comparing them to US carriers)...Non-stop flights and frequency are worth something and Delta runs a pretty good operation."

      So, they're better than all their domestic competitors (who else should we compare them to? Singapore?), have non-stop flights, good frequency, and they run a good operation? In other words, Delta's a great airline for US travelers who travel primarily...in the US?

      What is the Value of 1 SkyMile? 

      1 SkyMile has a floor value of 1 cent when redeemed for "Pay with Miles," a benefit of their co-branded American Express cards. Economy Pay with Miles redemptions don't earn MQM or redeemable SkyMiles, but first and business class redemptions do (with corresponding class of service bonuses).

      I've never made a Pay with Miles redemption and I hope I never do, but it's worth trying to establish what the lowest possible value of a SkyMile is. 

      Now, the value you get from SkyMiles is going to depend on your redemption pattern. After June 1 (post-devaluation) economy class redemptions to Europe from the Continental United States still cost just 60,000 SkyMiles. Assuming that's a $900-$1,300 ticket (with a free one-way!), you're getting 1.5-2.17 cents per SkyMile. If you book a 125,000 SkyMile award in BusinessElite, you'll get 0.72-1.04 cents in value per SkyMile (assuming you value BusinessElite the same as economy – a silly assumption but we're being conservative).

      However, we've already established that you'll get at least 1 cent in value from a Pay with Miles redemption, so let's say a conservative range in value is 1 cent to 2.17 cents per Skymile, and tentatively put the value of 1 SkyMile at 1.585 cents.

       

      What is the Value of the SkyMiles Program?

      There are three ways to get value from the SkyMiles program as a traveller: elite benefits, earning for flight activity, and earning for co-branded credit card activity.

      The value you put on elite benefits is going to depend on your own personality: I love being upgraded to first class, I love free checked bags (including insanely oversized fencing bags), and I love having competent agents I can get on the phone any time who are willing to go the extra mile to help me. That's tough to monetize, so let's set it aside for now.

      Earning for flight activity is easy: since we've figured out the value of 1 SkyMile, we just need to calculate what rebate value SkyMiles provide on the cost of paid travel. I'll use my own earning activity as an example:

      So far this year I've spent $1,514 on the fare portion of my Delta flights, and earned 25,182 Medallion Qualification Miles. Now, some taxes and fees are excluded from MQD calculations, so let's add a 25% buffer on that cost number, bringing it to $1,893 (being conservative). That means I've paid about 7.5 cents per MQM this year. As a Platinum Medallion, however, I've earned 100% bonus redeemable SkyMiles on every flight flown this year, making my total earned SkyMile haul 50,364. In other words, I paid about 3.76 cents per SkyMile, giving me a rebate value of about 42%: thanks to SkyMiles I earn 42% of the paid value of my tickets back in future travel.

      Finally, you can get value from the SkyMiles program by using their Platinum or Reserve co-branded credit cards. How much value? Well, at the Platinum card's $25,000 and $50,000 bonus thresholds, your overall earning is 1.4 SkyMiles per dollar, or 2.22 cents per dollar (about the same as the BarclayCard Arrival World MasterCard). The Reserve card earns slightly more at its $30,000 and $60,000 bonus thresholds, 1.5 SkyMiles per dollar or 2.38 cents per dollar.

      But as the old infomercials used to say, that's not all, because if you're hitting those spend thresholds, you should be doing so in order to secure Platinum or Diamond Medallion status, where you'll have the option of choosing 20,000 or 25,000 bonus SkyMiles as your Choice Benefit, giving you an additional $317 and $396 in value, without setting foot on a plane or spending an additional dollar.

       "Should" you fly Delta?

      Anyone who tells you what airline "smart" or "stupid" people fly without breaking down the analysis along all three of these axes is either deliberately lying to you or doesn't know what they're talking about. The redemption value, earning rate, and value you put on elite benefits depends entirely on your own travel and earning behavior. There is no one size fits all answer to those questions.

      Personally, next year is going to be my transition year away from Platinum Medallion on Delta. There's no way I'll fly enough paid tickets to make it worth the mileage runs I'd need to secure Platinum status, which is when you are able to make unlimited free award changes and redeposits (and secure that lucrative Choice Benefit). At the end of next year I'll status match to Alaska MVP Gold, and start crediting my Delta and Alaska flights to my Mileage Plan account instead. I'll be sad to lose my first class upgrades, but the Alaska miles are so much more valuable that without high-level elite status on Delta, it's worth it for me to make the switch.

       

       

      First MyVanilla Debit shutdown!

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      A few weeks ago I reported on my experience using MyVanilla Debit cards. A lot of people are concerned about having their cards shutdown, since it's so valuable to have a way to easily liquidate Vanilla Reload Network reload cards after reaching your $5,000 monthly Bluebird load limit.

      I explained how I had gradually increased my MyVanilla Debit usage, loading and unloading about $2,000 per week to each of my 3 cards.

      Well, one of my cards was finally shut down yesterday soon after I loaded $1,000 and did a bank cash advance in the same amount. 

      What happens when you're shut down?

      The most important thing to know is that a MVD shutdown only affects the closed account. While the folks at MyVanilla do have my Social Security number, so in principle they could link my three accounts (and in fact they do, since that's how they impose the 3-accounts-per-person limit), in fact they do not proactively close all your active accounts: only the one that triggers the shutdown.

      When an account is shutdown, you will no longer be able to log into that account. That's why it's extremely helpful to have your MyVanilla Debit account loaded into Mint or a similar banking website so you still have access to your balance and transaction history (more on that in a second).

      How do you get your money back?

      If you call the phone number on the back of your closed card, most people seem to have success having their account temporarily reopened to allow the customer to get a bank cash advance or use an ATM to empty the account, which keeps MyVanilla from having to mail a check for the account balance.

      Additionally, there are reports that while your account is in that temporary reopened status, it's still possible to load Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, giving you one last shot to push a large amount through the card before losing it. 

      Finally, some but far from all shutdown users report that after their account is "temporarily" reopened, it in fact remains open and can be used normally. 

      What triggers account closure?

      This is a question I obviously don't have an exact answer for. I was loading and unloading much more money to my closed account than the vast majority of MyVanilla's users. On the other hand, there are definitely people who load and unload even more than me. 

      Fortunately, I did have my MVD login credentials loaded into Mint, so I still have access to my transaction history, which I'm more than happy to share with my readers. This is for my closed card account, for roughly the last month. CA means a cash advance from a bank teller, WM means a Walmart bill payment: 

      • October 5: Load $1,000
      • October 7: CA $950
      • October 14: Load $1,000
      • October 14: WM $1,000
      • October 17: Load $1,000
      • October 18: CA $1,000
      • October 22: Load $1,000
      • October 24: CA $1,000
      • October 27: Load $1,000
      • October 28: CA $1,000
      • October 31: Load $2,000
      • October 31: WM $2,000
      • November 5: Load $1,000
      • November 6: CA $1,000
      • November 8: Load $1,000
      • November 8: CA $1,000 (shutdown)

      In summary, my total amounts of the 3 transaction types are: 

      • Loads: $9,000
      • Cash advances: $5,950
      • Walmart bill payments: $3,000
      • Balance at account closure: $35.04

       

       

       

       

      What Next?

      These cards are incredibly lucrative, so of course I'm sad to see one go, but fortunately I still have 2 active card accounts. For now my plan is to stop doing bank cash advances and stick to Walmart bill payments, which I believe are somewhat safer since they're processed as ordinary purchases (i.e. MyVanilla makes money off them). That may be an overreaction, since there's certainly some safe level of monthly cash advances. With only two remaining cards, however, I'm not willing to play Guinea pig to find out just what that level is!

       

      More fun with the United devaluation

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      Last week on the train to New York for a family weekend I posted a quick-and-dirty analysis of how what formerly seemed like insane "fuel" surcharges on British Airways award redemptions can actually be cheaper than flights purchased through United's new, devalued partner award chart. It was a stylized example (you had to earn a British Airways companion pass – and have a companion – for starters), but I've spent the week thinking about it and have a few more fun examples to share.

      Let's start with the assumption that you're flush with flexible Ultimate Rewards points earned through one of Chase's premium credit cards. You might have planned to redeem 125,000 of them for a Lufthansa first class ticket booked through United. Starting in February you know that award will cost 220,000 miles, so you're looking for an alternative.

      The good news is, tickets booked on Aer Lingus and air berlin (their punctuation, not mine) using British Airways Avios still don't have the absurd fuel surcharges that make most British Airways redemptions such a terrible value. That means getting to Europe in business class is still affordable using Ultimate Rewards points.

      Aer Lingus

      From Dublin, Aer Lingus flies to and from Boston Logan, New York JFK, Chicago O'Hare, and Orlando  International Airport. From Shannon, they only serve New York and Boston. Those flights will cost (each way):

      • JFK: 20,000 economy; 40,000 business
      • BOS: 12,500 economy; 25,000 business
      • ORD:  20,000 economy; 40,000 business
      • MCO:  25,000 economy; 50,000 business*

      *there are conflicting reports regarding the cost of this award. The flight is technically (72 miles) over 4,000 miles each way, so should price at the levels I give here, but some reports put the cost at 20,000 economy and 40,000 business. I haven't made a test booking yet to find out for sure.

      You will pay some taxes and fees for these awards:

      • The Points Guy paid $30.57 in fees for a one-way business class redemption JFK-DUB;
      • One of his commenters paid $157 in taxes for a round-trip business class redemption BOS-DUB, which puts the ex-Dublin part of the cost at around $125;

      From Dublin you can use Avios to fly anywhere Aer Lingus flies, or choose a low-cost European carrier. Be aware that if you purchase your connecting flight on a different itinerary, you won't be protected if your Aer Lingus flight is delayed or cancelled.

      air berlin

      air berlin flies between Dusseldorf and Fort Myers, Chicago O'Hare, Miami International Airport, Los Angeles International, and New York JFK; and between Berlin and Chicago O'Hare, Miami, and New York JFK.

      The flights to Chicago, Miami, and Fort Myers will all cost 25,000 Avios in economy and 50,000 in business class, each way. The flight between JFK and Dusseldorf comes in just under 4,000 miles, so costs just 20,000 Avios in economy and 40,000 in business. The flight between Dusseldorf and Los Angeles is over 5,500 miles, so it costs 30,000 Avios each way in economy and 60,000 in business.

      It's hard to believe, but that 20,000 Avios economy class redemption from JFK to DUS has a grand total of taxes and fees of...$2.50:

      You think that's something? Let me show you the rest of that dialog box:

      That's right: you can redeem just 6,000 Avios and pay $162.50 to "buy up" to the rest of the redemption. That values 14,000 flexible Ultimate Reward points at just $160. But those points are already worth $175 when used for a ticket purchased through the Ultimate Rewards travel tool!

      It's worth taking a look at the business class redemption as well. The fees are the same $2.50 when using 40,000 Avios one-way, but unfortunately the "Avios and cash" rate is much more expensive. Instead of "buying" 14,000 Ultimate Rewards points for $160 (1.1 cent each), can pay $560 for 20,000 points (2.8 cents each):

       

      Taxes and fees on the DUS-JFK flight are somewhat higher, at $103.30:

      But you again have the opportunity to "buy" 14,000 Ultimate Rewards points for $160 – an amazing deal.

      Roundtrip to Europe for 12,000 Ultimate Rewards points and $425.80 is an unbelievable deal. Roundtrip to Europe in business class for 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points and $105.80 only looks like a ripoff in comparison.

       

       

      Is it ethical to tell people about travel hacking?

      /

      Those who blog about travel hacking (myself included) get a lot of flack for writing about and making public techniques that people "in the know" would prefer to keep to themselves. I think View from the Wing best summarized my position here:

      I will continue my approach of sharing most things, things that seem like they’ll have a long shelf life or that seem like very short term opportunities regardless of whether they’re shared, and not sharing things that I believe will be killed once published.

      That's why I don't have any second thoughts about sharing the technique of Walmart Bill Pay: it's a legal service offered by a huge corporation that knows exactly what it's doing – and is even being paid for its trouble. The fact that it allows us to liquidate PIN-based debit cards by paying off our credit cards is a happy coincidence. Red in tooth and claw and so on.

      On the other hand, there's another technique I know of that involves exploiting a bug in the website of a travel provider. I'll never blog about that bug, since it'll be fixed within hours. People who discover it on their own can enjoy it, and hopefully they'll keep their mouths shut too.

      But that's not the point of this post. My feeling is that people who buy and read my book or regularly read my blog basically know what they're doing, so I'm comfortable sharing potentially risky techniques and trusting my readers not to take excessive risks.

      What I've been thinking about is whether it's ethical to tell people who aren't already interested in travel hacking about the techniques we use to manufacture huge volumes of spend every month.  After all, travel hacking requires a certain personality type: some mathematical aptitude, relentless attention to detail, and an ability to methodically evaluate the costs and benefits of each technique. A person without that personality shouldn't be buying $30,000 in prepaid instruments every month.

      I'm not trying to be condescending to the "little people who don't understand" how great this hobby is. I'm trying to be realistic, and the fact is the frequent flyer forums are full of posts by people who shouldn't be playing this game: people who buy the wrong gift cards, who lose their prepaid cards on the way to the car, who let store employees swap out their activated cards for duds. You can give all the "advice" in the world, but good advice will never be a substitute for the required personality type.

      That's why I've been wondering: is it ethical to tell people about travel hacking in the first place?