Disappointed by Alaska Airlines IT, satisfied by their customer service

I wrote a few weeks back about the maze of rules relating to the elimination of change fees by most US carriers. My basic conclusion was that eliminating fees is better than keeping them, but that if you’re trying to claim a credit for a fall in price you should anticipate having to put some work in.

That turned out to be prophetic in my own case, rebooking a 3-week trip out West in July. But while I didn’t run into any problems with Alaska’s change fees, I am now 3 weeks into an IT saga.

My reservation was complicated, but uneventful

For my summer trip, I booked a fairly straightforward multi-city itinerary, with stops in California, Oregon, and Montana. I was able to book the itinerary entirely online, and I didn’t violate any of Alaska’s rudimentary routing rules. However, I did pay for it in a modestly complicated way:

• I made the reservation logged into another person’s account, using their companion fare;

• I paid for part of the fare using their Wallet funds;

• and I paid for the rest using their Alaska Airlines credit card.

Obviously there are a lot of moving pieces here, but the reservation itself was made online with no hiccups.

Changing the reservation was straightforward

In my original post, I wrote that Alaska “offers two methods of changing an existing itinerary.” It turns out that’s not right. You can also “Deposit a ticket” through the “Wallet” tab in your account, which offers three additional options:

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In hindsight, I wish I’d chosen one of those options! Instead, I called in, had my ticket re-priced, and was told I’d receive a certificate by e-mail I could deposit to my Wallet.

But, the certificate never came.

A “known issue,” but nobody knows what it is

When I called back last week to follow up, the rep made me walk through the entire story from scratch, researched the history of the ticket, put me on hold while she called accounting, and then confirmed that I was due the $720 certificate, which I would receive by e-mail.

Yet again, the certificate never came.

When I called in again today, I decided to be a bit more straightforward: they had screwed up, I was sick of being given the runaround, and I needed to know what they were doing to fix it. This elicited a slightly more effective reaction, and the phone rep contacted the most knowledgable person in accounting she knew (“I’ve been working here for 29 years and Carrie’s been here even longer than me”).

This time, I got what seems like a sensible answer: “there’s a known IT issue, accounting is making great strides to fix it, and it will hopefully be resolved soon.” She even threw in that “Carrie” had recognized my name and knew I was one of the “handful” of people affected by the issue.

She also offered me a $100 discount code, bringing the total gross value of the rebooking to $783. I don’t believe I’ll be able to use the discount code since (unlike Wallet funds) I don’t think discount codes can be combined with companion tickets. Still, someone will surely use it.

Conclusion

I don’t know exactly which piece of my booking broke Alaska’s IT, so there’s nothing I can recommend to avoid running into the same problem until it’s finally resolved. I suspect it has something to do with how their change fee waiver populated across various systems, since I was using a companion fare, Wallet funds, and a non-traveler’s credit card.

But despite the incomplete and inadequate information they’ve given me since the beginning, I came away impressed with their overall customer service. Even as an entry-level MVP elite, I never had to wait more than a few minutes on hold. Every rep I spoke to confirmed that I was owed the fare difference, so there was no need to recite terms and conditions to them at any point. And when the problem continued far too long I was even offered a fare discount as a goodwill gesture.

It’s not like people have much of a choice in carrier these days, but I’m frankly thrilled Alaska's doing their best to keep up their customer service standards.

A tale of two Hyatts Place

Last week I took a road trip to neighboring Delaware to check out some of the beach communities we missed on our trip to Exmore in August. It was a fun time, and since neither of us had ever been to Delaware before we built the trip around completing the Discover Delaware Trail. We saw a lot of Delaware, and got some great ideas for stuff we’d like to do next summer assuming the vaccination campaign is up to speed by then.

But I don’t want to talk about Delaware today, I want to talk about “brand standards.” Except when American Express is running offers that are only valid at specific property types, I’m basically indifferent to the sub-brands each hotel chain licenses, not because I don’t acknowledge there are differences, but because there are just too many for me to keep straight. At the low end who cares if it’s a Hyatt House or a Hyatt Place, in the middle can anyone keep straight the difference between a Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, or Hyatt Regency, and even at the most luxurious properties, how do you decide between a Waldorf Astoria and a Conrad (the Maldives is host to both)?

Like any sane person, I decide between hotels based on location and cost, taking into account any points balances, free award nights, and credit card promotions. Which is why I was so surprised by the totally different practices at the two Hyatts Place we stayed in the same state during the same week.

Hyatt Place Dewey Beach versus Hyatt Place Wilmington Riverfront

To get it out of the way: these are two different properties in different parts of the state, they opened 6 years apart, and they have different ownership groups. Obviously the properties are going to be different. Dewey Beach is a party town just south of Rehoboth Beach, and relies on summer vacationers and hard-partying future Supreme Court Justices. Wilmington is a financial center that brings in conventions and business travelers year-round (until this year).

The Hyatt Place Dewey Beach was happy to sell us some beers to take out back and watch the sunset over the bay, but they didn’t have a kitchen, instead offering a few packaged snacks next to the reception counter. The Wilmington Riverfront had a “grab and go” pantry, but also a bar and restaurant, which served both lunch and dinner until March (they now open at 4 pm and close at 9:30 pm for an extremely limited dinner menu only).

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the stuff that goes to the core of so-called “brand standards,” and three things stuck out to me:

• Coffee. In Dewey Beach, the Hyatt Place had removed coffee makers from the rooms. This seemed perfectly reasonable: coffee makers are high-contact surfaces and relatively difficult to thoroughly clean (we occasionally run vinegar through our home coffee maker and it doesn’t work particularly well). Instead, they offered coffee all-day in the lobby, which worked fine for us. Imagine our surprise when we arrived in Wilmington and the coffee makers, difficult to clean and all, were still in the rooms.

• Breakfast. Stays at Hyatts Place include breakfast, and when we checked in at Dewey Beach the receptionist informed us that they were offering one “hot item” and one “cold item.” The next morning I went down and discovered that the hot item was a Jimmy Dean sausage sandwich. Not a Jimmy Dean-style sausage sandwich — it was literally still in its microwaveable Jimmy Dean wrapping paper. When I mentioned this to the receptionist in Wilmington, she was shocked, since they have someone come in every morning exclusively to cook breakfast in order to meet “brand standards,” a rotating cycle of french toast sticks, oatmeal, and something else.

• Toiletries. Another weird one: our bathroom in Dewey Beach was set up with shampoo and conditioner, but not skin lotion, which I’ve come to expect at even the most basic chain hotels. And sure enough, the Hyatt Place in Wilmington provided it.

None of this would have been of more than passing interest for me at all, except that while I was waiting to pick up a few things for dinner in Wilmington, the receptionist wandered over and I told her I was surprised by the difference between the two properties. She got more agitated than I was! They had worked so hard to meet “brand standards” since they opened in October, and this other property in the same chain 90 miles away was just phoning it in. I guess I’d be upset too.

Conclusion

Nothing on Earth could convince me to learn the differences between the 28 post-merger Marriott sub-brands, and in general I’m going to stick to booking the cheapest properties in the locations that best suit my needs. But the fact that two properties in the same sub-brand, in the same state, could have such different interpretations of “brand standards” has at least given me pause. Where prices and redemption costs are similar, I might start occasionally picking up the phone to find out in advance how individual properties are implementing them.

How I'm positioned going into 2021

With the end of the year in sight and the possibility of travel again appearing on the horizon, I thought it would be unusually desirous to take stock of my current portfolio of rewards currencies, identify any strengths and shortcomings, and apply myself with renewed vigor as needed.

Bank Programs

The three bank-sponsored programs I participate in are Chase Ultimate Rewards, US Bank Flexperks, and Barclay’s Arrival+, and right now my Chase balance is the only one I feel good about. With four Freedom cards I can earn up to 120,000 Ultimate Rewards points per year depending on how the bonus categories fall, and my Ink Plus lets me earn 250,000 more points at office supply stores, preferably during negative cost promotions like the one currently running at Office Depot and OfficeMax.

US Bank Flexpoints are worth 1.5 cents each when redeemed through the US Bank travel portal or through Real-Time Rewards, which allows you to redeem points for their full value against purchases at many merchant categories. That means the Flexperks Travel Rewards card earns the equivalent of 3% cash back at grocery stores, and it’s typically one of my go-to cards for grocery store manufactured spend. However, times haven’t been typical, and it fell out of my rotation in favor of cards offering temporary benefits during the pandemic, like my Chase Hyatt card and American Express Delta Platinum card, which is earning the equivalent of 1.5 SkyMiles per dollar (at $1,000 thresholds), with bonus MQM’s along for the ride. I wouldn’t normally consider buying SkyMiles for 2 cents each, but the bonus MQM’s (and recent news that all 2020 MQM will roll over to 2021) and the time-limited nature of the deals ended up convincing me to put a fair amount of spend on the card this year.

Finally, I still have a Barclays Arrival+ card, which used to function as a decent 2%+ cash back card with a chip-and-PIN functionality for use abroad and a trip delay benefit, which made it my go-to card when booking paid flights. Effective November 1, 2019, the trip delay benefit was removed, so I can’t recommend anyone pay an annual fee on the card anymore, as long as they have access to 2% or higher cash back on unbonused spend with another card (Fidelity Rewards or Citi Double Cash, for example).

Airline Programs

From one perspective, my airline mile balances are even more dismal than my bank balances. My highest balance is with Delta, with about 40,000 miles, and my lowest with Alaska, at around 13,000, with American and United in between. In hindsight this ended up being the ideal way to go into the pandemic, since the balances that ended up stranded and unredeemable since March were so minuscule. Looking forward, of course, I’d ideally like to get at least some of those balances up in order to opportunistically redeem them in the summer and fall.

My United Mileage Plus balance is the easiest to address since it’s an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, so my strategy for earning more Ultimate Rewards points works as a Mileage Plus strategy as well.

In 2021 I’ll have two Delta companion certificates: my 2020 companion certificate with its extended expiration date of December 31, 2021, and the new 2021 certificate I’ll receive in May. Those should cover all my domestic Delta travel in 2021.

With my family on the West Coast, my partner’s family easily accessible on American Airlines, and Alaska joining oneworld on March 31, 2021, I expect Mileage Plan miles will be one of the most valuable currencies for me for the next few years. Unfortunately, opportunities to earn them besides through flying are pretty limited. I have a good relationship with Bank of America, so I’ll keep an eye out for heightened credit card signup bonuses in 2021 (the current offer is for 40,000 miles with a waived annual fee the first year).

Another option for flights operated by Alaska and American will be to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to British Airways Avios, which should be redeemable for the lowest-priced award tickets on either carrier. Tickets to the Pacific Northwest cost the same with Avios as they do with Mileage Plan, and British Airways offers periodic bonuses when transferring points in. Unfortunately, those low-level award tickets are few and far between, so realistically Mileage Plan miles and companion fares will remain the best way to book Alaska Airlines flights. Flights to the Midwest on American cost just 15,000 Avios roundtrip, which would create a decent opportunity if flights weren’t already so cheap. Instead, I’ll likely just pay with Flexpoints or Arrival+ miles and credit the flights to Alaska.

Finally, my American balance, about 15,000 miles, is low enough that my two best options are to either spend it down entirely (for example on a 15,000-mile roundtrip redemption to the Midwest), or to aggressively boost it with a new credit card application. Since Citi doesn’t want my business anymore, that would mean a Barclays Aviator Red MasterCard (current signup bonus of 50,000 miles, $99 annual fee not waived). With no minimum spend requirement, that’s almost a tempting offer, but I don’t have a concrete enough redemption in mind to justify the application for now.

Hotel Programs

My two main hotel programs are Hilton and Hyatt, and here things are actually looking alright.

While my World of Hyatt points balance is low, I’m sitting on one Category 1-4 free night award from 2020 (extended until December 31, 2021), earning another by spending $4,000 on the card by December 31, 2020, and will receive a third when my card is renewed in April 2021. This is perfect as I already have (tentative, vaccine-dependent) plans for these awards in July, since a new Category 4 Hyatt opened in Portland in February, 2020. For additional Hyatt stays in 2021 I’ll be depending on Ultimate Rewards transfers.

My Hilton balance is in much sorrier shape. I actually went into the pandemic with a reasonable reserve, but it’s also the only hotel currency I’ve redeemed since March: two nights on the Eastern Shore in August and a 4-night stay in the Midwest in October. Without accelerated earning or definite plans, I simply stopped putting grocery store manufactured spend on my American Express Surpass card. Since American Express updated their website to show progress towards the $15,000 spend requirement to earn a free weekend night certificate, I realized there’s virtually no way I’ll spend that much on the card this year. Simply put, it was a wasted year not earning one of my favorite rewards currencies or the free night certificate that’s a main justification for keeping the card. In 2021, I’ll be ramping up spend again and getting ready for redemptions in the summer and fall.

Conclusion

I’ve gone into a lot of detail here because I think readers benefit more from knowing precise information they can compare against their own experience, rather than the idealized stories people are paid to sell. My situation is crystal clear: I try to earn the miles and points I need for the trips I want to take, and since March, I haven’t wanted to take any trips. On the contrary, I’ve wanted to keep my household safe, and keep my friends and family safe, so I pivoted my strategy towards earning cash back I can “redeem” today, rather than miles and points that I wouldn’t be able to use for 12-18 months.

As the vaccine enters widespread distribution, it’s time to start thinking about pivoting back. That means ramping up my most useful currency, Chase Ultimate Rewards, while also starting to pay renewed attention to Alaska Airlines, Hyatt, and Hilton earning opportunities.

Making the decision to keep my Delta Platinum Business card

I wrote last month about a little experiment I was running with my American Express Delta Platinum Business companion ticket. By booking a ticket before May 31, 2020, for travel before September 30, 2020, I should be able to move the ticket to any dates before September 30 with no difference in fare, or use the ticket value towards travel anywhere on Delta after that date. Additionally, since my annual fee appeared on my May statement, this would allow me to get my last companion ticket “free” by cancelling my card and having the annual fee refunded (in some states American Express is required to pro-rate annual fee refunds so residents of those states needn’t feel the same urgency).

Against my better judgment, I ultimately decided to keep the card for another year.

American Express gave me an “Appreciation Credit”

As I wrote back at the beginning of May, American Express increased the earning rate on the consumer Delta credit cards to 4 Skymiles per dollar spent at grocery stores through July, 2020. That’s a pretty good earning rate, and if I had a consumer card I’d be hitting it hard. Unfortunately, they didn’t extend the same courtesy to business card holders, so it didn’t affect my decision to close my card.

However, at the end of May, I refreshed my Mint account and found a pleasant surprise: American Express had credited my account with a $75 “Appreciation Credit.” Doctor of Credit had shared some information about the similar ($200) credit for Business Platinum cardholders, but American Express never communicated anything about it to me, by e-mail or in my online account, so I simply don’t know whether I would “keep” the credit if I cancelled my card and had the annual fee refunded. In other words, was the “Appreciation Credit” a retention offer, which in effect lowered my annual fee from $250 (itself an increase from the previous $195 fee), or a free statement credit like the ones provided through Amex Offers, in which case closing my account would produce a negative-$75 account balance and (eventually) a refund check.

Ultimately, I decided to treat the credit as an annual fee reduction, and that the card was worth keeping for another year at $175.

Is the Delta Platinum Business card worth $175 a year?

There are four potential sources of value from a Delta Platinum Business card (as mentioned, the consumer card has the additional temporary benefit of increased earnings at grocery stores):

• a domestic (lower 48 except for residents of Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico or the United States Virgin Islands whose flights also originate there) companion fare;

• free checked bags for the cardholder and up to 8 others traveling on the same reservation;

• access to certain Amex Offers;

• bonus Medallion Qualification Miles at the $25,000 and $50,000 spend thresholds.

The list above is roughly in the order I value the benefits in.

Domestic companion tickets are most valuable when simply sold to someone who is willing to pay some fraction of the fare’s value. For example, someone who would otherwise pay for two $500 fares in cash should be happy to buy a companion ticket for $250, wiping out your annual fee and letting you enjoy the other benefits for free. Unfortunately, unlike Alaska Airlines companion fares, the Delta offer is strictly limited to the cheaper fare classes, making that kind of win-win exchange hard to arrange; no one likes to be told what flights they have to take based on fare buckets!

If you’re going to use a companion ticket for yourself, then you should value it well below your nominal savings — you should value it at what you would other pay for the same tickets, either with a traditional mileage redemption or using a cheaply-earned currency like US Bank Flexpoints or Chase Ultimate Rewards. For that reason, I value Delta companion tickets much more conservatively than many travel hackers, perhaps $100.

Free checked bags, on the other hand, I value more or less at face value, because I don’t have elite status anymore and I really like checking bags! Delta now charges $30 for your first checked bag (and $40 for the second!), so two travelers making 2 round-trips per year with one checked bag each will save $240 just on those fees. We don’t fly Delta quite as much as we used to since our families are now easier to reach on Alaska and American, but between trips to see friends and domestic vacations I’m very comfortable valuing our free checked bags at $120 per year.

The third source of value, Amex Offers, used to be more valuable when each offer could be added to and redeemed on multiple cards; having more American Express cards mechanically increased the savings available to you. That’s less true now, but there are still some offers that are only made available on business or Consumer cards, so having at least one of each gives you the maximum likelihood of being targeted for the most valuable ones. Since my Delta Business is my only business American Express card, I’d assign perhaps $50 in value purely to the additional Amex Offers I receive.

Finally, since I don’t travel on Delta more than once or twice a year (and 2020 will be even less than that), I don’t assign any value to the card’s ability to earn bonus Medallion Qualification Miles. Until we move somewhere with more convenient Delta service, I won’t be coming close to earning even Silver Medallion status. The value you assign to this feature should depend on both how necessary it is to earn status (does it make or break your ability to achieve the status you’re chasing) and how you value that status (how frequently do your upgrades clear, etc.).

So in my case, the $270 in value I conservatively get from the card clears the $175 annual fee hurdle comfortably enough that I reluctantly decided to keep the card for another year, while if I had to pay the entire $250 annual fee, I would have proceeded to cancel the card.

The annual fee isn’t the only cost!

That was my calculus: the card is a little bit better than a wash, so I’ll keep it around and see what develops. I still plan to cancel it next May, but I’m equally prepared to be surprised on the upside as the downside.

Besides assigning the above benefits different values than I did (for example, if you have a particularly high-value companion fare redemption or a good opportunity to sell or gift the companion fare), your cost calculus might also be different than mine. For me, the annual fee is the only cost of holding the card. But since the Delta Business card is a credit card, it counts against your four-card (or five-card) limit with American Express. If you already have four or five American Express credit cards, then an additional cost of holding onto any one card is the inability to open additional American Express credit cards.

That means if your Delta Platinum card is your least valuable American Express credit card, then it is by definition the one keeping you from signing up for additional American Express credit cards, whether your intention is to trigger a signup bonus or add new, different, or more valuable bonus categories to your manufactured spend strategy.

Conclusion

Obviously there are some cards so valuable that this exercise isn’t worth going through in such fine detail, like the Chase Hyatt and legacy Ink Plus and Ink Bold cards. But for most cards with an annual fee, seeing that fee hit is as good an opportunity as any to take a step back and evaluate exactly what role the card is playing in your travel hacking strategy, and whether it still belongs there.

By default, your answer should be “no:” an annual fee is a hole you have to climb out of over the course of the year. Some cards make it relatively easy to get out of that hole and some cards make it relatively hard, but if you’re not digging up, you’re digging down.

Three notes on Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve grocery statement credits

I haven’t had a Chase Sapphire card in a long time, having downgraded my Preferred years ago to a second Freedom card and replacing it with an Ink Plus card to maintain the flexibility of my Ultimate Rewards points and the ability to redeem them for 1.25 cents each towards paid travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal.

Still, I’ve obviously been following with interest the news that Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards will allow Ultimate Rewards points to be redeem for 1.25 and 1.5 cents each, respectively, for “grocery, home improvement, and dining purchases.” That stacks with the accelerated earning on up to $1,500 in monthly grocery store spend on Sapphire cards through the end of June.

I wanted to share three quick notes on this new opportunity.

If you ever redeem points for paid travel, redeem them for groceries

There are three basic value buckets for Ultimate Rewards point redemptions:

• bank account direct deposit and credit card statement credits at 1 cent each;

• paid travel booked through the Ultimate Rewards portal at 1.25 cents (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold/Plus/Preferred) or 1.5 cents (Sapphire Reserve);

• travel partner transfers at higher — potentially much higher — redemption values for premium travel.

If you redeem, or plan to redeem, most or all of your Ultimate Rewards point balance for high-value transfers to Chase’s travel partners, then this opportunity doesn’t affect you at all; save your points, transfer them to high-value partners, and make high value redemptions!

If, on the other hand, you think of Ultimate Rewards points as a useful reserve account for paid domestic airline tickets, and were already happy to redeem them for 1.25 or 1.5 cents each for airfare or hotels when award space wasn’t available, then you should be eager to redeem them for the same value as statement credits against eligible grocery purchases. After all, once you’ve redeemed the points for a statement credit, you can use the same cash to buy the same tickets with a different credit card, and earn miles, points, or statement credits on that card!

A word of warning: statement credits aren’t “payments”

I wanted to flag one issue for folks who are planning to hit this deal especially hard. Most responsible travel hackers will tell you not to carry a balance on your credit cards, in order to avoid interest charges that can easily overwhelm the value of any rewards you earn on purchases. The “statement credit” is one way credit card companies have developed to charge fees regardless of how carefully you monitor your balances: according to the terms and conditions of most, if not all, of my credit cards, statement credits are not treated as payments and do not decrease your minimum payment due.

This doesn’t matter if you diligently pay your credit cards off before each statement closes, but one of the nice benefits of travel hacking and manufacturing spend is having several weeks of float to earn interest, meet minimum spend requirements, and spin up other opportunities. In that case, even if you pay off your entire statement balance with statement credits, you may get hit with a late payment or interest charge on the minimum payment. This shouldn’t apply if you reduce your balance to $0, but if you have made additional purchases during the month, your credit card company may consider those purchases to be subject to interest charges since your remaining previous balance was merged with your new balance.

This isn’t an extremely common situation, but I wanted to flag it for folks seeking to redeem tens or hundreds of thousands of Ultimate Rewards points towards grocery store purchases: go ahead and make your minimum payment in addition to any statement credits you redeem, to make sure Chase doesn’t decide to ding you for missing a credit card payment (and take a closer look at your account activity).

Apply or upgrade to Sapphire for redemptions?

Finally, this new opportunity raises the question whether you should upgrade an existing Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, or Sapphire card to a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card, or apply for a new card, in order to take advantage of these new statement credit redemption opportunities. Here, I don’t have a strong feeling either way.

If your credit history made you eligible for a Sapphire Preferred or Reserve offer prior to the new redemption opportunity, then it was probably already worth applying. It’s unclear to me that the new redemption opportunity should change your application calculus.

On the other hand, for folks with an existing large Ultimate Rewards balance held on Chase Ink cards, the new ability to redeem those points for statement credits may well justify upgrading a Slate, Freedom or Freedom Unlimited card to a Sapphire Reserve in order to cash out that existing Ultimate Rewards balance for grocery statement credits while travel redemptions remains a distant prospect.

Conclusion

I have to had it to Chase in making a fairly crafty calculation with this new redemption option. Existing members with large existing points balances, but who found themselves unable to redeem their points during the pandemic, might be tempted to simply cash out and cancel their accounts. Instead, Chase offered them the opportunity to both earn bonus points on their everyday purchases and redeem their Ultimate Rewards points at their “full” 1.25 or 1.5 cent value against them. That both directs spending towards Chase products and reduces the attrition of their “travel” clients during a period when travel is impossible.

But however clever Chase is, it’s still up to you to make the important decisions about how, when, and where to redeem your points.

COVID, cancellations, schedule changes, and refunds

This was originally going to be a quick hit on my experience cancelling an Alaska Airlines reservation for a trip I had been planning to take this summer, but then I noticed lots of people having related issues on a whole range of carriers, so I thought it would be worth taking a more comprehensive look at how different airlines are currently handling schedule changes and cancellations.

Most flights have been cancelled for the next few months, and more will be

The ongoing disruption to air travel has been catastrophic. Alaska says they’ve reduced their flight schedule by 80% in April and May. Airlines have eliminated some routes completely, while others have dramatically reduced frequency: we normally have our pick of 6 non-stop flights a day to Indianapolis on American, a route that has been completely cancelled until June 7, when it is scheduled to resume once per day.

A cancelled flight is the simplest situation to be in (although not always the simplest situation to resolve): the Department of Transportation recently clarified that for all “flights to, within, or from the United States,”

“Carriers have a longstanding obligation to provide a prompt refund to a ticketed passenger when the carrier cancels the passenger’s flight or makes a significant change in the flight schedule and the passenger chooses not to accept the alternative offered by the carrier.”

As the plague continues to exact its terrible toll, more flights will be cancelled and more schedule changes will be implemented, so if you have a flight booked you know you won’t take, but is still scheduled to depart on time, your best bet is to sit tight for now and see if you become eligible for a cash refund later.

It is faster and easier to take advantage of airline policies than to assert your rights

Now you know you have a right to a refund in the case of a cancellation or significant schedule change. But if your airline pushes back, asserting that right might mean filing a DoT complaint that takes weeks to resolve, as Stephan Segraves described here.

Instead of pursuing your rights, you might want to check out your carrier’s fee waivers instead. Every major airline has voluntarily waived change and cancellation fees, on somewhat different terms.

• Delta: no change or cancellation fees on flights booked through May 31, 2020, existing eCredits extended until September 30, 2022.

• United: no change or cancellation fees until May 31, 2020, existing and new travel certificates valid for 24 months from issuance.

• American: no change fees for all flights booked between March 1 and May 31, 2020 and for flights booked before March 1 for travel through September 30, 2020.

• Alaska: no change or cancellation fees on flights booked through May 31, 2020 (with inscrutably different rules for flights booked before and after February 26, 2020).

• Southwest: new and existing travel funds (from cancelled, non-refundable reservations) have their expiration extended until September 7, 2022. Refundable reservations continue to be refundable (obviously).

• Jetblue: no change or cancellation fees for flights booked through May 31, 2020, for travel through January 4, 2021, and 24 month validity for Travel Bank Credit.

As you can see, there are two slightly different moving pieces here: protections for people who already booked travel they won’t be able to take, and protections for people thinking about booking travel for the future they’re unsure they’ll be able to take.

Obviously travel credits aren’t as good as cash, but for folks who periodically book paid travel on the same one or two carriers, they’re not bad, and by taking advantage of these policies you may be able to avoid a drawn out battle for a cash refund.

My Alaska Airlines refund experience

As I mentioned up top, I called Alaska to ask for a refund for a July trip that won’t be happening. I knew there had been some schedule changes, and I knew Alaska had loosened their cancellation policy, so I didn’t have any doubt I’d be able to cancel the flights, but because I hadn’t read this blog post, I wasn’t prepared for the pushback the phone agent gave me.

To be fair to her, she did instantly agree to cancel the reservation, but then explained the value would be deposited to my travel bank. I told her I needed the refund to go to my original form of payment.

The problem was that despite Alaska’s massive cancellations, none of my four flights had actually been cancelled! All four were operating on the days I’d booked, with the same flight numbers and everything — two were even operating on the exact same schedule, and a third had an adjustment of just 35 minutes.

Fortunately, the fourth had moved its departure from 7:40 am to 9:05 am, just over the hour schedule change Alaska requires to offer a cash refund.

The agent then repeated a version of the most annoying cliche I hear from customer service representatives: “if there hadn’t been that schedule change, you wouldn’t have been eligible for the refund.” Whenever I hear this condescending aphorism I always want to shout into the phone, “but there was, so I was, so why are we still talking about it?”

Of course, what I actually did was politely thank her and hang up. The refund is supposed to take up to 7 days, and I’ll be interested to see how they handle the redeposit of the companion fare I used to book the ticket.

Chase's missed opportunity to do the right thing

I mentioned in Friday’s post that the airport transfer I ordered through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal to pick us up at the Sofia airport never arrived, and that we ended up taking the (cheap, convenient) subway instead. I wrote, “I have a request in with Ultimate Rewards to refund the points, so hopefully this mistake will end up being free, but overall it was a silly experience and waste of time.”

Oddly, that’s not how it worked out.

Chase wanted the transfer company’s permission to refund me

On my first call with Chase, on Thursday, October 10, I was placed on hold several times as the representative tried to contact the transfer company, but wasn’t ultimately able to. She told me they would contact the company and be in touch by phone or e-mail once they’d resolved the issue.

I received the first e-mail followup on Saturday, from the e-mail address “VNA-INTL.chasetravel@customercare.expedia.com,” which is obviously the e-mail address for the person at Expedia that handles Ultimate Rewards reservations:

“Thank you for contacting Chase Travel about Refund Request for your Budapest Express - Transfers on travel in dates Sep 08,2019 and travel out dates Sep 28,2019 .

“We have made multiple attempts but are still in the process of making contact with [Budapest Express - Transfers] for your Refund Request. Please expect an email update from us within 24 hour.

“Thank you for choosing Chase Travel.

“Sincerely,
”Arnold Fajardo
”Travel Consultant Supervisor
”Chase Travel”

Ignoring Arnold’s grammar, this is a very strange e-mail for multiple reasons: the dates of my trip were not September 8-September 28, they were September 27-October 9. The name of the transfer company is given as “Budapest Express - Transfers,” when the pickup was at the Sofia airport in Bulgaria, and the company in my original reservation was “P-Airbus,” which is obviously a nonsense, but it’s a different nonsense than “Budapest Express - Transfers.”

The transfer company didn’t give it

The next e-mail, from the same Expedia e-mail address, tried to break the news to me gently:

“Thank you for contacting Chase Travel about your cancellation request for your reservation at Budapest Express - Transfers.

“We have advocated your case with Budapest Express - Transfers and due to their policy in relation to your reason for cancelling your reservation, they have unfortunately denied your request.

“We apologize that their response was not more favorable.

“We apologize for the delay in answering your e–mail. We are currently experiencing an extremely high volume of e–mail requests preventing us from responding within our normal standards.

“Thank you for choosing Chase Travel.

“Sincerely,
”Alvin Elona
”Travel Consultant Supervisor
”Chase Travel”

Again, obviously I did not cancel my reservation for any reason. They simply never showed up.

I’m not mad about the points, I’m confused about the missed opportunity

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, 2,000 Ultimate Rewards points aren’t that big a deal to me, and they certainly aren’t that big a deal to Chase. But in its own way, that makes the situation more, not less, confusing. I understand Chase doesn’t have any way to exercise control over the service providers Expedia uses. But when you’re putting your customers, with whom you have a direct relationship, completely in the hands of your partners, the obvious way to resolve partner disputes is to err on the side of caution. Instead, Chase decided to very mildly annoy me in order to save $25 because they’re not willing to stand up to their partner.

Like I say, I’m not mad, I’m just confused.

I would have been better protected using a credit card

The final piece of this microdrama is that if I had simply booked an airport transfer with a credit card, and they didn’t show up, my credit card company would have cheerfully reversed the charge within minutes. By putting customers through this absurd three-step dance, where Chase contacts Expedia, Expedia contacts their in-country partner, and then it’s up to the partner whether or not to grant a refund, Chase may save 25 bucks here and there, but also sends a loud and clear message not to trust them with third-party reservations.

It’s not going to bankrupt them, and it’s not going to bankrupt me, but that doesn’t make it a good business decision.

The current Choice Privileges promotion is so stupid I expect it to become the norm

I was rummaging around on my Hotel Promotions page (check it out if you have any upcoming stays; current promotions are running as late as June 4, 2019) and noticed some funny language in the terms and conditions of the current Choice Privileges promotion. Once I understood what was going on, I groaned at both the idiocy and genius of the promotion design.

The first “top-up” promotion I’ve seen

How the Choice Privileges promotion works is that you are guaranteed to receive a total of at least 8,000 points when you complete two qualifying stays (a qualifying stay being one booked through the website, app, or over the phone). Your stays should still be eligible for the promotion if you book through an online shopping portal, where Choice has quite broad participation. You’re also guaranteed to receive a minimum of 5,000 bonus points. Here’s what the terms and conditions say:

“Registered members will be awarded a minimum of 5,000 to a maximum of 8,000 bonus points after the second qualifying stay. The number of bonus points awarded depends on the number of base points earned from the two separate qualifying stays, with points varying by hotel. The total of base points plus bonus points awarded, however, will be at least 8,000 points.”

To see how this works, take a real-life example: my two-night stay at the Quality Inn Harpers Ferry in October of last year. I paid $236.55 in room charges on that stay, which as a non-elite member earned me 2,360 Choice Privileges points (I guess they’re so stingy they round down).

If I’d had a second, identical stay, I’d earn another 2,360 points, for a total of 4,720 points, leaving me 3,280 points shy of the 8,000 minimum total points. In that case, I’d earn the promotion minimum of 5,000 bonus points, for a total of 9,720 points. If I’d booked a room rate half as expensive, earning just 2,360 points on my two stays, I’d earn 5,640 bonus points, for a total of 8,000 base points plus bonus points.

As this example makes clear, the value of the promotion (as opposed to the value of the program itself) is higher the lower your room rate: 640 bonus points higher.

A promotion design this dumb has to be a sign

Once I realized what was going on, I knew immediately this won’t be an isolated promotion. After all, despite the assurances of airline executives that they’ll never lose money ever again, nothing has fundamentally changed about the airline industry: it requires enormous, up-front, long-term capital investments and finances those investments by selling individual tickets to customers that are extremely sensitive to prices and the overall condition of the economy.

In other words, when the next recession comes, airlines will lose money hand over fist, just like they have in every previous recession, and will do anything possible to get more customers on their planes. The “rationalization” of frequent flyer programs into revenue-based earning will go out the window, and airlines will start shoveling miles towards anyone willing to buy a ticket.

The “top-up” promotion model is optimized to precisely target the marginal traveler: the airline can still award you 5 miles per dollar you spend on airfare, but, for example, guarantee you’ll receive at least one redeemable mile per mile traveled. Last-minute and business travelers can be handed a nominal minimum (like the 5,000-point minimum Choice is offering), while those buying cheap tickets and without elite status can have their balance “topped up” to the promotion maximum.

When it rains it pours: ending the first quarter on a high note

Earlier this month I’d started to notice that some of the promotions that had popped up fairly regularly in the past hadn’t shown up recently. No sooner did I wonder whether we were in for some dramatic shift in the rewards landscape…than the promotions reappeared. Here’s a quick rundown.

$10 off Office Depot/OfficeMax Visa gift card purchases of $300 or more

This promotion has taken many forms over the years, but it’s always worth cleaning out your local stores if you have a Chase Ink Plus or Ink Cash card earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at office supply stores. In previous years, this was stackable with eBates in-store cashback, making the deal even sweeter, but Office Depot/OfficeMax are not currently available for in-store cashback with eBates.

The current promotion runs through March 16, 2019.

3x fuel points on Visa gift card purchases at Giant, Stop&Shop, and Martin’s

Between March 15 and 21, 2019, Visa gift card purchases at Giant and their related brands will earn 3 fuel points per dollar spent on Visa gift card purchases, which usually do not earn fuel rewards.

The various Giant-related brands handle fuel rewards quite differently, so the value of this promotion depends on where you live, how much you drive, and how many friends you have to share your fuel rewards with.

Personally, I don’t own a car and typically only drive when on vacation, and I’ve recently run into trouble trying to redeem my fuel rewards points at Shell stations outside my “home” region. Since I spend maybe $200 on gas per year, this doesn’t bother me much, but if you are planning to hit this promotion hard make sure you understand how your local grocery affiliate and gas stations handle fuel rewards.

Don’t sleep on first quarter bonus earning

Don’t forget about any 5% bonus earning cards you haven’t maximized this quarter. For example, I hold two Chase Freedom cards earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at drugstores this quarter, but I still haven’t actually done the spend simply because I’ve been putting off thinking about liquidation strategies. If you’re like me, you should get your act together, figure out a liquidation strategy, and go max out your bonus earning. When you do, make sure you’re maximizing third-party rewards as well.

The Discover it grocery store bonus category is even easier to maximize (and stack next week with fuel rewards for folks with access to Giant-affiliated brands!), so if you’ve been using that as an excuse to put it off, well, you’re out of excuses!

Bonus: register for hotel promotions

I’m a little bit lazy about keeping it updated, but I also don’t bombard you with pop-ups every time you open the page, so be sure to check out my Hotel Promotions page to make sure you’re not missing out on any rewards for the hotel stays you’re already paying for.

Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG all currently have promotions open for registration.

Hyatt is burying Small Luxury Hotels, so keep an eye out for good values

Over at Running with Miles, Charlie Barkowski has been doing yeoman’s work tracking the “Small Luxury Hotels” eligible for Hyatt Category 1-4 free night certificates, meaning properties that cost up to 15,000 points per night. Check that out if you’re struggling to figure out where to redeem your Hyatt free night certificates.

Today, I want to make a few unrelated points about Small Luxury Hotels.

Non-Globalist World of Hyatt members should slightly prefer Small Luxury Hotels

All else being equal, World of Hyatt members, and Explorist and Discoverist elites, should prefer Small Luxury Hotels stays over otherwise-identical Hyatt properties. That’s because World of Hyatt reservations at Small Luxury Hotels come with continental breakfast for two, and at least the possibility of a 2 pm late checkout.

That shouldn’t be decisive for Globalist elites who receive breakfast and late checkout anyway, or if the Small Luxury Hotel property is more expensive, a worse value, or is much more inconvenient. But as a tiebreaker for the casual Hyatt traveler, it’s worth keeping in mind.

Hyatt buries Small Luxury Hotels at the end of search results, but it’s worth digging

If you search for Hyatt stays in New York City, you’ll see an ocean of properties stretching from the Grand Hyatt on East 42nd Street to the Hyatt Place in Princeton, New Jersey, before you’ll see the HGU NEW YORK, at 34 East 32nd Street.

That’s because all Small Luxury Hotels results are buried at the very end of the search results, long after most people stop looking. Slightly better is the map view, which shows all the properties in a given city, but which makes it more difficult to compare their relative value.

In destinations without Hyatt properties, Small Luxury Hotels are a potential game-changer

Since Manhattan offers a range of Hyatt properties, Small Luxury Hotels aren’t likely to play a huge role in a travel hacking strategy there. But in other areas, they’re potentially decisive. Consider a stay in the center of London next month. There are only two Hyatt properties, the Hyatt Regency London - The Churchill and the Andaz London Liverpool Street, both at 25,000 World of Hyatt points.

But there are 6 Small Luxury Hotels properties, ranging between 20,000 and 25,000 points, in or near the center of London. On a smattering of sample dates, I saw redemption rates at those properties between 1.58 and 2.84 cents per World of Hyatt point. Not breathtaking, but properly calibrated to the value of the program as a whole.

Compare that to Hilton’s central London properties on the same dates. From a high of 0.61 cents per point at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel London - Kensington (50,000 points for a 231 GBP stay) to a low of 0.45 cents per point at the London Hilton on Park Lane (80,000 points for a 273 GBP stay), what you see across the board from Hilton is replacement-level redemptions. There’s nothing wrong with those redemptions — I would make them myself in a pinch, and a 5th-night-free redemption would improve the value further — but the Small Luxury Hotel redemptions offer the kind of outsized value we’ve come to expect from Hyatt points.

Conclusion

The addition of Small Luxury Hotels as a redemption option in World of Hyatt hasn’t increased the value of individual Hyatt points (still worth between 1.5 and 3 cents each), nor has it increased the value of individual Hilton points (still worth about 0.5 cents each).

What it has done is increase the value of a portfolio of both Hyatt and Hilton points, allowing Hyatt points to be redeemed more readily in cities like London and New York where Hilton points are typically redeemed at their replacement value, while allowing Hilton points to be saved up for redemption at the very few properties and redemptions where they get outsized value.