REloadit report: opportunities and pitfalls

/

Since CVS stopped allowing Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to be purchased using credit cards, many people naturally turned to competing reload products. After Green Dot's MoneyPak reload product, one of the most prominent is REloadit, a product of Blackhawk Network (rather than Incomm, the producer of Vanilla-branded prepaid products) sold at many grocery stores nationwide.

I wrote about REloadit back in May, in the context of manufacturing spend at low or no cost using T-Mobile prepaid debit cards which, when loaded using REloadit cards, refund the $3.95 purchase fee to your card's balance.

Since writing that post, I've started experimenting with REloadit cards and have some very curious datapoints to report.

REloadit-compatible prepaid debit cards

You can find REloadit-compatible cards on this site. Besides the T-Mobile card mentioned above, the two most important ones to note are PayPower (since you might be accumulating a growing stack of unregistered temporary cards already) and Serve, the now-slightly-superior-to-Bluebird checking account alternative by American Express.

REloadit packs come in different designs

Last year I wrote about the the plethora of Vanilla Reload Network reload card designs and the opportunities each redesign promised.

REloadit packs come in at least four designs, and each design is sold by a different grocery store chain near me. I don't have pictures of the fourth design, but I do of the three designs I've personally experimented with.

Here's a REloadit "classic:"

Here's what I think of as a "second-generation" REloadit pack (I'll explain why in a moment):

And finally, here's REloadit 3.0 (now rebranded to "Reloadit"):

I bought all three of these cards within the span of a week. So why did I put them in this order?

The "third-generation" Reloadit card comes last because it's the current branding of their website. The distinction between REloadit classic and second-generation REloadit cards is more important, however.

First- and second-generation REloadit cards have different functionality

If you've experimented at all with Evolve Money, the free online bill payment service, you've no doubt wondered what exactly they mean when they say you can pay your bills with "cash" online.

It turns out they give two options: something called Evolve Pay Bucks which – to the best of my knowledge – no one has ever seen in the wild, and REloadit cards.

Unlike the many Vanilla Reload redesigns over the lifetime of that technique, and as strange as it sounds, first-generation REloadit cards do not work with Evolve Money.

What if you accidentally bought a handful of first-generation REloadit packs?

Needless to say, when I discovered this today, I was more than a little peeved. I had already successfully experimented with third-generation REloadit (or "Reloadit") packs using Evolve Money, so had purchased a few REloadit cards with precisely that purpose in mind.

After Evolve Money returned a not-particularly-helpful error advising me to call Blackhawk directly, I was eventually able to reach a customer service representative (try entering 16 0's when prompted for a card number) who both assured me the funds on the card were available for loading and that she had never heard of Evolve Money or any other REloadit-compatible bill payment service, other than PayPower.

Fortunately, I do have access to PayPower cards, so I registered one of my temporary cards and quickly loaded it up with over $1,000 in REloadit packs on my way out the door to Walmart, keeping in mind that PayPower charges its steep $5.95 monthly fee within a week of purchasing the card, and not wanting to pay that fee for access to my own money.

If it were July already, I would have attempted to load the funds to my Serve account, but I was already more than a little worried that my money had been claimed by marauding prepaid pirates, so I seized the opportunity to load the funds while I could.

Conclusion: and PayPower shut me down

When I got home, my access to my PayPower online account had already been revoked, so I assume my same-day loading and unloading activity resulted in my account being shut down.

Since I got my money out and won some hard-earned datapoints for my readers, I'm perfectly satisfied with the experience. And of course, once I'm able to experiment with loading my Serve and T-Mobile accounts with REloadit packs, I'll have more to report.

The question that matters about the US Airways credit card

/

Signup bonuses play a vanishingly small role in my miles and points strategy. They consume, on the other hand, approximately 95% of the the attention of most miles and points bloggers, one reason I scarcely read any other bloggers these days. It's trivially easy to manufacture 100,000 American AAdvantage miles should you foresee a need for them, while most bloggers will tell you only a madman would forego the chance to "opportunistically" acquire them at a cost of just $250. Then, as if to emphasize the absurdity, they spill even more ink over a 5,000 Starpoint increase in the signup bonus for the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card!

Ongoing benefits (like companion tickets) and lucrative bonus categories are miles ahead of signup bonuses in my decision making.

So in all the supposed "assessments" of changes to the Barclaycard US Airways MasterCard after the merger with American Airlines is completed (for example see here, here, here) I always look for one piece of information that's invariably missing: what's going to happen to the 10,000 miles anniversary bonus offered by the US Airways MasterCard once it becomes an AAdvantage card?

Barclaycard hasn't made a decision yet

It's clear that if Barclaycard had made a decision about what's going to happen to the "anniversary mile" version of the card, they would have shared it. In fact, they've already mailed out an update on what changes will be made to the card's ongoing benefits (eliminating the card's companion ticket and 5,000 mile discount on award bookings, most notably).

But they haven't shared what's going to happen to the anniversary miles.

Barclaycard wrote oddly specific terms and conditions

Let me preface this by saying the terms and conditions of the US Airways MasterCard include the same language found on all such documents:

"The APRs, fees, and other account terms, as well as the benefits and features associated with the account are subject to change to the extent permitted by law."

That being said, the language related to the anniversary miles is extremely specific:

"Anniversary Bonus Miles: Beginning with the first anniversary of Account opening and every anniversary thereafter, Cardmembers will be awarded 10,000 Anniversary Miles."

Barclaycard has a very expensive team of lawyers

If Barclaycard believed that they could eliminate the anniversary bonus miles without legal risk, they would do so. The fact that they claim not to have made a decision yet is strongly dispositive to me that they believe they do not have the ability to eliminate the anniversary bonus miles for cardholders who signed up for the card under that offer.

Credit card contracts are different than loyalty program terms and conditions

Loyalty program terms and conditions as written today have a plethora of conditions that protect the provider from any legal liability for future enhancements (devaluations) to the program.

Credit card terms and conditions, on the other hand, are real contracts entered into between customers and banks for mutual benefit, and there are substantially more restrictions on the kinds of changes that can be made to them, with or without notice.

Further, Barclaycard is bound by state consumer protection laws and would be vulnerable to claims in every state they have cardholders if they were to make a change they didn't believe was airtight from their lawyer's point of view.

Conclusion

I don't know anything more than anyone else pontificating about the coming changes to the US Airways credit card. But whenever you see an article purporting to explain those changes, now you know what to look for: does the author have any additional information about the anniversary miles, or are they just reciting their Barclaycard-approved talking points?

Delta companion ticket follies

/

I've written before about my affection for the American Express Delta Platinum credit card. A big part of the value the card provides, even at its new, higher $195 annual fee, is in the annual companion ticket. Now that my companion ticket has posted to my account, and I've had a chance to experiment with it, I thought I'd share a datapoint or two.

New fare classes, old terms and conditions

When you take a look at the certificates and credits in your Delta "My Wallet," you'll see one set of fare restrictions on the Platinum companion certificate:

If you click on the certificate's "Terms & Conditions," however you'll see a different set of fare restrictions:

"Seats are limited in L, U, T class of service."

In fact, the expanded list is the applicable one: it is possible to use the companion certificate to book into X and V fare buckets.

Each direction must be booked entirely into the same fare bucket

This restriction is both counter-intuitive and can be a real nuisance. While searching for tickets back to my ancestral homeland for Thanksgiving, I found what seemed like the ideal companion ticket reservation:

A simple roundtrip with four legs in economy, each leg booked into an eligible L, U, or T fare bucket.

This reservation is not eligible for a companion ticket redemption.

While Delta and their apologists would love to explain this limitation with reference to the technical limitations of Delta's reservation software, like all of Delta's "IT problems" it coincidentally works exclusively to the detriment of their customers.

In order to successfully make a companion ticket reservation, all the legs in each direction must be booked into the same fare bucket. Each direction, on the other hand, can be booked into the same or different fare buckets, as long as they are eligible fare classes under the terms of the companion ticket.

The value of the companion ticket depends on your other options

Perhaps the most important thing to know about the companion ticket is that it has to be paid for using your American Express Delta credit card.

And that's unlikely to be your most lucrative card for travel reservations, when you could instead be booking paid airfare using a Barclaycard Arrival+ card.

Failing that, you might be paying for your revenue tickets by redeeming US Bank Flexpoints for up to 2 cents each, earned in a bonus category like gas stations or grocery stores.

Alternatively, you might consider redeeming Ultimate Rewards points at 1.25 cents each, earned at no net cost at office supply stores like Staples.

Finally, you might be earning Delta Skymiles for hundredths of a cent each using the Suntrust Delta check card, and redeeming them for 1 cent each on Pay With Miles redemptions, which you're also eligible for as a Delta American Express cardholder.

Conclusion

I will probably end up using my companion ticket not for an expensive Thanksgiving trip this year, but for a $300 – $400 weekend trip this fall. That's not because the companion ticket is a bad deal (it's not), it's because it's not a way to actually save money, compared to the other options I described above.

Any charge I make to my American Express Delta Platinum card will actually have to be paid back with real money — and the whole reason I started travel hacking is that I don't have enough money to pay for all the travel I want to do!

Are you watching for PayPower prepaid debit cards?

/

Longtime readers know that back in New England, I had more or less constant problems manufacturing spend in two of my favorite bonus categories: gas stations and grocery stores. A few days or weeks after discovering a source, it would inevitably dry up, never to be replaced, or a memo would come down from management requiring cash for the purchases I was interested in making.

Since moving to the Midwest, I've been surprised daily by the options available in virtually every store here. One option I've only recently had a chance to experiment with are PayPower "reloadable" prepaid debit cards.

Are they free or are they cheap?

PayPower cards got some publicity recently when in many markets they went "fee-free;" that is to say, rather than their old $3.95 purchase fee, or the $4.95 activation fee of OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, or the $5.95 purchase fee of many PIN-enabled grocery store gift cards, the PayPower cards stopped charging any activation fee at all at purchase. Within about a week of activation, however, their monthly maintenance fee of $5.95 is still charged, so it's important to liquidate these cards as soon as possible.

In my market, the cards still come with a $3.95 activation fee. While not free, they do allow me to take advantage of grocery store bonus categories while paying less than I was at CVS for PIN-enabled OneVanilla cards.

Set your PIN – but don't register!

In theory, the cards you buy at your local grocery store are only temporary cards, meant to be replaced by a permanent card once you register your temporary card.

It turns out, however, that the PayPower phone tree allows you to set a PIN for your temporary card without providing any personal identifying information.

Just call the number on the front of your card, wait for the prompt, enter your card number followed by the pound key, the card's expiration date and CVC code, then choose option 3. You'll be prompted to enter your desired PIN code twice, and then notified when the PIN code has been successfully set.

No workaround, but remember your point-of-sale updates

These cards can be easily liquidated at Walmart through any of the most popular PIN-based transactions: loading prepaid cards, buying money orders, or making bill payments, and unlike OneVanilla cards before the latest changes, no "workaround" is required: these are immediately identified as PIN-enabled debit cards by Walmart payment terminals.

That doesn't mean you can let your guard down. The point-of-sale updates I've written about (here and here) are still in effect, so you'll still need to keep in mind, for each transaction type, whether the cashier or the customer goes first. Almost no cashiers are aware of the differences, so you may need to gently guide your cashier through each transaction.

I know many of my readers will also be pleased to know that, while not personalized, temporary PayPower cards are not branded in any way as gift cards, which may make them more palatable for some Walmart cashiers, although unfortunately not for those who insist on the cardholder's name being embossed or printed on the card.

Conclusion

Grocery stores are notoriously skeptical of large credit card purchases of prepaid debit and gift cards, so you'll want to take your time investigating as many store locations as possible and familiarizing yourself with the cashiers and managers. Be ready to provide photo ID without hesitation or complaint, and most importantly, be ready to take no for an answer.

The lower a profile you keep, the more likely your cashiers and managers are to be comfortable running larger transactions for you, and the more likely these opportunities are to remain available for you and others in your community.

What do no-blackout-date policies really mean?

/

During last weekend's trip to New York, I ran into a problem that I think is fairly common: a property won't show award availability, even though standard rooms are still available at cash rates.

In case readers run into similar situations, I thought this would make a useful resource: hotel chain policies on award blackout dates.

Club Carlson

According to Club Carlson's website:

"As a Club CarlsonSM member, you can redeem your Gold Points® for free Award Nights at more than 1,000 Carlson Rezidor hotels worldwide – with no blackout dates on standard rooms."

While attempting to make a reservation at the Radisson Martinique, I discovered that even though standard rooms were still available for sale, I was not able to redeem Gold Points for one. Indeed, you can see this is still true today:

Since I was getting down to the wire planning the trip, I decided to reach out to Club Carlson and see if they could make me an award reservation anyway. The phone agent I spoke to was singularly unhelpful, so I tried Twitter. The agent asked me to e-mail her, and over e-mail she told me:

"Rooms using points for reservations are based on availability and hotels only set aside a certain amount of rooms for redemption reservations, promotions, discounts, etc."

In other words, their "no blackout date" policy means nothing: while there aren't any systemwide blackout dates, hotels can make rooms unavailable for redemption any time.

I've since discovered that the Radisson Martinique makes rooms available for weekend redemptions sometime Wednesday afternoon. So if you are interested in making a reservation there, try the Club Carlson website then to see if they've opened up any award availability.

Hilton HHonors

Here's the Hilton policy on blackout dates:

"Use your HHonors Points to book a free standard room at any of our hotels and resorts worldwide, with no blackout dates."

And indeed, while I was looking at award availability at the Hilton Molino Stucky Venice, I discovered that while there were no award nights available for some nights:

there were also no paid rooms available for the same dates:

Marriott Rewards

In this FAQ, Marriott explains:

"Blackout dates traditionally refer to a limited number of dates on which a hotel could choose not to accept redemptions. With our “No Blackout Dates” policy, hotels will no longer have blackout dates for redemptions. Hotels may limit the number of standard rooms available for redemption on a limited number of days."

In case that sounds an awful lot like a blackout date, Marriott goes on to clarify that redemptions might not be allowed if:

"The date is an approved Inventory Control Date. On a limited number of nights, hotels may limit the number of rooms available for redemption. You may be trying to redeem on one of these nights and the hotel has already reached its maximum number of redemptions."

In other words, hotels can limit points redemptions if the date is one when people particularly want to stay at the hotel.

Hyatt Gold Passport

According to the Hyatt Gold Passport terms and conditions:

"Hyatt Gold Passport Free Night Awards apply when standard rooms are available at the Hyatt Daily Rate. Standard rooms are defined by each hotel and are not subject to blackout dates."

That seems pretty airtight, but there were enough reports of difficulty booking standard rooms that just this May a Hyatt representative explicitly stated on FlyerTalk:

"As long as the Hyatt Daily Rate and a standard room is available, you are able to redeem your Gold Passport free nights."

While seeing whether I could make an award reservation for December 31, 2014, in New York City, the two properties that still had (astronomically expensive) paid rates available seemed to show award availability:

Once I clicked through, however, I was told that:

"The special offer/rate you have selected is unavailable during the dates you have selected, or it is not offered at this property."

It appears that these properties have tricked out their inventory such that they're offering only "Advance Purchase" and "Bed and Breakfast" rates, presumably knowing that if they offered any "Hyatt Daily Rate" rooms they'd have to offer those rooms on points, as well. This may be within the letter of the no-blackout-date policy, but in my view still violates the spirit of the policy, not that anyone cares about my views on hotel management.

IHG Rewards

Like Marriott and Club Carlson, IHG Rewards "no blackout date" policy is so full of loopholes you could drive a truck through it. Here's the relevant passage from the terms and conditions:

"Rooms are limited, subject to prior sale and availability of allocated resources and may be unavailable during high demand periods."

In other words, there are no blackout dates, just dates when the allocated resources don't allow you to make an award reservation.

Starwood Preferred Guest

The SPG terms and conditions state in no uncertain terms:

"An SPG Member may redeem Starpoints for single or double occupancy rooms at SPG Participating Hotels including, without limitation, for Free Night Awards."

The New Year's Eve test

It's hard to get a sense of how these programs and policies work in a vacuum, so I figured it'd be fun to run a little experiment. Which programs would allow me to redeem points for free nights at their Manhattan properties on December 31, 2014 (and what kind of value could I get from such an award)?

  • Club Carlson: Radisson Martinique, no rooms available;
  • Hilton: Hilton Manhattan East, $690.91 or 70,000 HHonors points, 0.99 cents per point;
  • Marriott: Lexington New York City, $591.13 or 40,000 Marriott Rewards points, 1.48 cents per point;
  • Hyatt: No Hyatt Daily Rate rooms available, so no award availability (see above);
  • IHG: Manhattan Midtown West, standard rooms available but "Reward Nights rooms are sold out for one or more of the dates you selected at this hotel."
  • Starwood: Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Chelsea, $1,150 or 12,000 Starpoints, 9.5 cents per point.

In other words, Starwood and Hilton seem to vigorously apply the letter and spirit of their no-blackout-date policies.

Whatever policy IHG has barely qualifies as "no blackout dates."

Hyatt seems to allow their properties to play games with inventory, which is unfortunate, but all things considered, they do seem to have a relatively strict policy, and one supported by management.

The only real surprise here is Marriott, and it's a pleasant one: although their terms and conditions allow them to designate New Year's Eve as an Inventory Control Date, they haven't done so, and kudos to them for it.

Anatomy of an award trip: weekend in New York City

/

One piece of feedback I regularly get from readers is that while I write a lot about the earning side of miles and points, they'd like to hear more about the redemption side. To be sure, I've written about how I booked vacations to Prague and Philadelphia, and commented on specific things like the weirdness of Alaska Airlines' long-haul first class cabins.

But frankly, while I do more leisure travel than most people I know, or most people my age, it mostly follows a familiar pattern: visiting friends and family or taking a long weekend to visit a new or beloved city.

And when booking those trips, I mostly follow a few simple steps:

  1. Look at my points balances;
  2. Check award availability;
  3. Book an award ticket, if available;
  4. Book award nights, if available;
  5. Charge everything else to my Barclaycard Arrival.

You might ask where point valuations come into play in this system, and the answer is they don't. That's because as I never cease to remind people, by the time you're making reservations, it's too late to change the number or type of points you have. Only once you know how you in fact use your miles and points can you know what they're worth – that is to say, how much money they save you.

I took an award trip to New York City last weekend that illustrates this point nicely.

Getting there: low-level Delta award ticket

My partner and I were able to book two low-level award tickets leaving Thursday evening on a non-stop and returning Sunday morning with a connection in Detroit. We booked the trip less than two weeks before departure, when tickets were pricing out at about $460 each.

Total cost: 25,000 Delta Skymiles, $10. Total value: $460. Value per point: 1.84 cents.

In fact, the exact itinerary we booked would have cost $651, but there's no way we would have paid that much, so the lowest available fare for those dates is a better point of comparison.

Whether you're earning 1.4 Skymiles per dollar, 1.5 Skymiles per dollar, or generating boundless Skymiles with the Suntrust Delta Skymiles Check Card, 1.84 cent-per-Skymile redemptions will make that spend competitive with either a 2% or 2.22% cash back card. Of course, at high levels of spend the Delta Platinum and Reserve American Express cards have other benefits, as well.

Staying there: Hilton Points and Money award

We spent our first night in Manhattan at the Millenium Hilton on a Points and Money award, paying $118.25 and 32,000 HHonors points. For all three nights, the best alternative rate I was able to find was $206 after tax at the Ludlow Hotel.

The Millenium Hilton was a terrific property, and was the first Hilton property I've stayed at that allowed us to take the complimentary Gold Elite continental breakfast by room service. Lots of digital ink has been spilled over taking the Andaz Wall Street's Diamond breakfast benefit by room service, but I hadn't realized that benefit was offered by some Hiltons as well. This was my first time ever ordering room service, and I thought it was a very nice touch.

Total cost: 32,000 Hilton HHonors points, $118.25. Total value: $206. Value per point: 0.27 cents.

While 0.27 cents is well over my money cost of acquisition (0.13 cents), it's well below my opportunity cost of acquisition, since rather than earning 6 HHonors points per dollar (1.62% cash back) with my American Express Surpass card at bonused merchants, I could be earning 2% or 2.22% cash back at the same merchants.

The crucial point here is that this wasn't a "bad" redemption just because in retrospect the spend used to generate the necessary points could have been used more profitably on another credit card. That ship already sailed.

What it does mean is that before I earn any additional HHonors points, I need to take a hard look at my upcoming travel plans and decide whether those plans are better financed with cash back or HHonors points. Having done so, I know I have some 0.45-0.5 cent redemptions coming up, so I'll happily continue to use my Surpass card at bonused merchants.

Staying there: Club Carlson last-night-free award

For our last two nights, I redeemed 50,000 Club Carlson Gold Points for two nights at the Radisson Martinique on Broadway.

Total cost: 50,000 Gold Points. Total value: $412. Value per point: 0.82 cents.

Redemptions like this one are why I argued Club Carlson points can sometimes be worth as much as a penny each. Since my US Bank Club Carlson Business Rewards card earns 5 Gold Points per dollar spent everywhere, the dollars spent on the card in order to make this award redemption earned about 4.1% cash back. Since I have other high-value award redemptions coming up soon, I know I'm on the right track continuing to manufacture spend on that card.

Conclusion

The only value that miles and points could possibly have is the value you get for the redemptions you make. By looking at your past and future award redemptions (and the cost of your paid travel) you can determine which cards deliver outsized returns over a 2% or 2.22% cash back card.

Every change is an invitation to greatness

/

Do you remember April 1, the day CVS registers started the transition to blocking credit card usage for purchases of some prepaid cards? It's also the day I wrote that manufactured spend is here to stay. I took the change in coding at CVS as an invitation to explore other avenues of manufactured spend, and found that my reliance on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards was acting as an unnecessary throttle on my manufactured spend.

For example, rather than just buying OneVanilla cards for just a dollar more each, I had been relentlessly looking for new Vanilla-reloadable prepaid cards, each with pitifully low monthly load limits and a constant threat of shutdown (also, also, also, and also).

It was easy, it was cheap, and it was predictable.

Once the Vanilla Reload Network stopped being the backbone of my manufactured spend (and once I had more time to experiment and explore), I found to my chagrin that I'd been wasting my time: there was a whole big beautiful world of manufactured spend out there!

While I had already known about many of the techniques I use today, I cockily assumed they weren't worth my time, and I was wrong.

Something's going on with Vanilla prepaid debit cards

No one knows for sure who implemented the changes, whether they were intentional or not, or whether they're permanent or temporary. But for the last few days reports have appeared all over FlyerTalk and Twitter about OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, the famously convenient alternative to Vanilla Reload Network cards (since any 4 digits can be used as a card's PIN, without online or phone registration).

For the time being, OneVanilla and most, if not all, prepaid debit cards issued under the Vanilla brand (you'll find a small ice cream cone on all such cards) cannot be used at Walmart store locations for the three most popular kinds of manufactured spend transactions: money order purchases, bill payments, and loading of prepaid card products like Serve and Bluebird.

Non-Vanilla prepaid debit cards still work fine

Besides Vanilla, there are several other brands of prepaid debit cards, most of which are PIN-enabled, and most of which cost a dollar more for the $500 variety. Many of them are sold at frequently-bonused merchants like gas stations and grocery stores.

If you're looking for a substitute for OneVanilla cards, you might consider (slowly!) experimenting with those cards, if you have credit cards that still make it worth paying their higher activation fees.

But always look for alternatives to the prepaid treadmill

When I switched from my dependence on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, my manufactured spending increased substantially. But my time commitment also expanded, and not all of it was necessarily fun (though the travel it paid for sure was!). So I also started experimenting with techniques that wouldn't necessarily involve constantly visiting the same stores over and over, day after day.

And in fact, the current limitations on the usefulness of OneVanilla cards come just as I had started accelerating my use of other techniques, which don't require PIN-enabled debit cards at all.

Conclusion

Today you might be willing to pay $5.95 instead of $4.95, just like back in April you might have been willing to pay $4.95 instead of $3.95. But the more serious about this game you are, the more aggressively you should be looking for techniques that cost less, not more!

Best of all, there's a whole community out there willing to help you, with one big caveat: you have to first be willing to put the necessary work in to understand this game we love.

In the comments I'd love to hear reports of successes and failures using my readers' own favorite prepaid products.

Why you might (and might not) buy Gold Points for 0.4 cents each

/

A few bloggers have pointed out today that the current Club Carlson Gold Point flash sale allows you to buy up to 70,000 Gold Points for $280, or 0.4 cents each. I'm looking at my travel plans to decide whether to go for it. Here's why.

Opportunity cost and revealed preferences

In my discussion of Frequent Miler's latest experiment in mile and point valuations, I argued that the only kind of valuation that makes any sense for a travel hacker is asking the question,

"how much do I need to value a redemption to justify putting the needed spend on a co-branded credit card instead of a 2% or 2.22% cash back credit card?"

In my detailed analysis of Club Carlson's award chart, I found that it's relatively easy to justify manufacturing spend on the Club Carlson co-branded credit cards, requiring a valuation of just $111 per night at Category 6 properties like the Radisson Martinique on Broadway, where I stayed last weekend, while any value in excess of that is pure profit.

And I do, indeed, manufacture spend on my Club Carlson credit card, earning 5 Gold Points per dollar and foregoing 2% or 2.22% cash back on the same non-bonused spend.

That means I have what economists call a revealed preference: I'd rather hold 5 Gold Points than 2 or 2.22 cents, by definition valuing Gold Points at over 0.4 cents each, the price at which they're currently for sale.

That doesn't mean you should buy opportunistically

I have two simple goals here on the blog: destroying the undeserved reputation of the Chase Sapphire Preferred and convincing people to value their points correctly. The first appears hopeless, but I'm going to keep chipping away at the second.

The only mile-and-point valuation that matters is the value you get out of your miles and points — and the least valuable point is the one you don't redeem.

That means if you have a Club Carlson co-branded credit card and want to plan a weekend trip to New York, you can prepay $203 for two nights in advance by buying the "29,000 + 21,750" package. It's pretty hard to find a $101.50 night in the middle of Manhattan, and while the Radisson Martinique (deservedly) doesn't have a great reputation, that's still a pretty compelling value.

On the other hand, if you don't have upcoming travel plans where you can get an outsized, or at least good, value like that, the Gold Points are just going to sit in your account and fester, losing value with each devaluation, while you'll be out $203 in cold hard cash.

If you bought the maximum number of Gold Points during this promotion (70,000), you would need to aggressively plan some redemptions for them. Of course, the problem with planning your redemptions aggressively is that it might lead you to overlook even better values at other properties.

Conclusion

Take a look at your travel plans and point balances before deciding whether or not it makes sense to participate in the current flash sale.

In either case, the sale ends Thursday, June 19, at 11:59 am EST.

Moving credit lines between American Express accounts

/

There are many reasons someone might want to move a credit line between accounts. Perhaps the most common situation is when closing a card to avoid its annual fee; rather than seeing your total available credit decrease by the amount of the card's credit limit, you can transfer all but (typically) a nominal sum to another credit card issued by the same bank.

Alternatively, if you have a large credit line on a non-rewards-earning credit card like the Chase Slate from your pre-travel-hacking days, then you might decide to transfer the credit line to a more lucrative card also issued by Chase.

Each bank has a different procedure for this operation. In my experience, I've been able to transfer all but $2,500 from my Chase credit cards when closing them, and I've done that both over the phone and through the Secure Message Center without any difficulty.

Bank of America, on the other hand, in my experience requires a hard credit pull when transferring credit lines – even though they're not extending any additional credit!

American Express has fiddled with their procedure over the years, but since I just did this, I thought I'd share the method that worked for me today.

What cards are eligible?

American Express's basic rule is that a card must be open for at least 12 months before you can transfer that card's credit line away from it. In theory, credit lines can be transferred to a credit card almost immediately after the card account is opened.

I can now report from personal experience that the 12 month clock does not reset when you upgrade a credit card: I upgraded my Hilton HHonors Surpass card less than 12 months ago, but was able to reallocate credit away from it today.

Additionally, credit lines cannot be reallocated from business credit cards to consumer credit cards. Any other combination is theoretically possible using the online system: from consumer to business, between business, and between consumer credit cards.

Avoid the phone and online agents

I twice attempted exactly the same procedure that was successful today, once over the phone and once through the online messaging system, but was unsuccessful both times. Both times I believe the agents attempted to reallocate the credit lines from my (new) Blue Cash card to my HHonors card, instead of the other way around. I may have simply had incompetent agents helping me both times, or they might all be equally poorly-trained.

So for the sake of your sanity, use the online system if possible.

How it works

From your American Express home page, click on "Profile" near the top of the screen, then "Manage Credit Limit:"

From there, look for "Transfer Available Credit to Another Card," and click "Start:"

From there, select the card you want to transfer your available credit limit from:

And the card you want to transfer your available credit to:

Once you confirm the request, you'll be immediately notified whether the request was successful or not, and your available credit limits will almost immediately reflect the change (they say it can take up to 15 minutes).

Dots, Lines & Destinations is a pretty good podcast

/

This is the second installment of my now-long-running series: the Free-quent Flyer Reviews Stuff. In the first installment, I explained why Personal Finance Digest is a pretty good blog.

I have pretty specific taste in podcasts

Since leaving my job to pursue my true passions (blogging and taking money from banks), I spend about 3-4 hours every day manufacturing spend. That's mostly by choice; it would take a lot less time if I were willing to do it by car, but I hate driving and my new hometown has been torn up completely for road construction making driving an even more unbearable chore than usual.

That gives me a lot of time to listen to podcasts, which would be all well and good except there aren't very many podcasts I like. For example, I find the most popular NPR podcasts (This American Life, Planet Money) to be what I call "overproduced." The constant background noise, sound effects, and so on make them distracting and unpleasant to listen to (for me, although apparently not for anyone else).

It's pretty hard to do a miles and points podcast

Looking at iTunes, it seems that a guy named Kevin Le started a travel hacking podcast back in March. And a year or so back I remember seeing a podcast that only lasted a few episodes before the guys behind it seem to have given up (I can't find it anymore, so it may even have expired off iTunes).

The problem is, as I've explained before, most people who have the ability to leave steady employment in order to blog do so because of the replacement income they earn from credit card affiliate links. Podcasting is an incredibly time-consuming and ineffective method of generating income-earning conversions, which means few people with the expertise needed to produce a travel hacking podcast worth listening to have any interest in doing so.

Dots, Lines & Destinations is a pretty good podcast

With all that said, let me be clear: Dots, Lines & Destinations is not a travel hacking podcast. But it is a podcast by travel hackers, and informed by their knowledge and experience as travel hackers.

So what is Dots, Lines & Destinations? That's surprisingly hard to say. On the one hand, it's a discussion of industry news like new routes, loyalty program devaluations, and runway construction. On the other hand, it's a review of the hotels and routes the participants have used lately. For example, in a recent episode Seth Miller had a great discussion of the mechanics of booking Kenmore Air flights around Puget Sound. For some reason, the discussion participants refer to traveling on new routes and visiting new cities as "adding dots and lines," which I guess is the origin of the podcast's title.

All this hopefully has led you to ask, "so who are these 'discussion participants,' anyway?" That's a great question, which is, again, surprisingly hard to answer. The Seth Miller mentioned above is the Wandering Aramean, who programs online travel tools and by the sounds of it is present at every major travel conference in the world.

The other participants I've been able to identify are Fozz Mahmud, who blogs at upgrd.com, Stephan Segraves of badice.com, and a figure named "Rolo" who apparently visits South America frequently. They seem like nice guys, but as you can tell, there's no attempt to identify them or their expertise or qualifications for being on the podcast, besides perhaps being friends with Seth Miller.

But none of that ambiguity makes the slightest difference: I love listening to Dots, Lines & Destinations because it's the kind of natural, fun, wide-ranging conversation that you might overhear at a travel hacking conference and want to jump right into the middle of. Plus, whichever of the guys runs their Twitter feed also has a great sense of humor.

So give it a shot. It might not be for you, but you might just end up with a new favorite podcast.