About Hyatt suite upgrade awards

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Hyatt Diamond enthusiasts know that there are three kinds of room reservations at Hyatt properties: paid reservations, Free Nights, and Points + Cash reservations.

Points + Cash reservations are popular for two key reasons: they earn elite-qualifying stay credits and, like paid reservations, they're eligible for Diamond suite upgrade awards.

During my stay at the Park Hyatt Vienna, I got the best of both worlds.

Hyatt is thrilled to combine reservations into a single stay

There are few trivialities more annoying than having a room key deactivated in the middle of a hotel stay because you made two or more reservations as award availability or points became available.

As Joe Cheung pointed out during my most recent appearance on the Saverocity Observation Deck podcast, Hyatt is able to combine reservations so that multiple reservations are treated as a single stay, which is a terrific convenience given how some of their properties throttle Points + Cash award availability, potentially making you piece together a stay gradually over many months.

How I applied a suite upgrade award to two award nights

Soon after being matched to Hyatt Diamond status, I booked three Points + Cash nights at the Park Hyatt Vienna, and applied one of my four Diamond suite upgrade awards.

Then, since I don't chase signup bonuses and was well below the supposed "5/24 rule" for new Chase credit card approvals, I applied for a Chase Hyatt credit card and was approved, which quickly earned me two free nights at any Hyatt in the world, as long as award space was available.

I bided my time (i.e. set a Hotel Hustle award alert) and finally award availability opened up for my second and third nights in Vienna. I placed a quick call to Hyatt and had my Points + Cash award nights replaced with free credit card nights.

That made me wonder: would I have to change rooms after my first night, since that was the only night I had the right to apply a suite upgrade award to?

Of course not.

Can you apply suite upgrade awards to award nights? Maybe!

If you can replicate my experience, the advantages are obvious: you can earn a stay credit based on your first, Points + Cash night, but save cash by redeeming only points for all your subsequent nights.

So to review, here was my experience applying a suite upgrade award to my Park Hyatt Vienna stay:

  • book a Points + Cash stay;
  • apply a suite upgrade award to the entire stay;
  • replace all but the first night with award nights;
  • enjoy my suite for the entire stay.

Since my first night was also my 5th paid night during the current Stay More Play More promotion, I even got to take home 5,000 bonus Hyatt Gold Passport points for my trouble.

What did I miss: JetBlue edition

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I got back last night from New York, the final leg of a ridiculously circuitous trip through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Bavaria, and Berlin.

It was fun!

After managing to go all last week without a blog post (subscribers did get a newsletter out of me) this week I'll be easing back into the old blogging routine with some reflections on what I've learned. I mostly can't stand trip reports, so don't expect one! But it's an ironclad rule that travel hacking involves a lot of things that aren't immediately obvious, or spelled out in terms and conditions, and I've always sought to help readers understand how those things really work.

But first! Let's talk about JetBlue.

JetBlue is running a generous points match from Virgin America

You've certainly seen a rundown of this deal other blogs, but to refresh your memory, JetBlue is offering a tiered points match to Virgin America Elevate members with points in their Elevate account who book a new roundtrip JetBlue ticket after registering and before August 31, 2016.

To break that down even more clearly, the terms state:

  • you will receive bonus TrueBlue points up to 300% of your current Virgin America Elevate balance (30,000 TrueBlue points for a balance of 10,001 Elevate points);
  • if you submit a screenshot of your Virgin America Elevate dashboard and your TrueBlue account number by July 4, 2016;
  • and book and fly a new roundtrip JetBlue reservation after having your request approved but before August 31, 2016.

Should you go for it?

If you are planning to book a roundtrip JetBlue flight between now and August 31, 2016, and have a screenshot of your Virgin America account dashboard with more than 500 miles in it, you should definitely register for this promotion!

There's nothing glamorous about picking up nickels in front of steamrollers, but there's always a nickel in it for you.

Should you hack it?

On the other hand, a lot of bloggers are recommending "maximizing" the value of the promotion by transferring 40,001 Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints to Virgin America (yielding 50,001 total Elevate points), then requesting the match, and then flying the cheapest JetBlue roundtrip flight they can find out of nearby airports.

As you might have guessed, I have a couple of problems with this.

First, a transfer of 40,001 Starpoints does not maximize the value of the promotion; a transfer of 10,001 Starpoints does. That's because at the 10,001-Elevate-point level JetBlue adds 30,000 TrueBlue points to your account, while at the 50,001-point level they add just 75,000 TrueBlue points. If 45,000 TrueBlue points are worth $630, you'll get just 2.1 cents per Starpoints for the additional 30,000 Starpoints transferred, which is below their imputed redemption value of 2.105 cents! That is, in short, not a promotion at all.

Second, even at the most valuable 10,001-point level, you're required to make and fly a new roundtrip JetBlue reservation by August 31, 2016. Maybe you have access to cheap JetBlue flights. Maybe you don't place a high value on your time. But you need to have access to cheap JetBlue flights and not place a high value on your time to justify booking a mileage run in order to trigger the promotion.

Finally, let me gently remind my readers that the point of travel hacking is not to accumulate as many points as possible in as many programs as possible, but rather to pay for the trips you actually want to take, while spending as little money as possible. If you are able to successfully redeem 30,000 TrueBlue points for $450 worth of travel, and you're able to successfully redeem 10,000 Virgin America Elevate points for $220 worth of travel, and you manage to trigger the roundtrip flight requirement on a trip you were planning to take anyway, then congratulations: you'll have earned $670 worth of travel for $210 worth of imputed redemption value (assuming you manufactured all 10,000 Starpoints at an otherwise-unbonused merchant). That's a pretty good discount of 68.7%.

But to secure that pretty good discount, you have to build your redemptions around maximizing the value of your TrueBlue and Elevate points, even if another points currency would have offered you better connections, availability, or out-of-pocket cost.

Conclusion

There are a lot of people served by JetBlue and/or Virgin America, and a disproportionate number of travel hackers no doubt live in the large urban centers those airlines serve. If the stars align such that this promotion scores you huge, valuable points balances at little or no out of pocket cost, rest assured that I'm here cheering you on.

But if you've never flown either JetBlue or Virgin America and you find a credit card huckster is trying to get you excited about JetBlue because they've temporarily raised affiliate payouts to accompany this promotion, feel free to come back and re-read this post for a slightly different perspective.

Related reading:
On the value of not chasing deals
The JetBlue Points Match Is Worth It And You Should Do It
JetBlue Points Match Promotion: Is It Worth It?
 

Paid flights are not a strategy for earning redeemable miles

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This week as the blogosphere erupted like a school of piranhas around the bloody calf of the American AAdvantage devaluation, I quipped on Twitter that "'Where to credit your paid flights' should be of tertiary interest to travel hackers. Interesting question, but not very lucrative."

Let's break that down.

Primary interest: how much are you paying?

Due to the phenomenon I call price compression, how much you pay for your flights has only a glancing connection to the retail price.

  • If you manufacture spend on a US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card, you'll enjoy a discount of 62-75% off of retail, depending on where in a redemption band your flight falls.
  • A Citi Prestige credit card gives a 37.5% discount off ThankYou point redemptions on paid American flights, which increases to 79% if you're able to manufacture spend with a Citi ThankYou Premier card at gas stations.

Paying less for your travel may not be your only interest, but it should be a primary interest for the simple reason that the less you pay for your travel, the more of it you can afford!

Secondary interest: what are you getting?

Of course there's a difference between being frugal and being cheap: what you get for your money matters too, or we'd all be flying in the back of Spirit Airlines planes with our knees pressed against our chests (once — never again!).

In my experience, Delta Airlines is the domestic carrier most likely to get me where I'm going on time and in comfort. That doesn't mean I'll go out of my way to book Delta flights, but once price compression levels the differences in fares, Delta is far and away my preferred carrier.

Tertiary interest: where should you credit?

The reason I call the decision of where to credit paid flights of tertiary interest is that it's difficult to imagine a situation in which it would outweigh the factors of cost and convenience. In other words, there's no reason a travel hacker should pay more for less convenient flights that happen to earn a particular rewards currency.

There are two reasons for this. First, redeemable miles are cheap. When you can manufacture spend to earn exactly the number of redeemable miles you need, whenever you need them, miles earned through paid flights should be a rounding error in your overall rewards portfolio. Admittedly, it's a rounding error in your favor, and I'm not suggesting flying without a frequent flyer number attached at all. But if you have an award redemption in mind, it would be strange to count on your revenue flights to earn the needed miles.

Second, I'm happy to admit that elite status is valuable. But under most circumstances, it's unpredictably valuable. Here's a real-life example: I'm currently booked in economy on a United award reservation to Europe. I've been occasionally checking for business class award availability, and yesterday it suddenly appeared. For 40,000 more United miles, I can move to a premium cabin on a flight over 10 hours. Good deal! But as a MileagePlus general member, United also wants to charge a $100 change fee for each ticket. As a Premier Silver, I'd pay $50 per ticket, a Premier Gold would pay $25, and Premier Platinum and 1K members would pay nothing. That's real value: not some kind of squishy mental accounting, but cold hard cash that would be left in my pocket due to elite status.

The same example shows the problem with counting on elite status to generate big savings: to get predictable value from elite status you would need to know in advance which reservations, booked with which miles, are likely to require changes. If you spread your award reservations around between Alaska, Delta, American, and United, let alone the other transfer partners of your flexible rewards currencies, you will be left paying change fees (or keeping suboptimal reservations) on all the ones you don't earn elite status on.

Conclusion

When elite status is the natural byproduct of your travel hacking practice, it's a fine way to stretch the value of your rewards. As a checked-bag enthusiast, I enjoy my Delta SkyMiles Silver Medallion status, which saves me a few hundred dollars a year in checked bag fees.

But the less a person flies, the less value they receive from elite benefits. The problem with chasing elite status is not that there's anything wrong with elite status, but that it's expensive and inconvenient. If you live in a city where two or more airlines battle each other constantly on price and convenience, then it makes sense to pick one with which to run up your elite-qualifying tally.

Otherwise, chasing elite status and redeemable miles is playing the airlines' game, not ours.

Excited about Ultimate Rewards transfers to Flying Blue? Let's talk about it

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In case you've been staying in a buddhist travel hacker monastery for the last week, the big news to come out of the loyalty world this week was the unannounced addition of Flying Blue, the loyalty program of Air France and KLM, as a transfer partner for "flexible" Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

This post is going to come across as a bit cynical, so in the hopes of heading off sniping in the comments, let me first explain why this is phenomenal news.

Korean Airlines is not a great Skyteam program

While it's true that Ultimate Rewards already had transfer partners in oneworld (British Airways), Star Alliance (United), and Skyteam (Korean Airlines), Korean Airlines SKYPASS is a notoriously complex program to work with, with the gaping drawback that you can only book award tickets for relatives — and if you take them at their word, that even excludes stepchildren!

By contrast, Flying Blue has an online award search engine that allows you to book award tickets for anyone you like (as long as you don't get caught in one of their fraud traps).

Ultimate Rewards is a vibrant and growing program

Any expansion of a loyalty program to include new ways to earn or redeem points is an objective positive. If I never book a Flying Blue award ticket, I'll still be glad to know that it's someone's job at Chase to hunt down loyalty programs, negotiate transfer agreements, and implement the technology required to expand our Ultimate Rewards redemption options. To me that's a sign that the program still has a degree of vibrancy and is not yet ready to stagnate, like American Express Membership Rewards.

With that out of the way, let's talk about Flying Blue redemptions.

Delta makes life as hard as possible for their partners

To understand how difficult it is to redeem Flying Blue miles on Delta, it's important to understand how Delta makes award space available to its own members and to partners.

Delta dynamically prices awards for its own members. It's no longer rare to find cases where the constituent flights on a connecting award ticket are more or less expensive than the complete itinerary. Here's an itinerary connecting in Minneapolis that's more expensive than either of the constituent flights on their own:

The constituent flights price at 12,500 SkyMiles:

And 11,500 SkyMiles:

Unrelated to SkyMiles pricing for their own members, Delta makes some seats on some flights available to partners for awards.

Let's see those same three searches using Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. Here's the first leg (it's 25,000 instead of 12,500 because I'm searching for one-way flights):

Here's the second leg:

Here's the catch: Delta doesn't make that complete itinerary available to partners, which we can only surmise is because it prices higher at the 15,500-mile level. Here are the only options Alaska shows when doing a one-way search between BWI and MSO on September 19:

Fortunately, Alaska allows you to construct your own Delta routing as a "Multi-city" flight search. By feeding Alaska the flights I know have award space (because I checked earlier), I can easily produce my desired award:

It's important to understand exactly what's happening here: Delta is making its cheapest award space available to its own members and to partners on individual segments, but charging its own members more on the complete itinerary and not making that complete itinerary available to partners. The reason the Alaska workaround works is that Alaska is willing to search for each leg individually in a multi-city search, and then price the entire itinerary according to its own routing rules, which make it a valid one-way itinerary.

Flying Blue does not allow multi-city awards to be booked online

This is what Flying Blue's multi-city search engine looks like:

Flying Blue doesn't let you construct Delta itineraries online because your final destination must be your originating airport.

I assume you could construct this itinerary over the phone

Good luck with that.

Conclusion: how I'll be using Flying Blue

So Flying Blue isn't the key to unlimited cheap flights on Delta. That doesn't mean it's useless! On the contrary, it's going to be one of my first stops along with Alaska, British Airways, and United, each time I start planning a new trip. The search engine makes it easy to see at a glance whether there are award seats available, and if there are, they will usually be among the cheapest, not because of their great award chart or their low fuel surcharges (on the contrary, they have a fairly standard award chart and pass along fuel surcharges to customers), but because the miles themselves are so cheap when transferred from a Chase Ultimate Rewards account.

To make the same point another way, a redemption of 12,500 SkyMiles manufactured with a Delta Platinum American Express card costs $188 in opportunity cost ($8,929 manufactured on a 2.105% cash back card), while a 12,500-mile Flying Blue redemption costs just $125 in Ultimate Rewards points: a 33.5% discount.

I don't expect those redemption to be very frequent — but I do expect to make them each and every time the opportunity presents itself!

Membership Rewards points aren't worthless, but they are worth less

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If you follow the miles and points bloggers who churn out a constant flood of material on signup bonuses, you already know that earlier this week there was an untargeted offer available for the American Express Platinum card which earned 100,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $3,000 in 3 months of card membership.

After the first day or so of unceasing posts about the offer I responded uncharitably on Twitter.

Since the blogosphere is going to keep trying to shove these offers down your throat, let's do a quick recap of why chasing offers like this is unlikely to be a great use of your travel hacking time and money.

Statement credits are worth (much) less than cash

When I wrote a post of this name, reader MJC helpfully suggested in the comments:

"The Amex Platinum 'airline credit' is also as good as cash, given that you can book a Delta ticket without attaching a Skymiles number to it, then pay for Economy Plus after the reservation is made, then cancel the reservation within 24 hours, and Amex Platinum will always refund your Economy Plus fees even though Delta refunds them as well"

Perfectly true — someone could do this over and over again until they'd redeemed their entire $200 airline fee statement credit each calendar year.

But, and I don't want to sound patronizing, are you going to do this? I ask because a lot of people get into travel hacking thinking they're one type of person, only to discover they are, in fact, the type of person who pays $95 annual fees on the Chase Sapphire Preferred year after year out of habit, fear, and/or greed.

Most importantly, the people trying to convince you to sign up for American Express Platinum cards aren't asking you whether you're the type of person who's actually willing to jump through all those hoops. And if they won't, I'm sure as hell going to.

Global Entry statement credits are worth $100 (to almost no one)

If you don't have Global Entry, and were just about to apply and pay for it, then you are fully justified in treating the American Express Platinum $100 Global Entry statement credit at its face value of $100.

But if you already have Global Entry and are planning to use your statement credit on a friend, or family member, or even sell it online, then it would not make sense to value it at $100. After all, you weren't willing to pay someone else's Global Entry fee if you had to pay out of pocket. That's what we call a "revealed" preference for cash over others' participation in Global Entry.

Membership Rewards points are valuable if you redeem them. Will you?

Finally we've come to the crux of the problem: are 100,000 Membership Rewards points worth a lot, or a little?

And my answer is an emphatic: maybe.

I was speaking yesterday to a subscriber who had already spent $50,000 on his American Express Delta Platinum card, and didn't have any good remaining options for earning large numbers of Delta SkyMiles easily (at least until next calendar year). He applied for the 100,000 Membership Rewards point offer because he knows how valuable SkyMiles are for flying from our local airport, and I congratulated him. That's as good as money in the bank.

Likewise, if you are planning a high-value Hilton vacation, being able to transfer 100,000 Membership Rewards points to 150,000 Hilton HHonors points and pay just $450 in fees (less whatever statement credits you're able to wrangle) is an easy one-off source of points.

But if you're signing up because, as one person responded on Twitter, "Singapore?" then you need to take a nice long walk around the block and decide when, exactly, you are planning to go to Singapore. Next month? The next six months? The next 10 years?

This matters because the longer your time horizon is, the more likely you are to be able to accumulate the needed points in better, cheaper ways than with a one-off Platinum signup bonus. A single Chase Ink Plus lets you earn up to 250,000 Singapore miles per year by manufacturing spend at office supply stores. But even more importantly, the Chase Ink Plus and Ultimate Rewards points in general are more valuable than Membership Rewards points, so you're unlikely to need to do an emergency transfer of points to Singapore (or any other program) in order to avoid paying a second (or third, or fourth) annual fee on the Platinum card.

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed

Longtime readers know that I do not find arguments centered on "personal responsibility" particularly convincing. But there is one kind of responsibility that you are literally the only person who can take: knowing what kind of person you are.

Bloggers I consider irresponsible promote travel hacking as a way to experience the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as if all we can ask for out of life is a glass of champagne at 35,000 feet. If that is, indeed, all you can ask for out of life, then there's a flight to Singapore with your name written all over it.

But if you never felt the slightest longing to see the storied Singapore food courts before this 100,000 Membership Rewards point offer came around, it would be very strange indeed for such a promotion to instill such a longing in you at this late date.

Is that you, or is that the steady drumbeat of bloggers trying to sell you more and more expensive credit cards?

The chief business of the American people is business

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Cool Calvin Coolidge, in a 1925 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, told the assembly:

"After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life."

And yet whenever I discuss the superiority of the Chase Ink Plus small business credit card over the worthless Chase Sapphire Preferred, readers invariably remark how difficult it is to get the Chase Ink Plus "without a genuine business."

Normally I keep my business ideas close to my vest, but out of an overabundance of altruism, I've decided to share three easy ways to turn you from an employee into a proud self-employed American.

The gig economy makes business easy and fun

If you're a driver for the ride-sharing services Uber or Lyft, you've got a lot of expenses that you should be keeping strictly separate from your personal expenses: gas, vehicle maintenance, and car insurance for starters. Likewise if you do work through an app like TaskRabbit, you'll need to carefully separate any expenses you incur while on the job in order to correctly report your self-employment income come tax time.

Note that this is true no matter how much gig work you actually perform.

You don't have to be good at reselling to make it a business

Reselling is of course a term of art in the travel hacking community for folks earning miles, points and cash by buying up goods they think they'll be able to sell to others at a small, medium, or large markup, while pocketing the rewards currency of their choice.

But you don't need to a reselling savant to turn it into a business. Have you heard of random crap? Well before you start reselling random crap, you'll want to open a small business credit card to keep your random crap reselling business expenses separate from your personal expenses.

We are all content creators now

If you have something to say, you're definitely going to need your own website. That's going to come with all kind of expenses: hosting fees, maintenance fees and image licensing fees, just to name a few. And those are all fees you're definitely going to want to charge to a small business credit card.

Conclusion: unsuccessful businesspeople are businesspeople too

The Chase Ink Plus small business credit card exists so people will carry it. Those people are businesspeople. But if Chase limited card membership to people with longstanding and successful businesses, they wouldn't have very many cardholders at all, would they?

Your job, therefore, is to be the kind of small businessperson that gives Chase a reason to say "yes" to you and your small business.

What do I think about the 100,000 Hilton HHonors Surpass offer?

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Yesterday blog subscriber JH wrote to ask me, "what's your opinion on the current 100k Hilton card offer?" JH is referring to the current offer of 100,000 Hilton HHonors points after spending $3,000 within three months on the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express. The offer is available until May 4, 2016. Incidentally, I don't include personal referral links here on the blog, but you can find the relevant offer on my "Support the Site!" page.

Since I wrote JH a detailed answer, I thought it may be useful to share and expand on it here.

Higher signup bonuses are better than lower signup bonuses

In general, if you've been going through life vaguely considering signing up for a Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express, but have been waiting to sign up until the bonus goes up to an all-time high, well, you're in luck: the bonus is at an all-time high.

If that's you, this is the time to sign up.

What do you call 100,000 Hilton HHonors points?

A good start.

The fact is, 100,000 HHonors points is not an interesting number of HHonors points. The key characteristic of the Hilton HHonors program is that award nights at desirable properties are extremely expensive (up to 95,000 points per night), but Hilton HHonors points are easy to earn at bonused grocery store and gas station merchants using the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express.

Two approaches to an unusually high signup bonus

There are two ways to approach a 100,000 Hilton HHonors point signup bonus.

If you are already planning an expensive vacation to a Hilton HHonors property, signing up for the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express with a 100,000 points signup bonus will get you a minimum of one night free at that property (and breakfast, if you don't already have Hilton HHonors Gold elite status). That could mean saving real money compared to your cash rate!

Alternatively, you can use this unusually high signup bonus as an impulse towards earning large numbers of Hilton HHonors points on an ongoing basis in bonused spending categories.

But most readers shouldn't care about signup bonus fluctuations

The third approach, and the one I personally take, is to not pay any attention to the barrage of blog posts and twitter feeds dedicated to identifying the highest and shortest-lived signup bonuses.

The difference between a 50,000 and 100,000 Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express signup bonus is $8,333 in grocery store or gas station spend. If it wasn't worth spending that much on the card before the 100,000 signup bonus came around, what makes you think it is now?

These increased signup bonuses occupy an outsized portion of the attention of the travel hacking blogosphere, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to simply ignore them.

What happens when a Flexperks reservation is refunded to the original payment method?

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Background

For a recent trip to Washington, DC, I used US Bank Flexpoints to book my partner's ticket on the only daily nonstop flight home from Washington National Airport. Since economy tickets cost $264 while first class tickets cost $343.10, either option would have the same cost to me: 20,000 Flexpoints (an example of what I call "price compression"). I used Delta denied boarding vouchers to pay for my own $264 ticket in economy.

When I checked us in the night before our flight, I found that my partner had been seated in economy, although her ticket correctly showed her first class fare. My first move was to reach out to Delta's Twitter handle @DeltaAssist to see if they could resolve the problem:

Since my partner needed to get back in time for work the next morning, I decided not to push harder over Twitter and instead resolve the issue once we got back home.

Filing a Department of Transportation complaint

Since Delta wouldn't offer a refund over Twitter, I filed a Department of Transportation complaint, explaining that Delta had neither offered a refund nor reaccommodated my partner in the class of travel I paid for. I asked for a refund of the $79 price difference between first class and economy and any other compensation she was entitled to.

Response from the Department of Transportation

My first response from the Department of Transportation was a lengthy e-mail, reading in relevant part:

"Based on the information you have provided, your complaint appears to fall under the Department's rules. I will forward your complaint to the airline and ask the company to respond directly to you with a copy to me. Airlines are required to acknowledge receipt of a consumer complaint within 30 days and provide a substantive response to the complainant within 60 days. I will review the airline's response. If you need to contact me, please include your name and case number (see above). I will make every effort to reply to your message within one business day."

Response from Delta

Three days later, I received an e-mail from Delta's refund department, saying:

"I’m happy to help with your request regarding a refund.

We’re sorry you weren’t seated in the forward cabin as planned. An adjustment has been made for the fare difference between the class of service purchased and the class of service flown.

A refund for you
We processed a refund on April 8, 2016 as follows:

006........../$79.00/VI....5853."

Now, obviously, I don't have a Visa card ending in 5853: that's the account number used by the travel agency contracted by US Bank to book Flexperks reward tickets.

US Bank is clueless

My first thought was to call US Bank and see if their customer service agents knew what happens to Flexperks ticket refunds. They don't.

But they were able to transfer me to, and give me the direct number for, "The Rewards Center," the travel agency they use to book revenue flights. That number is 1-855-516-9182.

The Rewards Center is slightly less clueless

To communicate with the Rewards Center, you don't need your credit card number, your Flexpoints number, or even your airline record locator. You need your "Trip ID," the 12-digit number that is e-mailed to you when you make a Flexperks Travel Rewards redemption.

The frontline Rewards Center customer service agent had no ability to understand what I was talking about; he kept trying to transfer me back to US Bank. But once I said the word "refund" enough times, he finally was willing to check with his supervisor, and eventually came back to say that no refund had been processed for my reservation.

How Flexperks reservations are refunded

At that point I decided to wait and see how this played out. And it turns out, with no additional action on my part, my $79 refund was processed automatically — back to my Flexperks Travel Rewards Flexpoints account.

Remember that I paid 20,000 Flexpoints for a $343.10 first class reservation, getting roughly 1.72 cents per Flexpoint.

On April 20, 2016, 12 days after Delta e-mailed that they were processing my refund request, I received a "Points Adjustment" of 4,605 Flexpoints into my account.

For those doing the math at home, 4,605 Flexpoints for a $79 refund comes to 1.72 cents per Flexpoint — a refund of the exact number of Flexpoints corresponding to the original redemption rate.

Conclusion: when booking first class, go ahead and snap an economy screenshot

In this case, I actually had an economy ticket booked within minutes of the first class ticket I redeemed US Bank Flexpoints for, which allowed me to upload my economy receipt to the Department of Transportation complaint website.

But that won't usually be the case! My recommendation is, out of an abundance of caution, whenever using Flexpoints (or any other fixed-value rewards currency) to book revenue airline tickets in business or first class, take a screenshot of the economy fare as well. If an equipment change lands you in economy, you'll be glad to have some evidence supporting your refund request for the amount you actually overpaid for the premium cabin you didn't get to sit in.

Starting from scratch: alternative banking products

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This week I've been writing about some strategies, credit cards, and loyalty programs I would use differently if I were building a travel hacking practice from scratch. If I were ignoring my elite status and current stable of credit cards, I'd focus even more on fixed-value points for use in booking airline tickets, and I'd ignore hotel loyalty completely in order to maximize my cash discount booking hotel nights through online travel agencies.

Today's post is about the alternative banking products I've used, abused, and lost throughout the last five or six years.

High-interest prepaid savings accounts

Back when CVS allowed virtually-unlimited numbers of Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to be purchased with credit cards, the American Express "old" Blue Cash offered unlimited 5% cash back, and the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express gave 6 HHonors points per dollar spent at drug stores, there was a constant search for new prepaid products that could be loaded and unloaded as quickly as possible through the Vanilla Reload Network. I burned through 3 MyVanilla accounts, 2 Netspend accounts, and a Momentum account all in order to liquidate as many Vanilla Reload Network cards as possible.

In hindsight, with Vanilla Reload Network cards today mostly unavailable to credit card users, that was a mistake: Netspend and Momentum offer savings accounts with higher FDIC-insured interest rates than those available anywhere else in the market today, and I'd prefer to still have working relationships with those companies.

American Express prepaid banking products

Like most aggressive users of American Express's Bluebird and Serve prepaid products, on January 8, 2016, my accounts were all closed. I had been using both accounts to liquidate PIN-enabled prepaid debit cards for free, and in the case of Serve, earn cash back by loading funds from my Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express card.

If I were starting over today, I wouldn't use American Express prepaid banking products to manufacture spend at all: I'd use them to manufacture transactions for high-interest savings, checking, and credit card accounts that require a certain number of transactions per month to unlock their highest reward levels.

Conclusion

I don't have any regrets about the path that my travel hacking practice has taken, even though I focus more on airline and hotel loyalty currencies than I would if I were starting from scratch today.

I probably slightly overpay for my checked bags by earning Delta Medallion elite status with a Delta Platinum American Express each year, and I earn only part of that value back with high-value SkyMiles redemptions.

Likewise, I tend to overpay for my hotel stays by earning Hilton HHonors points and Diamond elite status with my Hilton Surpass American Express, instead of booking through a cashback portal and online travel agency, and I've certainly overpaid by directing stays towards Hyatt during this year of my Diamond status match.

But building relationships with banks and merchants is a process that necessarily develops over time, and as things stand I'm more or less happy with the decisions I've made and the relationships I've built, even if I would have proceeded different in hindsight.

I'd sure kill for another shot at a Serve account, though.

Understanding Hotel Hustle award alerts

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I've written quite a few times about Seth Miller the Wandering Aramean and Hotel Hustle, his tool for searching for award space across hotel chains.

Like most (all?) his online tools, it's undocumented, which means it requires quite a few rounds of trial and error before you get the hang of its, shall we say, nuances.

Just yesterday I discovered another one of those nuances that I thought readers might appreciate.

A Hyatt property can have any of three flags — or none of them

As a newly-minted Hyatt Diamond, I've been doing a lot of searching for Points + Cash rates to fill out my travel schedule for the year, and to do so, I've spent a lot of time using Hotel Hustle.

To understand how Hotel Hustle views the universe, you have to treat every Hyatt property as having 3 possible "flags" in a true or false position:

  • Flag #1 asks, "is there a cash rate available?"
  • Flag #2 asks, "are there rooms available for all-points redemptions?"
  • Flag #3 asks, "are there rooms available for Points + Cash redemptions?"

If there are rooms available for all-points redemptions there should be cash rates available, but the same is not true for Flags #3 and #2; in the course of researching this post I discovered a property with Points + Cash availability but with no points-only redemptions available.

(As an aside, I'm sure I could call Hyatt and have them book me into an all-points redemption, but Hotel Hustle operates based on what's available on the website — no bargaining allowed.)

Hotel Hustle treats each combination of flags differently

Say I'm interested in visiting Philadelphia on July 25, 2016, which happens to be the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Here's what Hotel Hustle shows me when I narrow my search to Hyatt:

It looks like Hyatt doesn't have any properties in Philadelphia, so I'm out of luck.

But a bit earlier in the year, say, this Saturday, my results look different:

It turns out Hyatt has all sorts of properties in Philadelphia! That Hyatt Place in Mt. Laurel looks promising, but unfortunately it doesn't have any points-only or Points + Cash award availability.

Of course, if I arrive a few days earlier, I might be interested in spending some time up in Plymouth Meeting:

I'm in luck! Points + Cash rates are available, securing me a precious stay credit towards requalification.

Making sense of Hotel Hustle flags

Each of the above pictures illustrates a particular combination of flags, each of which you need to understand to get all the information you need from Hotel Hustle.

The first picture illustrates the situation when none of the flags are "true:" Hotel Hustle will not help you. You cannot configure any kind of alert for a property that does not have any rooms available for cash.

The second picture illustrates a situation where only Flag #1 is "true:" Hotel Hustle will allow you to set an alert for points-only award availability in the righthand sidebar or, if you can locate the property on the map and click on it, set an alert for Points + Cash award availability.

The third picture illustrates the (unusual) situation where Flag #1 and Flag #3 are "true," but Flag #2 is "false." Hotel Hustle does allow you to set a points-only alert in the righthand sidebar, but it only allows you to view Points + Cash availability by locating the property on the map and clicking on its icon.

Points-only and Points + Cash are different alert types

What if you're not interested in qualifying or requalifying for Diamond status with Hyatt and just want to save some money on your next Hyatt stay?

In the second picture above, you can see that you can create both points-only and Points + Cash award alerts through Hotel Hustle. But if you are indifferent between the two, you need to create both types of award alert.

If you select "Manage Alerts" you can see which kind of award alert you've created. If you want to be alerted when either a points-only or Points + Cash awards become available, your "Manage Alerts" page should look like this:

The "C&P Alert?" column designates whether the alert is for Points + Cash or a points-only award availability.

Conclusion

I poke fun at Seth for not documenting his web apps, but in all fairness, even if he did I wouldn't read the documentation.

At the same time, since I just figured out how this worked I suspect there's a chance it will be of value to some of my readers!