The more you know: earning secret Giant gas and grocery points

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I’ve been doing most of my grocery store manufactured spend lately at Safeway, since they’ve had great offers recently for better-than-free Visa and MasterCard prepaid debit cards. When these deals come along it almost doesn’t matter what credit card you use, but the best options are obviously cards that bonus grocery store spend, like the Chase Freedom this quarter, the Sapphire Preferred or Reserve in May and June, or the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass or Aspire cards, with their uncapped 12 points per dollar spent at grocery stores through July.

As a reminder, you typically have two weeks to redeem these Safeway promotions, but they are only available to “add” to your Shop Your Way account during the week they appear in the app, so be sure to add them to all your accounts immediately when the promotions go live.

The other model of grocery store discount is the one preferred by the Giant/Stop & Shop/Martin’s grocery store chain, where you earn bonus gas points on prepaid debit cards instead. In some areas, including mine, these points can now be redeemed for credit towards a future grocery purchase, so they are much more “cash-like” than they used to be. Still, given the choice, I prefer a slightly smaller up-front discount than the hassle of trying to perfectly match up my grocery bill with my store credit.

Strange, but true: earn bonus gas points even when your store doesn’t advertise them

Word typically goes around Twitter and the blogosphere quickly once a new grocery store promo goes live, which is extremely convenient if you’re like me and either don’t receive or instantly trash your weekly circular. The circulars are available online, so it’s easy to plug your ZIP code in and see whether your local stores are participating.

Or so I thought.

Earlier this week, Stephen Pepper over at Frequent Miler mentioned in passing:

“If you live near Giant or Stop & Shop stores, this deal isn’t appearing in your weekly ad. For some reason, that’s been the case for the last couple of months or so – gift card deals are displayed in the weekly ad for Martin’s but not Giant or Stop & Shop. This offer is still available at all three chains though despite not being listed in all weekly ads.”

I’ve been travel hacking long enough to know that as bizarre as this sounds, that’s no reason to doubt it — the very existence of travel hacking is so bizarre most people have trouble believing it really exists. But I wanted to make sure, so I trundled over to my local Giant, which did not list the promotion in this week’s circular, to find out for myself (and, obviously, my beloved readers).

Embarrassingly, I’d moved so much of my grocery store spend over to Safeway that the entire Giant store location had been redesigned since my last visit, and I was almost afraid Giant had stopped selling prepaid debit cards altogether. It turned out they had moved the gift card center to just inside the store’s one-way exit, so you conveniently now have to walk all the way through the store, past the checkout lanes, then re-enter the store to make your purchase.

Since I had not yet maxed out the $1,500 cap on one of my Chase Freedom cards, I used that to buy the prepaid Visa debit card, knowing I’d come out ahead whether or not I earned the bonus gas points. Fortunately for me, and for you if you’re in an area served by Giant, Pepper was right and I did earn the bonus points.

But that’s not all.

Stranger, but still true: earn bonus gas points even when they don’t show up on your receipt

When I sat down to write this post, I was expecting to write the exact opposite of the above. I was planning to share a contrary datapoint, concluding that while there may be some stores where bonus points are earned regardless of whether the promotion is advertised or not, you shouldn’t count on it, and do your own research instead.

That’s because when I checked out, the bonus points did not appear on my receipt. Whenever you check out at Giant using a rewards card, there are two lines on the bottom portion of the receipt, “Points this visit” and “Points total.” The receipt reported that I had earned 0 points on the card, and that my points total was also 0.

It was only when I sat down to write this post that it occurred to me to double check using the Giant app, and as soon as I opened it, there they were: 1,524 points, redeemable for $15 in free groceries.

Conclusion

There’s no reason to believe there’s necessarily a connection between these datapoints. It may be the fact prepaid debit card deals aren’t printed in some stores’ circulars is one error, points nonetheless being awarded is a second, unrelated error, and awarded points not appearing on receipts is a third, also unrelated error. Likewise, it’s possible each error will be fixed independently of the others.

What I can say is that, based on my experience during this promotion, it is probably worth at least finding out whether your own stores are awarding gas points, whether or not the promotion appears in your circular.

Three notes on Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve grocery statement credits

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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.

How I'm thinking about traveling safely

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It has been interesting, to say the least, to see how the travel industry has responded to the present crisis so far.

Air travel, for example, never fully shut down as it did in the days after September 11, 2001. Routes were cut, which, perhaps counter-productively, meant the few remaining flights were fuller than they would otherwise have been, increasing passengers’ chance of exposure to the novel coronavirus.

Hotels in the most affected cities have been closed or converted into quarantine shelters for those without other options, as in Washington, DC, where residents of crowded group shelters that test positive or are exposed to coronavirus-positive individuals have been moved into private rooms at places like the Hotel Arboretum.

Likewise, Amtrak reduced the frequency of their most popular Northeast Regional service, and suspended some long-distance services, while reducing capacity to 50% on the remaining trains — quite a change from the typical procedure, where conductors frequently demand you move your bags off unoccupied seats because “every seat will be occupied.”

Finally, car rental companies have seen their own troubles, with Hertz already filing for Chapter 11 restructuring after finding itself unable to service its staggering $17 billion in debt, although it will continue to operate, at least for now.

From a traveler’s perspective, most of us are making the simplest, easiest decision to stay in place until the virus is in retreat. But there’s a lot of room between sheltering at home and flying to Missouri for a weekend pool party. Here’s how I’m thinking through the situation.

Are you the vector or the victim?

By now it seems most people have internalized that the reason we take precautions like social distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing, and contact-free payment and delivery is not to protect ourselves, but to protect those we come into contact with. A highly contagious disease with a long, asymptomatic incubation period means once you’ve contracted the virus, you can easily transmit it to others whether or not you ever develop symptoms.

This provides a useful frame of reference: taking for granted that you’re following best practices, are you more likely to be exposing others to the virus or to be exposed yourself? To give the simplest example, someone traveling from Rhode Island or Massachusetts, which have high and rising case numbers, to Montana or Alaska, which have low and flat numbers, should consider themself a potential vector of the disease. They pose much more risk to the population in their destination than the destination population poses to them.

This principle works in reverse as well: if you’re traveling from a relatively unscathed area to a coronavirus hotspot, then you’re much more likely to contract the infection than spread it.

Again, obviously you should not be traveling long distances and you should certainly not be having close contact with strangers. But if you have to travel, this is one way of thinking about whether you pose a bigger risk to others, or they pose a bigger risk to you. Traveling from a coronavirus hotspot and visiting a crowded bar or restaurant that has remained open in an unaffected region is one way to make sure that region doesn’t stay unaffected for long.

One extreme version of this exists for folks who have already received a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, recovered, and received a serology test indicating the present of antibodies. Due to the possibility of false positives, I wouldn’t be confident that I’d had the disease and recovered unless I’d received at least two positive results (i.e., two positive coronavirus results, two positive antibody results, or ideally one of each).

I wrote about getting pneumonia in February, when COVID-19 was already present in the community but was still believed to be only affecting folks who had recent travel to Asia or who had come into contact with them, so I was never tested for the coronavirus (I was also uninsured, which didn’t help). To find out whether I had actually contracted COVID-19, I’d now need to get a serology test, but since I don’t have any symptoms (or travel plans) there’s no plausible medical reason to get one, although apparently there’s a clinic down in Virginia that will give one to anybody, if they’re willing to pay for it.

Safest: dispersed camping with your own gear

The safest way to take a trip while minimizing the risk to yourself and others is to avoid them, which is possible in large parts of the United States through what’s known as “dispersed camping.” Essentially, it is free and legal to camp for up to 21 consecutive days on National Forest land where there are no amenities and services. So-called “developed” National Forest recreation areas have their own rules.

Unfortunately, the National Forest website appears to have been designed in the early 1990’s and hasn’t been updated since, so it’s a bit of a struggle to navigate. To save you some trouble, this is the method I found to find nearby options:

  1. First, visit the National Forest interactive map, and poke around to see what options might interest you. Don’t click on any of the camping icons, since those refer to developed campgrounds, not dispersed camping areas.

  2. Once you’ve found some areas of interest, go to the Forest Service homepage and search for the National Forest you’re interest in using the dropdown boxes on the righthand side.

  3. That will take you to the page for that specific forest, where you should be able to navigate to the “dispersed camping” page, like this one for the George Washington & Jefferson National Forests.

The term “dispersed camping” is a bit funny to me because it’s what I grew up calling “camping.” You go for a hike, set up a tent, cook some beans, and go to sleep. It usually rains. Only in adulthood did I realize that people in other places call it “camping” when you go to a big park with cleared ground, showers, toilets, and even firewood for sale. That’s not meant to disparage that experience (I had a great time on Madeline Island at a lovely campground), it just happens to be different than what I grew up doing.

Less safe: drive somewhere alone and maintain distance

Last year my partner and I rented a car and drove to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, which is a few hours drive from Washington, DC, depending on traffic. We stayed at a fairly rundown Quality Inn that appeared to only have a single employee, and spent most of our time wandering around the site of John Brown’s raid on the national armory and the West Virginian portion of the Appalachian Trail.

During the present crisis, this trip would obviously not be risk-free, for all the reasons discussed above. Renting the car and checking in and out of the hotel would present two obviously unnecessary interactions — unnecessary in the sense that if we didn’t take the trip, we wouldn’t have them. West Virginia has a much lower prevalence rate, for now, than the District does, so if we were asymptomatic carriers we might run the risk of introducing the virus there, while also running the somewhat smaller risk of contracting it there and introducing it to our building or neighborhood.

Riskiest: go somewhere safe, quarantine, and stay

Finally, on the other extreme, you might decide to relocate permanently or semi-permanently to a relatively safe destination. Here I am not talking about taking a vacation to Singapore just because Singapore has its outbreak under control. Doing that simply risks introducing the virus to Singapore anew. I mean that if you are retired, unemployed, or able to work remotely, you might consider relocating to a destination that has re-opened or is in the process of re-opening, taking into account the fact that you are a potential vector for the spread of the disease.

14 days in quarantine sounds like a lot, but if you’re already observing a stay-at-home order in the United States, then spending the same amount of time in a hotel with decent wi-fi might not seem like such a high price to pay, if at the other end you emerge into a society with the amenities or human contact you need to maintain your sanity.

Conclusion

Right now my household is staying on the side of extreme safety. Even if we both happened to be tested and discovered we had COVID-19 antibodies, flying across the country to visit our families is off the table for now, so short drives to isolated nearby locales are likely the extent of our travel for the next few months. This disease is a killer, and we don’t want to die or expose anyone else unnecessarily.

But I understand everyone’s risk calculus is different, so hopefully this helps you develop your own framework for when and how you’ll be traveling again.

My COVID-19 Delta companion ticket experiment (and one weird datapoint)

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Most people aren’t in a position to plan travel these days, but like me, you might be in a position where you need to book travel. In my case, that meant making a companion ticket reservation using a card I plan to cancel.

News to me: Delta companion tickets are linked to your co-branded credit card, not your Skymiles account

I only have one Delta Platinum Business credit card, so I only get one companion ticket a year, which means it takes some time to collect datapoints (and they’re stale by the time the next one comes around). For that reason, I was not aware of a curious development: Delta companion tickets are now automatically charged to your co-branded Delta credit card.

This may not seem like a big deal at first glance, since if you have a Delta co-branded credit card in the first place you’re probably fine earning bonus Skymiles on your purchase, and you might even be working your way towards a $25,000 or $30,000 high spend threshold anyway. Otherwise, why have the card?

It is, however, a change: in the past, Delta companion tickets could be booked with any American Express card, even cards that weren’t issued by American Express, like the Fidelity 2% cash back card, which used the American Express payment network before eventually moving over to Visa.

I wasn’t trying to be that clever, however. I simply wanted to pay with my American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card, since I plan to cancel my Delta card in the next few days. The payment was accepted, and my e-mailed receipt shows the last four digits of my Hilton card.

But the charge was put on my Delta card anyway, even though my Delta card isn’t even saved to my Delta wallet! I hope you’re as astonished as I am: not only did they charge a card I didn’t authorize them to charge, they charged a card that wasn’t saved to my account.

In my case this didn’t end up mattering, but do keep it in mind if you are planning to put a Delta companion ticket on a different American Express card, for example to meet a minimum spending requirement, high spend bonus, or to trigger an Amex Offer.

Book Delta speculatively by May 31 for travel before September 30

There are two slightly different rules on the Delta website that I’m hoping to take advantage of which led me to make this reservation the way I did:

  • “Tickets originally purchased between March 1 and May 31, 2020, can be changed without a change fee for up to a year from the date you purchased it.”

  • “for travel within the United States originally scheduled to depart March through September 30, 2020, all change fees are waived; You can rebook your trip to the same destination for travel departing before September 30, 2020, with no difference in fare applied."

Since, if epidemiologically possible, we’re hoping to take a trip to New Orleans in the fall, the way I read this is that I could book the cheapest possible flight to New Orleans departing anytime before September 30 and be able to change it to any date before September 30, at any price, while paying no change fees and no difference in fare.

By booking before May 31, I also have the backup option of using the price of the ticket towards any other Delta ticket up to a year after the date of purchase.

So, it is worth it?

In my case, I had the icing of being able to redeem a companion ticket that would otherwise be lost when I close my Delta card, but it’s worth considering who else might want to take advantage of this opportunity.

The clearest case is if you have a trip you know you need take on Delta before September 30, since according to my reading of these rules you can book the cheapest dates on the calendar, then simply change your flights to the correct dates without paying any fees or difference in fare. Delta appears to be saying all flights between two given airports, departing before September 30, are now priced at the lowest fare available anytime before September 30 between those same airports. Nice of them!

Another option is using the pre-May 31 change fee waiver as a kind of travel bank to liquidate fixed-value points on cards you plan to cancel, or to trigger airline fee credits. For example, the American Express Platinum cards offer a 35% rebate when you redeem Membership Rewards points for certain premium cabin tickets. Booking an expensive first class Delta flight, receiving the rebated points, and then using the value towards flights you actually plan to take might be one way to lock in that increased value.

I don’t carry any cards that offer annual airline fee credits so it’s not a sub-field I follow particularly closely, but if you can find some sub-$50 Delta fares, they might automatically trigger credits on cards like the American Express Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve.

Conclusion

Let me close with a word of (gentle) warning. The actual financial mechanism here is that you, the passenger, are making an unsecured loan to Delta, a troubled airline. That doesn’t mean you don’t have rights: you have a lot of rights! But if the pandemic lasts longer than expected, or Delta manages the aftermath worse than expected, then your rights are going to have to get in line along with everyone else’s rights: employees, bondholders, shareholders, airports, suppliers, etc.

I don’t mean to come across as pessimistic. I think Delta is an unusually well-managed airline! I just mean to say that, as in all these games we play, this is not a case of “pulling one over” on Delta, it’s a case of making a calculated bet, and your calculation may well end up being different than mine.

Introducing the Manifesto, on the Milenomics Podcast Network

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Today I get to share some exciting news about a project that’s been in the works for a few weeks: the Manifesto podcast, hosted by yours truly on the Milenomics Podcast Network.

Long-time readers know that the Milenomics Squared podcast is one my favorite travel hacking resources: it’s on the very short list of travel hacking resources I’m willing to pay for. The hosts reached out to me a few weeks ago to ask if I wanted to join them by hosting my own show on their feed. I obviously said yes (or I wouldn’t be writing this post and you wouldn’t be reading it).

Why a podcast?

I love writing, but it has some limits as a form of communication. I sit down at my desk, think through an issue or idea, then hit publish. Readers then pile into the comments telling me I’m an idiot. Sometimes they’re even right!

What I hope to achieve with the podcast is to replicate at least part of the experience of the subscribers-only meetups I organized once or twice a year back when travel was possible: more fluid conversations that can bring in different experiences and perspectives. People telling me I’m an idiot in real time!

As a jumping off point, the podcast will feature short conversations and interviews with friends, readers, and subscribers. I assume there’ll be some monologues and rants sprinkled in as well. Over time, hopefully we’ll figure out what people love and what they hate. The point of the podcast is for people to listen; I’m not doing it for my health!

How to get the podcast

The easiest way to get the podcast is to head over to the Milenomics Squared Patreon account and join the “Podcast Network & Slack Channel Access” tier, which costs $14.95 per month. That gives you access to all the podcasts on the network and their members-only Slack server, which, for the uninitiated, is like a bunch of chatrooms dedicated to different topics in the miles, points, and travel hacking world. Once you subscribe, you’ll receive an e-mail with a personalized podcast URL you can plug into any podcast player to see the entire library of past and current episodes of all the podcasts produced by Milenomics.

I thought the Patreon was worth paying for even before I joined the podcasting network. If you are able to use even one tip you learn there, the membership will more than pay for itself. If you can’t or won’t use any of the tips you learn there, then cancel your membership. Easy peasy.

On the other hand, $14.95 is a lot of money, and $15 also happen to be the amount I charge folks to subscribe to this blog. That’s why the folks at Milenomics agreed to create a separate podcast feed to host just episodes of my podcast. I’ll be sending that link out to my subscribers shortly.

So, put simply, there are two totally different products:

  • Milenomics Podcast Network: all Milenomics podcasts and access to the Milenomics Slack channel.

  • Blog subscription: support this blog, receive my occasional Subscribers-only Newsletters, and access to all episodes of my new podcast (but not other Milenomics content).

Two great tastes that taste great together.

Is anything else changing?

Nope! I’ll still be blogging here and at Saverocity, still be tweeting, and still be sending out occasional Subscribers-only Newsletters. If you don’t like podcasts, or you don’t like my podcasts, you don’t have to do anything. If you do like podcasts, or are at least podcast-curious, then you have the choice of receiving fresh new audio content every few weeks.

COVID, cancellations, schedule changes, and refunds

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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.

Two great, one good, and one marginal grocery store earning boost

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By now you may have heard that starting May 1, 2020, Chase and American Express have enhanced the rate that several of their cards earn miles and points at grocery stores. I was notified by American Express by e-mail on May 1 (subject line “FQF, your Amex Card Member benefits just got better”), but I still haven’t actually received any official communication from Chase.

Here are the four most attractive offers I see, from the no-brainers to the tough call.

12 Hilton Honors points with Surpass and Aspire, plus a lifetime status angle

The American Express Surpass card usually earns 6 Hilton Honors points per dollar spent at grocery stores, and the Aspire card just an unbonused 3 points. Through July, both cards will earn 12 Honors points per dollar spent, with no maximum.

Hilton Honors points are worth about half a cent each, and normally cost about half a cent each when manufactured at grocery stores (since the same spend could be put on a card that earns 3% rewards). During this period, the card earns the equivalent of 6% cash back, which is essentially unheard of for an offer with no limit on the bonused amount.

Additionally, if your travel hacking strategy includes hitting the $15,000 spend threshold for a free weekend night with the Surpass card, or the $60,000 threshold for a second free weekend night with the Aspire, you obviously want to earn as many points as possible along the way, and the next 3 months are going to be a great opportunity to do so. American Express is also extending the expiration date of all certificates earned after May 1 and allowing them to be redeemed any night of the week.

Finally, I want to mention — without putting too much emphasis on it — that there’s a lifetime status angle here as well: all points earned with the Surpass and Aspire cards through December 31, 2020, will be treated as “base points.” Base points are a legacy feature of the Hilton Honors program from when it was a hotel loyalty scheme instead of a credit card loyalty scheme, and are (normally) earned only on your room rate and room charges. If you receive Diamond status by holding the Aspire card or by spending $40,000 on the Surpass, then you have probably never had any reason to think about base points.

The reason you might care about base points now is that Hilton has a “lifetime” elite status program: if you earn 2,000,000 base points, and maintain Diamond status for a total of 10 years (they don’t have to be consecutive), you are awarded “lifetime” Diamond elite status. For those with access to especially plentiful and socially-distanced grocery store spend, this is an opportunity to earn a phenomenal number of base points towards that 2-million-point goal.

If, like me, you believe every deal dies eventually, then you can treat lifetime Diamond status as a kind of long-term insurance policy: American Express can fire you as a customer, grocery stores can refuse to serve you, but Hilton will be stuck honoring your status for years to come.

If you do decide to pursue this angle, contact Hilton and ask them what your current lifetime base point total is and the number of years of Diamond status they’ve credited you with. I don’t know of any way to look up this information online (leave a comment if you do!).

3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points with Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve

Over time every travel hacker should be diligently accumulating as many Chase Freedom cards as possible, which in the second quarter of 2020 are already earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per card in spend. I personally only have 2, but I know others have many more.

In May and June, 2020, Chase has increased the earning rate on their premium Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards to 3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points, respectively, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend. That means after you’ve exhausted your quarterly Freedom bonus categories, you have another $3,000 in bonused grocery store spend to go.

Points earned with the Sapphire Reserve are worth a minimum of 1.5 cents each (when redeemed for paid travel), which makes the spend a no-brainer, but even if you only have the Sapphire Preferred I think the flexibility of Ultimate Rewards points, compared to the relative restrictiveness of Hilton points, suggests you should knock out your capped spend on these cards before going all-in on the Surpass or Aspire cards.

3 World of Hyatt points with Chase Hyatt cards

The two offers above are great, in the sense that my recommendation is: if you have the cards, take advantage of them. The Chase World of Hyatt earning boost is attractive, but doesn’t quite fall into that category: in May and June, 2020, you’ll earn 3 World of Hyatt points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend.

My perspective here is that if you plan to transfer 9,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt any time in the near future, these 9,000 World of Hyatt points should be valued the same as Ultimate Rewards points: every point you earn in World of Hyatt is a point you don’t have to transfer from Ultimate Rewards.

But whatever your plans and your level of confidence in those plans, you should almost certainly value World of Hyatt points “somewhat” less than Ultimate Rewards points, which is to say, maximize your Ultimate Rewards earnings first before turning to World of Hyatt.

4 Delta SkyMiles with American Express consumer credit cards

I no longer have an American Express Delta co-branded consumer credit card, having swapped my personal Delta Platinum card out for the business version several years ago (a card I’m planning to cancel, if the increased $250 annual fee ever hits). That means I’m not personally affected by American Express raising the earning rate on consumer cards to 4 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent at grocery stores through July, 2020.

Let me get the obvious out of the way first: if you value and chase elite status with Delta through the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver (spending $25,000 per calendar year) and Status Boost (bonus Medallion Qualification Miles when spending $25,000 or $30,000 on the Platinum and Reserve cards, respectively), then you should certainly try to earn as many redeemable miles as possible while doing so! A high, uncapped earning rate at grocery stores makes the next few months a great opportunity to sprint towards those goals.

Likewise, if Delta American Express consumer cards are the only cards you have featuring enhanced earning at grocery stores, they’re the only ones you can use: play the hand you’ve dealt yourself.

But as much as I enjoy the experience of flying on Delta, there’s no escaping the fact that SkyMiles are simply hard to use for high-value redemptions, and I hesitate to value them at more than 1 cent each (their value when used on “Pay with Miles” redemptions). The risk of unredeemed balances, or low-value redemptions, is much higher even than with a program like Hilton, where even break-even redemptions come with a 5th night free, for instance.

That’s what makes this earning boost a “marginal” play: a 4% earning rate in normal circumstances would be great, especially with the potential of accelerated elite status with a good airline. But given the other possibilities available, I would turn to Delta only after meeting Chase’s earning caps and satisfying my need for Hilton points.

Bonus tip: free manufactured spend at Safeway & Co.

I’d been noodling this post for a day or two when I saw Doctor of Credit share a new Safeway deal for $10 off $100 in MasterCard gift cards. The discount reduces the cost of each card below face value, making it a great opportunity to score some early wins this month.

The offer runs through May 16, 2020, but in my experience these offers must be added to your Safeway accounts during the week they launch (after which they remain linked until expiry).

So, get cracking!

Mixed (overall negative) changes to Consumers Credit Union Rewards Checking

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I wrote recently over at my personal finance blog about my favorite high-interest checking account, the Rewards Checking account offered by Consumers Credit Union. In case any readers are as big of fans of the account as I am, I wanted to discuss some upcoming changes, and my reaction to them.

The bad: rates are dropping

I’m putting this first because there’s no sugar-coating these changes: each interest rate tier is dropping by one percentage point: the lowest tier from 3.09% to 2.09% APY, the next from 4.09% to 3.09%, and the highest from 5.09% to 4.09%. For an account with a maxed out $10,000 balance, this will drop your annual interest income by $100.

If you only meet the lowest tier requirements each month (or have more than $10,000 in cash savings), then you should seriously consider moving your balance over to a competitor like Western Vista, which offers 4% interest on balances up to $15,000 (for now).

If you’re meeting the highest interest tier requirements, then while the reduction in rates is painful, there’s little you can do about it: 4.09% APY is still significantly higher than any other current offers I’m aware of.

The good: deposit and transaction requirements are changing

There are a couple moving pieces here but all three changes are positive:

  1. in April and May, you need only make 6, instead of 12, signature debit transactions in order to meet your debit transaction requirement.

  2. Beginning immediately and going forward, your total signature debit transactions do not need to add up to $100 per month.

  3. Beginning immediately and going forward, you can meet the $500 monthly deposit requirement through mobile check deposit, in addition to direct deposit.

The 3.09% and 4.09% interest rate tiers will still require $500 and $1,000 in Consumers CU credit card spend, respectively.

Conclusion

On balance, these changes are negative: the reason to use a high-interest checking account is to earn as much interest as possible, so any reduction in the interest you earn is a negative change!

But they’re not entirely negative: I meet my debit transaction requirement using the Plastiq bill payment service, which previously meant making eleven $1 payments and one $89 payment to reach the $100 monthly transaction requirement. Starting in June I’ll be able to make twelve $1 payments, which will make both my Fee-Free Dollars and my student loan balances last longer.

I use my Consumers Rewards Checking account as my primary bank account since it offers unlimited ATM fee reimbursement in addition to the high interest rate, and I’ll probably continue to do so for now, although I’ll continue to re-evaluate as the situation evolves, and will of course keep my beloved readers updated.

How I did on the American Express Hilton Aspire card

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I wrote previously about using the American Express Hilton Aspire card to cover most of the cost of my honeymoon in Hawaii at the Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort. Since I cancelled the card as planned earlier this year, I thought I’d give a rundown of the total value proposition I ultimately got from it.

Signup bonus

For signing up for the card using my referral link, my partner received 150,000 Hilton Honors points and I received another 20,000 (we also got another 12,000 from meeting the minimum spend requirement for the card, but that’s less than I’d earn putting the spend on my own Hilton Surpass card, so we can set that aside). Hilton now allows you to easily and (relatively) quickly combine points from multiple accounts, so we pooled those points to pay for about 45% of our five-night stay, which I value at $1,900 (half a cent per point).

Total value: $855

Free night certificate

The Hilton Aspire card also comes with a free weekend night certificate on approval. To be honest, we did so much traveling in 2019 that I don’t remember which specific night we redeemed this award for, but since we typically stay in 40,000-point-per-night properties, I’ll assume we redeemed the certificate for “about” 40,000 points.

Total value: $200

Resort credit

If you’re a travel hacking junkie you may have recently read that American Express was issuing $250 resort credits to folks who had not completed eligible resort stays in 2020. There seems to be some confusion over exactly what’s going on, but this wasn’t news to me: after completing our stay in early January, 2019, our $250 resort credit posted automatically a week or two later. Then, in roughly April of 2019, a second $250 credit posted without explanation.

The most obvious explanation to me is that since the card was launched so recently, there were some early coding errors which kept some resort credits from posting automatically. When they discovered the error, American Express then manually applied an additional $250 credit to all accounts that had eligible resort activity, whether or not they had received an automatic credit.

I value the first, correct $250 resort credit at about $125 (we wouldn’t have run up the charges we did if they weren’t going to be reimbursed), and the second, incorrect credit at full value.

Total value: $375

Airline fee credits

If all the above makes it sound like I’m bragging, here’s the part where I prove that’s not true: I blew it on maximizing the card’s airline fee credits. The plan was to receive 3 years’ worth of airline fee credits while paying a single annual fee: in late 2018, in 2019, and in early 2019 before cancelling the card.

2018 went according to plan: we received the card in late 2018, quickly designated American Airlines as our airline, and bought 2 $100 electronic gift cards. The credits posted quickly, but we forfeited the remaining $50 in credits. Fortunately, the cards were used for flights my partner would have otherwise paid cash for, so I assign them the full $200 in value.

The right move in 2019 would have been to immediately buy another $200 in cards. But with our January travel, it just didn’t happen, and then I saw reports that gift cards had stopped triggering credits. Other options (JetBlue pet fees, etc.) still worked, but that would have involved switching the designated airline, learning the new technique, and monitoring the account all over again. So I did…nothing. We used the card for a few American Airlines checked bag fees in 2019, but I believe we received a total of $40 in 2019 credits.

For much the same reason, 2020 was a complete write-off, before we cancelled the card in late January.

Total value: $240

Unlimited Priority Pass membership

This is definitely the benefit that I was most surprised by: it turns out there are a lot of Priority Pass lounges! One issue when you have free lounge passes, whether through elite status, SkyBonus redemptions, or the 10 annual visits through the American Express Hilton Surpass card is that you constantly have to weigh whether you’re going to be laid over in an airport long enough to justify burning one of your lounge passes.

But with an unlimited membership, you can just pop in for some celery sticks or cheese cubes; it’s kind of an awesome feeling. It’s hard to put a value on something you would never pay for, but in a heavy travel year like 2019, an unlimited Priority Pass membership was very conservatively worth $100 to me.

Total value: $100

Diamond status

Worthless, I already have it and can book reservations for my partner when she’s traveling without me.

Total value: $0

Conclusion

The basic math here looks pretty good: I paid a $450 annual fee for what I have tried to conservatively calculate as $1,770 in value. Of course, part of that was a fluke: it would have been $250 less if American Express hadn’t awarded us two resort credits. Likewise, part of that was human error: it would have been $510 more if I had been able to trigger all 3 airline fee credits.

If you’re wondering whether the card is worth getting, the obvious answer is yes, if you can:

  • get it at the end of the year;

  • through a referral;

  • with a plan to use your points for a high-value stay;

  • and a plan to use your weekend night;

  • and a plan to use your resort credit;

  • and a plan to use your airline fee credit.

If you meet all those requirements, you can easily get several thousand dollars in value for a single $450 annual fee.

But this is the first card I had my partner sign up for in what Frequent Miler calls “two-player mode,” and let me tell you, it is absolutely exhausting. We ended up doing ok this time, but I’m not planning to try it again any time soon. You probably already know whether your partner has any interest in travel hacking, and if they don’t, you’re not going to convince them with some free cheese cubes in an Alaska Airlines lounge.