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Some interesting Amex Offers showed up for 20% off on large single purchases in France, Italy, or the UK. Wonder if there is a way to take advantage of I’m not actually in any of those countries.
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Sep 17, 2023 15:20
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smackfu posted:Some interesting Amex Offers showed up for 20% off on large single purchases in France, Italy, or the UK. Wonder if there is a way to take advantage of I’m not actually in any of those countries. Vpn and or Amazon.uk or whatever?
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Sep 17, 2023 20:28
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smackfu posted:Some interesting Amex Offers showed up for 20% off on large single purchases in France, Italy, or the UK. Wonder if there is a way to take advantage of I’m not actually in any of those countries. Are you talking about this? (and similar for other countries)  If so, its pretty heavily restricted: quote:PARTICIPATING MERCHANTS: Offer only valid at the following participating merchants: any participating merchant within Bicester Village, Charles Tyrwhitt, Hawes & Curtis, Guerlain, May Fair Kitchen, Whitcomb’s at The Londoner, Heathrow Express and Go City locations in UK. Even if it wasnt restricted to a handful of retailers, being limited to $20 back would mean at best it would cover the international shipping.
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Sep 17, 2023 22:01
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Ah yes, didn’t realize it was for a very limited set of merchants so never mind.
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Sep 18, 2023 01:58
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Maybe a dumb question, but I have to ask: if I get/have an American credit card, and I move to Canada (moving soon!), will I be able to pay a US card's balance with a Canadian bank account? Will they link up?
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Sep 20, 2023 00:55
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:Maybe a dumb question, but I have to ask: if I get/have an American credit card, and I move to Canada (moving soon!), will I be able to pay a US card's balance with a Canadian bank account? Will they link up? Probably depends on the bank, and the cc how much hassle it will be. Make sure you don’t have foreign transaction fees.
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Sep 20, 2023 07:02
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I don’t think it will work, to be honest. You’ll type in the routing number and it will say it’s not valid.
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Sep 20, 2023 12:15
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Interesting read on airline rewards programs https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/airlines-banks-mileage-programs/675374/ quote:For the airlines, this is a great deal. They incur no costs from points until they are redeemed—or ever, if the points are forgotten. This setup has made loyalty programs highly lucrative. Consumers now charge nearly 1 percent of U.S. GDP to Delta’s American Express credit cards alone. A 2020 analysis by the Financial Times found that Wall Street lenders valued the major airlines’ mileage programs more highly than the airlines themselves. United’s MileagePlus program, for example, was valued at $22 billion, while the company’s market cap at the time was only $10.6 billion.
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Sep 25, 2023 15:27
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. No good can come from the most valuable and profitable part of airlines not being moving people and flying planes. I don't know how it unwinds, or what the play is, but there's something fundamentally flawed there and it's going to correct itself at some point. To bring it back on topic for the CC thread, my AA card was a nice compliment to my regular travel. Now that it's "mandatory" to have the card and dump huge spend on it to maintain my AA status my loyalty is less, not more. The hurdles are too high and the gain too little to want to work the game. Starting to make more sense to buy better tickets on whomever and collect cash back instead of points/miles/whatever.
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Sep 25, 2023 15:52
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I recent picked up traveling and none of the mileage rewards look enticing anymore. It’s truly turned anti consumer.
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Sep 25, 2023 17:02
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:I recent picked up traveling and none of the mileage rewards look enticing anymore. It’s truly turned anti consumer. The hotel stay is almost always more than the flight and getting 5x points for booking through the Chase portal does help, but I frequently get better prices booking elsewhere.
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Sep 25, 2023 19:06
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Those portals are full of marked up prices and horror stories of bookings gone walkabout and people stranded on without a place to stay and little recourse.
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Sep 25, 2023 19:28
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We switched to straight cash cards last year instead of points-earning ones. I think that was an okay decision but I do miss being able to book hotels with points.
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Sep 25, 2023 19:30
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pseudanonymous posted:Those portals are full of marked up prices and horror stories of bookings gone walkabout and people stranded on without a place to stay and little recourse. 
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Sep 25, 2023 20:03
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Also curious how this works with Amex's FHR. I know that Amex uses Expedia on the backend for hotel reservations. We've had decent enough luck using them for the Amex credit, but presumably you're at the back of the line since it's a 3rd party booker.
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Sep 25, 2023 20:11
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pseudanonymous posted:Those portals are full of marked up prices I've been wary and double checking this for years and at worst I could find was that the credit card portal only offered me a higher status than the direct website for booking. As in, Amex portal was booking me at standard economy and the airline had me on basic economy, and if I chose standard at the airline website it was the same price. I feel like it's a obvious risk and worth checking, it's just never been true for me.
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Sep 25, 2023 20:35
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Josh Lyman posted:Yeah I booked a hotel with Chase points for the first time and the reservation number is different than Marriott's, but the reservation is showing in my Marriott profile so I assume I'm okay? I would guess so, but maybe call the hotel to double check. I booked a hotel using chase for the first time a few months ago, and no reservation when I showed up to a full hotel. Chase and the hotel pointed fingers at each other, I ended up with a few more points as compensation and had to scramble to get just about the last room available in town that night. Dunno if I'm doing that again. Might gamble on flights, because you get a *ticket* with those right? Should be safer?
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Sep 25, 2023 20:39
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I just cashed out my 90k chase points as $900 cash.
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Sep 25, 2023 20:51
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I booked through the chase portal for a bed and breakfast earlier this year and it worked okay, I did make sure to call and make sure they had my reservation though Edit: the cost was the same through the portal and the b&b website!
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Sep 25, 2023 20:58
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smackfu posted:We switched to straight cash cards last year instead of points-earning ones. I think that was an okay decision but I do miss being able to book hotels with points. My previous setup was US Bank Altitude Go for 4% on bars/restaurants BoA Cash Rewards for 3% on travel and 2% at Costco Amex BCP for 6% on groceries and easy extended warranty on electronics Citi DC for 2% on everything else Once I work through my UR points, I'm might just cancel my CSP and going back to that setup. The only annoying part is US Bank only lets you redeem for statement credit with $25 minimum and BoA won't adjust your automatic payment if you redeem for statement credit so you end up overpaying and having a negative balance. StormDrain posted:I've been wary and double checking this for years and at worst I could find was that the credit card portal only offered me a higher status than the direct website for booking. As in, Amex portal was booking me at standard economy and the airline had me on basic economy, and if I chose standard at the airline website it was the same price. The hotel I booked through Chase would've been $15 more in cash over a 3 night stay than booking with Marriott directly because it had a higher resort fee, but the 1.25x multiplier more than made up for it. Baddog posted:I would guess so, but maybe call the hotel to double check. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Sep 25, 2023 |
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Sep 25, 2023 21:11
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Josh Lyman posted:Is this because you were able to get nicer hotels for "cheaper" using points or because it felt like you were booking "for free" when using points? Thinking more, it was mainly transferring Chase points to Hyatt and getting very good value. Two examples from 2022: Hyatt Place in SLC for two nights for 17,500 points. Andaz in NYC for two nights for 50,000 points. Those were both over 2.5 cents per point compared to the going rate at the time. Also I’d be reluctant to spend that much on the NYC rooms in cash just on principle. The other good hack is when points stays are a fixed rate but the cash rate is artificially high. We wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns and all the hotels in Carlsbad were $300 a night because all the oil industry guys were staying there and I guess they jacked the rates. But in the system it was still a category two so only 20K Marriott points for two nights.
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Sep 25, 2023 23:27
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smackfu posted:Thinking more, it was mainly transferring Chase points to Hyatt and getting very good value.
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Sep 26, 2023 03:30
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smackfu posted:Those were both over 2.5 cents per point compared to the going rate at the time. Also I’d be reluctant to spend that much on the NYC rooms in cash just on principle. This is one of the reasons why points are complicated. If you wouldnt have actually paid full cash price for the room, is the value really 2.5 cents pp? Seems like you came to the same conclusion if you switched to cash back cards recently.
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Sep 26, 2023 04:40
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drk posted:This is one of the reasons why points are complicated. If you wouldnt have actually paid full cash price for the room, is the value really 2.5 cents pp? This isn't me saying one way is better than another, but of course everyone has different values in which they would be willing to pay at. For a simplified example, I wouldn't pay $70 for Diablo IV, but I might do it for $30. Now imagine if I could use the credit card points to buy the game for 3,000 points rather than spending $70. The way I see it, credit card points afford you the option to buy things at a discount that you wouldn't normally have access to at the same price if you were paying in cash. I would also never spend $500 a night on a NYC hotel room, but I might spend 20,000 points a night. Is that me getting 2.5 cents pp value? Maybe not, but it let me buy a room I couldn't buy at $200, and maybe the room is worth more than $200 to me. On the flip side, if I were only buying with cash, now the same $200 won't get me as nice of a hotel room as in this case. If I would be taking this trip either way, then for the points spender, they are getting a better experience for the same value. There's definitely a fine line that people need to draw for themselves, but for me, I prefer the points system because it affords me more options to look at when I am shopping around for flights and hotels that I wouldn't normally have access to. Not everything is a winner, of course, but sometimes there are some great deals to be had that just aren't there if you're paying in straight cash.
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Sep 26, 2023 05:42
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I was so hopeful to pick up travel cards again yet I ended up just staying on 2% cash back. Other than churning a sign up bonus there was nothing good out there that didn’t come with too many strings attached.
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Sep 26, 2023 11:51
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I will say that having cash back that can only be used as a statement credit doesn’t feel like as much of a bonus as “free” hotel rooms. All the statement credit does is change my autopay amount which I don’t pay attention to anyway. (This is totally an arbitrary mental thing, I know.)
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Sep 26, 2023 12:52
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Can someone give me a ELI5 on the Delta card changes? I have about 110k points from a sign up bonus and a few years of flying built up, but I'm seeing doom and gloom posts that the program is changing so spend your points ASAP, but am struggling to find a good story on it.
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Sep 26, 2023 13:00
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:I booked through the chase portal for a bed and breakfast earlier this year and it worked okay, I did make sure to call and make sure they had my reservation though I've read a number of horror stories, but I have also only had good experiences through the Chase portal. We use it to find apartments in Europe and other areas with strict occupancy limits that mean we'd have to get multiple hotel rooms with the kids. It makes much more sense to get a 2 bedroom serviced apartment with kitchen, living room, etc and usually works out to less points than even two rooms per night at a cheap Hyatt on points. There are a good number of smaller city hotels that have one or two apartments like that if you look. I just make sure to have multiple communications with the hotel in writing before the trip. One confirmation when I first book, and then another confirmation a few days before we fly. I've never had an issue yet. You also have the benefit this way of being able to check yourself- if they only offer one named apartment ('The Sweden Apartment', 'The Cozy Nook Apartment' etc) that you booked, then you easily know if the booking went through just by checking when its available. When Chase was doing PYB through Airbnb we went crazy and booked every possible trip through to the end of the calendar of availability. I miss that so much, it was like international family travel on easy mode. lgcty5 fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 13:54
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I've had a bad experience with using Chase Points to book flights so I will never do that again and hesitant on using points to book hotels. I think transferring Chase points to travel partners is the best option.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:57
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I had chase fail to secure reservation for 1 night in Latvia, despite returning a confirmation number. Didn't find out about that until I showed up to the hotel at like 10pm after an all day tour/transport from Estonia with my pregnant wife. Thank god the hotel was EXTREMELY helpful and booked me a room at another nearby hotel despite it really not being their issue. This was 1 booking fail of the 4 total hotels, and 2 flights from that trip. Had booked a couple times previously w/ chase portal successfully - so I probably will end up booking again w/ chase. Just be careful...
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Sep 26, 2023 17:35
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Medullah posted:Can someone give me a ELI5 on the Delta card changes? I have about 110k points from a sign up bonus and a few years of flying built up, but I'm seeing doom and gloom posts that the program is changing so spend your points ASAP, but am struggling to find a good story on it. They basically made status chasing impossible through any route except spending a shitload of money, plus cutting the lounge access perks for Co-branded and Platinum Amex cards. $35k a year on tickets or 10-20x that in cc spend for the top tier. If you're gonna charge > $100,000 a year on a single card then great, otherwise don't bother. I haven't heard anything about point devaluation for flights but that's usually the next item in line to get screwed in 6-12 months.
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Sep 26, 2023 21:05
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Looking for an opinion on a new card. I'm trying to keep things simple by only keeping a few cards in active use. I currently have a Chase Sapphire Reserve. I got and used the signup bonus, but will be cancelling before the next annual fee. I just don't spend enough to make back the $550 annual fee, even after the $300 travel credit. That leaves me with a Fidelity 2% cash back card that I use for most things and a Discover for grocery shopping (my preferred grocery store only accepts Discover). I got an offer for the Wells Fargo Autograph card, which is no annual fee and 3x points on restaurants, travel, gas, transit, streaming services and phone plans. I've gone over Doctor of Credit's gas, travel and restaurants cards, and it seems like while I can get cards that hit 4% for some of those categories, 3% is actually pretty good now, and that replaces the CSR's categories well (and even adds a couple of extra). It is no annual fee as well, which I appreciate. So 2 questions: 1) Any red flags with the Autograph card, or is there a better card with similar categories? 2) What no annual fee card should I product change the CSR to? I probably won't be using it a ton, but I'd rather not cancel it for age of account reasons. Grumpwagon fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 23:06
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1) If you want a good alternative, the US Bank Altitude Go gets you 4x back on dining/takeout/restaurant delivery. Going further away from dining or travel, the US Bank Cash+ would give you your choice of two 5% categories, including utilities and cable/internet/streaming. 2) Chase Freedom (Flex) for the rotating 5% categories
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Sep 26, 2023 23:10
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Grumpwagon posted:(my preferred grocery store only accepts Discover). Wow, maybe the most bizarre credit card processor ever, I've never heard of a place only taking Discover. I know WinCo only accepts debit cards because of transaction fees, but I wonder what their logic is. CEO was a big fan of Sears back in the day? E: I googled it and it looks like it's just they have an agreement with them about fees like Costco and Visa, makes sense now. If you don't want curious goons figuring out your general neck-of-the-woods though, I can delete this post and you edit the parenthetical out. demostars fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 23:19
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Grumpwagon posted:1) Any red flags with the Autograph card, or is there a better card with similar categories? I've got an Autograph and quite like it, issuing bank aside. If your offer includes 0% APR for 12 months like mine did, that can be a big tailwind to the sign up bonus since cash is earning >5% these days. One thing on the cell phone bill cashback is that at least ATT / T-mobile only give you an autopay discount for paying with debit or ACH now. That discount is >10% for me, so I dont actually use that particular card benefit. drk fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 23:41
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drk posted:One thing on the cell phone bill cashback is that at least ATT / T-mobile only give you an autopay discount for paying with debit or ACH now. That discount is >10% for me, so I dont actually use that particular card benefit.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:48
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Grumpwagon posted:Looking for an opinion on a new card. I'm trying to keep things simple by only keeping a few cards in active use. The Autograph is honestly a great card. 3X on a broad range of things, and you cell phone insurance for free. Wells Fargo left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths after that whole opening unauthorized accounts debacle but I used them as my primary bank for like fifteen years, and currently still hold an Autograph and I've never had an issue with them.
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Sep 27, 2023 05:45
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Josh Lyman posted:Same for Verizon and FIOS. They have their own CC which is eligible for the autopay discount but it’s not worth it for me to open another card for the extra $13 cash back I’d get each year. I got the verizon one but only because I'm on a family plan with 2 other people and they give me cash for their bills. Also we've been on this plan for like 6 or something years so it seems pretty stable.
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Sep 27, 2023 06:52
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Shroomie posted:The Autograph is honestly a great card. 3X on a broad range of things, and you cell phone insurance for free. I have a Wells Fargo card and while I liked the 2%, my petty reason for not using it is that it required a text to log in every single time. 
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Sep 27, 2023 12:04
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demostars posted:Wow, maybe the most bizarre credit card processor ever, I've never heard of a place only taking Discover. I know WinCo only accepts debit cards because of transaction fees, but I wonder what their logic is. CEO was a big fan of Sears back in the day? Yeah, it's weird, but it makes more sense once you realize it's a discount grocery store with 0 frills, and my impression of the owner is he's one of those super frugal people. For a long time they only took Cash+Debit. I got this Discover when they announced the partnership, pretty much specifically for it. Anyone with access to my post history can figure out where I live very easily, so no worries there. When I posted that, I figured someone would call out the chain in particular. As for the cell phone autopay discount, at least with T-Mobile, if you have a debit card set up for autopay, but make a credit card payment before the autopay goes off, you still get the discount. They've only just recently changed the policy to debit/bank only, so maybe this'll stop working, but for now it has. Not thrilled that it's Wells, but yeah, seems like a good card, so I'm going to go for it. Thanks thread!
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Sep 27, 2023 18:41
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