Here’s the silly question of the day: Do you save customer service numbers for airlines, hotels, and recon in your phone? Today, I found myself searching for the number to United after somehow my flight reservation disappeared again. Now I’m on hold trying to get the situation rectified.
At the same time, I had to call Hilton to book an award using those pesky stay certificates. I always forget that the number is 800-HHONORS. Have you had the experience of entering one of those letters in incorrectly? Someone clearly recognized that this happens since the wrong input results in a sex talk hotline.
I think the reason that I do not store these numbers in my phone is because I do my best to avoid calling them. Invariably, calling leads to hold time and the automated phone system that I despise.
Feel free to share your comments via TPOL’s latest and greatest feature, the online chat while I wait for United to come on the line.
Do You Store Customer Service Numbers?
Chat Live with TPOL!
TPOL is a man of the people except when I have my own business to manage. As an experiment, I added a chat plugin to the website to connect with TPOL readers. Now if you have a question about points, want to spout off about nonsense, or would like to be complimentary, you can initiate a chat by clicking on the lower left part of the screen.
This may be a great idea or it can be a waste of time like the old AIM days. Either way, I thought I’d try it out.
Citi Gold Checking: What Not to Do
Sometimes TPOL doesn’t read the terms and conditions but the ball still bounces his way. For example, I received the Hilton Surpass offer twice from Amex despite their Stone Age rule about offers available once in a lifetime. Sometimes I don’t read the terms and I deservedly get nothing. (see Delta Amex platinum) This cavalier [stupid] way of doing business is what gets me into trouble with visa requirements at the airport. Excited by the offer or the trip, I don’t do the fundamental research to ensure that things go smoothly. When it comes to the churn rules, despite the occasional oversight, I know what I am doing. Don’t apply for an Alaska card on a Tuesday. Don’t sneeze while on a recon call with Barclays. And don’t yell, “Yeah baby I’m a ducking churner!” when they approve your card over the phone. In all seriousness, I’ve done well for myself with the slow and steady approach of applying for cards over the years. Cue the Citi Gold Checking account. When I saw the offer for Citi Gold Checking, I was a little hesitant to fund the account with a credit card. I had never done it before and was scared that somehow I could not access my funds to pay off the credit card that I had used. That did not end up being a problem. $32,000 later, I had opened an account and paid off my Alaska Airlines card with no issue. The issue was carelessness in analyzing the offers for opening the Citi account. Either I could have 50k TY points or I could have 50k AA miles. From reading the blogs, I was told that the 50k AA offer could trigger a 1099. I was also aware that AA would be devaluing its miles in March. Concurrently, it seemed like every blogger had elected to take the TY points even though there were some troubling restrictions that were mentioned. One was that the points would expire within 60 days of closing the checking account, something that possibly could be prevented by simply downgrading the account. The other which was casually stated was the lack of transferability to TY partners. For me that should have been the ultimate red flag. If I can’t transfer my TY points to SQ or Virgin, then what good are they for me? I do not care for 1.6 cents per TY point refund for a revenue flight. I get greater value using my wizard skills to book premium class tickets for round the world trips. Still, like a true imbecile, I figured that I could get around the transfer restriction and move my TY checking account points to my Prestige card and then transfer those to wherever. Wrong. Although combining TY points is allowed, the origination of these points do not disappear just because they are put into one account. The Prestige points have its own policies and expiration date and the Citi Checking points have its as well. This means there is no way to transfer the TY checking account points to a TY partner. Stuck, I tried to accept that I was stupid and that nothing could be done. Maybe I could use this as a teaching moment so that next time I would pay more attention and trust my instincts instead of listening to the masses. Instead, I did something else impulsively which could either rectify the situation or backfire again: I called Citi and closed my checking account. They said that I had not received the bonus so I was welcome to apply again for the AA bonus. Now I am waiting for this closure to be processed before attempting to do so. Here’s why this strategy may be worse than anything I have done up to this point. First, Citi may say that I am ineligible to reopen the account despite what the agent said. Second, the AA offer may not be available by the time I am able to reapply. Third, I have read that this is a churnable offer so I could’ve gone for the AA bonus next year. Once again, I did no research so I have no idea how this will turn out. I may have just given away free money or I may have fixed what I thought was unfixable. At the very least, I did receive 32k Alaska miles. The takeaway from all this is the following:
- Do your own research. Read the rules yourself and then cross-reference trusted blogs.
- Pick what offer works for you not what works for everyone else.
- Admit when you are stupid and do your best to fix it.
Pho’ Nomenon Hoboken: Horrible Name, Rude Service, Decent Pho
I’ve come up with some great pho play on words in my posts reviewing pho restaurants around the world. Hits include Pho in the Morning, The Phoking Tour, Seattle SuperPhonics, Pho-sters Australian for Beer, and Pho-nix Hotness. Having said that, I would never name my pho restaurant something as terrible as Poh’ Nomenon unless I had LL Cool J as a spokesperson. In no way is this clever marketing. The only reason I stopped in for a hot bowl is because it was freezing outside.
The horrible name was just the beginning of the experience at Pho’ Nomenon. The person who I presume to be the owner was not especially kind. There was no attempt to be cordial. “Go sit there,” she said as I arrived. “We only have one size,” she quipped even though the menu says extra broth for $2. “We have $10 minimum on card,” she declared as she dropped my card back on the table. “Then charge it for $10,” I quickly replied. The bowl was $8.62 so with tip I would’ve met the $10 threshold, an arbitrary, stupid, nonsensical, antiquated number that many establishments in the area use to offset the fee charged by the credit card companies. If small businesses are concerned with this fee then build it into the cost of their products or services in advance instead of telling me there’s fee charging ATM nearby. If you are one of those shady establishments that is cash only, TPOL is willing to accommodate this with his credit only tip policy. If you’re not going pay Uncle Sam, if you’re going to deny the convenience of credit cards to your customers, you surely will not be receiving even more tax-free money from me.
As far as the pho is concerned, it was decent. The beef was good. The sprouts were plentiful, but the bowl should have more broth. Beyond that I’m not going to elaborate because the merchant was so unwelcoming. Sorry Pho’ Nomenon, you aren’t worthy of my artful analysis.
Desperate Times: Chase Marriott Opened, Hyatt Closed
Chase Kills Churning: Will TPOL Survive?
Look more bad news! Chase gutted the UR churning program by restricting clients from applying for UR earning cards if they have had more than 5 new accounts in 24 months. Most of us have 5 new accounts before we wake up for breakfast. Now it is being reported on Al Jazeera that they are going to enforce this rule on all applications.
Like my Serve analysis suggested, the only workaround is to have more spouses. Alternatively, I may hit up nursing homes in my neighborhood in the hopes that my new friends will not only allow me to churn on their SS# but also be kind enough to leave me an inheritance. Maybe they’ll even agree to open a Serve card.
TPOL has never cried wolf on the demise of the points hustle and continues to find a way to travel for free in luxury despite the devaluations, Dodd-Frank regulations, and the greatest, most beautiful wall built by Donald Trump. This year I already have epic (a word I do not use casually) trips planned. I probably have enough in the tank to replicate part of my adventures next year. But what happens in 2018 if this trend continues? Will we all be flying peasant class to Orlando and renting cars to get to Tampa for the sake of evaluating whether Busch Gardens is a better value than Universal?
Today, I also read a post about how Citi has shut down clients’ accounts who have plundered that booty by applying for obscene amounts of cards and manufacturing the duck out of them. They may be out of the game permanently but it does beg the question if we were we being too cautious this whole time? Given the new points landscape, should we have been applying for Citi Exec cards then cancelling them as soon as the bonus hit only to do the same thing again and again? I don’t believe so for two reasons: First, the handful of times that I have tried this blatant approach, I was rejected. (see Alaska Airlines) Second, like the economy, the points hustle is cyclical. Terrible offers today can turn into great opportunities tomorrow depending on the desperation of the banks. Right now Chase is riding high and Jamie Dimon is loving life. He doesn’t need our business.
Going forward, TPOL has to be more prudent about which cards he applies for, which offers he selects (note: it’s looking like I was completely stupid for taking the TY points over AA for the Citi Checking), and how he redeems the points (Etihad Apartments versus Etihad business). Barring travel sponsorship which is long overdue, this conservative strategy will be the only way TPOL’s blog survives.
Citi Gold Checking: Another Dead Deal
I’ve been waiting to write my post explaining on how I opened a Citi Gold Checking account because I haven’t received the bonus yet. I figured that I would elaborate on the whole process after it was complete. Yesterday, a TPOL reader messaged me to say that Citi no longer allows the Gold Checking account to be funded with a credit card. Today, multiple outlets have confirmed that this is the new policy. For that reason, I figured I might as well write the post now.
For those that are unaware, Citi had a promotion where a client could open a Citi Gold Checking account and received either 50k AA points or 50k ThankYou points. I wish I had selected the 50kAA option because I still haven’t found a great use for ThankYou points besides the dream of transferring them to SQ and actually finding availability. The bonus points this offer should be earned after using online bill pay for 2 consecutive months. It is that simple.
While the points are great bonus for doing essentially nothing, the best part of the offer was the ability to fund the account with a credit card in an amount up to $100,000. I consolidated my Alaska Airlines card and funded my account with $32,000 bringing my balance to 40k Alaska points. There was no cash advance fee on the transaction and in case there could have been, I reduced my cash advance limit to $200. On a side note, I let greed get the best of me when I applied for another Alaska card shortly thereafter and was promptly rejected.
Now, while I wait for the ThankYou points to come in, I will try to figure out the rules about their expiration and transferability.
Regardless, the takeaway from this latest dead deal is that points hustlers have to act fast when they hear about an offer. This one was available for quite some time most likely because there weren’t any annoying posts that have a tendency to kill great deals.
Nomadic Churning: Where Do You Send Your Card?
I’ve said it time and time again, there’s nothing like receiving a fat stack of envelopes from South Dakota in your mailbox. Living in Arizona for quite a while, they used to show up routinely. Now that I live here and there, I have all my mail sent to my parents’ house. Keeping the same address makes the recon call go more smoothly as I don’t have to explain my life story and it saves me from having the USPS forward my mail all over. The problem with this strategy is getting the card from them to me. They aren’t huge fans of the points game so asking for assistance is something I try to avoid. To combat this, I call the bank (after I’m begrudgingly informed by said parents that another card has arrived) and request that the card is via overnight courier.
To do this, I first have to get through the automated phone system which is especially bad for Citi which repeatedly asks, “What’s your credit card number?” From there, I’m asked by the agent for the full credit card number which I do not have before being transferred to the fraud department to verify it is indeed me. After being transferred back to customer service, the agent will try to charge $6 to have the card expedited, something that only a pushover would pay. Then within one day the new, shiny card will finally arrive which is when I have to figure out how to hit the mins.
One strategy for hitting those mins is to assemble a team of spenders, something my parents agreed to for a few weeks only to quickly change their tune, believing that the points hustle was borderline illegal. They quickly cut up their authorized cards. There are a few people in this world that you may be able to convince to help you, but that presents another problem. Without the full credit card number, banks are reluctant to send cards to authorized users at a different address than the billing address. The only workaround is to have the original card sent to your current location, activate it, then ask for another card to be sent overnight, at no fee of course, to the authorized user. When the authorized user does go to make a purchase in the third location, expect that the transaction will be flagged for fraud. Looks like, it’s back to calling the automated phone system.
If you’re nomading your way throughout the US then it may be worth the headache of putting the address of the current place you lay your head when you apply and endure the recon questions to avoid the alternative. If you’re living overseas, then this hassle is part of the process. Recall, the reward for this trouble is that baller lifestyle.
Keep Vs. Cancel: SPG Business Card
Another day, another fee. The real winners in this game are clearly the credit card companies. They get you coming and going. That’s why it’s silly to feel bad when you complain or persist with an agent about a reasonable retention offer.
Today I was hit with a $95 annual fee on my SPG Business card, a card which has many benefits that are not beneficial for me: I already received the 2 stay credits so technically I could cancel and still enjoy that benefit. I am already an SPG Platinum so Sheraton lounge access, a feature the card provides, is superfluous. The Amex Platinum gives me Boingo access, something I barely use anyway, so this perk doesn’t tickle my fancy. Since I don’t rep the D by wearing John Varvatos, I don’t find too much use for Amex offers. Finally, I kept the SPG Personal so I will still get points for SPG stays booked on this card and avoid foreign transaction fees.
Clearly I should cancel, right? Let me tell you why I did not. First, I still have no idea what is going to happen with the Marriott merger. I’m like to pretend that it isn’t going to go through which is why I am still aiming to hit Platinum again for 2017. Keeping both cards may prove useful somehow. Second, the agent offered me 3000 SPG points which is a $90 value. Why do I value SPG points at 3 cents? Because that is the cost in points or cash of staying at one of my favorite hotels, the Aloft Bangkok.
And with that, another fee has been paid.
Mums’s the Word on Serve And That’s Fine
Two new Citi AA cards in hand and one new Chase United used to mean a refill on prescriptions then a subsequent trip to visit some other minimum wage employee. Now that my Serve has been shut down, I have no motivation to learn a new job in manufacturing.
There are still a few lucky ones who have not had their rights taken away. I am not envious of those people who are paralyzed by fear of being shut down so much that they won’t even walk near the gift card rack. One clever approach that I read was a writer who said the following, “Ah, the benefits of having multiple spouses: I plan to get married as much as I can. Just for those serve accounts.” It seems like divorce proceedings, alimony, and child support trouble is second compared to MS inconveniences. I got 99 problems…
The most interesting part of all of this is we still do not know why some got shut down and why others continue to squirm around wondering if they are next. Some are probably still using their Serves as brashly as before and have yet to receive that damned email. To those people who hide in the shadows, to those bloggers who don’t come out and declare, “It’s back!” I would like to express my gratitude.
At this point, if your Serve is working, enjoy it and keep it to yourself.
Mum’s the word on Serve and that’s fine.
