Milenomics² Podcast Episode 260: Follow-Up, News, and What to do When it Seems Like Nothing Works?

0:21 Follow Up

0:30 BofA Alaska Cards

• Cards arrived: Did they result in new frequent flyer numbers?

• How to meet min spend?

• Worth spending on in an ongoing manner?

• Consumer card earns 2x on Gas, and 10% more miles if you have an active checking or savings account, 2.2 miles per $1

• Would LOVE to keep this card and set up recurring Taekus payments. 3.2% for fuel, less 2% would buy Alaska miles for around .55 cents per mile (2 miles per 1 Membership reward point cashed out at 1.1cents!) 

  • Update: Called BofA PBP and they successfully added debit card auto pay with no friction! (Phone agent actually suggested to use debit). 

07:27 Mesa Homeowners

• Did 50,000 welcome bonus attach?

• Spending beyond $1,000/mo?

• Worth getting for spouse even without 50,000 offer?

12:00 US Bank Leverage Follow-Up (Approved!) 

• Old (Closed) leverage is still attached to my account.

• Might take 2-3 weeks to fall off, annual fee said to refund (feels like a BofA situation)

• Last week I applied for a new Leverage

• 4 days later I received the magic email “Get more from your new U.S. Bank Business Leverage® Visa Signature® Card with the U.S. Bank Mobile App”

• 6th time I’ve applied for this card in the last 3 years. 

News

15:17 JetBlue Mint Not Bookable w/Partner Miles (OMMAT)

• Reports are they’ve switched the fare class from “I” to “A” then haven’t been releasing that space, making partner awards on Etihad and Qatar unbookable

• Surprisngly, this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with United partnership

• Dampens my enthusiasm for earning Qatar miles

17:01 Dynamically Move Chase Credit Lines Between Cards (FM)

• Helpful post about how to move credit lines online

• Seems very well implemented

• Certain cards have a minimum credit line so some transfers aren’t allowed

• What’s the optimal strategy here? With an eye towards future approvals or Manufacturing UR?

• I appreciate the ability to keep my Inks relatively even CL wise now. 

• Quick Mention: Rumors of Sapphire Reserve redesign. Higher fee, weak coupons, maybe 1.5 cpp through travel portal going away?

21:25 Fluz Gets Worse (Somehow) 

• Power portal MCC Drop down is not showing

• Intentional? Not? 

• For those without GC access this doesn’t change much, but signs of lack of care. 

• Power portal is still my preferred attack mode, just much faster

• Now need to go to fluz.app -> Manage money, then click “Add Money” in the prepayment row

• Same pricing, same MCCs so either this is a load test on fluz.app or they’re sunsetting the Power Portal. 

• App error this week meant I had to uninstall and reinstall the app and even that didn’t work right for MCC loads. 

• The whole service is so unreliable. 

• Extremely annoying (and rude) to email the entire group of Fluz users with services and CB rates.  Fluz sees volume spike to a service, notices it works well with MUVC and emails the play out. Shameful. 

28:19 Update: 4th Seat on Delta First Secured

• A few episodes back I talked about fare buckets and buying seats one or two at a time to compile a trip for four

• I was short one seat and stalked it with Google Flights and Award Tool

• AwardTool alert notified of a $649 seat becoming available (strangely, Google Flights never alerted me - I’ll have to look into that)

  • This is a GREAT use of Award alert for Delta fare drops because drop in miles price=drop in $ price. 

• Options:

• Delta with 15% award discount for having co-branded Amex card = 48k

• Amex 5% off Insider Fare + 35% Business Platinum rebate = 39k

• Chase 1.75x uplift = 37k (non-refundable, but interestingly could have bought a “Delta First Extra” fare for 47k that is refundable)

• Which booking option would you choose?

• Decided to go with Chase URs with the 1.75x uplift while it was available to me. Have to say: The Chase portal was really straightforward compared to Amex in so many ways. 

36:35 What to do When Nothing Works?

• Slew of things just absolutely were. Not. Working for me.

• Example: Cap One Shopping portal as just one example.

• What do we do when this happens?

• Take a break? Time heals all wounds?