Milenomics² Podcast Episode 225: Amex Struggles and Success, Heightened Credit Card Offers, and an Italy Trip Report

0:42 Amex 10x and New Apps: How’s it Going?

• 10x Dining Referrals

• Reconsideration calls

• IRS form 4506-C

• Both of us have multiple 10x referrals in play and in both directions.

• Daily loads of approx $1500 seemingly inevitable on Fluz at this point.

5:36 Fluz Phantom Transactions Piling Up

• These are failed GC loads, mostly on Amex and mostly in dining for me. 

• Steadily increasing in frequency

• Hindering my 10x spend

• What's going on here? 

• Discuss: What Fluz category do you rely on most? (Sam: Fuel, Robert: Dining)

13:46 New/Heightened Credit Cards

• US Bank Leverage up to $900 welcome bonus

• US Bank Altitude Reserve said to be churnable every 5 years

• Wells Fargo back with Business cards after a long hiatus ($500 welcome bonus)

• Discuss: Going for any of these?

16:30 Chase Pay Yourself Back Woes (And Successes) 

• Coming up on a year since my CSP/CSR double dip applications

• In a much better place W/R/T earning UR – 4 chase Inks mean 500k a year of earning, plus 5 freedoms. 650k a year at max. 

• Going to likely close the CSR, looking to get all UR off the table

• PYB has steadily gotten worse, with Fuel the sole ‘good’ remaining category.

• Still, 1.25cents per UR is great for me, so I want to cash as many out as I can and then close the card

• Despite calling and linking nothing actually happened until I used this tip from Robert, with a thanks to Larry as well: https://milenomics.com/2021/11/how-to-link-chase-business-and-personal-online-accounts/

22:52 Booked: Kauai for Christmas/NY

• Said I wouldn’t do this–but the holiday pattern this year is bad: Christmas is on a Wednesday, if I wait until the weekend after then I have <1 week to travel. 

• Instead I pivoted. Booked an AA anchor flight on Christmas booked with Avios

• Return is tough–I need an anchor that I can cancel. I’d like it to be Hawaiian (booked with MR) to Long Beach with a stop (I could pivot to Southwest if they ever release WGA fares)

• About a week after booking–AA changed this flight to 9am.  This makes it unworkable. (Moved from the afternoon) 

• British Phone reps not much help – had this been booked with AA would have been super easy to move to any flight. 

• I need the ‘oneworld’ Liaison – But phone reps don’t know about this person.  @brithsh_airways on twitter was EXTREMELY helpful. One message (plus an 8 hour hold time for a DM reply) got me a confirmation that the oneworld liaison is on the case. 

• I asked to be moved to Dec 26th, a flight with no award space. 

30:15 Italy Trip Report

31:11 Flights

• Booked using United miles on United metal, and Air France miles on Air France metal - and it worked really well in terms of complexity reduction

• United mid-level award availability on their metal is increasingly becoming an option I consider. My preferred option this time at 155k pp one-way in Business and seeing it as well for 200k pp one-way back from Tokyo this summer. Not cheap, but usually available and if we’re buying URs at 0.6 cpp it’s affordable refundable Business Class international travel. I like it.

• Last minute availability on Lufthansa First did not materialize. They really do seem to be releasing only 3 days out now, and even with adequate seats (+1) I didn’t seem them release adequate seats day-of. This has gotten much harder than even a couple years ago.

• I did see some last minute Business Class seats pop-up on Lufthansa/SWISS through Munich/Frankfurt/Zurich - but all things considered I didn’t like the flight times so I stuck with United through Newark.

• Desirable flight times are still so important to me. I’d rather take the positioning leg on the outbound side of the Atlantic and land at my final destination.

• Point of Concern: Checking oversized objects (golf clubs). No issue at all. An absolute breeze to check in Boston all the way through to Rome. Additionally, not having any bags to deal with in transit was very nice.

• Polaris Lounge in Newark

• United Business class was fine - not much different than Air France on the return. Lights were off from 11p eastern ‘til 4a eastern so got about 5 hours of sleep and arrived ready to go.

• Air France Business Class on the return from Florence

• 1 hour 40 minute layover in CDG

• Somehow it took us only 10 minutes to get from out arrival gate, through passport control, to our next gate. And our homebound flight was boarding 55 minutes prior to departure. What a smooth transition!

• Had dinner, watched Oppenheimer, snoozed for 3 hours, arrived around 8p. Terrific flight times, terrific flights.

• For the Future: I’ve gotta figure out how to get to Rome direct on ITA (they seem to open 2 seats in Business far out and that’s it) or Delta (but I’ve never seen partner saver availability BOS - FCO)

41:43 Rental Car

• Point of Concern: Rental car would be too small for our luggage

• No issue at all. Got a Ford Kuga which did barely fit the 3 of us, 2 sets of golf clubs and the rest of our luggage.

• Got the feeling that if we needed a larger car it wouldn’t have been an issue. No “name on board,” no “skip the line” (there was no line), no President’s Circle selection area, no keys in cars (everyone goes to counter), some insurance is mandatory in Italy, etc. So pretty much everything is different than in the US but it’s fine.

• I do get an International Driving Permit at AAA when driving in foreign countries. It’s easy, cheap, and provides a little peace of mind. Hertz didn’t ask for it and we didn’t get pulled over nor in an accident thankfully.

46:46 Lodging

• Premise of the Trip: Milestone birthday, replacement for Four Seasons Lanai, want a resort destination that’s a complete vacation with high quality/low traffic golf, and something for everyone

• Rosewood Castilgion Del Bosco nailed it

• 42 suites, 11 villas. Ancient estate, but manicured and gorgeous property.

• Discuss: Booking process

• Golf Hotel guests gain access to on-site private golf course (140 members) on a daily fee basis. I read before arriving they get about 15 players a day. I’d say that’s a typical day in peak summer. Played every day, and were usually literally the only people on the course. It was an incredible experience and exactly what I was looking for..

• Wine Resort is in Montalcino, the home of Brunello which is kinda like the Napa of Italy. Winery is legit with high quality tasting experiences. We did a wine dinner one night and it was fantastic. Quick tour and tasting in the cellar. Lavish feast in amazing wine library room.

• Hospitality Warm, comfortable, and intuitive across the board. Uniformly intent on helping you have the time of your life at every turn. Staffing level and quality is so high.

57:37 Activities

• Bopped into Siena one night for a small informal community Opera for 25 euros pp, which was great.

• Drove over to Pienza and Podere il Casale farm/to table restaurant. Not great.

• But otherwise just luxuriated at the resort for 5 nights.

• Discuss: Touring around like crazy on first visits vs just enjoying a place once you’ve gotten to know the area.

59:36  10 Years Ago Today: Amex moving to once per lifetime on card bonuses   

• April 21, 2014 

• News is breaking that Amex is moving to one per lifetime across their cards, effective May 1, 2014

• Discussion of the cards you have to get before May 1

• Sad development is for churners

• Grab one more SPG Amex card! That's 25,000 Starwood star points!

• What will we do now?

• The real point is...there's now way to know in the medium to long term how a change will affect anyone. Bad now might not always mean bad later.