Tag: rewards

Trip Report: Planning a 3 day Portland and Amtrak Coastal Starlight trip

The plan was to book a flight to Portland and take the Coastal Starlight Amtrak train down to Burbank.

Flight: Alaska airlines SNA-PDX. Was 7.5k points per person but google flights show it was $134 per person for the saver fare. The points booking is considered a main cabin fare (vs saver) so it is eligible for upgrades. We had to leave late at night so this was one of the only options. We also had a backup flight from Burbank airport early the next morning but that would require an hour long drive at 5AM.

Car Rental in Portland: Since we would arrive at around midnight, it made more sense just to take an uber to the hotel and then rent a car near the amtrak station the following morning. The uber should be around $30 and the car rental for a day only $28 with the Amex Platinum rate with 4 hour grace period. The other option was to do a one-way car rental from PDX and drop it off at the Hertz near the Amtrak station.

Hotel: The cash rates for hotels in the area were cheap ($100-150/night) but we opted for points because of free parking. The price for the Hyatt Centric was 8000 points/night versus a $150/night cash price. I would estimate any alternative within walking distance of the Amtrak Station, with parking, would be roughly $150/night, not including the globalist breakfast. For example, the Courtyard by Marriott was $254 total including taxes but did not include parking or breakfast.

Train: Paid 28536 points for a roomette on the Coastal Starlight from Portland Station to Burbank. The cash price would have been $570 with the companion certificate that comes with the Amtrak Credit card, or $790 for without the companion certificate. I earned the Amtrak points through the credit card sign up bonus. If I didn’t have the points, one option would be to reserve the Coach fare at $110 with companion certificate, then bid for an upgrade.

Burbank to home: Will either get a lyft ($100) or take a one-way car rental as backup ($71)

	Price Paid	Realistic Replacement	Realistic Price
Flight: Alaska SNA-PDX	15k points + taxes	Alaska: SNA-PDX	$300
Car Rental: Hertz via Amex Plat	$28	Hertz	$45
Hotel: Hyatt Centric	12k points	Courtyard by Marriott	$300
Train: Coastal Starlight	28.5k Amtrak Points	Coastal Starlight	$790
Lyft: BUR to SNA	$100	Lyft: BUR-SNA	$100

Realistically, I estimate points and travel hacking reduced the cost of the trip by about $700.

Total cost: $139, 15k AS points, 12k Hyatt points, 28.5k Amtrak points. I would value AS points at 0.75 cent and Hyatt/Amtrak points at 1.25 cents per point. These aren’t the realistic redemption values but the price I would pay for each point if I didn’t have a specific redemption in mind. This would put the price of the trip at roughly $760 for two people.

Realistic Cost of Replacements: $1535 assuming I pay cash for everything.

Day trip to see the 2024 total eclipse

I had a couple different itineraries available to see the 2024 eclipse on 4/8/2024. I planned to fly into DFW either the day of or day before, and leave the same day. Right before, I have a trip to Las Vegas, so I have the option to depart from either LAS or SNA.

The idea was to be in Dallas during the maximum of the eclipse and be in the air during at least some of the partial eclipse.

Outbound:

Option 1: LAS – DFW 1AM-5:39AM on Frontier for 20k points, the cash price was as low as $130. I would have an AA backup flight that arrives at 11:45AM for 17.5k points.

Option 2: SNA-DFW 4:27-9:22PM, $112 on Frontier. According to google flights price history, any other comparable flight was at least $190.

For option 1, I would probably just try and sleep at the minute suites at DFW. They usually allow back to back 1 hour bookings if you have multiple priority pass accounts.

For option 2, I would stay at the Hyatt Place Dallas/Las Colinas for 5000 points, which is a steal considering any other comparable hotel (of any brand) with airport shuttle would be at least $200/night. I could quote the cash price of this hotel ($890/night!), which would be a 17.8 cent per point, but that’s complete nonsense. As of today, none of the Hyatt hotels near DFW are taking points reservations and rates are at least $300/night.

Inbound:

I wanted to be in the air during the eclipse, so the flight needed to depart at 2-3PM from DFW. There were only a couple flights that fit this criteria.

Option 1: DFW-SNA on AA from 2:25PM-3:47PM for 18.5k points. Cash price was as low as $203. There was also a non-direct option with Spirit that was roughly $120 at one point.

Option 2: DFW-TUC-SNA on Alaska from 2:34PM-7:19PM for 12.5k points. The first leg is on AA and the second on Alaska. This route seemed to go in an out of availability and it no longer shows up on any search engine.

I’ll likely choose the 2nd option because it’s cheaper, leaves a bit later, and I would be able to use my Alaska 75k status.

The primary benefit of points/status for this trip is flexibility and free seat selection. I have status with American, Alaska, and Frontier, which allows me to select the window seat on all of the flights. It also allows me to cancel any of the trips without penalty if my plans change. If I opt for the hotel, Hyatt points would have saved me $200.

Having points didn’t really save me that much on flights. If I go with points flights for both directions, it would cost 20k Frontier points and 12.5k Alaska miles. The outbound flight was as low as $130, or 0.63 cpp. A comparable inbound flight would be roughly $120 on Spirit with seat selection (1 cpp), or $200 on AA (1.6 cpp).

	Price	“Retail Value”	Comparable Value
Option 1: F9 LAS-DFW	20k Frontier points	$130 (0.6 cpp)	$130 (0.6 cpp)
Option 2: F9 SNA-DFW	$112	$112	$112
Option 1: AA DFW-SNA		$203 (1 cpp)	$203 (1 cpp)
Option 2: AS DFW-TUC-SNA	12.5k Alaska points	N/A	$203 (1.6 cpp)
Hyatt Place Dallas/Colinas	5000 Hyatt Points	$887 (17.8 cpp)	$200 (4 cpp)

In domestic economy, which a vast majority of people fly on, points may not provide as much value as one might expect. It’s easy to get 5-10cpp when you’re booking international business with inflated prices. Realistic redemption values are much lower if you’re flying domestic economy. It’s even lower if you consider other comparable alternatives, and not just the retail price of that specific flight.

Trip Report: Rio Las Vegas as Hyatt Globalist

Beginning March 1st 2024, the Rio in Las Vegas was bookable through Hyatt. For globalists, you get:

Waived Resort fees (saves $45+/night)
Free breakfast at Hash House A Go Go, for 2 adults and 2 children
Elite Qualifying Nights
Upgrade to a renovated room in the Ipanema Tower

I arrived on 3/4 and tried to do mobile check-in (both on phone and at the kiosk) but they both failed. I manually checked into my room after waiting about 5 minutes in line. I was told that globalists could do elite/VIP checkin but there wasn’t a dedicated line for it. They provided 2 waters at check-in. The resort fees seem to be manually removed at check-in so it seems like ghost stays aren’t an option. I also asked about upgrades but I believe they consider the renovated room as an upgrade and didn’t want to push it.

The room itself was surprisingly nice given the price point. The renovated rooms are about the same level as NYNY or Park MGM, but much larger. They have an empty refrigerator, which is a nice change compared to strip hotels. Even though the hotel is huge, everything seemed centrally located in relation to the Ipanema tower. The front desk, gym, and restaurants were all within 5 minutes walk from my hotel room door.

I ordered 2 entries for $54 for takeout from the bar at Hash House and charged it to the room. They were efficient and took only about 20 mins to get my order ready. The portions were large enough that I could probably make 4 meals out of it.

My only hiccup with the hotel came when going to the fitness center. I called the front desk to confirm that the fitness center opened at 5AM. I went down at 6AM but they were still closed. I asked the front desk what the hours were and they said 7AM. However, they still weren’t open at 8AM.

I stayed from 3/4-3/8 (4 nights). My total for the 4 nights should be $36 + $40 + $24 + $24 = $124. In return, I get 4000 points from bonus journeys, an additional 750 points from Hyatt spending, and card points. I was able to book the points plus rates before they were removed so I should be receiving an additional 5000 points. So $124 for a total of about 10000 points and 4 EQN. Oddly enough, the bill for my first day said I had earned 2 EQNs but will see if they post.

In the future, weekday nights at the Rio should be around $24 per night for Globalists. Currently, Hyatt Bonus Journeys offers 1000 points per night until April 30th. There is also a new hotel promotion April 1-June 30 where nights earn an extra 500 points.

In theory, if you’re local to Vegas or visit often, you can get 60 night globalists for:

March: 17 days at $24/night, earn 17k points from Bonus Journeys, 4k from spend.

April: 14 nights at $24/night, earn 4k points from Bonus Journeys, 7k from New hotel bonus, 3360 from spend. April is the month where both promos stack.

May: 8 nights at $24/night, 4k from new hotel bonus, 1320 from spend.

June: 21 nights at $39/night, 10.5k from new hotel bonus, 8190 from spend. The June nights are more expensive, but may potentially go down (or up).

Total: $1755 and you receive 60k points, a Cat4 Award ($150), 2x2k Next stay award, 3xGOH award ($150), 5x SUA award ($250), and a Cat7 Award ($350). The total value of the milestone rewards is roughly $900. The values are estimated from certain websites. You would also get breakfast (with plenty of leftovers) every day, as well as a place to stay off-strip.

I don’t know how long this will last. It seems like they are losing money for each stay, especially if people take full advantage of the breakfast benefit.

Since the MGM/Hyatt partnership ended, I didn’t have a reasonable way to attain Globalist status but this was even better than expected. This would actually be perfect since I prefer to stay off-strip and I travel to Vegas monthly anyways.

Trip Report: 2 day Bay Area Trip

Flight: Frontier from ONT-SFO, 40000 points and $22.40 in taxes and fees. Parked at self-parking lot 5. In hindsight, since we were departing from terminal 2, it might have been smarter to park at at the $20/day lot since it was closer. Ate some food from the Aspire lounge and boarded the mostly empty flight.

Rental: $90 Rented from Hertz at SFO for $120 before the $90 off $360 Amex Offer. Smooth experience, picked a Camry with about 8000 miles from the PC lot. Gas ended up being $17.

Hotel: $184 for one night at the Fairfield Inn and Suites Oyster Point and one night at AC hotels Oyster Point. We saved on parking since there was plentiful street parking right outside the Fairfield Inn. We earned a 35k cert from the two stays, as well as $120 back from Amex Offers.

Food: $230 on various restaurant options. Ended up being roughly $13 per meal per person. Got some cheap and amazing food from a Chinatown bakery. Also ate at a place that happened to take inKind. Spent $16 for taxes and tip at a priority pass restaurant. In hindsight, it might have been faster and cheaper to just eat at the Amex lounge.

Parking: $73 Airport parking at ONT and used parking meters around the city.

	Price Paid	Realistic Replacement	Realistic Price
Flight: ONT-SFO	40000 points + taxes	Southwest: LAX-SJC	$318
Car Rental: Hertz	$117	Fox Car Rental	$110
Hotel	$184 but received 35k cert	Castle Inn SF	$173
Food	$230
Parking	$73
Misc/Activities	$32

Realistically, I estimate points and travel hacking reduced the cost of the trip by $300. The flight was paid with points which I value at 0.5 cents per point, but I earned at a much lower rate through a Frontier promotion. The flight times were perfect as well, giving us the maximum amount of time in the bay area. The alternative was to leave from LAX to SJC, which would add 2 or 3 hours in travel time. Amex offers and a Marriott promo basically ended up netting us a free 35k cert versus the alternative. The car rental through Hertz probably saved us 2 hours versus going to an offsite alternative.

Total cost: $631 and 40k Frontier Points at 0.5 cents/point = $831, but received a 35k Marriott cert

Trip Report: Vegas Trip

Flew out to Las Vegas with some expiring credits I had with Frontier. Not a full flight and we left and arrived on time. They closed the gate exactly at T-15 minutes because, supposedly we would have to wait an hour if we missed our landing slot at LAS.

Rented a car via Hertz – they had about 6 Mustangs and a Mini in the Presidential Circle Lot and a couple sedans in the gold lot. I chose the Camry with 5000 miles. Pro-tip: you can drive a Toyota for about 50 miles before the fuel gauge goes below full.

Stayed at the Four Queens hotel because I had a vegas.com $100 off code and they don’t charge resort fees. It’s a very basic hotel but has free parking for guests and is right in the middle of Downtown Las Vegas.

Walked around various Downtown LV hotels and used about $250 worth of freeplay/sign up offers/Las Vegas advisor offers but only returned about $190.

Ended up doing the status match at Fontainebleau to their gold status from Diamond Elite. There was a line of about 10 people and many seemed to be signing up or doing status matches.

I left Downtown LV at 11:08 for a flight that was scheduled at 12:43. Drove to the rental car center, hopped into the shuttle as it was about to leave, and arrived at the departure gate at 12:05, leaving about 15 minutes for the Priority Pass lounge in the E gates. They upped their food game a bit. They had rice, mashed potatoes, pulled pork sandwiches, shredded chicken, broccoli, and a salad bar. Previously they only had the sandwiches.

Beware: Ralph’s tampered Amazon Gift Cards

I recently purchased a $100 Amazon gift card from Ralph’s (Kroger’s) supermarket in Southern California. Being an idiot, I was in a hurry and didn’t check the packaging. I opened the gift card 3 hours after purchase and found that the gift card had been tampered with. They had scratched/scraped off two digits of the claim code so that I can’t claim the balance. The scammers would then periodically check the claim code to see if someone has activated it and claim it themselves.

I went back to the store and they gave me a phone number to call. Apparently gift card fraud is so prevalent that they make a hand-out when it happens. In the 3 hours since I left the store, the manager had independently already found over a dozen other Amazon gift cards that had been tampered with.

I called the Kroger customer service line (866-544-8062) and they looked up the transaction. They were able to confirm that the gift card was activated and told me to call the regular Amazon customer service line(888-280-4331). I went through the prompts (I said “gift card” to the automated system) to get to a human. They asked for the 16 digit number card number on the gift card and was able to apply the claim code to my account. Luckily, only about 4 hours had passed since I purchased the gift card so the scammers didn’t claim it yet.

If the scammer had claimed it before I called, I’m not sure Amazon would be willing to do anything. If not, my only recourse would likely be a credit card chargeback.

Lessons

Check the gift card for tampering before purchase.
Open the gift card before scanning and paying at the register
Check the balance on the gift card as soon possible
If it’s an Amazon gift card, contact Amazon ASAP, Ralph’s cannot help you

myVegas: Prizes and 1099-misc

Last year, I won a myVegas sweepstakes for a 2 nights stay at NYNY with $100 in freeplay and $200 in resort credit. I had to submit a W9 form with playstudios because the winnings are considered as income. I expected to be taxed but I was definitely surprised at how much they valued the prize.

I received my 1099-misc for the winnings and the prize was valued at $1000. They seemed to just pick a random number for the value of the prize, without considering the actual value. At a 30% state + federal tax rate, I would owe an addition $300. The actual value of the prize, based on publicly available rates on the same day, was:

2 weekday nights at NYNY: No resort fees. Had to go on weekdays due to schedule. Actual value: $220
$100 freeplay: Actual value: $100
$200 resort credit: Actual value: $120

The resort credit value is based on the premium they add for their room rates with a food and beverage credit. Typically, for $100 daily credit you only pay $50-$60 per night. So the actual value of the stay was only about $450, yet I had to pay $300 in taxes for it.

What’s even worse is that the REAL value for me is significantly lower. If I had to book this trip, I would have paid:

2 weekdays nights at NYNY: free through myVegas, no resort fee through MGM Gold. Price: $0
$100 freeplay: Price: $100
$200 resort credit Price: $120

If I booked the trip myself, I would have only spent $220! Yet by winning the prize I would pay $300 in taxes.

Conclusion

The lesson here is 1) if you win a prize, ask about taxes 2) book weekend rates to maximize value 3) consider decline the prize if the taxes is more than you would pay for the trip.

In the above picture, if someone won the NCL cruise, they would owe taxes on $1800, in addition to the gratuities and port fees. They could have gotten the cruise for free and saved $540 if they purchased the NCL reward directly loyalty

Waybetter and Healthywage: Health wagering apps

Waybetter is an app where you can join health challenges by paying a fee. The fees are combined and then divided among those who complete the challenge. For instance, you might bet $50 to walk 5k steps, 4 days a week for 2 weeks. They offer different challenges for strength, running, walking, exercise, and mental wellness.

The fee is $70 every 6 months, allowing you to join 10 games at once. The priciest games last for 2 weeks and cost $50 each. Over the past few months, I’ve won around 13% of the money I’ve spent on entry fees as prizes.

For the $140/year, I get:

Incentives to keep active
$13k spend a year, I personally use up any smaller denomination gift cards
Roughly $1500 in profit from the game

You do need a fitness tracker to track your activity and I typically spend 3-5 minutes a day uploading proof of activity completion. The challenges aren’t too difficult for me to complete in an ordinary day.

Healthywage

Healthywage lets you bet on losing weight. Their main challenge requires you to lose at least 15% of your weight, but you can only do it once or twice. There’s a yo-yo rule for the main challenge, where your starting weight for the second challenge can’t be higher than your ending weight for the first challenge.

Healthywage also has smaller challenges like Waybetter that don’t follow the yo-yo rule. They collect the fees from a specific challenge, deduct a processing fee, and divide the rest among the winners. On average, I join about 6 challenges every 2 months, spending about $100 on each one.

In addition to the primary benefit of keeping my weight in check, I spend about $4000 a year from gift cards and earn about 10% back in return.

Frontier Elite Status

Despite being a budget carrier, Frontier has a strong elite program. I had elite status with Frontier in 2023 via a status match through statusmatcher.com. I believe I paid $99 to match to top tier Frontier status for 2023. They have offered very generous status match promotions in 2023 as well.

An overlooked benefit of Frontier Diamond status is that every flight purchased through their website is fully refundable up until about 24 hours before the schedule flight time. By setting a google alert, this allows you to purchase the flight at the lowest price possible. Outside of Southwest, I don’t believe any other carrier offers refundability on all fares, even with elite status. And unlike Southwest, Frontier flight prices fluctuate wildly so it’s often possible to get flights for a couple cents plus taxes and fees.

New to 2024, Frontier’s elite program allows you to cancel flights up to 7 days before departure at any elite level. Since Frontier’s prices generally increase closer to departure, this benefit could be just as good as full refundability.

San Francisco Trip: an exercise in planning a trip with points

In the process of planning a quick 2 day weekend trip from Southern California (SNA, LGB, ONT, LAX) to Northern California (OAK, SFO, SJC). We have to leave after 2PM on Friday and return in the afternoon or evening on Sunday. Since it is a short trip, direct flights, flexibility, and time savings are ideal. We also plan to rent a car, so parking is a consideration when booking a hotel.

Flights

For most trips, I start with flights.

Do a google flights search to get an general idea on pricing between city pairs
Search on Southwest
Search directly on carriers where I have points. In this case, the cash price was low enough that I knew that most points redemptions wouldn’t make sense since most carriers are minimum 12k points round trip.

My options for the flights are:

Southwest: at least 16k points from LAX, 35k from SNA
From SNA: $312 round trip United
From LAX: $300 round trip Delta and Alaska
From ONT: $120 round trip Frontier, or 20k points

There are about a dozen airport pairs available between SoCal and NorCal. I looked at a variety of options, and the best seems to be ONT to SFO on Frontier with points. Since I have Frontier elite status, which includes refundability, the cash price is the lowest price in the past couple months with Discount Den. I could just set a Google alert and rebook if the price drops. The redemption was roughly 0.5 cents per point. Not ideal but I have an excess of Frontier points. The point options on other carriers were in the range of 30k per person. Even though ONT and LAX are each about an hour away for us, we would pay a premium not to deal with LAX traffic. There were round trip flights as low as $125 from LAX, but the time restrictions almost tripled the price. The car rental prices at each airport was roughly the same so that didn’t effect the decision.

Car Rental

OAK – Dollar at $67, Hertz at $97
SJC – Payless at $89, Hertz at $118
SFO – Hertz at $118, Fox at $80

Since I would be arriving from SFO, I chose Hertz because I have Presidential Circle status from the Venture X. I also had the $90 off $360 Hertz Amex Offer. Fox requires a 2nd shuttle and their customer service is inconsistent.

Hotels

Castle Inn via Agoda.com at $177, parking included
Hyatt Regency San Francisco SOMA, $340, offsite parking not included. Other Hyatts were around this price point
Grand Hyatt SF, 34k points, parking included with Globalist, Sticker (inflated) price: $535 + $170 valet + breakfast = $800
Marriots near Oyster Point, $300 with parking, but $120 off $300 Amex Offer and 35k free night promotion

Originally, the Grand Hyatt seemed like a good deal because it offered free parking, breakfast, and potential upgrades. However, I decided to save 34k points and booked the Castle Inn for $177 with free parking instead. Even though it’s a 2-star hotel and not as nice as the Grand Hyatt, it had great reviews and was an acceptable choice for us. While the Grand Hyatt would have been over 2 cents per point based on the regular prices, I wouldn’t have paid anywhere close to $800 for the stay. Considering the price of alternate hotels ($177), I maybe value the Grand Hyatt at $377.

But then I found some Marriott promotions changed my mind. I had a $120 off $300 offer on 3 of my Amex cards, and I was targeted for a free 35k certificate after 2 stays. So, I canceled the Castle Inn reservation and booked two nights at different Marriotts in South San Francisco for $318 total. After the Amex offers, it would be $198, I would get points, and I would also receive a 35k certificate.

Conclusion

Having points, elite status, and travel credit cards did open up extra possibilities for this trip. Without points and elite status, we would have spent:

Flight: Nonrefundable Frontier ONT-SFO flight, $300
Car Rental: Hertz SFO, $118
Hotel: Castle Inn via Agoda, $177
Parking: ONT airport, $54
Total: $649

With points and elite status, we would have spent:

Flight: Refundable Frontier ONT-SFO with perks, 40,000 Frontier points and $11.20
Car Rental: Hertz SFO after Amex Offer, $89
Hotel: Marriott, $198, but will receive 35k certificate
Parking: ONT airport, $54
Total: 40k Frontier Points and $352, but will receive 35k Marriot Cert

Since I value Frontier points at 0.5 cents each, and the 35k cert at around $150, I estimate we saved $250 on this trip. In addition, we do get perks like upgrades at Hertz, lounge/restaurant access at ONT/SFO, seat selection, carry-on, and priority boarding on Frontier, and increased points earn rate.