Oh I though that the min that they accepted was 1K!??
It went through with no problem as it did before. I note it as a car payment and noticed that plastiq also put it as auto payment as type of payment.
I'm eyeing a guided tour to Costa Rica in a few years. It looks like a beautiful country and I'd want to see more than just one area.
We've never been to the Caribbean, or on a cruise. A cruise was my other potential idea for 2019, but that'd require more OOP spend. Especially since I'm saving my UR points for other things. Australia is on my [very long] list too. I have to keep reminding myself that my kids are still young (5th & 9th birthdays coming up in the next month!) so I need to keep it simpler for now, lol.
Nice to hear such good things about GC from a TA! I really want to do Hawaii, but it's such a long flight from the east coast I don't think my youngest is ready. We'll see how she does on the flights to CA this summer; so far both of my kids have only flown to FL (~2.5 hours).
I put an alert on this one and the 3-day tickets, even though we have no plans for Universal in the next year. If I happen to score one, we'd figure it out!
Ugh, just when I'm getting into Marriott & Starwood points. I don't really care about status because I'll never stay enough nights in a year to earn it, but the dynamic award pricing doesn't make sense. How will it work with the Marriott free night certificates, or the certificates from Nights & Flights packages? They'd have to make big changes to both of those programs since they are tied to hotel categories for redemption.
The dynamic award pricing is the item that really captures my interest. This is something that could be good for some people, and bad for others. I'd hope that it would work like Southwest where there is an absolute value per point (vs Delta or Hilton where they have ambiguous dynamic pricing which essentially means nothing). If it works in the Southwest model then it would be good for some, bad for others most likely. If it works in a Delta/Hilton model, that's probably a negative for all.
I wonder if they could do something where they keep the categories for that purpose...but the points per night work independent of the categories and are based on the price per night.
Baptism by fire method is what that sounds like! But, maybe that dymnamic pricing is one of those things IT doesn’t quite have figured out yet?
That’s a great bonus—free!
So uhhhh it’s not as good as it used to be FYI! This is what happens when you have a bunch of bad news and bad rumors come out all at once haha.
So I'm not so apprehensive about the point being tied to dollars, somewhat; like everyone else mentioned, if they do it right I can live with it. Since we don't require much in a room, we're a quantity over quality type of house. (of course when all things are equal, we stay at the quality option )
I think the "do it right" part of this is key! I think I'm in the same camp as you on this one.My feelings on the Starriott changing to dynamic points are mixed. On the one hand, the opportunity for a score is diminished. Finding that $300+/night room for 15k is a rush no doubt. But on the other hand, it's been rare that I've ever been on the receiving end of that. I apparently don't travel to the right places or at good times as usually I'm the opposite end of the spectrum. Where I'm staring at 35k for a $150/night (or less) room.
Done wrong though, it just sucks for everybody, haha!
They could do like IHG and cap the certificates at a certain point value. But IHG’s point values by property are static, they don’t change based on the cash price per night. Capping it at points value while also having dynamic pricing would mean the list of eligible properties for the certificates would be constantly changing based on when you book. Sounds like an IT nightmare to me.As for the eliminating categories, there's a couple of ways to do it. First to mind is they do like IHG did, instead of category 1-5 it's any hotel 40k and under... something like that (I forget what a Cat 5 hotel costs in points). For the existing cert holders there's two options, they keep hotels in categories but the points aren't tied to the categories (cats are only used for certificates) or they pull a Disney and keep a category chart for outstanding certificates. The chart gets locked to a date and that's the what you have to choose from. I'm concerned if they do something like the latter that they could put an expiration on all the outstanding certs even if they don't have one now. So maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it - it doesn't leave this room, in fact, forget you ever read it
