I love credit cards so much!

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So happy for you! :jumping1:

You will not be disappointed with the value you get out of that signup bonus! It's the best one around!! Keep in mind that you don't want to use any of those points now (once they start posting) if you plan to get a CSR card later. The CSR will make those points worth an additional 20% (1.50x vs 1.25x) if you're redeeming for travel through the UR portal. ::yes:::thumbsup2

Will do! Operation don't touch the points is in full effect!
 
I agree..6,000 points can't even book a room for 1 night.. I'd be asking for at least 30,000 points.

id ask for money back and 10k points or something haha.

I’m supposed to get another 5000 points from the hotel so I’ll definitely be pursuing that. My 6000 points showed up this morning in my account. I normally would ask for my money back but work is paying for the rooms so I wouldn’t get anything back from it. Funnily enough, I tweeted marriott about it last night several times and received no response.
 
I’m supposed to get another 5000 points from the hotel so I’ll definitely be pursuing that. My 6000 points showed up this morning in my account. I normally would ask for my money back but work is paying for the rooms so I wouldn’t get anything back from it. Funnily enough, I tweeted marriott about it last night several times and received no response.

man, this is what scares me when SPG becomes them... @spgassist has never failed me once.
almost time for the press event... wheres my stress ball?

edit: saw this on reddit --> todays news will be https://i.imgur.com/wYC1oJv.jpg
lol
 


I’m supposed to get another 5000 points from the hotel so I’ll definitely be pursuing that. My 6000 points showed up this morning in my account. I normally would ask for my money back but work is paying for the rooms so I wouldn’t get anything back from it. Funnily enough, I tweeted marriott about it last night several times and received no response.
I found a cockroach in my room at the Marriott World Center Orlando probably 5 or 6 years ago. I initially complained and they gave me 500 points. I wrote an email or online feedback of some sort after getting back from the trip and I got a personal email from the hotel manager and 30,000 points...

This event is actually what made me a loyal Marriott guy for life, lol
 
I found a cockroach in my room at the Marriott World Center Orlando probably 5 or 6 years ago. I initially complained and they gave me 500 points. I wrote an email or online feedback of some sort after getting back from the trip and I got a personal email from the hotel manager and 30,000 points...

damn, never realized they would give u points... We had our cleaning lady used the same rag for everything(toilet, sink, countertop, tabletop). i mentioned it in an email to the manager but got nothing. :\
 
I have tried but I get discouraged every time. It is a challenge to match up flights and hotels...all based on award availability. And I am so accustomed to southwest and being able to make changes, that I have a hard time committing to another line/dates/price. Once I transfer those rewards points to an airline or hotel that’s it. They are stuck there even if something goes wrong in the booking process. I haven’t made the plunge.
This is why I just keep stashing UR points to pay for our flights using the CSR at 1.5 cpp. I really need a "Booking Airline Award Tickets for Dummies" guide because I've read so many articles about how to find saver awards, booking partner awards, how to avoid high fees on award tickets, etc etc. and it still makes very little sense to me. Or, in the case of partner awards, I can't seem to be able to actually pull them up on any of the websites. Also, because we need 4 tickets, for our plans so far it seems to make more sense to just pay with UR points (unless I'm missing something). Once I run out of UR bonuses to get I'll have to come up with another plan, but for now this is working for me.

AA allows you to change award bookings for no fee as long as your departure and arrival city remain the same and the same class and award type are available for the new date.
This is good to know. I haven't flown AA in many years (if ever, I can't remember) but NYC is an AA hub so I'm sure we'll end up flying them at some point. If I can ever figure out how to use actual airline miles. :scratchin
 


@Lain

Health Insurance cannot be paid by amex via plastiq? Has this always been a thing?

I think it's more that insurance premiums is not one of the supported categories.
For Payments to Recipients in the United States, the use of American Express cards is not supported beyond the following industries: Government, Utilities, Education, Residential Rent, and Club Fees & Memberships.

ETA: Here's a recent result from churningsearch: https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/c...stion_thread_march_14_2018/dvp02px/?context=3
 
man, this is what scares me when SPG becomes them... @spgassist has never failed me once.
almost time for the press event... wheres my stress ball?

edit: saw this on reddit --> todays news will be https://i.imgur.com/wYC1oJv.jpg
lol
I just tried the DoC site because he's going to be live-blogging the event, and it's crashing. I think many others had the same idea.
Edit: Finally got on after a few more attempts.
 
This is why I just keep stashing UR points to pay for our flights using the CSR at 1.5 cpp. I really need a "Booking Airline Award Tickets for Dummies" guide because I've read so many articles about how to find saver awards, booking partner awards, how to avoid high fees on award tickets, etc etc. and it still makes very little sense to me. Or, in the case of partner awards, I can't seem to be able to actually pull them up on any of the websites. Also, because we need 4 tickets, for our plans so far it seems to make more sense to just pay with UR points (unless I'm missing something). Once I run out of UR bonuses to get I'll have to come up with another plan, but for now this is working for me.

I can't get them to show up on partner sites either. I have pulled up blogs in dual windows and followed along step by step. So annoying!! At least I am not alone.


Also, Starwood Personal support links appear to be dead.
I just app'd DH for the spg biz before anything happens with it. Was going to wait a few weeks, but who knows what may be going on by then.
 
So they just discussed the free night rewards:
  • Marriott Premier card = up to 35,000 points free night (new cat 5) with $95 annual fee
  • Starwood Luxury card = up to 50,000 points free night (new cat 6) with $450 annual fee (numerous other benefits here too)
Obviously the big question here is...what category will various properties fit in. Swan/Dolphin is currently a Cat5 with SPG I believe. Will they be a Cat5 or Cat6 in the new chart? Could Dolphin be Cat 5 and Swan Cat 6? I use these as our example since they are the properties we all probably identify best with.

Something else worth pointing out is that currently Marriott Cat 6 and Cat 7 properties are 30k and 35k points respectively. Could those be slotted into the new Cat4 and Cat5 and have free nights available via the credit card??
 
Also, Starwood Personal support links appear to be dead.
Seeing the same, maybe they’re trying to push people into the new Amex personal card but are keeping the Biz alive until the last absolute second when they have to shut it down and Chase gets that Biz segment....
 
Thoughts on Marriott & SPG announcement:
There's so much here it's hard to process...
  • Status mapping has so many layers. I don't really care about it so I'm choosing to ignore it, sounds like some people are upset about it. I haven't seen many that are happy about it. This to me more affects the real business travelers who care about lounges, free breakfast, etc. I don't spend 5 nights a week in hotels so my opinion matters little.
  • Airline Partner Transfers sounds FANTASTIC. Hate to keep citing TPG but here is his writeup on it: https://thepointsguy.com/news/in-depth-look-new-marriott-airline-transfer-partners/ Basically you end up with all the partners before and the transfer rate is the same as SPG's before and that's a good thing.
  • Nights & Flights remains - may need to tweak it with the new categories, but I would expect that given that the new Cat 5 goes up to 35k points. Given that there isn't a whole lot of negative here, I'm remaining optimistic on this one too
  • The new category list is fine to me...until we see where the properties we care about map to it almost means nothing, lol. If Swolphin is a Cat4 we're super excited. If Cat5 we're somewhat indifferent. If Cat6 Boooo this sucks.
  • The "dynamic" pricing makes sense, it's easy to understand. I think it will affect people differently depending on their travel patterns. Some will say this is good, some will be indifferent and some will say it's bad. This also will again tie to the release of the properties by category.
  • The Credit Cards is another place where there's just so much info to chew on. New credit cards is always a good thing...especially if you already earned bonuses on the old ones, :)
Overall I'm going to say again that I think they've done a really good job with merging these programs. I know there was doom and gloom circulating and I kept saying, it'll be fine (but had no proof of that.) I'd say there isn't a whole lot of negative here, most of it is neutral. Of course one the property list by category comes out we may have more to discuss ::yes::

EDIT: One thing I missed is it seems on the regular SPG card that for those who MS it may not be as good since their is a small deval in there (basically going from earning 3x Marriott to 2x Marriott). Since I don't MS, I kind of overlook that.
 
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Thoughts on Marriott & SPG announcement:
There's so much here it's hard to process...
  • Status mapping has so many layers. I don't really care about it so I'm choosing to ignore it, sounds like some people are upset about it. I haven't seen many that are happy about it. This to me more affects the real business travelers who care about lounges, free breakfast, etc. I don't spend 5 nights a week in hotels so my opinion matters little.
  • Airline Partner Transfers sounds FANTASTIC. Hate to keep citing TPG but here is his writeup on it: https://thepointsguy.com/news/in-depth-look-new-marriott-airline-transfer-partners/ Basically you end up with all the partners before and the transfer rate is the same as SPG's before and that's a good thing.
  • Nights & Flights remains - may need to tweak it with the new categories, but I would expect that given that the new Cat 5 goes up to 35k points. Given that there isn't a whole lot of negative here, I'm remaining optimistic on this one too
  • The new category list is fine to me...until we see where the properties we care about map to it almost means nothing, lol. If Swolphin is a Cat4 we're super excited. If Cat5 we're somewhat indifferent. If Cat6 Boooo this sucks.
  • The "dynamic" pricing makes sense, it's easy to understand. I think it will affect people differently depending on their travel patterns. Some will say this is good, some will be indifferent and some will say it's bad. This also will again tie to the release of the properties by category.
  • The Credit Cards is another place where there's just so much info to chew on. New credit cards is always a good thing...especially if you already earned bonuses on the old ones, :)
Overall I'm going to say again that I think they've done a really good job with merging these programs. I know there was doom and gloom circulating and I kept saying, it'll be fine (but had no proof of that.) I'd say there isn't a whole lot of negative here, most of it is neutral. Of course one the property list by category comes out we may have more to discuss ::yes::
I agree that I'm seeing mostly positives here. It could have been catastrophically bad. There is a lot to digest, but on the surface I'm relatively pleased. At least they didn't hit the self destruct button.
 
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