I love credit cards so much!

[disneymagicgirl]

Guys - remember when we are all down about IHG sucky free night change; SW devaluation; SPG changes; 1 SW card rule; etc. etc.

Now we have increased CIC offer; new Marriott card; Marriott upgrade offers; New Chase Ink Unlimited; rumored new SW card; new SPG premium card; IHG one more free night cert

It’s all cyclical. Can’t stay down for long in this game

I'm still scarred from the 1 SW card change.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Thanks. I have been looking at DOC posts and also reddit but I haven’t found an intro for dummies/tutorial/banks 101 style article that I was hoping for. I guess if there were any major pitfalls, I’d have read about them by now. I suppose I should just dive in and learn as I go, lol.

Yes! Dive in! There’s nothing like experience to help understand the bank bonus game. Major pitfalls off the top of my head:
-hard pull: DoC has DPs on if it’s a hard pull so check before you apply; accepting overdraft protection can trigger a hard pull
-Debit Card: always order the Debit Card and make sure to activate it. For some reason banks like this. If you do a Citi account note the Debit Card number because if you get locked out of your credit card they’ve been known to ask for the Debit card # from the account you closed years earlier (Citi IT is THE WORST, just an FYI if you haven’t had the non-pleasure of dealing with them.)
-spreadsheet: keep track of account numbers, requirements, fees, when the bonus posts and what the bonus is, bonus req’s & closing date. Some banks don’t send out 1099s but you still need to report it as interest income on your taxes. And then some banks (HSBC 2016!) screw up their 1099 processing. Know what you owe independent of what the banks send you in the mail.
-DoC is kinda like a bank bonus bible, read religiously (but don’t be afraid to question ) he’s almost always right and tends to remedy bad advice quickly
-Reddit runs a weekly bank bonus thread. It’s not as vicious* as the Daily Discussion Thread if you have a q about something and the DoC article on it has gone quiet I’d throw it out there. *Unless you discuss contacting the bank to find out why you didn’t get the bonus due to your fake direct deposit or the fact you were not in the states targeted in the fine print. People will jump down your throat for violating Don’t Call The Bank When You Don’t Qualify (I’ve been known to lead that charge sometimes- don’t hate me! It’s our *1* Golden Rule!)
-fine print: print all offers to a pdf, if they won’t print take screenshots. I have referenced bonus fine print countless times in my last 1.5 years of this and sometimes banks pull the web pages that have the data
-try stuff: what if you fail? What if you don’t get the bonus?! You’ve lost some time and maybe a miniscule amount of interest. I’ve gotten a few bank bonuses I didn’t technically qualify for whether I was out of state and/or using ACHs to trigger direct deposit req’s. I read the comments on DoC, look for a couple people out of state who got the bonus or with ACH’s I can’t meet I look for people who got the bonus using banks I had access to
-hub bank: get a hub bank that is very ACH friendly. I use Ally, there are a couple others that work as well but I don’t recall of the top of my head. Ally allows up to like 20 banks connected to it! (M&T pushed me over the edge there they’re dead now for the most part in the bank bonus game God rest their soul)

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I was about to move 94k URs from my CSP to DH CSR and then had a thought...

Would I be able to book a trip without DH through his UR portal? Like just me and the kids, for example. Does he have to come on the trip or is it like SW and I can book whomever I wish with my points? If not, I better leave some points in my account.

 

[Lain]

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/nega...mited-to-two-guests-price-protection-removal/

Boooooooo.

Also, wasn't someone asking about the number of people you could use Priority Pass on? Maybe in Denver? Sorry, I don't usually pay too much attention to those posts since I don't think lounges have ever been heard of in my little airport

I’m personally ok with most of these changes.

I’ve used price protection once and it got me $74 back, but the process was a PITA and required me making numerous follow up calls and emails for over a month. For a lot of my shopping, I don't need the extended warranty of credit cards so I maximize my spend by buying and paying with gift cards, which means I give up price protection anyway. (ETA) I also use camelcamelcamel and slickdeals to get a sense of what the lowest price is on something I’m planning to buy and try to wait for a good deal before buying.

Fortunately, the limitation to two guests at PP lounges has no effect on my family of 3, and besides my wife has her own CSR good for another 3 people, but this change will hurt larger families the most. I hope the upside to this is less crowded PP lounges and guests being turned away from lounges. (ETA) I’ll add that PP lounge access with 2 additional guests has become such a standard feature among premium cards (I think the new SPG Luxury card is the most recent to include it) that even if you’re a big family with only one CSR card, I could see player 2 churning through another premium card that covers PP for up to 3 more people for a year.

The elimination of UR earning on $300 covered by the travel credit is trite — 900 UR! I doubt I’ll even miss it, but I get why Chase is doing this.

Chase has been very public about cutting $200 million from the CSR. What I see here is Chase trimming fat and curbing abuse (or at least excessive use) of the benefits. The earny app and others like it literally made nickel and diming the price protection benefit automatic. Even if Chase wasn’t taking too much of a hit paying out the price adjustments alone, the cost of human capital to review and process the claims must’ve gotten huge. Then there are the stories of CSR PP holders bringing in huge groups of guests, or staying at Timberline for hours and ordering a new round every 2 hours, which is contributing to all the overcrowding in lounges. I don't know what kind of financial arrangement Chase has with PP, so I don't know if Chase is paying $28 (or something close to that) per entry, but almost every other premium card limits their PP to 2 guests so this just brings the CSR on par with the competition. As for Chase removing UR earning on travel covered by the $300 credit, that's $9 saved across how many hundreds of thousands or millions of CSRs?

If these benefit removals and restrictions means keeping the overall ability to transfer UR points within households and across cards, I'll take it.

 

[calypso726]

@sayhello - This is the thread I promised to tag you on with the awesome sauce group of people that are happy to help other DISers begin the journey into travel hacking that I mentioned to you on FB. The rule of thumb is begin with your Chase cards. Before getting started, we'd need to know how many credit cards of any bank you have opened over the last 24 months.

 

[afan]

I’m personally ok with most of these changes.

I’ve used price protection once, and it got me $74 back but the process was a PITA and required me making numerous follow up calls and emails for over a month. For a lot of my shopping, I don't need the extended warranty of credit cards so I maximize my spend by buying and paying with gift cards, which means I give up price protection anyway.

Fortunately, the limitation to two guests at PP lounges has no effect on my family of 3, and besides my wife has her own CSR good for another 3 people, but this change will hurt larger families the most. I hope the upside to this is less crowded PP lounges and guests being turned away from lounges.

The elimination of UR earning on $300 covered by the travel credit is trite — 900 UR! I doubt I’ll even miss it, but I get why Chase is doing this.

Chase has been very public about cutting $200 million from the CSR. What I see here is Chase trimming fat and curbing abuse (or at least excessive use) of the benefits. The earny app and others like it literally made nickel and diming the price protection benefit automatic. Even if Chase wasn’t taking too much of a hit paying out the price adjustments alone, the cost of human capital to review and process the claims must’ve gotten huge. Then there are the stories of CSR PP holders bringing in huge groups of guests, or staying at Timberline for hours and ordering a new round every 2 hours, which is contributing to all the overcrowding in lounges. I don't know what kind of financial arrangement Chase has with PP, so I don't know if Chase is paying $28 (or something close to that) per entry, but almost every other premium card limits their PP to 2 guests so this just brings the CSR on par with the competition. As for Chase removing UR earning on travel covered by the $300 credit, that's $9 saved across how many hundreds of thousands or millions of CSRs?

If these benefit removals and restrictions means keeping the overall ability to transfer UR points within households and across cards, I'll take it.

Thank you for explaining it all so it doesn't seem that bad. I didn't think it was and doesn't really affect me since I don't use price protection and generally fly alone to meet up with friends. I didn't realize I'd earned points on the travel I got the $300 credit on because I didn't even think about it but like you said, it's only 900 UR and the $300 back is way better imo.

 

[sayhello]

@sayhello - This is the thread I promised to tag you on with the awesome sauce group of people that are happy to help other DISers begin the journey into travel hacking that I mentioned to you on FB. The rule of thumb is begin with your Chase cards. Before getting started, we'd need to know how many credit cards of any bank you have opened over the last 24 months.

Thanks!!
The only credit card I've actually opened over the last 24 months is a Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. I had a Macy's card upgraded for me without my involvement... I "re-opened" a Target Red card that got closed due to inactivity.

Sayhello

 

[wendow]

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/nega...mited-to-two-guests-price-protection-removal/

Boooooooo.

Also, wasn't someone asking about the number of people you could use Priority Pass on? Maybe in Denver? Sorry, I don't usually pay too much attention to those posts since I don't think lounges have ever been heard of in my little airport

Bummer. No using PP lounges for my family. Just if dh & I travel alone. That stinks.

 

[pillow]

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/nega...mited-to-two-guests-price-protection-removal/

Boooooooo.

Also, wasn't someone asking about the number of people you could use Priority Pass on? Maybe in Denver? Sorry, I don't usually pay too much attention to those posts since I don't think lounges have ever been heard of in my little airport

That was me. I was asking about the restaurants. But, I am taking 7 others into the Atlanta lounge with me in July. Looks like I'll make it before the benefit disappears. Stinks!

 

[disneedee]

So #1 - I don't want you to risk a Chase shutdown. I will recommend some Chase cards here...but you need to determine if you're at risk.

1) You and your Player 2 could both open a Marriott Business card. This card is NOT subject to 5/24. You earn 75,000 Points for spending $3,000. You stated that you will soon have 40,000 SPG points (which becomes 120,000 Marriott points). With these cards, you would earn 78,000 Marriott points each. I'm not going to bore you with the details of how to combine those points but you could get them all into one Marriott account through some different methods and you'd have 276,000 Marriott points total. With this total you could redeem though Marriott nights & Flights for 120,000 SW RR points and you'd get a bonus 7 night cert for a cat. 1-5 property. 120,000 SW points will likely cover $1,700 - $1,800 in flights.
2) You and your Player 2 could both open a Hyatt card. This card is also NOT subject to 5/24 and the signup plus MSR would earn 42k pts. Hyatt points transfer to Southwest at 5:2.4 I believe and if you transfer 50k points you get a kicker. In theory you could transfer 8k URs (if you have them) to Hyatt to hit that 50k mark and so that signup + some URs could be worth 29k-30k Southwest points (times 2 = about 60k Southwest points worth $850ish). (I know these are rough numbers but I'm not as familiar with the Hyatt program)
3) You could earn AMEX MRs from cards like the BGR, Biz Plat, BlueBiz+, and Biz Green, and transfer to SPG then to Marriott. AMEX MRs are 3:1 to SPG and then 1:3 to Marriott so it's basically 1:1 from AMEX MRs to Marriott. Then you could revert to step 1 and make them Southwest through a Nights and Flights.

I believe those are all the ideas I can come up with Again I'll reiterate that getting Chase cards when you are > 5/24 (even though the cards themselves are not subject to 5/24) can be risky due to all the shutdown reports.

EDIT: I should also add that you could just take your 120,000 Marriott points (from your 40k SPG) and based on the new conversion program that I think it coming soon you can turn that into 50,000 SW points (without the whole nights and flights thing).

After thinking about it I’m liking the option #1 but am so clueless on spg/Marriott. I tried searching but did not find a good primer that I could understand. Can you direct me or answer some more questions? How do I get all the Marriott/spg points into one acct? After purchasing a night/flight package the certificate shows on your Marriott acct? How do you get the “Certificate” to convert to southwest rapid rewards points?

 

[CaliforniaGirl09]

Opening day for booking the new Adventures by Disney 2019 itineraries will be on Monday for us. We will be booking the new Japan trip for next year! DH just spent the evening running around to various Best Buys purchasing Disney GCs with the Freedom and using Chase Pay for the 5x. Apparently they are now limiting the variable load Disney GC to $200 if paying with a credit card We will be putting our deposit down with those Disney GCs and will spend the next year buying Disney GCs at 5x or discounted in some way to pay for this trip. We have been waiting on pins and needles for several years for ABD to come up with a Japan trip! I've already got the miles we will need for the flights too!

I’ve been right there with you as you know for Japan and they blew me away with the itinerary. We’re signing up Monday, too, and using DH’s spg which will finish his MS! Two Spgs and 1 CIP done in frighteningly short order! I don’t want to do the math on all the Disney gift cards I’m going to need. I’m a little nervous to do that many. Do you submit them all at once or ongoing? I should have all the miles I need for all 4 of us RT business in next month—but saver level only so wish me luck!

 

[3 DD love princesses]

Opinions on 'value'..... which is worth 'more'- double dip SWA apps with CP,(based on current knowledge of rules and cards) or a double dip with sapphires (basic signup bonuses) -overall value? I don't have to decide immediately, but I have to decide within a few months. Initially I was 'holding' for the swa, but now I'm reconsidering. (we have used a cp faithfully for about 3 trips a year on average for about 8 years) wwyd?

Thinking the cp could be better if you have it for two years and get 6 flights on it. But it really depends on the cost of your flights.

Sorry to repost this, but anywhere here have any ideas before I ask the scary people at Reddit?

Also, how would I tell if Plastiq is ACH or anything else on my CIP? I made a $20 Plastiq payment last month and it just shows up on regular statements and doesn't say anything about it showing up elsewhere or under my cash access line or anything. I was planning on playing off a large portion of my student loan with my new CIP, but I'm not going to do it if it won't count towards my MSR.

CIP has been coding 3x. When that stops I’ll stop using plastiq as the benefit won’t be there. It counted towards dhs so I wouldn’t see why it wouldn’t.

If you assume you can get Disney gc's at a 20% discount (you can!) + booking with Costco saves about 8%(ish), your 9K price drops to $6,480. I've thought about doing this but since I can save on the cruise in other ways, I don't think its the best use of UR points necessarily. But then again, I'm spending 40K Marriott points on a $300 room this June, which is not the best redemption rate. Curious to know other's take on this. We love DCL!

Wish we had a grocery store that did promos worth getting gc. Like the Harris teeter but no gc offers.

Thinking out loud here:
I just can't leave the idea of the CIC alone. I have a bad case of FOMO and the deal isn't even over yet! I am re-evaluating my plan for the next few cards. DH just referred me to the CIP (from his CI+, his only Chase biz) which I was approved for yesterday (my only Chase biz). His AF should hit 6/1. I am thinking he could apply for the CIC in the next few days and then cancel his CI+. In another 11ish months I will refer him back to the CIP and cancel mine.

Questions:
1) Do I need to wait for the referral bonus to hit before cancelling (I assume yes), if so, how long will that take? I should have timed it better so I wasn't getting hit with the AF in the same time frame as the referral bonus. You usually have about a month or so to get the fee reversed, right?
2) Would it be too bold for me to try for a CIC in the same month as the CIP? (again, I assume yes ).

Man, I did some light churning a few years ago then floated on the points once I hit 5/24. Now I am back in it and we've awakened the beast. Plus if I can hit 14k in MSR in two months....well I can do anything! I WANT ALL OF THE POINTS!!

He could apply just remember the 30 day rule

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/nega...mited-to-two-guests-price-protection-removal/

Boooooooo.

Also, wasn't someone asking about the number of people you could use Priority Pass on? Maybe in Denver? Sorry, I don't usually pay too much attention to those posts since I don't think lounges have ever been heard of in my little airport

This is bad. The 3 princesses are going to miss going. I’m not paying $27 for them to go in.

Guys - remember when we are all down about IHG sucky free night change; SW devaluation; SPG changes; 1 SW card rule; etc. etc.

Now we have increased CIC offer; new Marriott card; Marriott upgrade offers; New Chase Ink Unlimited; rumored new SW card; new SPG premium card; IHG one more free night cert

It’s all cyclical. Can’t stay down for long in this game

Hoping the new sw Card is worth the wait

 

[Lain]

Thanks!!
The only credit card I've actually opened over the last 24 months is a Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. I had a Macy's card upgraded for me without my involvement... I "re-opened" a Target Red card that got closed due to inactivity.

Sayhello

 

[Lain]

A little thrown off this morning when I went to Plastiq to schedule a bill payment and saw they redesigned their homepage.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Something awesome just happened.

I mentioned to DH that we would be pretty close to Disneyland when we go for my cousin's wedding in Phoenix in November. And he thought that sounded cool and that we should go! So instead of flying home to Michigan on Sunday, we will instead fly to Disneyland and spend 3 days, then go home. So DD's first Disney experience will now be Disneyland in November!

Just booked the Sheraton Park Hotel for 3 nights on points. Still planning on using UR points (either through calling Chase or transferred to SW) to book SW flights at the end of this month. So now to work on park tickets and food. Wondering if using UR points for park tickets might work well. Still have some time to think about it though.

I AM SO EXCITED!

 

[speedyfishy]

Bummer. No using PP lounges for my family. Just if dh & I travel alone. That stinks.

Pick your favorite child and leave the others waiting by the gate?

 

[gottalovepluto]

Something awesome just happened.

I mentioned to DH that we would be pretty close to Disneyland when we go for my cousin's wedding in Phoenix in November. And he thought that sounded cool and that we should go! So instead of flying home to Michigan on Sunday, we will instead fly to Disneyland and spend 3 days, then go home. So DD's first Disney experience will now be Disneyland in November!

Just booked the Sheraton Park Hotel for 3 nights on points. Still planning on using UR points (either through calling Chase or transferred to SW) to book SW flights at the end of this month. So now to work on park tickets and food. Wondering if using UR points for park tickets might work well. Still have some time to think about it though.

I AM SO EXCITED!

Nov 4 is Dapper Day if you’re there then, mid-Nov or later you’ll see Christmas!!

 

[gottalovepluto]

I feel bad for those with families who use the CSR but a cap of some sort was long overdue. Just a reminder to those who are groups of four or five your new lounge math is now $6.75/pp fam of 4, $10.80/pp fam of 5. I still think that math makes sense if you’ll be somewhere for a while and would otherwise be buying everyone food (even just snacks or breakfast because airport prices) & drinks in the airport.

 

[SBWB48]

Finally caught up after falling over 30 pages behind at one point. Why must work get in the way sometimes... felt like a hamster running in place catching up

@amalone1013 - thanks SO much for sharing your Hyatt House review! We are there at the end of next month and I’ve been wishy washy about whether I wanted to move to the Sheraton for lounge access, but your review helped me just make a decision to stay with the Hyatt esp. since we are also two adults.

@speedyfishy made two runs to WM this week and converted VGCS (Metas) with no issue or any change seemingly. Seems like order is restored (or perhaps there was no scare to begin with when rumors were running over on reddit and FT). Your curse has been broken (I hope!). Business as usual and it almost felt easier as I’ve been using the line whenever cashiers casually asks, that my bank caps me at $500 per swipe, so I need to swipe twice stole that from someone else here or on Reddit. The cashiers have got friendlier and even chime in on their bank rules as well

Think it was also you that mentioned you go to Harris teeter. Tried them the first time yesterday and it couldn’t be easier. Didn’t ask for my card or ID and I even casually offered the cashier my card just to assess and her response was “nope, we don’t do that here, it’s just how we operate”

Guess I’ll be sourcing my GCs there now. A whole 5min farther than my local giant where I need to wait for a manager override for $500...

 

[Ava]

How do they determine your eligibility for the PP lounge? I’m planning to cancel my CSR at the end of this month, but I just got a new PP card in the mail that doesn’t expire until 2021. Will I still be able to get into the lounges with that PP card, even if I cancel my CSR? I haven’t had a chance to use the lounge benefit yet so don’t know what they ask for/check.