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The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Marriott

January 20, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the fourth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Details

Marriott Rewards is actually two programs in disguise, offering rewards for both the standard set of Marriott branded properties as well as the hyper-luxurious Ritz Carlton portfolio. Because of this, it has fourteen separate categories for its hotels — nine for Marriott and five for Ritz Carlton. It’s award charts are as follows: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hilton

January 19, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the third in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

Disclaimer: This is a big fat dud. Tomorrow’s on Marriott should be interesting, though, as there are a couple of angles from which to approach the hack.

I’m somewhat loathe to talk about Hilton hotels, since their HHonors program is one of the worst around in terms of redemption rates, and that’s if you can actually find award availability in the first place. That said, it is one of the largest chains in the world, and there is some value to be had if you look hard enough, so here it is. Continue reading →

How to survive a Bangkok ping pong show without getting horribly scammed

January 18, 2016 / / 6 Comments

Warning, the topic of this post is R rated, though I will try to keep the post as PG rated as possible. If you aren’t interested in more lurid topics, I’d skip this post.

You may or may not have heard of the infamous Bangkok ping pong shows. If you haven’t, google it if you dare (I would not recommend searching for it at work.) Pretty much no respectable Thai person goes to these things, and the main audience is curious tourists and pervert expats. I would say it’s a very, very unique experience that may not be for everyone, but makes a great story to tell amongst cruder minded company! Personally, I have very little interest in the titillating parts of the show myself, but just want to have very unique experience. For something equally unique that is less straight up gross and with a lesser chance of getting scammed, I would recommend the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Continue reading →

JetBlue reimburses me for departure airport change

January 17, 2016 / / 3 Comments

TL;DR: Persistence pays off. Pursue every avenue you can think of, until you’re clearly out of options. Of course, calculate whether the pursuit is worth the effort. And book every flight with a card that has a trip delay benefit…

On 1/6, my husband and I took JetBlue to Las Vegas for the world’s most attended tradeshow, the Consumer Electronics Show.  I won’t go into too much detail (maybe do a trip report later), but if you’ve never heard of it or haven’t been and you like gadgets, cars, drones, virtual reality, home appliances, cameras, and basically any other consumer electronic, you should go. It never fails to be one of the most memorable trips of the year, every year, and is the only trip that my husband will not protest going on. (Plus, if you like free stuff, it’s also good for that :P) Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: IHG

January 17, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the second in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

IHG Rewards Club is a slightly special snowflake since they offer two ways of buy points from them. Since there have been plenty of posts giving detailed explanations (see here for a good one), I won’t go into detail on how to purchase the points, other than to say that that the second method utilizes the points and cash option on bookings and IHG’s unique mechanism of refunding the total points cost if you cancel your booking. In practice, the purchase costs are: Continue reading →

How to signup for autopay on your BBVA credit card

January 15, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Did you sign up for the BBVA NBA Amex card like many others but were getting annoyed at having to manually make payments and worrying that you might forget and get charged a late fee? Well, no longer! Thanks to icemule1 on reddit, now we know there is a way to set up autopay for your BBVA credit cards!

All you need to do send them a form either through snail mail, fax, or email, and autopay should start working in 1-2 billing cycles. Before it takes effect, make sure to still make your monthly payments manually! Addresses / fax numbers are below: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hyatt

January 15, 2016 / / 13 Comments

Generating miles and points at low cost takes time and organization, and most people have neither the time nor ability to juggle tens of credit cards. Unfortunately, a lot of travel hacking is targeted at the minority who can, leaving behind those who are just looking to save money on their twice-a-year family vacations.

So, what about those casual travelers? Can you still use miles and points to your advantage? Or more generally, when your points balances are limited, can you still save money without compromising on comfort? Continue reading →

Bet You Didn’t Know: Capital One Has a Secure Chat Option

January 11, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Apologies to Julian at FrequentMiler for swiping the name of his column, but I actually didn’t know this existed until I accidentally found it today.

Secure chat is good for a lot of things, in particular confirming your eligibility for various offers or performing account maintenance without having to sit on the phone for a long time. Even if you’re someone who enjoys hold music (no, really; these people exist), having a paper trail is really useful in ensuring you get your promised benefits (this has saved me with both Citi and Bank of America). Continue reading →

Amex Gave Us a Red Card and Served a Blue Bird on a Platter

January 10, 2016 / / 1 Comment

One day, when class participation was particularly poor in my eighth grade U.S. history class, my teacher told us that “Opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone has one.”

Nowhere is this more true than in the blogosphere, where my teacher’s claim might better be stated as, “Opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone must have one.” That being the case, here’s mine: Continue reading →

Orbitz Makes My Head Spin

January 9, 2016 / / 8 Comments

I’m about as close to an Orbitz fanboy as you can find on the internet. I even signed up for the Orbitz rewards credit card, and I continue to book with them even after they eviscerated their best price guarantee program. That’s why I was supremely annoyed to find this in my inbox as I was sitting down to enjoy a burger at my friend Grant’s ‘meat’-up this afternoon:

For context, AA has been running some $100.60 round trip fares to Dallas from San Francisco. After all the rewards I can get, it ends up costing me about $93 for each round trip, so I decided to book two back-to-back for next week to start padding my Alaska mileage account and re-qualify for elite status for 2017. Continue reading →

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