Award Travel is Free! No, it's not. Does it matter? | Ep176 | 11-12-22
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2022
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are miles and points free? Do we use them for "free travel"? Does how we earned the miles make the travel more or less free? This week, we talk about costs and trade-offs of "free" travel.
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00:43 Giant Mailbag
04:59 What crazy thing....did Barclays do this week?
Arrival Plus adds transfer partners https://frequentmiler.com/barclays-arrival-plus-adds-transfer-partners-are-more-changes-in-the-offing/
10:44 Mattress Running the Numbers: Why Greg isn't transferring to Aeroplan
16:27 Awards we booked this week
Greg: A weak use of a Cat 1-7?
Nick: Hyatt suite success 26:20
Main Event: Award travel is free! No, it's not! Does it matter?
https://frequentmiler.com/the-joy-and-myth-of-free-travel/
27:39 Opportunity Cost
31:16 Redeeming points: is it free?
42:50 When people say "my travel is free", are they talking about the earning or redemption side?
52:55 Is acquisition cost relevant to your redemptions?
1:08:44 Does free matter? What is the Joy of Free worth?
1:20:05 Question of the Week: How can one meet minimum spending requirements on business cards?
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:10.8 | Let's get into the giant mailbag. |
| 0:13.5 | What crazy thing did City this week? |
| 0:17.5 | It's time for mattress running the numbers. |
| 0:19.8 | Ready for the main event? The main event. |
| 0:21.6 | Frequent Miler on the air starts now. |
| 0:26.6 | Today's main event, award travel is free. |
| 0:29.6 | No, it isn't. |
| 0:31.6 | Does it matter? |
| 0:33.6 | That's what we're going to be discussing today for the main event it's not free Greg it's |
| 0:40.7 | not free it costs you that we'll talk about travel is free okay a little little uh nod to to an old |
| 0:48.3 | oldy but but goody favorite old blog anyway um let's get into the giant mail bag. Today's giant mail is quite giant. It comes |
| 0:59.4 | from Erica. And it's in response to a conversation we had, I think it was a few weeks ago where I |
| 1:06.0 | talked about how I had success in changing an award flight to New Zealand because there was a schedule |
| 1:14.0 | change. |
| 1:14.7 | I was able to call up United and get a much, much, much better routing. |
| 1:20.5 | And in that conversation, we said approximately 17 different times that the reason I was |
| 1:27.0 | successful in getting that great |
| 1:29.1 | routing change was because the new flight and the old flight, but it doesn't really matter |
| 1:34.5 | about that. The new flight was on United's own medal, meaning it was on United's own flights |
| 1:40.6 | and it was a United award. So I'd used the United Miles and I called up United |
... |
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