Chatter

FHR Credit Devaluation: Two-Night Minimum; Airbnb Luxe Added and Credit Renamed “Lodging Credit” [Changes Now Official]

physixfan 2026-10-22 2026-10-23 2 Comments

[2026.10.22 Update] The rumors below are now official. See the official pages here and here. The former $600 FHR/THC Credit has been renamed the $600 Lodging Credit, covering FHR, THC, and Airbnb Luxe. Previously, a one-night FHR stay could trigger the credit. Starting January 1, 2027, a minimum two-night stay will be required. A new $250 Airbnb Experiences Credit has…
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American Express (AmEx)

Introducing USCreditCardGuide App for iOS & Android (2022.1 Update: Multiple Accounts Support)

physixfan and skysniper 2022-01-28 2022-01-28 64 Comments

2022.1 Update: We have multiple accounts support now. This feature is useful if you manage credit cards for family members. 2021.8 Update: We added customizing points value feature to the sign up bonus rank. If you can’t see the sort button, please go to settings and click app version to update it to at least version 3.1.60. Screenshot1, screenshot2. I…
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Inflation Hits the Miles and Points Game

Geo 2021-08-22 2021-08-25 10 Comments

[2021.08 – We have updated the text and table after finding an errant calculation in our source spreadsheet. Thanks to our readers for bringing this to our attention. However, now the “inflation” is worse than we originally posted!] Introduction The economic concept of inflation is defined as the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. This effectively…
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American Express (AmEx), Barclays, Chase, Citibank

Welcome to FTU Chicago 2019!

physixfan 2019-05-26 2019-05-26 2 Comments

Frequent Traveler University (FTU) is the world’s premier educational series of seminars for frequent travelers. It holds several seminars every year in varies cities. The topics are usually about maximizing points and miles, credit card strategies, and Manufactured Spending (MS), etc. It is a great honor that several authors from our website are invited to speak at the upcoming event: FTU Chicago! The…
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FTU (Frequent Traveler University)

Welcome to FTU Seattle 2019!

physixfan 2019-01-31 2019-05-24 2 Comments

Frequent Traveler University (FTU) is the world’s premier educational series of seminars for frequent travelers. It holds several seminars every year in varies cities. The topics are usually about maximizing points and miles, credit card strategies, and Manufactured Spending (MS), etc. It is a great honor that our author flywithchad, DEVGRU and I are invited to speak at the upcoming event: FTU Seattle! Flywithchad…
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FTU (Frequent Traveler University)

How noisy is your airplane cabin?

DEVGRU 2018-11-13 2018-11-13 4 Comments

DEVGRU* (correspondence author), jimmy0017 Long-term exposure to ambient noise can lead to adverse effects on human health, and aircraft cabin is a typical noisy environment. Here, we report the cabin noise level of ten mainstream airframes (other than Boeing 747) based on 48 in situ measurements. Airbus A380 is the quietest plane in the sky. With the exception of Boeing…
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Let’s face it: Airlines don’t want your loyalty anymore

DEVGRU 2018-11-05 2018-11-05 11 Comments

Today it was announced that American Airlines is going to raise the revenue requirements for Executive Platinum. At American, it used to be the case that you need to spend $12,000 Elite Qualifying Dollars (EQD) to earn the Executive Platinum status. Now the EQD threshold has increased to $15,000, representing a 25% hike. This move actually mirrored what United has done…
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American Airlines (AA), Delta Air Lines (DL), United Airlines (UA)

[RUMOR] SPG Website Going Down on August 1st?

DEVGRU 2018-03-29 2018-03-29 13 Comments

As SPG and Marriott will have finished the highly anticipated merger by the end of this year, we could expect some news more often. Here is one rumor that just got out … This morning (and Thursday night in China), user brain1992 on Flyertea (China’s leading frequent flyer forum equivalent to FlyerTalk), showed a screenshot of his chat history with someone…
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Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG)

Chain of Contempt: Are Passengers Flying on Miles “Inferior”?

DEVGRU 2018-02-15 2018-02-15 2 Comments

Yesterday Lucky at One Mile at a Time posted an article describing a recent policy change made by Alaska’s Mileage Plan. As you have probably known by now, Alaska no longer allow its member to redeem miles on Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, and Hainan Airlines within 72 hours of departure if the award is solely intra-Asia. As far as I know, this…
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Can Metal Cards Stop Bullet?

physixfan 2017-12-01 2017-12-01 13 Comments

Editor’s Note: Rumors say that the AmEx Centurion card can stop bullet and save your life. Can metal cards really stop bullet? We are very honored to have gun enthusiast Long Yu with us to do actual tests! In these tests, we didn’t use AmEx Centurion; instead, we used the heaviest credit card — Chase Ritz-Carlton, which weighs 28g and is about…
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Citi Hilton/Reserve will be automatically converted into Amex Hilton/Surpass

jnrfalcon 2017-10-23 2017-10-27 0 Comments

We’ve known that Amex will be the exclusive issuer of Hilton cobranded card since 2018. And Citibank has stopped accepting new applications for Citi Hilton and Citi Hilton Reserve credit cards. So what will happen to the current Citi Hilton cards? People believe there are two possibilities: Both cards will be converted into Citi’s other credit cards, presumably Citi ThankYou…
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Beware of Phishing Scams! (2018.1 Update: Problem is Solved)

skysniper 2017-10-23 2018-01-24 1 Comment

2018.1 Update: We guessed the reason quite a while ago, and now there’s finally news discussing about it: https://www.fastcompany.com/40516897/a-new-wave-of-bad-ads-is-hijacking-even-top-tier-websites & https://blog.confiant.com/uncovering-2017s-largest-malvertising-operation-b84cd38d6b85 . These phishing scam ads appeared because ad networks are hijacked. As a result, not only us, big websites like New York Times also showed these phishing scam ads. So the problem is finally solved, by ad networks. Hope they can…
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New policy? BoA limits up to 3 BoA credit cards openings in a 12-month period?

croco8dile 2017-09-26 2017-09-26 1 Comment

Recently one of our readers “本群倒数第一” received a call from BoA, informing him that the most recent credit card he’s got from BoA is approved by mistake, and therefore, he needs to close down one of his BoA credit cards. The representative specifically quoted one BoA internal policy: Any account holder currently can only open up to 3 new BoA…
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Bank of America (BoA)

The Best Looking Credit Cards Poll: Here’s the Results!

physixfan 2017-09-07 2017-09-07 4 Comments

Update: Here come’s the results of the poll! The top 10 best looking credit cards are as follows, are they in agree with your choices? #1 Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) ($450 annual fee) #2 Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) ($95 annual fee) #3 AmEx Platinum ($550 annual fee) #4 AmEx Centurion ($2500 annual fee, invitation only) #5 JP Morgan Reserve ($450 annual fee, requires $10M…
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WWDC 2017: Apple Announced Person-to-Person Payment Feature in Apple Pay! Maybe a Great News for Churners?

physixfan 2017-06-05 2017-06-05 0 Comments

Apple showed a new person-to-person payment feature in Apple Pay in today’s WWDC 2017. The slide showed that this feature will be built in iMessages. It will be available in this fall. We don’t know much information for now, but the person-to-person payment feature can possibly be huge for churners: Is it free to make a debit card transfer? Does it support credit…
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