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Reconsideration Recap

I’ve always found reconsideration calls to be fairly pleasant. I almost never get approved for a card straight away, and when I call reconsideration to speed things along, I usually only have to confirm my income (because, apparently, saying it twice makes it true). At worst, the lender will ask me to rearrange my credit lines to avoid extending me any new credit, which I don’t mind except insofar as it prevents me from buying a yacht.

So, given my pretty good track record, I decided to apply for the Chase Hyatt Visa, since I have a trip to New York coming up and would love to leverage the sign-up bonus (2 free nights) to stay at the Park Hyatt. It would be hard to get more value out of that sign-up bonus, and I’ve never stayed at a hotel that nice before, so it’s a no-brainer for me. Chase almost threw a wrench in the gears, though… As normal, my application didn’t go through right away, so I called reconsideration to see if I could push it through by reallocating my credit with Chase. In the past two years, I’ve signed up for a Sapphire, United MP Explorer, and IHG Mastercard, so I think my credit history screams “churner!” to them. I had a whole spiel about why I wanted two separate hotel c0-brand cards (did you know that I stay in Holiday Inns for work, but my wife loves Hyatt hotels, so we stay in those on vacation???), but the rep I talked to didn’t really care. She just kept telling me over and over that my credit profile was “aggressive.”

Plus, my spiel about why I wanted multiple cards didn’t take into account the multiple non-Chase cards I’ve opened this year, which was yet another red flag. I knew Chase had tightened approval rules for their own cards, but up until now I had heard that they weren’t enforcing the same rules for their other cards. Still, the whole “I swear I’ll really use and keep this card!”/”Yes, but your profile is very aggressive” pas de deux continued until I finally just asked if she’d approve me. She put me on hold for a few minutes and then came back to tell me that I was approved, although she didn’t deploy any of the congratulatory language that lending reps usually use when approving you. In fact, she told me not to apply for any more Chase cards for two years, or I’ll get automatically denied – and she added that the only reason I was approved was that I had a 15-year banking relationship with Chase.

I left out the fact that Chase inherited me, since that doesn’t make me sound as loyal…

Thing is, I really DO want to use this card to earn Hyatt points, and I’ll definitely keep it long-term, because $75 per year for platinum status and a free night in a category 4 hotel is a great deal! So, overall I’m really relieved that I got approved for this one, but this is the last Chase card I’ll be able to get for a good long while, so I better enjoy it.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: Does a difficult reconsideration call make YOU question your self worth and all the choices you have made up to this point?

The Citi Prestige Card – Unintelligent Design

The premium credit card market seems to understand that people love shiny objects, even if the shiny object has no intrinsic value. If you’re a bank who’s charging your customer a few hundred bucks for the privilege of collecting transaction fees and (you hope) interest payments, you have to give them a cool hunk of plastic, right? I’ll admit that I love me a nicely-designed credit card. A blank piece of plastic with a magnetic strip will work just as well, and whatever benefits I get as a cardmember have nothing to do with the physical object in my wallet, but it’s the same with any functional object, be it a watch or a pair of sunglasses. It may not be as important as a nice suit, but a fancy credit card definitely sits somewhere on the “looking good – feeling good” spectrum.

Look how happy this guy is to be carrying a gold Amex card.

As the upstart in the $400+ annual fee club, Citi Prestige has to come up with a wow design in order to justify its place at the table. It doesn’t have the classic high-end cachet of the Amex Platinum design, the “I must be rich because my credit card is black” aura of the Visa Black card, and certainly not the “I am definitely rich because my credit card is black AND says American Express on it” kill shot you get with the Centurion. By and large, I think Citi succeeds. Their card looks really nice, it has a subtle hologram effect, and the translucent blue window is neat.

You know what isn’t neat, though? THE STRIPE ON THE FRONT. What benefit could there possibly be to putting the stripe on the front? I’ve had the card for months now, and I’m still trying to figure this out. The best I can figure is that Citi wants its most Prestigious cardholders to have a hitherto unknown kind of cachet: the “I’m so Prestigious that I have a credit card that a pleb like you can’t even figure out how to use!” kind. Unfortunately, that’s probably the most unpleasant cachet that anyone could ever carry… and the people waiting behind you in line while you explain to the cashier how to swipe your card certainly won’t hold you in any high regard either.

So, in conclusion: Citi’s graphic design department gets an A, but someone signed off on the design for this card without ever considering that people may want to use it for transactions out in the world. Citi, if you’re listening, please issue a card with a stripe on the back where it’s supposed to go. And make it out of metal like the Chase Sapphire while you’re at it: nothing says “I’m more important than you” than a credit card that weighs as much as a garage door opener.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: Do YOU go out of your way to appear suave and sophisticated by seeking out fancy credit cards?

Thoughts on Premium Cabins

The thing about reviews is that most reviewers almost have too much experience for their experiences to be relevant to people like me who just don’t have enough time off to try every product in the sky. I realize that the point of most reviews is to be as in-depth as possible precisely because people who take a once-in-a-lifetime vacation in first class want to make sure they aren’t wasting their money (or miles). Still, some of the “bad” reviews I read make me laugh, given that they really don’t sound that bad to me.

I really have very little experience with first class – the first time I sat up front is when I had food poisoning and upgraded to AirTran’s first class because it was only $100 and I thought that sitting in Economy while trying not to barfpoop would just be too miserable. For anyone who never got that opportunity before AirTran disappeared, my review is that the seat is wider and they give you a snack. Definitely worth $100 given the circumstances, but not exactly “premium.” I’ve also flown Virgin America first class a few times, since their same-day upgrades used to be really cheap. I think I paid $150 to upgrade BOS to SFO (almost 7 hours in a headwind), and that flight was probably awesome. I say “probably” because I took too many sleeping pills while waiting at the gate, and I barely remember the flight. I was so zonked that, despite sitting in 1A, I was the very last person off the plane.

My wife and I flew “business class” on Norwegian from OAK to OSL last summer, which is more or less premium economy on most carriers. My review of that flight is that the seat is wider and they give you a snack. (I’m being snarky, but Norwegian is actually one of my favorite airlines, and that flight was amazing. Seeing the Hudson Bay and Greenland during the midnight sun from the Dreamliner’s oversized window was incredible. I’ve flown Norwegian both long haul and short haul, and their planes are spotless, their staff is always friendly, and Gardamoen airport in Oslo has the best candy selection of any airport I’ve ever been to. However, their planes are painted to look like dog penises, which is odd.)

That’s a plane in the photo, not a Samoyed getting excited.

Other times I’ve been in first class were just on short legs, so nothing to write home about. I flew Alaska Airlines first class from SEA to SFO a few months ago on one of those $50 upgrades I bought myself as a treat. My review of that flight is that the seat is wider and they give you a snack. (A quick aside – a friend of mine had asked if I could bring back some of Alaska’s bloody mary mix, since it’s supposedly really good. I hate bloody marys so I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I asked the flight attendant for some, and she very politely declined, explaining that it comes in a big carton, not individual bottles. But, after the flight as I was deplaning, she poured some into a lidded cup for me. I thought that was really nice, and it makes me like Alaska Airlines just because a flight attendant has never been that nice to me before. Once I got off the jetbridge, I stood over the garbage can right by the gate and decanted the cup of bloody mary mix into an empty Aquafina bottle… I can’t even imagine what the other passengers on the plane thought I was doing as the saw this upon deplaning.)

Alaska is going to run this plane on their new Seattle to Tulsa route just to fuck with little kids.

Okay, so anyway, back to my original point about reviews… I’m taking a trip to New York in a few months, and I used 50,000 United miles to book it in first class. Normally I wouldn’t waste the miles, but SFO – EWR on United is on their fancy “premium service” trans-con 757, so I thought it would be worth it. This will definitely be the nicest hard product I’ve ever flown, and I’m pretty excited. Plus, 50,000 miles for a $1200 ticket is over 2 cents per mile, which isn’t bad for a domestic redemption… especially when I don’t have a spare $1200 sitting around (or even really a spare $400 for economy).

Once I booked the flight, I excitedly looked up reviews of United’s trans-con premium service, ready to read how mind-blowingly amazing it is… and most reviews aren’t very positive. The gist of them is that the seat is nice enough, the food is meh, and the service is blah. Picky picky. First of all, I’m vegan, so I won’t be able to eat the food anyway. Second of all, I have a lot of social anxiety and don’t enjoy when people go out of their way to talk to me, so I don’t really care if the service is aloof. Maybe I should ask them for some extra bloody mary mix as a sort of controlled experiment. One review I read even criticized United’s snack bar, saying something to the effect of “hopefully you like Milano cookies and pretzels.” My response when reading this was to say, “Yes, I do like Milano cookies, and you’re telling me that there’s a snack bar where I can get Milano cookies whenever I want?” Different expectations indeed. (I realize Milano cookies aren’t vegan. I should have said I’m mostly vegan – don’t tell PETA.) My only concern about this flight now is that I booked a window seat, and if the person on the aisle goes to sleep, he’s going to be annoyed with me crawling over him every half hour to get Milano cookies.

I don’t really plan to review travel products on this blog, but I’m sure I’ll talk at length about how great United’s trans-con service is, since it will have been the first and only time I’ve been on a flat bed seat on a plane. This is like the Emirates shower suite for me, seriously.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: Do YOU like Milano cookies, and do you know what flavors United offers?

My Intro to Points & Miles

It seems crazy that a year ago I had no idea that distance/region-based miles even existed. For most of my early adult life, I had a hard enough time holding down a job and a place to live, so earning miles was a distant concern. Then, when I did start putting effort into flying the same airlines in order to accumulate points, my airlines of choice were Southwest and Virgin – both of which have fixed-value points. As a result, I always just assumed that all airline miles were like this, and I never put much thought into which loyalty program I used. I got a Chase Sapphire card, but I didn’t see the point in transferring points to United when I could just use Chase to get 1.25 cents per point. In other words, I was the rube that most credit card companies market to. This is probably why I was targeted for a 100,000 point sign-up bonus on the American Express Platinum card, and it’s also why I threw the application away thinking, “What the hell would I do with 100,000 American Express points?”

Finally, a friend of mine sent me a link to United’s redemption chart, and I realized that most carriers do indeed assign award prices based on either distance or regions… then all hell broke loose. This was right after United’s devaluation, but I wasn’t savvy enough at that point to be pissed, since 110,000 miles for a business class ticket to Europe at least made business class attainable to me when it previously wasn’t. See, I’ve been obsessed with long haul business class products for years, and I always thought that maybe I’d splurge on two seats for my wife and I on our 20^th anniversary or something. I simply had no idea you could get these seats by accruing miles.

So, step one was to kick myself for how many Ultimate Rewards Points I had pissed away using Chase’s travel portal. Step two was to start hoarding points with an eye on an eventual United business class redemption. I realized it would take at least two years to get the 230,000 points we’d need for two round-trip tickets, but at least it would no longer be a one-time extravagance. However, once I got into it, I really got into it, and as I read travel reviews on sites like One Mile at a Time, I also started to pick up tips on other credit cards and faster ways to earn award tickets. Fast forward to today… I just got approved for my seventh card of 2015, and I’m already looking past our next trip, since I have all the miles we’ll need for that one.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: How did YOU get involved in the points/miles game, and did you used to be as clueless as me?