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Earlier this year, in a bout of petulant frustration, I wrote about how annoyed I was that Bank of America denied my application for an Alaska Visa. The reason for the denial was a one-two punch of “too many recent inquiries” and “not enough business with Bank of America.” It was a bummer since the Alaska Visa is one of the last truly churnable cards, and my overall investment in Bank of America is low enough that I don’t care if they shut me down for opening/closing too many cards. I wasn’t so much unhappy that I couldn’t open this specific BofA card as I was disappointed that it seemed like the overall ride had come to an end. The annual fee on my last remaining Alaska card is due in a couple weeks, and I had planned to close it and in doing so close out my relationship with BofA. I don’t use the companion fare, and the earning rate doesn’t much matter when I can’t reliably build up my Alaska balance through multiple sign-up bonuses anymore. However, there was a wrinkle today when I saw that some people were being targeted for 40,000-point sign-up bonuses. I wasn’t targeted myself (at least via email), but I happened to be poking around in my Alaska account doing some award searches when I saw an ad for the card with the 40k bonus. Since I didn’t get the offer that was emailed out, I don’t know if my account was targeted, or if this was just a lucky find on the Alaska site.

Who knows why I bothered to apply — it has been around eight months since my last rejection, and I have continued to sign up for new cards in the meantime, so it didn’t seem any more likely that I’d get approved this time around. The 40k was calling to me, though, and having long given up caring about my credit score (since other factors on my credit report seem to matter so much more than the actual score), I pulled a Risky Business and sent in the application. (By which I mean that I said “what the fuck,” not that I put on my sunglasses and danced around in my underwear, although I did do that.)

I assumed it would go to pending and eventually be rejected, but in a shocking twist of fate, I was instantly approved, and for a higher total credit line than I’ve had in the past. Yay! It’s easy to read too much into why I would have been rejected before and approved now. It could just be luck of the draw, or that BofA’s lending conditions are generally looser now than they were at the beginning of the year. Maybe their tighter rules were cutting down the number of new sign-ups, so they made some tweaks of the sort that would allow me to slither my way back in.

Still, for the collective good, I thought I’d put this little chart together showing my recent application history across the two BofA Alaska apps. It would sure help to be able to put some sort of quantifiable figure on the “too many recent inquiries” rejection line to help guide future applications. Even more so now, considering that my plan to open two or three of these cards per year just had some new life breathed into it. (As an aside, while I love the 40,000-point bonus, I’m at least slightly nostalgic for the days when you could get 25,000 points after your first purchase on the card. I’m knee deep in minimum spends right now, so I’m going to have to do some work to finish all of them by their deadlines.)

As you can see, my situation wasn’t all that different this time, with the exception of having no BofA cards opened in the last 6 months (or 12 months, for that matter). It’s only if you look at the 12 month period when a discrepancy emerges, but even then, five new cards in 12 months is still a lot for most banks. I don’t really think it’s possible to draw any firm conclusions from this single data point, especially since BofA also doesn’t seem to care anymore that I still don’t have any other business with them besides credit cards.

In the end, I’m not going to question it too much… it’s great that I got the bonus today, and maybe I’ll get another one in 6-9 months, or maybe I’ll get rejected again. In today’s climate you gotta take what you can get. Anyone else get the 40k bonus today?

You liked this post enough to read to the end, but did you like it enough to give me money? If so, check out my Patreon page.

Earlier this year, in a bout of petulant frustration, I wrote about how annoyed I was that Bank of America denied my application for an Alaska Visa. The reason for the denial was a one-two punch of “too many recent inquiries” and “not enough business with Bank of America.” It was a bummer since the Alaska Visa is one of the last truly churnable cards, and my overall investment in Bank of America is low enough that I don’t care if they shut me down for opening/closing too many cards. I wasn’t so much unhappy that I couldn’t open this specific BofA card as I was disappointed that it seemed like the overall ride had come to an end.

The annual fee on my last remaining Alaska card is due in a couple weeks, and I had planned to close it and in doing so close out my relationship with BofA. I don’t use the companion fare, and the earning rate doesn’t much matter when I can’t reliably build up my Alaska balance through multiple sign-up bonuses anymore. However, there was a wrinkle today when I saw that some people were being targeted for 40,000-point sign-up bonuses. I wasn’t targeted myself (at least via email), but I happened to be poking around in my Alaska account doing some award searches when I saw an ad for the card with the 40k bonus. Since I didn’t get the offer that was emailed out, I don’t know if my account was targeted, or if this was just a lucky find on the Alaska site.

Who knows why I bothered to apply — it has been around eight months since my last rejection, and I have continued to sign up for new cards in the meantime, so it didn’t seem any more likely that I’d get approved this time around. The 40k was calling to me, though, and having long given up caring about my credit score (since other factors on my credit report seem to matter so much more than the actual score), I pulled a Risky Business and sent in the application. (By which I mean that I said “what the fuck,” not that I put on my sunglasses and danced around in my underwear, although I did do that.)

I assumed it would go to pending and eventually be rejected, but in a shocking twist of fate, I was instantly approved, and for a higher total credit line than I’ve had in the past. Yay! It’s easy to read too much into why I would have been rejected before and approved now. It could just be luck of the draw, or that BofA’s lending conditions are generally looser now than they were at the beginning of the year. Maybe their tighter rules were cutting down the number of new sign-ups, so they made some tweaks of the sort that would allow me to slither my way back in.

Still, for the collective good, I thought I’d put this little chart together showing my recent application history across the two BofA Alaska apps. It would sure help to be able to put some sort of quantifiable figure on the “too many recent inquiries” rejection line to help guide future applications. Even more so now, considering that my plan to open two or three of these cards per year just had some new life breathed into it. (As an aside, while I love the 40,000-point bonus, I’m at least slightly nostalgic for the days when you could get 25,000 points after your first purchase on the card. I’m knee deep in minimum spends right now, so I’m going to have to do some work to finish all of them by their deadlines.)

As you can see, my situation wasn’t all that different this time, with the exception of having no BofA cards opened in the last 6 months (or 12 months, for that matter). It’s only if you look at the 12 month period when a discrepancy emerges, but even then, five new cards in 12 months is still a lot for most banks. I don’t really think it’s possible to draw any firm conclusions from this single data point, especially since BofA also doesn’t seem to care anymore that I still don’t have any other business with them besides credit cards.

In the end, I’m not going to question it too much… it’s great that I got the bonus today, and maybe I’ll get another one in 6-9 months, or maybe I’ll get rejected again. In today’s climate you gotta take what you can get. Anyone else get the 40k bonus today?

This post is about my friend Patrick, who recently found herself on the wrong side of whatever causes Amex to deem someone unworthy of a sign-up bonus. (Yes, Patrick is a lady, and she’s aware she has a weird name for a lady. Her full name is Patrick Pibb, which is hilarious and sounds like a character from a lost Charles Dickens novel.) Ever since I read about Amex’s new policy (on Doctor of Credit, of course), I’ve been nervous about it. Amex is by far the most lucrative of the three issuers for churners, even after they instituted a once-per-lifetime policy on sign-up bonuses. They just have so many damn cards, even if you only get the bonus one time on each card, that will still amount to millions of points. I’ve been churning pretty aggressively for years, and there are still Amex cards I’ve never opened.

I suppose it was inevitable that Amex would crack down further, given how strongly their competitors have been pushing back on churning… first there was Chase’s 5/24 rule, and then Citi’s policy of restricting bonuses to one per card family (something Chase followed pretty quickly with the Sapphire cards). Given the aforementioned ease of racking up Amex bonuses, it was only a matter of time before Amex did something about it. What they’ve done, however, is a horrible abomination. Well maybe not quite, but it sucks pretty bad.

Yes, you saw it here first thirteenth. When you apply for a card, you may now get a pop-up informing you that you aren’t eligible to receive the sign-up bonus. If you hit “continue and submit,” your application will process as normal, and if you hit “cancel application,” the dog from Duck Hunt will pop up and laugh at you.

There’s both good and bad here… the good is that they’ll tell you for sure before they run a credit check, and you can still get the card anyway. This is great for someone who wants a Delta card for the free checked bag or companion fare… since a United flyer in the same position with Chase wouldn’t be able to get the card at all. Ditto Hilton vs. Marriott. The bad news is that it’s now all-or-nothing. Unlike Chase, who gives you the option of waiting out the 5/24 clock, or Citi, with whom you can still earn points from bonuses albeit more slowly, Amex now locks you out of the most lucrative bonus game full stop once you get on their bad side.

Plus, say what you want about 5/24, but at least it’s a published, objective rule. I’ve written in the past about how annoying it is to get denied for a card for “too many recent inquiries” without any indication whatsoever of what constitutes “too many.” Amex is definitely going the ambiguous route here, basically saying that there’s something off about you, but they can’t put their finger on it.

I’m sure as more data points emerge, some of the fog around Amex’s new policy will clear. (I assume the churning subreddit is on the case, asking users to fill out a Google form that asks your age, income, number of cards, number of bonuses, date of any card closures, number of sexual partners, brand of wallet, number of times in Emirates first class, name of nearest bank branch, and other critical info.) For now, though, it’s maddeningly difficult to determine what about someone’s history with Amex makes them ineligible for a sign-up bonus.

In Patrick’s case, she has seen the warning twice. The first time was on an application for the Business Rewards Gold card, and I told her to wait a little while and then try to apply for the new SPG personal card. My feeling was that Amex might be stricter with Membership Rewards cards versus co-brand cards, or that it had something to do with business versus personal cards. Neither of these hunches were true, and she got the same message on her SPG application a couple weeks later.

What’s really strange, though, is that — at least for now — I’m still able to get Amex bonuses. Or at least I was when I applied for the SPG Luxury card the day it came out. If you look at my history versus Patrick’s, I look way more like a churner. I’ve opened nearly 20 Amex cards in the past four years, and I have closed plenty of them as well. In contrast, Patrick has opened four Amex cards since the beginning of 2016 and only closed one of them. Unless Amex was so excited to have people sign up for the SPG Luxury card that they didn’t apply the same restriction that they’re clearly applying to both Amex-branded and co-branded cards, something doesn’t make sense here. (That’s certainly possible, by the way, given that Amex had so many sign-ups for the Luxury card that they ran out of cards.)

I have one other theory… After looking at Patrick’s card history, I asked her one potentially very important question: “How much have you paid Amex in annual fees since you opened your first card with them?” I already knew the answer based on Patrick’s general aversion to paying annual fees: zero dollars and zero cents. While I have certainly opened and closed some cards cards without paying the annual fee, I have also paid the fee on multiple platinum cards, my green card, the Everyday Preferred, a Delta Platinum, and a bunch of others.

Given that bonus eligibility is an instant calculation, there’s obviously some algorithm in play that evaluates how valuable of a customer you are for Amex. Despite my aggressiveness opening Amex cards over the years, for whatever reason, the algorithm thinks I’m more valuable to Amex than Patrick, and the thousands of dollars in annual fees that I have paid may play a part in that. Of course I’m just speculating here, and as noted above, most of my theories around this whole development have turned out to be wrong. (Just more evidence of how cruel it is for Amex to keep everyone guessing from now on.)

Who has had recent success/failure with Amex lately? I don’t want to get into Reddit-level data collection or anything, but I’m curious if Patrick is an outlier, or if I’m the one who got lucky sneaking past the gatekeeper to get my bonus on the SPG Luxury card.

You liked this post enough to read to the end, but did you like it enough to give me money? If so, check out my Patreon page.

This post is about my friend Patrick, who recently found herself on the wrong side of whatever causes Amex to deem someone unworthy of a sign-up bonus. (Yes, Patrick is a lady, and she’s aware she has a weird name for a lady. Her full name is Patrick Pibb, which is hilarious and sounds like a character from a lost Charles Dickens novel.)

Ever since I read about Amex’s new policy (on Doctor of Credit, of course), I’ve been nervous about it. Amex is by far the most lucrative of the three issuers for churners, even after they instituted a once-per-lifetime policy on sign-up bonuses. They just have so many damn cards, even if you only get the bonus one time on each card, that will still amount to millions of points. I’ve been churning pretty aggressively for years, and there are still Amex cards I’ve never opened.

I suppose it was inevitable that Amex would crack down further, given how strongly their competitors have been pushing back on churning… first there was Chase’s 5/24 rule, and then Citi’s policy of restricting bonuses to one per card family (something Chase followed pretty quickly with the Sapphire cards). Given the aforementioned ease of racking up Amex bonuses, it was only a matter of time before Amex did something about it. What they’ve done, however, is a horrible abomination. Well maybe not quite, but it sucks pretty bad.

Yes, you saw it here first thirteenth. When you apply for a card, you may now get a pop-up informing you that you aren’t eligible to receive the sign-up bonus. If you hit “continue and submit,” your application will process as normal, and if you hit “cancel application,” the dog from Duck Hunt will pop up and laugh at you.

There’s both good and bad here… the good is that they’ll tell you for sure before they run a credit check, and you can still get the card anyway. This is great for someone who wants a Delta card for the free checked bag or companion fare… since a United flyer in the same position with Chase wouldn’t be able to get the card at all. Ditto Hilton vs. Marriott. The bad news is that it’s now all-or-nothing. Unlike Chase, who gives you the option of waiting out the 5/24 clock, or Citi, with whom you can still earn points from bonuses albeit more slowly, Amex now locks you out of the most lucrative bonus game full stop once you get on their bad side.

Plus, say what you want about 5/24, but at least it’s a published, objective rule. I’ve written in the past about how annoying it is to get denied for a card for “too many recent inquiries” without any indication whatsoever of what constitutes “too many.” Amex is definitely going the ambiguous route here, basically saying that there’s something off about you, but they can’t put their finger on it.

I’m sure as more data points emerge, some of the fog around Amex’s new policy will clear. (I assume the churning subreddit is on the case, asking users to fill out a Google form that asks your age, income, number of cards, number of bonuses, date of any card closures, number of sexual partners, brand of wallet, number of times in Emirates first class, name of nearest bank branch, and other critical info.) For now, though, it’s maddeningly difficult to determine what about someone’s history with Amex makes them ineligible for a sign-up bonus.

In Patrick’s case, she has seen the warning twice. The first time was on an application for the Business Rewards Gold card, and I told her to wait a little while and then try to apply for the new SPG personal card. My feeling was that Amex might be stricter with Membership Rewards cards versus co-brand cards, or that it had something to do with business versus personal cards. Neither of these hunches were true, and she got the same message on her SPG application a couple weeks later.

What’s really strange, though, is that — at least for now — I’m still able to get Amex bonuses. Or at least I was when I applied for the SPG Luxury card the day it came out. If you look at my history versus Patrick’s, I look way more like a churner. I’ve opened nearly 20 Amex cards in the past four years, and I have closed plenty of them as well. In contrast, Patrick has opened four Amex cards since the beginning of 2016 and only closed one of them. Unless Amex was so excited to have people sign up for the SPG Luxury card that they didn’t apply the same restriction that they’re clearly applying to both Amex-branded and co-branded cards, something doesn’t make sense here. (That’s certainly possible, by the way, given that Amex had so many sign-ups for the Luxury card that they ran out of cards.)

I have one other theory… After looking at Patrick’s card history, I asked her one potentially very important question: “How much have you paid Amex in annual fees since you opened your first card with them?” I already knew the answer based on Patrick’s general aversion to paying annual fees: zero dollars and zero cents. While I have certainly opened and closed some cards cards without paying the annual fee, I have also paid the fee on multiple platinum cards, my green card, the Everyday Preferred, a Delta Platinum, and a bunch of others.

Given that bonus eligibility is an instant calculation, there’s obviously some algorithm in play that evaluates how valuable of a customer you are for Amex. Despite my aggressiveness opening Amex cards over the years, for whatever reason, the algorithm thinks I’m more valuable to Amex than Patrick, and the thousands of dollars in annual fees that I have paid may play a part in that. Of course I’m just speculating here, and as noted above, most of my theories around this whole development have turned out to be wrong. (Just more evidence of how cruel it is for Amex to keep everyone guessing from now on.)

Who has had recent success/failure with Amex lately? I don’t want to get into Reddit-level data collection or anything, but I’m curious if Patrick is an outlier, or if I’m the one who got lucky sneaking past the gatekeeper to get my bonus on the SPG Luxury card.

An introductory note: Many of the big blogs have written about the Rocketmiles/Amex partnership, so I’m not exactly breaking news here. However, I just found out about it tonight and did a shallow dive into what type of value you could get out of the partnership, and I figured this analysis might be useful. For those who aren’t familiar with Rocketmiles, it’s an online travel agency that offers you airline miles instead of discounted rates. Like any OTA, you don’t get any elite recognition or points earning at the hotel. I have used it a few times in the past, and it always works as advertised, so I have nothing bad to say about it. I just usually end up valuing elite recognition + hotel points earned for the stay more than whatever miles Rocketmiles is going to throw my way.

Like most things in this hobby, calculating whether you’re better off booking via the hotel itself or via Rocketmiles is maddeningly complicated. For instance, is your hotel chain running a promotion right now? If it’s an IHG hotel, will the stay trigger an Accelerate program bonus, because if so you probably have more to gain booking through IHG. How much is breakfast worth to you? Do you really need an upgrade, or is that just something that’s nice to have? Have you factored in the hotel points you’ll lose out on by not paying with your fancy co-brand card? And on and on.

Basically, my calculation usually comes down to the fact that I like and use hotel points, and outside of sign-up bonuses, I earn the majority of my hotel points through hotel stays. Therefore, regardless of whether 35,000 Hilton points are worth more or less than 9,000 United miles (or whatever), if I want to amass Hilton points, I might as well book through Hilton. Plus, it’s not like I’m against  free breakfast and a potential upgrade.

I learned something tonight, though, which is that ROCKETMILES OFFERS AMEX POINTS FOR HOTEL BOOKINGS. This changes things, since Amex points have so many uses. In the stark, barren once-per-lifetime wasteland, picking up 30,000 points for a weekend hotel stay could very well be the drink of water you need to stave off your point-based dehydration for another year. Wait, 30,000 points? Damn skippy 30,000 points.

At around $1200 for the stay, you’re effectively paying 4 cents per point and getting a free three-night stay at a 4-star hotel. To compare that with booking direct, you’d save around $90 booking with IHG, and you’d earn around 14,000 points. At a 1/2 cent-per-point valuation, that’s around $160 in total savings by booking direct. But, if you cashed out those 30,000 Amex points into your Schwab account, you’d get $375, meaning you could net over $200 savings through Rocketmiles.

That’s a fairly conservative estimate, too. I try to get at least 2 cents per point for my Amex points, which only further inflates the Rocketmiles value proposition. It doesn’t hurt that IHG also has weak elite benefits, so you’re missing out on very little by going through an OTA. The only hitch would be if this stay were key to requalifying for Spire Elite status or hitting one of those aforementioned Accelerate targets.

Well, there’s one other big hitch, which is that a 10,000 point-per-night bonus is the exception rather than the norm. Most hotels are in the 500-1000 point-per-night range, so if you’re out to maximize earning, your choices will be limited to one or two hotels in an entire city. The chances of those hotels meeting your geographic and budgetary needs are pretty small, and of course shelling out $600 per night at a Mandarin Oriental to earn 30,000 Amex points when you were originally in the market for a $200 Hilton is probably a dumb idea.

I’m not saying I’m never going to book direct again, but I’m for damn sure always going to check Rocketmiles before I book anything to make sure I’m not missing out on any pots of Amex gold. Has anyone else racked up Amex points this way? I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before.

You liked this post enough to read to the end, but did you like it enough to give me money? If so, check out my Patreon page.

An introductory note: Many of the big blogs have written about the Rocketmiles/Amex partnership, so I’m not exactly breaking news here. However, I just found out about it tonight and did a shallow dive into what type of value you could get out of the partnership, and I figured this analysis might be useful.

For those who aren’t familiar with Rocketmiles, it’s an online travel agency that offers you airline miles instead of discounted rates. Like any OTA, you don’t get any elite recognition or points earning at the hotel. I have used it a few times in the past, and it always works as advertised, so I have nothing bad to say about it. I just usually end up valuing elite recognition + hotel points earned for the stay more than whatever miles Rocketmiles is going to throw my way.

Like most things in this hobby, calculating whether you’re better off booking via the hotel itself or via Rocketmiles is maddeningly complicated. For instance, is your hotel chain running a promotion right now? If it’s an IHG hotel, will the stay trigger an Accelerate program bonus, because if so you probably have more to gain booking through IHG. How much is breakfast worth to you? Do you really need an upgrade, or is that just something that’s nice to have? Have you factored in the hotel points you’ll lose out on by not paying with your fancy co-brand card? And on and on.

Basically, my calculation usually comes down to the fact that I like and use hotel points, and outside of sign-up bonuses, I earn the majority of my hotel points through hotel stays. Therefore, regardless of whether 35,000 Hilton points are worth more or less than 9,000 United miles (or whatever), if I want to amass Hilton points, I might as well book through Hilton. Plus, it’s not like I’m against  free breakfast and a potential upgrade.

I learned something tonight, though, which is that ROCKETMILES OFFERS AMEX POINTS FOR HOTEL BOOKINGS. This changes things, since Amex points have so many uses. In the stark, barren once-per-lifetime wasteland, picking up 30,000 points for a weekend hotel stay could very well be the drink of water you need to stave off your point-based dehydration for another year. Wait, 30,000 points? Damn skippy 30,000 points.

At around $1200 for the stay, you’re effectively paying 4 cents per point and getting a free three-night stay at a 4-star hotel. To compare that with booking direct, you’d save around $90 booking with IHG, and you’d earn around 14,000 points. At a 1/2 cent-per-point valuation, that’s around $160 in total savings by booking direct. But, if you cashed out those 30,000 Amex points into your Schwab account, you’d get $375, meaning you could net over $200 savings through Rocketmiles.

That’s a fairly conservative estimate, too. I try to get at least 2 cents per point for my Amex points, which only further inflates the Rocketmiles value proposition. It doesn’t hurt that IHG also has weak elite benefits, so you’re missing out on very little by going through an OTA. The only hitch would be if this stay were key to requalifying for Spire Elite status or hitting one of those aforementioned Accelerate targets.

Well, there’s one other big hitch, which is that a 10,000 point-per-night bonus is the exception rather than the norm. Most hotels are in the 500-1000 point-per-night range, so if you’re out to maximize earning, your choices will be limited to one or two hotels in an entire city. The chances of those hotels meeting your geographic and budgetary needs are pretty small, and of course shelling out $600 per night at a Mandarin Oriental to earn 30,000 Amex points when you were originally in the market for a $200 Hilton is probably a dumb idea.

I’m not saying I’m never going to book direct again, but I’m for damn sure always going to check Rocketmiles before I book anything to make sure I’m not missing out on any pots of Amex gold. Has anyone else racked up Amex points this way? I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before.

Up top: if you have already decided to get the Hilton Aspire or Hilton Ascend cards, using my links to get me some extra points is mega appreciated. 

Back in April, I paid around $900 for a plate of breakfast potatoes that, thanks to my Diamond status, came with three free nights accommodation at the Hilton Conrad Hotel in Chicago. The hotel was fine (I’ll talk a little more about it in a sec), but the breakfast potatoes were fucking amazing. I’m a pretty big fan of breakfast potatoes as it is, but I had never had them presented as FRIED CUBES before.

They weren’t quite hash browns, since the outside of each cube was also somehow made up of shredded potatoes, only adding to the potatoey bliss. I don’t know how they did it, but I’m staying at the hotel next year just to get more of them. They more the outweighed any negatives from the hotel stay itself. And I know $900 is a lot to pay for some fried potato cubes, but when you factor in the cost of the free room for the weekend, it ends up not being that bad.

This was also my second Hilton stay in which I’m not really sure I got any incremental benefit from Diamond status (aside from higher points earning). I would have gotten free breakfast with Gold status, and the guy at check-in specifically told me that they weren’t offering elite upgrades. I made some comment about them being full up, and he said they weren’t full, they just weren’t offering elite upgrades. Since I’m going back next year for more potatoes, I’ll take another whack at the upgrade tree, but maybe keep that it mind if you’re booking a base room and hoping for something better. The guy actually offered me a paid upgrade to a room overlooking Michigan Avenue for like $70 per night, which also seemed kind of weird, since I thought Diamond status got you upgraded to a better room automatically.

Oh well, it wasn’t a huge deal since I grew up in Chicago and don’t really care about Michigan Avenue. Plus, I was by myself, so I didn’t need any extra space. And, the base room is plenty nice anyway. It’s not a huge room, but the bed is really comfortable, and the little couch by the window is a nice place to sit and get some work done. The expansive bathroom is great as well, with a separate toilet closet and a powerful shower. Toiletries are branded “Shanghai Tang” which sounds like the name of a racist stereotype movie character from the 1940s. Shanghai Tang and the Legend of the Jade Monkey.

Here are some photos of the room, in a handy slide show. Because of the layout, this is another room that’s hard to photograph, but it basically matches the stock photos on Hilton’s website, so just go there instead.

It’s pretty luxurious – they definitely check all the boxes you’d be looking for in a five star hotel. I’m reasonably excited to stay there again, to be honest… comparing it to the nearby London House (Curio), I’d probably give the edge to the Conrad, for a few reasons:

• The room is more solidly what I’d expect from a “luxury” hotel. Things like a giant bathroom and fancy shower, marble floors in part of the room, automatic blackout shades, and just overall nicer fixtures. The London House is good too, but it definitely feels like it’s a step down, despite being in the same price bracket.

• Unlike the London House, the Conrad has a lobby, so you don’t have to wait for your goddamn Uber in the rain.

• The breakfast credit at the Conrad is $18 per person (up to two) at the restaurant, whereas the London House offers a very limited menu plus paid options (which can’t be on the same tab).

Here are some photos of the two-story lobby. This is one of those hotels where the lobby is on the top floor, so you get some great views off the bat. There are even a couple outdoor terraces.

And here are some more photos of the Potato Sanctuary, AKA the restaurant where you get your free breakfast.

Last thing to note: the WiFi was totally non-functional. I was able to connect all my devices, but none of them could access the internet. Maybe this was user error, but I’ve never had this issue at any other hotel before. Given that premium WiFi is another elite benefit, this is another area where the Conrad totally whiffed on providing elite benefits. It didn’t ruin my stay or anything, but I ended up burning through way more data than I normally would as a result.

Overall, I think this idea of a potato restaurant also functioning as a hotel is a novel one, and I hope Hilton implements it at more properties. Just tighten up the elite recognition and I’d give it a ten out of ten. Anyone else eat these potatoes and have the same feelings about the attached hotel?

You liked this post enough to read to the end, but did you like it enough to give me money? If so, check out my Patreon page.

Up top: if you have already decided to get the Hilton Aspire or Hilton Ascend cards, using my links to get me some extra points is mega appreciated. 

Back in April, I paid around $900 for a plate of breakfast potatoes that, thanks to my Diamond status, came with three free nights accommodation at the Hilton Conrad Hotel in Chicago. The hotel was fine (I’ll talk a little more about it in a sec), but the breakfast potatoes were fucking amazing. I’m a pretty big fan of breakfast potatoes as it is, but I had never had them presented as FRIED CUBES before.

They weren’t quite hash browns, since the outside of each cube was also somehow made up of shredded potatoes, only adding to the potatoey bliss. I don’t know how they did it, but I’m staying at the hotel next year just to get more of them. They more the outweighed any negatives from the hotel stay itself. And I know $900 is a lot to pay for some fried potato cubes, but when you factor in the cost of the free room for the weekend, it ends up not being that bad.

This was also my second Hilton stay in which I’m not really sure I got any incremental benefit from Diamond status (aside from higher points earning). I would have gotten free breakfast with Gold status, and the guy at check-in specifically told me that they weren’t offering elite upgrades. I made some comment about them being full up, and he said they weren’t full, they just weren’t offering elite upgrades. Since I’m going back next year for more potatoes, I’ll take another whack at the upgrade tree, but maybe keep that it mind if you’re booking a base room and hoping for something better. The guy actually offered me a paid upgrade to a room overlooking Michigan Avenue for like $70 per night, which also seemed kind of weird, since I thought Diamond status got you upgraded to a better room automatically.

Oh well, it wasn’t a huge deal since I grew up in Chicago and don’t really care about Michigan Avenue. Plus, I was by myself, so I didn’t need any extra space. And, the base room is plenty nice anyway. It’s not a huge room, but the bed is really comfortable, and the little couch by the window is a nice place to sit and get some work done. The expansive bathroom is great as well, with a separate toilet closet and a powerful shower. Toiletries are branded “Shanghai Tang” which sounds like the name of a racist stereotype movie character from the 1940s. Shanghai Tang and the Legend of the Jade Monkey.

Here are some photos of the room, in a handy slide show. Because of the layout, this is another room that’s hard to photograph, but it basically matches the stock photos on Hilton’s website, so just go there instead.

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It’s pretty luxurious – they definitely check all the boxes you’d be looking for in a five star hotel. I’m reasonably excited to stay there again, to be honest… comparing it to the nearby London House (Curio), I’d probably give the edge to the Conrad, for a few reasons:

• The room is more solidly what I’d expect from a “luxury” hotel. Things like a giant bathroom and fancy shower, marble floors in part of the room, automatic blackout shades, and just overall nicer fixtures. The London House is good too, but it definitely feels like it’s a step down, despite being in the same price bracket.
• Unlike the London House, the Conrad has a lobby, so you don’t have to wait for your goddamn Uber in the rain.
• The breakfast credit at the Conrad is $18 per person (up to two) at the restaurant, whereas the London House offers a very limited menu plus paid options (which can’t be on the same tab).

Here are some photos of the two-story lobby. This is one of those hotels where the lobby is on the top floor, so you get some great views off the bat. There are even a couple outdoor terraces.

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And here are some more photos of the Potato Sanctuary, AKA the restaurant where you get your free breakfast.

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Last thing to note: the WiFi was totally non-functional. I was able to connect all my devices, but none of them could access the internet. Maybe this was user error, but I’ve never had this issue at any other hotel before. Given that premium WiFi is another elite benefit, this is another area where the Conrad totally whiffed on providing elite benefits. It didn’t ruin my stay or anything, but I ended up burning through way more data than I normally would as a result.

Overall, I think this idea of a potato restaurant also functioning as a hotel is a novel one, and I hope Hilton implements it at more properties. Just tighten up the elite recognition and I’d give it a ten out of ten. Anyone else eat these potatoes and have the same feelings about the attached hotel?

IHG is pretty much a worthless loyalty program in terms of elite benefits, but I do like their points. They add up pretty fast due to frequent promotions and high elite earning rates, and they’re really useful for non-glamorous redemptions like airport hotels when you want to save some money. Plus, it’s difficult but not impossible to get outsized value from IHG points, and their hotels are everywhere. So that’s the good part. The bad part is that IHG’s customer service is horrible, and they have a nasty tendency to behave in incredibly customer-unfriendly ways. My last issue with them was around a lackluster stay at the Intercontinental Chicago, and while the folks at the actual hotel were great, the back-end customer service reps took forever to respond to emails and were generally unhelpful.

Today takes the cake though… I’m not going to get all hysterical and claim that I won’t stay at an IHG hotel ever again on principle, but I’m still kind of shocked at what happened. Here goes: last fall, I noticed a fantastic redemption opportunity at the soon-to-be-opened Indigo hotel in Milan. Award rooms were only 30,000 points per night, and with daily rates usually around $400, that represented one of the best values I had ever seen for my IHG points. Based on the photos, I was actually pretty excited for the stay, especially since there would be a 1% chance that I’d get an upgraded room due to having Platinum status.

Cut to today. Thanks to an incoming link from Miles to Memories (thanks Mark!), my blog traffic has been higher than usual, which means that I’ve been paying more attention to my stats. One thing that jumped out at me was a hit from the search phrase “Indigo Milan opening date.” Uh oh. It was supposed to open in May of this year, and it occurred to me that I had never bothered to check if the hotel had actually opened.

It hadn’t. A notice on the hotel’s page says that it’s now accepting bookings for March 1, 2019 and later, which made me doubt that my stay in October would be very enjoyable. Not that IHG bothered to tell me about it, mind you. I went onto my account and saw that my reservation was still confirmed, with nothing anywhere on the page hinting at the fact that I might show up at the hotel and be shit out of luck.

I called IHG to ask them what was up, and the first person I talked to insisted that the reservation would still be good. I finally convinced her to look into it, and she came back and said that they couldn’t honor my reservation… but not because the hotel wasn’t open. No, according to this rep, since the credit card I used to hold the reservation had expired, IHG could no longer accept the reservation. I didn’t bother arguing and just asked to be transferred to a supervisor. He canceled the Indigo reservation for me, but when I kept complaining about IHG’s poor level of service, he transferred me to a third person who could only offer to rebook me in the Crowne Plaza instead.

Bottom line, IHG accepted reservations for a hotel that wasn’t open yet, pushed back the opening date, and didn’t bother to tell any of the people whose reservations were now worthless. Thank god I checked, or I actually would have shown up in Milan with nowhere to stay. It goes without saying that if you’re booked to stay at this hotel before March 1 of next year, you should probably seek other options.

There’s a silver lining though, which is that I’m just going to bite the bullet and spend 60k Hyatt points to stay at the Park Hyatt Milan. By all accounts it’s a fantastic hotel, and I can’t deny that the pics I’ve seen online are drool-worthy, even for basic rooms. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather spend 60k IHG points on a hotel that’s probably 80% as nice, but (and despite my frequent maligning of the Park Hyatt Paris), the Park Hyatt brand still has some sway over me. Plus, I can’t think of a better prelude to my first Emirates first class flight.

I suppose I should also apologize for recommending the Indigo Milan as an aspirational redemption on multiple occasions, since anyone who took my advice is probably going to get as fucked by IHG as I did. Anyone else hate IHG?

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IHG is pretty much a worthless loyalty program in terms of elite benefits, but I do like their points. They add up pretty fast due to frequent promotions and high elite earning rates, and they’re really useful for non-glamorous redemptions like airport hotels when you want to save some money. Plus, it’s difficult but not impossible to get outsized value from IHG points, and their hotels are everywhere.

So that’s the good part. The bad part is that IHG’s customer service is horrible, and they have a nasty tendency to behave in incredibly customer-unfriendly ways. My last issue with them was around a lackluster stay at the Intercontinental Chicago, and while the folks at the actual hotel were great, the back-end customer service reps took forever to respond to emails and were generally unhelpful.

Today takes the cake though… I’m not going to get all hysterical and claim that I won’t stay at an IHG hotel ever again on principle, but I’m still kind of shocked at what happened. Here goes: last fall, I noticed a fantastic redemption opportunity at the soon-to-be-opened Indigo hotel in Milan. Award rooms were only 30,000 points per night, and with daily rates usually around $400, that represented one of the best values I had ever seen for my IHG points. Based on the photos, I was actually pretty excited for the stay, especially since there would be a 1% chance that I’d get an upgraded room due to having Platinum status.

Cut to today. Thanks to an incoming link from Miles to Memories (thanks Mark!), my blog traffic has been higher than usual, which means that I’ve been paying more attention to my stats. One thing that jumped out at me was a hit from the search phrase “Indigo Milan opening date.” Uh oh. It was supposed to open in May of this year, and it occurred to me that I had never bothered to check if the hotel had actually opened.

It hadn’t. A notice on the hotel’s page says that it’s now accepting bookings for March 1, 2019 and later, which made me doubt that my stay in October would be very enjoyable. Not that IHG bothered to tell me about it, mind you. I went onto my account and saw that my reservation was still confirmed, with nothing anywhere on the page hinting at the fact that I might show up at the hotel and be shit out of luck.

I called IHG to ask them what was up, and the first person I talked to insisted that the reservation would still be good. I finally convinced her to look into it, and she came back and said that they couldn’t honor my reservation… but not because the hotel wasn’t open. No, according to this rep, since the credit card I used to hold the reservation had expired, IHG could no longer accept the reservation. I didn’t bother arguing and just asked to be transferred to a supervisor. He canceled the Indigo reservation for me, but when I kept complaining about IHG’s poor level of service, he transferred me to a third person who could only offer to rebook me in the Crowne Plaza instead.

Bottom line, IHG accepted reservations for a hotel that wasn’t open yet, pushed back the opening date, and didn’t bother to tell any of the people whose reservations were now worthless. Thank god I checked, or I actually would have shown up in Milan with nowhere to stay. It goes without saying that if you’re booked to stay at this hotel before March 1 of next year, you should probably seek other options.

There’s a silver lining though, which is that I’m just going to bite the bullet and spend 60k Hyatt points to stay at the Park Hyatt Milan. By all accounts it’s a fantastic hotel, and I can’t deny that the pics I’ve seen online are drool-worthy, even for basic rooms. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather spend 60k IHG points on a hotel that’s probably 80% as nice, but (and despite my frequent maligning of the Park Hyatt Paris), the Park Hyatt brand still has some sway over me. Plus, I can’t think of a better prelude to my first Emirates first class flight.

I suppose I should also apologize for recommending the Indigo Milan as an aspirational redemption on multiple occasions, since anyone who took my advice is probably going to get as fucked by IHG as I did. Anyone else hate IHG?