Plastiq.com is a service that will charge your credit card and mail checks on your behalf. (With some vendors they also make electronic ACH payments.)
Their usual fee for this is 2.5%. It’s worth it to incur that fee if you’re earning a signup bonus with the credit card charges, or you’re meeting a spending threshold for a bonus.
Right now Mastercard payments are costing just 1.5%, and you can even pay a residential mortgage with a Mastercard.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A reader shared a bizarre email exchange with the general manager of a full service upscale Marriott hotel. Being shorted points on $15 of room rate per night was enough to push him to Hilton.
Starbucks was asked about devaluing their program on their earnings call and they claimed customers don’t mind because fewer customers picked up the phone to call and complain than they had anticipated and fewer customers are complaining about this devaluation than their 2016 devaluation.
Love is a wonderful thing, and the excitement of a new and budding relationship is a feeling few people can match with their other experiences. Still, my recommendation would be for a discrete trip to the lav if you must and not to do this inflight (or during the boarding process).
First class upgrades are tougher than ever, but there’s real advice on how to get them. You can take the Wee Willie Keeler approach which is a very good one. You can hope for an operational upgrade.
There are also upgrade tips that make you look like an idiot.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker explained a year and a half ago that executive bonuses were determined by their ability to hit these profit figures, earning partial bonuses at $3 billion, and more at the $5 billion and $7 billion levels.
So what happened to executive bonuses when the airline failed to meet this goal for 2018? No one received bonuses, just as the CEO promised. Executives received bonuses.
I think that Marriott has done a better job with their program than many give them credit for. Marriott Rewards never offered suite upgrades. They’ve increased the number of brands that have a breakfast benefit. Since the Starwood merger late checkout became a guarantee. And they’ve introduced 24 hour check-in and Ambassador services at the top end of the program.
At the same time they’ve had incredible challenges over the past year. There are still IT challenges, even booking rooms at times at Marriott.com. There are huge challenges getting a sprawling network of 7000 hotels to consistently deliver on points and benefits promised by the program.
In the fall I walked through American Airlines financials to show that the airline is losing money flying but earning an overall profit thanks to selling frequent flyer miles to banks.
That remained the case for the last quarter and full year of 2018.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
