About Gary Leff

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 »

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Chase’s Big Cost Advantage Makes it Possible to Fund Rich Rewards, Re-Sign Partners

Sep 09 2015

The biggest long-term threat to rewards credit cards is declining interchange fees, as the cost to process transactions falls each dollar pushed through a card’s network is less valuable and thus less worth incentivizing with miles or other rebates.

And indeed, Chase’s interchange fee income fell 2% in the first half of 2015 despite greater charge volume. But Chase has a deal with Visa that allows it to get aggressive hanging onto partners and bringing new ones on — and it’s highly-incentivized to do so.

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United, Delta, or American Elite? Status Match to Copa and Get Free United Club Access!

Sep 09 2015

For a long time the way to get free United Club access has been to match status to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles. They’ve been inconsistent over the years in how they’ve accepted matches (first via email and then via web form), how long they’ve taken to reply (quickly vs months), and what status they’ve been willing to match (sometimes United status, sometimes only competitor alliances, sometimes only top tier status). But it’s status that lasts two years.

It turns out there’s another Star Alliance program offering status matches, and there are successful reports from United and American elites both of getting matches that allow for United Club access.

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