Secret Shopping the New Chase Sapphire Banking and Pay to Upgrade Priority Pass Lounge Access

by Gary Leff

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News and notes from around the interweb:

  • If you have the old IHG Rewards Club Visa and you get the new IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card then at least for the time being you can stack both the former’s 10% back on redeemed points and the latter’s 4th night free on redemptions.

  • Senate Bill 2650: Aviation Empowerment Act would make it legal for private pilots to post where they’re flying and bring folks along who kick in for gas money. Some of you will oppose this because (1) it’s offered by a Republican, and (2) the Obama administration opposed it, but there’s hardly anything unreasonable about it. (HT: @crucker)

  • Richard Anderson went from Chairman of Delta, taking subsidies for his airline while railing against subsidies for his competitors, to head of Amtrak where his job is primarily to seek federal subsidies. His leadership at Amtrak is being attacked by his predecessor. Joseph Boardman appears to believe that since Amtrak is a state-owned enterprise it should focus on its long haul service regardless of passenger demand, but aims his criticisms at disingenous process of current leadership. (HT: The Forward Cabin)

  • The Hong Kong airport lounge that Priority Pass customers can pay a upcharge to use

  • Betterment has a new savings/checking account combo that Doctor of Credit says is absolutely useless. You don’t get immediate access to money, your rate of return is lower than some alternatives, and these tradeoffs come with losing FDIC insurance to boot. Which is too bad, because Betterment now has Maggie Siff (Wendy Rhoades, Billions) pitching for them.

  • Heh.

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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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

Comments

  1. Why would you drag politics into the blog without reason? Lots of Senate bills are introduced by a member of one political party or the other. So what? The question is whether a bill is good or not.

  2. I agree with Christian above. We can make our own judgement on the White Supremacist KKK supporter Trump’s proposals on our own.

  3. I agree with Christian above. We can make our own judgement on the White Supremacist KKK supporter presidents proposals on our own.

  4. I agree with Christian above. We can make up our own mind regardless of it being supported by the White Supremacist KKK lover in the White House

  5. Not sure why you felt the need to inject politics into this post. Seems unnecessarily divisive.

Comments are closed.