Citi Adds Lifetime Language, Chase's New 3/24 Rule & Bilt's New Partner Is An Old Friend!

Shawn Coomer (0:00)

Citi has new, terrible application rules, Chase has a new 324 rule, and Bilt added a transfer partner that we've all been waiting for. All of that and more coming up right now on MTM Travel.

Mark Ostermann (0:12)

Have we been waiting for it? I haven't.

Shawn Coomer (0:15)

Benji is triggered right now.

Well, happy Thursday, everyone. Hope you guys are having a great week. As you guys are watching this, Mark is over in Europe, in the Azores.

Mark Ostermann (0:33)

Well, I probably won't be in the Azores when you're listening to this, but I'll be on my way there. Hopefully, I got an overnight in Lisbon, so I'll probably be there sweating. It's supposed to be like 90

Of course, we're driving around the other day, and my son's asking about why don't Europeans use air conditioning. He pulls up this map of percentage of places that have air conditioning, and the worst in Europe is Portugal at 18 percent.

Shawn Coomer (0:59)

Well, I will say that all my struggles with hotels in Europe, the Hyatt Regency there, beautiful air conditioning and a beautiful new property. So there's a recommendation for everybody.

But are we going to get started with the complaining about the air conditioning? I haven't seen the actual temperatures in Europe are hotter than they were 20 years. I guess it makes sense why they didn't have it, but I know I talked to somebody who's British the other day, and they were talking about how they're starting to actually install air conditioners in a lot of places now.

Mark Ostermann (1:30)

All right. Somebody open up a screen business over there. Make your money while you can. Retire a billionaire. I don't understand it. I say it too often, but I brought it up to my sons. We're going to hear about the screens again. Yes. He goes, in Germany, they don't like air conditioning. He's talking about it. They just open the windows at night. I'm like, yeah, and then all the bugs come in. It's terrible.

Shawn Coomer (1:51)

Speaking of Germany, I saw this thing. I'll see if I can throw up the tweet. This morning, it was somebody was responding to Lufthansa, and Lufthansa is like, you already contacted us on the other social media platforms, and our answer is not going to magically change. That's what they tweeted out to the person. I was like, that is German customer service for you right there.

Mark Ostermann (2:09)

Yeah. Lufthansa. I got to fly them coming up in the February, the 222 business class, which is probably my least favorite product, but hey, it's getting us over there, and it's better than Coach.

Shawn Coomer (2:21)

Better than those Philippine Airlines, Engel Black Flats. Yeah, I said it right.

Mark Ostermann (2:26)

You can go all Kroger's and Meyers on it like you're from the Midwest.

Shawn Coomer (2:29)

Somebody called me out in the Diamond Group for saying Philippines Airlines all the time. I'm like, yeah, I got my Midwestern on, and for people who don't know, people in Michigan love to add the S to the end of everything, like Meyers, Kroger.

Mark Ostermann (2:41)

No, it's just names of places that are also last names like Kroger, Kroger's. I don't know. It happens.

Shawn Coomer (2:48)

Well, it's the Philippines. It makes sense that it should be Philippines. I don't know, but there you go. But let's talk Miles & Points credit card stuff that we have to go over, and we're going to go bank by bank here. So Chase, to start off with, reminder, October 1st is when that whole change for the Sapphire Preferred, the devaluing of the transfer of Hyatt points. So you want to make sure you get that one-to-one before then.

Mark Ostermann (3:10)

Yeah. If you're not going to be playing the upgrade game to the Sapphire Reserve, when you got a stash of points, you want to move over some there now. I think a lot of people still, to this day, think of Chase as Hyatt slash United, and that's kind of where they go with their points. So whatever your normal influx over the next year or so, we'll push that over to Hyatt, maybe take a look back or look at your travels over the next 12 months, and then you can kind of game plan further down when you need to rehash those points or refill them and go from there. But there was a whole article I wrote when this went out that breaks down your options.

But I would definitely move a substantial portion of my points if that's what I normally use them for.

Shawn Coomer (3:53)