SOMETHING, ABSOLUTELY: Hack My Trip recently compiled a vast amount of information into a reader-friendly side-by-side comparison of frequent-flyer benefits. We don’t fly enough to even think about trying to get status with an airline, but for those of you who do, this is worth a look. And now The Points Guy has done something similar with hotel status, though he only looks at top-tier status (i.e. Hilton Diamond is covered, but not Hilton Gold). Mommy Points details her mattress runs which helped her qualify for Hyatt diamond status.
For those of you not in the know, a mattress run is the act of purchasing nights at a hotel that you don’t really need or want in order to get or keep status and/or bonus points. Why, you ask, do people do these thing? Let’s quote Mommy Points:
In the end, $250 for four mattress runs netted me 3,000 points from Diamond amenity bonuses, an extra 10,000 points from the recent promo, approximately 1,625 points from regular points + 30% Diamond bonus, and roughly 535 Ultimate Reward points by paying with my Chase Sapphire Preferred. That comes to 15,160 points that I value at a minimum of 1.5 cents each – and usually redeem for about 2 cents each. That means about $227 in value was earned from the points. That makes the stays almost a wash if you look at it that way. Of course, most of all it also helped me re-qualify for Diamond for all of 2013.
If you look at TPG’s table, you’ll see that Hyatt diamond status gives you free internet, breakfast, suite upgrades, and bonus points. Not too shabby for a little extra planning!
GREAT BRIDGE GROUP UPDATE: Following up on yesterday’s item, we completed our registration and entered our Chase data. Result: ERROR! No rewards for us. Then it occured to us that Quicken was not enabled on our Chase account; once we did that, we were able to add the account. Next, we tried one of our Amex cards, and it worked on the first try.
When you add cards, greatbridgegroup.com downloads all your transactions from the past few months and calculates your cash back, so we’ve already got money waiting for us on the next payout date of March 7, 2013. GBG caps the quarterly payments at $75, which is smart on their part as it will reduce the impact of people who like to game the system (ahem). Will the company be around to make the first payment? Stay tuned! If GBG does manage to find a viable business model, we’re more than happy to fork over our credit card transactions for $300 per year.
ONE MORE THING ABOUT TARGET: We just stumbled upon the Totally Target website. We’re not into the coupon scene too much, being mostly concerned with the low-hanging fruit (ahem), but we have to say, we are impressed with Kerry’s post on the $10/$50 deal.
AND FINALLY: The Fark headline put it best: “$50 for a crappy cup of coffee“. Indeed.
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