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The Amex Platinum has gotten better since the last time I wrote about retention bonuses , but the fee has also gone up, too.  I'd heard that they were now allowing you to request a retention bonus via the online chat app on their website so I gave that a try. Long story short, after 5 minutes of chatting in my web browser with a rep, my card has a "spend $4000 in 90 days, get 55,000 points" bonus/challenge on it.  It seemed like the rep was required to inform me about all of the new options on the card that made it worth the annual fee, but I just politely said things like "well, I don't actually use that very much" to each of the things they rattled off. After about a minute of that they sent me the spending challenge retention bonus, which I had to officially consent to.  We're definitely planning on doing that much spending in the next couple of months, so we're not going to need to do anything crazy to meet that goal. Yes, I could have just gotte...

The beauty of transferrable points (like Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards) is that you can shop around a variety of airlines for an award seat and then instantly transfer your points to the airline where you've found a good itinerary. Given how competitive the battle for award seats is (especially this year!), a delay of even an hour can mean your seats are long gone by the time your points show up.  Chase Marketing (and the travel bloggers who make a large share of their revenue from credit card affiliate links) like to sell you on the idea that these transfers are instant. But if you search through the FlyerTalk forums , it's clear that they're only instant some of the time. In my case, I needed to transfer some points to United for a Business Class flight from New York to Seoul, so I transferred the points, logged out of United.com and logged back in (the usual procedure to make the miles show up), and... nothing. So I waited, and waited... made dinner...

I've seen a bunch of marketing hype from United about how they'll intentionally delay a departure so connecting customers on delayed flights won't miss their plane. I figured it was mostly just hot air and didn't give it much thought. Until Sunday.  Rain delayed the Newark-SFO leg of Tim's trip back to Sydney. His connection was tight to begin with, and once the delay hit 45 minutes, he was certain he'd misconnect. He asks a United agent in the lounge if he could just switch to the next day but she said "we're expecting storms tomorrow too, so that likely won't fix anything."  He decides to just wait it out, and they end up taking off at 8:12 instead of 6:30. He's 99% certain he's going to miss his connection to Sydney, but then he checks his United app as they're about to land in SFO and it has a banner at the top saying "We're about to save the day for a few customers with a tight connection. Thanks for standing by while...

We were excited to hear the news that Japan was raising its daily arrival quota to 30,000 on the 1st of July. Lots of travel blogs and magazines are writing glowing puff pieces about traveling to Japan but they're all VERY light on specifics. We're looking to meet up with Tim somewhere in Asia in October and have all really been hoping for Japan to reopen, so I decided to go looking for the devil in all of those (missing) details.  Long story short: Under current guidelines, you are permitted NO unsupervised time while in Japan.  Yeah, that's a hard no from us. We'd been looking at a Kyushu bike tour for the visit since we've spent so little time in that part of the country. We've all spent enough time in Japan that most of the "Best of Japan" trips that are on offer look completely boring and tedious (none of us needs to be led through the Shibuya scramble crossing wearing matching lapel pins following a lady in a jaunty hat carrying a little yellow...

As I mentioned in my post about Turo , the huge fleet cuts rental car companies made during the pandemic have left people scrambling to find a rental car as the world quickly returns to its old travel patterns. We've had trouble finding any cars at our favorite location (Albany Amtrak) and when we do find cars elsewhere, they're always really expensive. I'd heard about a new car rental start-up called Kyte that completely does away with the concept of car rental lots and instead has an employee come to you on both ends of the trip to deliver and pick-up the car. We were planning a drive up the California coast through Big Sur and figured we'd give Kyte a shot.  Long story short : it was super convenient and really reasonably priced,  especially for a 1-way trip.  We booked our trip to start at 10am from the apartment where we were staying in West Hollywood. We got an alert that our delivery person (called a "Kyte Surfer" in their lingo) would be a little lat...

Unquestionably the best Business Class seat I've ever flown in. Pros New Kengo Kuma-designed seat with huge amounts of space and privacy Toto Washlet in the lavatory ANA's flight crew are incredibly helpful and attentive without being too doting Huge in-flight entertainment screen that pairs over bluetooth with the ANA mobile app on your phone Vastly cheaper Wi-Fi than they've ever offered before Food I'd actually eat on the ground Proper pajamas and slippers  Haneda lounge was nice: showers, chef-cooked meals, Wi-Fi Cons Haneda airport is still in full Covid shutdown mode. If you don't have lounge access your food and beverage options are severely limited The British Airways lounge at JFK is pretty dismal Tips There are 2 rows of Business Class ahead of the galley next to First, I love this little mini-cabin.  Be aware that in odd-numbered rows the seats face backward, but they're more private and closer to the window .  How I did it 105,000 Amex points transfe...