Tag Archives: Ritz Carlton

2 Product Change / Conversion Options for JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card

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Good morning everyone.  A few days ago, the $395 annual fee posted to my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card.  A few months ago, I wrote this post: Should I Keep Both Chase Sapphire Reserve & JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Cards?  In that post, I basically decided that the $300 travel incidentals credit and unused Ritz Carlton perks were not worth the $395 fee.  So when the $395 annual fee posted on my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card, I knew I had to call Chase and see what options were available.  I didn’t bother asking for a retention offer since I probably spent about $350 on the credit card during the past year, and $300 of that was reimbursed due to the travel credits.  Instead, I asked the JPMorgan Chase rep what my conversion options were.  He said there were 2 credit cards I could convert to…

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PSA: Don’t Forget your International Driver’s Permit (IDP) to Drive in Japan!

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Since I started traveling more-or-less full time around three years ago, my planning skills have gone a little down the drain. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the planning process, it’s just that I couldn’t possibly plan everything for every trip ahead of time.

The trip I most recently returned from began in Amsterdam in August and I just flew home from Japan on December 20. For the most part, there weren’t any major hitches with the trip, but there was a small one in Japan.

I had booked the Ritz-Carlton Okinawa with the three free night certificates I earned from signing up for the JPMorgan Chase Ritz-Carlton Credit Card last year. It was an easy round trip flight from Tokyo Haneda (HND) for only 15,000 Avios plus about $5 in taxes per ticket. Since the hotel is a bit far outside of Naha City, where the airport is, I had been planning to rent a car all along but hadn’t actually made the car rental reservation.

Image source: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/japan/okinawa#Rooms%20%26%20Suites

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Keep, Cancel or Convert? Chase Sapphire Reserve ($450 Annual Fee) & JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton ($450 Annual Fee)

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Good morning everyone, I have a dilemma on my hands.  The $450 annual fee is posting in the next 2 months on my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card and I need to decide if I should keep both my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card and JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card.  Both credit cards have $450 annual fees and I don’t *need* both credit cards, but what should I do?  As a reminder, I recently converted my Chase Freedom into a Chase Sapphire Reserve, but I have had my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card for almost 3 years (I applied for this credit card when the sign up bonus was 140,000 Marriott Points).  I will walk through all the perks for both credit cards and see if I have a clear answer by the end of this post.

Contender 1: Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card

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Tonei’s January Credit Card App-O-Rama Results

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Buenos diás everyone. I’m not usually one for credit card App-O-Ramas, typically preferring to apply for credit cards one at a time when they have high bonuses, but at the end of January, I decided to throw caution to the wind and apply for five new credit cards in one day, from three banks: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, Bank of America, and Chase.

Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

I finally decided to jump on the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico 60,000 Avianca LifeMiles offer that Grant wrote about in December. Like Grant, I also got instantly approved with a large credit line.

Image of the front of an Avianca LifeMiles Vuela Visa card with "Mr Grant Thomas" on the front. The numbers have been blacked out.

My card looks just like this, but it doesn’t have Grant’s name on it.

I paid my annual fee in February and made purchases on the card in March and April, but my LifeMiles balance is still zero. I emailed customer service to ask about it but got an automatic reply to call for assistance – when I did so, the representative (who I could barely hear) just said it takes 6-8 weeks for miles to post and that I should keep an eye on my balance at lifemiles.com. I’ll also email LifeMiles customer support and see if they can check whether I might have a duplicate LifeMiles account. Continue reading →

Google Flights Price Tracking, WOW Air KEF-SFO & JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Travel Credit

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Good morning everyone, happy Thursday.  I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to everyone who attended the SF Travel Hackers March Meetup last night.  I gave a presentation about my recent trip to Iguazu Falls, Argentina.  I will work on getting that presentation turned into a blog post “soon”.  In today’s post, I will show you how I used Google Flights to track a WOW Air flight from Reykjavik, Iceland (KEF) to San Francisco (SFO).  I’ve always been interested in Iceland, and even more so after reading Whitney’s posts (Iceland & What I Wish I Had Known Before Going – Part 1 and Part 2).

I’ve been planning a trip to Iceland for the last few weeks and knew the dates I wanted to travel, but I just had to wait for the price to go down.  One of the many great things about Google Flights is that you can track specific routes on specific days, and you can even track specific flights on specific days.  I received the following email from Google Flights that the WOW Air flight I was tracking dropped from $469 to $263.  Granted, this is not the cheapest possible WOW Flight I have ever seen, but the price was right for me so I jumped on the deal.

Google Flights Price Drop KEF-SFO Email Alert

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