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Episode Description:
As a reminder you can watch this show as well at: https://www.youtube.com/@20minutetravel
This week an insane Tik Tok trend took off that invited people to take advantage of a "glitch" with Chase ATMs to score money. Chase says it amounted to fraud and people have had their bank accounts wiped out. Are these trends fundamentally changing our society?
In other news Wells Fargo may be implementing a tough new 5/24 rule that is similar to Chase. When did it start and what do we know? We also discuss: Chinese ghost cities, Bilt's new Walgreen integration, a meltdown at Denver airport, a new targeted Hyatt promo and why you should be aware of location tracking when posting to social media.
Episode Guide:
- 0:00 Perfect travel hacker meme
- 1:00 Social media travel posts and location tracking
- 3:05 Meltdown at Denver International Airport
- 6:07 Is hotel loyalty dying as brands choose owners over customers?
- 7:50 Why hotels are playing games with elite benefits more than ever
- 9:54 Chase Tik Tok trend - Glitch or fraud?
- 12:01 How Tik Tok has changed culture and how people do business
- 13:21 Wells Fargo implements their own 5/24 rule?
- 14:38 Last remind for Chase Ink Preferred 120K offer
- 15:03 Targeted Hyatt promo - 1K+ bonus per night
- 16:37 Bilt’s new Walgreen partnership - Cool HSA integration & bonus points
- 18:28 A look at Chinese ghost cities
- 20:17 Why many Chinese Ghost cities don’t stay abandoned
About the Show:
We love to travel and love to laugh! 20 Minute Travel is designed to get you all of the info you need to supercharge your travel by utilizing credit cards, travel rewards and other tricks to pay pennies on the dollar.
Shawn Coomer is the founder of Miles to Memories and has traveled all over the world with his family utilizing miles & points. He has been writing and podcasting about miles, points and travel since 2013 and has earned and spent millions of points & miles across dozens of programs.
Mark Ostermann is the former Managing Editor of Miles to Memories and is the Managing Editor at Travel on Points. He has been writing about his travel experiences since 2017 and loves to dive into the weeds so you don't have to. He also enjoys a good beer and a laugh or fifty.
Each week tens of thousands of people tune into our MtM Vegas news shows at http://www.YouTube.com/milestomemories. If you like this show check it out!
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So, Mark, we finally found a meme that perfectly describes the travel hacker and so many people that I know who have day jobs and exactly what their priorities are. Yeah, this reminded me of you when I saw it, you know, how you like book a flight and then you're like, I figured out maybe on the flight, I'll book the flight home or find a hotel. I don't know. I've got a good deal. One way we'll figure out the rest. I know so many people like that in some ways where they're just their priorities are completely off. Maybe I'm a little bit different in, you know, booking a trip without having the end result. How many people have their day jobs and they spend 80% of their time doing travel stuff instead of actually working? I think a lot of people do, you know, award searches all day at work and maybe 50 minutes of work into the day. I don't know. It worked from homes, probably made it even worse. I do have one thing to nitpick. Why is saving money so far down the list? I mean, this is a show about saving money and traveling for less. It's scary out there, Mark. And as people who travel and often post pictures, you know, sometimes we want to remain somewhat anonymous. We'll say what city we're in or we'll give some context, but we don't say what hotel we're staying at. And this video is just a reminder and there's a lot of these on the internet where people will post things and then these experts will go in and figure out exactly where they are. What country? Crazy pictures where they'll just have a tree or like a random neighborhood. And based on the look, they can figure it all out. And this video has this influencer posting from her hotel in Italy. And then one of these guys tracks down exactly the hotel where she's staying. There's no privacy anymore. Yeah. I think he even goes back and like looks at her story, Instagram stories from the last few days and is like, all right, you had gelato from here and you slept at this hotel and then you probably took this street, you know, back to this in like all kinds of craziness and I found this picture that has the headboard and so it definitely scares me. I mean, we have to do it somewhat while we're traveling. It's kind of a part of the gig. But if you aren't, you know that, especially females, I would post it when you get back. I don't know. It's tough. Everybody wants to share as it's happening and it gets scary for sure. I for the most part have stopped sharing when I'm live at a hotel or do it like the last day before I'm leaving. There's been a couple of people in the miles and points space who have been outed where they'll call the hotel and try to mess with them, you know, things like that. So, you know, nothing too crazy and that it is always something to be aware of though. When you're out, when you're not at home, when you're doing things and then whatever you're putting out publicly, just understand that it's going to everybody. And there are some people who one have good skills and two may not have your best interests in mind. Yeah. Everybody's got something out there that hates them. So yeah, you're giving them fuel to fire. It reminds me of back in the day where you hear stories of fans calling the other teams, you know, the opposing teams hotel and just dialing them up. I think I was on the last dance for for Michael Jordan was getting like calls all night trying to keep them awake before playoff games and stuff. So that kind of thing can happen to you even if it's, you know, as a joke, it can really wear you out. So yeah, be cautious. Our next story is crazy just because of the videos and the pictures that came out of it. But did the Denver airport tram broke down so many of these airports these days are relying on these trains and trams to get you to the terminal without any real alternative way to do it. And so the trains broke down for a while. The train is down in sort of this basement area and people started getting stuck down there and then it got really, really crowded to the point where they had a block people from coming in. Eventually a lot of people missed their flights and they were able to get the trains running. But just the pictures of that mass crowd waiting for the train, what a miserable way to start and just another reminder that Denver International Airport, just because you have so much land to work with doesn't mean you need to build this massive airport that doesn't function well for passengers. I have one buddy that absolutely hates Denver, like all things Denver Airport and I find it kind of funny. We've experienced their TSA and how that can get to be a mess and there's not enough room there for people to get through and it's just kind of like craziness and this is both of our worst nightmares getting trapped in a space that you can't get out of and people just flooding it more and more and how hot and uncomfortable and scary it can get at times when that happens. So yeah, I think Atlanta does a decent job where they have the trams, but you can also walk between terminals and stuff like that. My favorite of course, DTW Detroit. They have the tram on the inside, but you can walk throughout it all. It's just an internal tram within the concourse. You don't like go from one to the next on it and stuff. So I think they really do need to think those things through like something like this can mess up several airlines worth of flights for days when it goes down and it's their fault. It's not the airlines fault. Yeah, it really is a terrible airport. Sorry to all the people who love Denver International. It's just too big to spread out. The TSA area is a problem. They did not build enough space for that. One of my favorite stories ever is my buddy. I think you've heard this story or been around when he was telling it when he got stranded at the Denver airport for two days because there was a blizzard and he was like the last train because there's a train that goes to downtown. He was on the last train to the airport and had to sleep in the terminal for like two days. It felt like Tom Hanks. They ran out of food. Everything is in such an epic story and of course it happened in Denver. Sounds like a good story to me. Sounds like a good time. So Mark, I know you're a milio user. They're the sponsor of this video. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it? Milio is a business business payment system that really makes my life easier. The best thing about it is it allows you to use a credit card for vendors that don't accept them. You know, I use it to pay my gardener. I pay utilities, stuff like that. And then I can earn points on the purchase. You know, it's great. You have a signup bonus you're working on or a spending offer or something like that. And milio has a great offer for 20 minute travel viewers. Yeah, they have something that's not available to the public. You sign up, you make a $200 payment and they'll give you $200 cash back talking about try it before you buy it. How about like getting paid to try it. And then once you trigger this, you make your payment, milio will reach out via email, set it all up so you can get your payment. Love that personal service. Sounds like a great deal. I'm going to do it right after recording the show. Thanks to milio for sponsoring this video. So Gilbert over at God Save the Points had an interesting article about hotel, loyalty, programs, hotel management companies like Marriott, Hyatt, IHD, choosing owners over the customers. And what people don't really know is that most new hotels are almost all new hotels are owned by real estate investment trusts or institutional investors and the hotel companies work really closely with them to align the product and everything else. And this article is so spot on. I want to just have everybody read it to understand where the true motivations are. I've had some behind the scenes looks and it's interesting to hear executives from these companies talk about their relationship with owners. And basically when you hear them talk, the owners are the customers. They really are doing everything they can to be more attractive than the other brand over there. And what's really changed is now with loyalty programs and perks and stuff like that. We see all kinds of properties trying to get out of them. And we know why there's really no soul behind anything running those hotels or owning the hotels. It's all about the bottom line, the spreadsheet, the return on investment. The hotel owners are the customer. We are the products. We are the things that they're selling to the hotel owners. Hey, if you sign up with our brand with Hyatt, we can bring you these customers and we have higher end customers that spend more money on properties, stuff like that. And the status perks and all that stuff they offer to us is just a way to get us in the door so that they can package us up and sell us to the owners. And that's why you see a lot of these hotels, switch brands, you know, some several times over a decade, like they'll just keep changing, flipping through brands. I have a cousin that is an HR person at a big hotel in Michigan and they switch brands because the owner didn't want to have to do a breakfast buffet anymore. So they left Marriott and went to win them because they didn't have to offer that. Like that was a big sticking point. The games they'll play to try to block you access to one-year breakfast or just having a standard available room, you know, they all do these little games and the loyalty brands just turn their heads to it. Yeah, I mean, it's all part of the game, right, is to, you know, grow their portfolio. They've all gone asset light, which means they, all these companies used to own hotels. I mean, some of them, they still own some hotels, but basically over the last 10, 15 years, they've been selling off all their land, all their properties, and they've turned themselves into management companies with a loyalty product. As you said, the customers are really the product and the owners are the customers and it really is about the bottom line and everything from the brand standards to, you know, the decor in the rooms, everything has been chosen basically as Gilbert puts it to get the highest net worth customer for the least amount of money. That's really what they're trying to do with any of these brands and how they've segment into the market. It's fascinating to hear the behind the scenes when this is discussed, which I've been privy to some of those conversations, but yeah, don't be loyal, especially when you have MX, FHR, and all these other virtuoso and all these other programs, where you can get a lot of the elite perks. So unless you're traveling like crazy or you can take advantage of status matches, being loyal to these companies, maybe not always the best thing to do. Yeah, or just book into the room that gives you those perks, you know, book into a room that has lounge access if you want the lounge breakfast, stuff like that, it will usually end up being cheaper for you than chasing the status unless you spend a ton of nights out there. You should mention that this is a lot different than airline programs. I mean, the loyalty programs of airlines is basically where all their profit comes from, but they still own the airlines. They still put you in those seats. They provide the service there. They want to keep it where it brings you in, but doesn't give up too much. But it also is like their whole, they own the whole thing, so it's a little bit different than hotels. Yeah, Gilbert points that out and makes a great analogy saying if every airplane was owned by a different group of investors, and then American Airlines had to figure out their loyalty program to please each investor for each plane, that's sort of how the difference is in the hotel space, great article, great discussion. And I think more people need to figure all of this out because it's all so true. But let's talk about the dumbest thing I've ever seen on the internet, Mark. That is people going and writing fake checks to chase the cash them out. So there's this TikTok trend where it said, you know, they people figured out if you could deposit a massive check into a chase ATM, it would give you a percentage of the check amount as available right away, and then they would go take all the cash out. Now this isn't anything new. The writing of fake check depositing it, cashing it, it's a felony in most places. I know here in Nevada, it's a huge deal because of all the casinos, but people thought that they could write this big check, take the money out, and then it was theirs. And obviously that is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Shut down TikTok. Please. Can we just shut down TikTok? All this stupid crap that they have people do and it makes me scared for the younger generation from my kids, your kids, your daughter growing up and seeing this stuff. And people start to think that like what's on TikTok is real life or is good sound advice and it's usually isn't and they're just doing it for likes and this is just craziness. Like it's just check a different way to do check kiting or fraud. Like there's no scam or there's no glitch. It's fraud. Like you're perpetuating fraud. I don't understand how anybody can't see this. It's crazy. People are going to be prosecuted or all these fines and everything sad. This is a serious crime doing it and you know, doing it intentionally is nuts. This is different than if you went to your bank account and there was a glitch and they gave you an extra million dollars and you cash that out based on my understanding. You would still have to repay it in that case, but probably wouldn't be charged with a crime because it wasn't your fault that you did it stuff like that. But this is just a crime. You're committing a crime and then how do you think you're going to keep the money? And then yeah, obviously they already clawed back the money. Some people's accounts are negative. But if you took 20 grand or 15 grand or even a thousand dollars, you don't think they're going to come after you. Like I just don't understand the end game here. I understand people getting excited. I mean, I don't really understand people getting excited about, you know, being able to get the money out right away. But like where did you think this was going? And if you take that much energy and put it into elsewhere, I guarantee you can make money other ways than this. Yeah, this one really, this one really got me. Yeah, unless you're like doing it for 20 grand, then you're leaving the country and never coming back to a country that can't extra you. But is that worth 20 grand? I don't know. It's just bizarre. And people think that, you know, this happened with DoorDash before that they were having free orders and people weren't paying for it. So they started ordering like 319 lobsters and like, come on. What is with people posting on TikTok and social media, them committing a crime? Like how stupid are you? Our society is being changed because of this. This reminds me of like the Chipotle thing where Chipotle was giving people small portions and then some people started filming the employees because a memo got leaked that said, if you're being filmed, make sure you fill up the portions big and then a million people descended on them with cameras. And then yeah, there was a whole trend of if the bowl wasn't big enough at the end, you would just walk out. So make them make the whole bowl. And then before you pay, just walk out. And this is really detrimental to businesses and you never know how these trends are going to take off. They changed the whole playing field and the way that they have to deal with social media. And obviously they want to. It's a great marketing presence, but sometimes it goes bad and TikTok trends kind of turn on you. Yeah, I don't want to ever I want a restaurant because of all the crap they have to deal with with social media and influencers and all that stuff. It makes it so I wouldn't want to get involved in maybe others, but yeah, it's a crazy world. There's our defensive chase for the day, but let's attack another bank. I don't know. I'm not talking, but Wells Fargo has a 524 rule. They copied Chase. So five revolving accounts in the last 24 months, they've already been pretty tough to get credit cards with. And now this seems like they're being even tougher and their rules are even stricter than Chase. Yeah, this is something that we were, you know, privy to from somebody that works with Wells Fargo. We're still looking for data points on it, but we were told August 28th this rolled out. And so if you've had five, you know, new accounts, personal accounts, for the most part, some business accounts account towards it, but most don't. In the last 24 months, you'll get automatically denied for Wells Fargo. I've usually been denied for Wells Fargo anyway, but they also are including authorized users, which with Chase, you could somewhat finagle your way out of it. And this hits extra hard home to the people that had the built card, like the original built card that wasn't issued by Wells Fargo. And they were just told recently that their card is going to get closed at the end of the year and they need to reapply for the Wells Fargo version. Well, they've been sitting on their hands for a little bit. They're like done. If you're over 524, you can't get it now. So I have to ask the question that everybody out there is wondering, do accounts that Wells Fargo open for you without your permission count towards this new rule? I think it was a lot of checking accounts, but yeah, good. So one last quick reminder, the ink preferred that 120k offer ends tomorrow. If you're watching this today comes out and September 5th, 9am Eastern, we've talked about it on previous shows, but since we had this show before, you know, before it ends, just to look out for that and to check it out. Yeah, one of the best offers out there and 20k, I'm assuming we'll probably drop back down to 100k for the $8,000 and spend. So this is 20% better. So if you had your eye on it, make sure you grab it. So Hyatt sending out targeted promotions of which I got no love. We have the link that you can check to see if you're eligible for this, but this one version of the promo, you get 5,000 bonus points after five eligible nights, 10,000 after 15 nights, 15 after 25 nights, it goes up from there could be super lucrative. And I was thinking for like Rio stays, it would actually be great, but then I checked and I'm not targeted for anything I had put me out in the past year. Yeah, I think this is like a super targeted offer because we, you know, shared it in travel on points to and every report that I've seen so far is not targeted. So I don't know who is targeted for this. The catch is like you have 90 days to do it and there doesn't seem to be an end date to it either that I could find on their terms or anything. So, but once you activate it or check, if you do get it, that starts the clock. So you almost want to wait until you have a stay coming up like a couple of days before your stay to check and see if that triggers it, at least assuming that you have more stays towards the end of the period. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I couldn't wait. I had to check. I did too and got rejected. Hopefully we see a good promotion for the fall from Hyatt because I would love to rack up some cheap real nights. So I'm still in the game for that. But make sure to check if you're like Mark said, don't don't do it and get yourself screwed over. But I think everybody in this hobby does that, right? We can't wait. Like, you know, I know it's great to wait, but you got to know right now. Yeah. Unless it's like one that like the American Airlines one where it said you are targeted once you click except it starts it like that, I can wait on. But if it's like, you don't know if you have it unless you click on it, I'm going to click it. Like just I will. So built. We've covered built a lot on the show. I feel like recently, they have a new Walgreens earning bonus. I know everybody's so excited for Walgreens. My wife must be because she's like a rewards master with Walgreens. She brings home all this stuff that she gets for free with rewards. So there's a whole ecosystem. I don't even know anything about with Walgreens, but you get two X points on Walgreens branded items and then a hundred built points on prescription refills. Is this a worthy perk? I mean, the cool thing is that this isn't tied to the card. So you can just download the bill app and put whatever card you use at Walgreens. Like if you use the Freedom Flex for three times at the pharmacy, you can use that card and it will still, it should still trigger it. So that's cool. But I think the really unique thing is that this is tied into, and maybe this is scary too with the information, I don't know, but this is tied into if you purchase something at Walgreens and it is, you know, FSA or HSA refundable, you can, it will alert you to that. And with a couple clicks, it will process that, take the money from your FSA account, pay your credit card. That's kind of next level. I think people will like that aspect of it. Yeah, it's one of the good things coming from all the data sharing. But that's what really this is, is data sharing. Everybody getting our data, selling it back and forth, but you do get some cool perks from that. And it is neat. You don't need the card. And like I said, there is a whole ecosystem for Walgreens rewards that my wife is super into bring some all kinds of free stuff. I don't have time to kind of dive into that, but certainly there's got to be more people out of who like it. So, you can restart, start reselling toothpaste instead of toys pretty soon. My, I have, we have a whole closet full of toothpaste. So, you know, don't pay anything. I guess it's cool not to have to pay for that kind of stuff. I, you know, she just got it, her sister got into it, got her into it. She claims she doesn't spend that much time on it. So we'll see. And we know I've deep-dived on worse programs than that. Yeah. So Nesta, hey, Benji. So now onto some cool S go cities. You want to talk about Chinese go cities. I've had the opportunity to be in some and there are some amazing things. So one of the things China's done over the last 20 years, I would say, but maybe before that is they'll often build cities that where nobody exists to kind of move people out there. But also in some of their big cities, they build these, you know, new areas that are miles and miles long. I had the opportunity to visit one in Nanchong a few years ago where it was outside the city center, but it was probably 10 miles of new apartment buildings where nobody lived wide avenues, like one car on them. And it was just outside of the city that was already established. Houdong was another one 20 years ago, but they're all over the place. There's some cool ones, including a fake Paris. Yeah. This is bizarre. Like they have all the Paris architecture. They have their own Eiffel Tower, other Paris landmarks that you've seen like parks and and all this stuff. Like built one to one. Like you look at it and it looks just like you're there. Which is bizarre. Some might call it cheesy. Some kind of thing is cool, but like nobody lives here and I didn't know anything about this really. And I saw something on social media about it, so I dug into it. And I guess a lot of it is because, you know, people that live in China can only invest in China. So this is kind of like a way to secure their money. They buy real estate, but the price, they keep the prices high. So nobody wants to move in there because it's not like it's a deal or anything. And they just sit on these properties for years and years and they sit vacant. It's so bizarre. A lot of people have said there's a property bubble because of it. It's beyond the scope of this show, but it does create some interesting areas and some interesting dynamics when you're there. In Nanchong, for example, my friend Dave and I visited a theme park there that was part of this new development, a brand new theme park. And like I said, there wasn't people other than at the park within, you know, 10 miles of there and there was just apartment building after apartment building, all the infrastructure for a city. Now I will say that a lot of these quote unquote ghost cities have been built and eventually been filled in. People do move to them. So like there's a Western narrative, I think that these places are just sitting empty forever. Some of them do and they end up crumbling and getting torn down. But for the most part, they do eventually grow. It's like they build the whole city before the people come. Yeah, it's it's unique and that you don't usually see this and you don't think anywhere else that pops up a whole city without people there. Like, you know, usually it grows over time. They build new buildings, add people, all that type of stuff. So it's it's insane. But I love it. I want to go to the Paris one, walk around see it. It's like going to Paris, but without any of the crowds, sign me up and then you could go down to Macau and go to the Parisian Venetian, the Londoner, and that's one of the reasons they exist in that way. And we moved away from theming, like in Vegas casinos and stuff, but in Macau and the Chinese culture, they love that sort of destination theming stuff. So they can visit on one quarter of Macau, London, Paris and Venice and then all throughout the country, there's all kinds of different places like this that are built to sort of emulate everywhere else and allows the domestic tourism. Why did the Chinese have to go to Paris when they can go to their own version? The baguettes might not be as good, but you got everything else. So let us know what you guys think about anything we talked about today, the Go Cities, that insane TikTok chase thing. I still can't believe that this is America in 2024. Everything else we talked about, leave a comment. We do a new show every Wednesday and we'll be back next week with another show. Thank you so much for watching, talk to you next time. Have a good week, everybody. (dramatic music)
