Chase Devaluations, New Turkish Airlines Business Class Suites, All About the New Apple Watch, Amex vs Chase, and More!

Happy Monday – hope you had a great week and weekend! My weekend was pretty quick, much quicker than normal. 🙂 I had some travel arrangements to make for something that popped up quickly and trying to line up some reviews I will be getting done in the next couple of weeks. Those can be the hardest posts for me so I am trying to get better with those!

Miles, Points, and Travel

• The 2019 Boston Marathon Registration Is Now Open – What You Need to Know – If you had better than a 5 minute qualifying time for the Boston Marathon, congrats on getting in! Today, the registration reopened for everyone else. The BAA says only a small percentage of those who enter this week will be selected so good luck!
• 4 Best Ever Offers for Hilton Credit Cards – Plenty of Points to Rack Up! – If you want to rack up Hilton points without buying them, you can now get almost half a million points with these 4 cards! Check them out to see which ones will work best for you!
• New Amex Offer: Get $200 Back or 20,000 Points with $200 Spent for AT&T Wireless Business – If you have this Ames Offer, enjoy your free AT&T service for a little bit or the free Membership Reward points you get. 🙂
• September 11 – Perspective on the 17th Anniversary of that Horrible Day – I cannot believe it has been 17 years since our country was changed forever. We should never forget what was taken from us that day and how we came together as Americans to support all those that suffered so much.
• 24 Months No More: All Chase Sapphire Links Restrict Customers with New 4 Year Language – This is getting bad for people interested in Chase Ultimate Reward points – you now have to wait up to 4 years to be able to get a Sapphire card again!
• Chase Authorized User Bonus of 5,000 Points Gone on Chase Sapphire Preferred – Why? – On the heels of the news above, we also had news that the 5K point authorized user bonus is gone on the Sapphire Preferred. Why?
• 4 Things the New Apple Watch Series 4 Could Do to Pull Me From Garmin – These were the 4 things I was really hoping Apple would roll out with the Apple Watch Series 4. It turns out that none of these things came with the new Apple Watch but that did not stop me from ordering one anyway to review and compare against my favorite Garmin devices!
• Turkish Airlines To Roll Out New Business Class Suites – Turkish Airlines has a pretty consistent business class cabin and service and I enjoy both. But, they are about to really make it better when they introduce new aircraft next year with business class suites!
• 4 New Features of the Apple Watch Series 4 For Runners and Travelers – While the new Apple Watch Series 4 did not have the features I wanted, they did roll out some features that are ideal for both runners and travelers!
• The New iPhone XS Models Are Great for Google Fi and International Travel – Apple really held back on these new iPhones but they did introduce a dual-SIM arrangement (one of them being an eSIM) that should work great for Google Fi users that like to use that on international trips.
• Stacking Them Up: New Apple Watch Series 4 vs Garmin Forerunner 645 – The nearest Garmin competitor to the new Apple Watch is the Garmin Forerunner 645. Find out how they stack up against each other.
• The Apple Watch Series 4 LTE Capability Is NOT For International Travel – Apple still hasn’t fixed this (they don’t think it is “broken” so maybe I should say they haven’t made it more usable). If you wanted the cellular Apple Watch (which bumps the price up $100 per model), you should know it cannot be used for your international travel.
• What It’s Like to Have a Head of State or Government VIP Stay In Your Hotel – Hotels and VIPs are all different but here are some of my experiences about what it is like to stay in the same hotel with a president/prime minister or senior government official.
• Two Ways the New Chase 48 Month Policy Is Worse Than the Amex Lifetime Policy – Who would have thought that Amex would be better than Chase? Yet, here are two ways that Amex beats the Chase new policy.

And that is it for last week! We are almost officially at the fall travel season. I am still trying to line up a review trip to the new Grand Hyatt Athens (just waiting on getting a date that works to do a tour of the hotel to get you all as much information as possible). I will hopefully have the done in the next couple of weeks!

Thanks for reading and following along!