PointsHoarder 31: Strategic partnerships abound

Gracias por escuchar el episodio de esta semana de PointsHoarder. This main focus this week is on a few different partnerships and how those relationships make things either good or bad for consumers. Usually it is good, but not always.

First on that list, United has four different partnerships which came up in the past couple weeks:

Thanks to a deal with Mercedes-Benz some passengers in Global First or Global Services members may now find that they are able to connect between flights in Houston or Chicago in a car rather than through the terminal.
Thanks to a deal with Marriott elites in the United Program get to be Marriott Gold now and Marriott’s higher level elites get United Silver Premier. Similar to the Delta/SPG program, but also different.
Wall & Main wants to build a new crowd-funding platform and they want you to help pay their seed capital. You can get a ton of miles in exchange, but it is at a relatively high price (though cheaper than retail).
United has gone exclusive with RocketMiles and cut off PointsHound from earning MileagePlus points for hotel bookings.

Some good there and some bad.

Delta announced a few improvements this week as well. They’re altering their same-day change (SDC) policy again, this time in favor of customers. Gold Medallion or higher members will be able to SDC without paying the $50 fee which cropped up during the last round of changes, among other things. The fare bucket limits still apply.

Delta also announced expansion in Seattle with a new London route launching. Is the Alaska Airlines feed really working or is there something else to it?

Finally, EVA awards are back online at the United website. So are ANA domestic flights. And the ANA domestic options are pretty interesting in terms of routes and timings available.

Lots of fun to be had in this week’s episode, and we mostly still did it in English, thank goodness.