MyStackRunnethOver

Recently spent three nights at the Andaz Singapore, as a fun layover on the way somewhere else. After reading a bit on Reddit we chose it over the Grand Hyatt because of the location: closer to the water, right between two great walkable neighborhoods (Chinatown one way, the Muslim quarter in the other). And breakfast was supposed to be good

My review is: all of the above is true, location is great for getting around via transit or on foot, and the breakfast is indeed fantastic. And. That’s. It.

Everything else about the hotel itself is mediocre, starting with a musty smell when you walk into the ground floor elevator lobby which also pervaded both of our group’s suites. The gym is ok - n

I’m reading this book for the first time. It’s hysterical. But there’s something I cannot understand for the life of me. Janet, the protagonist, has arrived home from boarding school for the Christmas holiday. Her father picks her up at the train station. Here’s the passage:

> There was a sparsely decorated Christmas tree at the end of the platform. Looking at it, Hector [(her father)] observed, “This will mean death to thousands of innocent birds.”

Like… am I missing some connection between birds and Christmas trees? Railway stations? I’m at a loss, please help

I’ve been using Eau des Baux (now renamed Cedre Encens) for years. The new sticks have a different IMO uglier color and slightly lower net weight (2.4oz instead of 2.6). The website claims the new refills (zero plastic) for those new sticks don’t fit the old ones. This is false. I bought one and put it in my old brown stick with silver cap, its a perfect match

I suspect both the net weight reduction and the claim of incompatibility is because the tip of the deodorant column is shaped a bit different (new one comes without the plastic cap stuck to the top of the deodorant and has a slightly tapered end instead)

All this to say, you can buy the refills directly, save a bit of money and avoid

God, covering an overspent category takes 5x as long as it needs to because every single action causes a widget to slide up, a new screen to render, or a pause before an action is taken

A wait for the cover overspending screen to pop up, then a wait for the category list to slide upward, select a category, and a wait for the animated slider bar to slide from zero to the overspent amount. Click Done and it all has to slide back down

I miss the days when windows would just gtfo of the way once they stopped being useful, I don’t need them to dance around for me

This is all on iOS

Wasn’t the last ALL Accor transfer bonus 200% bonus for Platinum, whereas this one tops out at 100%?

Going based of of Ankur’s post, Bilt Cash is going to function much like a Chase or Amex suite of mostly small-value, mostly monthly coupons, with some higher value options mixed in, except you get to choose to buy only the coupons you want in exchange for your Bilt Cash. I am honestly pleasantly surprised

His post: https://www.reddit.com/r/biltrewards/s/jWsb4PklSo

I appreciate Ankur writing with some more information, but his message and FAQ managed to completely miss the issue of "Bilt Cash only matters if there are high-value ways to spend it"

His announcement told us:

1. If we want, we can have rent bonus points automatically instead of Bilt Cash
2. At the low end of spend, this will be a better value than Bilt Cash
3. At the high end of spend, this will be a worse value than Bilt Cash

But the problem remains: no one knows what else Bilt Cash is useful for, so no one knows whether it's worth accumulating any of it past what you need to earn points on rent, or choosing to accumulate more of it instead of earning points on rent

https://www.biltrewards.com/terms/bilt-card-offer-terms

The last couple times I've tried logging in online, I've gotten incorrect username / password errors, despite using a password manager and not making any changes to my account (the mobile app has continued to work fine)

Today I went through the password reset flow, changed my password, and still got the same error

I went through the same flow again and noticed that my username shown in the password reset dialogue is "MYSTACK", whereas my password manager (which has been logging me in successfully for years) has it saved as "mystack"

Seems like somewhere along the line Vanguard decided that my username is now all-caps, but didn't bother to tell me. Oh well, FYI for anyone else experiencing

Context for those not following:

1. u/alosia (our original mod) posted, asking for feedback on sub moderation in the past year since two new mods were added https://www.reddit.com/r/hyatt/comments/1q033mk/its_been_about_a_year_since_i_added_two_mods_for/

2. The top-voted comment on that post:

I feel like right now it’s being a bit too heavily moderated where users will post a reasonable and specific question asking about current experiences on a hotel but the post is deleted as low effort.

There have been a couple of these types of posts where I spent time to thoughtfully reply with recent feedback or answers to specific questions but then found the thread was deleted soon after.

3

For those who don’t now, the 1.5x redemption multiplier for travel portal or real-time rewards cash back redemption goes away tomorrow. It is also the start of nerfed benefits for the Altitude Reserve in general

Despite announcing months ago that, as part of the revamp, the AR would be getting transfer partners, US Bank has not yet released any info about what they will be

Can’t believe we made it to this point. It’s hard to imagine a less customer-friendly way to handle this process. I cashed in all my cash back today. Can’t wait to see what the future holds

Hyatt points purchases have been eligible for Rakuten cashback of 1.25% for a long time, but what I just realized is that they're a great way to pad out the $7k / year Rakuten credit card spend cap, which bumps the rate up to 5.25%

Right now, points are on sale with a 20% discount, which means you're paying $1040 / 50k points, or 2.08 cpp. With the Rakuten 1.25% + card 4% bonus that same $1040 gets you an additional 5640 points, for $1040 / 55.64k points, or 1.86cpp

Shame points are not currently discounted by 25%, but that seems to be a beginning of year thing...

I just got a Rakuten credit card. It's an "Amex" but it's actually managed by Imprint. Imprint has a new-age login flow that only uses phone number and PIN, no user/password, to access your account. The account doesn't have a username and password

When I try to connect my account to YNAB anyway, I can do the following:

1. Lookup "Imprint" in the list of banks
2. Enter my phone number as my username and my PIN as my password
3. Connection process starts
4. I am prompted for a 2FA SMS PIN (which I receive on my phone) - I enter it
5. I am prompted for my Imprint PIN - I enter it
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 forever, nothing else happens

I can manually enter transactions on this card, that's no