MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 15 and December 31, at least none from me. We may have guest posts during that period, but that depends on you sending me some. On January 1(ish), we’ll celebrate with the 2025 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Travel Tuesday were all good to manufactured spenders, but companies collectively decided that the next day should be called “Woeful Wednesday”. The punches kept coming with devaluations:
- British Airways is devaluing Avios redemptions with mileage rates increasing by ~10% and cash co-pays increasing by ~10-20%. The devaluation takes effect December 15.
- Turkish Airlines devalued Miles & Smiles redemptions for US flights with rates increasing by 50%-170%. The devaluation is already here.
- The Redstone Federal Credit Union Visa devalued earning rates on its card, capping 5% earning at $1,500 spend quarterly and removing the most useful categories.
- Capital One devalued its transfer rate to Emirates Skywards from 1:1 to 1:0.75. This devaluation happens on January 13, 2026.
- American Express reportedly no longer admits you to the Centurion Lounge while you’re in financial review. This one just arrived too. (Thanks to alaskantraveler)
Surely there was some good news out there yesterday too, right? Well, Meijer tried to cheer us up with 50,000 MPerks points with a $500 third party gift card through December 16, but they limited it to one to MPerks account so here we are.
United tried to devalue business class meals with this, but it didn’t work because literally anything other than the old meal is an improvement.