A while ago a post on Connect Rewards Visa from VantageWest Credit Union was shared on reddit. This card has no signup bonus and you’ve to go an extra mile to join the credit union yet it is a rather appealing card to some churners, most notably to those who manufacture spend (MS).
Churners love to talk about their precious points. Almost all churners will tell you how (now expired) 100k CSR signup bonus they got is worth at least $1500 and some will even go as far as to put a $5k value on it. While I like flexibility of points as much as the next churner, often I simply cash them out. Recently while writing a post “I Schwabed out $6k worth of MR” occurred to me that I had flat out profited $3000+ from a single card.
I recently opened a Chase total checking and Chase performance business checking account for a signup bonus of $300 each and while opening the business account I was informed about some changes on business banking fee and services which will be effective on august 27, 2017.
Mustang, a northern district of Nepal, is one of the most beautiful place in Nepal. It is distant from rest of the Nepal that it is often called himal pari ko desh (literally means kingdom beyond the Himalayas). Yet most tourists, foreign or domestic, focus on visiting Kathmandu or Pokhara more than they do Mustang. Well there’s a reason for it – this place is hard on your body and wallet alike 😉
Upgrade 2: Someone was denied 3rd upgrade bonus.
Update: A fellow redditor confirmed to me that 2nd upgrade was no go for him as well.
Late March 2017 (reddit), a 100k upgrade offer for no AF Hilton card appeared. The following was the direct link for the said offer but it has expired long since. The said offer did not contain once in a lifetime language.
I obviously upgraded my existing no AF Hilton card to surpass and soon after meeting 3k spend, 100k Hilton points deposited into my account. 100k points for no hard pull, no new account? Glorious.
But around mid may 2017 (reddit) it occurred to me that I could potentially churn this over and over again. A redditor confirmed it and I proceeded to downgrade my newly upgraded card. Then about 24 hour later downgrade to no AF Hilton card successfully reported in Amex site. Next I tried above mentioned upgrade offer link and I was somehow eligible for it again so I made an upgrade again and voila after 24 hours my upgrade to Surpass was complete. Meanwhile, said redditor turned out to be Geo from uscreditguide who soon after made a post on how he was able to churn this offer thrice for a whooping of 300k points!
Fast forward a little bit and I paid almost 3k to a family member via plastiq and I used this trick to waive plastiq fee. I thought I had hit a jackpot. Not only did I avoid hard pull or creation of new account but also I did not pay AF to amex and it cost me 0% to MS 2nd time around…and for all that I was about to be rewarded with 200k points. Glorious?
I waited quite some time for 2nd installment of 100k but it never came through. I recently inquired with Amex and they told me that 100k points was not pending either. I’ll soon be hit with an AF and will have no choice but to downgrade to regular surpass. For obvious reasons I will not fight with Amex.
While it is possible that Amex has stopped paying out upgrade bonus more than once, it is more likely that this is part of a system wide glitch from Amex. We know that many new applicants of SPG card did not have signup bonus attached to their account.
A while ago I reported a plastiq glitch that would significantly reduce your payment fee. It was such a good “deal” that I’m still making rent payment at around 1% fee and I figure some other folks have locked into to a fee as low as 0%. While this new glitch/bug isn’t as great as the old one I mentioned above, it still waives fee on one single payment.
Okay, this topic barely has anything to do with churning but the reality is you could read about usual churning stuff in 5,000 other blogs. I make it a habit to (mostly) not report on the big and glorious headlines of churning. Instead I cover smaller things that most other bloggers tend to miss.
Also recently made I made it a habit of reviewing all international hotel brands in Nepal. Now I’m taking it a step further and reviewing both cell service provider in Nepal, namely Nepal Telecom (NTC) and Ncell. Needless to say both companies are huge in Nepal and folks write piece on them all the time. So the question you might be thinking is – why do you feel the need to write one for yourself? Well, because I feel that the information on net isn’t provided in simple and elegant manner as I would like it to be presented.
I can’t stress this enough – you want both of these networks in Nepal. One of them will have better coverage in one place while other will have better coverage somewhere else. In some places you will only find coverage by one network. Additionally, calling within this provider (say NTC to NTC or Ncell to Ncell) is way cheaper than calling across provider (NTC to Ncell or vice versa). Furthermore calling abroad to certain country can be significantly cheaper in one network than other. Last but not least, you may find data pack on one provider to be significantly better than another.
Ideally you probably want to buy SIMs at airport, if not there are plenty of local shops where you can fill out form (yes you need your passport) and get a new SIM activated in a few hours. It generally costs Rs 100 for a SIM and it comes preloaded with Rs 50 balance.
Normal call to USA via NTC costs Rs 30/min but you can make budget call at Rs 1.75/min. In order to make this budget call, you want to enter 1424 before country code. For example, 1424-1-773-1234567 where 1424 is budget call code, 1 (or rather 001) is country code for USA, 773 is area code, and 1234567 is the phone number.
This rate is actually cheaper than budget call rate for the neighboring country India ( Rs 2.90)…go figure. Oh and be sure not to mistype 1425 or 1445 because that budget call will cost you Rs 8/min. You may read more about NTC budget calls here and here. Information provided in above link is particularly helpful if you wish to call somewhere beside USA. For instance in some cases it may be cost efficient to use a different budget code than 1424.
Do note that Ncell charges a mere Rs 1.99/min for calls to US and Canada.
All above prices are exclusive of taxes.
You can add 5 NTC numbers as your FTF and you’ll be charged a mere rate of 70 paisa/min (1 Rs = 100 paisa).
In order to add a phone number, you want to text FNFSUB*NTN to 1415 where NTN is your friend’s NTC phone number. For example to add 0123456789 as FTF, you want to text FTNSUB*0123456789 to 1415.
If you use internet without a data pack then it may cost as high as Rs 3.99 on Ncell.
Ncell provides a wide variety of cheap data packs and one or more is bound to be suitable to you. In order to see and buy current data plan dial *123#
You can find complete info on current data plans in Ncell’s official page.
My personal preference is to buy DAY-TIME pack (valid from 5 AM – 5 PM) and NIGHT-TIME pack (valid from 11 PM – 5 AM) to cover a huge chunk of day. Then for other time not covered by day and night pack ( i.e. 5 PM – 11 PM) I use ALL-TIME pack. This deal gets sweetened when you buy 30 DAY PACKS namely 30 day day-time pack, 30 day night-time pack, and 30 day all-time pack.
So why not just buy all-time pack and use it all the time? Because 30 day night-time pack costs and 30 day day-time pack costs 1/4 and 1/2 the price of 30 day all-time pack respectively.
These packs automatically get activated during their time slot so there isn’t much hassle in using them. For example, if I’ve all-time pack, day-time pack, and night-time pack then during day time (i.e. 5 AM – 5 PM) I’ll be consuming data from day-time pack, during night time (i.e. 11 PM – 5 AM) I’ll be consuming data from night-time pack, and my all-time pack will only kick in during hours of 5 PM – 11 PM.
In order to check your data balance dial *1901#
Note: As of few weeks ago Ncell used to provide 30 day packs for as low as Rs 9 but it seems they’ve removed low cost packs. For example, you could buy 200 MB 30 day night-time pack for Rs 20 but now such option does not exist. If you want to get a 30 day night-time pack then you’ve to spend Rs 100 and in return you’ll get 1200 MB. The older scheme used to be ideal for those of us who needed some data during night time but not a whole lot.
Up until few weeks ago Ncell dominated data packs by offering 1 day, 3 day, 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day packs. But now Ncell only seems to offer 3 day and 30 day packs. NTC on the other hand still offers a 1 day pack for a cost of Rs 9 for 10 MB. NTC’s data plan barely change so I’ll simply list them here.
| Data | Cost before tax (Rs) | Validity (month) |
|---|---|---|
| 200 MB | 130 | 1 |
| 500 MB | 300 | 1 |
| 1 GB | 500 | 1 |
| 3 GB | 1290 | 2 |
| 5 GB | 1800 | 3 |
| 10 GB | 2800 | 6 |
In order to get these plans you should text Data xxMB to 1415. For example, to get 10 MB you would text Data 10MB and to get 200 MB you would text Data 200MB.
To check your data balance text VL to 1415.
Normally if you want to recharge your balance you’ve to walk up to a store, buy a recharge card (Rs 50, 100, 200, 500, or 1000), scratch a code off the recharge card, and finally enter the code correctly in your phone.
However, you can try https://esewa.com.np to recharge your (or anyone else’s) mobile (be it NTC or Ncell) for as low as Rs 10. Now to make full use of the site you do need to submit Nepalese citizenship card info online. When you do that you’ll be able to transfer cash to esewa directly from your Nepalese bank account.
Now if you do not wish to do so or can’t do so then there is still an alternative. As usual you can create an esewa account with your email address. Once your esewa account is setup you go find a store with esewa service (it should not be terribly hard to find one in Kathmandu or Pokhara) or even a person who has some balance in their e-sewa account. Next you hand them the cash and request them to transfer said cash to your esewa account associated with your email address. Then with the cash available in your esewa account you can load cash in any mobile you like. This can be pretty handy if you don’t want to run to a store or if you’re travelling to remote areas where stores aren’t as readily available.
Oh and esewa will credit you back the tax amount that is normally charged when buying a reload card. For example, when you buy Rs 100 recharge card you only get Rs 98.03 worth of recharge in your mobile. However, when you attempt to load Rs 100 via esewa, you’ll still only get Rs 98.03 worth of recharge but the net difference of Rs 2 gets credited back to your esewa account.
This guide has also been shared on r/churning!
The goal of the article is to list most, if not all, hard and fast rules that will hinder your churning activity. Some of these rules, such as 1/24 from Citi, came as a direct response to growth of churning activity.
Finally Marriott has finally opened in Nepal and I decided to check it out in less than a month of it’s opening. I really wanted to see how it would compete with other major international hotels in Kathmandu namely Hyatt Regency, Club Carlson Radisson Blu, and IHG Crown Plaza. After my two separate stays in Fairfield I can safely say that it offers something different than above mentioned brands and is most welcomed by locals and tourist alike.
Fairfield is located in Thamel which is the center for tourists in Kathmandu. Thamel is the neighborhood where most tourist prefer to stay, eat, and generally handout. One of my stays at this hotel was on occasion of Nepalese New Year 2074 BS (short for Bikram Samvat) and the streets of Thamel was full on party mode.
celebration of 2074 new year on Thamel
The streets of Thamel itself are mostly narrow and as such walking around is preferred over riding a taxi. Since this is a tourist center you’ll see folks walking in street even at night time.
Additionally, at about 3 minutes walking distance from Fairfield lies the famous Garden of Dreams. The garden itself is of historical importance because it lies within Kaiser Mahal which was once build and resided by Prime Ministers of Rana reign.
Last but not least the Narayanhity Palace lies in walking distance from Fairfield. Narayanhity palace now turned museum is of significant historical importance because until 2008 last 4 generation of Kings of Nepal resided in the palace.
Every room in this hotel are identical so the only possible “upgrade” you can get preferred higher/lower floor room. I think the rooms were intentionally made small so as to maximize the number of rooms they could have.
The closet and bathrooms were build within the walls to save space. Some toiletries (namely body wash, shampoo, and lotion) were not available in small portable size and obviously the big ones were hooked into the wall. The toilet papers themselves felt cheap and were rather rough.
The view from the hotel isn’t going to be anything speculator. The picture below display views from window of two different high floor rooms.
Fairfield provides standard amenities like mini fridge, coffee/tea maker, etc but no welcome fruit basket like they’re often provided by other chains in Kathmandu.
If you want items in freeze, you have to request it otherwise you may find your mini fridge completely empty. Now this property does provide complementary minibar to gold members. On my second stay I requested that the minibar not contain any alcoholic beverage and they were happy to comply.
As a gold member we also received complementary breakfast. On our 1st stay we noticed that they had a lot of local food and (almost) everything we tried was rather delicious. Now had we not made a 2nd stay we would have walked away thinking this hotel had better breakfast Hyatt Regency Kathmandu. On our 2nd stay options on local food was rather lacking and the ones that were available were rather terrible to a point that we still believe it was a catalyst in us eventually falling ill during our soon to follow Mustang travel.
While the dining lounge is rather standard, Fairfield somehow made it feel a little extra special – it may have something to do with the greenery on the left of above pictures.
This Fairfield property is category two and thus costs a mere 15k Marriott points per night. On the other hand this property generally seems to cost $75-90. I personally wouldn’t pay for this hotel because that amount of money can go very far in Nepal but I was rather pleased with my points booking.
If you’re looking for an international brand hotel with relatively low cost and yet superb location then this is it. If you’ve Marriott Gold, which is easy to obtain through various credit cards, then free minibar and breakfast might be a huge plus for you.
A while ago, Plastiq was running a targeted promotion “for every 20 friends you refer to Plastiq from now until February 28, 2017, you will earn 10,000 fee-free dollars.” 20 referral in a short period of time is no joke so I never expected to get 10k fee-free dollars (FFDs). But out of the blue sometime in first week of February I received an email titled “Less than a month to earn 10,000 fee-free dollars”. The email claimed that I was only “1 referral away from earning 10,000 fee-free dollars!”
Needless to say I had not referred 19 people by then but nevertheless a small part of me hoped that someone would eventually signup with my referral and I would somehow magically get 10k FFDs. Then around the end of the promo someone did signup using my referral link and as expected I only got referral bonus for referring a single person.
Eventually on a boring day I decided to write an email to Plastiq. It was essentially a 3-4 line email expressing my [FAKE] disappointment for not receiving 10k FFD even though I had done what was told of me (i.e. refer 1 person). Like always Rebecca was the one to respond to my email. She pointed out that I had only made 2/20 referral but ended up giving me 2k FFD anyway. I could have probably pushed it further but I was fairly surprised and satisfied with free 2k FFD.
don’t be lazy to write 3-4 line emails.
