Welcome to this week’s Monday Musings. As a reminder, Monday Musings is a weekly series where I rattle off a few thoughts I have that mostly relate to points/miles, travel and I might highlight other posts/news/nuggets I found interesting from the past week. For those that are football fans and read Peter King’s MMQB, think of this as similar to his “A Few Things I Think I Think” section.

1. Felt like a slow week in the points & miles world (maybe due to the holiday?) but the biggest item to me was that Hilton is also offering status matches. I’m sure many of you are already Hilton Gold as there at least 3 cards that offer this benefit easily but if you are a top elite in another program, you might get matched to Hilton Diamond. Email HHonorMyStatus@hilton.com to get started.

2. Speaking of status matches, Hyatt finally responded and let me know they can’t offer squat. I knew this was coming but still slightly bothered by the whole fiasco as I personally know others with the same status (SPG or Hilton Gold) who got matched to Hyatt Diamond. Oh well, on to the next one.

3. Not sure if it’s just me but I was sorely disappointed with the travel related Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. If you want to see the best deals available today, I recommend reading this post by Tagging Miles as this was the best roundup I saw specific to travel deals on Cyber Monday.

4. Last week I mentioned earning 10x per dollar spent on Amazon (up to $1,500) by using a Chase Freedom card and to maximize the promotion, I plan on buying gift cards to cover the amount I don’t spend on actual items. The tip I learned is even if you use gift cards for the majority of an order, as long as you put some amount on your Freedom card you are covered for extended warranty protection. (H/T to Reddit)