My Monday Musings are a little light today and I expect my posts in general to be a bit more sporadic until New Year’s as I will be enjoying the holiday season. That said, if another deal like the Etihad mistake fares around Christmas 2014 occur again, I’ll make sure to get a post up or at the very least, tweet about it from @PointsCentric.

1. I was interviewed for an article about retention bonuses on CreditCardForum.com and I thought the piece was well done. Another blogger, Miles to Memories, was also interviewed for the article and between us, I think we gave some great tips and tricks on how to evaluate and handle a retention call. I highly recommend reading the article or at least bookmarking it the next time you go to cancel a card.

2. Finally, after several back & forths with Hyatt over the past month, I am now officially a Hyatt Diamond member after a successful match of my Hilton Gold status! As most of you know, Hyatt has tightened this status match to currently be for SPG Platinum members who have stayed 20 nights this year. However, I submitted my request for a status match the morning this promotion was announced and argued with Hyatt that they should honor my request because I submitted it before the terms of the offer were changed.

I won’t get into details on the exchanges with them but in short, I basically presented my argument on why Hyatt should match me as I had followed the rules of the promotion at the time I submitted it and it was unfair to change the terms after I already submitted my application. The Gold Passport team kept refusing the match but once Hyatt got their consumer affairs team involved, my account was finally upgraded. This obviously isn’t replicable unless you submitted your request before noon EST on 11/20 (which is when Hyatt told me the terms of the offer changed). If you did, I would push for the status even if you’ve been denied. In the case, perseverance was key. I’m excited to try my new diamond status at the Grand Hyatt Kauai next year.

3. Speaking of Kauai, I finally got my first class Hawaii award flights I mentioned a few weeks ago booked. I’ve been monitoring United award space between EWR-HNL like a hawk (checking several times daily) and I finally saw space open on a Sunday red-eye home. I took a chance and instead of booking it right then and there with United miles for 40k miles per person, I transferred Citibank Thank You Points to Singapore to save 10k miles per person. I had to wait about 26 hours for the transfer but lucky for me, the award space was still there. Right now we are planning on spending 3 nights in Honolulu and 6 nights at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. For Honolulu anyone have recommendations for a nice hotel?

UA BusinessFirst EWR – HNL Seats

4. I’ve pretty much stopped all reselling activities until the New Year. I’m relatively new to reselling & I might be overly cautious by doing this but I am worried about the Christmas hangover on sales and the increased threat of returns. If I see a screaming deal, I might jump on it but for now I’m content to sit out a few weeks and start fresh for 2016.

5. Lastly, I thought this was an impressive article on hacking movie tickets. I’m not a movie person (seriously, the list of classic or “must-see” movies I haven’t seen is quite embarrassing) so this isn’t for me but still nice to know if you are into movies.