September 14, 2014

Quick Reminder – 25% JetBlue American Express Transfer Bonus Ends Tomorrow!

Last month, I posted about a 25% bonus on all JetBlue point transfers from American Express. I wanted to send out a quick reminder that this promotion ends tomorrow, September 15th. Normally, the ratio to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points into JetBlue TrueBlue points is 5:4 and you must transfer in increments of 250 points. Without this promotion, to get 10,000 JetBlue points you would have to transfer 12,500 Amex points but now to get the same 10,000 JetBlue points, it would only cost you only 10,000 Amex points!

25% Bonus on Points Transferred to JetBlue Ends Tomorrow!

Now many points and miles bloggers don’t talk about the JetBlue program for a variety of reason – no first class, lack of “real” elite status, and a poor frequent flyer program. However, if you are like me and based in NY or in other JetBlue focus cities, like Boston, JetBlue is sometimes the best value for popular leisure routes to the Caribbean and Florida compared to the big legacy airlines. In my award booking service, I have found clients a roundtrip flight from JFK to the Bahamas for only 13,800 points as compared to the 35,000 miles that Delta, American or United would charge.

Before transferring any points over to JetBlue though, research the cost in points on JetBlue’s website. There are no blackout dates so every flight is available for points but some are better deals than others. Once you have settled on the flights you want, at that point only, should you transfer your Amex MR points to JetBlue. Transfers between Amex and JetBlue happen instantly so you could book the flight immediately after transferring the points (you might need to sign out and sign back in to see the points).

I do plan on transferring some Amex points over to JetBlue as I tend to visit the Caribbean several times a year and JetBlue offers the most convenient and plentiful flight options from the NY area. This isn’t for everyone but before you write off the JetBlue program take a look at your future travel goals and see if JetBlue makes sense for you.

September 6, 2014

Point & Center: 50k United Credit Card Still Available, New IHG Promo and No More Cashback on Amex Gift Cards

Let’s take a quick look at the some of the big things going on in the points & miles world this week.

1) New IHG Promotion And Why You Should Care – Every quarter or so, most hotel chains release a new promotion which generally range from sucky to OK but the recently announced “Into The Nights” by IHG has potential to be one of the best hotel promotions in recent memory. The offer is slightly different for each member but generally others have indicated that 2-3 nights stayed at IHG hotels from now to December 31st could result in 2 Free nights anywhere in the world with IHG. The obvious hack here is to stay at two really cheap hotels and redeem them at high end hotels.

My Offer

The above is my offer for the promo. I only need to complete 4 of the 5 offers for 2 Free Nights anywhere. Looking closely at it, if I can simply stay at 2 different Holiday Inns, I can complete this promo by staying only 2 nights. Holiday Inns are everywhere and can be cheap, so if I could find 2 Holiday Inns at $100/night, I could get 2 Free Nights certificates for $100 each and then I could redeem them at InterContinental Hotels that range from $300-$700 a night! Check out this post from Travel Summary for more analysis.

2) American Express Gift Cards No Longer Eligible for Cash Back via Shopping Portals – I haven’t written about this yet on the blog but a popular way to meet the minimum spending requirement on a credit card to unlock a large signup bonus is to purchase American Express Gift Cards via shopping portals. You would actually earn a small profit while meeting the spend requirement but recently all the portals stopped paying any cashback for these gift cards.

In the past, if a portal paid 2% back you would earn $20 cashback but pay $12.90 in fees for a $1,000 Amex gift card. Then you simply use that card to pay for your normal expenses (or liquidate it if you are more advanced) going forward. In a pinch, if I had no other way to meet the minimum spend on a card, I would consider still buying a gift card but I’d hold off until the portals start paying again for the gift cards.

3) 50,000 Mile Chase United Explore Credit Card is Still Available – The popular 50,000 mile signup bonus offer expired on September 2nd online but there are reports you can still signup for it…if you visit an airport. It seems in some of the United hubs, they are still promoting the 50k United Credit card offer in the terminals. Most of the time any credit card you see promoted in an airport is typically inferior but its nice to see one time where that isn’t the case. (H/T Milecards)

August 26, 2014

British Airways Avios Devaluation Scare + Why I’m Using My Avios Now

Update: There is an Avios Devaluation as of April 28, 2015.

Late Sunday night, a post on View From the Wing caught the point and mile blogosphere by storm – there appeared to be a massive devaluation of Iberia Avios and as a result many people, including myself, thought British Airways Avios would shortly be devalued. This is because British Airways Avios and Iberia Avios are very closely tied, to the point you can transfer Avios freely between each program. This would obviously be terrible news as British Airways Avios are unique and great for direct, short to medium flights in which legacy carriers would charge 25,000 to 35,000 miles roundtrip but with Avios, the cost would only be 9,000 to 25,000 miles roundtrip. The Iberia chart showed these awards jumping up in cost to 19,500 to 30,000 miles roundtrip.

Well, the good news is that Iberia did not actually suffer a devaluation last night. These rates by Iberia have actually been in effect for 18 months. Instead, they actually just published their award chart online for redemptions on partner airlines, which apparently was not available previously. Furthermore, experts who have been in the game for decades, weren’t even aware of a separate Iberia award chart for partner redemptions. However, this doesn’t mean a devaluation of British Airways Avios is out of the woods. In fact, I am recommending that if you have flights to book and plan to use Avios, book them soon. Here’s why:

1) British Airways Is Due For a Devaluation – It has been over three years since British Airways last updated their award chart which is right about when a devaluation could be expected. Furthermore the highlights of the current Avios program, which is redeeming 4,500 miles for $300-$400 flights, isn’t sustainable. You know the saying it’s too good to be true – well it applies here, and Iberia actually shows us that. That’s why Iberia charges the same 4,500 miles for only British Airways flights but a lot more for partner redemptions since these cost the Iberia more money (it costs more to pay American Airlines for partner redemptions, especially on expensive flights as compared to its closely linked partner British Airways which doesn’t cost Iberia as much).

2) There Is A Clear Points Arbitrage Opportunity Between Iberia & British Airways and It Can’t Last – I don’t have any anecdotal evidence to support this theory but it simply doesn’t make sense for Iberia to have a higher priced award chart when you could simply avoid it by transferring Avios to British Airways. I refuse to believe this is an intended “benefit” between the two closely linked programs because it doesn’t make sense. Yes, I know its been going on for 18 months but as exposure increases, I can see them closing this loophole either by not allowing transfers or by raising the British Airways Avios award chart to be more competitive compared to Iberia’s. And I think the latter is more likely to happen first.

3) (Most) Miles Are Illiquid – If there was a huge devaluation and you couldn’t use the miles for travel, as a last resort you could redeem them for that toaster oven or an overpriced gift card to Applebees but that’s not why you got the miles in the first place. You can’t easily convert your miles to cash without losing a TON of value. For example, you could redeem 52,400 Delta Skymiles for a pair of Bose QuietComfort headphones which retails for $269. If you wanted to sell then sell them to “cash out”, you would be hard pressed to get more then $225 after selling fees while those same miles would cover two domestic flights which could easily be worth $400-$1000 in value. Use miles for their intended purpose.

4) It’s Easy and Cheap to Cancel a British Airways Avios Award – With British Airways Avios, you can either pay a $55 cancellation fee (which is extremely reasonable compared to other airlines) to get both the miles and taxes you paid on the award flight back or you could do the “free cancellation” online in which you just get the miles back but not the taxes. So if you booked a Chicago to NY award flight, the taxes paid would be $5.60 and in this example, you are obviously much better using the free cancellation and losing the taxes paid. Your loss would be $5.60 which I would gladly pay to hedge against a massive devaluation.

The truth is no one, even the “experts” in this game, know what or when a potential devaluation could happen. It could be weeks, months, years or it could be tomorrow. We simply don’t know and that’s why its always best burning miles sooner rather then later. I’m not saying spend Avios on frivolous flights you really didn’t plan to take but make a more conscious effort to use them now. Remember its better to be weeks, even months early rather than a day late to a devaluation.

And to prove to you I follow what I preach, the following screenshot is my current Avios balance of 656. I ended up burning 20,000 Avios a person for a roundtrip flight to Antigua in March next year but I will have an Award Trip Breakdown post on this redemption so look forward to more details in that post coming soon!

August 19, 2014

American Express 25% Bonus on Point Transfers to JetBlue!

One of the key features of flexible points is the ability to transfer them to a bunch of different airlines or hotels instead of being locked into earning points with just one program. Sometimes there are bonuses to entice you to transfers points and currently, American Express has announced a 25% bonus on all point transfers to JetBlue from now to September 15th!

25% Bonus on Points Transferred to JetBlue

Normally, the ratio to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points into JetBlue TrueBlue points is 5:4 and you must transfer in increments of 250 points. Without this promotion, to get 10,000 JetBlue points you would have to transfer 12,500 Amex points but now to get the same 10,000 JetBlue points, it would only cost you only 10,000 Amex points!

Membership Rewards Transfer Page

Combining this deal with the separate 25% off JetBlue award flights deal I posted last night, there are some incredible deals to be had! One example is a trip down to Florida – this would normally cost 25,000 miles with all legacy carries (United, Delta, American or US Airways) but with these two promotions from Amex and JetBlue, a roundtrip flight is only 10,000 miles. That is less than a one-way domestic flight on most airlines (which is 12,500 points). That’s a really, really good deal.

This is only 10,000 JetBlue Points which means you could transfer 10,000 Amex MR points to JetBlue for this flight

Please followup with any questions!

August 15, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: Flights for a Long Weekend in Puerto Rico for $26!

Greetings from San Juan, Puerto Rico!

Andrea and I decided to get away for the weekend and decided upon San Juan to “relive” our first trip we took back together in 2008. That was before I was involved in the points and miles game so I think I spent over $1,000 for a 4 night stay + flights last time. Thankfully I’ve gotten a little smarter since 2008 and with the help of this amazing hobby of ours, Andrea and I booked our flights for a whopping total of $26 and ended up with a great rate on our hotel (and I used giftcards I acquired at 19% off to pay for the room). Here is how I did it.

Flights

Departing: American Airlines – Business Class – JFK-SJU for a cost of 20,000 miles plus $2.50 in taxes per person.
Return: American Airlines – Economy Class – SJU-JFK for a cost of $208.50 a person, paid with $200 of American Airlines Gift Cards acquired as part of American Express Platinum card each.

I will get into this some more in my trip report but I used British Airways Avios instead of American Airline miles because of the uniqueness of British Airways award chart. Since it’s distance based, it cost 20,000 Avios for business class or I could have used 17,500 American miles for economy – easy choice there. British Airways miles can be obtained via transferring either Amex Membership Rewards points (which is what I did), Chase Ultimate Rewards, Starwood SPG points or by having the British Airways credit card. In short, there are a lot of easy ways to rack up Avios.

For the return, I was focused on flights that left after 6pm on a Sunday so I could maximize my time in San Juan. By doing this, I limited my flight options and there was no award availability for either economy or business class on the way home. I ended up choosing a 7pm American Airlines flight that cost $208.50 each but I only ended up paying $8.50 of it per person.

That is because I am an American Express Platinum card holder and each calendar year you are entitled to a $200 airline credit. With this credit, you can buy airline gift cards (though the rules technically prohibit this but it still works) twice in a one membership year. In other words, I signed up for the card in 2013 (and paid the $450 annual fee) BUT I got $400 of that back when I bought $200 of AA gift cards (technically 4 gift cards at $50 each) in March 2013 and again in January 2014. I simply applied this gift card to these flight and paid the remaining $8.50 per person.

Hotels:

Courtyard (Marriott) Isla Verde Beach Resort- 3 Nights.

The Beach at the Marriott in Isla Verde

I know this isn’t the fanciest hotel on the nice strip of beach in Isla Verde as its right next store to the Ritz-Carlton San Juan and the InterContinental San Juan but it was far by the cheapest for our stay and I was able to use Marriott gift cards I acquired at 19% off to pay for the room!

AAA rates were only $122 for the first night and $139 for the remaining two nights so it didn’t make sense to redeem Marriott points for this stay since a free night would have cost 35,000 points a night resulting in a very poor value per point (.003 per point, not even half a penny!). Additionally, I had a $500 Marriott Gift card burning a hole in my safe that could be used for this stay. I only paid $405 for this $500 gift card via American Express Daily Getaways which typically happens once a year in which Amex partners with variouis companies to sell discounted travel.

Stay tuned for the trip report in which I’ll provide a little more detail on the flights and hotels and decide whether it was worth it.

PointsCentric

Points & Miles Travel Consulting

American Express