Point & Center

October 26, 2014

Point & Center: Use Marriott Points at Atlantis, No More 7,500 AA Miles at Cadillac & $300-$400 Airfare to Europe

*For my new readers, Point & Center is a weekly series (with a witty play on words) that rounds up some of the biggest news in the points and miles space. These posts are generally well-received though some argue my witty play on words is not. You be the judge.*

Here’s a quick recap of what happened in the points & miles world this week.

1. Use Marriott Points at Atlantis Resorts in the Bahamas – I received an email this week from Marriott letting me know that I can now book certain rooms at Atlantis with Marriott Rewards Points. I’ll be the first to admit out of all the major hotel loyalty programs I care least about Marriott – before getting the 140,000 point Ritz credit card I never earned any Marriott points – so it is certainly nice to have a more “inspirational property” available for redemption for Marriott members. That said, I don’t think the values are great as the base level rooms cost 35,000 points. Here is a summary of the points cost per room depending on what tower you are in.

Atlantis

I’ve seen prices for the Beach & Coral Tower hover around $199/night except during prime season or holidays. Outside of times when the room rates are exceptionally higher, I would not use points as I would only be getting $.0057 cents a point when the room rate is around $200. On a different note, if you do pay cash for your room you will only receive Marriott points on the room rate only. In most cases with other hotels chains (and Marriott’s other hotels), you receive points on anything that posts to your hotel bill before checkout. With food and drink quite being quite expensive at Atlantis, this restriction will cost you a fair amount of Marriott points.

2. No More Free & Easy 7,500 American Airline Miles for Test Driving a Cadillac – I posted about this last week but per View From The Wing, Cadillac is no longer allowing any new registrations for its promotion in which customers that test a Cadillac could received 7,500 American Airline miles. If you registered for the promotion but haven’t taken the test drive yet, you should still go forward with it as you will still receive the miles for the promotion.

Cadillac ending this promotion most likely means they have scheduled enough test drives to cover the amount of miles they purchased from AA. The bigger takeaway from all of this is the old mantra of if you snooze, you lose. If you’ve ever seen a mistake fare (scroll to the bottom for the list of fares I’ve taken advantage of) or a promotion “too good to be true”, you know it has a limited shelf life. Especially nowadays, when there is much more attention on some of these deals as blogs, websites and forums are reaching more people, quicker than ever. In this case, there was no downside to registering so hopefully you registered for it and it was not one of the things you decided “to put off”.

3. Wow Air Still Has Cheap Fares to Iceland, London & Copenhagen – I wrote about this deal earlier and suggested to book your flights as soon as possible as I assumed Wow Air only released a handful of seats at the low prices ($99 to London, $300 roundtrip to Iceland etc..) and then would have much higher fares. Well, I’m happy to report I am still seeing some extraordinary airfares to Europe between $319 – $400 roundtrip which is still phenomenal for summer travel to Europe. Here are some fares I pulled at 11pm EST on 10/25. 

WowAir10_25 WowAir10_25Fare2WowAir10_25Fare3

I’ve seen several people disregard this sale because Wow Air is ” just like Spirit”  and they won’t get suckered into all the extra fees. I think this is a bad assumption to make. Even including a fee for a seat reservation and carry-on luggage that’s only an additional $32 to $43 each way so you might be looking at $350-$400 roundtrip with fees included. At these prices, it would be a waste to use miles for Europe. Remember the highlight of a vacation is the destination itself – I’ve read Iceland is absolutely stunning in the summer and at these prices, I’m finding it very difficult to pass up.

October 10, 2014

Point & Center: Last Chance for Amazon Payments, $10 Off Uber for All Users, & Changes with American Express and Delta

*Some of the items below have out in the blogosphere for a while now but I never covered due to my vacation. Think of this post as a catchup for the past 2 weeks*

1) Last Day for Amazon Payments is October 12th – I’ve talked about the death of Amazon Payments earlier but this is a reminder to send your final $1,000 payment to someone on or before October 12th. When October 13th comes around, Amazon Payments will disable this functionality and you will no longer be able to make person to person payments. This was an easy and free 1,000 miles a month – AP will be missed.

2) $10 off Uber for Existing Users, $40 off for New Users – American Express has announced a new promotion in which anyone can take $10 off their next Uber ride if they sync their American Express credit card with Twitter and tweet #AmexUber. Here’s how to do it.

If you do not have an Uber account, you can signup for a new account with my link here and you will receive $30 off on top of the $10 credit above for a total of $40 your first ride (I will also receive $30 off a ride if you signup with my link above).

3) American Express Premier Rewards Gold Devaluation – The American Express Premier Gold Card lost a benefit last week when Amex announced that it will no longer rewards users with 15,000 bonus points if they spend $30,000 in a calendar year. The loss of this benefit might not be applicable to many of you but I really didn’t see the point of keeping this card past the first year with a hefty annual fee of $175 unless you were a big spender. And with that benefit revoked, I don’t understand the love for this card. But that’s another post for another time.

4) Restriction on Delta Transfers from American Express Membership Rewards – In the latest flyer #unfriendly move by Delta, they are limiting the amount of American Express Membership Rewards that can be transferred into Delta SkyMiles to 250,000 miles annually. Before you think that doesn’t matter cause that’s still a lot of miles, it’s not. If I wanted to book two business class tickets to Europe with Delta using my Amex points, that’s 250,000 miles right there. If I wanted to book two business class tickets to Asia or Australia, I will have to transfer miles to each individual’s Delta account since each ticket is over 125,000 miles. But I may not be able to do that, since Amex only let’s you transfer miles to your frequent flyer accounts or that of your authorized users. This takes effect in 2015, so you have until 12/31/14 to make unlimited transfers.

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

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 23, 2014

Point & Center: ~$120 Flights to Hong Kong, Chase Freedom Loses a Key Benefit & Hyatt Fall Promotion

Here are the some of the key promotions and news you should know about in the world of points & miles.

1) ~$120 Flights to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific – Cathay Pacific is having a promotion in which they will sell 2,014 tickets at 100 HKD for trips to and from Hong Kong. I’m sure it will be competitive but it doesn’t seem impossible to get a ticket if you time it right. Below is a snapshot of the routes for sale (all to/from Hong Kong). The interesting ones are definitely the US to Hong Kong routes in premium economy. With taxes, the flights will be about 957 HKD or around $120 USD. Remember to set an alarm for Tuesday 8am on August 26nd when tickets go on sale.

I should mention this is intended for Cathay Pacific Asia Miles account holders who list a residence in HK. However, there is nothing stopping you from registering for a new Cathay Pacific Asia Miles account and to use the address of a hotel in HK…

cathaydeal cathaydeal2
(HT One Mile at a Time)

2) Chase Freedom Loses 10% Annual Bonus – The Chase Freedom is arguably one of the most valuable no annual fee credit cards as it earns valuable Chase points at 5x depending on the category each quarter and if you also hold a Chase Ink card or Chase Sapphire Preferred, you could transfer your Chase Freedom points to your Ink/Sapphire Preferred card and then transfer them out to airlines or hotels. One of the nice features of the Freedom card was if you were also a Chase checking account customer, you would receive an annual 10% bonus on all points earned from your Freedom card but this is being discontinued as of 12/31/15. This was a nice perk that required no additional effort or registration so it will be one I will miss (as I’m a Chase checking customer) even if it only resulted in a few thousands points a year. There are a few additional changes but none as noteworthy as this one.

Freedom Chase

3) Hyatt Fall Promotion Announced (Targeted) – Every quarter most of the big hotel chains announce a special promotion in which they offer bonus points, free nights or some combination of the two to entice guests to stay with them. Hyatt is the first hotel chain to announce its Q3 promo and there seem to be variety of offers that are targeted to individual users. Even if you haven’t received an email yet, I highly recommend trying to register for the promotion at the links below. I got the 2,000 bonus points after each stay so make sure you try to register so you don’t miss any extra points you might be entitled to.

Link to Flyertalk that summarizes the offers and registration links

hyattq4

August 9, 2014

Point & Center: Another Free 1,000 Air Berlin Miles, New Centurion Lounge at LGA and More Free Miles!

It’s been a bit of a slow week in the points and mile world but let’s recap what you might have missed.

1) Another Free 1,000 Air Berlin Miles – I posted a similar deal a few weeks ago on how to get a 1,000 Air Berlin miles for free via their partnership with Sixt. This time a duty free store called Heinemann is offering 1,000 miles if you register for a Heinemann account online. Do I know anything about Heinemann? Nope but I’m not going to let that stop me from 1,000 free miles. Remember to use an email address you don’t care about to signup for this account.

airbelin

2) New American Express Centurion Lounge at LaGuardia Airport – American Express is in the process of opening several lounges around the US that offer higher end food, beverages and massage services while you wait for your next flight. The lounges in Dallas and Las Vegas are currently open but View From the Wing broke the news that the LaGuardia lounge will be opening in the next week. He has several pictures of the lounge and the menu, which looks quite tasty. Access is complimentary if you are a Amex Platinum card holder. The one downside I see is that the lounge is landside which means you will need to budget some extra time to go through security.

3) Free 100 Airlines Miles from Baltimore Airport (BWI)- Via Doctor of Credit, if you signup for a free BWI rewards account, they will give you 100 airlines miles in the program of your choice! You can choose from American, United, JetBlue, Southwest, Delta among others. You could also receive 200 hotel points but the programs listed (Hilton, Wyndham and VOILA) don’t make it worthwhile for me to choose this option. Here is a direct link to this offer.

4) American Express Sync Deal for $5 off $25+ Purchase at Bed, Bath & Beyond – If you are an American Express cardholder, you are eligible for certain promotions and deals Amex offers under the “Amex Offers For You” tab in your account. This month one of their feature offers is $5 off a Bed, Bath & Beyond purchase of $25 or more. Now you might be thinking you have no need to shop at BBB but they sell gift cards to other stores including Starbucks, Subway, iTunes and a bunch others. I have 4 Amex cards myself so I can save $20 bucks on my next caffeine pit stop at Starbucks.

amexoffers