Promotions

September 18, 2014

Point & Center: Bonus Miles for Flying to London, Activate Chase Freedom 5% Bonus for 4th Quarter & More…

Let’s take a quick look at some of the bigger promotions and deals in the points & miles world.

1) Activate Chase Freedom for the 4th Quarter – It is now time to activate the 5% cash back (or 5x miles if you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold and transfer Freedom points to those cards) feature of the Chase Freedom for the 4th quarter categories. This quarter it should be very easy to earn the full 5% cash back on the maximum $1,500 in spending, as the categories are Amazon.com and Department stores. Amazon sells literally almost anything and you could always buy gift cards for future Amazon purchases. For others, department stores will be huge once the holiday season comes rolling around. Click here to activate the 5% cash back. 

ChaseFreedom4Q

2) Fly United or Air Canada to London and Earn Up to 35,000 Bonus Miles – This tidbit will be helpful for some of my co-workers (well at least the one person in my department who gets to fly to London) as you can earn up to 35,000 bonus miles by choosing to fly United or Air Canada to London. You must register for the promotion first here, and travel by December 12th.  The only downside to this promotion is you must book a certain fare class to qualify for the promotion (see terms & conditions), which won’t be the cheapest fare. However, if you are a business traveler, you most likely are booking a qualifying fare so this promotion could be quite valuable.

United35k

3) Combine 3 Offers From TravelPony to Save Big on Hotels – A relative new player to the field of online travel agencies, TravelPony is an online hotel reservation site with over 20,000 hotels worldwide, usually at prices cheaper then Orbitz, Expedia and the actual hotel’s website. This week they are celebrating their one year anniversary by promotion a different discount code each day. For example, some of the daily deals have been 8% off hotels and save $25 on a $250+ hotel reservation. You can check back daily for the latest deal on their website and if you signup via a friend referral you get $35 off your first reservation while the person that referred you gets $35 credit as well. If you want to signup and save $35, here is my referral link. Lastly, the third offer is to use code TPSAVINGS for an additional 10-45% off (varies by hotel). You can combine all 3 offers (new member, daily deal and TPSAVINGS code) for an awesome deal on a hotel room.

travelpony

 

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!

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 10, 2014

One Way Award Flights to Europe: 13,125 Virgin Atlantic Miles + $134!

Virgin Atlantic is having a promotion in which they are discounting all award flights by 25% off which makes one way flights to Europe only 13,125 miles + $134! The best part is this promotion is valid for all dates of travel that you could currently book Virgin flights for, including next summer! You must book by September 23rd and this applies to economy & premium economy bookings only. 

Prices listed are for roundtrip travel

Prices listed are for roundtrip travel

As I’ve written previously, using Virgin Atlantic miles for travel on Virgin Atlantic is generally not an amazing use of miles due to the large fuel surcharges Virgin passes on, especially when departing London since the British government tacks on a large tax on departing flights. However, there is one great use of these miles for travel on Virgin Atlantic: One Way Travel To Europe for only 13,125 miles + $134. Most other airlines charge 30,000 miles one way to Europe so this is a pretty solid deal.

With this promotion, economy roundtrip flights are discounted to only 26,250 miles but with hefty taxes of $400 per person. The workaround to make this promotion worthwhile is to book just a one way award to London which causes half the amount of miles, 13,125, but only $134 in surcharges. The surcharges are not evenly split between flights to and from London so it makes sense to take advantage of the lower surcharges simply by flying to London but not home from London.

NY to London...Reasonable

NY to London – Good Deal.

London to NY

London to NY – Not As Good.

I think the real advantage of this promotion is that it covers flights into next summer, when airfares SKYROCKET to Europe. Even better, Virgin Atlantic has amazing availability for award flights for next summer. I personally would fly Virgin Atlantic to London and return home from a different city in Europe using miles. Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam are all easy train rides from London and you can explore several cities before returning home.  This promotion ends September 23rd, so you could book flights for next year up until August 23rd by waiting for the last day of the promotion.

I think the promotion has sneaky good value. Is anyone taking advantage of this promotion?

(H/T to View From the Wing)

 

 

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)