Promotions

July 9, 2014

Point & Center: 1,000-1,500 Free Miles, Check Your Rewards Earned & Bonus Delta Miles & More…

Point & Center is a new feature that seemed to be pretty popular last week. I plan to make this at least a weekly post briefly highlighting some news and offers in the points & miles world.

 A quick run-down of some of the news & offers out there:

1) 1,000-1,500 Free Air Berlin Miles – Rental car company Sixt is offering 1,000 free Air Berlin miles for registering with Sixt here. Brush up on your German or use Google Chrome to translate the page for you. Note you must first create an Air Berlin account here (if you do not have one) in order to have the miles deposited in your account and they are currently offering 500 miles just for signing up and giving them your email address! Remember Air Berlin is a transfer partner of Starwood so you accumulate additional Air Berlin miles via SPG.

2) Check the Rewards Earned on your Credit Card! –  After I broke the news on the easier way to track rewards on the Chase Freedom card, I went through all the dining & travels transactions on my Chase Sapphire card (ya, I’m a little obsessive) to make sure I earned the appropriate 2x bonus and I found a charge that was not awarded the extra bonus points. Yes, it was only $3 bucks so not a big deal but it was for a coffee at Gregory’s Coffee so it should have counted. If this happens, I recommend securing messaging Chase to look into it and fixing it. Basically, the principle here is always check your transactions because if this was a $1,000 dollar charge, the extra 1,000 points start adding up quickly.

I want my extra 3.24 points please!

I want my extra 3.24 points please!

3) Up to 5,000 Bonus Delta Skymiles per Flight! – Most of the time promotions like these are targeted but this is open to anyone and I think its actually quite a good offer for a leisure traveler. If you travel to the Caribbean, Latin America or Mexico from September 2 through December 11, you will earn an extra 2,500 to 10,000 miles per roundtrip flight with no limit!  And that’s on top of the miles you would already earn from flying. You must register before purchasing the tickets and all tickets must be purchased by September 30th. Even if you are not sure you will be flying Delta on these routes during that time, register just in case here.

Mexico in Economy is the Sweet Spot

Mexico in Economy is the Sweet Spot

4) New TSA Policy – Lastly, the TSA recently announced that on flights back to the US from abroad, they might require you to prove your cell phone or laptop can be turned on as the fear is terrorists might have figured out a way to “hollow” out a phone or laptop and turn it into an explosive device. The easy solution is to always carry a charger on you in your carry-on luggage but a real question to me is – what do you do if your phone or laptop actually breaks on vacation and can’t be powered on? This is obviously unlikely but still a concern to me at least.

July 6, 2014

Quick Deal: How To Get 15% Off EVERY Southwest Flight!

UPDATE: Deal is Dead per commenter Yana. TwoSmiles seems to have pulled Southwest gift cards off the site.

Earlier this week I posted two deals on how to save 20% on Frontier Airlines flights (now expired) & 20% on JetBlue flights (still ongoing) but there were restrictions around the dates you could travel.  Well, I just saw a post from Just Another Points Traveler that you can now take 15% off Southwest Flights without any travel restrictions!

The way this deal works is you are buying Southwest Gift Cards at 15% off through gift card site Two Smiles when you use promo code FIREWORKS15 at checkout. Southwest Gift Cards have NO expiration date or inactivity fees so you can use them for any flight in the future!  The only restriction on this deal is you must purchase the gift cards via the Two Smiles website by tomorrow night, 7/7/14. 

15% Off All Gift Cards Above Including Southwest Airlines!

15% Off All Gift Cards Above Including Southwest Airlines!

If you have any upcoming travel you need to book on Southwest or you know within the next year or so you will be flying Southwest (remember they fly international now), I recommend purchasing the gift cards now. It is rare to find this large a discount on Southwest flights so unless you are using Southwest points, this is the next best deal to take 15% off ALL Southwest flights.

 

July 2, 2014

Quick Deal: Take 20% Off Your Next JetBlue or Frontier Flight

I stumbled across two offers that for whatever reason haven’t gained much traction in the points & miles blogosphere that could allow you to take 20% off your next JetBlue or Frontier flight! While I’ve highlighted several Frontier promotion codes in the past, I’ve never seen a JetBlue discount code this high at 20%!

1) Frontier 20% Promotion – To celebrate their 20th birthday, Frontier is offering 20% off all domestic flights between July 12th and December 12th (with blackout dates around but not on Thanksgiving unfortunately) using promo code RGIFT2U. The downside is all travel must be booked by July 4th. Additionally, you must book your flights on FlyFrontier.com and enter the promo code in the approriate field.

Enter Code RGIFT2U Like Above

Enter Code RGIFT2U Like Above

I think we will be taking advantage of this offer as Andrea & her friends are looking to go to Portland for a long weekend in September and the return one way flight is pricing crazy at $260+ currently. Using this promo code knocked the price down to $218 which is more reasonable.

Frontier

Link to Promotion – Frontier RGIFT2U Promotion

2) JetBlue 20% Promotion – Utilizing their partnership with Dunkin’ Donuts, you will receive 20% off a JetBlue flight when you purchase specially marked 16oz bags of coffee at participating Dunkin’ Donuts locations.  A 16oz bag of coffee goes for $10 at Dunkin’ so it probably makes sense to buy a bag of coffee, even if you don’t want the coffee at all just for the coupon code (price out your flights beforehand to make sure) since the code will most likely save you greater then $10. [PSA announcement – Please donate the coffee if you are just buying it for the code.]

Unfortunately the travel window is much smaller and comes with some restrictions:

  • Book now through September 1, 2014
  • Travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 30, 2014
  • Offer blacked out between Oct. 10 and Oct. 14, 2014
  • Valid for roundtrip airfare only
  • Book only at jetblue.com/promo

Link to Promotion – 20% off JetBlue with Dunkin’ Donuts

I don’t have any plans to make this JetBlue deal work for me but if I had some fall travel still to book, I would definitely look at JetBlue now.

June 25, 2014

Amazing Deal Alert: $58 Roundtrip Flights From New York to Cape Cod

I just a notification from The Flight Deal (they are a great follow for airfare deals) that JetBlue is selling round-trip flights from JFK to Cape Cod for only $58!! The best part is it is available for the summer months!

Key Things To Know:

  • You must fly into Hyannis, Cape Cod (airport code HYA)  and depart from JFK
  • Availability is from July to September
  • Dates are scattered but still available (see example below I pulled at 4:15pm EST)
  • Book on JetBlue.com or Orbitz.com (others probably work but have not confirmed)

  • $58 Flight!

    $58 Flight!

 

Who is going to the Cape for a long weekend?

 

June 16, 2014

Who Wants 1 Million Points?

Via Mile Nerd, points.com is running a contest where one lucky receipent will win one million points in the program of their choice!

Yes, it is a longshot you will win but let’s daydream where one million points could take you. Let’s say you choose United miles. To give you an idea what you could burn one million miles on, you could use them for:

  • 4o Roundtrip Domestic Flights in the Continental US or
  • 8 Roundtrip Business Class Flights to Europe or
  • 10 Roundtrip First Class Flights to Hawaii or
  • 7 Roundtrip Business Class Flight to Australia

Link to signup for the contest is – HERE.

Good luck – you’ve got to be in it to win it!

*Note I do not receive anything if you enter the contest – I simply think for 10 seconds of work, its worth daydreaming where one million miles can take you*
**PointsCentric is on vacation, using his points and miles, without access to wifi and thus, cannot respond to emails or comments. Please enjoy this run of scheduled posts – I will respond to all email and approved comments upon my return. Thanks!**