January 7, 2016

How to Check If You Are Targeted for 10,000 Membership Rewards Points for Enrolling in Pay Over Time

Update: Based on feedback, I believe this will only work for Business Charge cards.

Even though charge cards from American Express generally have to be paid off in full each statement cycle, American Express has a program called Pay Over Time that allows charge card holders the “benefit” to enjoy flexible payment options instead of paying off the balance in full. Of course, no one should ever take advantage of this benefit as you will get hit with a large APR but American Express lets you enroll in this feature even if you never have any intention of using it. To promote it, American Express is offering 10,000 Membership Rewards Points per eligible charge card to enroll in Pay Over Time to targeted members and I think there is a chance you could be targeted without knowing it.

At one point in time, almost anyone was able to signup for this promotion to receive the 10,000 MR points but American Express has cracked down on this and allows only targeted users to receive the bonus. However, someone recently shared with me a link that was working for some people (though not everyone) to enroll in this service and earn 10,000 Membership Rewards points. I gave it a shot and clicked this link which leads to a screen asking you to log in to your American Express account. Even though I hadn’t received the offer directly from American Express, I tried it for my 2 eligible cards (Business Platinum and Business Gold) and it worked! Remember this offer will only work on charge cards such as the Platinum, Premier Rewards Gold or Business Gold cards.

Success!

Here is the direct link to the offer – www.americanexpress.com/openpayovertime87

Considering you don’t actually have to take advantage of this benefit (and you really shouldn’t), if you happen to be targeted for this, it is a no-brainer to take advantage of this. I know some people hate seeing posts about targeted offers but considering this takes all of 10 seconds to check, I think this is worth posting about.

Share your results in the comments!

Note: This was suppose to be posted two weeks but it was hiding in my drafts. Better late than never.

January 5, 2016

Confirmed: American Express Airline Credits Are Working for American Airlines & Delta Gift Cards

One of my first posts of 2016 recommended that anyone who generally buys airline gift cards to take advantage of the annual airline credit on the American Express Platinum ($200) or Premier Rewards Gold ($100) card should do so now, rather than taking a chance that American Express kills this option at some point in 2016. While reports on Flyertalk have generally been positive about this ‘trick’ still working, I can confirm firsthand that $100 American Airlines e-gift cards and $50 Delta e-gift cards are working. Not only are they working but American Express is crediting them in record time – only one or two days!

Successful AA Gift Card Reimbursement

Successful Delta Gift Card Reimbursement

As you can see in the above, I purchased 2x $100 American Airlines e-gift cards on 1/1 with my Business Platinum card while I used my wife’s Premier Rewards Gold card on 1/3 to purchase 2x $50 Delta e-gift cards. Both were credited automatically quite quickly compared to other airline credits I’ve seen posted in past years. If you plan to buy American or Delta gift cards, I highly recommend sticking with $100 e-gift cards for American and definitely only $50 e-gift cards for Delta.

If you want to try it for a different airline, please see the applicable Flyertalk threads below for other airlines.

Update: One note that Ann brought up in the comments – AA will not sell gift cards to NJ residents so you need to chose a different airline if you plan to buy gift cards. So make sure you select your airline with American Express first before buying any gift cards.

United Gift Card Reimbursements

Southwest Gift Card Reimbursements

Alaska Airlines Gift Card Reimbursements

Hawaiian Airlines Gift Card Reimbursements

January 4, 2016

My 2015 Travel Review: How I Used One Million Points/Miles & 8 Free Night Certificates

As I alluded to in 2015 Year in Review post, I wanted to post a recap of all my travel from the past year so here is a summary of our travels from the past year & how I burned over 1 million points in 2015 broken down by the various trips we took this year.

January 2015 – Aruba: 75,000 IHG Points

For this trip, we booked a cheap airfare about 9 months out or so when fares from NYC to Aruba dropped to $300 roundtrip which is fansatic for winter (and especially MLK weekend). Of course, I used some Delta e-gift cards I got my from various Platinum cards to offset the flight cost. We stayed 3 nights at the Holiday Inn Aruba at 25,000 points a nights with no resort fees or taxes. It wasn’t the most luxurious hotel but it had a great beachfront location. I would return for a long weekend in a heartbeat, especially at only 25,000 IHG points a night. See this Award Trip Breakdown post for more details.

Holiday Inn Aruba

Hawaii – April 2015: 160,000 Hawaiian Miles + 60,000 Hyatt Points + 6,000 Virgin American Points

This was our first big trip of 2015 with 3 nights on the Big Island, followed by 6 nights in Maui. We booked first class flights on Hawaiian with the outbound routing of JFK-HNL-KOA and return of OGG-HNL-JFK for 80,000 Hawaiian miles per person (I did transfer some Amex MR points to top off my account). Our return flight had quite an interesting twist as we assisted in a medical emergency onboard.

Hawaiian A330 First Class

On the Big Island, we stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on a paid stay which was around $130/night if I recall correctly for their new MAKAI rooms since I had booked it during a Black Friday sale in 2014. My wife and I really loved this property and the Big Island in general – we felt it had such a different vibe from what most people think of when they hear “Hawaii”.

Hilton Waikoloa Village

To get to Maui from Kona, we used 3,000 Virgin America points each for a one way ticket on Hawaiian Airlines which is actually a pretty solid deal, considering these flights can cost $100 or more. Then in Maui we did cash + points at the Andaz Maui for 75,000 points + $150/night co-pay so I could use a Diamond Suite upgrade…which led to this post. However, Hyatt was running a promotion for Hyatt Visa cardholders and I got 20% of my points back (hence the 60,000 total in the title). Even with the all complaints on Flyertalk about the Andaz Maui (resort fee, reduced breakfast for Diamonds, lack of cash+points), it remains my favorite domestic hotel and it took a lot for me not to return to it this year on our April 2016 trip to Hawaii. For more details, see this Award Trip Breakdown.

Andaz Maui

Seattle – May 2015: 2 Hilton Free Night Certificates + 50,000 Hilton Points + 40,000 Delta ~~Skypesos~~ Skymiles

We went to Seattle for a long weekend to visit one of Andrea’s friends and set up base at the Hilton Seattle using 2 free nights from the Citi Hilton Reserve (yes, I know it wasn’t the best use of the free nights but our original plans for Italy fell through) + 50,000 Hilton points for the 3rd night. For the flights, we paid for the outbound as it was only $162 per person (we used Delta e-gift cards again) but all the return flights were pricing at $275 + for a one way since we wanted a red-eye back to NY to maximize our time in Seattle. I ended up using 20,000 Delta Skypesos per person – see this Award Trip Breakdown for even more details.

No trip to Seattle is complete without a trip to Boeing #avgeek

Antigua – July 2015: 40,000 British Airways Avios

We wanted to go away for the July 4th weekend and to figure out where to go, I used American’s Award Map tool which I talked about in this post. The only island that had availability was Antigua so we decided to use British Airways Avios at a rate of 20,000 Avios per person instead of the 35,000 miles American wanted. For the hotel, there are no chain hotels so I decided to take advantage of the 4th night free benefit from the Citi Prestige card and booked the Sandals Antigua. Since we went for exactly 4 nights, we only paid for 3 nights but even with this perk I don’t think I’d return to this Sandals anytime soon.

Chicago – July 2015: 50,000 Club Carlson Points

My wife was running a half marathon in Chicago so we headed off to the Windy City for 2 nights. We booked a cheapish roundtrip on American for ~$225 roundtrip and stayed at the Radisson Blu Aqua hotel, which is part of the Club Carlson group of hotels. We chose this hotel since at the time, I had the Club Carlson Visa which allowed you one night free on all award stays – so for our two night stay, we paid for one night in points (50,000) and the other night was free! Unfortunately Club Carlson discontinued this perk and I cancelled my card shortly thereafter.

Radisson Blu Aqua

Costa Rica – August 2015: 78,400 JetBlue Points + 22,500 Hyatt Points + 1 Hyatt Anniversary Night

I’ve always wanted to try out the Andaz Papagayo Resort in Costa Rica so we planned a 4 night stay there with some friends for our first trip to Costa Rica. The Andaz is located on the west coast of Costa Rica and you need to fly into Liberia so flights are bit more scarce than say to San Jose, Costa Rica. Coming from NY, I really wanted to fly the only non-stop on JetBlue and we did though it cost us a boatload of points. However a large portion of that high cost in points (almost 30,000 additional on top what was already booked) is that I had to change our return flight only about a month out since we had to return a day earlier (for my wife’s new job) and cash prices were quite high. I talked about my decision in this post (and yes it still hurts I had to burn that many points for an economy flight).

For the hotel, I once again used cash & points for the first 3 nights (7,500 points a night + $100 copay) so I could use a Diamond Suite Upgrade. For the last night, I used the 2014 free anniversary night from my Hyatt Visa since this is a category 4 hotel and they were nice enough to let us stay in the suite for the night. We loved this hotel and how secluded it was – highly recommended for a relaxing getaway.

One of the pools

Dubai / Maldives – October 2015: 180,000 Alaska Airlines Miles + 2 Anniversary Hyatt Free Nights + 2 Hyatt Free Nights +100,000 Hyatt Points + 180,000 American Airlines Miles

Ok, this was the BIG trip in 2015 for our second anniversary – and quite possibly our favorite trip ever. It had amazing first class flights on Emirates & Etihad and two great Hyatt hotels. For the outbound we used 90,000 Alaska miles per person for a JFK-Dubai (2 night stopover) – Male routing on Emirates first class. Yes, we even got lucky and the Dubai-Male leg had an equipment change with a 777-300ER with first class suites!

Emirates A380 First Class

Shower for First Class Passengers

First Class on 777-300ER

Our hotel in Dubai was the Grand Hyatt Dubai which is a category 4 hotel so we were able to use my 2015 & 2016 Hyatt free nights here as Hyatt was able to extend the expiration date of my expiring 2015 free night. This served as a solid base for our 2 nights in Dubai as it was only 10 minutes from the airport.

Grand Hyatt Dubai, Courtesy of Hyatt.com

In the Maldives, we stayed at the Park Hyatt Maldives using 2 free night from Andrea signing up for the Hyatt Visa + 100,000 Hyatt points for the other 4 nights. We decided to upgrade from the base villa to a private pool villa for 3 nights and an overwater villa for 3 nights. I’m behind on trip reports but I do plan a full review of the property (and the trip in general). Spoiler alert – it was awesome!

Villa 24, with a private pool

From our overwater villa

Overwater Villa

Finally for the return flight home, we burned 90,000 American Airlines miles per person for a first class routing on Etihad home of MLE-AUH-JFK. Unfortunately this was about two months before they flew the First Class Apartments to JFK but nonetheless the flight was awesome. The first class suite on the 777 for the AUH-JFK is very comfortable and the chef for first class was a great perk. It was our longest flight at almost 14 hours and 7,000 miles.

Etihad First Class

Another angle of Etihad First Class

To sum it all up, I burned the following for travel in 2015:

Airline Miles – 684,400 miles
Hotel Points – 357,500 points
Free Night Certificates – 8 Free Night Certificates (I’m including the 4th Night Free in Antigua from the Citi Prestige)
Grand Total = 1,041,900 Points/Miles + 8 Free Night Certificates

I’m happy we were able to travel as much as we did in 2015 and even happier to do it for a small fraction of the retail cost of all this travel. Here is to making 2016 just as memorable!

January 2, 2016

My Advice: Use Your 2016 American Express Airline Credit Now

Update: Credits are posting as expected. See this post for more details.

Earlier this week I posted one final reminder to use your 2015 American Express Airline credit whether it be for $200 (Platinum cards) or $100 (Premier Rewards Gold card). Now that 2016 is here you can now change your airline selection (if you so chose) but I am advocating to use the 2016 credits NOW if you plan to buy airline gift cards. I have always had success buying $50 Delta gift cards or $100 American Airlines gift cards but I would check the latest reports on the Flyertalk threads for United, Southwest and Alaska Airlines before selecting any of those airlines.

My argument is a simple one. It is widely known that airline gift cards are not eligible for the airline credit per the terms & conditions. However for years, the automated system American Express uses to determine what is eligible has nonetheless processed certain gift card purchases as being eligible – usually small amounts such as $50 (Delta) or $100 (Southwest/American) or if purchased a part of a registry (United). Right now, we know this is still working as the recent posts to Flyertalk demonstrate but there is no guarantee this will work for all of 2016. I have no inside knowledge to this but I do think there is a non-zero chance American Express changes this at some point in 2016.

To show that I follow my own advice, I purchased these two $100 American Airline gift cards yesterday on 1/1 and I am hoping the credits post shortly after (I will update this post once it does).

To be clear, I have absolutely zero inside knowledge that this ‘trick’ to buy airline gift cards and have them be eligible for the airline credit will end soon. In fact, it probably won’t end this year as that chance is quite small (but not zero either) in my opinion. After the technical issue earlier this year in which people feared American Express had caught on to this trick, I’d rather be months earlier getting my airline gift cards reimbursed than a day late.

January 1, 2016

PointsCentric: 2015 Year in Review

Apparently this is the new thing to do as I’ve seen several esteemed (and not so esteemed) bloggers going over how 2015 went so I wanted to join in the fun with some stats about this blog in 2015. Looking through the stats was actually quite interesting and I’m hoping I can use that information to write about content readers care about most. This post will talk about just about the blog – I will cover my favorite trips, flights, hotels etc. in my next post.

Background:

2015 was my second full year of blogging as a points/miles blogger as this blog started early in January 2014 but I’ve been blogging since 2011 (I used to blog about Boston College sports at AroundTheRes.com with several other BC alums). I’m happy to say readership increased significantly in 2015 as both page views and unique visitors increased by over 200% even though I posted less in 2015! I think a lot of that is due to a lack of readership in early 2014 as traffic was quite low for a while until I got linked to by several bloggers and MMS featured me in one of his interviews. In 2015, PointsCentric saw just shy of 100,000 visitors.

In terms of revenue, the way this blog makes money is from clients who signup for my consulting or award booking services. There are no ads or credit card affiliate links on this site so I am not forced to write about credit card offers and plug my affiliate links relentlessly. I do have some referral links, such as Uber, Amazon etc but those honestly have such little impact to the blog’s bottom-line. Thankfully new clients signups were mostly consistent year over year as new clients signups in 2015 decreased by only 4 as compared to 2014. Revenues generated from clients are still enough to keep me actively engaged in blogging and help keep this blog going.

Top 5 Most Popular Posts in 2015:

#1. My Experience with the Citibank Citigold 30k American Airlines Offer & Funding My Account with a Credit Card > 7,700 Pageviews

This was posted in Feb. 2015 and I believe I was one of the first bloggers to discuss this offer in great detail. It also helped several other blogs linked to this post.

#2. Positive Update on the 30,000 American Airlines Miles Offer for Opening a Citigold Account > 7,600 Pageviews

The followup was posted in May 2015 and I showed that everything worked out as intended with this offer.

#3. The Alaska Airlines 25k Offer with $100 Statement Credit is Still Alive! > 5,600 Pageviews

This was posted in May 2015 and I figured out an alternative way to generate this offer. Bank of America has been killing any links to this offer pretty quickly but this method still works (I tested it this morning 1/1/16) to get this better offer on the Alaska Airlines credit card.

#4. American Express Business Gold Rewards Signup Bonus Increased to 75,000 Points! > 5,100 Pageviews

This was posted in Nov. 2014 and is the only 2014 post to make this list. I was figured out that using incognito mode/private browsing and/or trying the offer on mobile device would generate a better offer than normal on certain Amex cards. In this case, I found a 75k Amex Business Gold offer. Using incognito and/or mobile devices still generates a better offer on certain cards now (most recent example for me is the 25k Everyday offer)

#5. The Two Browser Trick is Back with the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Credit Card > 4,600 Pageviews

This was posted in Jan. 2015 but the most recent comments on that post seem indicate this isn’t working anymore. However for a large part of 2015 this worked and was an easy way to double up on any BofA offer.

Random Stats:

2014 Total Posts: 154 Posts
2015 Total Posts: 125 Posts

Most Popular Day: May 19, 2015 (Published Positive Update on the 30,000 American Airlines Miles Offer for Opening a Citigold Account)

Least Popular Post of 2015: Today is the Last Day to Book Awards Using US Airways Dividend Miles < 100 Pageviews

Top 5 Countries That Visited PointsCentric:

United States
Canada
United Kingdom
France
Australia

Top 5 Referrers to PointsCentric (thank you to everyone who has ever linked to me!):

Dollars Made From Credit Card Signups and Ad Revenue: $0