November 9, 2015

Monday Musings – First Class Hawaii Awards, IHG Promo Hack & More

As a reminder, Monday Musings is a new weekly series where I rattle off a few thoughts I have that mostly relate to points/miles, travel and I might highlight other posts/news/nuggets I found interesting from the past week. For those that are football fans and read Peter King’s MMQB, think of this as similar to his “A Few Things I Think I Think” section

1. I am not at all surprised to see Discover enforcing the “no gift cards” as part of their lucrative Apple Pay promotion. They added it after the start of the promotion so I took that as a sign that they had figured out what each purchase contained (maybe with Level 3 data?). I don’t have a Discover card but those affected are asking to submit receipts if they want to contest it. Good luck to all those affected.

2. I’m sure some of you have seen the hack with IHG’s Surprise Promo but if you have not, instead of staying at an IHG hotel to be eligible, you can mail in entries with very specific instructions such as hand writing an entry on 3 x 5 index cards and mailing them individually. I first saw it here and it looks like you could net ~47,000 IHG points for a few hours of work + ~$46 in postage. I have no intention of participating as hand writing 94! 3 x 5 index cards seems like a punishment to me…I’ll save my time for something more valuable.

3x5_Notecard

3. I’m already sick of all the posts about the rumored upcoming AA changes. I get posting about the rumor especially since it is coming from a legitimate source but any more posts after that is pure speculation. Let’s wait for the real announcement shall we? As for my take on the rumored changes?  – Eh, I don’t care about them. I’ll care when the award chart is devalued which will happen sometime in the next year.

4. I’ve been working on an first class award to Hawaii from the East coast and it is tough to find anything halfway decent for next spring. The focus was on lie-flat seats on United from either IAD or EWR but that was a miss. Next was focusing on AA and trying to fly on AA’s 321T that flies JFK – LAX (or SFO) but also a dead end. There is plenty of time to go before this trip so I’m not concerned yet.

5. I didn’t mention it above because it is not a viable option but Delta has obscene rates for a first class flight home from Hawaii. Here is a search for a one way flight from HNL to NYC for 1 passenger next April. 65,000 miles is the lowest over a whole month! Skypesos indeed.

DeltaSucks

November 3, 2015

A Possible Way to Get Targeted for a 50k United MileagePlus Explorer Offer

I posted last week about how I was targeted for a 50,000 mile signup bonus on the United MileagePlus Explorer card via email and how the offer link seemingly hasn’t expired even though it should have. To followup on that, the link still works but I think I know why. This week I was sent the following envelope via snail mail. Since I am still targeted for a 50,000 mile offer, that could explain why the link still shows me the offer.

United50k

All of the terms of the offer are identical to what I received via email but do you see the interesting language on this mailer (hint: check out the circle and arrow).  It specifically congratulates me for recently earning miles so does this possibly hold a clue as to why I was targeted for this offer? Let’s take a look at my recent activity.

United Activity

As you can see, I haven’t had much activity earning United MileagePlus miles with the exception of some random earning from shopping via the United MileagePlus Shopping mall. And the only two I’d consider recent are obviously just the two last transactions. My hypothesis is that earning miles via their shopping portal, mostly from 10/17, contributed to receiving a targeted 50,000 mile offer. It’s possible that lack of activity also contributed to this as someone who constantly earns United miles may not be able to trigger this targeted offer.

If you haven’t received the signup bonus on the United Explorer card in the past 18 months and you haven’t had much activity earning United miles, you might be to get yourself targeted for this offer. The next time you do some online shopping consider using the United shopping mall to earn miles. I’d also guess that earning miles from other means outside of flying such as crediting car rentals to United or even transferring 1,000 points from Chase Ultimate Rewards could work.

Anyone else have luck trying this?

November 2, 2015

Monday Musings – Some Scattered Thoughts on Our Hobby, Travel & More

I have a lot of thoughts and ideas about travel and “the Hobby” in general though many of them don’t necessitate a blog post on its own. I am going to try out a new weekly post on Mondays where I rattle off a few thoughts I have that mostly relate to our Hobby and I might highlight other posts/news/nuggets I find interesting from the past week. For those that are football fans and read Peter King’s MMQB, think of this as similar to his “A Few Things I Think I Think” section.

1. First, my thoughts are with the victims and families of Metrojet 9268. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the crash but there are reports the plane was having technical difficulties and the pilot declared an emergency landing. Either way, very sad news to hear.

2. For those that don’t get “The Hobby” references, I am referring to travel hacking. The Hobby apparently is the way to describe what we do at least per this Rolling Stone article that went viral.

Snipet from the Rolling Stone Article

Snipet from the Rolling Stone Article

3. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen some great awards become available using AA miles. We had crazy availability to London during summer on AA direct flights (so no surcharges), first class to Chile and last week, first class awards on Qantas for travel to Australia. I held two awards including first class on SYD-DFW but unfortunately I let them go as I wouldn’t be able to get the time off from work for it.

4. Speaking of the above, the 5 day hold on American Airlines award tickets is a vastly underrated tool. It really comes in handy when hard to get awards become available and you don’t know right away if the dates/times/routing etc., work. It buys 5 days to figure it all out which usually is sufficient for me.

5. Great post by Mile Nerd about questions that aren’t easily answered – such as which credit card should I get? To truly make the best recommendation, you need to learn about their travel goals, credit history, ability to spend etc. This is why I have a consulting service to better help people with this.

6. Lastly, I saw MileValue released an e-book on how to become a travel hacker and “fly first class for free”. Few issues I have with it – The title is misleading as no flight is truly ever free (taxes, fees, annual fees on credit cards to get the miles etc.) so I don’t appreciate the hyperbole to try and sell the book. Additionally the price is $67 dollars!!!, which seems overpriced and set to increase again in the next few days! I wonder if there will be a Citibank application link on each page #zing

October 28, 2015

British Airways Kills the 4,500 Avios Awards in North America

I just got an email from British Airways stating that starting February 2nd, 2016 award flights that occur in North America that are under 650 miles, will increase by 66.67%. In other words, any award flight that cost 4,500 Avios today will now cost 7,500 Avios. It is important to note this is for flights in North America only – you can still find 4,500 Avios award flights in other parts of the world. Here is the official notice from British Airways.
NewPricing1

Here is the full scope of changes:

  • Economy class flights that touch North America increase from 4,500 Avios to 7,500 Avios.
  • Business class flights that touch North America increase from 9,000 Avios to 15,000 Avios.
  • First class flights that touch North America increase from 18,000 Avios to 30,000 Avios.

NewPricing

Sample new pricing

It is interesting to note that this is the ONLY devaluation made and it is only for a very specific set of flights (under 650 miles, North America only). Basically this tells us BA has seen a surging number of redemption for these short flights on American Airlines and wants to curtail that activity slightly. I think even at 7,500 Avios this still represents a great deal for most travelers, especially when using Avios to get last minute tickets which are usually several hundred dollars.

I appreciate the advance notice from British Airways but I’m slightly miffed at the timing of this as my wife just applied for British Airways 100,000 Avios offer. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have gone through with that offer but it’s slightly disingenuous to offer a large credit card bonus for the US market and then weeks into the promotion, make a change that only affects the US market. I guess I should be happy nothing else has devalued but that still doesn’t make me a happy camper this morning to see their best award devalue by almost 67%.