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 9, 2014

Long Weekend in San Juan, Puerto Rico Trip Report – Introduction

* I am going to try something new here on the blog and do a full trip report for our trip to Puerto Rico last month. It will be a 4 part series in which I’ll go over the miles/points/travel hacking aspect to the trip, followed by reviews of our flights and hotel stay and ending with some activities and dining we did to spur ideas for a possible trip for you to Puerto Rico. I’ll update each link below once the relevant post is up.

1) Introduction (this post)

2) Flights – American Airlines Business Class JFK – SJU & American Airlines Economy Class SJU – JFK 

3) Hotel – Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde

4) Activities & Dining

The first ever trip I took with my then girlfriend (now wife) was to Puerto Rico back in 2008. This was before I was into points and miles so I remember thinking back then I got a deal when I booked a vacation package on Orbitz.com for $500+ a person for a 4 night stay. Obviously now I wouldn’t consider that a deal especially considering my trip to Bora Bora cost less but I digress. For this trip, we were looking for a relaxing getaway for the weekend that was within a few hours of NY, had good weather and most importantly, had award availability for flights to make this trip as cheap as possible. The one location that met this criteria almost immediately was a return trip to Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico - 2008

Puerto Rico – 2008

For our flights, I’ve written about this before but being based in NY, British Airways Avios are quite valuable for trips to the Caribbean. The only limitations was that flights had to be on American Airlines and had to be direct to maximize the Avios award chart. I’ll go over the flight selections in the next post on the flight reviews but I was only able to find award availability to San Juan. There was none on the way home which wasn’t especially surprising since everyone is looking for a late Sunday flight home after a weekend getaway. Thankfully, I had some AA gift cards to burn for the return flight.

For the hotel, it was a trip down memory lane as stayed in the same hotel we did back in 2008 – The Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde. I wasn’t trying to be nostalgic but it made the most sense from a financial standpoint, which I’ll get into when I review the hotel. It is located about 5 minutes from the airport and I’d argue the beach at the Courtyard Marriott is nicer then the Ritz Carlton’s which is down maybe a half mile. It’s also #AVGeek heaven as the runway is located across the street from the hotel so you have some amazing views of planes taking off.

I hope you will stay tuned for my first trip report on the blog and if this proves successful, I plan to go back and review some of the bigger trips I’ve taken. My goal for doing this is by showing you how easy it can be to accumulate the miles/points, I hope to inspire you to start taking your own trips. I think seeing pictures and descriptions of the activities we did will only entice you more to make these trips a reality. I know this worked on me when I first started collecting points and miles as I would see bloggers post amazing pictures of their trip in Europe or Asia, followed by pictures of their first class seat or luxury 5 star hotel room that they got for free due to points and miles. Hopefully, this will have the same effect on you.

Puerto Rico - 2014

Puerto Rico – 2014

September 8, 2014

Surprising Your Spouse with the Gift of Travel When You Are a Travel Hacker

Update: We went to Bali and Phuket. Click those links for more details on how she found out, a little more about the trip etc.

I have a confession to make: It’s really hard to impress my wife with the gift of travel. No, it’s not because she is demanding and only wants first class travel or 5 star luxury hotels (trust me Holiday Inns are just fine for her) but rather with all the traveling we do, traveling together is almost too commonplace in our lives. Seriously, at any given time we have 3-5 trips booked in advance and we have traveled every month this year with the exception of January and February. In all those cases, we always discuss together where we want to go or if I see a limited time offer, either with miles/points or a great cash price, we will quickly figure out when we want to go to take advantage of that limited time deal.

Our one year anniversary is coming up later this month and I really wanted to do something special for it. I wanted it to top all the other traveling we have done in the past year, which is quite a tall task to do when you look at where we have traveled since October 2013:

  • Moorea & Bora Bora
  • Maui
  • Alaskan Cruise
  • Paris
  • Puerto Rico and other small weekend getaways
Bora Bora

Bora Bora

The one similarity with all those trips above is Andrea knew when the trip was coming, where we were going and what we were doing there.  I know almost no matter what country or destination I chose for our one year anniversary, it was going to be hard to top that list above (seriously how do you top a honeymoon in Bora Bora and a second one in Maui?!?!?)

So what did I do? I booked our one year anniversary trip for later this month and Andrea has no idea where we are going. I wanted to avoid the idea of “travel fatigue” and keep the excitement fresh so I booked a 10 day trip to 2 countries and Andrea is in the dark on our activities, hotels, time in each country, etc. I’m pretty sure she never even heard of one of the places we are going.

To be fair (and to keep the excitement building for the trip), I have given her a few clues along the way. Here are the clues and facts I have given her thus far. Some of them are purposely too vague.

  • There is a total of 21 flying hours (yes 21 hours in a plane) plus a 3 hour layover to reach our first destination from New York.
  • We are flying 10,168 miles to reach our first destination.
  • She knows the layover is in Seoul because I couldn’t resist showing her a picture of her seat for the flight from NY to Seoul which is a first class suite on Asiana (see below).
  • With that hint, she asked if this trip was somewhere in Asia which I confirmed for her that it is.
  • I was able to hire a private driver and tour guide for 10 hours for about $68 USD. Things in this country are cheap.
  • The second destination, which is in another country, is only 1,640 miles away but requires a connection in the capital of this country.
  • There may or may not be elephants involved.
Our seats for NY to Seoul

Our seats for NY to Seoul

Can you guess where we are going? I won’t confirm or deny your answers in the comments for obvious reasons but let’s see who can figure out where we are going!

She will only find out the first destination when we get to the airport and gets her boarding pass for that flight. I think with her not knowing the details of anything going on, she will be even more excited for this trip then normal.  Hopefully, this is how you can still surprise your spouse with the gift of travel when you are a travel hacker 🙂

 

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)

September 4, 2014

Points & Miles 101: Before You Cancel a Credit Card Make Sure You Do This!

As you might imagine with over a dozen active credit cards, I am potentially on the hook for a lot of annual fees as the best credit cards that offer points or miles typically have high annual fees ($65-$450). Sometimes when I signup for these credit cards the annual fee is waived for the first year so it is only after having the card for a full year do I have to decide whether to pony up for the annual fee. On some credit cards the annual fee is definitely worth it as they give you a free hotel night (IHG, Hyatt, & Marriott credit cards), bonus points (Club Carlson) or airline credits, elite status and lounge access (Amex Platinum) simply for paying the annual fee. On other cards though, there is no point to keeping them after the first year as I simply signed up for the card to get the large signup bonus, which we all know is the easiest and quickest way to earn lots of points and miles.

The one big piece of advice I have is before you decide to cancel a card you should always attempt to get the annual fee waived or at a minimum, ask for a “retention bonus” (i.e. bonus points) to offset the annual fee. Let me walk you through what I just did with my Starwood American Express credit card when I called to “cancel.”

SPG card

 

I signed up for the American Express Starwood credit card in August 2013 when the signup bonus was for 30,000 Starwood points for spending $5k in 6 months and the annual fee of $65 was waived for the first year. I was excited to earn the 30,000 bonus points but once the first year ended, I had to decide whether to cancel the card or renew it. Unlike some of the cards mentioned above, the Starwood card doesn’t offer any sort of renewal bonus so for most people I would recommend cancelling the card unless the annual fee could be waived or you got enough bonus points to keep the card open. For me however, I wanted to keep the card another year as it is my go to card for everyday purchases as I am trying to increase my Starwood point balance and this is the only credit card that earns Starpoints (unlike say Hilton or American Airlines which all have several cards that earn those type of points or miles).

So even though I decided I wanted to keep the card another year, I still called in to “cancel” my card. When chatting with the representative, here a few good tips to remember:

1) Always be polite – There is no need to get aggressive or sound agitated. Ask them how their day is or how their weekend was. They deal with enough annoying people daily so being nice to them can go a long way. More often then not there is a greater chance the rep will try to help you in anyway possible if you are nice to them.

2) Tell them want to cancel the card, NOT “I am thinking of cancelling the card” – You need to sound plausible and sincere about cancelling a card to get the reps to make an offer to you to incentive you to keep the card another year. In this case, it comes down to who is gonna call who’s bluff. If you sound serious about cancelling, the rep will have to make more of an effort to keep you (i.e extra bonus points). There is no guarantee this works but it will increase your odds.

3) H.U.C.A (Hang up, Call again) – My favorite piece of advice. Make sure to not let the agent cancel the card if you receive no offer – as they start reading the legal mumbo jumbo before they can cancel the card, just tell the rep you’d like some more time to think about it and you will call back. Or my personal favorite – tell them you received an urgent call from your boss on the other line and you can’t miss the call. That will stop the rep from processing anything and it allows you to HUCA and hopefully be more successful next time with a different agent. This worked for me in my example below.

4) Be prepared to walk away – This could actually apply both ways. Be prepared to go ahead and cancel the card if you have tried several times to get something but all the reps have refused and your true intention is to cancel the card. On the other hand, if you really want to keep the card, you might be forced to give up trying to get any extra points or the annual fee waived and just accept it for what it is. Make sure to not let the agent cancel the card on you in this case.

Going back to my example, my first attempt to “cancel” my SPG Amex was via secure chat while logged into my Amex account online but the rep was unwilling to offer anything when I asked if the annual fee could be waived. I pushed a bit further and asked about a “retention bonus” to keep the card open. Again, he could not offer anything, but he did suggest that I call the American Express retention department directly and ask them. The phone number to the American Express Retention Department is 1-800-452-3945.

Later that afternoon, I called the retention department and I was quickly connected to a live agent after entering my card number. I explained that I was speaking with another agent who suggested I speak with the retention department before cancelling my card. She asked why I wanted to cancel and I told her with the other 4 Amex cards I have open, I was paying too many annual fees and “I was trying to get a hold of my finances”.

Almost instantly after saying that, the agent proceeded to explain as a policy American Express does not waive annual fees but it could offer me some bonus points if I kept the card open. My offer was for 1,000 Starpoints + an additional 500 if I spent $1,000 on the Starwood card in the next 60 days (which was fine since I had to buy a new patio set the following week). Even though the value of the points (worth $30 to me at 2 cents a point) didn’t cover the annual fee, I still accepted the offer. As I stated earlier, it is really hard to earn Starpoints and I wanted to increase my Starpoint balance for some future trips I have in mind. With the annual fee in theory reduced to $35, that was a price I was willing to pay to collect Starpoints for another year. This may not work for everyone, but it works for me and my point earning strategies.

In closing, I was content to renew the Starwood American Express for the annual fee of $65 but before I did, I made sure to “pretend to cancel” to see if American Express would blink and offer me something not to close the card. It worked as I earned an additional 1,500 Starpoints for my time chatting with a rep online and then calling American Express. There is a whole thread on Flyertalk showing other offers people received to not cancel their cards, so I highly recommend trying this approach before cancelling your next credit card.