Monthly Archives: January 2012
I have had a few people ask me lately what the best airline is for earning rewards. If you search the web, you can find a huge amount of information on the topic, but it can be tough to understand what it all means. I really wish that there was an easy answer to this question and I could just tell people to concentrate on X Airline and everything will be great. Unfortunately, like most things in the world of miles and points, it is not that simple. In today’s post, I will attempt to sum up some of the more important pieces of information on the topic and hopefully provide you with the tools to answer the question for your specific situation.
There are many factors that need to be taken into account when choosing a primary airline. Perhaps the most important question that needs to be answered is why you are trying to pick just one. There are a few common answers to this question. Some people believe that the only way to earn miles is to continue to fly on the same airline until you have built up enough miles for a reward. Although many years ago this was the case, today it could not be farther from the truth. Let me use my family as an example. In the past year and a half, we have earned close to 2 million miles and points in loyalty programs and we have actually flown less that 10 miles-earning flights. Rather than concentrate on a specific airline’s program, we have used alternate techniques such as credit card sign-ups, mileage shopping malls, and individual airline promos to build up our balances in as many programs as possible. If your goal is simply to gather miles and work towards award flights and low cost travel, you probably do not want to limit yourself to earning miles in a single program. Different airlines are better for travel to different parts of the world, so if you are like me and want to see as many new places as possible, it will be better for you to build up balances in several programs.
A second reason you might want to concentrate on a single airline program is if you think that you will fly/earn enough to qualify for elite status. Each airline has multiple levels of elite status that will give you benefits ranging from priority boarding and free checked bags to lounge access and upgrades to first class. Whether you spend a lot of time in the sky or only take a few flights a year, having elite status can make your travel experience much more enjoyable. If you are want to become elite, it is best to concentrate on a single airline.
Another reason for choosing a primary airline program is that you might fly regularly on paid tickets. This usually applies to those who fly for business purposes and either their company only uses one airline or they are allowed to book their own travel and choose who they fly with. Being able to travel consistently and regularly with the same carrier will allow you to get comfortable with that airline’s procedures and facilities and will also let you build your way up to elite status as mentioned above.
If you have read this far, you should now be able to decide if it is actually a good idea for you to try to choose a specific airline program to concentrate on. If the answer is yes, keep reading and I will try to help you with that task. If the answer is no, keep reading anyway. You never know, you might just learn something.
The next thing you will want to consider is your location and what your primary airport of departure will be. You will often see this referred to as your home airport. Most people will have a single airport that it is most convenient for them to fly out of. In some cases, you will have a local airport that is closest to you. These smaller airports are usually more expensive to fly out of and often only have connecting flights to nearby international airports. For these purposes, you will most likely want to look at the closest major international airport to your home. If you are flying for work and cost is not an issue, you may also want to consider the local airport.
For me, the closest airport to my home is the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP). This is just really an international airport in name. To get anywhere from AVP, you usually just connect to Philadelphia, NYC, or Chicago. I don’t even think they have direct flights to Canada. Although they are growing and increasing flight schedules, I have never found a flight that is close enough in price to make it worth flying out of there. After ruling out AVP, I am in a good position. Sure it takes me about two hours to get to the airport for a flight, but I am just about equal distance from both Philadelphia (PHL) and Newark (EWR). This usually gives me far more options for flights than if I was only looking at one airport.
Once you have chosen your home airport, or in my case 2 home airports, you want to see what the primary carriers are that fly out of that airport. You may already know this information but if you don’t, you can check out AirlineRouteMaps.com. They have over 1000 airline route maps and break them down by region, so it should be pretty easy to find what carriers serve your city. If you live in the United States, you can check out this page for US Airline Hubs and Focus Cities. For me, the primary airlines are Continental (United) out of EWR and US Airways and Southwest out of PHL. If you travel to the same destinations regularly either for personal or business reasons, you will want to do the same type of analysis for those destinations. You will want the airline that you choose as your primary miles earning airline to be one of the ones that is the easiest for you to travel on for most destinations that you will be traveling to.
At this point, you should have been able to narrow your choices down to just a few airlines. In some cases, you will be down to just one logical choice. To be sure that you have made the right choice for your primary airline though, there are a couple of other things that you should look at. Most likely, if you are looking at choosing a primary airline, your ultimate goals are to gain elite status and/or to earn miles and redeem them for award flights. Knowing this, it would be a mistake to choose an airline without looking at the options for redeeming miles and the benefits or becoming an elite.
To find the specific benefits for the different levels of elite status, you will need to check out the website of each of the airlines you are interested in. The benefits can vary between programs and so can the requirements for reaching the different levels. You will need to look at each program’s benefits and decide how valuable they will be to you. Also make sure that you will be able to qualify for elite status with your normal travel patterns. You can do things like mileage runs to qualify more easily and some airlines even let you buy your way up to elite status, so these are also things to consider if you are really determined to get to that next level.
When it comes to redeeming miles for award travel, it is important to look at not only the airline in question, but also their partners and whether they are a member of a major alliance. The three big alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and OneWorld. You can check out their webpages to see the member airlines for each. There are two main reasons that this is important. First, miles flown on partner or alliance airlines can often be banked to your primary airline of choice. This will allow you to build up miles in your preferred program when flying in other regions of the world, instead of leaving a few thousand miles in the account of an airline that you may never fly again. Second, when you are trying to redeem miles for award flights, you can often use your primary airline’s miles to book flights on many of their partner or alliance airlines. This opens up a huge array of destination options that may not be possible if you were just looking at the route map for your airline of choice.
Each alliance can be easier to redeem miles for different regions, so if you have specific award travel destinations in mind, this is something that you should be aware of. For example, Star Alliance is often the best for Asia, SkyTeam for Australia, and OneWorld for South America. This is not to say that you can’t find award flights to these locations with the other alliances, but only that it would likely be easier using the ones that I mentioned. These are also not the only destinations that you can get to with each of these alliances, but merely the areas where there has historically been the best award availability. I will not go into a full alliance analysis here, but you can find plenty more information online if you are interested.
The question of alliance is easily answered for my situation. Southwest is not a member of a major alliance so for these purposes, I can rule them out. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Southwest is a great choice if you are planning to primarily fly domestically. I like to travel to as many new places as possible though, so the lack of international flights in addition to the lack of partners is a deal breaker for me. That leaves me with Continental (United) and US Airways. Both are members of Star Alliance so I could really choose either one. Whether I fly out of EWR on Continental (United) or out of PHL on US Airways, since the two carriers are members of the same alliance, I would be able to bank my miles to whichever one I want.
In my case, I don’t have to make that final decision and choose one primary airline. I am more concerned with low cost flights than I am with reaching elite status. I already have lounge access and free checked bags on several airlines through my American Express Platinum Card and my airline specific credit cards. When I plan to travel, I usually just check flights from EWR and PHL and choose the option with the lowest price. Traveling most often with a family of four, it is more important for me to get us to our destination with as little cost as possible than to have us sitting in first class. For the time being, I just build up miles and points balances with as many programs as possible and when it is time to plan a vacation, I have a variety of options.
For many of you, choosing a primary carrier will be the best move. I hope that if that is the case, you now have a basic idea of the steps you need to take to identify the best airline or alliance for your specific situation. Even if you choose an airline or alliance to concentrate on, make sure you are staying aware of promotions and miles earning activities on other carriers too. You don’t want to miss out on a great opportunity just because you weren’t paying attention. Always remember that even though you are choosing an airline for the majority of your flights, the more you are able to diversify your miles earning, the better your chances of finding the specific award itineraries you are looking for.
Feel free to comment if you think that I left something out. I tried to cover the major items that should be considered, but like all of you, I’m still learning so I may have missed something. As always, if you have a question, don’t be afraid to ask.
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This week the first ever OneWorld MegaDo is taking place. It started on Monday with the optional international leg of the trip going from JFK to LHR. There were some events in London and then the participants headed back to the States with a flight to DFW. Dallas is where the domestic portion of the MegaDo took flight and also where most of the people joined the trip. In addition to several exclusive airline and hotel industry events, the domestic portion of the trip includes charter flights from DFW-SEA and SEA-LAX. If you would like to see a full schedule, you can look on the official OneWolrd MegaDo 2012 page.
Basically, the OneWorld MegaDo is a big party with all of the participants being crazy about miles and points. To quote the MegaDo site, this event is “The world’s ultimate travel junkies on a once-in-a-lifetime field trip.” When registration was announced for this event, I couldn’t make a decision on whether I should book or not. I thought I would have some time to decide, but I was very wrong. The event sold out in less than an hour and my decision was made for me. Since that time, I have started this blog and my travel consulting business and now that the MegoDo has taken off, I am unbelievably sad that I am not taking part in this event. I can guarantee that if at all possible, I will be one of the first ones booked for the next MegaDo.
In the meantime, there are a few things that are easing my pain. First, Mommy Points and The Points Guy are doing a great job of sending pictures and updates direct from the event to their twitter accounts. You can follow @ThePointsGuy or @Mommy_Points to see everything they are sharing. You can also check out the OneWorld MegaDo Blog for the official updates of what is going on. I’m not 100% sure if these pictures and updates are making me feel better or worse about not being there, but at least I can see some of what I am missing.
The other thing that is helping to comfort me is that I am already planning to definitely attend the Chicago Seminars in October and I am working on getting things into place so I can be at the Frequent Traveler University in NYC in April. Although neither of these events actually involve any flights or special treatment from the airlines, I will still be able to meet many of the people I have only read about in the forums and blogs, and I should be able to gain a tremendous amount of miles and points knowledge.
The one thing I have taken away from my experience with the OneWorld MegaDo is this. If you are thinking about going to an event but can’t decide, you better book it before it’s too late. I have a similar belief about award seats and great airfare prices. If you wait to think it through, you might just miss a fantastic experience. Sometimes it is better to just make the reservation and then figure out how to make it work later. It’s pretty difficult to Indulge the Wanderlust while sitting in your house, so get out there and experience more, spend less, and travel the world.
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This post has been left up as a history of the blog, but at this time, due to changes in my situation, this business is not operating.
If you have been looking around the website over the past few days, you may have noticed that there are some new pages under the heading of Wander the World Travel Services. I started adding them last weekend, but wanted to make sure everything was ready before making any announcements. Today, I am happy to say that we are now going live with our new travel consulting business. You will see a general information page, as well as pages for our Vacation Planning Services and our Award Flight Booking Services. Of course, as with any business or website, you will also find a Terms and Conditions page with all of the important (but not so fun) information that you should know.
As I have spent more time lately talking with friends and communicating with readers, a couple of things have become more evident to me. First, not everyone has the time or desire to learn all of the ins and outs of awards programs, flight and hotel booking, and the travel industry in general. Most people like the idea of traveling the world and seeing new things, but very few are willing or able to put the time and effort into learning what it takes to make a dream vacation work. Planning an outstanding vacation takes a tremendous amount of work and it is not something that everyone can do on their own.
The second thing I have realized is that no matter how much myself and other bloggers teach you, it is not possible to become an expert overnight. You may want to learn everything and be able to book that first class ticket using miles tomorrow, but it takes time to learn the tips and tricks that will help you get the most value out of your miles and points. I started this blog to teach people how they can experience more, spend less, and travel the world. Everyone is welcome to learn what I am sharing, but if you are new to this and want to take a vacation now, Wander the World is here to help you.
There are two main components of Wander the World Travel Services, Award Flight Booking and Vacation Planning. Everyone knows that frequent flyer miles can be very difficult (if not impossible) to use if you don’t have an excellent grasp of the rules and restrictions for each program. Our Award Flight Booking Service makes using your miles easy by taking care of the hard parts for you. With the growing number of people trying to use miles and points to travel, having help from a professional may mean the difference between flying first class to Asia or finding no availability and ending up sitting home on your couch. We are aware that there are already several successful award booking services available to you, but we think that we have something valuable to add to the market. We have set our pricing to be quite competitive and if you need more planning help, we won’t stop once we have your booked your flights.
Having flights to a destination is great, but it won’t do you much good once you get there. This is where our Vacation Planning Services come in. Whether you just need a ride from the airport and a place to stay, or a detailed daily itinerary of what you should do, we can take care of everything for you. We have structured our services so you can pick and choose just what you need us to do. If you would like us to plan everything for you, there is even a discounted full service package available too. Our Vacation Planning Services are available to you whether you have an award flight to book or not. We will also be happy to take care of your standard airfare booking.
We are very excited about our new travel consulting business and can’t wait to plan our first client trip. We will be running a short commercial on local TV next week, but I wanted to make sure that my loyal readers were aware of what we are offering first. Rest assured, I will still be providing the same types of free content here on the blog, helping you to learn how to Indulge the Wanderlust in you. All I ask for now is that for you take a look at the new business pages and let us know what you think. Then for your next trip, consider using Wander the World Travel Services for all of your booking and planning needs. We would love to put our knowledge and experience to work for you.
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Starting this week, there are going to be a few changes in the advertising and reservation rules that airlines are required to follow. FareCompare has been doing a great job keeping us up to date about these changes and you can read their news stories on the subject HERE and HERE. For those of you who just want a quick overview, here it is.
The biggest change is that starting January 26th, all published or advertised airfares must include all mandatory taxes and fees. This includes advertisements from airlines, travel agents, or anyone else trying to sell you a ticket. The bad news is that starting that day, all of the emails you get and the ads you see online will have higher advertised prices for the same flights. The good news is that when they were advertising the lower prices, you would still end up paying the higher price because they would add in taxes and fees at the end. In effect, you will still be paying the same amount for airfare as you were before the change, but you will know what that price is upfront instead of being lured in by unrealistically low fares and having the price go up when you try to book.
I think this is a great change. I can’t count the number of times I have been excited about an advertised fare only to find that the final price was more than twice what was advertised. With these new rules in effect, it might not happen quite as often, but at least I will know when I should actually be excited about a price. You should know that add-on fees such as baggage or preferred seating fees will still not be included in the prices, since not all passengers are required to pay them.
In addition to the new advertising requirements, there are a couple of other changes that will be happening starting today.
Reservations will now be held for 24 hours without payment. Some airlines were already doing this, but they will all be required to now.
If booked at least 7 days before departure, reservations can be cancelled within 24 hours with no fee. This will be nice if I find a good deal but need to check with my wife to make sure we can go. I will be able to book the tickets before they disappear and then cancel if Chrissy reminds me of a reason we can’t take the trip.
Finally, passengers must be notified promptly if their flight is delayed more than 30 minutes. I think this will have the least effect since with all of the flight tracking tools available to us, I think most of us would probably know about the delay before we even get this notification.
All together, I think these new requirements will have a positive effect on my planning, booking, and flying experiences. It might not be much, but every little bit helps. How do you think these new rules, if at all, will effect you?
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In about a month and a half, mine and my wife’s Platinum American Express Cards will come up for renewal. The card carries a hefty $450 annual fee, so for the two of us, that would be a $900 investment for the year. That may sound crazy to many of you, but the benefits of having the card are really quite spectacular. At this point I am confident that I am going to renew one of them, but not 100% sure about the second. As I try to calculate whether renewing both is a good move for me, I thought I would do a summary of some of what I believe to be the Platinum Card’s most valuable benefits. This is not an all encompassing list of the card benefits, but instead, some of the ones that I think should be highlighted.
Airport Lounge Access – Just by having the Platinum Card, you have access to American Airlines, Delta, and US Airways Clubs. In addition, you get a free Priority Pass Select membership which will give you access to over 600 international lounges in countries across the world. If you have never been in an airport lounge before, you don’t know what you have been missing. I highly recommend it.
$200 Airline Fee Credit – You can get this credit once a year and although they say it is only for incidental charges, it seems to work for gift card purchases on a few airlines. I used ours last year for a total of $400 of AA gift cards ($200 x two cards).
Global Entry – You will get a refund of the $100 application fee for global entry if you pay with your Platinum Card. This program allows you to fast track through customs when returning from international trips and can be a real time saver. We are in the process of enrolling in this service and look forward to using it on our upcoming trips.
Car Rental Program – As a cardholder, you will get automatic Elite Status with Avis, Hertz, and National. This will give you discounts, upgrades, and some other nice features when renting cars.
Starwood Preferred Guest – You will get automatic Gold Preferred status with Starwood as a Platinum Cardholder. This will give you room upgrades and late checkout in addition to other benefits when staying at Starwood Properties.
Platinum Concierge and Dedicated Platinum Service Number – This is a benefit that I don’t use as much as I should. The concierge team will get you reservations, tickets, or even help you plan events. The dedicated service number really does give you better service too. I once had an issue with my Starwood Amex card and after talking to two people and getting nowhere, I decided to call my Platinum service line. Within 2 minutes, the issue was taken card of.
There are lots of other smaller benefits that I haven’t listed, including baggage insurance, travel accident insurance,B and roadside assistance. For a complete list, take a look on the American Express website.
If you are a first time applicant for the Platinum Card, you can also get a sign up bonus in addition to all of the benefits outlined above and on the website. As far as I know, the best currently available offer for the Platinum Card can only be accessed if you have a referral from a current cardholder. The offer is for 50,000 Membership Rewards Points after you spend $3000 in the first 3 months. This is the offer that was publicly available last year when I applied, and if I were not already a cardholder, this would definitely be on the list for my next churn. I value American Express points at a minimum of 2 cents per point and that works out to a $1000 value for the 50,000 bonus points. You can only get this kind of value when transferring to airline or hotel programs, but f you just want to use their pay with points option for travel, you still end up with a value of 1 cent per point. That would work out to $500 in value for the sign up bonus.
However you use the points, the sign up bonus along with all of the other benefits easily outweighs the $450 fee. If I could get the sign up bonus again, my decision would be simple. In my case, I need to decide if the other benefits are worth the $450 fee. I am leaning toward yes because the airline fee credit and global entry payment make up for $300 of the fee just to start with. I think the other benefits are worth more than $150 to me, so I will probably end up renewing both cards. Of course, I will call first to see if I can get some sort of retention bonus too. If you have an opinion about what I should do, please leave a comment for me below.
If reading this post has convinced you that you need the American Express Platinum Card and you want me to refer you, send me an email at wanderer@indulgethewanderlust.com. I will need your full name and an email address where you would like to receive the referral. You should know that if you are approved from my referral, I will get a referral bonus from American Express. I think you can tell from what I have outlined in this post that the referral bonus is not at all what makes me recommend this card, but I still thought I should mention it.
The American Express Platinum Card is definitely a card that will help you to experience more, spend less, and travel the world. It’s vast array of benefits make it one of my favorite cards and if you decide to get one, I don’t think you will be disappointed. Maybe we will even cross paths one day at one of the many International Airport Lounges that the Platinum Card gives us access to, and we can spend some time discussing miles and points.
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In my post about Chrissy’s January Churn, I mentioned that there was a reporting error on her credit report. I wanted to take the time today follow up on that and to explain the issue in a little bit more detail. Errors on your credit report are much more common than you might think, and I want to use myself as an example to show you why you should always read through the details of the report to check for accuracy.
Chrissy and I have a ValuePlus Checking account with KNBT bank here in PA. One of the benefits of this account is a free account with Privacy Guard. Since we have a joint checking account, we are each entitled to our own separate Privacy Guard accounts. This is something that I found out several months after I started the service for myself, and I quickly signed Chrissy up as well. When first signing up for the service through the bank, they send you a printed copy of your credit report along with your membership information. We did this for Chrissy back in August of 2011. Since then, I have been using Privacy Guard to run credit reports on a regular basis. We are allowed to run one report a month for each of us, and I always make sure that I check our scores before doing a credit card churn.
When I ran the report for Chrissy during the first week of January, the scores came back lower than I had been expecting. I looked at the section of the report titled “Top Factors That Make Your Score Lower”. I always scan through this section, but this time there was something that caught my eye. One of the things that was keeping the score from going up was a credit card from Discover Financial Services that had a high balance of $22,500 and a current balance of around $6000. My automatic first fear was fraud. A couple of years back, Chrissy had a bad habit of getting her purse stolen. In fact, it was stolen on the exact same weekend, two years in a row, in different states. Needless to say, we have experience with Discover Card Fraud and they have always been quite helpful. I was worried that somehow someone had opened up a new account and was using Chrissy’s name and credit.
Upon further investigation, I determined that if it was fraud, the person committing it was the worst thief ever. In the detailed section of the credit report, I found that the card was opened in April of 2004, and although it was carrying a balance, the payments were being made on time each month. Why would someone fraudulently open a credit card and then be working on paying it off? It just didn’t make sense.
The next step was a call to Discover. Before I started with churning cards, my Discover Card had been my primary card since I was 16. It pains me to think about all of the miles and points I missed out on, but that’s the way it was and I am quite familiar and satisfied with Discover Customer Service. I first spoke with someone in the credit card department and after searching by name, zip code, and finally social security number, he was unable to find the account in question. Then I was transferred over to the loans department and had the same lack of success. The second representative told me that my best course of action would be to dispute the account with the credit bureaus. She said that most likely, a wrong number was pushed in a data entry system somewhere and the account ended up registering to Chrissy’s credit report. This was not exactly what I wanted to hear, but since Discover could not locate the account, it seems like it is my only option.
That is where we stand at this point and I am in the process of disputing the incorrect information. I am not sure how much Chrissy’s scores will go up once this account has been removed, but I think it will be more than a couple of points. This one account represents the majority of the available credit she was using. The worst part about this situation is that when I pulled out the printed report that they sent to me in August, sure enough, there was the account listed in the details. If I had just read through the whole report back then, I could have had this whole mess cleared up 6 months ago and I wouldn’t have to be worrying about it as we start our 2012 churns.
In this case, even with the errors on Chrissy’s credit report, her score was still high enough and did not effect her ability to be approved for all 4 of the cards we applied for on her churn day. We were lucky. In some cases, credit reporting errors can cause you to be unnecessarily denied for credit or in the case of major loans, can cause you to pay a higher interest rate for the lifetime of the loan. By running a credit report on a regular basis and always checking for errors, you can make sure that your scores are as high as possible. When you are planning to churn credit cards, a high score is essential and even if you don’t plan to churn, your credit score is definitely something worth protecting. So next time you get a credit report, make sure you read and understand all of the details and dispute anything that is not correct. One piece of inaccurate information on your credit report could be the difference between an approval and a denial the next time you apply for a new credit card with a 100,000 mile bonus.
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Every day, so much information is added to the world of miles and points that it is surely impossible to read it all. For those items that I think will be most valuable to my readers, I will always try to do a detailed blog post. Occasionally, there are news items that I can’t take the time to do a full write-up about, but I still think you might want to know. To get that information to you, I am going to try this “Updates” style of post. Each item will have a sentence or two to summarize and a link to a far more detailed write-up. I hope this helps you to keep a little more up to date with the latest happenings and at the same time introduces you to some of my favorite bloggers and news sources.
Hyatt is offering up to a 30% bonus on purchases of Gold Passport points through March 15, 2012. This isn’t a great deal for their less expensive hotels, but can be quite good for Hyatt’s high end properties. Details HERE.
Emirates will be added as an Alaska Mileage Plan member on March 1, 2012. This is a great new redemption and earning partner for Alaska Airlines. Details HERE.
Perhaps to avoid giving a Valentine’s Day gift, Continental is terminating their relationship with Virgin Atlantic effective February 13, 2012. Details HERE.
Here’s a HUGE congratulations to Rick and the whole team at Frugal Travel Guy. They have announced that Internet Brands has acquired the Frugal Travel Guy site and we can look forward a new design and new features. The current staff will remain in place after the acquisition. Rick and his team were my first daily read when I got started with all of this, so it’s nice to see their hard work paying off. Details HERE.
For an amusing story about what elite status can get for you, read about FrequentMiler’s take on making the most of the middle seat. Story HERE.
For those of you who have been following my posts on credit card churning, Jared has a great summary of the best currently available offers from each of the US based airlines. Remember, you don’t necessarily want to apply for all of these cards today. You can expect that some of these offers will get bigger throughout the year, so do your research before applying. Details HERE.
Starting in the second quarter of 2012, United will be offering their 1k and Platinum Elites reimbursement for the $100 application fee for Global Entry. This is a fee that is already reimbursed for Amex Platinum Cardholders, but will be a nice addition for elites that don’t have that card. Details HERE.
Frequent Traveler University will be held this year April 27-29 in New York. More information will be coming soon and registration will start on February 10th. I don’t know as much about this one as I do about the Chicago Seminars, but since I am so close, I am hoping to attend. Details of the announcement HERE.
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Posted: Indulge the Wanderlust
Categories: Airlines, Conferences & Events, Credit & Debit Cards, Hotels
This is one in a series of posts that I am doing based around the January credit card churn that we did for Chrissy. Before reading this post, I would suggest reading my previous posts on What You Should Know about credit card churning and How to Pick Your Cards, if you haven’t already. Remember that you always want to protect your credit and at least in the short term, card churning will definitely have an effect on your scores. For more information about what factors effect your credit score, check out myfico.com.
Today I will be running you through the process I use for a churn day, using Chrissy’s churn as a specific example. Before you decide on a churn day, you should have spent some time to come up with a list of cards that you will be applying for, along with the links that will give you the highest bonuses for applying to each card. Make sure you are taking into account the required minimum spends and are not trying to take on more than you can financially handle. As you look at the specific cards that I am using for the example below, remember that this is Chrissy’s third churn day and she has already been approved for 13 other cards. The ones used for this churn may or may not be the best options for you to apply for at this point in time.
I follow several travel blogs and read message boards on a regular basis, so I like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what the current available credit card offers are. This really helps when preparing to do a churn because I already have a basic idea of what cards we will be applying for. Chrissy’s churn days are a little more challenging than mine because she doesn’t like to do the applications or make the follow-up calls. I have no problem doing this for her, but if a call is necessary, I need to make sure that I am making the call when she is home so that she can give permission for me to speak on her behalf. Once you have this many cards with all of the banks, a call is quite often necessary to get an approval. On your first churn, you might not need to make any calls.
For this churn, I did all of the applications during the afternoon and we made the follow-up calls as soon as Chrissy got home from school (she is a teacher). The cards for this churn are almost identical to the churn I did for myself back in October. Until then, I have been churning cards on the same day for both of us. In October, I decided to only do a churn for myself since I did not think we would be able to meet the spending on these cards if we got two of each at the same time. If you have the ability to meet higher minimum spends then by all means, you should be getting the best cards for your spouse at the same time as yourself. That is what we did for our first two churns, since we had lower total spend requirements with those cards, and it helps to build up your miles and points even faster.
As always, when applying for any credit card with a bonus offer, I recommend taking as many screen shots as you can with the bonus offer showing. This includes the page that you link from for the application, the actual application page in some cases, and the confirmation page if it shows you the offer. In certain cases, you may be using a link for an offer that the bank meant to end, and it is best to have proof of the bonus that you were offered in case they try to give you something less. This has not happened to me, but I have read many stories of this happening and I always make sure to have the screen shots on file until the bonus miles or points have posted to my account.
My plan for the day started out with 4 cards, then changed to 2, then I decided to add back in the 3rd, and finally after a conversation with Chrissy when she got home, I applied for the 4th one as well. Even the best laid plans can be changed by last minute thoughts, so make sure you are being flexible on churn day.
The first card “Chrissy” applied for was the Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa. Many people believe that this is the best card currently on the market and I tend to agree with them. I won’t get into details here, but it has some excellent benefits. This card didn’t exist with this offer when we did our first two churns and I got one in October, so this was the first opportunity to get one for Chrissy. Chase recently changed their advertisements to read “For a limited time only”, so if you are interested, you might want to get one in the near future. No one knows when the offer will change or what it will change to, but it would be a shame to miss out on the current offer of 50K Ultimate Rewards points with a $3000 spend in the first 3 months. I did this card first because I though it would give me the most problems. Chrissy already has 3 other Chase cards, and Chase seems to be the most strict out of the major banks in terms of number of cards, amount of total credit, and time between applications. To my surprise, a few seconds after filling out the application and submitting it, a congratulations came up on the screen explaining that she had been instantly approved. I think the last time we were instantly approved for a Chase card was in our first churn, so apparently waiting 6 months between applications did the trick.
Nothing puts me in a good mood on a churn day like instant approvals, so I moved right on to the next application. Next on the list was the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airlines Card. This is also available as a Bank of America Card and people claim that you can get both cards on the same day. I was only approved for one of the two in October, so I decided to play it safe for Chrissy and only apply for one. The current offer is the same for both cards and is 35k miles for $1000 spend in 4 months. This is not a huge amount, but I have not seen or heard of a larger bonus on this card and it has a pretty easy minimum spend requirement. Also, Hawaiian miles transfer 1:2 to Hilton, so this is really a 70,000 point Hilton bonus if I would prefer. After filling out the application and submitting, I got the following screen.
So what’s my number?
This screen will only show for about 2-3 seconds and then it will reload to a page that doesn’t have the phone number on it. I remembered this from my application, so I was ready for the screen shot. What I found extra amusing was the reference number they told me to have available when I call. I think they might have a coding error somewhere in their programming. I kind of expected we would have to call for that application, so I was not too surprised when I got this message.
Early in the day I had decided to only do two cards for Chrissy because I was concerned about the high spend limits for a couple of the cards and due to a reporting error by Discover, her credit score is not as high as I would have liked. I will discuss that more in another post, but let me just say that you should read through all of the details when you get a credit report and not just look at the scores. The first two applications took a total of about 5 minutes and I wasn’t ready to stop, so I decided to take a gamble on the third card.
The card in question is the Barclays Bank US Airways MasterCard. The reason this is not a sure thing is that Chrissy already had a US Airways MasterCard from Barclays. It appears, however, that this card is churnable for the bonus and there are even reports of people having more than one of the same card at the same time. I decided to give it a try and we will see in a few weeks if it worked. The offer I used was for 40k miles with a first purchase and an additional 10k miles on the one year anniversary. I was not too surprised when after applying, I was told that they needed to review the application further and would email a decision within 10 days. This is not an acceptable time frame for me to wait, so we would need to make another call when Chrissy got home.
Once Chrissy was home from school and settled, I started making the necessary calls. The first call was to Barclay’s regarding the US Airways MasterCard. Calling 1-866-369-1283 will get you directly to a credit analyst and in my experience, a real person actually answers the phone within a couple of rings. I spoke with a very nice gentleman who quickly confirmed with Chrissy some personal information and that it was alright to speak with me. Then I handled the rest of the call, and we ended up getting an approval for the new World MasterCard and cancelling her old card. I am not sure how this will effect the bonus miles, but when she got the last card a few years ago, she had been approved for a lower level card and had only received 5k miles. For the couple points on the credit score, it was worth it to me to apply for the new card with the higher bonus and see if they allow it. You should know that when applying for a card with Barclay’s or with Bank of America, if you do not qualify for the highest tier card with the large bonus, they will automatically approve you for a lower tier card EDIT[which will sometimes come] with a significantly lower bonus. When I apply for a card with either of these two banks, I always call to confirm that the approval was for the highest tier card with the bonus that I am expecting. EDIT[Katherine reminds me in the comments that if you apply through THIS LINK for this card, you will get the 40k bonus miles if you are approved for either the Premier World MasterCard or the lower tier Platinum MasterCard.]
Our next call was to Bank of Hawaii, which is really Bank of America. I used the number that was on the screen I had captured, but of course did not have a reference number because they didn’t give me one. They were able to pull up her application, but even after she gave permission to talk to me, they insisted on talking to her directly. This was little awkward at some points because she had to ask me for things like what password and security questions I had used. They asked a whole bunch of questions about income, personal details, and why she wanted the card. Chrissy already has two other Bank of American Cards, but simply explained that we like to travel and prefer to use a card specific to the airlines that we are flying. She said that our next trip was to Hawaii and that was the reason for the card. This is not completely true, but it is important to note that you should always have a reason prepared for why you want a card. If you need to call, they will almost always ask you this question, and your chances of approval are pretty low if you just say you want the bonus miles. Finally the woman came back on the line and told her that she was approved for the card, but not before giving Chrissy a little bit of advice about her credit and how it is easy to get into credit trouble if you have too many cards.
At this point, we were now 3 for 3 and I was chatting with Chrissy and explaining that I didn’t apply for the 4th card because of the minimum spend required. She pointed out that we would have a large bill in the next couple of weeks for her tuition (she is two classes away from her second master’s degree) so we would probably be able to easily meet the requirements. Within minutes, I was back on the computer applying for the Citi Thank You Premier Visa. This card is another one of the best offers out there right now. They are offering 50k Thank You points with a $2500 spend in the first 3 months. Thank You points are not as valuable as Ultimate Rewards points since you can’t transfer them, so that along with the additional $2500 of spending is why this card originally got bumped from the churn. On the last step after the application was submitted, we were once again given a phone number to call. This time, in contrast to Bank of America, I was actually given a reference number so the call went smoothly. They confirmed and few quick pieces of information with Chrissy and then she passed the phone bank to me. After a couple of minutes on hold, the gentleman I was talking to came back and explained to me that Chrissy had reached her credit threshold with Citi and he could approve the card but would only be able to give her a $5000 limit. If we wanted, he was also willing to transfer up to $3400 of credit from one of her other cards over to this one. I decided to move some of the credit over from her Hilton Visa so she ended up with a $8400 limit on the new card. He finished up the processing and said she was all approved.
We ended up going 4 for 4 on this churn day. Any way you look at it, this is a success. There was only one instant approval and we had to make three follow-up phone calls, but her total bonus miles and points will come to 175,000 once she meets the minimum spends. That’s not too bad for a couple hours of work and the best part is, we can do it again with a whole other set of cards in as little as three months. I think I covered most of the process here, but if you have any questions about churn day specifics, feel free to ask. Hopefully this information along with your other research will help you to do your first credit card churn and give you a huge bump on your way to seeing more, spending less, and traveling the world.
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