Monthly Archives: March 2012
This is the final part in my series of posts about our family trip to San Diego this past November. I started writing up the trip reports soon after we got home, but with the holidays and all that I was doing to get this blog up and running at full speed, the last few days of the trip slid to the back burner. As we make the final preparations to head off to Paris in a few days, I thought it would be important to finish up the trip report from our last family vacation before we go. To see the previous parts of the trip, feel free to click on the links below.
- Turkey Day Travel
- Turkey Day Travel – Drive Down and Dinner in Philly
- Turkey Day Travel – Flights, Cars, and Arrival in San Diego
- Turkey Day Travel – La Jolla, Hotel Indigo, and Chianti
- Turkey Day Travel – San Diego Zoo
- Turkey Day Travel – Chocolat Cremerie and the USS Midway Museum
- Turkey Day Travel – Cabrillo Tide Pools
- Turkey Day Travel – SeaWorld
- Turkey Day Travel – LegoLand
- Turkey Day Travel – Coronado and the Trip Home
Coronado Bridge
Ryan and Cole excited about the beach.
It was a rather cool day and the middle of the week, so the beach was pretty much empty. In fact, there was no one else hanging out on the sand at all. The only people around were those playing out in the water. Even though there were some decent waves coming in, we were still surprised to see how many people were out surfing. There was even a guy gliding along on a paddleboard out past the waves.
Paddleboarding out past the surf.
Ryan and Cole showed almost no interest in the surfing, instead using their time to play in the sand. Chrissy and I sat on a bench on the walk above the beach watching the boys play. Of course, we also made sure to enjoy the view as we sat in the ocean breeze. Every now and then the children playing would cross paths with the adults playing and we were reminded how the ocean appeals to those of all ages.
Everyone can enjoy a morning at the beach.
Eventually our time was up and we had to call the boys back to brush off the sand. We said goodbye to the ocean and piled back in the rental car. After a short drive, we were back at National to return the car. The return was quick and simple and we walked over to a waiting shuttle bus. Within a few minutes, we were back at the airport and ready to check in for our flights. This was my first time renting from National and I have to say that I was quite impressed. Some of this could have been because of the elite status that I get from my American Express Platinum card, but after this rental I can say that I will definitely rent from National again.
Do you think National rents cars with surf board racks?
Check in at the airport went smoothly and we grabbed some lunch while waiting for boarding to begin. I hadn’t checked in online right at the 24 hour mark, as is recommended when flying Southwest, so we had boarding numbers deep in the B group. Because we were traveling with children though, we were allowed to board in between the A and B groups. The flight was uneventful and all was good until we landed in Nashville.
When we got off the plane, the first thing we did was check our connecting flight and that’s when we got the bad news. It was delayed an hour when we landed and then quickly moved up to a 2 1/2 hour delay as we sat down. Although I had previously joked that it would be nice to get stuck in Nashville for a day or two, this delay was last thing we needed with a two hour drive home from Philly ahead of us after our next flight landed. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do when a flight is delayed, so we waited as patiently as we could.
They ended up reducing the delay by a little bit and we eventually boarded at about the same time we were supposed to be landing in Philadelphia. After another smooth flight, we landed in PHL at around 11:30 PM. We got off the plane and called Winner Airport Parking so they could bring us our truck. I was quite grateful at this point that I had paid the extra $12 so that we could leave right from the airport. At that hour of the night, it was well worth the extra money to not have to go back to the parking lot first.
The late night drive home was much better than expected. I didn’t really get tired at all, probably mostly because my body had adjusted to west coast time. We got home a little after 2 in the morning and went straight to bed. We decided that it would be best for us to sleep in on Wednesday so Cole ended up missing preschool and Chrissy and Ryan went in to school late.
Overall, this was a great low cost family vacation. Our four round trip PHL-SAN flights cost us a total of $40 thanks to the sign up bonus that Chrissy and I both got with our Chase Southwest Visa cards. We spent two nights at the Hotel Indigo Gaslamp Quarter and although we paid for those nights, Chrissy earned over 13,000 points for the stay thanks to several stackable Priority Club bonus codes. Our remaining nights we spent staying with friends. We also managed to find coupons to save almost half off our admissions to several of the places we went. This all goes to show that with a little planning and a couple of credit card sign-up bonuses, its easy to put together a great family vacation for far less than full price.
As a family, we all agreed that San Diego was awesome. It is definitely on the list of places that we will return to. I think next time we will go during the summer so we can spend some more time at the beach and a lot more time playing in the tide pools. I am hoping to make it back while the kids are still young enough to enjoy LegoLand, but I am somewhat torn because there are still a lot of other LegoLand parks around the world that we need to visit too. If you are thinking of taking a trip to San Diego with your kids, I would highly recommend that you get it booked. If you don’t have kids, the city still has a tremendous amount to offer and was one of the easiest cities to get around that I have ever visited.
I hope you have all enjoyed this report of our Turkey Day Travel, even though it has taken me months to finish it up. I plan to do much better with our upcoming Paris trip and maybe from now on I will be able to stay caught up. The schedule looks pretty clear for tomorrow, so you can expect to see some Updates from the World of Miles and Points coming your way. For now, I am off to bed to try to rest up. Only a few days left until our European adventure begins.
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Priority Club updated their PointBreaks page today with the new list of hotels that are available for booking through 5/31. For those who aren’t familiar with PointBreaks, they are B a limited list of hotels that are available for booking for just 5000 points per night. The rates are available for a set amount of time, usually changing every couple of months. You never know what hotels are going to show up on the PointBreaks list, but there are often some great deals.
The current list includes hotels all over the world and from several of the IHG brands. Even their highest level brands are represented. In my quick review of the lists, I saw several Crowne Plaza Hotels and even a few InterContinental properties scattered throughout the world. This list of properties will remain in effect until the end of May or until the allocated rooms have been booked. The best properties are often gone within a couple of days, so if you see something you like, it might be best to make a speculative booking. Although I still recommend checking the terms for your specific reservation, PointBreaks are almost always fully refundable.
I have found that I get the best use of PointBreaks when I need a hotel for a night before or after a flight. In fact, I have been waiting for this new list to be released so that I could book a room for next week. I know from past lists that there are usually at least a couple of options in New Jersey, and today’s update didn’t disappoint. Last August, we took advantage of a PointBreaks night before our flight to Costa Rica. We stayed at the Hotel Indigo in Rahway and had a great experience. I was a little sad when that property wasn’t on the list today, but with a different Hotel Indigo and two Crowne Plazas to choose from, I can’t really complain. I booked a night at the Crowne Plaza in Edison as that looked like the best option for me. I used to work in Edison, so although it is not the nicest town we will ever stay in, I am at least familiar with the area.
I decided that we should get a hotel room for the night before our flights for a couple of reasons, but it all boils down to me not wanting to get up ridiculously early to drive all the way to JFK on Wednesday. When I originally booked our flights, I never bothered to check how long it would take me to get to JFK. I have flown out of there before, but not since I moved to my current location, so I didn’t really think about how long the drive would take. Now that I am finishing up with planning the trip details, I checked Google Maps and found that it would be a little over 3 hours if we didn’t hit any traffic going through the city. Anyone who has driven through New York City knows the chances of no traffic are just about zero, so we will need to add a bit on to that 3 hours.
In addition, we need to get to the airport a little bit earlier than normal to go through the Global Entry interviews for the boys. When you take our 1:10 PM departure and start working backwards, it started to look like a very, very early morning departure. With a whole day of travel, that would in turn lead to a very cranky family. Instead, I decided that we should break up the trip. Now, we will drive about 2 hours to Edison on Tuesday night, get a good night’s sleep, and only have about an hour of travel left to get to JFK in the morning.
I hope that some day in the future I will be able to use PointBreaks for a several night stay and take a quick last minute vacation. For now though, I will just have to be content with redeeming my points 5000 at a time and not having to pay when I need a room for a night. Have any of you been able to take advantage of PointBreaks rooms? Take a look at today’s new list and see if there is anything that interests you. This is my third PointBreaks redemption and I expect there will be many more in the coming years. Let me know if this is a program that works well for you and if so, how have you used your 5000 point rooms?
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This past Sunday, Chrissy and I drove to Newark to have our interviews and complete the application process for Global Entry. I thought it would be helpful if I shared our experience with the program for anyone who is thinking of applying. For those of you who don’t know, Global Entry is a US Customs and Border Protection program that allows you to fast track your re-entry into the United States when you travel internationally. Instead of waiting in the sometimes very long lines, you simply use a kiosk to process your re-entry. For people who travel out of the country more than once or twice a year, the time you save can really add up fast. In addition, being approved for Global Entry also gives you access to the TSA Pre-Check program which can ease your trip through security when checking in for a flight. I am not going to go into all of the details of the two programs here, but instead I will focus on what it takes to be approved. If you want more information on the programs, read through the Global Entry website.
The first step you need to take to be approved for Global Entry is filling out an online application. This is required for every member of your family, no matter what their age is. When I first started looking in to the program in January, I called and was told that kids under 12 can just walk through with their parents who have Global Entry. Since that time, the rules have changed and even kids need to have a separate approval. You can get started with the online application by going to THIS PAGE. About half way down, you will see an option to register for a new GOES (Global Online Enrollment System) account. Once you have done that, you can log in and begin your Trusted Traveler application. You should note that you are filling out an application for the Trusted Traveler program as a whole and not specifically for Global Entry. You will choose the option for Global Entry towards the end of the application.
The application is fairly straightforward, but does take a bit of time to complete. You will need to have your identification (Passport) information, birth information, and a complete 5 year work and residence history. In addition, they will be asking you to list all of the countries that you have been to in the past 5 years. It would be in your best interest to compile all of this information before starting the application so you can finish it in one sitting. For those people who have lived in the same place and had the same job for more than 5 years, the application will go pretty quickly, but if you have moved around or switched jobs a lot, you will have a lot more information to enter. I found the website to be somewhat slow and it often got hung up when switching between screens after I clicked on the “Next” button. Most of the time, it would move on more quickly if I clicked on the button a second time. B In addition to the above information, you will be asked a series of questions about past customs, immigration, and law infractions. When filling out the application for kids, you will need to put in guardian information and that person needs to be at the interview with the child.
Once you have completed the application, you can review all of your information. I recommend doing this in great detail since you can not change anything after submitting the application. It took us an extra 5 weeks to get Chrissy a credit card from Citi when I mistyped a single digit of her social security number. I can only imagine how much of a delay there would be if you enter something incorrectly on this application.
When you are ready to submit the application, you need to pay the $100 application fee. This fee is pretty steep, but the Global Entry approval is good for 5 years and if you travel a lot, it can really make your experience with the TSA and Customs and Immigration a lot easier. American Express Platinum card holders will have the fee reimbursed as one of their card benefits as long as it is paid with your card. This is one of the great benefits that can help to offset the high annual fee on that card. I charged my application fee to my Platinum card and my wife’s to hers, and both fees were credited by American Express two days later. I also believe that United 1K members can have this fee reimbursed, but I do not know the details of that program or if they have even started that benefit yet. If you are a United 1K member and know more about this, please leave it in the comments.
After making your payment, your application status will show as “Pending Review”. I think it took about 3 days for our applications to be verified and we got emails telling us that our status had changed. At this point, you can go back in to your GOES account and schedule your interview. The interview is only available at certain locations, most of them major airports, and they all have different hours and days that they are open. The closest to us was Newark, and they are actually open for interviews on weekends, so our choice was pretty easy. Rather than make the drive to an airport just for your interview, you can schedule it right before your next flight and just get to the airport a little early. We didn’t do this because we didn’t want to make the kids wait with us and we wanted to be approved for our trip to Paris next week. This plan kind of backfired on us when we found out kids need to have their own approval now, but at least we will only have to go through the process for them at JFK and not for all four of us.
We arrived about a half hour early at the airport and headed in to find the interview location. Once we got to the right area, it was well marked with signs pointing to Global Entry Enrollment. I can’t speak for other airports, but at least at EWR this was the case. The odd part is that the last of the signs pointed us directly through a set of doors that said DO NOT ENTER all over it. This concerned us a little bit, but when we asked at the information desk, they told us to go right through. We did and soon arrived at the US Customs and Border Protection Global Entry Office.
From everything I have read, I expected the interview to be about half an hour long and be very detailed. I also expected to be in a private room. I am not sure if Newark just does things differently or it I had made those ideas up in my head, but that was definitely not our experience. Instead, we walked in and found three Customs Officers at terminals behind a counter. Across from them, there were 6 seats. We checked in with one of the Officers and she told us to have a seat a watch the video. There was one other man there already and the three of us watched the 5 minute (if it was even that long) video about how the Global Entry Program works.
Before the video was even completely over, they started calling us up to the counter individually. The Officer that I had was a little difficult to understand due to a heavy accent, but he was very friendly and didn’t mind repeating himself when I needed him to. I was asked a few questions about my work history, my education, and what my travel plans are. Basically, it seems like he was trying to confirm some of the information on my application and make sure that I wasn’t lying about anything. None of the questions were difficult and Chrissy’s interview was similar. I know this partially because of what she told me afterwards, and partially because she was only two feet away from me and I could hear almost everything they said.
Once we passed the interview, they took a full set of each of our fingerprints and then explained a few things about Global Entry and TSA Pre-Check. I already knew most of the information they gave us because of my research, but it was a good quick summary. Then we got a little CBP sticker for our passports and we were all done.
Before we left, we wanted to double check about the kids, and that’s when we found out the bad news. Had we known ahead of time that the rules had been changed, we would have done their applications and brought the kids with us to Newark. The officers apologized even though they had nothing to do with the rule changes. They also told us that the interview process is much simpler for kids, so we shouldn’t even need an appointment. We can just stop in with the kids after getting the temporary approval on their applications, and they will process them right away. We told them that our next travel was leaving from JFK and they said that we should be fine doing that there too. Of course, I plan to call to confirm, but hopefully we can get the boys approved for Global Entry at JFK before we leave for Paris. It sure will be a shame if we have to leave our 8 and 5 year olds in the Customs line by themselves while we go relax in the lounge. (of course I am just kidding about that…unless the line is really long)
So that was our experience with the Global Entry application process and interviews at Newark International Airport. We made it into the airport, had our interviews, and were back at the car in less than half an hour. The experience may be different at different interview locations, but at least you now have a basic idea of what to expect. Due to the rule changes, I should also be able to tell you about the interviews for kids at JFK by this time next week. I did the online applications for the boys last night and if all goes well, we should have temporary approval for them sometime in the next few days. After the trip, I should hopefully be able to report on how the Global Entry Kiosk Check-In goes, so you can look forward to that in my trip reports.
Hopefully this helps a bit for those of you who are considering Global Entry. I know the $100 application fee sounds like a lot, but think about it next time you are standing in line at Customs. How much is your time worth, and how much would you like to be already on your way home from the airport.B If you have been approved recently for Global Entry, let me know what the interview process was like for you. I am curious to see if it is uniform across all of the interview locations or if not, how much it varies.
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Well, here we are on Tuesday night and I am just beginning to write up my weekly Updates From the World of Miles and Points. I am starting to think that perhaps Sunday isn’t the best day for me to try to do this, but will give it a try for a few more weeks before I move it permanently. With my wife and two boys home from school for the weekend, we are often busy doing other things. This Sunday, Chrissy and I drove to Newark to go through our Global Entry interviews. I will do a detailed post about that in the next few days. The good news is that once again we have the opportunity for a few extra days of posts, so get ready for some good information.
For those that are new to the blog, I am trying to do these updates every Sunday to help catch you up with what is going on. There are often items that come up throughout the week that I donbt really think I should devote an entire post to, but still think you might want to know about. This is where I link to some of the other blogs that I read and respect so that you can get the whole story.
Credit Card March Madness is still going strong over at Extra Pack of Peanuts. We are on to round two and there have been some good match-ups. If you haven’t checked it out yet, get on over there and vote for your favorites. I managed to come in absolute last place in the MilePoint group for the real March Madness, but I am doing pretty well in the Credit Card version. Details HERE.
There was a good post this week on Hack My Trip that details the positives and negatives of using Google Flight Search. It looks like they are on the way to building a great search tool, but aren’t quite there yet. Depending on what you are looking for though, Google Flight Search could be very helpful. Details HERE.
View From the Wing had some similar themed posts this week, so I will give them to you in pairs. First, there were two posts about a variety of bonuses from Priority Club. Both posts referenced Priority Club Insider, who most of us know as an expert in the Priority Club program. Details HERE and HERE.
Gary also mentioned a couple of criminal acts this week that I thought I should pass along. The first involves a TSA employee selling heroin, and the second is about thefts from luggage at JFK. Needless to say that after reading this, I will not be putting anything of value in my checked bags for my trip to Paris next week that departs from JFK. Read about drugs HERE and theft HERE.
Finally, Gary has posted information the past two days about the rumor that Citi Thank You points will be transferrable to British Airways and Singapore Airlines starting in April. First it looked like it was true, then Citi said it wasn’t, but updated information makes it look like it might be true again. I guess we will just have to wait and see. I personally am really hoping that the rumor is true as it will significantly increase the value of the 100,000+ Thank You points that Chrissy and I have in our accounts. Details HERE and HERE.
The Frequent Miler has been working on a study to determine what the best website is for finding the shopping portal that will give you the highest rewards for an online purchase. I have mentioned using evreward in the past, but it looks like that is not the best option. He even went back and updated the post after testing some of the sites that people left in the comments. Details HERE.
The Loyalty Traveler has a good write-up of the Hilton Q2 Double Points or Double Miles promo. It looks like if you have the right credit cards, you can really rack up the points with stays at participating Hilton properties. There are a lot of hotels in the USA that are opting out of this promo and a few internationally, so make sure to check for participation before booking if you want to take advantage of the double offer. Details HERE.
Ric also tells us about the new site Tingo.com, which is promising automatic refunds if you book your hotel with them and the rate drops before your stay. This is similar to what AutoSlash does with car rentals. In concept, this sounds great, but Tingo is so new that we will have to wait and see how much people are really getting back. You also need to remember that you won’t earn points with most hotel programs if you book through a third-party site like Tingo. Details HERE.
The Points Guy gave us the heads up this week that Ritz Carlton Rewards is now a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. This is not a huge deal since Marriott was already a partner, but in my opinion, the more transfer partners, the better. If you want to get involved with Ultimate Rewards but aren’t sure what card to get first, take a look at my post comparing the different cards. Details from The Points Guy HERE.
Jared from Online Travel Review reported earlier today that people are seeing some $600 RT fares for travel from the US to Europe this summer. This is a great price since summer fares are almost always well over $1000. It looks like this is mostly for flights to Germany, but you can easily get a cheap flight from there to another country if you want. If you are thinking of traveling to Europe this summer and don’t have tickets yet, this might be your best chance to find them cheap. Details HERE.
You can always count on Jared to give you a sarcastic spin on whatever the big news is and he does it again this week regarding the potential decrease in the Chase Sapphire Preferred sign-up bonus. Lots of other people wrote about the topic too, but his is my favorite. Details HERE.
Million Mile Secrets brought us some bad news about Venmo this week. They are now going to be charging a 3% fee on credit card transactions. It was only a matter of time until this happened, but it is still sad to see a good thing go away. If you still need to increase your credit card spend without really spending any money, Amazon Payments will work for up to $1000 a month, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that go away soon too. Details on Venmo HERE.
Mommy Points is going to be doing a series of posts called Keep It, Downgrade It, Dump it. Similar to what I did recently with my American Express Platinum, the posts will look at different credit cards and evaluate what should be done when the annual fee comes due. In fact, the Amex Platinum is the first card she plans to write about. I look forward to seeing her analysis on some of the cards I have in my wallet (or office file). Details HERE.
Thanks to a reminder from Mommy Points, you still have a bit of time to take advantage of the Hyatt 48 Hour Sale. It will end at midnight on 3/28, which is the day most of you will be reading this, so book quickly if you find a rate that works for you. Remember though that these are prepaid non-refundable reservations, so make sure you can actually use the reservation first. Details HERE.
Finally, we look to Ben from One Mile at a Time for our humor for the week. Take a look at his “Five Signs You’re on the Road Too Much” and let me know if any of those things have ever happened to you. Details HERE.
That’s all I have for you from this (extra long) week and I hope to give you your next Updates on Sunday, so they will most likely be much shorter. I’m not sure what I have on the schedule this weekend, but at least I can be sure that Katniss and Peeta will not be getting in the way. That’s right, everyone. This past weekend I was sucked into the world of The Hunger Games. I wasn’t allowed to go see the movie with my wife on Friday because I hadn’t read the books yet, so I started the first one on Saturday. Then I kind of left the real world for a few days and finally finished up the third book late Monday night. That might have a little bit to do with why these updates are late, but if you have read the books, you will understand why I couldn’t put them down. I am a little sad they went so quick though, as I was planning to read them on my flights next week. I guess I will have to find something else to read as my AA miles take my family and I to Paris.
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I find myself wondering today if I have come up with a technique to squeeze an extra 15,000 miles out a new Barclays US Airways World Premier Mastercard. It has worked twice for me now and could potentially be big news since this is one of the few cards that is still churnable. When I say churnable, I mean that you can get a new card as soon as 91 days after being approved for your last one. In this case, you don’t even have to cancel your old card before applying for the new one.
The public offer for this card isn’t that great, offering 30k miles with your first purchase, another 10k miles through balance transfers, and an annual fee of $89. If you are using credit cards to earn miles and points, you shouldn’t be carrying any balances, so we can pretty much ignore that 10k miles. There is an active link, however, that will give you a much better deal on this card. If you go to mostmiles.com/chairmans, you will see an offer for 40k miles with first purchase, the same 10k miles for balance transfers, 10k miles on every anniversary, and the $89 annual fee waived for the first year. Again, we can ignore the 10k for balance transfers, but this offer gives you 10k more miles with your first purchase, doesn’t cost you anything the first year, and if you choose to keep it and pay the annual fee, you are basically buying 10k miles for $0.0089 per mile. That’s a price I would be happy to buy miles at any day.
I personally have recent experience with this card and I currently have two of them active, so I can vouch for that fact that churning it works. I applied for my first card during the US Airways Grand Slam last October and then the second one just 95 days later in my February Churn. It was necessary for me to call the reconsideration line for the second card, but after explaining that I wanted to separate different types of spending, they approved me with no problem.
When I got the cards, I did the same thing with both. I made a small purchase (less than $10) within a few days of activating them, and then put them in a file and didn’t use them again. Then in December, about a month and a half after getting the first card and making my initial purchase, I got the an email from US Airways Mastercard with the following offer.
There were many reports of people getting these emails, with some variation in the months and the spend amounts, but this is the one that I got.B I wasn’t working on any new cards at the time, so I decided to take advantage of the offer and I spent $1250 on the card in January, February, and March. In fact, I just added up my March spend earlier this week and determined that I had met the requirements for the offer. I was excited and moved my Amex Business Rewards Gold back to the front of my wallet to work on its minimum spend. Then the very next day, I got another email from US Airways Mastercard, this time referencing my other card.
Once again, the email came about a month and a half after my initial charge on the card, and once again, I am going to take advantage of the offer. I know that 15,000 miles for $3750 in spend isn’t that great of a deal, but this basically turns the sign-up bonus for the card into 55,000 miles for $3750 in spend in 3 months. If that was offered up front, I would have had no problem applying for the card, so I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t get the extra miles now.
It is important to note that you must be targeted for this offer and these additional miles do require a minimum spend. If it works for you though, you can effectively raise the bonus for this card from the public offer of 30,000 miles all the way up to 55,000 miles. When you add in the miles earned from the required spend, you will have 58,750 miles, which is just short of the 60k you need for a round trip coach ticket to Europe, South America, or Northern Asia on any Star Alliance partner. If you use the miles for US Airways off peak awards, they can take you even farther. There are some real deals in the US Airways award charts, and a couple of these cards managed correctly could quickly send you on your way across the world.
Remember, receiving these 15k bonus miles emails is just my situation. You may or may not be targeted for this offer. If you are going to apply for this card, you should go into it with the mentality that you will get 40k miles and the extra 15k will be an exciting bonus. On the other hand, if you are working on minimum spends for larger offers on other cards, the 15k offer might not even be of interest to you. For those of us who have the ability to complete this added minimum spend though, this represents a great opportunity to increase the bonus on one of the last true churnable cards.
I am planning to pick up a third one of these cards sometime later this year, and it will be interesting to see if I can get targeted for the 15k mile bonus again. In the meantime, if you currently have a US Airways Mastercard, let me know what your experience has been with this offer. I know that other bloggers have been getting it too, but I would like to see just how widespread their targeting is. If you don’t already have this card and are planning to get one, make sure you go through this link to get the best offer and give my single purchase strategy a try to see if you can get yourself an extra 15,000 miles.
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When you pay as much attention to miles and points earning opportunities as I do, it is not very often that points appear in an account by surprise. I am usually waiting not so patiently for points to post and wondering why they are taking so long. Twice in the past week though, I got a pleasant surprise from Chase. One of my favorite emails to receive is one that is from the Ultimate Rewards Mall and has the subject “You’ve just earned bonus rewards”.
When I make purchases online, I always check a site like evreward.com first to make sure I am earning as many points or miles as I can for the purchase. Quite often, the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall is the best option for clicking through to get the highest number of points per dollar, but to be able to shop through the UR Mall, you need to have a Ultimate Rewards earning credit card. I recently did a post about the different Chase cards and how they relate to Ultimate Rewards. If you missed it, you can check out the post to see how you can use the different cards together to earn even more.
The Frequent Miler regularly writes about bonus point earning opportunities through the UR Mall and although I do not always pass those along, I do participate in them every now and then. If you really want to learn how to increase your points earning through the UR Mall, I would highly recommend subscribing to The Frequent Miler. So a couple a weeks ago, I decided to jump in on one of these opportunities and make a rather significant purchase at Staples.com.
You can read all about it at the link above and if you want to give it a try, I believe this deal will still work until the 24th. The basic idea of the plan is to go through the UR Mall and purchase 10 copies of a downloadable software program from Staples. The program in question is marked down to $45 and offered with an easy rebate that will return the entire price. The rebate is limited to 10 per household, so you can spend a total of $450 and get the same amount back by rebate in the form of a check. I am currently working on a $5000 minimum spend on my Amex Business Rewards Gold Card, so I was mainly interested in this deal to increase my spending. Any points I earned would be a bonus.
As always, I made sure to read all of the terms and conditions at the UR Mall and it looked to me like that plan that was laid out by The Frequent Miler would fail. The T+C specifically stated that no points would be awarded for promotional products.
There are no further details given about what qualifies as a promotional product, but from what was showing on the Staples website, I was pretty sure this software did.
Realizing this made me a little sad since I would always like to earn extra points, but like I said before, my main purpose was to increase my spend, so I went ahead with the purchase anyway. Much to my surprise and in direct contradiction to the terms and conditions, this week 1800 bonus points posted in my UR account for this purchase from Staples.
My second surprise came from shopping online at Kohl’s. I am a Kohl’s credit card holder (I had it far before getting in to miles and points) and every few weeks, they send out a coupon for a certain percent off of your purchases when using your Kohl’s card. A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to get a 30% off coupon. This usually happens to us once or twice a year and when it does, we try to make a trip to the brick and mortar store to pick up some new clothes. The 30% off coupled with their in store sales can really lead to some great deals. Well this last time, we happened to go when they were also offering $10 Kohl’s Cash for every $50 spent. We ended up walking out with $30 in Kohl’s Cash and I noticed that there was a two day overlap between when we could use the Cash and when the 30% off coupon expired. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the store during that time, so I made a plan to spend the Kohl’s Cash online.
Of course, I checked out my options and ended up once again at the Ultimate Rewards Mall. I had already decided what my purchases would be on the Kohl’s website and went back to click through and get my bonus points. That’s when I read the terms and conditions.
No only was the eligibility going to be calculated after my Kohl’s Cash (in my case leaving about $10), but I would not be eligible at all using my Kohl’s credit card and a 30% off coupon. Again, I was going to make the purchase anyway and I was already at the UR site, so I went ahead and clicked through. I finished my purchase, expecting no extra points, but still getting a great deal on a couple of Red Sox shirts. Then, later in the week, I got another nice bonus notification.
So I guess the moral of the story is this. Even if you don’t think you will earn any points for a purchase through an online shopping portal, you don’t have anything to lose by trying. It only takes a few extra seconds to click through a portal to get to your shopping destination and you might just get a few hundred extra points (or maybe more). The Ultimate Rewards Mall is well known for awarding points when their terms and conditions specifically state that they won’t. If I hadn’t ignored the T+C and clicked through anyway, I would have 1884 less UR points in my account. Sure, that isn’t enough for an award flight, but every little bit helps and those points will really add up fast.
If you don’t already, take the time to check out where you can earn miles and points for all of your online purchases. These companies are trying to give us miles and points for purchases we would make anyway. Make sure you are getting your share and before you know it, you will be off on that next award trip.
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One of the fastest ways to build up a large base of miles and points is by applying for credit cards to get the often large sign-up bonuses. This is sometimes referred to as credit card churning since you are constantly getting new cards and changing what cards you are putting your spend on. Churning in the truest sense of its definition is actually getting the sign up bonus for the same credit card over and over again. Since the number of cards that can be successfully churned has decreased dramatically over the past few years, people have started to use the term to refer to earning sign up bonuses on multiple different cards as well.
I am not going to get too far into how credit card churning works, since much has been written about the topic and I, myself, even did a short write-up a couple of months ago. Instead, today I am going to talk a little bit about part of the aftermath of applying for several cards on the same day. In the last year and a half, Chrissy and I have been approved for a total of 37 new credit cards, 20 for myself and 17 for her. Since March of last year was our first big application day, we have a total of 14 cards that are up for renewal this month. Many of these cards either have no annual fee or had the annual fee waived for the first year, but now that the first year is up, the annual fee is coming due for 10 out of the 14 cards. We are at the point where we need to decide which cards we are going to keep and which we will cancel. By comparing the annual fee to the benefits of the card, we can determine which cards are worth paying the fees. I plan to do a future post with the details of all the cards we have to evaluate, but for today I want to concentrate on the card that has, by far, the biggest annual fee.
The American Express Platinum Card is definitely one of my favorite credit cards due to the tremendous variety of benefits that comes along with it. Those benefits, however, donbt come without a price. The annual fee for the Amex Platinum card is $450 and it is not waived for the first year. Chrissy and I both have this card and our one year anniversaries are coming up this month. That means that when we got the cards last year, we paid a total of $900 for our annual fees, and if we want to keep the cards for another year, we will have to pay another $900. Most people that I talk to think that I am nuts to have a credit card with an annual fee of $450 and really donbt understand when I tell them that Chrissy has one too. Some of you may be having similar thoughts. That is why I thought I would take some time today to share the analysis I did when trying to decide if we should keep the cards for another year.
Like I mentioned above, the most important thing to do when a card comes up for renewal is to put a value on the benefits that you get from that card and see if that value outweighs the annual fee that you will be charged. With an annual fee of $450, the Amex Platinum card benefits had a tough road ahead of them, but when I started to list each benefit and what the value to me was, it soon became clear that they were up to the challenge.
I completed the analysis for both of our cards, but for simplicity’s sake, I will just go over the details for my card here. The benefit values that I looked at fall in to three main categories: Sign-up Bonuses, First Year Bonuses, and Second Year Bonuses. For the purposes of this analysis, I am going to value my Membership Rewards points at 2 cents each. You may value these points differently and can adjust as needed. I will also provide numbers in parentheses using 1 cent per point values, since this is the absolute minimum you should be redeeming Membership Rewards points for. Below, you will find a part of the spreadsheet that I used for this value analysis along with a description of each line item to follow.
My initial sign-up bonus for this card was 50,000 MR points. Currently, the public sign-up bonus for this card is only 25,000 MR points. You can still get a 50,000 point bonus, but you need to be referred by a current card holder and then spend $3000 in the first 3 months. If any of you want to apply for this card, just send me your email and I will be happy to refer you (I will get a 5k point bonus if you are approved).
Last summer, we were able to take advantage of a “bump the bonus” opportunity. Using a bonus code from a 100k targeted offer, I called and requested that they match the bonus for our cards. Since we had already met the required minimum spend, the representative applied the offer to our accounts and instantly added 50,000 MR points for each of us. Many people who tried this did not have nearly as good luck as I did and American Express has mostly shut down these bump opportunities since then. I guess just had good timing.B Together, that comes to 100,000 bonus MR points just for signing-up and meeting minimum spend. These bonuses alone have a value of $2000 ($1000).
One benefit that the Platinum Card offers is a reimbursement of $200 of Airline Incidentals. This is meant to be for drinks, luggage, and other such charges, but you can buy gift cards for a few airlines and get reimbursed as well. The great part about this benefit is that it goes by the calendar year instead of membership year. That means that during the first year you have your card, you can take advantage of the benefit twice. I was reimbursed for $200 in American Airlines gift card purchases in December of 2011 and then again in January of 2012. This gave me a total benefit value of $400.
The Global Entry program requires a $100 application fee, which will be reimbursed if you put it on your Platinum Card. I applied for Global Entry last week and have already seen the credit post to my account. I have my interview for Global Entry approval this Sunday in Newark and will be sure to write a post about my experience after that is complete.
Leading up to the Holiday Season in 2011, American Express ran a Gift Chain promotion that would give you various gifts for making purchases at certain online retailers. I registered my Platinum card and received a total of $14 in statement credits for buying things that I would have bought anyway. I also received a free ShopRunner membership which I have used a couple of times, but I am not sure of the value of that so I didn’t include it here.
Last fall, I received an offer for 5000 MR points if I enrolled my Platinum card in the Amex Pay Over Time program. It was easy to enroll, although I ended up having to call to get the bonus points applied. I found this to be a bit odd since the points applied automatically for Chrissy’s card. This is a good example of why it is important to keep track of the points that are owed to you, since these points have a value of $100 ($50). You should know that although I enrolled in the Pay Over Time option, I never plan to use it. You should not be churning credit cards unless you plan to pay off your credit card balances each month. If you don’t, the interest charges from carrying balances will outweigh any miles or points you are earning.
I didn’t take advantage of the free lounge access last year nearly as much as I will this year, but I still managed to spend some time in a couple of lounges. The Continental lounge in Newark (before Continental/United was dropped from the program) would have cost $50 for a one day pass and the lounge in San Jose, Costa Rica would have cost $30 for a one day pass.
For rental car savings, I used the card benefits a few times. In addition to getting me Elite Status with Hertz, Avis, and National, my Platinum card saved me some money too. By using my Platinum card to rent cars during the US Airways Grand Slam last October, I was able to save a total of about $20. When we rented a car in San Diego, our elite status with National allowed us to choose a higher level car and saved us at least $50 off of our rental price.
When you add all of these up, I have a first year benefit value of $2764. That’s not too bad for a card that only cost me $450 to have. Keep in mind that these are the actual values for the benefits that I used. Additional benefits are available that I did not take advantage of, but for this analysis, I needed to look at my particular situation. I also did not put a specific value on benefits like free SPG Gold status and rental car elite status, even though I did take advantage of them.
So it is easy to see that this card was well worth the annual fee that I paid to have it for the first year. Now I need to look to see if it is worth it for me to keep it for another year.B I called a couple of weeks ago to see if American Express was willing to give me any kind of retention bonus to keep my Platinum Card, but wasn’t able to get much. The best offer they were willing to give me was a $50 statement credit. There have been reports of people getting as much as a $400 credit or 50,000 MR points to keep the card, but I am assuming that they have either had the card for much longer or put a lot more spend on the card than I do. Still, $50 is $50 and I will take what I can get. I do plan to call one more time and see if I can get them to increase that number, but am not very optimistic about that call.
I also know that I will be able to get another $200 of airline incidentals credit in early 2013. In addition, we should be able to take advantage of access to American Airlines Admirals Clubs in New York, Miami, and Paris on our upcoming trip. I have not looked into lounges for our South American vacation, but assume we will have some access on that trip as well. Starwood Gold and rental car elite status will definitely provide some savings and added benefits with our travel this year, especially if US Airways runs their Grand Slam again and I take full advantage it.
What I have listed above are just the benefits that I am confident I will take advantage of in the upcoming year. With just the airline credit and the retention credit, I have already covered $250 of the $450 annual fee. With the travel I have planned, I think the lounge access and elite status for hotels and car rentals will easily make up the other $200. I would also expect to see some promotions from American Express like their Gift Chain, Small Business Saturday, and new Social Media Syncing that will give me even more value.
Even if I take advantage of no other benefits besides what I have listed in the chart above, I am still looking at $3014 in value for $900 in annual fees (2 years). Sure you could say that if I get out now, I could have a benefit value of $2764, and you would be right. But if I can already see more than half of the next year’s annual fee being outweighed by the value I will get from the card benefits, I would prefer to hold on to the card for another year and see just how high I can make my benefits value grow.
So there you have my decision. After struggling with the choice for quite a while and doing a detailed analysis of the value I have seen in the benefits, I have decided to pay the $450 annual fee and keep my American Express Platinum Card in my wallet for another year. Since the numbers are pretty similar for Chrissy’s card, we are going to keep that one around too. It will be interesting to see how this analysis works out at this time next year. Will we get the value we expect from keeping the cards? Will we decide to keep them for year three? Only time will tell, but for now, this is still one of my favorite cards, even if I don’t pull it out to use every day. Feel free to let me know in the comments what you think of my decision. Am I making a good choice or do you still think I am nuts for paying such a high annual fee? I would love to hear your opinions and maybe someday soon, we can sit down in an airport lounge and talk about it. Of course that will only work if you have access to the lounge too. Thanks for giving me my access, Amex Platinum.
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It’s that time of the week again and although I haven’t done too many posts of my own in the past few days, there are plenty of items to go over in this week’s Updates From the World of Miles and Points. For those that are new to the blog, I am trying to do these updates every Sunday to help catch you up with what is going on. There are often items that come up throughout the week that I donbt really think I should devote an entire post to, but still think you might want to know about. This is where I link to some of the other blogs that I read and respect so that you can get the whole story. In addition, this week I am going to start out with a couple of updates of my own before getting into information from others.
Subscribers of Southwest’s Click and Save emails got an offer yesterday for 25% off of roundtrip Wanna Get Away fares. There are some blackout dates and limits on booking dates, but this could be a great deal if you were planning a flight on Southwest between 4/10 and 5/16. There is a specific one time use code that was sent out with each of the emails so if you normally get these emails, check your trash or junk mail to get your code. Tickets must be booked by today, 3/18, and I am not going to be able to use my code. I am not confident that the code is transferrable, but if you can use it and want to give it a try, send me an email or leave a comment and I will get my code to the first person who requests it.
The weekly Priority Club One Day Sale, which I first wrote about HERE, seems to have died. The sale, which featured heavily discounted award redemptions for 12 properties each week, ran for 24 hours on Thursdays for three weeks in a row. Now there is a message on the sale page saying that the sale was a test and they may have similar promotions in the future. See the sad news HERE.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the Credit Card March Madness Tournament happening now over at Extra Pack of Peanuts. The first matchup is already over, but you have until the end of today to go vote for either the Chase Southwest of Chase Priority Club card in the second matchup. The tournament will continue with a new matchup every two days so go over and voice your opinion to help determine a winner. Details HERE.
There were a few good hotel items coming from Loyalty Traveler this week. Club Carlson is offering 9000 points for 3-day car rentals from Budget or Avis. This is an especially good deal because it only costs 9000 points per night for a Category 1 Club Carlson redemption. Basically, that means you can earn a free hotel night for every 3-day car rental. There is also a 5500 point bonus for 2-day rentals with Budget. Details HERE.
Ric also told us about a super good deal for the Sheraton Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal. They are offering a limited number of rooms for 40 Euros per night, each night for the rest of the year. This is a significant discount off of their normal rates and when I looked this morning, there was still a lot of availability, especially in July and August. This rate is prepaid and nonrefundable so make sure you are definitely able to go before booking. Details HERE.
Finally from Loyalty Traveler, we have a list of Priority Club Q-2 bonuses for multiple nights stayed during the quarter. You can only register with the code for one level of the bonus, so try to have an idea of how many nights you will stay before registering. This is an easy way to get a few thousand extra points if you have some IHG hotel nights coming up. Details HERE.
From now through May 31st, you can get a 50% bonus when transferring from American Express Membership Rewards to British Airways Avios. Many people think that the British Airways program lost a lot of value when they switched over to Avios and changed their award charts, but there are still some great deals to be had for short haul flights using Avios. This is especially true when flying domestically in the USA on American Airlines. Details HERE.
Brian also gave us the details for the current US Airways offer which will allow you to buy up to 50,000 miles and get a total of 100% bonus. This is a split bonus, with 50% coming instantly from US Airways and 50% posting in June after registering your Dividend Miles account with Points.com. As usual, this can be a pretty good deal if you have a specific redemption in mind, but still might not be the best for buying speculatively as offers like these are becoming pretty regular from US Airways. You also have to wonder with all the bonus miles they are giving out if we can expect a devaluation of their award charts soon. Hopefully not. Details HERE.
Back in December, I wrote about a way to potentially get free OneWorld Ruby Elite Status by signing up for free Silver King Club Status with Kingfisher Airlines. At that time, it looked like Kingfisher might be joining the OneWorld Alliance, but since then, things have taken a turn for the worse. Online Travel Review reported this week that Kingfisher Airlines has cancelled all of their international flights. This appears to be one of many steps on the way to the airline shutting down altogether. Sad for those of us who were hoping for free elite status, but these things happen. Details HERE.
One Mile at a Time has compiled some information on which credit cards are still currently churnable. I have recent experience with getting the bonus with my second Barclays US Airways World Mastercard and look forward to trying out a few of the others on this list. Let me know your experience if any of these churns have worked for you. Details HERE.
Freecreditscore.com is offering 3000 bonus Southwest Rapid Rewards points after you have two paid months of their service. The cost works out to $29.90 and with the bonus, can be a good option if you need a way to access your credit score for a couple of months. I currently get free credit reports through my bank, so I won’t be taking advantage. If I did, I would still probably cancel after the two months, once I had my bonus miles. Details from Mommy Points HERE.
Million Mile Secrets is looking for some help choosing a new logo for the blog. There are several choices and you can rate each one individually. To me, the choices look like the first round of designs from an outsourced graphic designer, so I would guess there will be some more tweaking before the winning logo is finalized. Head over and let Daraius know what you think of the current choices. Detail HERE.
For the final amusing story this week, I couldn’t pick just one, so you get a couple. First, head over to View From the Wing to see how Gary got a little bit too much information from his readers after a recent post. Details HERE. Then go over and read about The Frequent Miler’s quest to purchase Pie and earn 3.14 points per dollar earlier this week on Pi Day. Details HERE.
Until next week, keep earning and churning, and maybe I’ll see you out there exploring the world. Paris is my next big stop April 4-10, so let me know if any of you will be there and want to get together for a chat.
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