News and notes from around the interweb:
- Wandering Aramean details a new top elite tier in the
Greyhound Road RewardsAmtrak Guest Rewards program that seems pretty good for upgrades and bonus points (if you spend about $10,000 or take 40 one-way Acela trips in a year). - I shouldn’t make fun of the Amtrak program, I id receive all those Hyatt gift cards from converting my Priority Club points after all.
- Delta Points says the Air France website now recognizes Delta trip confirmation numbers, which can be mildly useful for seat assignments. I suppose it was easier to update Air France’s technology than for Delta to just display corresponding Air France record locators online, or to train Delta telephone agents that Air France is a partner. He suggests adding Delta flights to a Flying Blue account so that Award Wallet can track your trips.
- One Mile at a Time flags that American is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased miles through January 31. Not as good as the end of year 50% bonus of course, but it appears what was then a temproary lifting of the 40,000 mile per year purchase limit to 60,000 per year has become a permanent feature of the program.
FWIW, for those of us on the Northeast Corridor, AGR points can be somewhat lucrative. With Amtrak now varying ticket pricing based on demand and advance bookings, last-minute NE regional trains can often be had cheaper by straight-up purchasing the required points and redeeming a reward, due to the flexibility of AGR pts (other than blackout dates).
This used to be much more lucrative than it was before Amtrak devalued its award chart earlier in the year (it used to be the case that any non-acela train on the NE Corridor could be had more cheaply by buying points if the cash cost of the ticket was over $75, which it often is), but it still has some value.
Just received a targeted(?) spg notice that with registration, one stay at any spg property between now and Feb 28, 2013 will yield a free night at any 1-6 level property good through February, 2014…It says for new members, but I have been a member for years and it accepted the registration….
AGR isn’t too bad for Northeasterners
Switch 10 of your round trips between NYC-DC from US Airways shuttle to Acela, and you’ll have 20K Hilton points and access to United Clubs
Plus it’s just a flat out better trip
It’s actually more than 20K points, as after 5 round trips, you’ll get a 25% points bonus, so really 22.5K
@Gary72 presumably targeted but would still love to see the link…
spg.com/bonusbeginnings