Citibank is offering $400 for opening a new Citigold checking account by February 28. You have to deposit $50,000 within 30 days to earn the bonus but you only need to keep the funds there for 15 days. The bonus funds don’t credit for 90 days so you have to keep your account open that long — pull the funds after 15 days, you’re looking at $90 in fees but net of $310. $310 in 15 days on a $50,000 deposit should work out to something like a 15% annualized return on those funds. Obviously this offer isn’t for everyone or even for most, it’s a good return for those with $50,000 liquid. It highlights how valuable a new high net worth account is to the bank — though it’s striking that they only require…
Is It Time to Regulate Frequent Flyer Programs?
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything as egregious as Delta over the past few weeks. Delta eliminated their award charts — just pulled them off the website — without telling anyone. When asked they said that members now get all they need to know from the award calendar. That suggests pricing could change and change rapidly, or at least they’re preparing for it to. Delta now has 21 day advance purchase requirements for the lowest award prices in many (most) markets. They’ve made your miles less valuable, without notice or even acknowledgment, for one of the only strong uses for domestic coach awards. One candidate for ‘worst action by an airline frequent flyer program against its members’ as noted by a commenter on the blog is fuel surcharges, especially the continued charging of these…
The Strangest Immigration Landing Card You’ve Ever Seen, and It’s Now Being Used.
The other day I entered Abu Dhabi briefly. Apparently additional security measures were in place for immigration, and the fast track queue took about 40 minutes — even though the line wasn’t particularly long. What was unique was they were insisting that everyone fill out landing cards. I don’t recall ever filling one of those out before, I certainly haven’t in the past few years, and the person behind me noted they hadn’t done so last week. These weren’t cards distributed on the plane. Instead, as everyone got in line they were being told if they were a non-resident they had to go fill one out before getting back in line. Everyone was directed to a long table with a bunch of forms strewn about. The forms were in English. I use the term ‘forms’…
Readers Prefer American Miles Over United Miles 2-to-1
The extra 1000 miles from Kaligo.com with your first hotel booking didn’t draw all that many clicks. Data is interesting to me in its own way, and I’m fortunate to be able to look and see what people click on and learn about my readers as a group that way. When I wrote that the CreditCards.com CardMatch tool was offering some people 100,000 Membership Rewards points as a signup bonus offer on the Platinum Card, that was quickly clicked on over 3000 times. The MobileSuites app, which will let you order room service or your car up from valet using your phone at most chain hotels in the U.S., was clicked on about 1000 times. Of course, they were sponsoring a giveaway of hotel points. What’s interesting about the Kaligo post is that there were…
Send Credit Card Payments Free, the Best Vacation Bargains, and the Biggest Devaluations
News and notes from around the interweb: United is launching once-weekly New Orleans-Cancun flights. I always find these routes strange and fascinating, there’s usually a backstory to them that’s not always immediately obvious. New mobile payment app that lets you send $3750 by credit card without fees. Air Canada has a promo code for 15% off to Asia British Airways is gutting its small business program, too. The winner, as with the Avios changes, will be the rarely-spotted individual who flies exclusively in Club World and First on fully flexible tickets during the week but who loves nothing more than jumping into a World Traveller seat when he travels for leisure. What’s the most improved vacation opportunity for those spending US dollars? Argentina is a great bargain, especially when you exchange cash at the street…
Qantas Offering Gold Elite Status Match: Get Free American Airlines Club Lounge Access
Qantas is offering to status match New Zealand residents with competitor airline status to their Gold elite tier. Emirates elites are excluded. Status matches are common for US airlines though increasingly airlines will only give you status for a limited period of time, if at all, until you first fly a certain amount with them. Qantas Gold is oneworld Sapphire status, which means lounge access — including when flying American Airlines on wholly domestic itineraries (and indeed they’ll give you a drink chit good for a premium cocktail, or how I use them – a bottle of water). Gold also confers preferred seating, upgrade list priority, priority check-in and baggage (with extra baggage allowance) with Qantas. Check-in, boarding, and baggage benefits accrue on other oneworld carriers as well. First step is to join – with…
New Debit Card You Can Order Free Online and Load With a Credit Card
There’s a discussion on Flyertalk about several prepaid debit products that you can buy online (free, with free shipping) and that you can then load online with a credit card. They’re branded cards issued by Metabank for Boys & Girls Clubs of Delaware, Goodwill Delaware, and others. (These groups don’t manage the cards, they just get royalty income for use of their name.) You can load up to $2500 per day onto the card and store up to $10,000 at a time. Some key fees: $3.95 monthly service fee, waived when you load $800 or more to the card each month $2.95 for loading the card by credit card $2.50 ATM cash withdrawal fee (in addition to fees charged by an out of network ATM) $0.50 Bill pay fee The card terms seem to suggest…
OUCH: American Fails to Load Bags at Miami for 8 Hours, Doesn’t Tell Passengers
Readers of this blog know that I’m generally a fan of American Airlines, I fly over 100,000 miles a year with them and I think the AAdvantage program is the most rewarding airline frequent flyer program at least at the top elite tier. Every once in awhile though an airline does something that reminds you why people hate airlines. This time it happened to be American. Apparently American’s baggage system broke down in Miami for several hours on Friday. The airline couldn’t deliver checked bags to aircraft. Planes took off without any checked bags loaded Passengers weren’t told their bags weren’t onboard Indeed, in many cases they weren’t even informed on arrival at their destination Usually when truly terrible situations develop, there’s an external factor (most often its weather) combined with very bad decision-making. Here…
Is It The End of Loyalty, Time For Everyone For Themselves?
At the beginning of the year I wrote The State of Frequent Flyer Miles in 2015. Award charts are more expensive. Miles are easier to earn. The products we cna redeem for are better than ever. The economy and travel business are relatively good which makes programs less generous with us. And they’ve gotten smarter, there are fewer opportunities to game. But as they continue to get more complex opportunities emerge. And the economy won’t stay strong forever. Something else has changed. Some of this is driven by the economy, that programs aren’t as worried about our loyalty in good times. But that’s not all of it. At some programs, the gloves are off, there seem to be no constraints, things that were unthinkable for programs to do in the past are now just ordinary…
The Changes That Will Happen to American’s Award Chart After The US Airways Merger is Complete
Reader Ryan wanted to know, [W]hat do you think would be a ‘worst-case’ scenario for US/AA miles devaluation after the programs merge in Q2? Plenty of folks thought that combining US Airways and American frequent flyer programs was a chance to implement a brand new program on day 1, a revenue-based one like Delta and United. I predicted from the beginning that: The primary focus would be on integrating the airlines When you merge you don’t want to alienate your customers So the merger would be reprieve from devaluations, for the most part. (Not exclusively.) And indeed, we know what the 2015 program looks like and I don’t expect a big upending of the award chart in the second quarter of 2015 when Dividend Miles gets migrated over to AAdvantage. I don’t necessarily expect big…
