Usually my favorite online shopping portal is the Chase Ultimate Rewards mall, both because the points earned are especially valuable (in large measure due to their flexibility and their lucrative transfer partners) and because the earning ratios tend to be really good. There are some online shopping portals that consistently just offer bad deals, this is not one of them. For most purchases I start at EV Reward, it’s a search engine where you look up the merchant you’re going to be buying from and it shows you the different deals that are on offer from the various mileage and cash back websites. That’s points or cash rebates you can get for the purchases you’re going to make anyway, just for starting at a shopping portal ad using their link to get to the online…
For Our Friends Up North: Bonuses for Converting RBC Rewards to British Airways and American
RBC rewards is offering a 50% bonus when you convert points into Avios through December 31. Through the end of November there is still a 25% bonus on transferring points to American. For most awards I prefer that greatly — for connecting itineraries, for long haul itineraries, in many cases premium cabin itineraries are much cheaper, and no fuel surcharges except on British Airways flights (and a very modest charge on Iberia).
American Airlines Bonus on Purchased Miles is Back
American is offering 2000 bonus miles per 6000 miles you purchase, up to 12,000 bonus miles total, through November 15th. That works out to be a one-third bonus (as long as you buy the right number of miles). That’s still too expensive, in my view, unless you specifically need to top off towards a particular award. Here’s how the cost breaks down: 36,000 miles purchased earns 12,000 bonus miles, for a total of 48,000 miles. That purchase costs $990 + 7.5% tax + $35 transaction fee, for a total of $1099.25. That comes to 2.3 cents per mile. Now, I value American miles highly. I love them for international first class awards on Cathay Pacific, Etihad, and British Airways (this last with fuel surcharges). And their distance-based awards can offer tremendous advantages. But buying an…
Bits ‘n Pieces for November 1, 2012
News and notes from around the interweb: Air Mauritius has become a partner of Air France KLM’s Flying Blue (story in French). Previously you could book Air France codeshare flights on Air Mauritius using Flying Blue miles, now you can book all Air Mauritius flights. This is especially useful because Flying Blue is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards (points transfer instantly, and with occasional transfer bonuses) as well as Starwood Preferred Guest. ING Direct, officially merged with Capital One today, will no longer charge foreign transaction fees on debit card purchases made outside the United States. Starwood is offering 50% off at hotels and resorts in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The site is currently showing a deal expiring November 11 for stays through February 28. However, a new offer is supposed to…
US Airways 100% Bonus on Purchased Miles Back for November
The buy, share, and gift miles page of US Airways Dividend Miles has the following up, one day early: Buy or gift miles November 1 – 30, 2012 and get a 100% bonus – up to 50,000 miles. Buying miles is the quick and easy way to get award travel. And for the perfect holiday present, gift miles to a friend of family member to help them reach award travel. As with most of the 100% bonus offers that US Airways runs, you can buy up to 50,000 miles and receive a 50,000 mile bonus. 100,000 miles costs $1881.25 all-in. Accounts must be open at least 12 days in order to buy miles, so even if you don’t have a Dividend Miles account you could still open one and be able to buy miles under…
Your Comments Are In My Spam Queue But I Like You Anyway
Apologies to folks whose comments are taking a long time to show up. Since around 11am Eastern yesterday morning all comments have been getting directed into the spam queue. I normally get something like 50-100 actual spam comments per hour and those are wonderfully redirected to a place where I never even see them. And 99.9% of the time when a comment doesn’t appear right away on this blog, it’s not over in the spam folder just in a ‘moderation’ queue. First-time commenters, commenters who include links in their comments, and commenters on especially old threads often get flagged by the system as ‘possible’ spam and I review these a few times a day and clear them out quickly. Right now I’m having to sort through those ‘up to 100 per hour’ comments in order…
A TSA Feel Good Public Service Announcement
This is nearly three years old, I’m not sure how I missed it the first time around.
Bits ‘n Pieces for October 30, 2012
News and notes from around the interweb: As announced on Milepoint, Starwood has finally introduced an Android app. Mommy Points offers great advice to prepare for a child’s first flight. A Jetstar (Qantas low cost subsidiary) crew was taken hostage in Shanghai (Shanghai’d?) by passengers who figured they were getting stranded after a diversion. This even though the airline was providing hotel rooms. Passengers eventually made it to their final destination of Beijing. Wendy Perrin offers advice to plan ahead for the next big storm, you’re in best shape if you’ve got a good travel agent handling things for you; some people benefit from travel insurance (although I only like insuring against the costliest of bad events); you can hire Cranky Concierge to help; and she follows my advice to use online tools to find…
Fly More Places for Fewer Miles: American’s Little-Known Distance-Based Frequent Flyer Awards
Last week I wrote about the best value awards that each US frequent flyer program has to offer, and I noted American’s distance-based awards, frequent flyer tickets that are priced based on the number of miles flown rather than by where you start and where you’re flying to. That chart has some real values, such as the ability to fly business class between the US and Europe for 90,000 miles roundtrip instead of the usual 100,000, the ability to pop around Europe with several extra flights thrown in for 115,000 miles in business class instead of 100,000 miles roundtrip plus another 20,000 miles for each and every additional intra-European flight, and the ability to fly to Australia in business class via Asia (not normally allowed on a single award ticket) for an extra 25,000 miles…
PointsHound: 100 Free Miles in Your Choice of United, Delta, Hawaiian, or Aeromexico
PointsHound is a website that will give you frequent flyer miles for making hotel bookings. They will give you 100 miles just for signing up (this is my referral link — the 100 miles comes from being referred by an existing member, and the referrer only gets points when a new member actually makes a booking through the site — if you’d like feel free to add your own referral link in the comments). You can choose earning miles with United, Delta, Hawaiian, and Aeromexico. And while many websites like TopCashBack and eBates will offer cash back for the hotel bookings you make through the hotel’s own website, PointsHound rebates you in the form of miles and has you book through their own system. The downside to making bookings through third party websites is that…
