Tag Archives for transferable points.
Star Alliance frequent flyer program Avianca LifeMiles is testing points transfers with Brazilian carrier Gol, which is a much bigger deal than it might seem at first.
Last month a Chase Ultimate Rewards member transferred their points to United, in order to book an award that showed as available at United.com, but wasn’t really available. United wouldn’t send his points back to Chase, and he complained to the Department of Transportation that this was an unfair and deceptive practice. They needed 193,000 more miles than they had in their account. United’s website suggested they buy the miles. They transferred the points in from Chase Ultimate Rewards instead. The award space for business class travel on EVA Air from Chicago to Singapore via Taipei turned out to be phantom and unbookable. The website errored out after they transferred the points. While the space still showed up online, a phone agent said the space wasn’t available and also that they couldn’t send their points…
It is possible for a loyalty program to return points to a bank transfer currency! Now a customer is asking the Department of Transportation to force United Airlines to do it.
Wells Fargo has entered the chat. They’ve announced themselves in travel rewards, and transferring bank points to airline miles and hotel points. They’ve launched a rich new travel credit card, and launched points transfers to airline and hotel loyalty programs for both this high-earner and existing cards.
The Wells Fargo Autograph Journey Visa Card is a brand new product. It’s pretty compelling in its own right as a travel and dining card, but offers some great possibilities in combination with other Wells cards now that their branded portfolio of points cards all come with point transfers.
Marriott may be offended by this. Bilt probably won’t like it either. But I’m laying down truth here, and it’s simple math. Marriott points transfers are simply a low value use of Bilt points. You can transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan, United or American, Turkish and more. Anyone paying a little bit of attention can do better than a transfer to Marriott.
American Express has added a new Membership Rewards transfer partner: Qatar Airways Privilege Club. Points transfer at a 1:1 ratio and generally post instantly.
Avianca LifeMiles is a popular Star Alliance frequent flyer program for U.S. members because they sell miles inexpensively on a regular basis, and because you can transfer points into their program from several different credit card currencies. They have generally reasonable redemption pricing and no fuel surcharges, though getting customer service when things go wrong can be challenging at times. There was a problem many members were experiencing this month where points would be transferred to the LifeMiles program, it would look to the bank program that the miles transfer went through, but account balances didn’t update. The program says this is solved. Daniel Paredes from LifeMiles shares with me that, The issue was related to some members who transferred points from other loyalty programs (such as Amex Rewards, Citi Thankyou Points, etc) to LifeMiles…
There’s another way to combine miles and that’s literally to move the points from one account to another. Airlines usually charge a fee for this. But British Airways has cut theirs by 90%.
You can often still move hotel points to airline miles, but some programs actually let you move airline miles into hotel points. By offering transfers in both directions this does create the opportunity to launder airline miles through hotel programs from one airline to another as well.
Marriott has myriad airline partners – at 38 it’s way more than bank transfer programs. We’re now seeing a change to the Marriott points-to-miles transfer bonus. Specifically, the hotel chain informed customers this morning that the bonus would no longer be available on transfers to American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, or Avianca LifeMiles effective October 31. Transferring 60,000 Marriott points will yield only 20,000 AAdvantage miles going forward – not 25,000.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
