Credit Cards, Credit Cards & Miles, Miles & Points

Chase Ultimate Rewards: Transfer Partners to Avoid

January 29, 2018January 29, 2018by milesforplacesLeave a Comment

One of my friends asked me a pretty good question regarding Ultimate Rewards point transfers into partner programs: Which one should he avoid? While I’ve gone through many of the transfer partners that provide excellent value, I haven’t really addressed the transfer partners or scenarios that provide poor value and thus should be avoided. There are also certain situations where even a good frequent flyer program won’t provide good value if you transfer Ultimate Rewards points into the program. At the very least, you want to get a value of 1.25 cents per point if you’re using the Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) and 1.5 cents per point if you’re using the Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR). How did I arrive at those numbers? If you book through Chase’s UR portal, that’s how much value you would get. For example, by booking a flight using the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal, a ticket worth $150 will require 10,000 UR points if you have the CSR. $150/10,000 = 1.5 cents per points. That same ticket would require 12,000 UR points if you have the CSP $150/12,000 = 1.25 cents per point. Here is what you should do to ensure you get the best value using your points: Make a comparison of the number of UR points required if you were to book through the Chase portal, the number of points required if you were to book through the hotel or frequent flyer program, and the dollar amount required if you were to pay with cash. For certain programs, the answer will be obvious and you will get a clear idea of what not to do. For others, there might be a tie and you won’t come out on the losing end either way. Let’s take a look at some transfer partners and see what type of value they might provide…

IHG

I’m going to use IHG hotels, the least valuable of all transfer partners in my opinion, as the first example. Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred into IHG on a 1:1 transfer ratio in increments of 1,000. Among the brands that are under the IHG umbrella are Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Indigo, Kimpton, and Candlewood Suites. Let’s say you wanted to stay in Downtown Chicago between June 29th and July 1st at the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue….

This would cost $233 a night. If you were to book as a CSR card holder straight through the Ultimate Rewards portal…..

A good redemption of just over 16k points a night. This is a value of 1.5 cents per point and the litmus test you should use if you’re a CSR card holder booking through Chase. Last but not least, let’s see how many points you would have to transfer into IHG’s program from Chase if you were to use their loyalty program to book this hotel:

A ridiculous 50,000 points per night, meaning you’d have to transfer a total of 150k UR points for 3 nights. If you’re reading this, please don’t ever transfer 150,000 Ultimate Rewards points to make a booking like this in which you’re getting absolutely ripped off. If you do the math, $233/50,000 = 0.4 cents per point. You read that right. You’re getting less than a penny per point value if you transfer 150,000 UR points to book 3 nights at the Intercontinental Chicago on Michigan Avenue when the cash price is $233 per night. It’s unfortunate but these types of redemptions are the norm when using IHG points to book hotel stays. This particular redemption is so bad, you would be better off exchanging 69,900 UR points for $699 cash and then using the cash to book the 3 nights at the hotel. For this scenario, we would book straight through the Chase portal at just over 16k points per night. The only scenario you should consider transferring Ultimate Rewards points into IHG is if you need to top off your account and you’re just 5k or fewer points away from getting an award night at a higher redemption level. For example, if you’re at 29k IHG points and 30k would get you an award night, go ahead and transfer that 1k from Chase. The more you need to transfer, the more you’re losing value.

Marriott

Another transfer partner which provides terrible value when transferring points from Chase Ultimate Rewards is Marriott. Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred into Marriott on a 1:1 ratio in increments of 1,000. Don’t get me wrong, they have a very nice portfolio of properties which include upscale brands such J.W. Marriott and Ritz Carlton. But when you’re redeeming points, it’s all about getting maximum value and getting the most for your redemptions. Let’s say you wanted to stay in the Miami area from March 29th-March 31st in a location close to the airport:

The TownPlace Suites would cost $175/night or a ridiculous 50k Marriott points per night for a total of 150k points. This redemption is even worse than the one we saw above. Please do not, and I repeat do not transfer 150,000 UR points for this type of redemption. $175/50,000 = 0.35 cents per point redemption (lol). To put it into perspective, 60k UR points when transferred into United can get you a round-trip ticket to Europe. 60k UR points when transferred into FlyingBlue can get you two round-trip tickets to Hawaii. If you were to book straight from the Chase portal…..

A far more palatable redemption of nearly 12k per night, giving you the baseline value of 1.5 cents per point if you were a CSR credit card holder. If you carried the CSP instead, your redemption would require approximately 14,300 points per night for a value of 1.2 cents per point. In this scenario just like the one above, booking directly from the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal rather than transferring points into Marriott is the way to go.

Hyatt

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’m going to use Hyatt, one of my favorite transfer partners and one that provides excellent value as an example. Let’s say you wanted to make a booking at the Hyatt Place in Downtown Chicago between June 29th-July 1st. Here is the cash price you would have to pay per night: At the very minimum, $531 per night (!!).

If you were to book straight through the Chase Portal as a Chase Sapphire Reserve card holder:

At the very minimum, you’re spending 26,509 points per night. This gives you a redemption rate of 1.5 cents per point, the value you would get when booking through Chase as a CSR card holder. And finally, let’s see how many Hyatt Points would be required to make this booking…..

We have our clear winner. For 12k Hyatt points per night, you can find yourself in a room that would cost you $531 per night were you to pay with cash. If you do the math, $531/12,000 = 4.4 cents per point. This would qualify as a fantastic redemption and one where it would be a no-brainer to transfer your points from Chase UR into Hyatt. Prior to transferring into Hyatt, make yourself a World of Hyatt account on their website. This is free and you will get an account number which you will need to link with Chase in their Ultimate Rewards Transfer Portal. Below is just a simple schematic showing you where to go to transfer UR points.

When you click on your point balance, this will be the first page you see. Bring the cursor to “use points” and click on “transfer to travel partners”

Click on World Of Hyatt and transfer the total number of points you would need. Since Hyatt requires 12k points per night for our redemption and we searched for 3 nights, we would transfer a total of 36k UR points into Hyatt. The cash price for those 3 nights would have been nearly $1,600. The only downside of Hyatt is it’s relatively small footprint. They only have about 750 properties worldwide so finding a location where you can take advantage of this value can be challenging, particularly if you’re looking at international destinations.

Airline Transfers

Generally speaking, transferring to the frequent flyer program of Chase’s airline partners provides very good to excellent value. A prime example of this would be transferring to British Airways Avios for domestic flights on American Airlines or transferring to FlyingBlue, the frequent flyer program of KLM/Air France for a round-trip ticket to Hawaii on Delta Airlines. However, there are certain situations where you’re better off booking a ticket by redeeming UR points through the Chase portal or using cash rather than transferring the points into a frequent flyer account to book a ticket. For this example, I’ll use a round-trip ticket from Chicago (ORD) to New York City (LGA) from April 28th-May 1st.

Pretty good price for a round-trip ticket between Chicago and NYC. Keep in mind, these are economy seats, not basic economy which can be had for $129 round-trip but with limitations such as no carry-on bags and no advanced seat assignments. Now if you wanted to use United miles for this trip…..

25k miles for a round-trip itinerary. How much value would you get if you transferred 25k UR points into United? $169/25,000 = 0.67 cents per point. This would be a terrible way to use UR points since you’re getting less than a cent worth of value per point. If you were to hold a Chase Sapphire Reserve and you booked through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal, your redemption would require…..

Just 11,240 UR points for a round-trip ticket. You would save yourself nearly 14,000 points, or enough for possibly another round-trip ticket by using Chase’s portal versus transferring into United. If you had the Chase Sapphire Preferred, your redemption would be about 13,500 UR points, a significant number of UR points saved.

Recap

Prior to transferring into a program, evaluate whether you’re getting at least 1.5 cents per point if you’re a Chase Sapphire Reserve holder or 1.25 cents per point if you’re a Chase Sapphire Preferred holder. This is done by taking the cash price/the points required by the loyalty program.This should always be your litmus test prior to transferring. If you’re value matches or exceeds those numbers, transfer the points into the loyalty program. If not, then book directly through the Chase portal. The wildcard is if you happen to have status with a hotel chain. From my experience, hotels won’t extend status benefits if you don’t make the reservation through their own website or toll-free number. What what I do? I would still forego the benefits for IHG and Marriott if it means I’m going to get killed on the redemption when transferring UR points into either of those two brands. A free breakfast or room upgrade is not worth sacrificing a round-trip ticket to Europe, South America, or two round-trip tickets to Hawaii. If you want to read about the transfer partners that can provide tremendous value, you can read that here and here.

Credit Cards & Miles, Miles & Points, Tips

How to Avoid Ticketing Fees on Last Minute Award Redemptions

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018by milesforplacesLeave a Comment

For all you last-minute travelers/procrastinators, there are many frequent flier programs that penalize travelers if they book an award redemption close to the departure date. For example, if you book a ticket using miles on either American or United and your departure date is less than 21 days away, you will have to pay a $75 ticketing fee. Sometimes this fee will wipe out the value of a redemption and on the rare occasion, it will be more than the entire cost of the ticket were you to pay in cash. Delta doesn’t charge a ticketing fee but will charge additional 5k points per one way ticket (and even more for business class). Alaska Airlines does not charge a close-in ticketing fee and neither does JetBlue. Southwest does not charge a ticketing fee but the number of miles required will increase significantly. If you have status with an airline, that might be enough to skirt around the close-in booking fees. There are a couple of ways to bypass the close-in fee and I’ll demonstrate how.

Using British Airways to Book on American Airlines

I talked about the benefits of using British Airways Avios to book on American Airlines here.
One valuable aspect of British Airways Avios is the ability to redeem it on American Airlines as close to a few hours prior to departure.
British Airways has a distance based chart so certain redemptions can be made using fewer miles.
If economy saver award tickets are available on AA.com, they will usually be accessible through British Airways.

Here is an example of the exact same flight from Albany, NY to Chicago (ORD) and the costs associated with the two different programs.

If I were to book this one-way ticket using AA miles, the cost is $12,500 miles plus a $75 ticketing fee (the mandatory 9/11 security fee is $5.60 making it $80.60). Now let’s see the price using British Airways Avios…..

No $75 ticketing fee and only 7.5k Avios as opposed to the 12.5k AA miles that would have been required. It is important to note that if you have a connecting flight, it will cost double the Avios for a trip since BA charges 7.5k per segment. I’d still rather dish out 15k Avios rather than 12.5k AA miles with the $75 ticketing fee tacked on.

Using Singapore Krisflyer Miles to Book on United

If I want to book a one-way flight to Chicago for this Friday using United miles, it’s 12.5k miles + $80.60

Similar to AA’s policy, United also charges a $75 ticketing fee for flights booked within 21 days of departure.
Singapore Airlines allows you to book via United up until 24 hours prior to departure if saver award redemptions are available on United.
Unlike the American Airlines example, this ticket cannot be booked online. You need to call Singapore Airlines reservations and they will book it for you. Just make sure you have a Singapore Krisflyer frequent flier account set up prior to calling.

Both British Airways and Singapore Airlines are transfer partners of Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Points, and Starwood Preferred Guest. Singapore Airlines is also a transfer partner of Citi ThankYou points. If you are booking on United Airlines via Singapore miles, DO NOT transfer any points into Singapore Airlines until you have confirmed seat availability for your travel dates on United. Transfers into an airline’s frequent flier program are not reversible.

Airport Lounges, Reviews, USA

Lounge Review: United Club O’Hare Terminal 2

November 4, 2017July 22, 2018by milesforplaces1 Comment

On my way back to Albany, NY, I had about an hour and change of free time at O’Hare International Airport. As a United Explorer credit card holder, United gives me two complimentary passes to the United Club lounge every year during my cardmember anniversary. Without the passes, I’d have to pay $50 out of pocket for a day pass. In essence, the two United Club passes make up for the $95 annual fee even if I never used any other benefit from the card. So I figured I’d give it a shot.

The United Club lounge in Terminal 2 is located in the F concourse. Once you enter the lounge, the staff at the front desk will take your pass, verify your boarding pass, and direct you to the escalators that lead to the concierge. There are many factors that I’ll look at when evaluating any airline lounge. The most heavily weighted factor in determining how I’ll rate a lounge is food. If the food is good, it can make up for shortcomings in many other areas. It happened to be breakfast time so off I went to check out the offerings……

As you can see from the pictures, cantaloupes, honeydew melon, grapes, yogurt, and oatmeal.

Bagels, white bread, and whole wheat bread with cream cheese, butter, and strawberry jam or grape jelly. The fresh fruit was pretty good. The bagels? dry with the texture of sandpaper. They also had an espresso machine (not pictured) which gave you a few different choices of latte’s, cappuccino, hot chocolate, and mocha. I had the latte and it was pretty decent. There was also orange juice and watermelon infused water. In terms of the food selection, it was nothing special and certainly nothing that was memorable. So let’s move on to other areas of the lounge…..

The common areas were very spacious and the decor was pretty nice. The lounge was clean, perfectly lit, and didn’t suffer from overcrowding that routinely plagues the United Club lounge in terminal 1.

There is an abundance of power outlets and it seems that just about every seat has access to one. This is certainly not the case at the United Club lounges in Terminal 1 so good for United in addressing that here.

The bar area was quiet at 8am as expected. Very spacious, clean, and an appealing ambiance.

This lounge also had free wifi with very good speeds. Perfect place to get work done if you have a layover or you’re there a bit early and have time to kill.

I really want to like this lounge more than I do. It was comfortable, clean, spacious, great ambiance, not overcrowded, great wifi speeds, and had a very friendly staff. But the food was mediocre at best. And even that’s putting it kindly. I can’t justify or recommend paying $50 for a 1-day pass if the best thing they have going for them is great coffee and wifi. The only way I’d ever return is on a complimentary pass or if I booked an award ticket on business class and complimentary access came with it. On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best, I’d rate it a 3.2. If the food is ever on par with AMEX Centurion lounges, it would easily be a 4.5 or higher.

It is important to note that these passes do not work at United’s Polaris Lounge in Terminal 1 or any of the Polaris lounges that are due to open at Newark, San Francisco, Houston, D.C., Los Angeles (LAX), Hong Kong, Tokyo (Narita), and London (Heathrow) over the next year. For those lounges, you need to have a business class or first class ticket on a long-haul international flight. I’ve heard a lot of great things about that product and if I’m ever fortunate to experience it, I’ll share my review here.

Credit Cards & Miles, Miles & Points, Tips

Using Ibotta for Uber, Hotels, and More

October 25, 2017by milesforplaces1 Comment

Of all the apps I have downloaded on my phone, there isn’t a single one that’s as rewarding as Ibotta. If you already have it downloaded and regularly use it, you know how it works. If you’ve never heard of Ibotta, I’ll introduce it and show you how you can benefit from your routine shopping. It’s available for both Android and iOS.

Ibotta rewards you in two different ways. The first requires you to upload your receipt from one of their listed retailers. Among them are Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Jewel-Osco, Pathmark, Mariano’s, etc. For example, Walmart will have tons of different grocery or household items that will be eligible for cashback in a given week. If you purchase those items and unlock them on the Ibotta app, you get whatever the cashback is for that particular item. Here is example of some of the breakfast items listed this week at Walmart:

Clothing retailers work the same way. Until November 2nd, you can make a purchase at H&M, upload your receipt and you get 15% cash back. The purchase would have to be made in-store.

The other way Ibotta rewards you is by using their app to launch another app and then making a purchase. For example if you click on Uber via Ibotta, it will automatically launch the Uber app that’s already downloaded on your phone. For every ride you take, you get a dollar back:

The same goes for travel websites such as Hotels.com, Booking.com, Hotwire.com, etc. For these websites, you typically get between 4-6% back on your total cost.

Make sure you have the apps for any of the above downloaded prior to making a booking. Ibotta will credit you the cashback once you have completed your hotel stay.

Once you have $20, you can cash out via Paypal or Venmo. You could also select gift cards to retailers such as Amazon or Target.

You could also double dip using this app. For example, Walmart sells Hotels.com gift cards. You could use your Chase Freedom credit card to buy the gift card from Walmart and that will get you 5 points per dollar (Walmart is a 5x quarterly category for Chase Freedom this quarter). You can then make your booking on Hotels.com by launching the app via Ibotta and get an additional 5% back. Regardless of where you shop or travel, Ibotta has something that can benefit just about everyone. If you don’t already have Ibotta and you use my link to sign up, you get $10 back after uploading your first receipt or making your first purchase using the app. —-> https://ibotta.com/r/xq3zkq

As always, thanks for reading.

Credit Cards & Miles, Miles & Points

My Experience Redeeming British Airways Avios for a Flight on American Airlines

August 20, 2017August 20, 2017by milesforplaces1 Comment

Before I get into the tidbits of Avios redemption on American Airlines, I’ll share my recent experience with British Airways and how redeeming Avios on American Airlines rather than booking with American using its own AAdvantage miles saved me a huge headache. At a conference in Philadelphia two weeks ago, I arrived at the hotel and was asked to provide a drivers license or an ID and a credit card for incidentals. I opened my wallet and my credit card was there. I assumed I had my drivers license and looked behind a few cards but I could not find it (I left it in my scanner at home when I was making a copy 2 days prior). I went into all out panic mode and frantically started searching my pockets, book bag, and suitcase. I took out every single card from my wallet and nothing came up. I was the guy who booked the hotel rooms for 3 other friends and I’m thinking I might be the guy who might have screwed this whole thing up. I told the receptionist “uhhh I’m really really sorry but I don’t have my drivers license with me. I think I dropped it. The only thing I have is my school ID. Can you match that with my credit card and make that work?” The receptionist said they generally don’t allow it but since I was there for the conference, he’d let it slide. If you are some how reading this and you are that receptionist from the Double Tree near Phildelphia International Airport, God bless you and thank you again. Half the disaster averted. Now I realized I also had a flight from Philly to Albany two days later and not having my license would really make things difficult ( I arrived in Philly via Greyhound and they never checked for ID). I booked my flight using British Airways Avios on American Airlines for 7.5k Avios plus $5.60 in taxes. The cash price for this one way ticket was going for $422 (!). This gave me an excellent value of 5.6 cents per Avios. If I had booked the same flight using American Airlines miles, It would have cost me 7.5k AAdvantage miles PLUS an additional $80. If you book an award flight within 21 days of departure on American, you are subjected to an $80 “close in” fee. British Airways does not charge the same fee when using Avios to book on American. This allows you to make same day bookings (if seats are available) without losing value due to a surcharge. Since I didn’t have my license and didn’t want to deal with extra paperwork and questions from TSA trying to board my flight, I decided I would just ride back with a friend who had driven there. I called British Airways about 40 hours prior to departure and requested to cancel my flight. British Airways’ award cancellation policy is very customer friendly. As long as you cancel 24 hours or more prior to departure, they will credit your miles back without charging a fee to reinstate those miles. The only thing you would lose is the $5.60 in tax which is negligible in the grand scheme of things. Had I booked this flight using AAdvantage miles, American would have charged me $150 to cancel the flight and reinstate those miles.

PHLAvios — The cost of my flight had I used cash to pay for it. Prior to cancelling, I only used 7.5k Avios, which would have given me a value of 5.6 cents per Avios.

For many of the reasons highlighted above, Executive Club is one my favorite frequent flier programs for domestic travel. BA Executive Club is a transfer partner of Chase, AMEX, and SPG, so there are many ways to get Avios (British Airways’ frequent flier curency). I have never redeemed Avios for international flights on British Airways itself because BA charges a very hefty fuel surcharge on transatlantic award flights flown on their metal. I use Avios to book flights on BA’s OneWorld partner, American Airlines. British Airways utilizes a distance based award chart which means the number of Avios used depends on the distance you’re traveling. Zone 1 costs 7.5k Avios for a one way ticket (0-1,151 miles traveled), zone 2 costs 10k avios for a one way ticket (1,152-2000 miles traveled), and zone 3 costs 12.5k Avios for a one way ticket (2001-3000 miles traveled). When you book a saver award using American Airlines, domestic flights that are less than 500 miles require 7.5k AAdvantage miles. Anything more than that requires 12.5k at the saver level. I do want clarify that British Airways award availability on American Airlines isn’t a sure thing on any given date. Generally if American Airlines is showing saver award availability via their own program, there is a decent chance BA will have access to those as well. I have posted an example of a sample itinerary using both programs.

In this example, we’ll use a one way flight from Chicago (ORD) to Denver (DIA) on September 17th. Let’s start off with American Airlines:

We can see that there is MileSAAver availability from Chicago to Denver. A one way flight would cost 12.5 AAdvantage miles.

There is also discounted MileSAAver availability in business class for 25k AAdvantage miles.

Now let’s see how much the same flight would cost using British Airways Avios:

The same flight we saw above for 12.5k AAdantage miles in economy can be booked for 7.5k Avios. And if we want to book a seat in business class……..

This same flight costs 25k AAdvantage miles to book in business class. Booking with British Airways only costs 15k Avios for a business class ticket. When you take into consideration that booking just an economy seat using American costs 12.5k miles, an extra 2.5k Avios to bump up to business class is a tremendous value.

Another great use of Avios is for domestic award tickets on Alaska Airlines. Unfortunately, Alaska Airlines does not show up on British Airways’ website the way American does so you would have to call them to book. If they tell you that a phone booking would cost you a fee, kindly request them to waive it since booking an Alaska flight using Avios is not possible through their website.

Credit Cards & Miles, Miles & Points

Leveraging Your Routine Spending Into Points: Back to School Edition

August 15, 2017August 16, 2017by milesforplacesLeave a Comment

If you have driven past any mall or big box retailer over the past couple of weeks, you have seen the “back to school” signs plastered on storefront windows trying to grab your attention and inviting you to walk in. It’s the time of the year when parents will be restocking school supplies for kids and undergrad and grad students will be looking for the best deals on laptops and textbooks. This time of the year is pretty important for retailers and they know consumers have more choices than ever. In the realm of the points and miles world, this is also a time of the year where you can benefit greatly. If you plan on doing a majority of your shopping on Amazon, you can read in-depth how you can accumulate JetBlue miles by clicking here. For other retailers where you might consider shopping online, I highly recommend using www.cashbackmonitor.com

This website shows you how many airline miles or hotel points you will earn by routing yourself through that airline’s or hotel’s online mall. It’s pretty straight forward and you can find a detailed example below. I have posted some screenshots for the online Apple store as an example:

This is the homepage of http://www.cashbackmonitor.com. The most popular retailers are listed on the front page. If you don’t see yours, search for it on the search tab

If you wanted to purchase something online from the Apple Store, this is how many miles/points/cashback different airlines/hotels/cashback portals are offering if you route yourself to the Apple Store via their own shopping mall. Keep in mind, it doesn’t cost you a dime to sign up for these frequent flier programs. At this particular time, United is offering 6 miles per dollar if you make a purchase on Apple.com by clicking through their link. This is the highest among any of the shopping portals. Let’s use that as an example.

When you click on United’s link, this is the page you land on. But wait, not only would you get 6 United MileagePlus miles per dollar for your Apple purchase, United is also offering a back- to-school bonus depending on your level of spending. That $1,300 Macbook Pro would earn you 10,800 United MileagePlus Miles –> ($1,300 x 6 miles) + 3,000 bonus miles for getting the 3,000 mile back-to-school bonus offered by United for spending $600. 12.5k United MileagePlus miles gets you a saver award one way in economy. In addition to that, Apple is offering free Beats headphones if you purchase an iPad or Macbook Pro for college (presumably with a student ID).

UnitedBack2School — Simply click on the “shop now” icon and you are directed to Apple’s website.

If you were going to shop for school supplies online at Walmart.com, this is how much you would earn through each portal:

For you undergrad and grad students reading this, popular online textbook retailers such as Textbooks.com and Alibris.com are also listed on cashbackmonitor.com. If you’re purchasing from Amazon, remember to route yourself via JetBlue. You are simply walking away from an easy opportunity to earn miles if you don’t. And remember, you can use this website to help you earn miles for your routine online shopping no matter the time of the year.

SOME VERY IMPORTANT TIPS BEFORE USING ANY PORTALS TO MAKE A PURCHASE

Make sure your cookies are enabled. If they’re not, the airline or hotel rewards program can’t track your purchase and you might not get credited for them.
Sign up for that particular airline’s frequent flier program PRIOR to shopping (it’s free and takes a minute).
Make sure you are logged-in to the airline’s frequent flier program prior to clicking on the retailers website. Most portals will make you sign in prior to routing you to that retailer.