Does applying for a credit card for free travel really work?

[Pellice]

Good information, thanks!

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pellice .... Today I unfroze my credit as step 1. I wonder if you can "haggle" with a card issuer to get a better deal. I'm going to try it with United to argue for more than $40,000 miles on their Level 2 card.

I see very often different bonus amounts offered for the same credit card. So spend some time searching.
Even log into the United site, and see if they offer you a CC there. When DW was buying airline tickets, before paying, a window popped up offering the airline CC with a $250 credit and 40,000 miles So she got it.

[BlueberryPie]

I had my first experience using points for travel today and it was NOT a good one.

As I mentioned in the original post, I was after scoring tickets that cost about $1000 a piece. I've been monitoring ticket prices via Google Flight and got a notification around lunch that the flight had dropped to $560 per person for basic economy or $640 in main cabin. about half of yesterday's price of $1250/ticket.

So I go to the Chase web site, enter flight info: nope, no flight to be found at that price, best price is $875. I check Google flights and Americans Airlines, yes I can get still get a ticket for $640.

And this is where I made my mistake: I called Chase for help. They were no help wasted my time walking me through confirming they didn't see the American Airlines direct price. I asked them to confirmed that if I purchased directly from American for $1280 for 2 tickets ($640 a-piece) I would be able to use points at a 100pts=$1 rate or 128000 points to "pay myself back" later. He said No, points don't work that way. Then he said he didn't know I needed to call the number on the back of my cart to know. then he told me to wait 10 minutes and check again, the flights would likely sync up with American's database...

so it was either buy on American for $1280 and use 128000 points to pay myself back, or buy from the Chase website for $1750 and use 140000 points to cover the bill now.

So I decide to go with American. I then got into some hellish loop of selecting a flight and somewhere in the process of getting it booked, being told that some flight parameters had changed and I needed to start over. By then I was almost 3 hours into this process.
I checked Google flights and now it told me that the $640 fare was sold out and that my new fare was $875. so now I decide to go back to the Chase web site because the fare was not the same. By the time I checked out, I got a notification my return flight was no longer available and I had to pick a 23h return flight with a night at DFW instead of a 9h flight.

Sigh... If I had booked straight from the Google Flight page I would have had the flights I wanted for a total of $1280, instead because I tried to use miles and it caused me to delay, I ended up paying $1750 and not my preferred return flight and the extra cost of a hotel night and likely meals.

I suspect the low price (remember half of yesterday's price) was offered on a small number of seats, and somehow those were not available through Chase. To make matter worse, I suspect many people had a Google Flight alert set and those seats disappeared quickly, and the time dealing with Chase caused me to miss out.

So it was not a very positive experience, however:
- while I didn't get the cheap tickets I wanted, I still got a better best price than anything in months and was able to cover it with points, albeit too many points
- while I didn't get the return flight I wanted and now have to book a hotel in DFW, the Sapphire has a once-a-year $50 hotel credit built-in when you book the hotel through their site, so I should be able to get the room for around $50 in the end

so I could be in worse shape

[Sunset]

^^^^^^ I use google flights for quick check of flights when planning. But I've also found the teaser flight they have is often a terrible timing for us. I HATE 6am flights.

[BlueberryPie]

The Google flight alerts I had where for the specific flights I wanted. I agree that otherwise they'll have a great price but 33h of travel time and 4 flight changes (real story!)
I could see the exact same flight on American (fro the Google flights link) for $640 instead of $875 on the chase site. At least for a couple of hours.

[brett]

Cancelled our Amex Bonvoy at the start of covid.

Just re-applied for it. It will come with 70,000 Marriott points. Last time we used Marriott Points was in Sydney, Australia. Booked 4 nights @20,000 points per night, got the fifth night free. Five nights would have cost about $1200 AUD. The card costs $120 cad per year but includes one free Marriott hotel stay....which we always use.