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

[Sunset]

O.....

AA cards can also generate pretty good value. We got two cards at 70,000 miles each. Flew AA partner JAL to Bangkok via Tokyo in business class for 70k miles each plus some taxes.

....

I'm pretty bummed the AA card from Citi has removed most of it's travel benefits (lost baggage, delays, etc).
They did it near the end of 2019. Probably when they did it to the Costco card as well.

Both are now much LESS of a travel card now.

 

[BlueberryPie]

>Venture is Capital One, Sapphire Preferred is Chase

Oops yeah I meant Chase. The Venture card is my usual card, i just got the Chase cards for the sign-up bonus but I doubt I'll keep them.

I can see how buying gift cards could help. Stock up on medicine, frozen meat and other high price items you would get/use anyway works too. I just had a couple of home repairs i would have loved to put on the card but they happened before I got the card.

 

[Pellice]

This thread has been helpful. I am considering some kind of rewards card for one year, since I'm planning a number of home upgrades this year, and I could put them all on one card. I'm not planning to spend a huge amount, perhaps $10,000 over the year. My usual cards are a Costco Visa and an Amazon Visa, and I'd expect to keep using those, which do account for a lot of my spending. I'm trying to decide between a Chase Sapphire preferred and one of the United cards, since my airport (Newark) is a United Hub, and probably 75% of the flights I do are United.

I'm trying to narrow down what my wishes are from a card, and I guess flights are the thing. Costco and Amazon both offer good percentages on their sites and some other usual categories, so I wouldn't want to switch. I also want the rebate for my Global Entry program, which is up next year. My travel is mostly eco-tours, and hotels are included, so they aren't that important. Checked luggage cost waivers would be useful, though I've perfected my carry-on luggage strategy.

Sorry for the length, I'm thinking out loud here, and it's looking like a United card, with miles that do not expire, might be best. I'm kicking myself because I was on a recent flight which had one of those "in-flight specials" that offered a bonus amount of miles, and I forgot to grab the card upon disembarking. Maybe if I called them and explained, they'd offer it to me, since I really did fly?

PS: I should mention that most of travel is either to Latin America or domestic US. I believe United has a partnership with Copa/Avianca, so that might be another point in favor of a United card.

 

[SecondCor521]

@Pellice:

Most of those in-flight offers are also offered on the ground, so I wouldn't worry that you've somehow missed out. At most you get an extra 2K or 5K miles.

United Mileage Plus miles never expire, so there's no need to look for that as a criteria for card selection.

You might like this post:

https://thepointsguy.com/credit-cards/united/

The United Explorer card (first one on the list at the above link) covers the TSA precheck / Global Entry fee and comes with a 40K miles signup bonus.

The Chase Sapphire class of cards (there are three tiers of this card) all have pretty good signup bonuses assuming you're under 5/24. I think the bonuses can be up to $1000 (or more if applied to travel). I also think I read that those are ending any day now; they'll probably continue to offer bonuses (Chase regularly does) but at a potentially lower rate. Compared to an SWAG of 2% bonus on your $10K of spending, which would pencil out to $200, the signup bonuses can be a relatively big deal.

 

[sengsational]

The Chase Sapphire Preferred category for pay yourself back statement credit was gutted on 10/1 and now it's Airbnb and a couple other things nobody would need. You can buy travel through the Chase portal, though, points to cash style. A separate option is to transfer points to airlines (not United), but Jet Blue, Southwest and many European lines, some of which might fly to Latin America.


ETA: check out doctorofcredit for sign-up bonus offers. Lots of good, current info.

 

[Montecfo]

I'm a member of many of the flight mileage programs. I have found British Airways Avios are really good for US domestic flights as the mileage requirements are lower than say American. Also can book Alaska as I did for trip in am currently on.

There used to be a Barclays card you could get a large sign up bonus for.

I used to like Amex miles as you could transfer them to a number of different airline mileage programs. Harder to get big signups bonuses though.

 

[Sunset]

This thread has been helpful. I am considering some kind of rewards card for one year, since I'm planning a number of home upgrades this year, and I could put them all on one card. I'm not planning to spend a huge amount, perhaps $10,000 over the year. My usual cards are a Costco Visa and an Amazon Visa, and I'd expect to keep using those, which do account for a lot of my spending. I'm trying to decide between a Chase Sapphire preferred and one of the United cards, since my airport (Newark) is a United Hub, and probably 75% of the flights I do are United.

I'm trying to narrow down what my wishes are from a card, and I guess flights are the thing. Costco and Amazon both offer good percentages on their sites and some other usual categories, so I wouldn't want to switch. I also want the rebate for my Global Entry program, which is up next year. My travel is mostly eco-tours, and hotels are included, so they aren't that important. Checked luggage cost waivers would be useful, though I've perfected my carry-on luggage strategy.

....

....

Why don't you get both ?

Spend whatever you need to spend on the United one for the extra 40K -> 60K miles, then put it away until you are going to fly.

Spend the rest on the Sapphire card, and use it to get $1,000 in gift cards.

Why limit yourself to just one. You can always cancel one at 11 months so you don't pay a fee for year two.

 

[brett]

Yes. They work.

Especially good for hotels. We cancelled two just after covid hit. We plan to apply for one of the hotel cards that we previously cancelled before January.

 

[Pellice]

Why don't you get both ?

Spend whatever you need to spend on the United one for the extra 40K -> 60K miles, then put it away until you are going to fly.

Spend the rest on the Sapphire card, and use it to get $1,000 in gift cards.

Why limit yourself to just one. You can always cancel one at 11 months so you don't pay a fee for year two.

Sunset, this may be a real possibility. One of the credit agencies informed me today I *should* get another 2 cards to hit the "sweet spot," whatever that is. I never carry a balance, and 3 cards have sufficed for decades, though.

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.

 

[SecondCor521]

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.

Generally not. AFAIK:

The only thing you can do (sometimes) is if, say, Chase offered 40K United miles and you applied, then they increased the bonus to 50K miles the next week, you could ask them to give you the later, larger bonus. Some CC companies, will, some won't, and their practices change over time. I think Chase United cards are ones that might do this, though.

You can't just say, "Hey, Chase, I know you're offering 40K, but I want 50K just because otherwise I won't apply." They'll politely tell you to pound sand.

 

[Pellice]

Good information, thanks!

 

[Sunset]

....

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.