40K MILES FROM AN UNUSUAL SOURCE: Courtesy of Flyertalk, here’s rare offer: 40,000 LAN miles through October 15 when you sign up for the LAN visa. The downside: it’s issued by US Bank, which is known for being finicky about approving credit card a. Here’s the LAN awards table: coming from the U.S., it’s 48,000 milesfor a roundtrip to Brazil, 70,000 to Argentina, and 100,000 to Easter Island.
I had hoped there’d be some discussion on boardingarea.com about how to use these miles, but no such luck, alas…
HOW TO USE YOUR REWARDS AT A CERTAIN YELLOW AND BLUE ELECTRONICS STORE: For those of you who want to maximize your rewards: I’ve already been turned down trying to buy Visa gift cards with my reward certificates. Last week, I attempted to purchase Kindle gift cards and a store gift card in a single transaction. That didn’t work at all. The cashier suggested I throw in a non-gift card item as well, so I threw in a candy bar. She got farther into the transaction, but it still wouldn’t let her complete it. We took out the store gift card, and that did it. I’m quite content being able to reward myself with Amazon merchandise, so I’m going to leave it at that.
VCOM ATM UPDATE: Chasing The Points continues his investigative work on the mysteries of the VCom ATMs. I had no idea you could use it to pay bills with a My Vanilla Debit.
HOW TO DRIVE YOUR CAR INTO THE GROUND: Or rather, how not to. 74-year-old Jim Gordon claimed the world’s record for most miles on an originally-owned car by hitting 1.69 million miles–but that was a couple of decades ago. Gordon now has an incredible 3 million miles on his 1966 Volvo P1800. Take that, Crown Vic fanboys!
- Thanks Volvo!
VERY interesting on the LAN CC offer. The distance-based partner chart is also pretty intriguing – I may need to do some more digging into LAN’s program…
The Brazil ticket seems like it would be a good deal for a single CC sign-up, Easter Island not so much. I seem to remember Rapid Travel Chai went to Easter Island at least in part using Avios.
One of the best uses for LAN miles would be to travel far flung regions of southern South America. Those tickets can be very expensive for foreign tourists due to some weird tax. I can’t find the thread where I read it, but the info is out there somewhere.
LAN is very good for super short haul (think less than 300mi or something like that). Also very good for LAN metal only awards to SA, etc.