Barclays Archives - asthejoeflies

Oct 25 2016

Quick note about Barclay Arrival+ redemptions

tl;dr You can only redeem Barclay+ Arrival points against a travel cost if you have enough points to redeem against the entire cost, even if you only want to zap away part of it.

I’m trying to get back into writing, and I figure short and sweet is the way to ease back into things. I’m about to get rid of my Barclay Arrival+ card and ran into a situation that I hadn’t before.

I had a $114.60 cent charge that I wanted to zap away with my Arrival+ miles. I knew that since the changes last year, the minimum travel redemption was $100. In the past, I’d always been offered the option of redeeming miles for a $100 credit or for the full credit of the airline charge.

So I was surprised when I couldn’t redeem 10,000 of my 10,500 remaining Arrival+ points against the cost of that $114 ticket! The redemption was grayed out and I was told I needed enough points to redeem the entire ticket.

One day and $500 gift card later, I had enough points to redeem for the entire ticket. When I went to redeem, I was still given the option to redeem for only $100! Silly. Anyway, I redeemed all my points and I will just live with the 600 orphaned points when I cancel in a week or two.

I guess I had never run into the issue before because I always had enough points to redeem for my total costs. Only when I was drawing down did I finally run into this issue.

I’m sure this might help someone out there!

Mar 24 2015

Some Simple AA Credit Card Mistakes You Probably Know to Avoid

Update: Literally 5 minutes after I posted this, I got an e-mail from AAdvantage saying programs would start combine on March 28 (though no real details).

Most are savvy enough to have avoided these mistakes, but for relative newcomers here are a few reminders. Currently, you can get 100,000 AAdvantage miles pretty quickly with two credit card sign ups: the Barclays US Air card and the Citi AA Platinum card.

The theory is simple – sign up for the Barclays US Air card and get 50,000 US Air miles after first purchase ($89 annual fee not waived). Sign up for the Citi AA Platinum card and get 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3000 in three months. Once the programs merge (imminently!), you’ll have 103,000 AA miles, 7000 short of flying round trip to Hong Kong in Cathay business.

Guess I've got too many of these — Guess I’ve got too many of these

The problem is, if you’ve been in this game a lot, getting that Barclays approval is tough. Read some theories on how to improve your chances from Chasing the Points and Miles to Memories, then read about my unsuccessful attempt (I applied before I read either of those posts).

I made quite a few mistakes when I applied for my US Air card. For starters, I was applying for my third card. I knew it’d be a long shot but I hadn’t applied for a Barclays’ card for over six months so I figured it was worth a try. Barclays is all about the instant approval – if you have to call reconsideration you’re dead in the water more often than not. Especially if you’re going for your third card of the same product (and fourth overall). I applied and got the dreaded “pending” page, and pretty much was dead from there.

Let it be said that people have had success getting approved for a third card instantly, as I was informed on Twitter. Not me though.

https://twitter.com/bhamada01/status/580102984815628288

@asthejoeflies yes, wife and I both were approved for 3rd card last week
— James (@JamesStorie1) March 23, 2015

Well, I realize now I could have improved my chances by lowering my credit limit on one of my other cards. (Those guys didn’t, but I could have improved my chances if I had).

Other mistakes not to make are not using your card or applying more than once every six months – but Miles to Memories more or less has that stuff covered so I’ll leave it there.

After I finally got my rejection letter I called in – they specifically told me they wouldn’t give me a third card. I didn’t push it too hard, win some, lose some. I figured an easy 50K with no work was worth a hard pull on my Transunion score which never gets dinged (except by Barclays).

Applying for the Citi AA Platinum is a bit more straightforward. Nowadays, it seems like Citi won’t approve you for the card if you have opened or closed another AA Platinum card within the last 18 months – so you can screw that up easily if you don’t get your timing right.

They've redone the look of the Citi AA Platinum Select card, but you still can't get a new one if you opened or closed one 18 months ago — They’ve redone the look of the Citi AA Platinum Select card, but you still can’t get a new one if you opened or closed one 18 months ago

Best practice is probably to open a card, get the 50K bonus, keep for 18 months, open a new card (Citi is great about moving credit lines around as long as you’re not breaking their arbitrary time rules), then close the old one (or keep it forever). That way you can get a new card every 18-19 months or so. I haven’t tried it personally but that’s what makes most sense to me (let me know in the comments if you’ve been successful or otherwise with something like this).

Note the verbiage in the fine print

One thing to note for the truly new players in the game: a buddy of mine applied for the Citi AA card but didn’t have an AAdvantage account yet. Currently he’s not sure where his miles are. Theoretically, AA should have opened an account for him but if they did he can’t find it – he also opened his own AAdvantage account after getting the card. Anyway, I think it’s just simpler to enroll in AAdvantage first and then apply for the card.

AAdvantage miles are still some of the best miles out there – get them while they’re still hot! Just make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s along the way.

Nov 17 2014

Lazy Weekend in Lyon: Introduction

Lyon is all about eating... — Lyon is all about eating…

Last week my wife and I spent a quick long weekend in Lyon, France with a nice little layover in London to boot. It wasn’t the cheapest trip, but it was some much needed R&R away from the little one. I haven’t seen a lot of stuff out there about Lyon, so hopefully this trip report will remedy that. I decided not to do it live because I needed the rest – hopefully it won’t take me too long to finish!

Before we get to the fun stuff, a little bit about how we got there.

Flights: British Airways First Class Boston to Lyon

Back when US Airways switched to Oneworld there was a small window of time when you could book British Airways tickets without fuel surcharges. We took advantage of that opportunity to book two first class tickets from Boston to Lyon for 125,000 US Air miles and $265 each (that includes a $50 phone processing fee for US Airways).

Got to add another set of pajamas to the pile

The majority of our miles were earned via the Barclays US Air card sign up bonus and butt in seat miles. The remaining 40,000 or so came from one of those share miles promotions where you could get miles for 1.1 cents a piece, costing us an extra $440 dollars (a deal I no longer thinks works for me, but I was younger and less wise then). So all told our cash outlay for flights was about $485 each – or the cost of a good cash fare to Europe in coach.

I wouldn’t say this was a great deal by any stretch, but we got to fly in British Airways’ first class cabin for a decent price which dovetailed with my goal to travel as comfortably as possible for less. Our original routing was BOS-PHL-LHR-LYS // LYS-LHR-BOS, but after an equipment change I managed to switch us to BOS-LHR-LYS on the outbound. I wrote about how my obsessiveness pulled that off here.

Taking afternoon tea together at 40,000 feet

Hotel: Hilton Lyon

I really wanted to book a hotel on points, but the Radisson Blu in Lyon is currently under renovation. So instead, we booked the Hilton Lyon for 100 Euros a night – I figured getting free breakfast (with HHonors Gold) would make up for the slightly distant location. And hey, we ended up getting a ton of exercise. There was also a Crowne Plaza nearby the Hilton, but even though I had IHG points I didn’t want to stay there, believe it or not I have faith that Hilton will treat us well and we were not disappointed. Free breakfast is big for Jess and I needed that to be guaranteed.

The Hilton Lyon is located right by the Parc de la Tete d'Or — The Hilton Lyon is located right by the Parc de la Tete d’Or

Layover: In and out of London in six hours

The final thing we had to consider was our layover in London on the way home. We were arriving in London from Lyon at 7:45 AM and departing at 4:25 PM. I love London and wanted to make a quick trip into the city. You can get to the city from Heathrow via the London Underground or the Heathrow Express. The Underground is a lot cheaper (we would have bought £17 daypasses to ride the Tube all day), but it takes almost an hour to get into the city. I found a deal where we could buy two roundtrip tickets on the Heathrow express for £50 pounds total – that got us into the city in fifteen minutes. In this case time was more important to us than money. We ended up spending another £18 total for Underground daypasses, so £68 total for our little jaunt into London. That works out to £34 to save 1.5 hours of travel time which was worth it to me. We got to see the poppies at the Tower of London, eat at Jess’ favorite vegetarian restaurant, and take a walk through some of our favorite spots.

Porcelain poppies at the Tower of London - in memoriam — Porcelain poppies at the Tower of London – in memoriam

Final Thoughts

It was a quick trip, and though it wasn’t cheap, we saved a lot of money thanks to the points and miles we’ve accumulated over the years. Of course, we blew a lot of that on eating…but hey we got to relax and Little M was well taken care of at home with grandma and grandpa – can’t put a price on that!

Other Posts in this Series

Introduction

British Airways First Class and the Ghost Terminal at Heathrow

The Hilton Lyon, Parc Tete d’Or, and Salon du Chocolat

Michelin Starred Meals at La Mere Brazier and La Remanence

Nov 14 2014

Using the Chip and Pin Barclays Arrival+ in Europe

Ordering from the automated kiosk is possible with chip and pin cards!

It’s too bad that Barclays deemed the Saverocity family not deserving of having affiliate links anymore, because I have a post that would have been perfect for pushing their card! But even without an affiliate link, I wanted to share some of my experience using the Barclays Arrival+ card on our recent trip to Europe.

I was excited when Barclays announced that they would be adding chip and pin functionality to the card. I’m sure many of you know what that is, but just to recap – in many places outside of the US instead of using the magnetic strip, credit card readers often read a chip that’s embedded in the front of the card.

There are a lot of US issued cards with chips – the Chase Sapphire Preferred, AMEX Platinum, or the Citi AA cards (man if I had affiliate links this article would be a goldmine!). Most of these are chip and sign cards, which means you stick their chips into the machine but then a slip gets spit out that you have to sign. While a minor convenience, these cards don’t make a major difference in Europe.

The Barclays Arrival+ card, in contrast, offers chip and pin functionality – which is equivalent to the functionality of almost all European credit cards. Most automated machines in Europe will ONLY work with chip and pin cards. In the past, I’ve found myself waiting in long lines to buy train tickets and the like due to my lack of a chip and pin card, so I was excited to try it out.

Most US credit cards, even ones with chips, won't work with this kind of payment system — Most US credit cards, even ones with chips, won’t work with this kind of payment system

Despite reading some reports that the card didn’t work in some machines – I had a pretty sweet 100% success rate! The first place I tried the card out was at McDonalds. We had skipped lunch but realized we needed some kind of snack and the good ol’ golden arches were most convenient. There were a bunch of automated kiosks which I haven’t been able to use in the past, but this time we were able to order and use the Arrival+ chip and pin card with no problem! This made life convenient since I didn’t need to deal with lines or the pressure of ordering at the counter – the menu was in English on the kiosk.

In a less silly and more important way, the chip and pin card made life a lot more convenient when buying train tickets. We had to buy tickets to ride the funicular in Lyon and also to ride the London Underground. In the past, especially in London, I’ve had to wait in lines to get my tickets which I really find inconvenient. So it’s really nice to have a credit card to use on the machines. Traveling can be stressful at times so having a card that makes things a little more convenient is a big plus.

Anyway, setting the pin on the card is really straightforward if you haven’t done it yet. Either call the number on the back of the card or just click the convenient link in your online account. Necessary? Absolutely not. Convenient? You bet. Never avoid a McDonalds kiosk in Europe again!

Our trip into London to see the poppies was way easier thanks to our chip and pin card

Oct 23 2014

US Air 10,000 Miles Anniversary Bonus to Stay (for some cards)

The companion certificate is a benefit of the US Airways card that I had never used before — I’m curious – will the card change?

Last week, I had a short twitter conversation with @tmount, @KennyBSAT, and @FreequentFlyr (follow me @asthejoeflies!) about whether the 10,000 miles anniversary bonus (after paying annual fee) on the Barclays US Air card would be sticking around. We determined that for older cards that have the bonus, it will stick, but applications in the last year or so have taken that bonus out.

So for example, the card I got in 2013 has the 10,000 mile bonus in perpetuity while the one I got in 2014 has no bonus at all. Freequent Flyer was saying how it’s in the terms and conditions so Barclay’s couldn’t get out of it, but I was kind of worried once the programs combine (which looks like it could be soon) they’d be able to sneak out.

Well, I received an e-mail today stating that the 10,000 mile anniversary bonus will continue after the programs combine in 2015.

Instead of 10,000 US Air miles next year we'll be getting 10,000 AAdvantage miles — Instead of 10,000 US Air miles next year we’ll be getting 10,000 AAdvantage miles

I find two things interesting about this e-mail. First, Barclays is going to start awarding the bonus miles as AAdvantage miles – that’s a great thing it means they’re not weaseling out of their T&C. But secondly, the fact that they are saying they are going to be giving 10,000 AAdvantage miles in 2015 lends credence to the theory that the programs are going to complete their marriage sooner rather than later. I was thinking that 2015 might be the “you can transfer miles freely between programs” period but this is further evidence that they’ll be straight up combined.

Anyway, just wanted to share with anyone who has the card and is curious!