Miles and Points Archives - Page 4 of 10

Jul 17 2018

Finding value in Delta’s dynamic award pricing

My alternate title for this post was Delta dynamic award pricing is ridiculous, but it felt too click-baity. But that IS how I feel after searching for Delta awards over the last few days. While there has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth about Delta’s dynamic award pricing (rightfully so), you can actually still find a lot of value in Delta awards. In this post, I’ll share some of the valuable itineraries I’ve found. I’ll also share some thoughts on why dynamic award pricing still drives me nuts. Things can be two things (copyright: @totalsoccershow), and Delta dynamic award pricing is BOTH super valuable in the right circumstances and super annoying!

Update: the prices may or may not be due to this sale? I’m inclined to hope not, because I saw some of these prices a week ago and the flights I searched don’t even fall into the sale dates, but we’ll see.

Update 2: I don’t think it’s just the sale, still seeing same prices on 7/20

Valuable award itineraries to Europe

I’ve long said that Delta can provide a lot of value from the East coast to Europe. While that remains the case, business class award space is harder to come by which is disappointing. Still, you can find Virgin Atlantic business class seats for 75K each way, which I can live with.

Now, take a look at some of these round trip itineraries that Delta dynamic award pricing spit out. Note: when I started looking for these, I was looking for actual dates that I want to fly. I did eventually start cherry picking, but overall my point is that these exist!

Double note! I have no idea whether Delta is running an unadvertised sale right now, but if it is, the prices are still dynamic.

JFK-LHR RT (38,000 miles per person)

BOS-LHR RT (50,000 miles per person)

LAX-LHR RT (36,000 miles per person)

Now, the reason this makes Delta dynamic award pricing look good? Under the old “award chart” all these flights would have cost 60K RT per person. So even though there’s no award chart, the dynamic pricing is in consumer’s favor.

The non-basic economy cost of the BOS-LHR RT I searched was about $850, so it’s pretty good value.

I tweeted about this (follow me!), and need to give Dustin, @wallerswallet a shoutout for finding this gem:

Wow! 30k RT. #howlowcanitgo pic.twitter.com/2JfeSDkbRv
— Dustin (@wallerswallet) July 17, 2018

Follow him too, lol.

The best deals are with roundtrip award pricing

An interesting thing I found was that the best deals with Delta’s dynamic award pricing come when you search for roundtrip or multi city itineraries. Let’s take a look at some of the one way legs from the above searches.

This particular itinerary actually shows why I find dynamic pricing ridiculous. The one way flight costs 105,000 miles vs. the round trip containing the exact same segment that cost 50,000! Delta, I swear. I left the VS flights in there just so you can note that those prices never change.

Anyway, that flight from LAX isn’t as crazy, just 35K one way. But still, 35K one way vs. 36K RT, pretty weird!

What’s going on here?

I have no idea – Delta’s dynamic award pricing doesn’t seem to make much sense. It really does look like cash pricing – you almost never save money using cash one way internationally. But the value is still pretty great. If for some reason you needed to book that LAX-LHR one way flight, you could pay the 35K miles and $5.60 or the cash price: $2425. I wish I was making this stuff up!

Why Delta dynamic award pricing still drives me nuts

While it’s all well and good to have these good deals out there, Delta dynamic award pricing still drives me nuts. Almost literally, because knowing that there are things like 30K RT deals out there will drive me insane when I’m looking for awards. I’m currently looking at an itinerary that’s pricing out at 56K RT – 4000 less than Delta’s old award chart. But it feels bad man because I know 38K RT itineraries exist! Ahhh…Delta dynamic award pricing personally just adds to my analysis paralysis.

But what can you do. At least I know there is value to be had, and like when I book cash tickets, my plan is to book something I’m happy with and not look back.

Don’t overlook Delta awards

My main takeaway from today’s searches is I can’t overlook Delta’s awards, especially if I’m okay with coach flights (which I’m happy to take to Europe). There’s just too much value to be had there. Anything under 60K RT to Europe feels good, and Delta has a LOT of options that fit that bill, at least out of my searches today.

If you find similar values or find nothing good, please, leave a comment and let me know. I don’t have the time to search for awards for fun like I used to, so I’m happy to be corrected if I’m off base! This post is just working off what I found today, which, frankly, was pretty exciting to me personally. Delta dynamic award pricing is ridiculous!

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Apr 17 2018

Things I’ve changed my mind about in the miles and points world

I am a sucker for spirited debate, and at the end of my last such interaction with my flesh and blood father, he said to me, “Nobody’s mind was ever changed.” Aside from the weird sentence structure, I think that’s a fairly common sentiment. You get old, you get set in your ways, you never change your mind about anything. Knowing that to be human nature, I’ve always tried my best to be open to new ideas. Or rather, as I’ve gotten older I’ve tried to be MORE open to new ideas. Things rings very true for me in the miles and points world, where my mind has changed quite a bit since I started this blog thing almost six years ago.

So, I present to you some of my former “truths”, and discuss why my thinking has changed or evolved on each. I’m very curious to hear what everyone else has changed their minds on over time so let me know in the comments!

There are right and wrong ways to use your points

Let’s start here. This kind of post invites commenters to come out and tell you why you’re wrong. But that’s the first thing I’ve really changed my mind on: there’s really no right or wrong way to use points. The best use of points is situation dependent. Specifically, your best use of points is specific to your situation. So even though I’ve changed my mind on some of these things, maybe that’s not your perspective because of your situation. And that’s okay.

My life has changed, and thus my opinions on miles and points have changed. Let's take a look at all the ways my views on miles and points have evolved. — I probably wouldn’t use my points for this, but if you have 4 million points…

Just because I now no longer believe there’s a wrong way to use points doesn’t mean I won’t cringe when someone uses points for an iPad. But I need to remind myself I’m cringing because I don’t have the point balances to do that. That doesn’t make it “wrong” for someone else to use their points that way. Judge not, glass houses, etc.

You get the most “value” out of your points flying international forward cabins

OK, obviously this one relates to how you define “value.” If, like I used to, you define “value” as straight cents per point, flying international forward cabins obviously still gets you the best value. If, like me now, you rarely get to travel without your kids and thus “value” now means getting to take the trips with your family that you want to take for less, then it’s a different story.

When we didn’t have kids, we’d fly business (or first) to both Europe and Asia at least once a year. To fly my family to Asia in business class costs around 640,000 points round trip plus however much the lap infant costs. Europe costs, say, 400,000 points.

My current plan is to splurge for business class when flying to Asia and suck it up in economy at least one way flying to Europe. That will get us almost a full extra trip to Europe per million point cycle. I value getting to go to Europe twice over going just once in business class, especially since the flight time is about the same as flying to California.

A corollary to this is my investment in flexible point currencies and bank points to book domestic travel. Since it’s less realistic to fly internationally twice a year, we will vacation more domestically which means using things like Flexperks for Southwest flights or cashing in Chase Ultimate Rewards at 1.5 cents per piece becomes more valuable.

Honestly, I never would have imagined ever thinking redeeming at 1.5 cents per point would feel more valuable to me than redeeming for first class, but hey, I changed my mind.

Cash Back cards are a bad deal

Oof, this one embarrasses me. “Why would you ever settle for cash back?” said a stupid, younger asthejoeflies. It turns out you can use cash to pay for lots of different things. Mortgage, rent, McDonald’s, beer, all sorts of stuff!

Anyway, it ALSO turns out that having three children can get costly and can cut into your disposable income! Thus, cash back gets pretty exciting compared to stupid situations like this:

Good news, I can continue to save my 50K Starpoints for the perfect airline transfer, four years and counting
— Joe Cheung (@asthejoeflies) April 17, 2018

Like I said, I’m embarrassed, let’s move on.

Hotel credit card free nights justify the annual fee

Another “truth” where my mind changed as my life situation changed. Much ink has been spilled over the devaluation of the IHG card free night, but the reality is, my wife and I were no longer getting $49 stays at the Intercontinental. While we could have stayed there with the kids, not getting free breakfast sort of was a bummer and we stopped using the free night for the “expensive” properties.

$49 still probably could justify holding on to the card, but any annual fee higher than that isn’t worth it to me anymore. I did manage to use my Hyatt cert this year, but one night stays are few and far between. If a hotel card brings me a lot of other benefits (like if I was chasing status or something), I’d still hold on to it, but the free night alone just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. However, on this one, I’m willing to bet older kids will change my mind once again…

Staying on site at Disney World isn’t worth it

If you go strictly by cost, you almost always get more bang for your buck staying off site at Walt Disney World. For half the amount of money that it cost to stay at a moderate, my extended family and I were able to stay in a four bedroom apartment with a kitchen. I’m sure there are even better deals out there.

But…the mouse got me. There’s something about making my vacation easier, proximity to the parks, and yes, that Disney magic that has drawn me more and more to on site hotels lately. Staying at Disney hotels isn’t always perfect, but I’ve enjoyed my experiences and the reality is, staying there has made my life easier (especially when traveling alone with my kids).

Again, as they get older, I expect this to shift again, but I’m happy staying on site at Disney for now, especially when paying with bank points.

Every 40,000+ sign up bonus is worth chasing

I no longer believe in chasing shiny, flashy things just because they are shiny and flashy. Well, I try not to at least. I’ve got to evaluate whether I have an actual use for the points, and act accordingly.

Final Thoughts

I find it fascinating how much my opinions have changed over the years of being in the game. I find it equally fascinating to see that others’ opinions have evolved, while others keep holding on to the same ideas. Like I said at the top, there is no right or wrong. But at this point, I personally find my mind changing enough (over time) to try to avoid sweeping generalizations. Only a Sith deals in absolutes, after all.

So, I’d love to hear it: have you changed your mind on anything in the miles and points world over time? What, and why?

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Apr 16 2018

Quick Hits: How to use non-Southwest points to book Southwest flights

When you’re trying to save money on flights using Orbitz or the like, you may notice that Southwest never pops up. That’s because Southwest blocks online travel agencies from viewing their flights. This becomes a problem when you want to use points to book Southwest flights. You become limited to only using Southwest points. You can’t use Ultimate Rewards, Thank You points, or Membership Rewards because you can’t see the flights!

Well, the other day on Twitter I theorycrafted in a #veryshortblogpost one possible way to pay for a Southwest flight with non-Southwest points:

Theorycrafting:
1) Buy SW ticket with a Flexperks card
2) Redeem points using real time mobile rewards
3) Profit. #veryshortblogpost
— Joe Cheung (@asthejoeflies) April 2, 2018

This past weekend I killed three birds with one stone: I booked my first Southwest flight ever, burned some points I’ve been hoarding, and I tested out my theory. It worked! I figured at least someone might prefer to see some circles and arrows, so here’s how to use US Bank Flexperks to book Southwest flights. I’m guessing you can do something similar with Capital One and Barclays Arrival.

1. Enroll in Real-Time Rewards

If you haven’t yet, enroll in real-time mobile rewards. Log in to your account, click on “My Rewards”, and then click on “Redeem Rewards and Access Card Benefits.” From there click on “Card Benefits” and then “Real-Time Rewards”.

Enroll your phone number and then do the most important thing: make sure Airlines and Other Travel is checked off as eligible for Real-Time Rewards. I may or may not have had to cancel my first attempt within 24 hours due to not having done this. 😛 I’d also suggest reducing the minimum purchase amount.

2. Buy your Southwest ticket with the Flexperks card you just enrolled

Self explanatory.

3. Reply to the Real-Time Rewards text with “REDEEM”

You’ll eventually (very quickly in my case) receive a text asking if you want to redeem X points for Y dollars. Since Flexperks are simple now, this will be a rate of 1.5 cents per Flexperk point. Reply with “REDEEM” and you’ve redeemed non-Southwest points for a Southwest flight. Huzzah.

Final Thoughts

You know, as I wrote this, I realized someone must have figured this out before, at the very least for Capital One or Arrival. But, since I never bother to fly Southwest, I had never experimented before. Anyway, if you knew this already, at least I kept it short?

Anyway, I found this to be very useful – and plan to never do it or fly Southwest again 🙂 J/K, we’ll see how the flight goes. Let me know if there are any nuances I missed in the comments, thanks!

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It's almost impossible to use points to book Southwest flights, but you can use certain types of miles and points if you're smart about it. Here's how.

Apr 02 2018

Choosing which point option to use for a domestic flight

So I’ve been working on clearing out earned miles and points (my shame list). I’ve got points lying around in all sorts of programs that I’ve decided to prioritize getting rid of. That creates an interesting scenario when you have multiple trips coming up. Do you burn the points you want to get rid of, or do you redeem points for best value? In my case, that question turned what should have been a ten minute booking into a two hour internal debate. Mo Points, Mo Problems as Diddy said.

I thought it might be useful to go through my thought process as I debated which points to use (like I’ve done before). I’ll keep this post focused on only one of the flights I booked, Newark to Charlotte. The other flights I’m booking factored into my decision making but not enough to blab about all of those. I also learned a few things along the way which I’ll share as well. Let’s dive in.

Flight Parameters and Non-negotiables

Before I started looking for airfare, I had to figure out my flight parameters. Since this will be our first flight as a family of five, I wanted:

Nonstop flights
Morning flight times
Everyone on the same itinerary

Also, since I’m trying to ditch miles and points in all the various programs I’ve earned, I had one more parameter: Use up some of these random miles, even if it might not be the best value.

Various Options and Prices

So I had various options to try:

AA award flights via British Airways Avios
UA award flights (out of Newark)
Cash flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Cash flights booked with Flexperks
Cash flights booked with Merrill Lynch points
Cash flights booked with BofA Premium Rewards points

Here’s what I found and what I felt to be the pros and cons of each.

AA award flights using Avios

As always, I found Avios to not be as useful as advertised (in my personal situation, relax everyone). While there was bountiful award space on AA in economy, at 15,000 Avios round trip per person I didn’t find the redemption to be a great value vs. the $177 cash price. Now, if I had a ton of Avios, I probably would have pulled the trigger since it would have fulfilled my “use random miles” parameter. However, I would have had to transfer from Chase or AMEX – I could do better by either using the 35% rebate on my Business Platinum (AMEX) or booking for 1.5 cents per point (Chase). So, no Avios for me.

The goal should always be to redeem points for your flights. But sometimes, it can be difficult to decide which points to use, so how do we go about doing that? — It did not feel worth it to transfer points over when the cash flight is so cheap

UA award flights out of Newark

The next thing I checked was UA award flights. Saver flights were only available at inopportune times (6 in the morning or 8 at night), so I quickly moved on.

Cash flights booked with Ultimate Rewards

Since I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, I knew I could get 1.5 cents per point if I booked through Ultimate Rewards. Since the cash flight cost around $177, that came out to a favorable number (especially compared to transferring to Avios). The whole itinerary priced out at around 47,000 Ultimate Rewards points, as opposed to 60,000 Avios + $44.80. I put a pin in this one to think about later.

Cash flights booked with Flexperks

Since Flexperks offer the same 1.5 cents per point rate, I knew that it would cost the same number of points as Ultimate Rewards. Pinned this option as well. However, at this point I had been farting around for so long that space had dropped from 4 seats in the fare bucket I needed to 3, so the new cost (in either UR or FP) was around ~50,000. Analysis paralysis! (If I didn’t have the all people on same itinerary parameter, I could have booked two separate itineraries. But 3K points are worth avoiding the hassle for me).

Cash flights booked with Merrill Lynch

The next thing I did was see if I could book business class with Merrill Lynch. The best way to maximize Merrill Lynch is to book flights that cost almost $500, you can get those for 25K Merrill Lynch points. I was trying to see if I could get a couple of one ways in business, but as you can imagine with such a specific parameter, it was too difficult to make the numbers work. Each leg cost around $300 in business, too cheap to book a one way and too expensive to bother booking a round trip. Doing this also would have violated my one itinerary parameter so it ended up being a non starter. Curse you Merrill Lynch points I must be rid of you!

Cash flights booked with BofA Premium Rewards points

At this point I wanted to look at BofA Premium Rewards, one of those cards that I just got for the sign up bonus because of the hype. Guess what I learned that I probably should have already known? Points can be redeemed for 1 cent per point for travel (no uplift) or for straight cash, homey. Since my goal was to get rid of miscellaneous points if possible, I immediately redeemed my Premium Rewards points for cash and kicked myself for not doing it three months ago.

Choosing what miles and points to redeem

In the end, I decided to go with Flexperks. I figure Chase Ultimate Rewards points are more flexible (I can even use them to buy Disney tickets), and Flexperks offered the best combination of value and “random points I want to get rid of” status. Better yet, I was able to charge the ticket to my US Bank Altitude and test out mobile rewards redemption. It’s pretty nice to just redeem points with a text! Which gave me an idea for a #veryshortblogpost which you’ll see if you follow me on Twitter.

Final Thoughts

I find it useful to go through various miles and points options when booking tickets. Honestly, it’s a little annoying to have so many options but I guess that’s #firstworldproblems. Make sure you go through all your options to find the best value for yourself and your situation, and redeem according to your parameters! In the end I was happy to be rid of a bunch of Flexperks and to save my Ultimate Rewards. Now to get rid of those Merrill Lynch points…

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Mar 26 2018

Four Reasons to consider passing on the Chase Iberia Credit Card

Like I wrote about last week, at one point in my miles and points career I applied for cards I didn’t need. That was all well and good when we didn’t have kids and could fly off to Europe for the weekend. It’s less ideal now that our time is limited. One thing I wish I had seen during my “Phase 3” heyday were more reasons not to apply for the shiniest new credit cards out there. So I’ve written this post about reasons to avoid the Chase Iberia credit card with that in mind. If you’re looking for reasons to talk yourself out of this card, this post is for you!

Now let me get this out up front: this is a perfectly good card and will fit a lot of people’s situations. However, every single review you read of a new credit card spends 90% or more of its time talking about what’s good about the card. This post will spend 90% of the time highlighting what’s not so good about the card, but let me get the other 10% out of the way. 50,000 Avios can be very useful to families who live in cities that have good AA space, transferring to British Airways is useful if not cumbersome, and the card not being subject to 5/24 is great.

Alright, let’s get to the reasons why I’m avoiding the Chase Iberia credit card. You can also consider these reasons to be wary of the hype.

1. It’s not really a 75,000 Avios sign up bonus

The first thing I think consumers should be aware of is the advertisement of the sign up bonus being 75,000 Avios rings a bit false to me. You earn 50,000 Avios after $3K in spending, and the other 25,000 after $7K in spending. If you have reliable MS or reselling methods, that 75K might be worth it. But if you’re a bit more average, like myself, 25K for 7K of spending isn’t amazing. I’d rather do 7K spending with my Chase Ink at office supply stores and earn 35K Ultimate Rewards.

Here’s the tricky thing that I need to remind myself. Even though I know I probably wouldn’t earn the 75K total if I applied for this card, just seeing it advertised as 75K has a subtle effect on how I view the card. I know better, but advertisements, which I’d is how I’d characterize 80% of the Chase Iberia credit card posts out there, have one job, and that’s to psychologically fool people into buying products. So I personally need to mentally adjust when I’m reading the hype, and I think others should do the same.

Just remember the opportunity cost of spending an extra $7000 to earn that extra 25K Iberia Avios. It definitely will be worth it to some, but not all. But it’s really a 50K sign up bonus with a 25K spending bonus. At least that’s how I identify it.

2. Avios (both Iberia and British Airways iterations) can be difficult to use in your situation

I used to love British Airways Avios. Even post devaluation, I found being able to take AA flights for slightly cheaper to be invaluable. Then a funny thing happened, AA tightened up all their award space and I had a bunch of kids. Now all of a sudden I’m searching for four tickets during peak school vacation times. Finding nonstop flights that fit those criteria can be very difficult.

One highly touted usage of British Airways Avios is the ability to redeem for flights from the West Coast to Hawaii for 12,500 per segment. That is indeed a great deal! Except:

They say Avios are great for the West Coast to Hawaii, but that’s contingent on award space

Things get better in September but your kids are probably back in school.

Update : counterpoint from @lsjbrooks

That space does my family very little good but hopefully it helps yours

Looks like you cherry-picked that LAX-Hawaii space. It looks decent in late July and most of August, especially non-HNL. Only east-coast Hawaii casuals go to Oahu 😜
— Tim (@ljsbrooks) March 26, 2018

Anyway, sometimes Avios can be super useful, but I generally haven’t found them to be as useful as the internet says they are. You have to get pretty creative, and if you don’t have a lot of time to do your research, you may just be chasing a shiny new sign up bonus that you don’t have the time to put the work into to use properly. Also, if you’re busy, you might not want to go through the hassle of transferring from Iberia to British Airways. It’s only like, two steps, but there’s the 90 day waiting period yada yada yada…I have found as my time has become more precious these small nuisances add up.

In terms of using the Avios for Iberia flights, I’ve had my eye on BOS-MAD on Iberia in the summer (it’s seasonal) for years now, but have never found enough seats for my family. We’d love to go back to Madrid, and you’d think the Iberia credit card could get us there, but in reality…probably not.

3. It’s another card to keep track of in your sock drawer

The earn potential on the card out of the sign up bonus isn’t very exciting. Most people don’t fly Iberia regularly so it won’t be worth it to spend $30K to get a $1000 voucher. (Though at 3.3% back, it’s not bad if you do I guess). But most people aren’t going to be spending on Iberia or British Airways flights regularly, so this card will only earn you 1 Avios per dollar. Obviously you can do better just by using any Sapphire Card which will earn you a minimum of 1 Ultimate Reward point per dollar which you can of course transfer to Avios.

So, most people will just get this card for the sign up bonus and sock drawer it – that’s not going to be worth the hassle for a lot of people.

4. Is the card worth going past 5/24?

A lot has been made about the fact that the Iberia card isn’t subject to Chase’s 5/24 rule. For some people, that’s great because if you’re “LOL/24” you have no chance to ever get back under so any hit of that sweet, sweet Chase is worth it. However, 24 months isn’t that long in the game – I’ve been dropping closer to 5/24 over the past 12 months. We’ve kept my wife permanently below 5/24. So is this card really worth adding to your 5/24 total or putting you over?

Ultimately, the miles and points game is a long game – so make sure you keep that in mind as you make your decisions.

Final Thoughts

If I’m being perfectly honest, I thought there’d be more compelling reasons to avoid the new Chase Iberia card. Turns out, the reasons are mostly subtle, meaning it’s likely a pretty good card! I thought I’d try a new angle while analyzing the credit card, so I don’t know if I’ll do another post like this in the future. In the end, I think my post has at least convinced me that I’m personally going to pass. Because the fact of the matter is, there aren’t many compelling reasons to get this card either. These days I like to keep my credit card applications to the ones I really want, and I’ll stick with that for now. If you’re looking for a more traditional review, DoC’s got you covered.

How about you, does the Chase Iberia card have a new space in your wallet? For the next month or so at least? Let me know in the comments!

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