Bad use of membership rewards points?

[ElainePDX]

I have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to book some intra-Africa flights as awards tickets.

The flights I need are all operated by South African Airlines, which is a United partner. The United site is no help at all as it doesn't recognize the SA airport codes at all. I plan to call them but do not have high hopes of either getting an agent who can actually help or finding there is award availability if I do.

I also tried to use the Ana site but it was no help. Ditto for Air Canada's Aeroplan.

I moved on to consider if I can transfer some Membership Rewards points to an airline like Virgin America that also partners with SAA. I am not in their FF program and I am a bit reluctant to transfer MRs that could get stuck there if I run into a problem and the award seats I thought were available end up not being bookable.

In the course of this, I realized that perhaps the simplest way to use points for the tickets I need would be to just book them through the Amex travel site, and to then pay with points. For example, a $355 flight would cost us 35,420 MRs.

Is this sacrilege? I sense that this would be a crummy redemption, but I am a total MR newbie, having only decided to collect them when the 150K deal for the Bus Plat was live a few months ago. As a result, we are very lucky to have 340K+ MRs in our household.

Should I save them for a better redemption or just figure the points are worthless until I use them on something?

What super redemptions have you used your MRs for? Perhaps if I have a sense of that, I'd know if it's smart or foolish to blow 35,420 MRs to cover a $355 cash ticket.

Thanks for any advice you may be able to offer! Happy Weekend!

 

[italdesign]

Congrats on the big bonuses.

50K got me 5 nights in central Venice and Rome (Choice hotels). Very happy.

Other uses include transfer to SQ and ANA. BA was good but transfer ratio devaluated.

MR pts are fairly easy to accrue by CC churning and you have a lot on hand. Unless you have plan for it, I would use it now if it helps.

 

[Barb]

I've transferred MR to Avios to use for short haul flights in Europe (LHR-FRA, CDG-LHR), Africa (CPT-JNB) and Asia (TPE-HKG). I've also transferred to Delta to top up accounts for flights to South Africa on Virgin Atlantic.

The redemption through Amex travel at 1 cent is not great, agreed, but only you can decide how much the points are worth to you.

Maybe this is jumping the gun? Call United first and see if you can get the flights you want.

 

[Matt]

Maybe this is jumping the gun? Call United first and see if you can get the flights you want.

Agreed.

My view is that it is perfectly fine to use the MR as cash or whatever you need, if doing so keeps money in your pocket and points out of it. I always keep an eye on the backend when doing this - IE would I need those points at 3cents in 13 months? If so I'd hold, but if not, then I'd burn them.

That said... I'd not give up until I've tried for space.

 

[smittytabb]

I have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to book some intra-Africa flights as awards tickets.

The flights I need are all operated by South African Airlines, which is a United partner. The United site is no help at all as it doesn't recognize the SA airport codes at all. I plan to call them but do not have high hopes of either getting an agent who can actually help or finding there is award availability if I do.

I also tried to use the Ana site but it was no help. Ditto for Air Canada's Aeroplan.

I moved on to consider if I can transfer some Membership Rewards points to an airline like Virgin America that also partners with SAA. I am not in their FF program and I am a bit reluctant to transfer MRs that could get stuck there if I run into a problem and the award seats I thought were available end up not being bookable.

In the course of this, I realized that perhaps the simplest way to use points for the tickets I need would be to just book them through the Amex travel site, and to then pay with points. For example, a $355 flight would cost us 35,420 MRs.

Is this sacrilege? I sense that this would be a crummy redemption, but I am a total MR newbie, having only decided to collect them when the 150K deal for the Bus Plat was live a few months ago. As a result, we are very lucky to have 340K+ MRs in our household.

Should I save them for a better redemption or just figure the points are worthless until I use them on something?

What super redemptions have you used your MRs for? Perhaps if I have a sense of that, I'd know if it's smart or foolish to blow 35,420 MRs to cover a $355 cash ticket.

Thanks for any advice you may be able to offer! Happy Weekend!

I was speaking with a woman I met this weekend who does charity work in Africa and she was actually mentioning that it is no longer possible to book with miles easily on South African. If I had read this first I might have asked for more details. This is hearsay obviously, but I would not be surprised if that might be a deadend. If I have a chance I will contact her for more details.

 

[ElainePDX]

Update - I just spoke to two reps at United.

CSR 1 - Very helpful and seemed knowledgeable but she found no availability for the date I need or anything remotely close for the Nelspruit MQP >>> Livingstone LVI nonstop South African Airlines flight. In fact, she could not find anything for any dates she tried. Then she tried Kasane BBK >> CPT and found nothing for the BBK>JNB leg but there was availability in Business for the JNB>CPT leg at 35K plus $13.20.

She connected me to CSR2 (who deals with website questions) to determine why CSR1 could key in MQP in her system but united.com does not recognize MQP when I try.

CSR2 said that the agreement with SAA allows them to book award seats only for a limited set of SA cities. So maybe CSR1 can search all cities but then gets a "no awards seat" screen, while customers using united.com can't even get that far. That also explains why there are award seats for JNB>CPT but not BBK>JNB.

The upshot is that awards seats on SAA seem few, far between and expensive, and unless both of these CSRs are wrong, I can't use United miles for the SAA flights/cities I need. Given how hard it seems to book award seats on SAA, I don't think it makes sense to transfer any MRs to Virgin (another SAA partner) or anyone else, since I might be left with a bunch of points sitting idle in a program that I have no current plans for using. So I am back to whether to blow the MRs.

The consensus, so far, here and elsewhere, seems to be, as one friend said about these MRs, which came from the 150K deal: "easy come, easy go! "

 

[Maverick17]

Not a direct answer, but MR > British Airways (for Comair flights) was the best value I found in South Africa and Namibia. JNB to LVI has Comair flying that route, although they don't serve MQP or BBK it looks like. And JNB to CPT there are many flights of course.

Edit to Add: This was pre-BA devaluation. I haven't paid much attention to that, and don't know if it would affect Comair at all.

 

[Phantom707]

The issue with this activity of using points is that it expects you to be able to plan a long ways ahead, and for a lot of people, that's just not possible. If you do have concrete plans for the future where you would be able to use the points for a better value, then off course it would be better to hold onto them. If you know you won't have any other travel plans that could use the points for a while, then it would be better to redeem now.

I legitimately don't know, but could you call Virgin and ask them to check seats availability before you transfer points? Likewise with calling Air Canada and ANA if you have the time to do so.

 

[Andrew Beall]

I got about 6.3 cents/point by transferring to 100k MR to Flying Blue and booking two one way flights from Atlanta to Milan and two one ways from Geneva to Atlanta. Flights on my particular dates would have been about $6.3k. Changing dates wouldn't have been an option since I needed to use Fairmont and Hyatt free night certs. Fairmont availability was limited and Hyatt certs expire that month.

The thought of redeeming MR at 1 cent/point makes me cringe. If you need the money that's one thing, but personally I wouldn't redeem just for the sake of using points over cash. I know without a doubt I could find a better use for the points at a later date, but if you don't think you'll be able to then I can understand redeeming them. Being able to get outsized value from points is one of the main things that keeps me in this game.

 

[SanDiego1K]

Does the BA subsidiary fly the routes of interest to you? Avios provides amazing redemption values on one segment flights in coach. They have a subsidiary based in South Africa so have quite a number of routes in southern Africa on which I've found good availability. (Update: I checked flights.google.com for the routes you listed above and see only SAA suffices.)

I have a marker on my planner to move AMEX points to BA by October 1 when the transfer ratio drops from 1.25 to 1. I have a specific international award I am targetting, but I also use Avios for single segment AA and AS flights in the US and OneWorld partners around the world. I'll no longer redeem for business class as BA has hiked the Avios required.

 

[SanDiego1K]

Update - I just spoke to two reps at United.

CSR 1 - Very helpful and seemed knowledgeable but she found no availability for the date I need or anything remotely close for the Nelspruit MQP >>> Livingstone LVI nonstop South African Airlines flight. In fact, she could not find anything for any dates she tried. Then she tried Kasane BBK >> CPT and found nothing for the BBK>JNB leg but there was availability in Business for the JNB>CPT leg at 35K plus $13.20.

I've spent some time digging. The routes you want are operated by South African Airlink but not South African Airway. Airlink code shares with SAA. South African Airlink is not a Star member. It is not possible to redeem United miles on these routes. Thus, it won't do you any good to move points to another Star carrier as they will have the same restriction.

Here's the wikipedia entry on Airlink. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airlink

 

[ElainePDX]

I've spent some time digging. The routes you want are operated by South African Airlink but not South African Airway. Airlink code shares with SAA. South African Airlink is not a Star member. It is not possible to redeem United miles on these routes. Thus, it won't do you any good to move points to another Star carrier as they will have the same restriction.

Here's the wikipedia entry on Airlink. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airlink

Thank you @SanDiego1K for doing this research! It explains why United only shows certain cities. I knew it was Airlink flights, but not the implications.

My strategy is to indeed use some MRs and URs to pay for the flights, unless the travel agent I am working with can get better prices than I can this way. I'm (impatiently) waiting for a reply but she's on vacation and her co-worker is supposed to be working on it....

 

[kathynokes]

A bad use of points doesn't truly exist. Each of our needs/expectations are different. Arbitrary point valuations are just that. I know that I can get incredible point values for a first class ticket and an over-water bungalow in the Maldives. Unfortunately, that is not a trip that is in the near future for my family.

That said, for my purposes, I prefer to earn the points on low $ flights with limited availability, to save for the trips I am planning to use points on. Perhaps purchasing the tickets with whichever card in your arsenal earns the best point/$, then use those points for another trip, or a great redemption on a hotel or upgrade on this one?

 

[ElainePDX]

Used the MRs and bought all the tickets we'll need. Much more palatable than using cash even if it wasn't the so-called "best" value. For me, at this time, it was!

 

[Voyaging Doc]

Why not redeem the MR for cashback, and then use the money earned from cashback to charge the new trip which at least earns you points for that purchase?

 

[ElainePDX]

Why not redeem the MR for cashback, and then use the money earned from cashback to charge the new trip which at least earns you points for that purchase?

I guess because it was my first use of MRs and I just didn't think of it! Lesson learned.

With URs you get a bit of a deal - I think you save 20% - meaning they take less than the full # of URs to cover the cost of the flight. Can't remember if MRs work that way too; I think not since I tried my best to book them all with URs. We did book one flt via the UR portal and so saved that way, but the other flts we needed were not available for URs and so I moved to MRs.

 

[bayguy]

I know its late now but I was able to use United Miles for my JNB-HDS-JNB and Avios for CPT-JNB-VFA-JNB

 

[ElainePDX]

I know its late now but I was able to use United Miles for my JNB-HDS-JNB and Avios for CPT-JNB-VFA-JNB

No problem. Actually we couldn't use Avios because we are flying into/out of regional airports. But thanks!

 

[zceuxbhjutf]

For example, a $355 flight would cost us 35,420 MRs.

That seems better than cashback. Maybe my MRs (via Business Gold Rewards) are worth less but I thought cashback or statement credit only yields 0.5 to 0.6 cents a point.