"What About The Points Cards?"

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From a recent comment by “Anonymous,” (he seems to post here a lot!)
“I saw a couple of times written about credit-card miles that are a scam and are no blackout dates, etc. i wanted to mention that the citi “thank you network” points are good for flights and its 25000 ty points for a ticket and they actually dont have any blackout dates, i was able to get a ticket from ny to la for kratzmach weekend without a problem. “

Anon-I couldn’t disagree with you more!
I am a fan only of the true mileage cards that give you actual miles.

While I am not familiar with all of the Thank You program, however i took a quick glance at it and i saw that for airline tickets:
-14 days advance purchase is required
-Saturday night stay is required.
I’m also going to assume(correct me if I’m wrong) that it is like all of the other “points-miles” cards, like the capital one “no hassle rewards” scam card, which carry a limit of what the ticket can cost, often limiting the points to no more than .01 each, and often even far less than that.

The great thing about true airline mileage cards is that
-you can book expensive last minute tickets
-on most airlines you can make free changes to the dates
-None of the major airlines still have blackout dates
-There is never a limit to the value of the ticket, so an international business ticket worth $10,000 may be only 90,000 miles, valuing each mile at over .11!

At any rate using miles for a domestic ticket is almost always a poor use a miles, but I will go into that further in a future post.

As long as you are somewhat flexible, a true miles(or a card that lets you exchange points for real miles, like an amex membership card or the starwood card) is the way to go-you will never get that kind of value out of any other rewards card, period.

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4 Comments On ""What About The Points Cards?""

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Anonymous

i disagree with you.
when prices went sky high i tried to make a domestic flight with miles with either aa or delta. they both charge a fee for under 14 days and the have very few seats which are available for mileage and those go quickly or you can get them for double the miles. i also tried an international ticket giving an open window of 2 months with a 2 month advance notice and there were no mileage seats on 3 carriers

Dan

I’m not saying mieage tickets are perfect-they are not.
However using the Capital one card as an example (they are the biggest and most popular “points-miles” card, and unlike citi, they openly disclose the ticket limits to non-cardholders on their site) They advertise that just 15,000 points gets you a free ticket with no blackout dates. In actuality that ticket can’t be over $150, or else they charge you 35,000 points.
As you see each point can never be more then .01 each. So why not just get a .01 cash-back card instead???

Now miles can be tricky to redeem, however they remain a far better value than the points cards as they have no ceiling.
As for the charge to book tickets within 14 days…there’s an easy way out of that…just be creative!

Anonymous

which major airlines do & don’t charge a change fee for mileage tickets?

Dan

iy”h i’ll do a roundup of the Big 6 airlines, offhand i know that AA and UA do not.

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