Well, here’s some exciting news to start off the year… POINTS PALS, my brand new award booking service is now operational!
This all started a few hours ago when a reader emailed me (as an aside, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to say “a reader emailed me”), asking for an opinion on a flight she was trying to book. I spent a half hour looking into various options because for some reason this is fun for me, and that’s when it hit me that I should have my own award booking service.
But what’s a pitch without a bulleted list of reasons why you should use my service? With that in mind, here’s what makes Points Pals different from all the other guys:
The name is ridiculous. You could go with PointsPros, or BookYourAward.com, but wouldn’t you rather just be pals? I certainly would.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Because my knowledge of the points world is limited to the type of awards I usually research for myself, I don’t really know anything about obscure sweet spots or routing rules, but god dammit I intend to find out.
The swearing. You know the other guys aren’t going to tell you that it’s “fucking bullshit” that American Airlines doesn’t have any availability or that British Airways wants $750 in fuel surcharges to fly from London to Paris, but that’s exactly what it is. One of the key “Points Pals” promises (KPPPs, for short) is that I will probably find something to swear about when responding to your request.
In sum, there are tons of knowledgeable, professional, and expertise-laden services that you can go to, but part of the allure of international travel is that you don’t know what you’re going to get. And why shouldn’t that extend to the award booking service you use for your flights? That’s where Points Pals comes in – unqualified advice from a weirdo with no experience.
If you’d like to avail yourself of the full Points Pals experience, get in touch via the contact form on the “Get in Touch” page linked above. I currently charge $0.00 for your first ticket and $0.00 for any additional passengers.* Also, I won’t actually book the award for you, since I don’t know how to do that. I will tell you what to do, though, and I’ll take it personally if you don’t take my advice. After all, I thought we were PALS!
*If enough people take me up on this and I actually learn what the fuck I’m doing, maybe I’ll start charging. Until then, though, you get what you (don’t) pay for.
Update: This post tends to show up in search results higher than my more recent articles rants about pieces of shit abusing the emotional support animal system. If you’re interested, you can read those articles here:
Ever the diplomat, One Mile at a Time has a fairly neutrally-toned article about the DOT’s plan to look into whether they should consider discussing the possibility of forming a committee to investigate regulating emotional support animals on planes. Me, I’ll just come right out and say it: you’re a piece of shit who deserves to wind up on the no-fly list if you take a fake ESA onto a plane.
Now, before you paint me as some heartless asshole… First, I said “fake” in the title of this post. Someone who needs a support animal – and I mean legitimately needs (not just who wants one because it makes them feel a little better) – should be allowed to have one, provided that animal has received training from an accredited training program. Plus, I’m probably more sensitive than most to emotional needs while traveling given that I have a phobia of flying that I have had to learn how to manage in order to avoid the alternative of driving everywhere I go. So I know what it’s like to have a four-hour panic attack on a plane. I know what it’s like to feel so claustrophobic in-flight that you think you’re having a heart attack. I’ve been there, multiple times. And if I legitimately thought that carrying my dog onto the plane would help me deal with flying, I would do it. I’m one of those dog owners who considers their dog to be a real child, and I would love to bring her on vacation with me. She’s the best dog ever. Here, I’ll show you:
The reason I would never smuggle her onto a plane as an ESA has to do with the following:
I’m oversensitive to people acting entitled to take their dogs everywhere after living in San Francisco, where I’ve literally seen pets licking produce at Whole Foods while their owners look at their phones. Having a pet sometimes requires leaving the pet in the car (not in the sun, duh), or at home. Deal.
Service animals (which are different from ESAs) are trained to operate in spaces WITHOUT other animals. A guide dog guiding a blind person through the subway is not trained to deal with encountering 50 other dogs on her way. You know those people that have disabilities and actually NEED those animals with them at all time? Well your privileged, entitled ass is making their life more difficult.
Having a disability sucks, which is why differently abled people get various concessions designed to make their lives easier to manage. Do you walk around with sunglasses and a cane so people move out of your way? Do you park in disabled parking spaces because you have a placard left over from when you broke your ankle? I’m guessing not, because pretending you have a disability when you don’t in order to take advantage of a particular concession is some next-level amoral bullshit. Why people seem to conveniently forget this when it involves their special little poochie-woochie is a mystery to me.
Your dog probably isn’t that well behaved, which makes it that much worse. I’ve had pit bulls jump up on me (nothing against pit bulls; they’re cute as fuck but I don’t really want them slobbering on me while I’m trying to chow down on a Cinnabon), little dogs yap at me, and I can’t imagine what I’d do if a filthy duck was walking around the aisle of a plane. And aside from the little inconveniences, did you stop to consider that other people on the plane might be stressed about about your animal getting in their face, and that you might make someone else’s flight anxiety WORSE by bringing your stupid exotic pet with you?
You’re going to fuck it up for the people who actually need these animals. One of the reasons why the rule is so lax is that it’s embarrassing to have to explain to every check-in agent, gate agent, TSA agent, cabin crew, etc that you have PTSD or agoraphobia, or claustrophobia, or whatever. Society is not kind to those who have even mild forms of mental illness (the amount of times someone has responded to my fear of flying with, “Well you know it’s 1000x safer than driving,” as if I never thought of that suggests as much), so letting people who need ESAs proceed unmolested is part and parcel of the concession offered those people who are suffering from mental illness. Your stupid untrained dog pissing on the floor of a Southwest flight is going to ruin it for everyone.
Okay, rant over. Obviously I feel strongly about this, so here’s what I think should happen: ESAs should require an ID card, similar to Global Entry. To get the ID card, you need to apply online and pay a fee that would be reimbursed by your health insurance (unless you don’t actually have a disability). You’d then need to have your ESA complete an accredited training course and show those documents along with vaccination records when you completed your application. If any of these steps were difficult for you to complete due to your disability, the DOT would make case workers available to help you. The costs of this would be funded by the application fee, and any overruns would be covered by all the extra money we’re going to have as a result of all the great deals Trump is going to negotiate. Anyway, the end result of this is that you’d have to travel with your ESA ID in order to bring the animal on the plane. Requiring passengers to show the ID is no more of an imposition than requiring them to show their own ID, since the ESA ID wouldn’t have any specific information about the patient or their specific emotional issue. Problem solved!
What do you think? I’m guessing that if you comment, you probably agree with me… since if you don’t agree, I just called you a piece of shit.
Everyone does top 5 lists at the end of the year! Why should I be any different? I’m sure a nobody like me name-checking Ben Schlappig is really going to boost his career, but god dammit, I’m going to do it anyway. So, in no particular order, these are the 5 blogs that kept me going during a particularly shitty year.
View from the Wing. This should be self-explanatory… the only reason I’m languishing in near-obscurity rather than total obscurity is thanks to Gary Leff’s propensity to link to things that I write. I had pretty much left this blog for dead until he started to send me traffic, and it’s that stream of readers that has motivated me to start posting on the semi-reg. Aside from the traffic, I find VFTW to be the most well-rounded blog out there, covering general aviation news, funny/weird travel stories, credit card strategies, and trip reports in equal measure. On top of that, VFTW is written in a really opinionated yet engaging and humorous voice, and I appreciate that he doesn’t efface his individuality in a bid to expand his reach (cough POINTSGUY cough).
Doctor of Credit. This is a must-read every morning. I actually check this one first, since he breaks stuff before it makes the rounds on other sites. Plus, he turns down a fuckload of possible affiliate revenue in the name of integrity, which is admirable. I’m quite sure that if I had the traffic he did, my first thought would be how to milk the hell out of it (which may explain why he’s where he is and I’m over here!). Don’t forget, he was writing about the Sapphire Reserve back when it just a glimmer in the Sapphire Preferred’s eyes.
One Mile at a Time. Honestly, unless you’re a raging homophobe, I don’t understand the hate this guy gets. Out of all the people that blog about their luxury lifestyle, Lucky is the one whose writing illustrates how much he legitimately loves every minute of it, and not just for bragging rights. He also seems like a really nice guy, although if I ever meet him in person, I’ll make sure to report back. I love the reviews too, to the point that I actually look forward to them when he publishes the introductions to his trip reports. I don’t even bother taking photos when I go on my trips, since it’s almost guaranteed that whatever I would review has already been exhaustively documented on his site. The volume of review content he has produced really is amazing. So yeah, I don’t mind admitting I’m a total fanboy.
Bald Thoughts. Solidarity for bald people! I started going bald at 17, so I immediately gravitate to other chrome-domers.
Miles per Day. I fucking LOVE this blog. Do you know about the guy who created a pain scale of insect bites by letting a bunch of poisonous bugs bite him while he took notes? It’s a real thing, and the guy is amazing. Anyway, Miles per Day is the blog equivalent of that guy – if you were ever wondering what’s the limit of what banks will allow, Vinh has probably smashed through it and either found a way to get his account reinstated or just said fuck it and moved on to the next thing. He’s like this guy I used to go mountain biking with – I could never hang with him on the downhills, because he was just too damn fast. Then he crashed and broke his neck, was in a halo for a while, rehabbed for a year, and smoked me like old times on his first ride back.
That’s my list – what did I miss? What should I read in 2017? I think things are going to get way worse before they get better, so I’ll need to keep distracting myself with all these miles…
I definitely don’t *need* ExpertFlyer by any stretch… I usually fly around once per month, meaning that paying $9.99/month for a service designed for road warriors probably counts as a dumb purchase. I tend to look at it like a fun toy, since I get my jollies by searching for availability on random routes just for the heck of it. What if we wanted to go to Siem Reap in September? How would we get there? What miles would I need? Sure, I could find all this out by going through various mileage programs, but it’s easier to have all the data right there in ExpertFlyer.
That said, I’ve gotten a ton of value out of the flight alerts that you can set up – maybe not $120/year, but certainly enough to get me hooked on having the service. In the few months I’ve been a member, I have been notified about first class availability for Justine’s return flight from New Zealand, business class availability on Swiss during my trip to Europe next year, and today maybe the biggest thing of them all – a non-bulkhead window seat on Delta! The one time I’ve sat in the first class bulkhead on a Delta A320, I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that the bulkhead wall is about an inch and a half from your face, giving you less room for your feet than you’d have in economy. I just recently flew United’s updated A320 first class product and was happy to see the generous amount of legroom they give the bulkhead seats, which really puts Delta’s product to shame. So when I booked this flight, I decided to spring for first class given the small premium over economy, but the only available seat was 1D. I’d still rather have a wider seat with less legroom, so I took it and set a seat alert for any other window seat. Cut to just now, when ExpertFlyer emailed to tell me that 2A was now available – thirty seconds later I was in my Delta account confirming my seat change to 2A. Score!
Again, this is a pretty small deal and doesn’t on its own justify ExpertFlyer’s fee (especially because you can create some seat alerts for free). Still, it’s a fairly small price every month and it has demonstrably improved my experience when I do fly, so I’d definitely say it’s worth it, in case you were on the fence.
My experience in SAS’s new business class was great, as long as you start from the moment I walked onto the plane. SAS’s ground operations leave quite a bit to be desired (especially given that CPH is their hub), making my layover after arriving from the Faroe Islands one of the most stressful in recent memory. Since I didn’t book the whole trip as one itinerary, I had to collect our bags and re-clear security, although that part ended up being a breeze. (As a quick aside, now that SAS flies to the Faroe Islands, you can book award flights all the way from the US. Back when I went on this trip, only Atlantic Airways served that destination, and although they codeshare with SAS, Vagar wasn’t recognized as a Star Alliance destination.)
SAS has a special “fast track” security lane for business class passengers at CPH, which is nice, since we learned on our outbound flight to the Faroes that the normal security line can take forever (around 25 minutes for us, and the check-in agent told us that that security traffic was unusually light). Rather than simply offering a separate lane à la Premier Access, SAS’s fast track is an entirely separate security apparatus in its own room, with one metal detector, one x-ray machine, etc. The entire screening took only a few minutes from entry to exit, and it was easily the smoothest security checkpoint I’ve ever been through. Walking out of the private security room, things were looking up. See, that morning I had received an aircraft change notification from ExpertFlyer, which would have worried me if SAS’s retrofit of their long haul fleet hadn’t already been completed. In fact, the change ended up helping us, since it was from an A330 to an A340, which would free up more business class seats. Since I wasn’t able to reserve window seats when I originally booked the itinerary, I was hoping the aircraft swap would enable us to make a last-minute switch at check-in.
Sure enough, 5H and 6H were open, so we snagged them, much to the check-in agent’s bewilderment at why we’d give up two seats together in the middle section only to sit apart from each other. Of course I would make almost any sacrifice to have a window seat, but my lovely wife made a joke about how after two weeks on the road together, a few hours apart wouldn’t be so bad. Haha, good one. Boarding passes printed, window seat achievement unlocked! Except for one SSSSmall problem – the quadruple S of shit, AKA special secondary security screening. I was immediately worried that SSSS would follow me home to the US and that I had months of TSA rectal exams to look forward to, although it luckily turned out to be a Copenhagen thing. And since the fast track security folks let it go, I hoped that maybe SSSS meant something different in Europe than it does here.
Either way, off we went to the SAS business class lounge, which I’m to understand is their flagship lounge. My singular goal at this point was to take a shower, since I didn’t have time before leaving for the airport, and I felt disgusting. I got a key from the SAS rep at the desk and found a perfectly serviceable shower room (with a private toilet that… well, given that this is a review, I’ll give the toilet an A+). Sure, the shower isn’t the same as the ones you see in pictures from first class lounges in Asia and the Middle east, but the water is hot, there’s free soap and shampoo, and you even get an orchid on the sink for ambience. Shower completed, it was time to check out the rest of the lounge, which was… underwhelming. It was fine, but my overall impression was that it was very United Clubby by way of Ikea, especially for an airline’s flagship lounge. (Granted, there was a first class area up the stairs for Star Alliance gold people, but the entire lounge is open, and what I could see of the first class section didn’t look much different.) If SAS wants their brand identity to be “gets the job done well enough, I guess,” then they’re right on message with the CPH lounge. Oh also, it was around 85 degrees inside and they still had a decorative fire going.
After Justine’s underwhelming experience with the catering on our Delta One flight overseas, she wanted to get a snack before the flight in case SAS’s food proved similarly gross. After finding nothing too appetizing (aside from a clean husband, of course), we decided to walk to the opposite end of the airport to check out the Aspire lounge, which is one of two Priority Pass lounges in CPH (the other being the Aviator lounge, which we didn’t visit.) Now, contract lounges often feel “less-than” to me, since they’re easier to get into, and they don’t have the cachet that comes with being an extension of the airline’s brand. SAS spends millions of dollars building up a certain brand image, so there is something that speaks to people (though I’m sure most would deny it) about being in this idealized space imbued with all that built-up brand equity. More and more, airlines are realizing that the top-down corporate identities by luminaries like Gerstner, Bass, and Unimark need to extend to all aspects of the flyer’s experience, like they did at the beginning of the jet age, when your experience with the brand started at the ticket office, continued into the lounge and onto the plane, and ended when you recognized the branded luggage tag on your suitcase at baggage claim. That’s why you’re seeing nicer and nicer Delta Skyclubs, an entirely new lounge concept with United Polaris, and so on. It’s why the Virgin group airlines put so much zazz into their lounges (either way you spell it, it means mazooma in the bank). My point here is that anonymous contract lounges are at a branding disadvantage, and I would almost always choose an airline’s own lounge if given the choice (especially if I’m at that airline’s hub). Having said all that, we both actually preferred the Aspire lounge to SAS’s business class lounge. It’s about 1/4 the size, but it was comparatively less crowded. The furnishings are nicer, the bar is equally as good, and the food is better too. SAS has a lot of fancy looking salads and stuff, but if the salads aren’t very good AND YOU DON’T EAT SOUP BECAUSE YOU REJECT FOOD THAT’S DRUNK RATHER THAN EATEN, you’re kinda out of luck. That’s where some slices of meat, cheese, and bread can really come in handy. So, long story short, my wife got a sandwich at the Aspire lounge, which gave it the nod over SAS.
From there, the shit show really kicked into high gear. First, we were late getting to the gate due to really long lines at passport control (not SAS’s fault, of course, but it just made the whole situation more hectic). Then we went to board, at which point we found out both that our precious window seats were no longer ours, but also that I would have to wait for all of the other passengers to board so that I could finally get my SSSSpecial screening. The boarding agent was especially rude, snapping at us that there were no more window seats and then referring us to a woman at a different desk who had an array of boarding passes spread out before her.
Here is where I admit that I don’t work in flight operations, so I don’t really know how difficult of a problem an aircraft swap presents the gate agents. (I suppose I should also add in a more general disclaimer that all the shit I’m whining about in this post amounts to a fairly minor inconvenience, since I did eventually board my flight. Still, the game of premium travel is built upon small differences among competing products, and after getting excited about flying SAS for months, my experience with them on the ground was really disappointing). Anyway, to go back to the seat fiasco, it turns out that there were bigger problems, namely that someone somewhere decided to play a game of 52 pickup with the passengers and seat assignments. To make matters worse, a good chunk of people in the gate area were no longer even on the flight at all, despite the switch to a bigger plane.
That meant that my concern about seating assignments was comparatively low priority, and had I been able to board, I probably would have said fuck it and taken the seats in the middle section. However, since I had to wait to be the very last person on the plane, I decided to stick around the check-in desk to see if they could produce a miracle and give me two window seats. After waiting for all the people who had been bumped to be reticketed, the frazzled agent did her best to help me. Turns out 9H and 10H were both available (which makes sense, given that those seats are in a mini-cabin that doesn’t exist on the A330, so they wouldn’t have been available to reserve beforehand). I thanked her profusely and sent Justine on her merry way, waiting while they made the final boarding call, said the doors would be closing, etc. I started to freak out that they weren’t going to let me on the plane, since they just kept ignoring me as they made the announcements that passengers had one more minute to board before they closed the doors. Finally, a solemn gentleman took me into a separate room off of the gate area and had me take off my shoes, belt, and watch while he gave me a good wanding and crotch-grab. Then I had to unpack my carry-on, turn on my iPad and demonstrate that my toiletries weren’t filled with exploding goo. The whole process took a while, at which point I was finally allowed to board – and the flight attendant waiting for me on the plane glared at me as I entered, as if it was my fucking fault that I was the very last person on the plane. I’m getting annoyed just thinking about it, so thanks a lot, blog!
Once seated, everything was right with the world. As I mentioned in a post a few months ago, 9H unexpectedly turned out to be an amazing seat, despite being one of the window seats that’s along the aisle, with the console against the window. I LOVE the Vantage XL seat that SAS has customized, since I prefer to be sitting forward, and the storage area next to the seat was really useful after dealing with my stuff sliding every which way in Delta’s reverse herringbone seat. I don’t mind the narrowness of the seat, and I didn’t find it restrictive at all. It’s an air-cushioned seat, and I did make the mistake of keeping the pressure too high for most of the flight – at one point with a few hours left, I complained to Justine that the seat was way too hard, and she made fun of me for not figuring out how the adjustments worked. Once I let some air out, the seat was much more comfortable.
Other things I remember – the food was gross. Again I had a special meal, so my experience isn’t representative. Justine hated her food, too, though, so there you go. Maybe we’re picky eaters? I don’t really consider myself overly picky, but everything just seemed lukewarm and slimy. Others have given good reviews to SAS’s food, so who knows. Also, are you mad that I don’t have 25 photos of the menu and each successive dish? Every blogger who reviews flights does that, and I always hastily scroll through that part when I read those reviews. I guess the food is a big part of the premium experience, but it just doesn’t really matter to me. The in-flight entertainment was really good, by the way. My system initially didn’t work, although it woke up after a reset. Good movie selection, and being the avgeek I am, I enjoyed all the little SAS-branded mini-movies. Finally, the bathroom is nice – it has a window in it and a bunch of wood paneling, so you get that premium feeling even when you’re dropping a deuce.
Bottom line? SAS over Delta One for sure. Any day of the week. Even with the hassles in CPH. Delta was fine, but the SAS seat is a cocoon of awesomeness, it has room for all your crap during the flight, the IFE screen is bigger, the in-flight snack bar is better, the bathroom is fancier, and I didn’t constantly bang my elbow on the privacy partition that sets Delta’s seats apart from the aisle. The only area where Delta is better is the bedding – SAS pillows are made by Hastens of Sweden, so they cost like $5000 each, but they’re pretty thin and need to be folded four ways before you can sleep on them. I would be excited to fly SAS again, whereas flying Delta would merely be a way to get from A to B without having to fly in economy. Given all the recent devaluations, the fact that these flights were only 45,000 Aeroplan miles each seems like a phenomenal deal as well.
Okay, that’s it. Do you have any questions? Have you flown SAS’s new business class? What did you think? Was their old business class really that bad? What do you think of Scandinavia – pretty great right?
Flying over the Faroe islands on our way from Copenhagen to Chicago. I definitely enjoyed how much the A340’s engines enhanced my view along the way.
A couple years ago, my wife applied for an Amex Premier Rewards Gold card after being targeted for 50,000 points after $3000 spend. That was actually one of the opening salvos in my churning period, since before that I was pretty focused on United/Chase, not realizing the utility of having points in multiple programs (I know, I know). The Amex offer seemed like a good deal, especially after I learned how easy it is to share Amex points by transferring them to authorized users’ frequent flyer accounts.
Much to my surprise, another mailer came today offering her the same deal (50,000 points after only $2000 spend), although the dreaded “once per lifetime” language was nowhere to be found. To be specific, neither the “have or have had this product” or the “card enrolled in the Membership Rewards program” verbiage appeared anywhere on the offer or the terms and conditions. My first thought was, “What makes HER so goddamned special, AMEX???” My second thought was to be happy that such a rare, beautiful missive appeared in my mailbox, since I had heard rumors of such restriction-less targeted offers being sent out, but I assumed I’d never receive one, given our current level of engagement with Amex. I did just write about how I was hoping to have Justine open more cards in 2017, though, so this definitely comes at an opportune time. (My third thought was that this definitely bodes well for the future, and while I probably won’t get any of these offers myself for a few years, there’s definitely a sliver of hope for more Amex bonuses in the future.)
What about you, though? Well, in the interest of public service, the POID code for this offer is CCFY:0001. Now, before you call Amex and quote this code, please be advised that you shouldn’t call Amex and quote this code. Amex has cracked down on people applying for offers not intended for them, and it’s very likely that if you did receive the 50k bonus, your points would be clawed back, and your entire Membership Rewards account might end up frozen indefinitely. But, I mean, you do you. If you want to roll the dice, you might get lucky.
BTW, POID codes are different than RSVP codes. If I were dumb enough to give you the personalized RSVP code on the offer and you entered it online, you’d see my wife’s information pre-populated on the webform. POID codes are used when calling AMEX’s new accounts department, and they describe the offer itself and not the recipient. Back in 2015 when the 100k Platinum offer went public for a couple days, people were able to get the bonus by calling and quoting the POID, even if they couldn’t get the offer to load online. Like I said, though, that was then and this is now. Amex isn’t as friendly as they once were toward this type of rule-bending, and I don’t recommend you test your limits unless you’re an outlaw who plays by your own rules and has nothing to lose.
New readers may not be familiar with this, but I’m a pretty big deal around here, given that I singlehandedly uncovered THE BIGGEST HOTEL MISTAKE FARE IN HISTORY, and I have received innumerable plaudits as a result. Okay just kidding, I just stumbled upon a Hyatt mistake fare this past summer, but it blew up way bigger than I thought it would. AND I JUST WON’T SHUT UP ABOUT IT APPARENTLY.
To Hyatt’s credit, they sent me an email a few weeks later letting me know that I got in while the getting was good, and that despite the fact that the rate was indeed a mistake, they would still honor it. However, I’ve been slightly nervous ever since that they were going to find out it was me who unleashed the torrent of shit they had to deal with and take some sort of punitive action, like leaving stale croissants on my pillow or something.
Anyway, today I woke up to an email from them and was immediately worried that they had gone ahead and decided to cancel my reservation, but it turns out that it just has to do with the full renovation going on at the hotel.
Basically, no Regency Club access, but free breakfast and drinks in the hotel’s restaurant to compensate. Should I be happy about this? I’m only in Paris for a few days and will be out and about most of the time, so I don’t know if I would have spent much time in the club anyway – so maybe breakfast (and tapas!) in the restaurant is better. Did you get this email? Have you been to the hotel before? Is the club amazing? Tell me how to feel about this, and I’ll do it!
[Morning after addendum (seriously the last thing I’ll write about this, I promise): Upon further examination, I learned that both The Points Guy and Mommy Points wrote about the 45 miles per dollar deal yesterday, which also applied to American and United. (Alaska is by far the strongest program of the three in my opinion, which is why I didn’t bother to mention the other two yesterday.) I’d argue that both of those blogs buried the lede pretty significantly, though, given that both posts were about the 500/1000 mile spending bonuses, and a chance to buy miles on the (very) cheap is far more exciting to me than a measly 500 or 1000 point bonus. Still, it’s not like I was the sole voice in the wilderness or anything, so PERHAPS I gave myself a little bit too much credit yesterday. No joke, I even had a fucking dream about people getting mad at me for my vainglorious blog posts about some goddamn magazines. You know you’re a churner when…]
To recap, Alaska Mileage Plan shopping is offering 45 miles per dollar on purchases from Magazines.com today. None of the usual suspect blogs have written about this yet (at least the last time I checked), which is seeming weirder and weirder as the day goes on. Here’s why: in this post, Lucky writes about how the 40% promotion on Alaska miles that they offered earlier this year is typically as good as you’ll see (though he does recommend against purchasing speculatively at this rate). At a 40% bonus, you received miles for around 2.11 cents each – but you had to buy at least 30,000 miles to get the full 40% bonus. I passed when this came around, because I didn’t want to invest $600+ in Alaska miles with no use in mind. (Yes, I pretty much do whatever Lucky says, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.)
Now, earlier today I wrote about the Magazines.com promotion as offering miles for 2.2 cents each, plus free magazines. Looking back at Alaska’s historical mileage purchase bonuses, that’s almost as good as “as good as it gets,” but you can get in on the deal for a much smaller initial investment – meaning that if you have enough time to wait for the miles to post, it’s a fantastic way to top up an account for cheap. However, I realized this evening that it gets even better. Alaska is also offering 1000 bonus miles for spending $300 through the shopping portal over the next couple of weeks. That means that if you spent $300 at Magazines.com, you’d get 14,500 miles when all is said and done, which comes out to less than 2.1 cents per mile – even better than the 40% bonus promotion with less than half the required investment. (In fairness, if you were to spend the same $633 that you would have had to spend to get the 40% bonus, you’d end up paying 2.14 cents per acquired mile through Magazines.com, which isn’t quite as good, although we’re really splitting hairs now.)
Also, and I swear to god I don’t have a relationship with Magazines.com (who is a religious company, so I’m certain they’d take offense to much of what’s on my blog anyway), their selection is actually pretty good! Rather than subscribing to a bunch of shit that I’ll barely read, I was able to find Airways Magazine (a pretty decent publication for avgeeks), Eye (one of the best design magazines in the world), and Elephant, which is new to me but looks really cool. Those are all neat magazines that I was thinking of subscribing to anyway, so this promotion really worked out well for me.
This isn’t really a news blog, per se, given that I don’t usually have scoops before anyone else. That said, after a quick check on MilesFeed (which you should definitely add to your bookmarks if you haven’t already), I didn’t see any mention of this, so here you go. In addition to Alaska Mileage Plan Shopping offering a 1000-point bonus on spending $300 through their portal, they’re also offering 45 miles per dollar on magazine subscriptions from Magazines.com. Or, if you prefer, they’re offering miles for 2.22 cents apiece and throwing in free magazines. I re-upped a lapsed subscription to Airways Magazine for two years, netting me 3823 miles in the process.
I figured I might as well go back and look at all the bonuses I received this year, since it would be nice to benchmark future years against this one. I have a feeling the next years won’t be nearly as good as these last two, given the tightening we’re seeing from issuers. Anyway, this is everything I raked in this year in roughly chronological order, excepting bonuses from normal spending (including Amex offers).
50,000 Amex points from the Premier Rewards Gold
60,000 Chase points from the Ink+, which I applied for before it went under the 5/24 rule. I eventually had this matched to 70,000 by being really charming.
20,000 Chase points from referrals on the Sapphire Preferred and Ink+
35,000 SPG points from the increased bonus on the Starwood Amex.
20,000 Citi points from the ThankYou Preferred.
6,000 Citi points from a retention offer to downgrade my Citi Premier to a Preferred
75,000 Amex points from the increased bonus on the Mercedes Benz Platinum
60,000 SkyMiles from the increased bonus on the Platinum SkyMiles card
50,000 SkyMiles from the increased bonus on the Gold SkyMiles card
75,000 JetBlue miles from their ridiculous points match promotion with Virgin
100,000 Chase points from the Sapphire Reserve
15,000 Amex points from a retention offer on my Platinum card
30,000 Alaska miles from the BofA Alaska card
10,000 Amex points from the Blue for Business
40,000 AAdvantage miles from the Barclay Aviator Red
I’m earning points faster than I can use them right now, especially in programs like Delta, American, and Alaska. I even bought 30,000 SPG points in order to convert them to Alaska miles, which (when combined with the 10,000 SPG points I already had and funneled through Virgin America) will generate 65,000 Alaska miles at a cost per mile of around .8 cents. I’m especially concerned about the Delta miles, since a massive devaluation to SkyMiles seems to be right around the corner. Still, should they go through with the devaluation and lock SkyMiles in at $.01 apiece, I will have earned $1100 in bonuses against $195 spending. Not as good as using them for long haul business class, but not worthless either. Earn and burn is the gospel, but for someone like me who can really only do one or two long-haul trips in a year, I’m bound to end up with more points than I can use, unless I take my foot off the gas on the earning side. In my case, I’d rather focus on earning as many points as possible while the banks still allow it, and hopefully those points will retain most of their value by the time I do get around to spending them.
(A good example of this is the AAdvantage miles I got from the Aviator Red – I pretty much ignore AAdvantage completely, since their Europe awards mostly suck, and American has been terrible about availability lately. I was curious about them until they devalued once the merger was complete, and now it’s even harder to earn miles through sign-up bonuses given Citi’s new 24 month restrictions on bonuses within the same family of cards. Having said all that, Barclay is offering 40,000 miles after paying the annual fee, which is around 0.24 cents per mile – good enough of a deal in my mind to take aadvantage of, even if I have no idea how I’ll use the miles. Plus, I had around 8,000 miles that will expire in a couple months, so at the very least, this will keep those alive. At some point next year, I’ll probably open a Citi card and get 40-50k additional miles, which will give me enough to actually have some fun with.)
What’s up for next year? With Justine’s permission, I want to get her in the game with some more cards. Reddit refers to this as “two player mode,” which is a great term. She has a couple cards right now, but 90% of our churning happens on my Social Security number. I’m especially interested in getting her an SPG Amex before those go away, hopefully taking advantage of the 5000 point referral bonus. For myself, I have my eye on the JetBlue cards, since I have a bunch of miles there now, and I need around 100,000 for a round-trip SFO-JFK in Mint. After that, I need to decide whether I want to get rid of my personal Amex Platinum and get the Business version. I certainly won’t be able to spend enough to get the full 100,000 point bonus, but 50,000 points is still pretty good. I don’t want to keep both Platinum cards, though, so I need to weigh how much I care about earning 5 points per dollar on airfare vs. getting 2 cents per point on first class airfare. Finally, I’m not ignoring Amex’s Delta cards, since I have one personal and one business card and thus have bonuses on the opposite version of each still available to me. I know, I know… racking up even MORE SkyMiles with no use in mind is probably dumb. We’ll see – if they offer elevated bonuses again, I’ll probably jump on them just cuz. The only other thing on my radar is another Alaska card, since I’m convinced BofA is going to impose a restriction on the 30,000 point bonus at some point. I’m hoping to see some exciting new stuff – probably nothing like what happened with Chase this year, but it would be nice to mine some new bonuses now that I’ve already claimed most of the biggies.
What about you, blog readers? What does your 2017 churning landscape look like? And why are you reading this blog on Christmas anyway – are you Jewish or something? (I’m Jewish, so I can say that.)
Windbag Miles 