A couple of days ago, GiftCardMall suddenly disappeared from cash back portals.  I had listed GiftCardMall as one of the best ways to buy $500 Visa cards in the post “Best options for buying $500 Visa gift cards,” but they pulled out of their affiliate channels the same day I posted.  Luckily, they’re back!

FatWallet:

1% cash back, but terms exclude Visa gift cards:

TopCashBack:

2% cash back for regular gift cards. 1% cash back for Visa gift cards:

Sign Up Links

You can find links to sign up for the above cash back portals and others on my “Sign-Up Links” page (which can also be found under the Resources menu of any page on the Frequent Miler site).

UPDATE: Code BLOSSOM15 is no longer working.  Kohl’s charge card holders can still get 30% off with code SAVE30, but it is no longer possible to get 40.5% off in total.

Until May 22, Kohl’s has two stackable coupons that total to 40.5% off everything (except gift cards) at Kohl’s.  There is both a 30% off coupon (SAVE30) and a 15% off coupon (BLOSSOM15).  The trick is that you do need to have a Kohl’s charge card to qualify for the 30% off coupon.  When you apply both coupons, you’ll get a combined discount of 40.5% off.  The great thing is that this discount is applied to sales & clearance prices as well!  If you spend more than $75 (after discounts), you’ll also qualify for free shipping.

The picture above shows an example of stacking both coupons with a product that is on sale.  The purchase comes with free shipping because the total order (before taxes) is greater than $75.  This is just and example and is not meant to be a recommendation to buy the product shown. 

Kohl’s Cash

In addition to this 40.5% discount, you will qualify for $10 of Kohl’s cash for every $50 spent (after discounts, but before shipping and sales tax).  That sounds like an additional 20% rebate if you buy in multiples of $50, but its not really.  When you pay with Kohl’s cash, the portion of your order paid that way does not qualify for discounts and does not count towards totals needed for free shipping.  Regardless, Kohl’s Cash can be used to buy stuff, so it’s a nice extra perk!  Plus, Kohl’s Cash is deducted before sales tax is calculated, so you do get a small discount by not having to pay tax on that portion of your purchase.

Shopping Portals

When shopping online, it’s always a good idea to start with a portal that offers points or cash back for your purchases.  I’ve always had great luck with Chase’s Ultimate Rewards Mall, and they offer an amazing 10 points per dollar for Kohl’s purchases!  In my experience, the points are earned regardless of what coupons have been applied.

Gift Cards

You can save even more (or earn more points) by buying Kohl’s gift cards before making your purchases.  If you want to get the gift cards quickly, the simplest approach is to go to a store where your credit card earns bonus points and buy Kohl’s gift cards there.  One great example is to use a Chase Ink card at an office supply store to get 5 points per dollar.  Another similar option is to double dip at Staples.com.  Start at a cash back portal such as uPromise and click through to Staples.com.  Buy Kohl’s e-gift cards and pay with a Chase Ink card (5X).  The e-gift cards should arrive overnight or early the next day.  Note that Kohl’s only allows up to 4 gift cards to be used per order.  Finally, if you’d rather save money than earn points, consider gift card resellers.  Search GiftCardGranny.com for deals on Kohl’s gift cards.  If you’re in a hurry, opt for electronic gift cards rather than paper ones.

Happy shopping!

Thanks goes to this SlickDeals thread for finding this deal!

Club Carlson recently announced their new summer promotion: stay two nights and get 10,000 bonus points.  There’s no doubt that this is a nice bonus if you plan to stay two nights anyway.  The question I have is whether this promo is good enough to go out of one’s way for.  Is it worth booking a weekend stay just for the points?

Stay two or more consecutive nights anytime between May 13 and July 21, 2013 at any of our more than 1,000 participating Carlson Rezidor hotels worldwide to earn 10,000 bonus Points for each eligible stay.

Details about Club Carlson’s new promotion can be found here.  Make sure to register, just in case!  You can also read Mommy Points’ view of the promotion here; Points, Miles & Martinis’ view here; and Lucky’s view here.

In 2011 and 2012, Club Carlson ran promotions in which it was possible to earn up to 50,000 points for a one night stay.  There was no doubt then that it was worth booking a cheap stay just for the points.  This promotion, though offers only 1/5 the points and requires a two night stay instead of one.  So, this promotion requires deeper analysis…

Near Optimal Earnings

In the post “Earn 70 points per dollar at Club Carlson hotels” I showed how it is possible to stack multiple Club Carlson points earning options onto a single stay.  Almost all of the possibilities are unlocked simply by getting a Club Carlson Premier Rewards Signature card (or its twin Business card).  With either card, you’ll earn 10 points per dollar at Club Carlson properties when you pay with the Club Carlson credit card, and you’ll earn bonus points as a Gold elite member (which is an automatic perk of the credit card).  You could do slightly better with top level Concierge status, but for most people that is out of reach since it requires 75 nights or 30 stays to achieve.

Another way to boost earnings is to sign up for “Club Carlson for Business.”  If you are a business owner, you can get a business account and earn an additional 10 points per dollar for bookings made online.  You will also qualify for a 5% discount off their standard rates.

Here is a full run-down of points earned for a regular stay (without the summer promotion) if you have the Club Carlson credit card and a business account:

• Base earnings for any stay: 20 points per dollar
• Elite bonus (Gold members): 10 points per dollar
• Credit card earnings: 10 points per dollar
• Club Carlson for Business: 10 points per dollar
• Online booking bonus: 2000 points

So, even without a promotion, it is possible to earn 50 points per dollar plus 2000 points per stay (not per night) for booking online.

10K Promotion: 110X

By stacking the points earned as shown above, with the summer 10K promotion, you can now earn up to 50 points per dollar plus 12,000 points per stay.

Ignoring taxes, with a $100 per night stay, you would spend $200 and earn 22,000 points.  In other words, you would earn 110 points per dollar!

How much are points worth?

A few months ago, I looked at Club Carlson hotel prices and redemption rates in a number of cities.  I found that, in my sample, the per point value of Club Carlson points ranged from .22 cents to .89 cents each.  The average point value came to .43 cents.  So, 110 points per dollar is like a 47% rebate.

The math gets better with the Club Carlson credit card which offers a free night with each reward stay of 2 nights or more.  In other words, if you stay two nights on points, you only need to pay for one night!  For details, see “Club Carlson rocks our world… Again.”  So, by focusing on two-night stays, your points can be worth twice as much!  The value of points then (based on my sample) goes up as high as .44 to 1.78 cents per point with an average value of .86 cents each. 

If you value Club Carlson points at .86 cents each, then 110 points per dollar is like a 94.6% rebate!  Clearly, if you’re planning to travel anyway and if a Club Carlson hotel is a viable option, then you will do very well with this promotion.

Taxes vs. Cash Back

It’s hard to estimate how much you’ll pay in taxes since that varies from State to State and from city to city.  Credit card points will be earned for the full cost of your stay, but other point multiples shown above will be based on the stay cost before taxes.

It’s worth noting that there are a number of cash back portals that include Club Carlson properties such as Radisson, Park Plaza, and Country Inn & Suites.  For example, TopCashBack currently offers 9% cash back for those hotels.  If you start your booking from a cash back portal and click through to one of those Club Carlson web sites, you will still be eligible for all point earnings and online booking bonuses.  For a list of cash back portals to consider, please see my Sign-Up Links page.

Overall, rather than trying to estimate the effect of taxes and cash back portals, for the sake of this analysis let’s assume that they cancel each other out.  In other words, I’ll calculate the value of mattress runs without factoring in taxes or cash back.

Mattress Runs

The point of pure mattress runs is to book a hotel stay just to earn points or elite status.  In this case, we’re just talking about point earnings.  If you really don’t value the stay at all and just want to get points, then the goal should be to get points at a cost lower than their redemption value and lower than they could be bought elsewhere.

Club Carlson outright sells points to consumers for just .7 cents per point.  So, even if you value points higher than that, it wouldn’t make sense to do a mattress run if you end up paying .7 cents or more for your points.

Personally, I wouldn’t consider a Club Carlson mattress run unless the full cost was less than .4 cents per point.  The idea, after all, is to get a bargain.  However, if you are working on building up your points for a specific high value redemption (Radisson Blue Paris, for example), you might be willing to set a higher bar.

Here then are the calculations for the cost per point for mattress runs for Club Carlson hotels at various price points with the 10K promotion included:

* Points earned: This column assumes that you achieve near optimal point earnings as described above (e.g. 50 points per dollar plus 2000 points per stay before including the 10K promotion).

As you can see in the table above, booking a $50 per night room just to get points would cost .59 cents per point.  This is better than buying points outright at .7 cents per point, but not by a wide margin.  And, it doesn’t come close to my “buy” target of .4 cents per point.

So, go ahead and book a two night stay if you value both the points and the stay, but don’t book it for the points alone.

Second night add-on

Suppose you have a planned one night stay at a Club Carlson property.  Is it worth adding a second night to qualify for the 10K promotion?  The second night would get you up to 50 points per dollar for the cost of the second night, and 10,000 bonus points thanks to the summer promotion.  Here are the calculations for the cost per point for adding a second night to your stay:

* Extra points earned:  These are the points earned for the added-on second night.  This column assumes that you achieve near optimal point earnings as described above (e.g. 50 points per dollar before including the 10K promotion).

As you can see in the table above, tacking on a second night to a $50 per night stay would result in “buying” points at only .4 cents each.  As room prices go up, the cost to buy points this way increases as well.  So, if you are planning a one night stay in an extremely cheap Club Carlson hotel, it may be worth it to extend your stay to two nights depending on how highly you value Club Carlson points.

Background: Million Mile Madness was the mad quest to earn a million points in one month. Throughout March, I did everything I could to earn as many points as possible while keeping within my ethical boundaries. During the month, I tracked all of the points that I expected, and I declared victory when the expected total topped one million.

Million Mile Headaches

Not everything went smoothly during my million mile quest.  Last week, for example, I wrote about problems I had with SunTrust (see “Million Mile Headaches: SunTrust“).  And, in March, I wrote about some issues I had with Sears (see “A setback from Sears“).  Also in March, I published “Bumps in the road” where I told the story of my botched attempt to get 15 points per dollar when buying items from Lowes.  This is a continuation of that story…

Recap of what went before

I started the month with a plan to earn 75,000 points from Lowes as follows: 1) Use credit cards that earn 5X at office supply stores to buy Home Improvement gift cards at Office Depot; 2) Go through an online portal that offers 5 points per dollar at Lowes and buy physical Lowes’ gift cards.  Pay with the Home Improvement gift cards; and 3) Go through the 5X portal again to buy $5,000 worth of merchandise and pay with Lowes’ gift cards.  If all had worked as planned, I would have earned 15 points per dollar and therefore 75,000 points from buying $5000 worth of merchandise (which I would then resell).

The first $3500 worth of gift card purchases seemed to go smoothly.  I bought out all of the Home Improvement cards available at my local Office Depot.  I registered each card and then went online through a portal to buy Lowes’ gift cards.  The gift cards arrived at my house and all portal points posted as expected.

So, with that success under my belt, I drove to a distant Office Depot to buy more Home Improvement cards and I used those cards to buy more Lowes’ gift cards.  To make a long story short, a computer glitch prevented the new orders from going through, and Lowes’ re-credited my Home Improvement gift cards which I had previously thrown away thinking that they had been used up.  I had to find the original purchase receipt from the Office Depot to get my money back.  And, in fact, I received a refund check from InComm (the company behind the Home Improvement cards) a few weeks later. 

You can read the full story here: Bumps in the road.

Preparing to buy

Once Lowes’ fixed their computer glitch, I was ready to try again.  I still needed $1500 more of Lowes’ gift cards.  This time, when ordering the gift cards, I paid $4.99 per card for overnight delivery.  It was March 26th, and time was running out for my challenge.  When the cards arrived the next day, I now had about $5000 worth of Lowes’ gift cards.  Or so, I thought…

My plan had been to buy $5000 worth of Nest Learning Thermostats 2nd Generation.  These were top sellers on Amazon.com so I knew they would sell quickly.  With my 10% off movers coupon, I still would lose money on the whole deal (due to sales taxes and seller fees), but I had calculated that the loss was worth it given all of the points earned.

One big (and one little) break

On March 27th, I found that someone had posted several Lowes’ 10% off coupons on SlickDeals.  This was great for me because I really was thinking of moving and would have liked to use my movers coupon for that move.  So, I was able to use the SlickDeals coupon and keep my own for later.  That was my little break for the day.

The bigger bonus came when I browsed to Lowes and discovered that the Nest Learning Thermostat 1st Generation was on sale!  The sale price was lower than Amazon’s usual price, and so I calculated that I would lose much less on this deal than I would have with the Nest II.

Uh oh

I clicked through to Lowes from an online portal, and added $5000 worth of thermostats to my cart.  When I went to pay, I discovered a problem.  Four of my $500 Lowes’ gift cards couldn’t be applied to the order.  Something was wrong.

I called Lowes and learned that those four gift cards had been affected by the same computer glitch that had caused me trouble before.  But, unlike those orders, Lowes had sent me these gift cards as if everything was fine.  Once again, my Home Improvement gift cards had been re-credited, but I had long since thrown them away (I’ll never do that again!).

I repeated the earlier process of requesting the old receipt from Office Depot and emailing it to InComm.  As with the previous time, I asked for my refund as a check rather than replacement gift cards.  This check also arrived in a few weeks.

Final order

I ended up buying just $3000 worth of thermostats.  When they arrived, I sent them to Amazon for their fulfillment program and they sold out quickly.  I probably could have broken even or even made a profit by selling these through other channels, but I was happy to have the Lowes chapter behind me.

Learn about Million Mile Madness:

• A crazy million mile idea. Should I do it?
• Million Mile Madness, it’s on
• Million Mile Madness: Strategy
• Million Mile Madness: Preparing to buy & sell
• Million Mile Madness: Tracking points and expenses
• Million Mile Madness: The big churn story
• Million Mile Madness: buying, selling Kohl’s
• Million Mile Madness: Banking on Lowe’s
• Million Mile Madness: A setback from Sears
• Million Mile Madness: Pending Success
• Million Mile Madness: Bumps in the road
• Million Mile Madness: Credit scores and pulls
• Million Mile Madness: Easy points
• Million Mile Madness: Success!!!!!
• Million Mile Madness: Which points?
• Million Mile Madness: How it was done
• Million Mile Headaches: SunTrust

Recently, Visa and MasterCard gift cards became great tools for earning points and miles thanks to the new ability to assign PINs (see “Gift card PINs“).  It’s now possible to buy gift cards and cash them out easily by loading them to your Bluebird card or other means.  In other words, buying debit gift cards is now like buying cash and paying with a credit card.  One can earn points and miles and pay only the fee associated with the gift card (if any).

Size Matters:  When buying gift cards in order to earn points & miles, the best cards are those with the lowest net cost as a percentage of card value.  High value gift cards tend to have the lowest fees (as a percentage of their value) and they are easier to deal with.  For example, a Bluebird card can be loaded up to $1000 per day at Walmart (via “Swipe Reloads”) for free.  With $100 gift cards, you would have to do 10 swipes to get to $1000.  With $500 gift cards, it takes only 2 swipes.  And, while $1000 gift cards exist (at least, they used to!), they’re very hard to find.  So, currently, $500 gift cards are the sweet spot to look for.

Visa vs. MasterCard: While it is now possible to set PINs with both Visa and MasterCard gift cards, people have reported more issues in trying to use MasterCards with PINs than Visa gift cards.  Until that changes, I’d recommend favoring Visa gift cards whenever you have the choice.

Here is a roundup of the best options I know of for buying $500 gift cards:

Grocery store gift cards with fuel points

Some grocery stores have rewards programs in which they give fuel points that can be used to get a discount when filling up your car at a participating gas station.  Of those stores, some will give fuel points for the purchase of variable load gift cards.  For example, I’ve had success buying $500 Visa gift cards at Kroger and I earned 500 fuel points each time.  The value of fuel points is directly proportional to how much fuel you pump at one time (see “What is a fuel point worth?“).  Since I drive a car with a fairly small tank and I don’t try to game the system, fuel points are worth just over a penny each to me.  If you have a large fuel tank and/or practice tricks to increase how much you pump at one time, fuel points can be worth much more to you.  At the minimum, though, I’d say that the fuel points earned are worth at least the fee associated with the gift card ($5.95, for example).  So, with this approach you can basically buy $500 gift cards with no net fee (as long as you actually use the earned fuel points).  The $500 gift cards I’ve found at Kroger are issued by U.S. Bank and do require that you call in the number on the back of the packaging to set the PIN.  When I’ve setup the PIN this way, I’ve had no problem using the cards, but when I tried other approaches (such as trying to use the last four digits of the card # as the PIN without calling first), it not only didn’t work, but the card still didn’t work for debit purchases after I called to set the PIN.

Pros:

• Pay with any credit card accepted by the grocery store (including those that give bonus points or cash back for grocery purchases).  I’ve also had success paying with American Express gift cards.
• Banks will generally treat these purchases as grocery store purchases so you do not have to fear the purchase counting as a cash advance.
• Fee free or even a money maker depending on how you use the earned fuel points.

Cons:

• Debit PIN feature on U.S. Bank gift cards is finicky and may not work if you don’t set the PIN properly before attempting to use the card.
• Requires extra step of calling to set the PIN.
• Your local grocery store might not award fuel points for these purchases (so, experiment!).
• There is probably a limit to how many fuel points you can realistically use.

Chase Gift Cards

Currently, Chase is offering their Visa gift cards fee-free.  You can order the cards online at chase.com/gift-cards.  The current message on the website says:

We apologize that we are temporarily unable to offer Chase Gift Cards through the branch. Due to the inconvenience, our standard shipping fee of $4.95 for online gift card orders is temporarily waived.

This is a great way to buy gift cards up to $500 each, but Chase only accepts Visa or MasterCard for payment.

Pros:

• Fee free!

Cons:

• They only accept Chase credit cards for payment
• Gift cards are not available to residents of the following States: AR, CT, HI, ME, NH, NJ, RI, VT (Hat Tip Scott)
• It’s possible that some banks will treat these purchases as cash advances.

GiftCardMall.com

Until recently, GiftCardMall offered $1000 Visa gift cards which were perfect for loading to Bluebird.  Sadly, they recently lowered the top Visa gift card amount to $500 and they raised their fees slightly.  Even with those changes, though, GiftCardMall can be a good deal, especially when you start your purchase from a cash back portal.

TopCashBack offers 1% cash back for GiftCardMall Visa purchases.  If you click through from TopCashBack to GiftCardMall and buy two $500 Visa cards with standard non-trackable delivery, your credit card will be charged $1,015.38.  If all goes well, you’ll get back $10 from TopCashBack, so your net cost will be $5.38 which is a very reasonable net fee of .54% (and if you follow the Frequent Miler Laboratory closely, you can do even better…)

Note that GiftCardMall sends the Visa gift cards in one envelope and sends activation codes in another.  I think that this helps make delivery of the cards more secure and so I would be willing to accept non-trackable delivery.  If you prefer trackable delivery, the total price goes up only $2.

Pros:

• Pay with any credit card accepted by GiftCardMall. 
• With GiftCardMall gift cards, you do not need to set the PIN in advance.  Simply use the last four digits of the card number a the PIN.

Cons:

• Your purchase through TopCashBack (or any portal) may not track correctly, so you might not get paid.
• GiftCardMall often holds up orders as they investigate them.  This can be a hassle.
• It’s not hard, but you do need to activate the cards online once you receive them.
• It’s unclear whether any credit card companies would treat these purchases as cash advances.  I’ve never heard of this happening with GiftCardMall, but the possibility does exist (especially with Citibank cards).

OneVanilla Prepaid Cards

Certain OneVanilla cards can be loaded up to $500 with only a $4.95 fee each.  This is $1 cheaper than most competitors.  $500 OneVanilla cards can be found at certain gas stations, drug stores, and grocery stores.  In my experience you can use these cards without ever setting up a PIN. The card simply uses the first PIN you type in.

Pros:

• Pay with any credit card accepted by the store.  If your credit card earns bonus points at the store visited, then you should earn bonus points for these purchases as well.
• Banks will generally treat these purchases as store purchases so you do not have to fear the purchase counting as a cash advance.
• No need to set the PIN in advance.

Cons:

• The $4.95 fee amounts to approximately 1% of the card’s value. This is not a bad price, but it is more than the options presented above.

Reader Experiences

Have you found any better deals than those listed above for $500 gift cards?  Have you had any experiences to add to (or contradict) what I wrote?  Please comment below.

Today, Plastic Jungle shut down their shop.  They sent an email to all of their customers announcing that they would no longer buy and sell discount gift cards directly from and to consumers.  Instead of doing business directly with consumers, Plastic Jungle will continue to offer gift card exchange services through their partners (United MileagePlus, FlexPerks, BestBuy, CVS, and Zeevex).  This means that, instead of selling your used gift cards to Plastic Jungle for cash, you can trade them in for miles or points instead. 

Of course, if you want cash for your gift cards, there remain several other options.  Cardpool, GiftCards.com, and ABC Gift Cards are a few examples of services that currently compete with Plastic Jungle and will presumably continue to offer the services that Plastic Jungle is giving up.

Since I began blogging as Frequent Miler in September 2011, many deals I’ve written about have involved Plastic Jungle one way or another.  For example, on September 22 2011, I published “Buy American Airlines Miles for less than 1.6 cents each. No limit.”  In that post I showed how to effectively buy AA miles by buying Sears gift cards via the AAdvantage eShopping portal and then selling the gift cards to Plastic Jungle.  This was back when miles earned from any source counted towards AA lifetime status.

More recently, I wrote often about how to take advantage of TopCashBack’s 4% rebate for Plastic Jungle purchases and sales (which later dropped to 2.5%, then recently to 1%).  Thanks to that extra cash back, it was sometimes possible to buy discount gift cards from Plastic Jungle and to sell them back at a profit.  It wasn’t easy, though.  Plastic Jungle was able to detect if you tried to sell the same card back to them, so it was necessary to “launder” the gift card first by using it to buy a new gift card (stores like Walmart and Target allow this) before selling it back to Plastic Jungle. 

In case you’re interested, here is the text of the email that was sent out today from Plastic Jungle:

The team at Plastic Jungle would like to thank you for your participation in our gift card programs over the past seven years. Since 2006, Plastic Jungle has been a leader in providing you with great deals on gift cards in a secure marketplace.

 

As our business has grown and evolved, we have seen that the greatest potential for Plastic Jungle’s long-term success is in working directly with our business partners. As a result, we will no longer be buying and selling gift cards at www.plasticjungle.com. This change is taking place effective today.

With this transition, there are a few important things you should know. First, all orders currently being processed will be honored with the same guarantee of service and safety that we have upheld for seven years. Second, our website will be available to allow you to access your account and retrieve gift cards until November 1, 2013. Third, Plastic Jungle will continue to offer gift card exchange services to customers through our partners. Finally, our customer service desk will remain open during this period to answer inquiries and resolve any concerns. If you have any questions, we encourage you to visit our FAQs page or contact Plastic Jungle Customer Success at customersuccess@plasticjungle.com.

Thank you again for being an important part of the Plastic Jungle family over the past seven years. We appreciate all of your support as we begin this exciting new mission as a company.

All the best,
The Plastic Jungle Team

On any flight, I’d rather be up front.  Yes, it’s true that compared to international first class, domestic first class stinks.  Heck, compared to international business class, domestic first class stinks.  Most domestic first class products simply offer a bigger seat and a few snacks and drinks.  Sometimes you’ll get a meal.  So, it’s not an amazing “gotta write home” type of experience, but there’s no denying that domestic first class is considerably better than coach.  While John Fogerty likes to sing “Put me in Coach,” that’s not for me — I want to be up front (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

When looking at airline award charts, there’s a value gap when it comes to domestic first class.  As an example, let’s look at United’s award chart (Saver level) for a selection of round-trips originating in the United States:

Most domestic flights are two cabin, coach and first, so a domestic first class round trip is usually a 50K award (at the Saver level).

Note that domestic two-cabin first class requires twice the miles of coach whereas international 3 cabin first class also requires about twice the miles.  And international business class requires less than twice the miles.  With international flights, it’s easy to argue that the product you get in business or first class is more than twice as good as coach, but with domestic flights that’s a tough claim to make.  Domestic first class might be 30% better than coach or even 50% better, but few would argue that it is worth twice as much. 

This situational creates a dilemma for people like me.  I have lots of miles and I like to fly first class whenever possible, but I also like to get good value from my miles.  I don’t mind spending 50K for a long transcontinental flight and I don’t mind flying coach on very short flights, but what about the much more common (for me) flights in the two to four hour range?  Are there options for flying up front that offer good value?

Obviously one could achieve high level elite status with an airline and hope to get upgraded, but these days most flights run near capacity and the chances of scoring elite upgrades have gone down considerably compared to a few years ago.  Upgrading using miles is rarely a good value.  Sometimes paid upgrades make sense especially when they’re offered at a last-minute discount, but I’m looking for opportunities to book domestic first class from the get-go. 

Ideally, domestic first class would have no more than a 50% premium over coach.

Best Domestic Options

I’ll start this list with a few good options that I know of.  I’m hoping that readers will chime in with more ideas, and I’ll add to the list as we go along.

Free One-Ways

When booking an international or overseas award, it is often possible to add a free domestic one-way award before or after your trip.  Through this trick, when you book an overseas business or first class award, you can tack on a free domestic one-way in first class.  So, if you’re planning a big trip anyway, you might as well get a free domestic flight as well!  It’s outside the scope of this post to explain how to book these awards (or why they work), but you can get the scoop here from MileValue:

• Free Oneways on American Airlines Awards
• Free Oneways on United Awards
• Free Oneways on US Airways Awards
• Free Oneways on Delta Awards

Best ways to earn American, United, US Airways, and Delta miles:

• Sign up for credit cards for big sign up bonuses.  Details here: Best credit card offers.
• Transfer from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) to American, US Airways, or Delta.  Don’t bother with United, though, because the transfer rate is poor.  Details here.
• Transfer from Chase Membership Rewards to United
• Transfer from American Express Membership Rewards to Delta

Three domestic one-ways for the price of two

Delta is unique among the major airlines in that their domestic round trip awards allow free stopovers and open-jaws.  What this means is that it is often possible to construct an itinerary of three one-way trips (a round trip plus a one-way) for the price of a single round trip award.  At the lowest level, Delta charges 45,000 miles for a round trip first class domestic award.  Delta is notoriously stingy about opening saver-level award space, but with this trick it is at least theoretically possible to book three one-way flights for only 15,000 miles each.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few limitations to this trick and it works best only if you live near a Delta hub.  For details please see:

• Free Oneways on Delta Awards
• Delta SkyMiles: Value from domestic flights
• Delta: two one-way awards for 12,500 miles

Best ways to earn Delta miles:

• Sign up for a Delta credit card. Details here: Best credit card offers.
• Transfer from American Express Membership Rewards
• Transfer from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG).  Details here.

Miles & More

The recent flurry of attention regarding a 50K offer for Lufthansa’s Miles & More credit card had one really good outcome: It brought to light a terrific use for those miles.  You can use Miles & More miles to book United Airlines‘ domestic two-cabin first class (or business class on their 3 cabin flights) for only 35,000 miles round trip or 17,000 miles one-way (yes, booking two one-ways is slightly cheaper!).  35,000 miles is a reasonable 40% premium over usual 25K coach awards.  MileValue has the details here.

Best ways to earn Miles & More miles:

• Sign up for the Lufthansa credit card (currently with a 50K bonus).  Details here: Best credit card offers
• Transfer points from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG).  Get a 5000 point bonus when you transfer 20,000 points.  Details here.

Japan Airlines Mileage Bank

JAL’s Mileage Bank program requires only 35,000 miles to fly business class or two-cabin first class on American Airlines.  Hat Tip Murtuza.

Best ways to earn JAL Mileage Bank miles:

• Transfer points from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Get a 5000 point bonus when you transfer 20,000 points. Details here.

Singapore Airlines Krisflyer Miles

Like Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines is a Star Alliance member.  And, like Lufthansa, their miles can be used to fly United first class within the continental U.S. at a lower rate than with United miles.  Singapore charges 40,000 miles round trip, which is 10K better than United’s price, but 5K higher than Lufthansa’s price.  40K for first class is 60% more than 25K for coach, so this deal doesn’t quite meet my goal of paying no more than a 50% premium, but it’s certainly better than the usual 100% premium!

Best ways to earn Singapore Krisflyer miles:

• Transfer from American Express Membership Rewards
• Transfer points from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Get a 5000 point bonus when you transfer 20,000 points. Details here.

British Airways Avios

There’s no question that the sweet spot for British Airways Avios are short non-stop flights on partner airlines in coach.  For example, any non-stop one-way flight on American Airlines of less than 650 miles will cost only 4500 Avios in coach (9000 round-trip).  Unfortunately, BA charges triple for first class awards.  So, the same round trip flight would cost 27,000 Avios in first class (vs. 9000 in coach).  This is a huge premium over coach when using BA Avios, but it is a tiny premium over coach vs. other mile currencies.  So, if you really want to sit up front on a short flight, this can still be an excellent option.  As flights get longer, this option sours quickly.  Flights between 650 and 1149 miles would cost 45,000 miles round-trip in first class.  With longer flights… forget about it.

Best ways to earn British Airways Avios:

• Sign up for Chase’s British Airways card (currently with a 50K bonus), or any Ultimate Rewards card, Membership Rewards card, or SPG card with a good bonus. Details here: Best credit card offers
• Transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards (often with a transfer bonus)
• Transfer points from Chase Membership Rewards
• Transfer points from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Get a 5000 point bonus when you transfer 20,000 points. Details here.

Cheap Tickets

Every now and then, the price for a paid first class ticket isn’t so bad.  Sometimes, if you search for one-way tickets rather than round-trip you’ll find good prices in one direction or the other.  In either case, it may make sense to pay for cheap first class tickets with cash or with fixed value points.  Either way, you’ll save your hard earned airline miles for better future redemptions, and you’ll earn additional airline miles for the trip.  Here are a few fixed value points worth considering:

FlexPerks: U.S. Bank’s FlexPerks program has a tiered reward structure.  Flights costing up to $400 require only 20,000 points to purchase.  Flights costing up to $600 require 30,000 points, and so on.  The best use of these points is when a paid flight costs just a bit less than the tier maximum (e.g. $399, $599, etc.).  That way, you can get up to 2 cents per point value.

Amol (@PointsToPointsB) points out that, with FlexPerks, you can call in to request a specific fare class to be bought.  He says “That’s useful if you need a specific fare class to use a SWU or upgrade instrument.”  I think that’s a great idea.  In fact, even without an upgrade instrument, if you’re using FlexPerks to buy a ticket and the price is significantly below the tier maximum, it may make sense to ask for a higher fare class as long as it stays within the same FlexPerks tier.  If you have elite status, this would significantly increase your chance of an upgrade.

ThankYou: Citibank’s ThankYou points are worth using for booking flights when you have one of their premium cards such as the Citi ThankYou Premier.  With such a card, each ThankYou point is worth 1.33 cents towards flights.  Note that not all airlines are available to book through the ThankYou program so this won’t work for every situation.

Ultimate Rewards: Chase’s Ultimate Rewards points can be used to book travel at a rate of 1.25 cents per point if you have a premium Ultimate Rewards card such as the Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus.  This is not the best value use of Ultimate Rewards points, but it’s better than using points to get cash back, gift cards, or merchandise (all of which usually offer only 1 cent per point value).

Companion Pass

Some credit cards offer, as a perk, free or discounted companion tickets.  Most, though, only allow coach travel.  One exception is the Delta Reserve credit card which provides a companion pass each year when you renew the card.  That companion pass can be used for domestic first class travel.  The card has a hefty $450 annual fee so this approach is not really much of a money saver unless you also value the card’s other perks: free Delta SkyClub access for you and two guests, priority upgrades for elite members, ability to earn Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) with high spend, etc.

Details here: An Analysis of the Platinum Delta SkyMiles credit card

Reader Input

Do you know of other frugal ways to fly domestic first class?  Please share your ideas below, and if I like your idea I’ll update this post and send a hat tip your way.  Thanks in advance!

An incomplete reservation.  Bottom tier elite status.  No free breakfast.  No free internet.  Would I survive? 

A few weekends ago, I was scheduled to visit Washington DC for the Freddie Awards (Thursday), the Travel Executive Summit (Friday), and Frequent Traveler University (Friday through Sunday).  Before going, I thought that my travel plans were all set.  I was wrong.

On Wednesday night I packed for the trip and then opened TripIt to review my itinerary.  “Thursday morning: Depart DTW to IAD.  Friday: Check into hotel.”  Uh oh.  I was scheduled to fly out on Thursday and return on Monday, but I only had Friday and Saturday night booked at the hotel.

I called Hilton to see if they could extend my reservation to arrive a day earlier and leave a day later.  They told me the hotel was sold out.  Sure, I could have booked another hotel in the area, but I really wanted to stay in one place, so I logged into Hilton.com to see what I could find.

It turned out that there were a number of special rooms available.  All were listed at $300 per night or higher.  Luckily, I found some that I could book for “only” 40,000 Hilton HHonors points per night.  Compared to the $300 room rate, this was a pretty good value for my otherwise devalued Hilton points, so I booked the rooms with points.  Now I had three reservations for one long weekend.  Problem solved.  But, then I had to face the real challenge….

While researching room options, I discovered that I no longer had Hilton Gold status.  I was a lowly Silver elite!  Horror!  No more free internet or free breakfast!  What could I do?

Sure, I could have signed up for free Hilton Gold status by temporarily becoming Australian and making up a credit card number (see this post), but that just didn’t feel right to me.  And, it was far too late to get Gold status by spending $20K on my Hilton credit card or by signing up for the Citi Hilton Reserve card.  What other options did I have?

I remembered reading this LoyaltyLobby post about Hilton status matches.  According to LoyaltyLobby, I could send an email to hhonors@hilton.com to ask for a status match.  I would have to send a year-end activity report from a competing chain where I had status to prove that I was match-worthy.

Luckily, last year I had completed Marriott’s Taste of Platinum Challenge which resulted in my getting Marriott Platinum status that would last throughout 2013 and I had quite a few Marriott stays on the books for 2012.  I couldn’t find anything like a year-end report, but I was able to get Marriott’s website to display activity for the last 9 months of 2012.  I copied that info, along with a screenshot showing my Platinum status to Microsoft OneNote and then used OneNote to save the whole thing as a PDF.  I then emailed the PDF to Hilton along with a request for a match.  I received an automated response saying “Our goal is to respond to all inquiries within a 24-48 hour timeframe from receipt of the message.”  Would I get my status match in time?  Would I avoid having to pay for internet and breakfast?

On Thursday, there was no response from Hilton about the match.  I arrived at the hotel in the afternoon to check in.  The desk agent found my three reservations and click clacked away at the keys for many minutes to ensure that I had one room for the entire stay (which I appreciated very much!).  My Friday and Saturday night stays were booked as Executive Club Floor rooms (which included breakfast, but not internet), but the club lounge was closed for renovations (no wonder they had such a good rate for those rooms!).  Instead, I was given a bunch of breakfast and snack coupons that were valid through Sunday.  This meant that I was covered for breakfast for every day except Monday morning, even without Gold status.  Whew.

On Thursday night I paid for one night of internet service.  I had to work on this blog, after all.  The internet service lasted until Friday evening.  On Saturday, I called the desk to ask if internet was included in my Club Floor room rate.  Nope, but the desk agent offered to make an exception, and she gave me a code for two days worth of internet for free.  Score!

I was all set for the rest of the weekend, but Monday morning loomed ominously ahead.  That was the day I would have to pay for breakfast.  Oh no!

On Monday morning, I checked my email and found a wonderful sight (bolding is mine):

Re: Status Match

Dear Frequent Miler,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding a status match. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

First, we are always thrilled any time a member reaches out to us in an effort to attain our most prestigious Diamond membership level.
As you have reached the highest achievable level of membership with one of our hotel competitors, we are happy to extend a special one-time offer to fast track to Diamond tier level. If within the next 90 days, from today’s date, you record 21 eligible nights at any participating HHonors hotel, your account will be automatically upgraded to the Diamond tier status through March 31, 2015.  In the interim, we have upgraded your account to Gold membership level so that you may begin to enjoy the benefits while working to earn Diamond.

Sweet.  I have no intention of trying to stay 21 nights to get Diamond status, but I was happy to get free Gold status!

So, I got dressed and scampered to the front desk to let them know that I had earned Gold status during my stay.  The desk agent was incredibly gracious.  She told me to go sit down for breakfast and she would bring the breakfast coupon to me.

At the restaurant, I asked about ordering from the menu instead of the buffet and was told that there would be a $7 upcharge with the breakfast coupon.  I was OK with that.  When the coupon arrived, however, I was told that this coupon was good for anything on the menu, for free.  Score!  Breakfast was fantastic.

Background: Million Mile Madness was the mad quest to earn a million points in one month. Throughout March, I did everything I could to earn as many points as possible while keeping within my ethical boundaries. During the month, I tracked all of the points that I expected, and I declared victory when the expected total topped one million.

Final tally… not yet

Yes, I succeeded in earning a million points in one month, but there was another aspect to the challenge: my goal was to keep my net costs below $1000.  That meant that when I bought items to earn points and sold the items to earn back my money, there was very little room for error.  At this point, I still have some items that remain unsold, so I can’t yet give a final tally.  Did I succeed in keeping net costs below $1000?  I don’t yet know.  From my latest projections it looks like it will be close one way or another.

Million Mile Headaches

I’ve written before about some of the challenges I had during Million Mile Madness: A setback from Sears and Bumps in the road.  Some issues, though, popped up late in the game and I haven’t previously had a chance to report on them.  Sometimes bad results can be just as instructive as good ones.  Here’s my SunTrust story…

SunTrust Plan

SunTrust offers a debit card that earns one mile per dollar spent on all credit or debit transactions.  This is pretty amazing since very few cards offer rewards for debit transactions and those that do tend to offer much smaller rewards. 

I signed up for the SunTrust card on March 7th with modest goals for Million Mile Madness.  I wanted to earn the 5K sign-up bonus, and I intended to make about $10K in debit purchases for a total of 15K Delta SkyMiles.  This would have made a small, but positive contribution towards my Million Mile Madness quest.  My real reason for wanting the card, though, was for tax payments beginning in April.  Pay1040.com charges a flat fee of only $2.99 for tax payments made by debit card, so this would have been a great (and very easy) way to earn miles while paying taxes.

Signup Process, March 7

To sign up for the debit card, I visited suntrust.com, clicked “Open an Account,” and then clicked “Chat Now” to bring up an instant messenger style chat window.  I told the rep what I wanted, and he setup the new account for me.  He told me that they needed $100 to start the account and that I could pay by debit card.  I tried using a Visa gift card for that purpose (before gift cards had PINs), but I got a call a few days later saying that it didn’t work.  So, I used my Mio debit card instead.

First Contact, March 20

After the sign-up process, I waited eagerly for my new card to arrive.  The first sign that anything was happening was an email on March 20th saying that my online banking enrollment had been activated.  The email included instructions for competing the activation, which I did.  I didn’t yet have the debit card, though.

Funds Transfer Initiated, March 24

A few days later, on March 24th, I received an email stating that I could transfer funds from external accounts.  I logged on to my SunTrust account and initiated a transfer of $7000 from my CapitalOne360 account (formerly ING Direct). 

Card Received, March 25

On Monday, March 25th, I finally received my SunTrust Delta Debit card.  It was the last week of my challenge, so I was glad that it finally arrived!  I was also glad that I had proactively transferred in some funds so that I could use the card soon.

Transfer Stopped, March 26

On March 26th I received an email from CapitalOne360 informing me that SunTrust had initiated a $7K withdrawal.  The same day I received the following email from SunTrust:

For security reasons, your funds transfer request from ING Direct, Savings account to SunTrustBank, Checking account has been stopped.
As a policy, we need to review the transaction. Based on the results of that review, we will either cancel the transaction, or the funds may take a little longer to reach the destination account. We will notify you of the status of the transaction by email.

I thought that was odd, but I figured that they would finish up their investigation quickly and credit my account as expected.

Account terminated, March 27

The next day I tried to log into my account to see if the transferred funds had been deposited.  I only had a few more days remaining in my challenge so I really needed to start using the debit card!  Unfortunately, the system told me that I had entered an incorrect ID or password.  I reset my password and tried again but received the same error.

I called SunTrust.  At first, the rep I spoke with tried to help me with my password, but eventually he noticed a note on my account: SunTrust was closing my account and terminating all business with me.  No reason was given.  I asked why this happened, but the rep was unable to give me an explanation.

Crap.  I had to find other ways to earn 15,000 miles before the end of the month.  Luckily both Amex and Chase came through for me with big retention bonuses (see “Million Mile Madness: Easy points“).  Whew.

“Show me the money”, March 29

On Friday, March 29th, I logged into my CapitalOne360 account and noticed that the $7K I had transferred was still gone.  Crap.  I called SunTrust.  They claimed that there was no record of a transfer into my SunTrust account.  “But, I initiated the transfer from suntrust.com” I exclaimed.  Sorry, they said, but most likely the money will be automatically re-credited to my Capital One account in about 5 business days.  I had no choice but to wait.

No, really, “show me the money!”  April 8

On the first week of April I went on vacation and tried to forget about SunTrust (UnTrust?).  On Monday, April 8th, SunTrust reminded me of my dilemma by sending a box of checks.  Huh?  I distinctly remembered telling them that I didn’t want checks when I signed up.  And, if they terminated my account, why send checks anyway?  Had they re-established my account?  Maybe they realized that the account closure was a mistake and reinstated it?  I tried again to log on, but with no success.  I checked my Capital One account and saw that the $7K was still missing.

I called SunTrust and told the rep my dilemma.  The account was still closed.  Supposedly I had ordered checks in the middle of the month and so my account that previously had a $100 balance was about $14 poorer (I don’t actually remember the exact amount).  They still couldn’t explain why my account was closed or where my $7K had gone.  They couldn’t even re-credit my account for the checks I hadn’t ordered because my account was frozen.  They said that I could get my balance returned to me after my account had been frozen for 30 days and finally terminated completely.  It was still unclear if I would get back the money for the checks, but the bigger issue was my $7000 dollars!

I called Capital One and they offered to open an investigation.  I filled out and faxed a form describing the issue.

Capital One comes through!  April 9

To this day, I still have not heard about the results of the investigation, but on April 9th I logged into my CapitalOne360 account and found a wonderful sight:

• 04/09/2013 Withdrawal Reversal    7000.00

Great!

What happened?

I still do not have the $100 used to fund the SunTrust account, nor do I have an explanation of why my account was terminated.  My best guess is that they figured out that I don’t live in one of the States that they serve.  Of course, they knew that when I applied for the account in the first place!

On May 1st, I received a letter from SunTrust’s Enterprise Fraud Management department.  The letter read as follows (bolding is mine):

SunTrust continually reviews its products, markets and client relationships to ensure that we are able to provide the best possible client service while also meeting our corporate business objectives.  There are circumstances where the company will identify a specific account relationship that no longer meets these criteria.  In the interest of our clients and SunTrust, the company will request those accounts be closed.

When you opened your account with SunTrust, you received a copy of our Rules and Regulations for Deposit Accounts, our contractual agreement with our depositors.  The Rules and Regulations stipulate that SunTrust may close an account for any reason without advance notice to the client.

In accord with these Rules and Regulations, and as a result of information we have received after the account was opened or the unsatisfactory handling of the account, we find it necessary to discontinue our banking relationship immediately.  If the account is overdrawn, the overdrawn amount is a debt owed to SunTrust, and we require payment of any such debt within 30 days of the closing of the account.  If the payment of the overdraft is not obtained within that time action will be taken to collect the debt.  You will be responsible for all items, along with any associated fees, that are presented against the account after closure.  If there is a positive balance at the time of closure, SunTrust Bank will make a determination on the disposition of the funds.

We regret that we will not be in a position to continue to provide you with banking services, however this decision is irrevocable.

In other words, “We can do what we want… na, na, nuh, na, na.”

Learn about Million Mile Madness:

• A crazy million mile idea. Should I do it?
• Million Mile Madness, it’s on
• Million Mile Madness: Strategy
• Million Mile Madness: Preparing to buy & sell
• Million Mile Madness: Tracking points and expenses
• Million Mile Madness: The big churn story
• Million Mile Madness: buying, selling Kohl’s
• Million Mile Madness: Banking on Lowe’s
• Million Mile Madness: A setback from Sears
• Million Mile Madness: Pending Success
• Million Mile Madness: Bumps in the road
• Million Mile Madness: Credit scores and pulls
• Million Mile Madness: Easy points
• Million Mile Madness: Success!!!!!
• Million Mile Madness: Which points?
• Million Mile Madness: How it was done

The pace of change in the miles & point world is staggering.  The most recent big change is with the latest and greatest way to earn 5X everywhere.  There was a special link to sign up for the Citi ThankYou Preferred card that offered 5X in drugstores, gas stations, and supermarkets.  That link now appears to be dead:

More than a week ago, at Frequent Traveler University, the theme of my presentation was change.  In that presentation, I highlighted the following developments in the 5X everywhere game:

• May 1 2012: I published “One card to rule them all.”  In that post I showed how to earn 5X Ultimate Rewards points everywhere credit cards are accepted.
• October 16th 2012: I published “Bluebird takes flight and changes the game.” In that post I showed how to earn 5X Ultimate Rewards points everywhere including billers that do not accept credit cards!
• November 10th 2012: I published “Office Depot discontinues Vanilla Reload cards.”  This change made 5X everywhere tough, but not impossible.
• February 3rd 2013: I published “Office Depot discontinues $500 Visa/Amex cards.”  5X everywhere was effectively dead.
• February 6th 2013 (just 3 days later), Personal Finance Digest published “The old Citi 5% gas/grocery/drugstore link is dead, here’s a new one.”  5X everywhere was alive again!!!
• April 6th 2013: Million Mile Secrets published “Breaking News: You Can Now Use Gift Cards For Cash Back, Loading Bluebird, and Buying Money Orders!“  Not only was 5X everywhere alive and well, but there were new ways to do it!

Now, just a month later, 5X everywhere with ThankYou points is effectively dead.  Those who got their cards in time can still enjoy 5X rewards for 12 months (unless they get shut down for perk abuse!).  Others will have to look to other opportunities.

For good or bad, change is coming.  And the game plays on…