Points gurus - how would you spend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
definitely use one of the points websites--I like point.me. I recently got flights to london non stop for about 12k points each way by doing a kind of work around, instead of using points directly on the airline or credit card sites where it was like 40k points. I search them for business class deals as well--last year DH and I went to the dolonites, business there and economy plus back for 100k points total, non stop to venice, in july.

as to how i would spend? We have a list of places to go. I kind of search for the time period and places I'm interested in and see what's available. We have a lot of places on our list, japan, turkey, argentina, vietnam/thailand, etc. I would use the points to fly business long haul.


NP here. I have $1M amex points! Not kidding. I want to use for long haul flights/upgrades. Kids want to go to Australia, Japan, Thailand, ect. I'm in! But we are 4. So do you get regular flights with points and then upgrades with cash?

You can search business class tickets. Once you try it, you see that there are multiple ways to book the same trip, using a variety of credit card or other points. Its a membership fee--can't remember how much--that allows you to search a year out. But you can test it out for free I think . So right now, the same business class United flight that is 200k points on united shows ms 88k chase ultimate reward points. You can select to search only amex points, etc, etc. I am guessing that pointsyeah is a similar thing. I never really understood the whole points/credit card thing until I realized these sites exist. They also alert you when there are really great deals.

So do you have a general idea of what you want to do or go eg safari or Europe or Asia and then you monitor for the flights and work the trip and lodging around that?

We do a lot of safaris and travel to see family in Europe regularly and I’ve never been able to get the award flight availability to match up with lodge / family availability.

Not PP but yes that's what we do, but we aren't aiming for locations with such specific availability. So we have a few weeks of summer vacation flexibility, and let the flights make the calendar. Aim for business class on the way over if it's an overnight, economy on the return is fine if it's a daytime flight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
definitely use one of the points websites--I like point.me. I recently got flights to london non stop for about 12k points each way by doing a kind of work around, instead of using points directly on the airline or credit card sites where it was like 40k points. I search them for business class deals as well--last year DH and I went to the dolonites, business there and economy plus back for 100k points total, non stop to venice, in july.

as to how i would spend? We have a list of places to go. I kind of search for the time period and places I'm interested in and see what's available. We have a lot of places on our list, japan, turkey, argentina, vietnam/thailand, etc. I would use the points to fly business long haul.


NP here. I have $1M amex points! Not kidding. I want to use for long haul flights/upgrades. Kids want to go to Australia, Japan, Thailand, ect. I'm in! But we are 4. So do you get regular flights with points and then upgrades with cash?

You can search business class tickets. Once you try it, you see that there are multiple ways to book the same trip, using a variety of credit card or other points. Its a membership fee--can't remember how much--that allows you to search a year out. But you can test it out for free I think . So right now, the same business class United flight that is 200k points on united shows ms 88k chase ultimate reward points. You can select to search only amex points, etc, etc. I am guessing that pointsyeah is a similar thing. I never really understood the whole points/credit card thing until I realized these sites exist. They also alert you when there are really great deals.

So do you have a general idea of what you want to do or go eg safari or Europe or Asia and then you monitor for the flights and work the trip and lodging around that?

We do a lot of safaris and travel to see family in Europe regularly and I’ve never been able to get the award flight availability to match up with lodge / family availability.

For specific dates you usually need to book as soon as the calendar opens, 11 or 12 months in advance depending on airline.

[Anonymous]

I'm guessing the work around was transferring the points to Virgin instead of booking through Chase directly, or transferring to the bigger US partners like United. But 12000 points to London would've had a hefty cash co-pay, possibly approaching the price of the ticket if you paid entirely with cash.

That's not the workaround, that's the proper way to book. Never use the portal.


Dumb question- if you don’t have points and need to pay cash, it’s better to use the portal to then earn more points : get the discount right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm guessing the work around was transferring the points to Virgin instead of booking through Chase directly, or transferring to the bigger US partners like United. But 12000 points to London would've had a hefty cash co-pay, possibly approaching the price of the ticket if you paid entirely with cash.

That's not the workaround, that's the proper way to book. Never use the portal.


Dumb question- if you don’t have points and need to pay cash, it’s better to use the portal to then earn more points : get the discount right?

No because it you need to make changes to the ticket, have a schedule change done by the airline, or delays/issues, dealing with a 3rd party ticketing agent between you and the airline makes it very complicated and frustrating. Always book directly with the airline when paying cash for a ticket. Use your Sapphire card to book, it earns additional points as a travel cost, and triggers the extra travel insurance on the card.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm guessing the work around was transferring the points to Virgin instead of booking through Chase directly, or transferring to the bigger US partners like United. But 12000 points to London would've had a hefty cash co-pay, possibly approaching the price of the ticket if you paid entirely with cash.

That's not the workaround, that's the proper way to book. Never use the portal.


Dumb question- if you don’t have points and need to pay cash, it’s better to use the portal to then earn more points : get the discount right?
Should basically never book through a portal. You’ll be completely out of luck if you ever have an issue.

[Anonymous]

I'm guessing the work around was transferring the points to Virgin instead of booking through Chase directly, or transferring to the bigger US partners like United. But 12000 points to London would've had a hefty cash co-pay, possibly approaching the price of the ticket if you paid entirely with cash.

That's not the workaround, that's the proper way to book. Never use the portal.

I think it was like 430/ticket (r/t) and I think I used 48k points total. Part of the issue is that I transferred to virgin last year and cancelled the trip so I wanted to use up the points.

Right now I’m looking at a flight from iAd to Marseilles in July; it’s 70k (plus 108$) on business class in Swiss but I have to transfer the points (chase or cap one) to air canadas plan to buy it and if we dont go you can’t transfer the points back. So one risk if the whole points thing is that you sometimes transfer to the airline plans and then you have points in like 8 different plans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm guessing the work around was transferring the points to Virgin instead of booking through Chase directly, or transferring to the bigger US partners like United. But 12000 points to London would've had a hefty cash co-pay, possibly approaching the price of the ticket if you paid entirely with cash.

That's not the workaround, that's the proper way to book. Never use the portal.

I think it was like 430/ticket (r/t) and I think I used 48k points total. Part of the issue is that I transferred to virgin last year and cancelled the trip so I wanted to use up the points.

Right now I’m looking at a flight from iAd to Marseilles in July; it’s 70k (plus 108$) on business class in Swiss but I have to transfer the points (chase or cap one) to air canadas plan to buy it and if we dont go you can’t transfer the points back. So one risk if the whole points thing is that you sometimes transfer to the airline plans and then you have points in like 8 different plans.

Yes. This is sometimes the risk: if you for some reason need to cancel, your points will be stuck with the airline and you will be forced in future to book only through this airline.

I am a dedicated point-and-miler and the way I make peace with this is that this is the price of this hobby, and if not for this hobby, you would be paying cash for economy tickets and dealing with other stupid restrictions like nonrefundable tickets or no checked bags. So ye take yer lumps with yer flowers and go.

[Anonymous]

What is the best points option IAD to LHR? The Virgin fees are absolutely nuts (about $500 RT just in fees on an economy ticket, way more on higher class tickets.) Is United or American a better option even though more fees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the best points option IAD to LHR? The Virgin fees are absolutely nuts (about $500 RT just in fees on an economy ticket, way more on higher class tickets.) Is United or American a better option even though more fees?

Currently award economy flights on United to/from LHR in Sep, Nov and Mar are 36K + $5.60 outbound and 31.4k + $223 inbound.

Same dates for economy flights on BA show 27.5K + $83.50 and 27.5 + $120.

May be cheaper to fly with a partner airline.

[Anonymous]

I spent 200K per person R/T to fly to Indonesia during christmas week in QR J so that was 800K.