As Good As Sherlock? Detective Work For More Points!

I recently watched this BBC series and I strongly suggest that you check it out. What does this series have to do with miles and points earning? If you have been keeping up with the blog, you would know from my Jump off it? post that the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy is dead. After some detective work of my own, I have found a possible way to collect Chase Ultimate Rewards points at almost the same cost as the Vanilla Ink bold strategy, with only a little more convenience. I'm not going to lie. I totally thought myself to be Sherlock when I was doing the research; albeit Asian, less smart, and less witty. But hey, who's judging?

Triple Card Churn Part 1: Signing Up (American Airlines and Southwest)

At the time of this writing, I am sitting at Gate 12 of LAX waiting for my (delayed) Southwest flight back to Portland for the weekend. This trip was purchased last minute partly because of Goober's terrible planning, but mostly because I didn't mind spending ten bucks for the roundtrip ticket.

And since this blog is about cheap travel and not fail travel, I guess I won't go into the details of why Goober won't be meeting up with me in Portland or on Mt. Hood for snowboarding. (To be fair, his schedule wasn't entirely within his control. Also, he has admin privileges on this blog, and I don't want him to delete this post.)

I've made a few of these $10 flights this winter, and I'm pretty sure I acquired the taste for inexpensive trips. Unfortunately, my miles are running low, and it's time to get more. I usually work on one card at a time, so I'm stepping out of my spending comfort zone for a triple helping of cards: two American Airline cards (Visa and American Express) and one Southwest card.

Since this blog started, you guys have been reading how we've done this or completed that. Now I'm inviting you to start at beginning of a churn period and see how I'm going to attempt it.

Jump off it?!

One of the major sources for information is http://www.flyertalk.com/, and in a forum post, someone has mentioned that Office Depot has started to remove all gift cards and prepaid cards with variable loads (i.e. the $500) ones. The max you can buy now is $200 with a $7 fee, effectively bringing the cost of Chase Ultimate Rewards points to $0.008 instead of $0.004 (an increase of double!) Taking the math out of it for you, if you were to redeem on United for trips, here are the following costs for a round trip fare in economy.

Destination	Mileage Plus Points	Cost in US Dollars
Continental US	25,000	$213
Caribbean	35,000	$298
Hawaii	40,000	$341
Europe	60,000	$511
Asia	65,000	$554
India	80,000	$682

As you can see, you still get a good deal out of it, but it's far from the deal we got earlier. With the prior deal, we were able to get a round trip to Asia in BUSINESS class for $360. Remember there would be taxes and surcharges so add maybe around $100-$200.

Just as my last post mentioned, these deals are dying out quickly. We continue our quest to find new means to get more points!

Jump on it!

That feeling on your last day of vacation, realizing you won't be served breakfast in the beach-side cabana tomorrow (pictured above). Worse yet, dreading opening that inbox that you have neglected to the point that it almost disappeared. Just like your vacations, miles deals begin and end quickly, especially the lucrative ones. Recently, there was one deal that lasted less then 24 hours for a AMEX Platinum card that I failed to jump on. Read more about lessons learned on this deal!

Southwest Valentines Day Sale!

 


For those brave few in a long distance relationship, or those who just want to get the hell away from a certain someone, Southwest is having a valentines day sale! Valid only on non-stop flights and only on Feb. 14th(Valentines day for those unromantic ones). Maybe you can surprise that special someone! Deal ends Saturday Januaray 12th 11:59.

 Link below:

Southwest Valentines sale

Redeeming Your Points (Part 2): Partner and Alliance Networks

In Part 1 of my Redeeming Your Points post, I talked about putting your points to use and how straightforward it can be to redeem them (some more so than others, of course). But here's an important thing to know when you want to redeem your miles: you're not limited strictly to that airline.

Let's say you have racked up an envious amount of Avios points (the reward points for British Airways) and you want to fly from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. It doesn't mean you HAVE to fly British Airways (BA). If you were to fly strictly BA, you would first have to fly east to London before continuing onto Hong Kong. Two precious days of your vacation time will be devoted completely to traveling—one way.

But luckily for all of us, most airlines aren't this guy:

Learn more about Partner and Alliance networks and how it's getting easier to use them after the jump.

When Does a Mile Not Equal a Mile?

The biggest misnomer we'd like to clear up is the term "mile" or "point". It's forgivable if you believe that when you earn a 50,000 mile bonus, you're able to fly that many miles. Unfortunately this is not the case. (If that was true, you could fly around the world twice with that single sign-up bonus.)

The terms "mile" and "point" are interchangeable and it just depends on which reward program you're talking about. The key to understanding the term is to think of miles/points as a currency, and not distance. If miles/points are a currency, how much are they worth?