The one who earned 1.3 million miles on one paid flight, another Capital One Shopping clawback, an easy Amex retention call, and 23 million miles. This week’s Saturday Selection is a weekly roundup of interesting information from the interweb (links to each article are embedded in the title).
Earn 1.3 million miles on one round-trip business class flight
A common complaint among business travelers is that airlines are more concerned with credit card programs than rewarding actual passengers, making flying far less rewarding than it used to be. I’m saying that. My friend Gary from View from the Wing found a stark exception. Malaysia Airlines currently offers an amazing 1,348,000 miles earned for booking (and flying) a single return business class ticket between London and Bali. The cash cost for that flight is about $4,000. Reasonable redemption values don’t cover Malaysia (to some degree unsurprisingly), but Malaysia is her OneWorld partner. The prize is usually chart It’s not the best, but at a cost of about 0.3 cents per mile, it starts to look pretty sexy.
Amex retention calls made easy
99.4% of Points and Miles enthusiasts hate calls about retention. This age-old nuisance is for cardholders to contact their credit card company after the annual fee is due in an attempt to get some sort of “retention offer.” Credit card companies encourage you to keep your card and use it for another card. Year. A few years ago, one such call earned Greg $895 and he earned 75,000 points. One of the reasons he finds cards so frustrating is that he usually criticizes frontline personnel who try to tell you how wonderful your life is with this card and how miserable it would be to part with it. that must be ignored. Miles Earn and Burn’s Matt discovered a great way around this ritual when an Amex chat rep gave the Amex retention rep a direct phone number. This allows you to pre-populate the card number so that when the holding officer responds, the card information will be pre-populated. loaded. Pretty nice!
Capital One Shopping launches new clawback
This week’s clawback corner is brought to you by Capital One Shopping, a glitchy quirky portal that no one likes (but can offer exceptional value). If everything works fine). Giftcards.com (GCC) has appeared frequently on Capital One Shopping (sometimes backed up to 24%), where people buy Visa/MC and 3rd party gift cards while others can’t find them. We’re making it hard for you to earn big rewards. Back in March, we were horrified when thousands of dollars in GCC-affected rewards suddenly disappeared from C1 shopping with an apparent clawback. After numerous appeals and sweaty palms, finally this was undone and all was well. Except that C1 shopping claws are on the move again, aiming to reward people for their hard-earned industrial spending. Will this also be reversed? Let’s see. In the meantime, let’s start our quarterly fire drills.
23 million mile man
If you’re interested in travel or points and miles, you’ve probably heard the name Tom Stuker. United Airlines’ most frequented airline was offered the chance to purchase a lifetime pass for his UA flight for his $290,000 in 1990. He took the chance that United Airlines would remain sufficiently solvent to make the most of his golden ticket and currently has over 23 million miles flown with the airline There have probably been more since I wrote it). His most prolific year yet was 2019, when he flew 378 flights and flew about 1.5 million miles. The cash cost for airline tickets that year would have reached about $2.4 million. He is frequently featured in the news media, including the Washington Post article linked above. Obviously there are some mistakes in the post, Fixed by Live and Let Fly Shortly thereafter (the Post then corrected the article). Regardless, it’s a fascinating story that continues to grow with each passing year.
JetBlue finally decides to part ways with American Airlines
JetBlue has had a complicated relationship with authorities in recent years. The company is in the middle of two disputes with the federal government. Acquisition of Spirit Airlines And the Northeast Alliance with American Airlines. Federal officials didn’t like either, and in the spring a judge ordered American Airlines and JetBlue to take action. Since then, the airlines have attempted to appeal the ruling in order to continue their partnerships, which continues until this week. JetBlue has announced that it is dissolving its partnership with AA to save its merger with Spirit.Analysts are skeptical that it will help much, if at all). American Airlines, apparently unaware that tango requires two people, said it would continue to fight the ruling in court. Earlier this week, Thrifty Traveler brilliantly unraveled the drama and its aftermath. Who Needs Vanderpump Rules?
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