US Airways 2011 Grand Slam Promotion - Lowest cost per mile this year?

The next best thing to getting hits is bragging about how you did it so cheaply :).

My CPM for 20 hits (plus the miles that come with those hits) is $.0027/mile.

Obviously the business travelers out there will probably have a ton of free hits helping keep CPM low, but that's fine.

I'm curious to know what your CPM ended up being.

Even without business travel, you'd have to note whether something is incremental cost or total cost. For example, I had a $200 stay at an Intercontinental planned anyway, so I didn't count it toward the GS in terms of spend. Same thing with some of the flower hits, since I would have bought something for birthdays anyway.

If we're going for incremental spend, I'm looking at $.0036/mi for about 180K miles after 36 hits (still have to get the last 4 but I'm aware of the prices for that). Not bad for what equates to a F RT to Asia and an "emergency fund" for 2-3 domestic Y or 1 domestic F RT. Could I have done it more cheaply? Possibly. I couldn't take advantage of certain Hertz discounts because I used my discount on the under-25 fee waiver.

With the mysterious Connie having saved my Choice transfer, I have finally reached 36 hits (insurance hit to come later, but that's a freebie). My total out of pocket was $596.24, earning me 114,462 miles, pre-insurance hit. Cents per mile of 0.5209083 (although that seventh decimal point might have been rounded), which just missed my goal of 0.5 cpm. That number includes the $44 I spent for Choice points to transfer; Had I decided not to do that hit, I would be under the goal but sweating out every hit.

A few notes:

1. Any hit which involved a hotel I would have stayed in anyway, a restaurant I would have eaten at, an item I would have ordered, etc. was considered a free hit, since there was no incremental cost. If I surrendered a more valuable currency for a cheaper one to earn points (i.e., not earning SPG points and choosing to earn miles instead), the difference was added into the cost.

2. When I transferred points from a hotel program to US, I added the cost of the points (based on Lucky's estimates) to the numerator and the miles that I received to the denominator. That made my "accounting" more conservative, since a straight valuation of the miles might have made them worth more than the points transferred, but ultimately I felt that it made for a better comparison in a cents per mile sense. There was no discount given in programs where I never would have used the points anyway (I'm looking at you, PCH.).

3. "Negative costs" accrued where I bought a substitute item at a cheaper price than I would have paid absent the promo. Let's just say my wife received cheaper flowers this year than she might have in the past. She can think about it while she's drinking her PDB in SQ F.

4. Most expensive hit: The Wyndham transfer, valued at $70. Ouch. I shouldn't have done that one so early. Or at all.

5. I gave no bonus for the enjoyment I got out of doing the promo which includes, but is not limited to: trying to explain to the Hertz people that I really don't need the car, chatting with Joan from Choice in her van down by the river and trying to figure out exactly how much to spend at the W Hotel restaurant without going over $67.

Mike

The accounting is always tricky, as your notes demonstrate. Just one question: why do you value the Wyndham transfer at $70?

out of pocket was bet $300-350 thats for items that I wouldnt have gotten otherwise, nor does it include the value of what the Hotel transfers might have been worth if instead of transferring to DM I used them towards a free night eg 10k Hilton = 850 miles yet 12,500 could have gotten me a night that would have gone for $149+

so I dont see it as being easy or simple to actually come up with any figure that is really close to the cost. The Plus is that 100+K miles can get me tkts that will way out weigh whatever the real cost would have been

Assuming netsol posts (and not counting their ephemeral bonus) and the century quote turns into a hit, I spent roughly $200 for 20 hits for me and about the same for my spouse, resulting in about .52 cent ratio per mile.

16 hits, $75 OOP, .29 cpm.

I did do a BW transfer with 1K purchased ($10 included in OOP tally) and 4K from Topguest, but I specifically did Topguest for this promotion and wouldn't use those points for hotel stays anyway, so I only recorded the $10 towards cost there.

36 hits (+1 safety), 162,631 miles, $704, .43 cents per mile

- 40,000 came from getting the Barclays Mastercard
- $92 spent on hotel I needed anyway
- could have saved $18 by not buying a ticket for the Audience Rewards hit

I'm pleased with the outcome.

20 hits, .27 cpm. $101 spent.

-1 hit includes a hotel stay from work, which was paid for. So I didn't count the cost for that.

not done yet.

but i had anticipated that i would need 6 hotels. so i planned 2 mini-vacations out of this, and i needed 5 of the six car rentals, and did only one rentals (and return immediately)

otherwise, the most expensive was probably ftd.com for 30 USD.

spent more on supershuttle and skymall, but a few dollars here and there. it is not the end of the world. overall, i am please that i should be able to get a bunch of miles. i have yet to use the miles form GS2010.. so i have some work to do!

0.009368973 per hit. Including various paid-for hotel stays. 20 hits

From the awesome spreadsheet. I will likely get one more hit, but I currently have 27. Most of them were from work travel, so I considered those "free". The most expensive was wineinsiders.com, at $91, but I would have bought the wine anyway, and it was a good price. I also opened a US MC, so that added a free 10k miles. All in all I consider this successful, especially because I needed the 5k PQMs to amintain my GS for next year!

$ Outlay
$396.86

Cost Per Mile
0.005996948

The accounting is always tricky, as your notes demonstrate. Just one question: why do you value the Wyndham transfer at $70?

I went through all the options of what I could do with Wyndham points and determined that the highest category of hotels ended up costing about 0.7c per point. Thus, my transfer "cost" me $70. As others have correctly pointed out, however, that is only one way of doing it. For instance, I might have valued the Wyndham points at $0, since I'll probably never actually use them for a Wyndham hotel. Or some other way. In other words, "cost" is a highly subjective term and doesn't necessarily include cash cost.

Mike

I will prob be around 0.45cpm.
BTW, which insurance was that? I thought they were all ineligible in NY. TIA

33 have posted.

Pending post

34 10-26 FTD
35 10-31 La Quinta hotel transfer
36 21st Century Insurance
37 11-08 Network Solution

I am getting 144,261 miles. My spend was $610.44. CPM 0.004231497

The above includes buying 20K miles for 295.62. To me that was my biggest cost. Please note, I was planning for this for the last 1 year where in I had all the hotel accounts lined up for transfer. If I were to plan for next year, I would not buy 20K miles for $295 next year.

36 hits, 152,253 total miles, $698.54 total outlay, .46 CPM

- I scored all six hotel stays as zero cost. Five were Marriotts that yielded about 2,200 miles per stay. The sixth was a crappy Rodeway Inn in the middle of nowhere. I think it was the only hotel option I had. In theory, I could score the Marriotts as negative cost since 2,200 miles plus 500 Marriott points is worth more than the 2,000 Marriott points I would have otherwise received. But that's splitting hairs...besides, at a couple of them I had to go order a beer and an appetizer to make sure my final bill was $100. (Oh, the troubles we go through for miles! :o)

- I scored rental cars as $25 cost each. That's about what 1/5th of a National Free Day is worth to me.

- I scored the three flower purchases as $30 each. That's about the difference between their cost and the normal street value of the flowers.

- I scored my own SPG hit as $19. I scored other hotel hits where I traded 850 SPG points as $35 each. I scored my own IHG hit as $70 - that was my 36th planned hit and all the reinforcement I needed to not go for 40.

- I scored Trial Gold as $100. I'm flying international in December, I genuinely need the trial to secure a 2012 *A status, and will enjoy the benefits of Gold during the trial such as domestic upgrades and international lounges. I simply estimate the total benefits I'll get at a little lower than $430...hence I'm allocating some of the cost to the hit. If I go 4 for 4 on domestic upgrades, maybe I'll revisit this and change it to $0. :p

- After consuming two of the Wine Insiders wines, I scored that hit at $0. The zin and the chard are both pretty good as $8 everyday drinkin' wines go... In fact, I'd consider buying another $90 case from them in the future.

Earned Bonus
100,000

Earned Bonus - PQM
10,000

Total Bonus
110,000

Non-Bonus
25,206

Grand Total
135,206

$ Outlay
$788.83

Cost Per Mile
0.005834283

Earned Bonus
100,000

Earned Bonus - PQM
10,000

Total Bonus
110,000

Non-Bonus
25,206

Grand Total
135,206

$ Outlay
$788.83

Cost Per Mile
0.005834283

I probably could have gotten into the 16-20 hit range at close to zero incremental outlay.

I decided to go to 36, knowing that the planned hits in the high 20's and low 30's began to entail some sort of cash or other points cost.

I think of the IHG transfer hit ($70 net cost in terms of hotel award power) as my 36th hit. Didn't do them in that order, but in terms of planning it was this hit that made me realize that #37 and beyond would cost too much to warrant the pursuit.

Looking at my spreadsheet, adding #33 through #36 together, I was spending close to a penny per mile.

Even without business travel, you'd have to note whether something is incremental cost or total cost. For example, I had a $200 stay at an Intercontinental planned anyway, so I didn't count it toward the GS in terms of spend. Same thing with some of the flower hits, since I would have bought something for birthdays anyway.

I think the true cost is even a bit more complicated than that. But for the promo, what would you have chosen as your earning preference for your $200 IC stay? If your answer is that you would have collected US miles anyway, then I agree it's close to a free hit. If you would have instead earned 2,000 PC points, then this hit had a cost -- the cost was the difference between how you value 2000 PC points and 500 miles. Or maybe you would have earned AA miles instead, which you value higher than US miles, and so there's an incremental cost there too. Or maybe you would have stayed at Hilton instead and pursuant to a Q4 promo earned 4,000 points, etc.

I think this can be seen more clearly with Marriott, for example, where you only get 2 miles per $1, but can get upwards of 17 points per dollar for using your marriott visa. If I had a business stay at a Marriott for $200, I would ordinarily choose the 3400 Marriott points, which I value highly. If I instead take 400 US miles, there has been a cost to me, even though there was no out of pocket cost.

Same principle with a car rental on business. It seems free. But the questions to me is what would I have earned but for the promo. If I passed on a 1,000 UA mile Hertz bonus to get 100 US miles instead, this hit had a cost, etc.

I think you sort of have to do that with the other vendors too. If you have a unique e-mail and address and credit card that will work with netflix to get a bonus, you have a wide variety of bonuses that you might be eligible for. Is there one that you value more highly than the one you grabbed to do this promo? How about erewards? Is the $25 spent on US miles really what you would have done with that $25? At some point, these questions hit the level of silly, but if you're truly interested in assessing the real cost of the miles you earned, you need to at least do a bit of this, IMO.

This is somewhat inaccurate, since I also had the cost of the points I used to swap from the various hotel programs (although most of them were orphan points anyway)

Earned Bonus
95,000

Earned Bonus - PQM
5,000

Total Bonus
100,000

Non-Bonus
25,002

Grand Total
125,002

$ Outlay
$257.00

CPM
0.002055967

I think the true cost is even a bit more complicated than that.
Your excellent analysis got me thinking - what would be the theoretical minimum to spend?

You really have to account for, among other things:

The actual money you spent, if you wouldn't have done the activity without GS
The additional money you spent on something you would have purchased anyway, if you bought in a different way because of GS
The lost value of miles/cashback you would have earned without GS
The value of miles you got back independent of GS bonuses

If I follow those rules and make a few assumptions (would not have bought any of it otherwise, a US mile is worth 1 cent, no sales tax, etc.), I get these minimums for each hit level:

[...]

For those just starting, you can still do most of those hits. The next least expensive are Biscoff ($13.34) and TrackItBack ($19.94).

Probably too late to start either e-miles or e-rewards from scratch. Don't know about Thanks Again...that one might be possible if they post Activity Date correctly.

If you go down the Vinesse road, might as well do Wine Insiders. Several FTers, including me, felt like the sampler case was drinkable enough to consider it a "free" hit. The catch is that you obviously need to be in or near a state where they can mail wine.

Sharebuilder might still work too. The cost for that one is about 10 minutes and giving up the kind of information needed to open a brokerage account. I figure ING already has that data about me, so I was willing to trade 10 minutes for 2,500 miles and 1 hit. Again, I'm just assuming they'd post the account open date as the activity date. I did all of this in Sept-Oct so I didn't pay close attention.

You could probably squeeze in another rental car or two but that requires a time cost unless you're already planning on getting a rental car.

It's always fun doing these calculations, but there's really no "right" answer. Time means different things to different people. For some emiles/erewards is free because they would be spending tuesday night sitting at their computer anyways. For others it's a hassle to deal with all these surveys.

As for me 36 hits ended up costing me about 38 cpm, or something like $380. I had six hotel stays that I'm not including in that total, although I also had four car rentals which are included in that $380.

I did one hotel transfer (free). The rest were purchases or other activities like emiles/erewards.

All in all I can't complain. About 115,000 miles for $380 and that includes getting a bunch of stuff (flowers, biscoff, etc.) in the process. A very good deal considering I have lots of free time. For me buying 100k US miles for $1500 (during the 100% promo) was not at all a good deal, since I have never paid for a business class ticket. But for $380, I'm game.

No matter how you add things up I think we all still come to the conclusion that Grand Slam is an extremely lucrative promotion. Whereas some other promos are more like incentives to do things you might already have done, Grand Slam represents an amazing value even if you don't use/need any of the items you purchase.

It's a wonder US keeps repeating this.

It's always fun doing these calculations, but there's really no "right" answer. Time means different things to different people. For some emiles/erewards is free because they would be spending tuesday night sitting at their computer anyways. For others it's a hassle to deal with all these surveys.

I just don't think you'd get the necessary e-miles/e-rewards credit generated in 3 days to get 500 mile redemptions submitted with a Nov 14 activity date. I mean, I know there are ways to buy things that earn a bulk of e-miles at once but I'm not sure it would all happen and post fast enough.

It's a wonder US keeps repeating this.

I think it's quite good for them. Airlines selling miles to partners is a nice fat high-margin business. So US stepping in to throw us some bonuses for using a bunch of partners isn't a bad thing for them. I will finish GS with 152,000-ish miles, 100,000 of which are GS bonuses. US probably made a nice profit off of the 52k they sold. Partners, in turn, are happy to get something - my personal information plus a sale, plus maybe some future business. (I might actually buy another case from Wine Insiders at some point. :))

I even did two things that US Airways *really* loves: I bought a trial preferred, meaning I'm now actually buying airline tickets from them when I probably wouldn't have considered it at all without the GS. And I bought miles directly from them at just under 1.5cpm, another massively high margin sale for them.

I just don't think you'd get the necessary e-miles/e-rewards credit generated in 3 days to get 500 mile redemptions submitted with a Nov 14 activity date. I mean, I know there are ways to buy things that earn a bulk of e-miles at once but I'm not sure it would all happen and post fast enough.



I think it's quite good for them. Airlines selling miles to partners is a nice fat high-margin business. So US stepping in to throw us some bonuses for using a bunch of partners isn't a bad thing for them. I will finish GS with 152,000-ish miles, 100,000 of which are GS bonuses. US probably made a nice profit off of the 52k they sold. Partners, in turn, are happy to get something - my personal information plus a sale, plus maybe some future business. (I might actually buy another case from Wine Insiders at some point. :))


Good post! I would love to understand the economics of this better. Do all partners buy miles at about the same price? I think the current understanding ist hat the banks pay something like 1.0 cpm for miles from the majors, I wonder what the partners are paying?

Keep in mind the partners are paying for those miles, but US is giving us those 100k miles for "free" subsidized by what the partners are paying for their miles. Still that's like $1000 (or more, depending on how you value them) for $400 in purchases, which is a big subsidy. Also I would love to see a graph of how much revenue the partners are making from people crediting US miles during Grand Slam versus during the rest of the year.

I dunno, it still seems like rough economics for US unless there are features of their partner contracts that we don't know about, like tiers or bonuses.

I got about 28k bonus miles to earn my 100k. Even if US sells miles to partners for the price AA does -- 2.2 cents -- that's only about $600 of revenue. It could sell 128k miles directly to customers for $600 all day long. Probably twice that.

I dunno, it still seems like rough economics for US unless there are features of their partner contracts that we don't know about, like tiers or bonuses.
Perhaps there are two more factors to add in to this:

1) Outside of FT, people tend to be pretty bad at making promotions work for them. I suspect the average spend for most participants is significantly higher to earn the points.

2) There's definitely the appeal of convincing high-income travelers to try your stores and hotel/car brands. How many of us would actually order from 1-800-Flowers? Or stay (heh) at a Wyndham hotel? And I'm betting some of us will use those brands again... I'm certainly considering ordering Biscoff again. Maybe even OfficeMax - their delivery method is great.

OK, let me see,

118,162 miles for $2057.
Minus business expense hits: $1158.88

But if I control for the things I needed to do anyway:
2 hotel stays
3 rental cars
flowers to people that I send flowers to every year anyway
Changing to a cheaper netflix plan
Using a thanks again diner coupon for a meal we were going out for anyway, so that saved me money...

and

Count only the hits I had no need for:
Track it back
2 car rentals
1 hotel
a poetry reading
some miles
AA stock
etc.

My adjusted out of pocket cost is $247.15 for at a rate of 0.00209cpm.:D

Thanks to all the folks who made this possible! FTers are the best!^

leisure traveler paying for everything out of my own pocket.

Will net 117K for a total cost of $452 out of pocket ~0.39cpm.

leisure traveler paying for everything out of my own pocket.

Will net 117K for a total cost of $452 out of pocket ~0.39cpm.

0.39? That's awful!

I think you need to double check you decimal places.....;)

But I am impressed. You no doubt had to work harder than I did for your haul.

0.39? That's awful!

I think you need to double check you decimal places.....;)

But I am impressed. You no doubt had to work harder than I did for your haul.

Sounds right to me :confused:

$452.00 = 45200 cents

45200 cents / 117000 miles = .386 cents per mile ~= .39cpm

You wouldn't happen to work for Verizon (http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-recording-of-verizon-customer.html), would you? :D

Good post! I would love to understand the economics of this better. Do all partners buy miles at about the same price? I think the current understanding ist hat the banks pay something like 1.0 cpm for miles from the majors, I wonder what the partners are paying?

Keep in mind the partners are paying for those miles, but US is giving us those 100k miles for "free" subsidized by what the partners are paying for their miles. Still that's like $1000 (or more, depending on how you value them) for $400 in purchases, which is a big subsidy. Also I would love to see a graph of how much revenue the partners are making from people crediting US miles during Grand Slam versus during the rest of the year.

US can afford to give us the 100,000 miles - they don't have to book them at anywhere near 1cpm. It's a closely-guarded proprietary secret exactly how many miles are "in circulation" at any one time, but I've read around here that airlines book the liability at something more like 0.1cpm.

They know there's a huge amount of breakage - people either never using their miles or using them for incredibly low return. There aren't many of us who book far in advance and snag the rare premium cabin awards on the specific flights that will eventually take off 100% full. Thus, the trillions of miles floating around out there can be valued by accountants much lower than people like us would value them.

Perhaps there are two more factors to add in to this:

1) Outside of FT, people tend to be pretty bad at making promotions work for them. I suspect the average spend for most participants is significantly higher to earn the points.

2) There's definitely the appeal of convincing high-income travelers to try your stores and hotel/car brands. How many of us would actually order from 1-800-Flowers? Or stay (heh) at a Wyndham hotel? And I'm betting some of us will use those brands again... I'm certainly considering ordering Biscoff again. Maybe even OfficeMax - their delivery method is great.

These two are huge. For me, it's Wine Insiders and Teleflora. I know a lot of it hinges on the local florist and I realize that *all* of the mileage-earning florists are huge markup over street prices, but I was impressed with what the Teleflora florist delivered - better and more artistic than anything I've ever gotten from an FTD florist - and would use them again in a pinch.

The Biscoff stuff was good too. :)


The other thing to consider on GS is that a huge percentage of participants probably completed it somewhat suboptimally compared to what an FT'er did. Even experts here have a foul ball every now and then... The general public probably had a lot of foul balls, plus most people didn't chase the 32-40 level where the hits get lucrative. Think of all the people out there who got to, say, 11 hits. I'm sure more landed on 11 than made it to 36.

I’m ready to close the books on this year’s grand slam. I didn’t do nearly as well this year as last. Once I got to the end, the hits started to get into the $35 to $40 range, but it was still worth it.

Miles: 119,000, of which 5k are EQM. Cash out of pocket: $375.60.

While it would be nice to simply say that my cost was .316 cpm, that’s wishful thinking. It doesn’t take into account the other things I gave up for the promo:

Out of pocket costs, with my values assigned: 5k choice ($30); 5k Hyatt ($62.5); 1.5k SPG ($38); 8k Wyndham ($58). Opportunity costs, including lost value: SPG stay at which I would have preferred SPG points ($8.10 = difference between SPG and US to me); Value of bonus points that I gave up by choosing US as car rental earning ($11); $25 erewards ($14).

That puts my true cost at about .501 cpm, which is still pretty good. In retrospect, I should not have done the Wyndham and Hyatt transfers. They were just too costly -- I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess coming down to the end, I just wanted to get it over with and those were easy. But that’s two hits for $120, when I still had $40 hits I could have done. As should be pretty clear, I don't regard things like erewards as "free," since that currency is pretty nice to have for topping off accounts. (I do view e-miles as free.) I get my value by taking what I think is the best redemption option -- 7k Hilton for $100 erewards.

Out of pocket costs, with my values assigned: 5k choice ($30); 5k Hyatt ($62.5); 1.5k SPG ($38); 8k Wyndham ($58). ... In retrospect, I should not have done the Wyndham and Hyatt transfers.

Though I couldnt do it because I didnt have enough Wyndham points,
Wyndham was one of the cheapest transfers IMO. 8K Wyndham is valued ~$48 (http://boardingarea.com/blogs/unroadwarrior/2011/03/26/if-you-had-an-infinite-wallet-what-credit-cards-would-you-carry-part-i/) transfers to 3200 US miles. At 1.5cpm, 3200 miles is worth $48 making Wyndham almost a free hit.

Am I missing something?

Though I couldnt do it because I didnt have enough Wyndham points,
Wyndham was one of the cheapest transfers IMO. 8K Wyndham is valued ~$48 (http://boardingarea.com/blogs/unroadwarrior/2011/03/26/if-you-had-an-infinite-wallet-what-credit-cards-would-you-carry-part-i/) transfers to 3200 US miles. At 1.5cpm, 3200 miles is worth $48 making Wyndham almost a free hit.

Am I missing something?

Well, I think you need to take out of the equation the 3200 miles earned. If those go in your final total, you can't back them out of the cost, or else you're counting your miles twice.

Put another way, it's true that when you do a Wyndham redemption, you are getting 3,200 miles, and that's a good haul, but only so long as you count the value of those Wyndham miles in determining your cost. It's false, to me, to say, "I earned 120,000 miles and only spent $400," and not include any cost for the Wyndham points. If you do that, you should at least say, "I earned 116,800 miles and only spent $400." Virtually everyone's calculations to me seem to want to both inflate the miles and disregard the costs. Even sharebuilder or the other "free" hits have a cost -- you could have used sharebuilder to earn a bonus with a different airline and if you value that airline's miles more highly, you "paid" for your hit.

I view Wyndham as worth way more than .6 cents per mile. The reason is their flexibility -- they exchange into a number of airline programs, and Wyndham expressly allows people to transfer their points into anyone else's frequent flier account. As a result, they are a very valuable commodity. Whether you're topping off a family member's account to get a reward, trading them on coupon connection, or something else, having a big store of Wyndham is valuable. Just by way of example, since Wyndham can be transferred into another person's AA account, they are super valuable right now. 3200 super flexible, freely transferrable points that go into others' accounts are worth way more to me than $48. My value of $58 is actually pretty conservative.

Well, I think you need to take out of the equation the 3200 miles earned. If those go in your final total, you can't back them out of the cost, or else you're counting your miles twice.
Right. There's at least two ways to account for the cost. One way is to take total cost over all of the miles. Another is to subtract out the direct miles earned at "par" then calculate the cost per bonus mile with the remaining cost.

In a hypothetical situation, let's say you accrue 15 free hits then spend $26.09 at Network Solutions, and earn 2000 miles from the purchase.

You could say your overall cost per mile OVERALL is:
$26.09/(25000+2000) = 0.09 CPM

Or, if you value a US mile at 1 cent, then you could say your cost per BONUS mile is:
($26.09-20)/25000 = 0.02 CPM

Either of those is a valid conclusion. You're either saying "I paid 0.09 cents per mile for a total of 27000" or you're saying "I got a $20 rebate on my purchase then paid 0.02 cents per mile for a 25000 mile bonus".

EDIT: In the Wyndham example, if you value the points natively at $58, that's fine. But you still need to credit back the value of the 3200 miles you got somewhere. Regardless of how super flexible the points are, if you value a US mile at 1.5 cents, you still got $48 of value back. So your cost is $10. The only variables are the value of the point and the value of the mile.

For me it was 96,645 for $380. I did not count in prices of hotels (3 I used for personal but would have needed anyway and 3 were for business so I was reimbursed). Besides the 6 hotel hits (all hilton) also got me 1.5 free nights with the new Hilton promo so it was an extra bonus. I also didn't count the dining cost because I was on a trip and had to eat. I just picked a (BAD) idine restaurant. Not to all SAN visitors: The Stout Public House may be a fine watering hold but the food was below Jack In The Box. I also didn't count officemax because I ordered things I would have bought anyway and itunes because I'm always buying a song here and there. My main expenses were on flowers and buying hotel points to transfer. Biscoff, Track It Back, etc. are things I wouldn't have otherwise bought so those as well.

This is the first time I've seriously played in the Grand Slam so I think I did ok. Next year I will do erewards all year to get La Quinta and other points. So my expenses should be lowered next year. I will still have to buy overpriced flowers but what can you do?

Thanks for all the help on this forum. Beltway you did an amazing job. Everyone else was helpful and I learned so much.

Next year I will do erewards all year to get La Quinta and other points.

+1. I hate those e-rewards/e-miles type sites, but the GS is an incentive to at least prime those accounts with a couple hits' worth of activity. The direct hits, the hotel transfers, and even having an extra to trade from the e-rewards account can be useful.

Sounds right to me :confused:

$452.00 = 45200 cents

45200 cents / 117000 miles = .386 cents per mile ~= .39cpm

You wouldn't happen to work for Verizon (http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-recording-of-verizon-customer.html), would you? :D

Seems to me, and as my DW will attest to I have been wrong before, 0.39 is shorthand for thirty-nine cents.

Seems to me, and as my DW will attest to I have been wrong before, 0.39 is shorthand for thirty-nine cents.

I would think thirty-nine cents is $0.39 and not 0.39CPM. Maybe I'm wrong but CPM = Cents per mile and 0.39 CENTS per mile means $0.0039 not $0.39.

I figured my total outlay for 3 accounts (36,36,20) was $1131 with a value spent of $1638 for a total of 274,480 miles. I think my cash spent is somewhat irrelevant and the value spent is much more important.

Using value I am at .0060/mile.

Its pretty tough to get your actual costs as many have stated. I tried to be as accurate as possible but its almost not worth splitting hairs. In the end I have no doubt I am ahead.

The real curve ball is what do you value your time at?!

I really enjoy this kind of stuff and dont have much else to do, but if I had a family and less free time, I might be more interested in just buying miles at .01 through the delta promo, or whatever US will sell them at these days.

IThe real curve ball is what do you value your time at?!

Pretty high. I avoided any hit that would have caused a time investment - e.g., going to get rental cars I didn't need, check into hotels I didn't need, etc. Since I don't have those immediately accessible right by my house (the way someone might if they lived in Manhattan, for example), they would have entailed time-cost.

Two n00bish errors I committed with the GS related to time spent:

(1) I decided it would be a good idea to actually use SuperShuttle instead of just no-showing a $10 reservation. :o I learned that it is the absolute worst possible way to get from EWR to Manhattan - worse than either a taxi or a train. I will never use it again, except perhaps for their private car service if I have a group of 3-4 people.

(2) I didn't start eMiles at all until after GS started. That required me to invest a half hour in them on two or three separate occasions. Now I know about eMiles...I'll just do a few seconds of clicking on the site throughout the year and have the 500 miles ready to go for the next GS. Oh, and I accidentally allowed my browser to autofill real information in one of the offers related to insurance quotes, causing my cell phone to blow up for about three days with texts and voicemails from every insurance agent in town. :o

I realize that doesn't change the total time spent on eMiles, and I still hate those kinds of sites, but a few seconds at a time over the year seems a little easier to stomach.

I spent about $550 incrementally for a total of 116K miles, for about $0.0047 per mile.

Of course, those that did just 3K miles could get them for $0.00 due to the free hits, so they've got the lowest cost.

I managed three accounts, mine, Mrs. dwcatty and grandbaby dwcatty.

Me: 112,700 pts earned, $383 spent, $12.35/hit, or $0.0034 per mile.

Mrs: 25,820 pts, $105 spent, $6.57/hit, or $0.0040 per mile.

Grandbaby: 10,127 pts, $36 spent, $3.64/hit or $0.0036 per mile.*

I combined this year's points with last years and Mrs. dwcatty and I are flying in C on vacation, CLT-JFK-FRA-VCE//FCO-EWR-CLT. With a ticketing fee of ~$200, that is two round trip business class transatlantic tickets for under $1,000. I like this promotion. Sure I had some time invested over the two years, but I am more than happy with my return.


*this could have been less, but granddad got two extra jars of Biscoff. I also forgot to register her and had to start over.