American Express Membership Rewards - "Now you can fly on virtually any airline with Membership Rewards Points"

This is the headline on a full page Amex ad in today's (Aug 30) WallStreet Journal.

Is this anything new? It's hard to tell. Maybe this is just the same old stuff?

If I go to the webpage indicated it gives no indication about the value of the points in buying a ticket, so I suspect it will be just one cent a point, which is certainly no big deal. It DOES say somewhere in the small print that there will be a service fee charged to your account that will presumably be payable in real money to get this award.

The implication is that they will bill you for an actual plane ticket and then deduct points and give you a credit back. But there is still that service fee, amount unspecified.

Anyone got any specifics?

The web page referenced in the ad is http://800thecard.com Be prepared for a long commercial before you actually get to anything useful.

I went out this morning trying to book on the "new" site for award travel next june ny to london

no seats available for any amount of miles, coach, business first or any combination

The site has the look and feel of a masked expedia site

Their is no way to filter out just for award seats

The process is you find seats from what looked like a very limited inventory (no virgin flights only virgin codeshares with co) for each leg of your trip (each has a price associated with it) and then when it recaps it is supposed to give you the option of using mr points.

I checked 15 different flights and each said that I could not use mr points to pay for this ticket "at this time" whatever that means (I do not know if there is a time window or not or if they are just using goofy language).

Also if you want anything but coach class seats you must go through a search and then click modify search and then click more options to select fare class, non-stops or preferred airline.

Overall this was a very poor experience and it certainly did not seem well tested for a roll out with full size ads in every national newspaper today.

Tested a sample itinerary.

Got much better value on a Merrill Lynch + points purchase for an itinerary I booked last week.

Amex deal is better than burning up airline miles on a "rulebuster" or similar arrangment, though.

http://leisure.americanexpress-travel.com/Promotions/0,,AMEX|2981|mkt_main,00.html

Did it actually allow you to use points, am I doing something wrong or not registered for something that will keep me from doing so?

This "virtually any airline" offer is being promoted in spots on Seattle AM news radio. The spot says, "If you live in the Seattle area, now you can use Membership Reward Points for travel on virtually any airline, anywhere." Is there some geographic targeting associated with this?

I am surprised it took AMEX literally years to finally realize their MR program was in the toilet w/ respect to poor choice of [airline] partners (at least for high-volume earners that I know and am part of). NW left after the first year of MR, while TWA went the way of the dinosaur. And AMEX never bagged the "BIG TWO" (AA and UA). MR was essentially stillborn from the start for high-volume useage consideration.

AA and UA, for various reasons (speculation was that AMEX snubbed AAdvantage when AA first developed the concept of an affinity program, and went to AMEX seeking their first partner...AMEX snubbed, and AA turned to Citibank...rest is history), never joined.

So, the two world's largest airlines never became members of Membership Rewards, and the program has been in decline almost since it was announced.

I know - I know - AMEX has seen nice upside w/ this program as "the greater fool" theory kept newcomers coming year after blessed year, but I think the writing is on the wall that a) dedicated airline-only affinity cards such as Citibank/AAdvantage card, and AMEX/DELTA cards, are dying, and 2) airlines themselves are choking their own affinity program credibility by implementing such agregious capacity control schemes as to neuter the very success of their affinity programs and create true, real-world credibility problems such that their own ff'ers don't have confidence they can redeem miles, and finally 3) consumers now demand choice, as much as a workaround to the airline's capacity control schemes as anything,

SO - I give a qualified "A" to AMEX for figuring out their MR points *should* equate to generic points programs like Cap One's and USAA's Eagle Points and have convertibility. I give them an outright "F" for taking years to figure this out.

As for implimentation and ease of use and "intuitiveness", if its like typical AMEX promotions, it will still take them a year+ to "get it right", since they always are loaded w/that arrogant "not invented here" approach to seeking input from competent ff and affinity program consultants and experienced ff consumers. I myself earned low 7-figures worth of these semi-worthless points and finally abandoned most efforts to accrue more after finally concluding I could not use MR proints easily in my travel patterns. Its taken me many years to get my balance down.

CONCLUSION: This approach has PROMISE...lets see if AMEX can put it together during my lifetime. Or will it take AMEX a decade of fumbling to make this site easy to use and reasonably useful in terms of value proposition. I am not in anyway interested in using the site or the points if the conversion is worse than 25K points = 1x domestic US air ticket.

Yeah, Membership Rewards points for purposes of traveling for free or upgrading paid tickets is not very useful, and I am moving most all of my spending to the Starwood Amex, which is better even than the Citibank AAdvantage M/C, IMHO.

If it's 1 point=1 cent, plus some mysterious fee in actual cash, as you folks seem to have confirmed, it's a pretty useless program. Best deal I've found using these points is to convert to DL miles when they are giving a decent bonus and then use the DL miles for premium class seats on SQ. That's hard to do, because C or F award seats on SQ are rarely made available -- but at least it's not impossible.

My points are building up again and if all I can do with them is get a 1 point = 1 cent merchandise credit at Sharper Image or some other overpriced store, it's not much of a program.

BUMP -

wondering if anyone has attempted to use this feature and can discuss their experience ?

Link to this new MR feature:

http://leisure.americanexpress-travel.com/Promotions/0,,AMEX|2981|mkt_main,00.html

I see full-page ads in USA Today (back page, business section, today, 9/7) but, in typical AMEX fashion, no details...generic discussion in big bold letters, but as we all know the devil is in the details.

I tried a test run on a ticket I need to secure and, true to form, the process is
a) NON-intuitive in that it takes one through a 3rd party (orbitz-style) web site using PRICES and a tiny, small-print (hyperlink) mention of the ability to use membership rewards points; IMO it appears AMEX is just trying to grab some of the 3rd party ticketing process and use of the MR points is almost an afterthought.
b) confusing and not functional - when I clicked on the link to take me off to who-knows-where to see if I could use points...the link was dead, so I NEVER got to a point to see where I could use points in lieu of payment

Not surprised at all - AMEX is usually waaay lagging in forward ideas, and then when they try to roll out a new initiative, it takes months and a lot of NEGATIVE feedback for them to get it right the 3rd or 4th try.

Can you tell I am not very impressed w/ AMEX corp ? yes, I hold their card products, because they have shrewdly aligned w/ an innovative company I am fond of (Starwood and the AMEX OPTIMA/SPG card), but I use it because of the benefit of the starwood program, in spite of the AMEX process I have to endure.

Had great hopes when I heard of this MR point conversion option to secure generic airline tix, but so far I think its a dud, both in function (actually, it stillborn in terms of function) and form (methodology of directing the user to orbitz-like 3rd party web site).

Comments anyone else ?

Don't know if it is true, but I talked to a MR representative yesterday and she told me this.

"Because you are a platinum card holder, you can make reservation on-line throught the leisure AE site, book a FHR property and pay with THE card, then later when the statement come you can pay the balance with your MR point. You will still get the FHR benifit because the hotel will see that you pay with plat. and not MR point".

Any body can confirm if that is true or not? :confused:

Thanks!

Cindy

Excellent! Although I'd never watched this thread before, I had no doubts that my fellow FTers would be churning on the subject...

At any rate, a little background.... I guess I hadn't paid very much attention to the MR program until two weeks ago when I went to go switch some MR points into UA miles for my honeymoon next year, and found that I couldn't. :td: I was totally shocked b/c my use of THE card is compulsory for my work expenses, and THE move to THE card was much ballyhooed by everyone in the corporate office who several years ago sold us down the river, clearly overlooking or ignoring quite possibly the most glaring and painful flaw in the otherwise fine (but far from great and somewhat expensive) MR program.

So what brings me here tonight, and I can't say for sure if it's new or not (and I haven't seen the ads folks are talking about, etc.) but I had confidence FT could show some light... Randomly I looked at the MR homepage tonight (accessed through the amex.com website from my Account Summary page) and saw the clip/option below under airline point redemptions... Inferring quite a bit, and generalizing far more than I have a right to, it looks like AE is using an outfit called GlobalPass to push points through to miles (I am not familiar with them)... at least to round out access to the airlines with which it doesn't have existing relationships:

Transfer Membership Rewards® points to GlobalPass miles and use GlobalMiles(TM) as currency to purchase non-reward airline tickets on over 600 airlines worldwide. GlobalPass is an online booking engine with the best available airfares in the market. There are no restrictions and no blackout dates! Tickets can be purchased with GlobalPass miles or a combination of GlobalPass miles and your American Express card.

1000 points = 1000 GlobalPass miles.


But it (quite conspicuously) doesn't say whether GlobalPass maps to all airlines existing point redemption structures, etc. And I didn't have the time this evening to go register at GlobalPass, which appears to be required...

Aside from that, I also tried the goofy leisure.amex.com website and saw the footer indicating a registered Ohio Travel Agency. But beyond its goofyness, the really strange thing is that (as was noted above) it lists prices rather than miles/points... Redemption of points/miles is obviously similar but often different by airline, and even more loosely tied to flight cost, so I'm really skeptical about any claims that buying a ticket with a price at some Ohio Travel Agency maps back to your statement and automatically gets the points deducted correctly...


Definitely interested in hearing more discussion / experiences...

the MR system seems to be "down" for booking by points.

Has anyone had any luck booking with points?
What is the conversion ratio?
Where does the seat inventory come from?
Are there blackouts/capacity controls?
It appears that AX charges you for the tix (allowing you to acrue FF miles) and then credits you with purchase amt. on you statement. Is this correct?
If anyone from AX monitors this site, please update your FAQ's to answer some of these questions.
Thanks!

The site has the look and feel of a masked expedia site

It's a masked travelocity site

I don't see where to use the MR points

And it says you get double MR points?

That could make things interesting

I guess I hadn't paid very much attention to the MR program until two weeks ago when I went to go switch some MR points into UA miles for my honeymoon next year, and found that I couldn't. :td: I was totally shocked

It's still possible to get United flights by transferring your MR points to *A carrier that is a MR partner, such as USAir or even All Nippon .... Clearly not the easiest but it works fine for me.

I thought I'd give an update here since I've successfully purchased tickets twice using this new service, once on CO, once on AA.

No, $0.01/mile isn't a great deal, but there are some considerations:
1) The ticket is actually purchased from the airline -- your credit card is charged by the airline, and later (not sure timeframe yet) will be credited by Amex. Thus, TICKETS OBTAINED THIS WAY ARE ELIGIBLE FOR FF MILEAGE, ELITE STATUS AND ELITE UPGRADES!!! The airline probably doesn't even know that you used points for the ticket.
2) Booking isn't that hard -- you "purchase" the ticket on the amex travel website, and when you get to the payment option, you can select to use MR points for some or all of the purchase price. You will have to log in with your Amex ID/pw after you choose your flights.
3) If a ticket comes up for <$250 then it's pretty much a no-brainer to do it this way, since the point transfer would require 25,000 points into whatever program for a free ticket (excluding bonuses and mileage specials), capacity controlled of course. No capacity controls with this new option, if the ticket is for purchase, you can use your points.
4) If the ticket is between $250-$500 it still can be a reasonable use of MR points if you can't find cheap award availability and you can't be that flexible on dates/times.
5) For tickets over $500 you're probably better off transferring 50,000 MR points into the FF program and redeeming an unrestricted award ticket, if you're flying on CO, DL, US, etc. If you need to fly AA or UA for example then the MR option still isn't necessarily a bad deal. Or if you really need those elite qualifying miles but don't want to pay for your mileage run, this can be a good option.

But here's the big problem -- the Amex travel website S-T-I-N-K-S. :mad: It does a TERRIBLE job finding valid flights. I've been trying for days to book a particular routing and I can't get their website to offer the flights I want, which I know exist. The options just don't come up. Customer service hasn't been much help either, but I'm going to keep trying and bit*hing...

It's Travelocity with the option to pay with MR points... you can play with getting the flights you want to come up by clicking on "more options" under the search and selecting the class and the carrier. Also, choosing the 'multi-city' option and nurse-maiding the routing can help but Travelocity is a pain.

It's Travelocity with the option to pay with MR points... you can play with getting the flights you want to come up by clicking on "more options" under the search and selecting the class and the carrier. Also, choosing the 'multi-city' option and nurse-maiding the routing can help but Travelocity is a pain.Thanks, this is helpful but the carrier options omit British Airways. Any thoughts on how one might make it come up?

As stated before, redeeming *Alliance with USAir is easy if there's availability and the mile transfer is instant.

As for BA, try a One World Code Share like AA