Diners Club Club Rewards - Rate Diners Club Club Rewards

We are going to review Diners Club Club Rewards in the September issue of InsideFlyer magazine and would like your input.

If you would like to participate, please post your response in the thread with the pros and cons of membership in Club Rewards and grade the program from A to F (A being the highest grade). You can include a plus or minus with the rating.

You can also respond directly to me at dmankell@insideflyer.com.
Thank you!

Beautiful Catalogues sent regularly during the year = A+
Value of DC points = C-

Out of all the merchants offering gift certificates for points the redemption value is similar. The usual redemption value is 0.01 (1 percent) which is similar to other credit card products.

Ordering merchandise is never the best use of points.

Also, the money spent listing all types of merchants/gift cards in the catalogue would be saved if Club Rewards just offered a MasterCard Gift Card of $50 for 5K pts, which could be used anywhere.

I have their program an A-.

DC points are extremely valued on FT's Coupon Connection.

1) They have some transfer options that SPG doesn't.
2) They offer bonuses every year (e.g., 50% bonus to BA at certain times of year).
3) Above all, you can usually covert your DC points to miles in a friend's FF account.

A-
For non amex I split my charges with Diners and Airtran.
I don't expect as much for Mastercard merchant percentages are less than Amex (spg)
For this reason I would not rate spg much higher if any.

BA and other bonus points biggest +
Transfer charges and limited partners biggest -

Diners Ritz Carlton certs are better than Amex MR certs.

I would rate the program a B+. The flexibility of Diners Club points is unmatched in my opinion, you have a wide variety of airline choices plus more hotel choices than any other program, plus the hotel point transfer rates are better than AMEX. They do offer frequent bonuses of 10%-50% for transfers, though they're not as generous as they used to be (I'm not sure that's DC's fault though, I'm sure the airlines have more say in that than DC).

The big huge negative that knocks them down from an A grade is they never offer bonuses on earning anymore. They were pretty rare years ago, but they're nonexistent now. If they offered double points on everyday purchases or something like that, this would be a killer card.

I give CR a B+

From a travel affinity card persepctive, I feel it is still one of the best. While it has lost many of the partner airline FF programs to redeem points toward, There are still 18 or so I can use. I can also redeem points directly towards the purchase of airline tickets on any carrier in the form of a statement credit. That is a nice perk. Other branded cards (Marriott, SPG, etc) may have better accumulation within those particular programs, but for me the flexibilty is worth the higher redemption premium, IMO.