wise2u

UR, by mistake or on purpose, had some of the best Cyber Monday deals with their new partner Best Buy. They are allowing in store pickup at BB for merch bought with UR points.....while merch redemtions with CC or airline points are usually overpriced, this was a huge sale....it was supposed to be a 25% off discount in points, but they took it off the CM sale prices at BB or screwed it up because some things were 50%-63% off.
It slammed their site so hard it crawled all day Monday, so they extended the sale until midnight Tuesday and gave away a bunch of points for the people that complained.
I had 100k from signup bonus and bump, 2.5k from stamps.com and 3.5k for the qualified spend..so for my 106k I got about $2400 worth of merch...the receipts from best buy show the jacked up price and tax (that I didnt have to pay)...this is what I got:

57k points (normally 147k) Samsung 59" 3D plasma TV...reciept said $1500with tax!!
27k for a 320gb PS3 move bundle ...$350 everywhere including amazon
7k for a hoover steamvac rug cleaner that runs $110
6k for a samsung wifi built in 3D bluray player lists for $130
4k each for ps3 games (skyrim and uncharted 1&2 twinpack)

I might return the rug cleaner and exchange for 4 sets of 3D glasses and a couple of movies.

I doubt they will do it again next year but we can hope. I was waiting till I got my 7% sapphire bonus to cash them all in on UA miles, so I still had the miles when I heard about the sale. So glad I waited, with the CO UA merge I have plenty of miles already.....now thanks to sapphire and UR I have a great entertainment package.

apolloms

i think Amex customer service is leaps and bounds better than chase though

apolloms

i almost bit on the tv and when i went to finally do it, it was too late. chase said they were extending the deals until midnight tuesday night but ended up raising the point redemption to 67k tuesday morning

iceman77_7

I would have to disagree here. Chase Sapphire Preferred customer service is awesome! US agent picks up right away when you call CS, and they're empowered to make a lot of CS adjustments.

belfordrocks

I would go with Chase even if you're not a UA/CO flyer. 7 points per dollar is very good, much better than 4K DL points- especially considering redemption options.

saatx

[QUOTE=UA Fan;17561381]Its 1:1 right? I generally hear ppl say that one airline mile (including the Pesos) to be worth more than one hotel point. am I missing something?



+1
Can someone explain that please what we are missing?

flltravel

With the Chase UR Black Friday deal, I bought two home speaker systems for 20K points each from Best Buy. The retail value of these speakers is $590 each. So today I returned them to Best buy for a Best buy gift card. After selling the gift cards, I will get at least $1000 cash for 40K UR points. The best use of points in quite some time.

In general, I feel Chase UR points are worth more than Amex MR points.

Mommy Points

57k points (normally 147k) Samsung 59" 3D plasma TV...reciept said $1500with tax!!
27k for a 320gb PS3 move bundle ...$350 everywhere including amazon
7k for a hoover steamvac rug cleaner that runs $110
6k for a samsung wifi built in 3D bluray player lists for $130
4k each for ps3 games (skyrim and uncharted 1&2 twinpack)

Yowzer, that is awesome! Congrats. The Best Buy Black Friday 10x UR deal was awesome.

To answer the OP, since you are a Delta flyer it is a tough call, but I absolutely think that UR points are worth more than MR points. Since you are also earning many more UR points than you would MR points for your purchase that also weighs the scales to UR.

I would go UR, but you really can't go wrong either ay since Delta miles are valuable for you.

shanshan

If Chase started running transfer bonuses for CO I would run away. What good are transfer bonuses to Delta and BA when the miles get diluted etc. I love CO for not diluting their miles so aggressively (resulting in diluted awards/tougher redemptions etc.). 50K CO to me is worth a lot more than other programs.

mia

If you accumulate points bear in mind that Chase has a history of removing partners and rewards, even discontinuing entire card programs, with zero notice. American Express typically announces departures from Membership Rewards months in advance.

edrags

I feel like I'm missing something here. With MR I can transfer to any of over twenty airlines. With UR it's three. I know each one represents an alliance, but isn't the flexibility this gives me worth quite a bit? After all, I can't automatically convert Korean Air into Air France or British Airwas into American or Coninental ibto Singapore.

What am I missing?

edrags

Okay, what am I missing other than a spell-checker?

DHAST

[QUOTE=saatx;17562552]It really depends on the program/your travel needs. BA and DL points are worth less than the average airline point, because of the recent devaluations. UA/CO and AA are still worth something.

On the hotel side, SPG and Hyatt are particularly valuable, whereas Hilton and Priority Club, not so much.

Depending on how you want to play the valuation game, I can easily squeeze 3+ cpp out of Hyatt and SPG, although Hyatt has some top tier properties with better redemption values, if you'd actually be willing to pay the list price. (PH Vendome in Paris and the PH in Maldives both have rooms pushing $1,000 USD per night, available for 22,000 Hyatt points.) SPG generally has some good redemption values for C&P awards, which I have no trouble getting in Thailand. I got 14+ cpp at the Sheraton Krabi last Xmas, and a few awards at Category 2 hotels, worth more than 7 cpp. But by and large, I think 3 cpp is a fair value for SPG points.

To me, airline miles have a bi-modal value. (IOW, I hate trying to put an "average" on them, because if you use them for coach, they'll be worth < 2 cpp, but if you use them for premium cabin travel, they can be worth lots more.) The flip side is that to extract the best values, you have to have gobs of points. (1 J class ticket to Asia runs 100,000+ points, depending on the carrier.)

Given that, IMHO 15,000 airline points in and of themselves are worth about 0, but you can get a few hotel reward nights for an equivalent amount.

To tie this back to UR/MR, MR has two airlines with really crappy redemption values, but UR has one airline + one hotel chain with really good opportunities.

mase

darn.. oddly enough, my receipt said $1300 including tax... very odd.

DHAST

For true transfers, it looks like it's only 16 airlines (The others are some sort of ticket purchase for miles types of transactions.)

I don't think the transferability in and of itself is worth that much. I mean, being able to transfer 5,000 alone to 16 different programs doesn't do me a lot of good, or create a lot of value. If we were talking about 150,000 points, then lets talk. But I'd still argue that some partners transfers aren't worth much (BA, DL) so those two options certainly don't get any "extra" for flexibility. Besides, how many partners in an alliance do you need anyway? If I'm crediting all of my miles to AC, then why would I care that NH is a partner? Granted, each carrier might have niche awards, but it's really hard to value a program highly when there are only a handful of truly valuable/desirable rewards. MR only has weak redemption options for the average American -- DL and BA aren't worth as much these days.

UR gets points because they have a solid airline partner AND a solid hotel partner. Airline points only get me so far, because I can only take so many trips in a year. At some point, I need help paying for the hotels, and MR can't help me there. (I do realize Hyatt doesn't have a lot of offerings, but we construct these trips around our points anyway...)