chobby100

(Shamlessly stolen and morphed from GUWonder's great info b/c I wasn't smart enough to put this all together)

Make sure you are signed up with Ebay, Paypal, points.com, asia miles and have created an Ebay Anything points account:

1) go to www.ebay.com and sign in.
2) select "buy"
3) select "travel"

or alternatively go to http://pages.ebay.com/travel/ and sign in

4) On the left side of the screen enter your desired Priceline-related travel details
5) Enter your ebay login (which should be linked to your paypal/ebay anything points account
6) usual priceline process

1 - 2 star hotels earn 500 points per reservation
2.5 - 3 star hotels earn 1000 points per reservation
4 - 5 star hotels and resorts earn 1500 points per reservation
Car rental 500 earn per reservation
Vacations 4,000 earn per vacation
Airfare 1,500 per ticket

7) a few days later your paypal account "redeem gift certificates" link should indicate how many Ebay points you have. (Look at the bottom after signed in on paypal for the "Certificates/Points" link and click on it).
8) Go to Points.com, sign in and transfer (read: "Swap") Ebay Anything Points in batches of 514 (to get to the 1.126 ratio) into Asia Miles. This will yield 579 Asia Miles which should generally show up in your account within a few minutes.

Asia Awards flight chart: http://www.asiamiles.com/en/redeem/f...ts/0,,,00.html

The award chart is excellent for roundtrip business class trips where the one-way distance is less than 5000 miles (measured from origin to destination) and allow for two stopovers, two transfers and one open-jaw. The only downside is that you cannot mix & match carriers unless one of the carriers is Cathay Pacific (which from the East Coast to Europe is impossible), so the award is good for flying AA all the way or British Airways all the way.

In effect, every 3* Priceline hotel nets over 1240 Asia Miles and every 4* Priceline hotel nets over 1860 Asia Miles.

jabez

chobby100
Thanks for the helpful step-by-step!

ashaboe

The ratio should be 1.126 ... for a while I thought that you've found a glitch that will allow a 1.26 transfer ratio

whlinder

I've been getting Upromise 'money' from my Priceline bids, which is 2%. Anyone care to do a comparison of the value of this vs. Asia Miles?

FlyBalletGuy

Per this thread - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=339240

1 - 2 star hotels earn 500 points
2.5 - 3.5 star hotels earn 1000 points
4 - 5 star hotels and resorts earn 1500 points

This is per bid, not per night.

Anything points are worth a minimum of .01 (on eBay items that you purchase with Paypal). It takes 60,000 Asiamiles (or about 55,000 anything points via points.com) to get a business class trip of 2,500-5,000 miles, making the east coast to Europe possible. So it depends upon the trip. I am shooting for NYC-LED on BA. That's about $7K on BA, but I have seen it discounted as low as $2,800 on Air France. That's a value of about .046 per point.

As for value, it depends on the prospective bid. It takes 37 individual 4* bids to get enough eBay points --> Asiamiles for this ticket. If you're looking for a ticket actually worth $2800 to you, then 1500 points is worth about $75. That way outclasses Upromise, or ebates' 3% priceline rebate. But that figure doesn't factor in the loss of actual and status miles and that to many people, a $2,800 business class seat is not something they would actually buy over a $500 economy seat. So figure how much the business class ticket is worth to you and do the math.

My guess is it will still beat Upromise or eBates for most bids, except those with very high dollar values.

FBG -

"Priceline for the Timid: An excruciatingly detailed bidding guide" http://www.leighwitchel.com/blog/arc...ine/index.html

gleff

Do any transpac itineraries from North America come in under 5k flown miles using AsiaMiles? YVR-NRT on JAL... anything else?

chobby100

I have made a few changes to the original post. Feel free to post changes you'd like to see to the original post. (I'm still learning, so I don't profess to know all the answers).

windwalker

Just noticed that Ebay anything points can be exchanged 1:1 for Hilton, if you don't need mile. 1000EBAP=1000 HH points

flyingstudent

I've been doing the 514-579 swaps today and it only lets you do it 5 times before it turns into "swap pending" messages. Perhaps a security measures by the system. Anyone else experiences the same thing?

Governator

Can you do multiples of this - for example 5140 to 5790? It seems like an odd number, is it just a fluke that this is the best transfer rate?

flyingstudent

514->579 yields a transfer rate of 1.126

Other ones are between 1.124-1.125. Thinking about it, you only get a very small fraction more miles, given the hassle.

chobby100

I think that the thing is that the Asia Miles (using partners) are so easy to accumulate a mass that allows for redemtion. Just 15k for a short economy roundtrip.

chobby100

Interesting. My last two exchanges got me 1:125 (using all of my anything points in my account at the time, not using the 514 -> 579 method)

chobby100

Does anyone know if there is a chart showing exchange rates on points.com? This seems to be illusive (or at least to me).

chobby100

if the rates are in fact 1.124, 1.125 and 1.126 is it really worth 1 extra mile per thousand anyhing points to go through the process of 514 -> 579?