should I go for 25?
thanks to a bunch of business travel, I'll be able to make 15 with very little effort. Thus far, I have:
1. Skymiles AmEx
2. Skymiles Dining & Hotels (1 dine)
3. e-miles transfer
4. points.com transfer
5. Skymiles Clothing care purchase
6. Avis rental
7. Hertz rental
8. Hilton Hhonors hotel stay
9. Marriott rewards hotel stay
10. Starwood (pts xfer)
11. Wyndham group hotel stay
12. Best Western Gold Club hotel stay
13. Skymiles Dining & Hotels (1 hotel stay)
All of the above have posted. After this week I'll have a Choice property credit, so that makes 14. I also have a Hyatt stay from this past weekend, which should credit toward Skymiles, so that makes 15.
15,000 Skymiles thanks to a particularly brutal business travel period that happily coincided with this promotion. However, now I'm to the point where I'm going to have to lay out real money if I want to make 25. Looking over the list, here is what I see as reasonable:
16. random list of retail partners (Ameriprise quote or something)
17. buy/gift/xfer miles, probably to my wife.
18. Skymiles Shopping
19. Skymiles Subscriptions
20. FTD
21. 1800Flowers
22. Teleflora
23. Shutterfly
so that gets me to 23. and what kills me is that I also have a Priority Club stay and a GoldPoints Plus stay during the past couple of weeks -- but I screwed up by registering my PC profile for their 2/1 stay/free night deal instead of Skymiles, and I only stayed in the GP Plus property one night, so I didn't earn enough points (10K) for the automatic transfer of points to miles.
I just caught the PC mistake, and redeemed a Priority Club reward for miles, but that may not post in time (webpage says allow 4-6 weeks). Even if it does, it still only brings me to 24, and after this week my travel will stop until after the end of the promotion (ironically, the week after). So to make 25, it looks like I'll have to rent a car I don't need, just for a day (unless I want to drop a few thousand dollars into an investment account I don't want, or something similar).
I haven't crunched the numbers yet to see if I think it's worth it; I'm looking at either spending a little bit on small ticket items (SM shopping & mags), spending a bit more for some things I (or my wife) like but don't need (flowers & shutterfly), and then dropping money down a hole for the last one (unneeded rental car) -- or two, if the PC points don't transfer in time.
Or I could save all of it and just be happy with 15K Skymiles.
Anybody got an opinion?