Originally Posted by
boilers
Yikes, that is bad. Worse than I thought. Would the Chase Sapphire Preferred be the next best option?
I hope you don't think that because of the TV commerical where they go: "You redeemed Chas Sapphire points for a last-minute holiday trip to Hawaii?"
What that ad doesn't say is
how many points that took.
And what it doesn't say, of course, is that it is
absolutely no problem to redeem at the last minute for the very last two seats on the plane, with almost all real mileage programs, as long as you use double miles (50000 for domestic instead of 25000). (And with some airlines you also have to pay a fee for last-minute, but that fee likely would be the same whether using these unrestricted awards or the half-price restricted awards.)
So it's very misleading to talk about how easy or hard it is with some program to redeem miles/points/whatever if you don't talk about how many it takes, since in so many programs just using twice as much eliminates all the hassles of "no availability".
The thing is, people have been hearing the marketing about 25000 miles for a domestic flight so long, they think that's what they "should" pay, and most people don't even consider the 50000 miles for "last seat" option.
But the people who write Chase Sapphire TV ads do!!!
