Originally Posted by
iahphx
Thanks for the summary, Happy. Sounds like there are no tricks to the TY redemption.
I did see on a website somewhere that there was currently the ability to buy a $100 Amazon gift card for 9000 points. I decided to use a small portion of my TY points for this. It's obviously not as lucrative as airfare redemptions, but if you don't currently need airfare -- and you do buy things on Amazon -- it's not a bad deal. Especially since I can usually get about a 10% "cashback" on airfare (using PenFed Amex and a cashback travel agency) and I basically can't get any cashback on Amazon purchases.
So TY Network now offers AMZN gift card again? That is good to know.
If you need airfare, clearly 25% off is better than the 10% cash rebate.
$100 less 25% would be $75. 10% cash rebate of $100 is $10. So $100 less $10 would be $90. You are still paying $90 after the 10% cash rebate, instead of paying $75 with TYP.
Same applies to the Amazon 10% discount redemption if you can actually get it. Saving $10 out of $100 still means you use $90.
How $90 would be less than $75 I do not know You could say that you are willing to only get 10% discount for something you CURRENTLY need versus to get 25% when you will need in the future. But you are basically giving up 60% of your saving as in the form of $10 is only 40% of $25.
That said, I redeemed $100 in each account as I have some TYPs expiring in Aug and no foreseeable airfare that would use TYPs. Still haven't cleaned out the expiring portion but it is a good start. Thanks for the heads up.
Originally Posted by
Aitchly
Good summary Happy. An addendum, I needed a hotel that was unavailable on the SPG website due to a conference. The conference rate was $189. Perhaps a glitch, but I found the hotel on the TYP site for $159/night.
Even with opaqueness and lack of SPG credit, the $150 savings per night + tax (possibly, the fine print is opaque as well) made this an easy decision.
Good that worked out for you. Always check other sites to compare the price. I had booked a hotel at Seville during Easter last year because several sites I looked, there was absolutely no acceptably priced room available for the date we needed, yet TY Network had availability. Even Booking.com did not have it when this site usually had a lot of European offerings. One place I failed to check, was to google hotel's own site!!! It turned out the hotel's own website had room available, at about 10% cheaper than what TYP would cost me. Too late, I already redeemed the TYP. It was during the process of confirming the reservation with the hotel to make sure we indeed had a room, that I discovered that room booked thru TYP did not specify guest name at booking. It took many emails back and forth in both English and Spanish to finally confirmed that there was a room booked under a confirmation number (I finally got the info from TYP) BUT no guest name. I had to make sure we had the reservation because it was Easter Friday and Seville basically was sold out except for some $500+ rooms at the Starwood property (a Cat 6) very close to the Cathedral. Our room costed $185 including taxes apparently (no additional payment needed at hotel) for a suite at a hotel at the outskirt of Seville, next to a hospital. We decided to just stay at our suite to watch TV for the prossession. It turned out Seville had severe downpour on Easter Friday and the prossession was canceled. I sure was glad we did not pony up for the Starwood property!