Originally Posted by
nbtmn
Thanks for the responses so far!
I am aware of the much-larger signing bonus with Barclays and the fact that it allows partial redemption whereas Venture does not. I was also aware they were less flexible;
Actually Venture used to be very flexible especially if you redeem it over the phone. Hopefully you could find the old thread and resurrect it in the hope someone would give you more updated insight.
The old thread about Venture's initial foray into the big push of gaining new customers via the Million Miles promo - that was a $1,000 bonus offer have many posts about people were able to redeem digital camera, iPad and whatnot with their Venture points when talking to the CSRs!
As I mentioned earlier, in the past the Venture online redemption allows you to split the redemption into fractions and the same charge can used to redeem multiple times during the 90 days period. Using that mechanism I was able to redeem $600+ against a $41 AA award ticket taxes. I was also able to drain the bal down to 2 pts using fractional redemption. (it is a bit counterintuitive that also requires playing with it but in that old thread there were several such mentionings and I experimented with proven success - when you redeem 2 tickets instead of 1, it actually divided the amount into 1/2. So you can play with the number to get the optimal value to drain your points.)