Originally Posted by
shimps1
Way off dude. Yes, the 50,000 points can be turned into $500 cash, but it can also be used towards flights, on ANY airline. 25,000 points gets you a flight up to $500. So, you can get up to $1,000 in flights. I just booked my wife and her friend using 50,000 miles for an itinerary that would have been $1005 if paid with cash.
The Merrill+ card is significantly better than the AS card, IMO. It has a MINIMUM redemption of 1 CPP. Are 30,000 AS miles worth more than $500? Or, in reality, are you able to get $1000 in value out of 30,000 AS miles? Because that is VERY easy to do when traveling domestic and using Merrill points.
Along with that, there are very few other banks outside of Chase that have a sign up bonus worth $500 in cash like this card. If you're over 5/24, this is a great card. And there is no annual fee.
I think you are more way off here.
As
sdsearch pointed out - most folks who want the miles than cash do NOT care to pay for a flight that is only a few hundreds. It is the international long haul FLAT BED flights that they want.
Try to price an international business class flight using google flight, on any random city pair, and see for yourself just HOW MUCH CASH you would need to buy that flight, not to mention that many times the reward tickets can be one-way not a r/t - that makes the flights even more expensive.
Here is an example for you - price out this itinerary JNB-HKG//HKG-LAX-SEA-SLC, in business and first class. See how much cash you need to buy this. Hint: between $7K to $16K.
FWIW, the ticket costs 70K AS miles $134 taxes and fee from the airline, plus $12.50 partner award fee and $15 AS phone booking fee, for the total cash outlay of $167.
If you are going for cheapo domestic flights, you are far better off to get a 2% cash back card.