Originally Posted by
Amfortas
Hello everyone, I'm considering getting the Guest Rewards World MasterCard and wanted to make sure that I understand everything correctly and that it would be the best choice for my situation. I have some questions and would appreciate any input that anyone could offer on them.
Brief background, I'm going to be a grad student making frequent trips between NYP and BAL (along with my girlfriend). I would guess that we'll take 30 Amtrak trips per year.
First question: for the $1,000 you have to spend to unlock the offer - obviously it's best to spend this on Amtrak travel to get the most points, but it's also impossible for us to accurately plan our dates of travel this far in advance. Is there a way to make this work? Would a $1000 Amtrak gift card count towards the 3x points or is there some other way to get the credit and points?
I'm not sure about the gift card, but if not I think you could back door it by booking $1000+ worth of tickets (two round trip first class acela tickets from WAS->NYP should cover it), then cancelling and taking your refund as an eVoucher. eVouchers expire one year from issuance, so you'll want to make sure you can use it up in time.
Secondly, it's 5x points for Amtrak travel right? 3x for the card and an extra 2x for guest rewards normally?
Yes, you'll earn 5x total.
Lastly, the money spent on saver and student discount tickets counts towards earning points yes? I know you can't *redeem* points for these tickets, but we'll be buying saver and student discount tickets as much as possible so I wanted to be sure these tickets will still give full points.
Yes, you'll get full value.
Unfortunately on the BoA and Amtrak websites the offer seems to now be 20,000 points not 30,000, but even then it seems like for someone in my position it is a good decision to get this card. I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks!
The link posted by
Comenius is showing 30K for me. If it doesn't show 30K for you, try opening it in a private window or another browser.