Originally Posted by
snowmt
You can use other cards to book those hotels using expedia via a shopping portal (e.g., ebates). You earn 5 membership reward points from ebates + 3-5 credit card points from travel purchase.
You earn more points, plus the benefit to deal with Expedia directly (more inventory and choices) or any other OTA you like.
There are many ways to skin a cat, and UR points certainly worth less than Membership Reward points based on the usefulness to our household. Of course this varies.
The bad thing about UR portal is you are NOT dealing with the Expedia consumer side - there is huge difference between the Expedia the general public sees it and the Expedia Chase contracted with to do the UR booking. The former is almost like another big OTAs because Expedia owns most of them just under different names, the latter is more or less like a corporate contract with lots of hidden restrictions that we the users have no clue until we run into issues, that includes the independent hotels do not confirm the reservations but you have NO WAY to contact them, among other perils we have encountered.
PYB let's you keep the 1.5x so you just use the cash to book whatever you need / want, thru better channels and earn more points in the process without losing the 1.5x benefit!