Originally Posted by
TTT103
I'm really perplexed as to why all of the frequent travelers on this thread can't use the $300 travel credit to book a flight without gaming the system? I just booked a flight from PPT to BOB for $415.
I suspect there are a few buckets of people in this scenario, but my guess as to some of these are:
- Some are blindly following advice of travel bloggers who tell them that they need to have this card because (yada, yada, yada..it's the best), even if it is not well-suited to them, and by the time they realize they just want to use the credit to get value of it.
- Some people just don't want to deal with booking not direct so trying to game credit to get a credit directly with carrier (or whomever) so they can use it there
- Similar to #1, some just fall victim to Cap1 marketing, thinking they can score a 'deal' on a good card with a lot of benefits, even though the benefits may not be good ones for them, or get the thought in their head that they can do as well with this card as one of the more premium travel cards (ie, CSR/Plat), without the fee those both require
- Some just aiming for the best of both worlds (booking direct but getting it paid fro from somewhere else.
Personally, I tend to use the credit on either non-chain hotels (where I can't get credit anyway), or for airfare where I'm unlikely to change it and on a high-frequency route where a schedule change, delay, etc. is less likely to be an issue. For example, we just used our annual credit on a OW ORD-YYZ trip we needed for later this summer - for us - this is part of a longer SFO-YYZ trip where we are stopping in ORD for a few days. Again, unlikely to change, and with UA flying this route every couple of hours pretty much all day, I'm not really worried about schedule changes of IRROPS.
Originally Posted by
gef100
You realize some people has this card BEFORE it was changed to require portal booking right?
When was this, exactly?
As far as I'm aware, it always required a portal booking. In the past, you paid full price at checkout and the $300 (or portion thereof) was credited on the statement vs. using as a form of payment at checkout, but that still required it to be booked on Cap1 portal.
Originally Posted by
SpaethCo
The biggest problem I had can be summed up as simply "eCredits."
Now that you can change or cancel flights without fees it's not hard to end up with piles of eCredits even if you're only re-pricing your tickets over time. Now throw in the probability that the more you travel the more your plans tend to change and it's not hard to end up with a bouquet of credits that all have varying expiration dates.
I don't have the card anymore, but I'd rather add another eCredit to the pile of eCredits I'm already working with than having to deal with a separate Capital One credit that can't be combined with any of the airline credits I'm already holding.
I don't know about everywhere, but in some cases, it's definitely possible.
I've had no problem getting credit directly from UA. I said above I typically use on trips where changes are unlikely, and I do, but last year, youngest daughter got sick a day before departure so we had to cancel our UA flight (SFO-SAN). Was able to cancel on UA.com, and had no issues using the full amount of credit for a future trip.