mtparadis

Somehow I see this devaluation as hugely backfiring right now as people are scrambling to book very expensive tickets that otherwise would not have been booked.

moondog

I would guess not. As BIG as FT is, you guys (speaking the second person because I didn't join the party until this year) did a good job at keeping this deal secret. I wouldn't have found out about were it not for an impromptu mini-do at M&S this Feb. Furthermore, folks that know how to push the $8800 threshold (for us-Asia) are an extremely rare breed.

mtparadis

I never thought Citi was losing a ton of money fixed point redemptions (I mean, they made $21 billion last year), but a marked increase in the type of tickets that they are trying to avoid probably stings somewhat.

mia

I don't believe the redemption costs are borne directly by Citi, but rather by Expedia. Expedia's gross revenue is $2.3 billion with profit of $256 million, a much smaller operation. In any event one important way companies remain profitable is by making sure that each product is profitable.

I do not expect Citi to eliminate Fixed Flight redemptions, but because of this abuse I do expect to see further restictions on the cards that are eligible and some mechanism to issue restricted tickets.

EsquireFlyer

Why would Expedia be buying the tickets instead of billing Citi for them?

mtparadis

Abuse? More like maximizing value. Just Citi's job is to maximize profit for shareholders, TYP users should maximize value of their points.

drjhwang

I ended up doing the same thing. I was slowly saving up my points for a nice trip to Hawaii, but this new deadline basically induced me to cash out the points at an insane valuation in order to buy that ticket.

skit53

What "tricks" are you referring to?

I assume you are referring to tricks to find a high priced itinerary? I'm trying to find such an itinerary for Continental, do you guys have any luck?

Continental's cancellation fee is $100.

Baby61212

I'm trying to find an itinerary to cash out too, on any airline. I've been playing around with dates but haven't really found any insane valuations...but then again I'm not really too good at that. Anyone successful in finding something really great?

edlin303

Nevermind

anaggie

abuse....they said whatever...whenever ...any airline you want to fly.....at any time...not our fault that a biz class ticket to ASIA costs 8k.....

And I have looked at this a bit closer:

1) How many FT'ers are TYP earners? Most are gung ho on mile cards anyway....

2) How many TYP cardhiolders are not FT'ers? and I can pretty much assure that these people are looking for the domestic award instead of the crazy flights that we enjoy.....

so I am sure that EXPEDIA keeps a count of the redemptions that are going on and this lead them to enhance the domestic value to 20k....but increase everything else which is where they were losing on....so they are maximizing their return as are we....

I mean tell me which FT'er gets an award ticket from point to point...Hell instead of flying LAX-SIN in SQ F which is the shortest time, an FT'er will fly JFK-SIN just to enjoy the SQ F....

pointman

I'm bummed as I was just about to can my Amex Delta Plat and totally switch all my efforts over to the TYP system.

HOWEVER, this is NOT surprising in the least and I'm not upset at Citi. Let's face it, .02 per point is a great value considering almost everyone here is earning 2 points per dollar spent and then 3 to 6 and even 12 points per dollar in certain catagories. That's a minimum of .04 per dollar spent. How much more can we expect?????

Obviously, Expedia shares some of that cost and Citi makes revernue from offering the TYP members to advertisers but still, I'd say a 4% reward return is not too bad at all. Still extremely competative unless there is something out there I don't know about. Is there another reward program with this kind of flexibility that returns a minimum of 4% on your spending? Some of the flight redemetions way too good to be true and everyone knows it.

pinniped

OK, question from a TYP noob here... How are you guys earning 3,6,12,whatever points per dollar spent on a large-scale basis? I have my fresh new PP Elite card - it looks like I mainly get 2 points per dollar, but only if I move enough spending over to the card to match the number of miles flown by tickets I bought with the card (sort of a weird rule, but whatever...). Sure, I know I can pick up a few extra points off of groceries and whatnot, but on a large-scale - say, I fly 8000 miles per month and charge $8000 per month on the card, which is about where this card caps out - how on earth would I earn such a high return? Seems like those "special" category might only be a few percent of the monthly spend, just like they are for any other card.

Using Expedia for my airline tickets seems to be a net-losing proposition.

pointman

As I understand it, earning at that level is not large-scale but limited to certain catagories. Specifically, the 12% is from the Dirver's Edge Card. For the first 12 months, it returns 6% for gas, groceries, drugs (convertable to TYP) this can be matched with driven miles for a 12% return. Total annual earning is capped at $1,000 (converts to 100,000 typ).

mia

Agreed, but the abuse occurs when people choose a city pair because it is expensive and exchange the ticket for airline credit vouchers that can be used to purchase several tickets or tickets in another cabin.