US Bank Flexperks Travel Allowance Problems
 

Buyer beware. I took a reward trip with Flexperks last month. We had two tickets, one each for my wife and me. That means we were entitled to $25 allowance each. I used that to pay $50 to check two bags on United. Pretty straight forward. I called today to have the $25 credited to my account. The rep said it can only be up to $25 in a transaction, so because our transaction was $50 we only get $25 back. To get the full $50 we were entitled to, I would have needed to use the Flexperks card both ways on the baggage check to get two different $25 refunds.

This is the most asinine thing I can imagine. Basically, US Bank is unwilling to credit me the $25 owed to me over a technicality. If that is in the TOS, I don't know it (it sure as heck isn't advertised).

Frankly, I have witnessed a complete and utter breakdown of service from Flexperks over the last year. After over 13 years with the card (and over $75,000 in spend last year) I will be cancelling it very soon. I look forward to the phone call in which we do that.

And now the reward website & phone service is down for "enhancements" until March 24th/25th. Seems like a ridiculously long time for updates.

We were supposed to be notified of this on our last statement, but my statements contained NO notification- even the phone agent I spoke with looked at my statements and agreed that I was not missing anything and I had not been notified.

When I asked whether they would cover the difference in points for the tickets that are available on Travelocity today for sub-$400 if they went up between now & then, I was told, "We can talk about that next week if it happens." Grrr...

Updated: When I called back to see if there was anything to be done, they discovered where the notification had happened- it was only on my February statement in the "important messages" box, but same size font, no bolding, etc., sandwiched in between two unimportant messages about the fact that my account is on autopay & something else. Still pretty unhappy with their idea of "notification" for such a lengthy outage.

Apparently the enhancements being made are that all rewards (except for travel) will now be redeemed in-house rather than through a 3rd party. Not sure why the travel section has to be offline in order for that to happen, since it will still go through Travelocity.

I may be missing something obvious. I understand my points expire after 5 years. Is there a place on the website where I can see the exact day my points will start to expire? I feel like I'm getting close and want to make a redemption before that happens.

I have not paid much attention to this product as the Barclays Arrival, BOA travelcard and the Cap 1 Venture seem to have a better redemption scheme.

I'd like to know if there is a feature in Flexperks that is better than the above cards. The reason I don't use Flexperks is that one can redeem the points needed for the flight without wasting anything. So I can spend 35K point (which needs 17.5K in spend) for a $350 ticket rather than 20K points (which require 20K in spend).

Am I missing anything?

For day to day spending, Arrival/Cap1 Venture are better, agreed. But if you only spent in bonus categories, US Bank could be of better value. For example, I use the US Bank card for Kiva/charity (3x back, better than other cards AFAIK) and pretty much nothing else.

Do also keep in mind that with US Bank you get a $25 fee allowance with each award ticket. Which can be used to purchase yourself a $25 gift card from the airline you're flying, on the day of travel...

For each redemption, you get a $25 allowance to use on the airline. This can be used toward baggage fees, in-flight entertainment, pay lounge, or food. It can also go toward an airline gift card.

So if you redeem for $375, you can still get $400 of value from a 20K ticket.

Lastly, there are 2X and 3X earning categories on this card which could potentially get you 4% or 6% return.

With the 33K Olympic bonus in 2012, I've earned about 200K FP just off the 2X and 3X categories. But I've stopped spending since I have 120,000+ let and don't know when I will use those.

Tried to see if there are other decent options to redeem Flexperks here:

http://www.flexperks.com/credit/travelRewards.do

But I am not seeing the rates needed. Are there any options that can be redeemed for 1 cent/point?

It's not March 25 yet, is it??? See here (5 posts above yours):

I think you get up to 1.5 cents per point when booking hotels. I base this solely on what I saw when I did some searches for hotel bookings and saw the cost and number of points required. As with flights, you need to get the hotel cost to be right at a certain dollar amount to get the best value for each point.

I gave gift to relatives of RT flight for 2 on US Air I got using my Flexperks. They are on trip now and their return leg is Friday. Forgot till now about the $25/trip allowance. I was thinking of buying US GC but saw online US stopped selling them. Any suggestions for how I could use the $25 x 2 allowance potential of their trip?

In-flight meal? Check a bag for the heck of it?

Thanks. They are flying first class so all that is covered. Was hoping the many super creative minds here could figure out a non-GC way for me to profit from this potential opportunity!

Pick a handful of random people sitting in the back and buy them drinks? (Not necessarily directly profitable though...)

LOL. I'd do it if I was on the plane, but as I noted in my OP it is my relatives that are flying on tickets I redeemed my Flexperks for, so they do not have my Flexperks CC to pay for them with. :)

Im a little confused.. can I book ONE ticket, which has two passengers (my wife and I) worth $400, and use my 20,000 flexperk, or I have to buy one ticket worth $200 with flexperk and one with cash ??