Recreation

I wonder if Transferring miles to another account counts towards spending? Currently there's a 50% transfer bonus.

I have some huge bills coming up, the main one being my daughter's college tuition bill of $13,000.

If I signed up for the promo and charged the tuition to the Delta Amex, and then transferred 40,000 SkyMiles to my husband's account, then I'd be able to get 59k miles for $430. Or .007 cents per point.

Does that sound right?

msp2msy

I don't think so.

This promo, if I understand correctly, is 2pts for general spending, 3pts for spending on Delta. It looks like you assumed it was 3x for the college tuition.

My math works as:
$13k spend * 2pts/$ = 26k pts.

I haven't double checked the transfer bonus but assuming you're right, he'd get 40k of your points and you'd get 20k (50%) bonus into your account. That brings your total points to 46k, not 59k.

There's another issue: You can't transfer more than 30k Delta points in one transaction via the web site, though your math would be right if you could. I assume there's a reason why you were going for 40k? I'd guess (not sure) you could do two transfers but the cost would rise.

The other side of your question is whether transferring points counts as a redemption for this double/triple promo. I'm not sure but post if you find out! I may be interested.

Assuming that was the case and that you were looking to minimize cost per mile, it might look more like this:
Spend $13k on Delta Amex = 26k miles.
Transfer 10k to his account = -10k miles to yours.
50% bonus to your account = 5k miles.

Net is 21k miles to your account at a cost of $130 which equals $.00619 / mile (assuming the 10k to your husband had no value).

On the other hand, if you didn't factor out the 10k loss in your account, it's really more like you got 31k miles for $130 which is $.00419/mile.

Don't forget that if you are that close to $15k, spend a little bit more and you should get the milesboost of 5k at that threshold (at least we would on our Delta Gold Amex).

I'd suggest looking at the parts of the transaction though. Consider the following:
* Spend 10k points to get $100 off a ticket qualifies you. I'd argue that Delta miles are worth $.015 to $.02 at most (others assert $.01). That means your opportunity cost for the low redemption is $.005 or $.01. And it would qualify you for the promo.
* Forgetting about the amex spend entirely since that's a different promo, the transfer idea really has a cost of $130 to gain 5k miles. That's $.026/mile. I have a hard time buying Delta miles at that cost. Of course, that qualifies you for this promo too.
* Finally, if you really did do 40k via 2 20k transfers, that'd be $460 total and you'd gain 20k miles via the bonus at a CPM of $.023.

Bottom line for me: redeeming miles seems a much better use than the transfer scenario. The opportunity cost in redeeming 10k miles is only a CPM of $.005 to $.01 while the real cost under the transfer program is significant (E.g. $130 to $460 above) and has a CPM of $.023-026.

Of course, your situation may be very different. Maybe getting 40k miles to your husband has some real value to it but I think the cost is quite high.

Recreation

Thanks for setting me straight. I completely misread the chart to read that you get double miles for redeeming 10k miles and triple miles for redeeming 40k miles. D'oh!

The PWM option is the most attractive except I'm not planning to travel in the near future. So my best option would be to transfer 10k miles from my husband's account to mine at the cost of $130. This would earn 18,130 miles at the cost of $130 = $.007 per mile.

5000 miles (transfer bonus)
+13000 miles (double miles bonus on regular spending)
+ 130 miles (triple miles on Delta purchase)
-------------
18,130 miles

FYI, my only goal in collecting miles is to get award tickets to Hawaii every other year. I know that they're getting harder to find, but over the years I've spent about $2500 in fees (including transfer fees when they run bonuses) to accumulate enough miles to redeem 12 RT tickets to Hawaii worth over $11,000. Even with the doubling of the "price" of the awards, I've been coming out ahead.

Thanks so much for your input.

safigan

My college tuition bill came in for my daughter (let's round it off to $17,000) and I just realized that the Bounceback bonus really changes the math to use the credit card for this bill. Here's what it looks like for me: 2.3% service charge ($391), but I get 34,000 miles plus a 10,000 miles boost I wouldn't otherwise qualify for. So at $391 for 44,000 miles it comes to less than 0.9 cents per mile. And I get 10,000 MQMs! Works for me!

Tennisbum

Take a screenshot and paste it into Word.

ScatterX

How do you get 10K MQMs? I thought they were just bonus miles.

That didn't work either. I'm very familiar with this technique and tried it half a dozen times. It seems like this is hidden content. It doesn't matter now, since the promo showed up in my account. Maybe I'll video tape the registration process or have a CPA witness it next time.

iamhereandthere

Platinum Amex provides a 10,000 MQM bonus once you spend $25,000 in a year...so if the tuition was $17k...$8k more is only $1k/mo in spending. And with the double/triple bonus, nice. So the 10,000 miles are credited and used just like the miles you earn from purchases except that they also count toward your MQM total (regular purchase miles don't).

I think I've spent almost $2k on Delta in the past month. Not because of the promo...but I couldn't pass up $44ow+tax DCA-LAS.

ssb2045

I think this promotion may be from Delta rather than AMEX? For example, I signed up for the bonus 1000 miles for automatic bill payment, and that doesn't show up (because it is from AMEX not DL) in my SkyMiles page. This one does (enrolled 13 July, covers period 24 June - 30 Sept.)

This seems like a silly promotion (unless you're spending $10K in the period, or going to redeem miles anyway). I guess I'm going to use 10K on a Pay With Miles ticket for a friend to come visit. The ticket is really cheap ($150 o/w), but its the perfect way to meet the promotion requirements and not worry about not earning miles for my own flight. This seems like a sound idea, right?

msp2msy

That's what I'm doing. My 2-year old niece isn't yet collecting miles so I'll use 10k miles to offset some of her ticket costs to come visit.

cyberdentist

So is it confirmed that medallion market place purchase qualifies for this promo? I am eager to find out. i am flying to India and Greece on Business before end of September on Delta and will probably spend $10-$12k on my delta amex.

if market place purchase works, then i don't mind redeeming 10k miles ...

VolareBene

I redeemed 10,000+ miles in the marketplace, and I fully expect that to qualify me for the promotion. I called delta to confirm. I must have asked the delta representative "Are you sure?" ten times. Each time, he said "yes."

Recreation

Today I called Delta gold AMEX to raise my credit limit a measly $1300 so that I could put my daughter's tuition on it without fear of going over the limit, so that I could take advantage of the double mile promo. I told them that they had my permission to lower my Starwood AMEX credit limit by an equal amount so that they had no additional exposure.

No can do. They could immediately lower my Starwood credit limit, but raising my Delta limit would require a separate "application." Whatever. Then the rep said that might be able to give me an instant answer if they transferred me to another line. Well, okay. After all, we're only talking $1300, right?

After asking our income, which is substantial in relation to our total credit including our mortgage which is nearly paid off, the rep said that AMEX needed me to answer one additional question and that they'd be mailing it to me. Once I returned it, they'd give me an answer within two weeks.

Christ on a cracker. It cracks me up that the banks, whose greed nearly led to the collapse of our economy now are so tight with their money that someone with an 801 credit score and an impeccable payment history with AMEX can't get a $1300 increase without the grand inquisition.

flymonthly

I agree that some credit policies don't seem connected to the real world at times. Did you try requesting the credit limit increase on-line? Amex raised my paltry credit limit 150% last fall in about 15 seconds and I don't remember having to answer any questions.

abcx

Just shows you that the crisis hasn't really taught anyone anything. The one thing that we were supposed to learn from this crisis was to be wary of quants bearing formulas. Yet, we rely on these stupid arcane credit scoring formulas that often have very little to do with how likely someone is to pay back what they borrow.

Recreation

Searched all over and couldn't find it.

Doesn't matter now because I've already opened an application. If I tried again, AMEX might think I'm desperate and lower my credit limit.