maharashii

Howdy folks,

I have a US DC card. Originally it was a corporate card from 2001. Some time back it was converted to a personal card.

I have ~100k points that I'd like to transfer out as I'm probably going to cancel the card this December.

I figure the best thing I can do is keep my airline miles from expiring.

My FF miles are kept on Southwest (4,000 expiring 5/2013), United (122,000 expiring 7/2013), American (49,000 expiring 3/2013) and BA (100,000 expiring 11/2012). I also have about 100,000 Marriott points.

When I check club rewards, it only lists BA and Southwest as available partners. I can go through Marriott to get points onto United but I don't see any route to American.

Any suggestions for the best path to United and American airlines? I don't fly for work like I used to and I'd like to keep those miles from expiring so I can use them for occasional personal travel.

mia

There are much better ways to preserve your AA and UA balances without flying. The best path to AA is through Starwood Preferred Guest.

DC 5000 > SPG 3000 > AA 3000

or for slightly better value

DC 33750 > SPG 20250 > AA 25250

Note that the arithmetic would be very different for UA because the transfer ratio from Starwood to UA is half.

sdsearch

There are other ways to keep miles from expiring. Where do you live? In many places, the simplest is to sign up a different credit/debit card in each airline's dining program, then make a dine in that program once or twice a year. Done, problem solved. (Except BA doesn't have one of those.)

Another is to use an airline shopping mall. Most, but not all, of the ailrines have htis.

Another is to credit every hotel stay or car rental to an ailrline, but to rotate among the airlines. Doesn't matter how little each hotel stay or car rental posts, it resets your expiration date.

And those techniques will work the next time you need to reset expirations. Transferring from Diners Club will work only once, and is obviously complicated and inefficient for UA and AA (while UA and AA have both dining programs and online shopping malls).

So I suggest you keep UA and AA from expiring other ways, and focus on BA (which needs the expiration reset the soonest and doesn't have a dining program and I"m not sure about an online shopping mall either) and Southwest (whose dining program is not as good as UA's and AA's IMHO and I'm again not sure about an online shopping mall).

But even for those, study up on other ways to reset expiration dates periodically, since if you close your Diners Club card you won't have this method available again.

Between the two, it depends again on where you live which is the most valuable. Southwest can be used anytime for any flight, but the point value varies with the cash price, so you always need more on hand than you might need, because you never know exactly how much you'll need. But if you live near a Southwest city, you may find that often booking a month or two out for short-to-medium lenght flights they've got the best availability at reasonable points cost.

BA is most useful if you live near an AA hub or focus city, since BA can be redeemed much more efficiently the AA miles for one-leg flights. But BA is not all that good for mulit-leg flights (since they price each leg separately), so again it depends on where you live as to how valuable BA miles are.

... Btw, another options is to park your Diners Club points in some hotel program, then transfer out of that hotel program occasionally to keep that hotel program alive (if you're not keeping it alive any other way). There are other points programs (mainly ones from hotels) which allow transfer to various airliens, but Diners Club is the rare program that lets you transfer to multiple hotel programs. (Amex Memember Rewards and to a very limited degree Chase Ultimate Rewards are the only other two, AFAIK.)

maharashii

Thanks for the insight. I'm based in the US but I'm on sabbatical from work, spending the next few months in Mexico. I'm not staying in many hotels or doing any flying. I don't plan to either, at least not before the BA and AA miles expire.

I used to have Starwood points. I'll have to look that up and see if the account still exists.

I probably won't be applying for any new credit cards anytime soon. The diners is the only one I hold and I'm kind of looking forward to letting it go. No more fees ....

Robt760

Sign up for an account with points.com. Make minor transfers (for the minimum amount) between accounts that you link. Sure you loose a small value, but you keep your accounts alive for awhile longer.

maharashii

I just checked with SPG and it looks like I let my 20k SPG points expire in 09/2011. Not only that but my account is shut down / suspended. I'll give them a call and have it re-activated.

I wonder if there is any way I can get some of those expired points back?

UAAAPeter

I find the best way to stop expiration is to give to a Charity. 500 or 1000 mile minimum normally. It achieves the objective and you feel good.

UAAAPeter

Diners is always having bonuses (50% of late) to BA. I think the current BA bonus is from AMex unfortunately but would be the ideal answer to your problem if you can wait a while.

sdsearch

No need to wait, in fact, a need to hurry, it ends at the end of this month. See here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/diner...31-2012-a.html

shawntobi

The High Fuel fees make BA to pricey for rewards, the bonus will return again because they do very well on the points program plus cash.....

sdsearch

There are no Fuel fees (High or otherwise) when redeeming BA for a domestic USA flight. And in fact, it can take fewer BA miles than AA miles in some cases (shorter non-stop flights).

Are are also no High Fuel fees when redeeming BA miles on some other OneWorld carriers (from USA) to South America and/or Asia.

So the thing to do is to get BA miles with the understanding that you should only use them for certain partner redemptions, never for actual BA redemptions, if you don't like high fees!

phospho

so in your opinion, if you wanted to close your diners club card and transfer ALL your points into united airlines (around 250k), EVEN if for a loss, would the most efficient way still be SPG?

thanks in advance

sdsearch

Through SPG, it's going to be

DC 33750 > SPG 20250 > UA 12125, or about 3:1. So that route, your 250k points would convert to about 85k UA miles (not even enough for one TATL round trip in business). Is that really a good use of DC points???

The second post of this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/diner...os-2012-a.html

shows the conversion rates to all the programs that DC supports.

For UA, it looks like you'd get a signficantly better conversion by going through Best Western (though still a signficantly loss compared to any airline to which you can transfer directly from DC).

DC to BW is almost 1:3, and then BW to UA I think is 5:1, and so it would seem that DC to BW to UA would be "only" about 5:3. (You should verify all this before you commit to that. You should also verify whether BW has any limits on how much you can transfer out per year or not for non-status members.)

But you can't find an airline (to which DC points can be transferrred directly) in which 250k miles would be worth more than 150k UA miles to you? And you can't find a hotel program in which the transferred DC points would be worth more (if remaining as hotel points) than 150k UA miles?

(Of course, don't choose another airline or hotel program that you don't yet use without becoming familar with their terms. For example, some airlines and at least one hotel program have "hard" expiration policies, while others have "soft" expiration, ie, expiration which can be continually deferred.)

mia

It would probably be much better to transfer from Diners Club to Aeroplan. You can redeem through AC for travel on any Star Alliance airline including UA. This does not mean that you can transfer miles from AC to UA, you need to redeem according to AC's rules, rates and availability. Research before acting.

phospho

wow, thank you both so much. I am not so sure what I would do without you two. I remember how even back when I registered, you were so kind, and the level of knowledge you both shared with me simply blew me away.

I live in Columbus, OH and it just so happened that over the years, whenever I booked a flight out of CMH, United was always the cheapest. When I go overseas to see my family in Germany and Israel, it just so happens that Lufthansa has the better fares. I used to have the United Airlines card until they started jumping from bank to bank, so I quit that. I got back their credit card a couple years ago when they finally settled with Chase.

Literally every single time I want to use my award miles, I have not been disappointed by either airline. I guess that's why I feel safer if I park my miles with them. However, Sdsearch, you make a good point. I think I need to find an airline which will give me what my points are worth. Mia, Lufthansa is also part of the star alliance if I remember correctly, so your suggestion looks like an extremely viable option.

I am not sure what I'm going to do. Diner's Club has waived their yearly membership every single year for me. I have no real reason to leave them, but I feel like I have no real reason to stay with them when I'm sitting here accruing points for essentially nothing. On top of that, my united airlines credit card has a credit limit of of 5k, which is basically not usable for my situation (as opposed to my DC card which has a credit line of 30k).

Every year I end up deciding to simply stay with DC hoping that they will begin an award program that would actually benefit me. I am so sick of those dam Amazon gift cards.

A random thought. Do you think there's any chance that DC will offer United awards someday? or should I stop daydreaming and start thinking about something realistic?

Once again, thank you both. Please feel free to add to this thread if you have any ideas at all. Even if you're not sure, I can look into it. As someone who has no clue about this process, your thoughts and ideas are EXTREMELY appreciated.