No expiration. As long as the card is active, the miles stay put. Cancel the card & you lose the miles. (heads-up for those wanting to cancel to avoid the annual fee next year... use those miles!)

That's what I'm thinking of doing for most of our $2200. We have a small payment left on an upcoming cruise that will go on one of our new Venture cards. But other than that, we don't have much travel coming up. Between restaurant, store and Mobil/Exxon gift cards, the points will be well used in covering many of our day-to-day expenses. Plus maybe an occasional luxury here and there.

Me thinks that paying for a priceline hotel bid with cap one points, which can be done for as much as 65% off reg hotel rates, may make the Venture Card, at least on occasion, worth more than traditional hotel credit cards.

yah I gotta read up on the use of C1 miles. I am SOOO not familiar with any of it. So I'm like a FT newbie in this scene! I mean, I may still use other entities for travel stuff and do different things with what I earn on this card.

That said, if there's a way to just get a ton of store GCs and then buy stuff my wife already buys this will be like BIG TIME HUSBAND POINTS for ME hahahaha

...and as many of us know, guys in relationships don't EARN points, we just have days or moments that we don't LOSE them :D

Capital One says: “Redeem miles easily for flights, hotel rooms, car rentals, gift cards, merchandise, and more”. I am trying to determine what would fall into the categories of “merchandise” and “more”.

I emailed Capital One from my credit card account page - and I also tried the "chat" option with them. Neither representative was able to answer my question. I will have to call them (which I had avoided doing since I wanted an answer in writing).

Does anyone have information on what would fall into the categories of “merchandise” and “more”?

When you are on your Account Page just click on Explore Rewards. Everything is there under Redeem Miles.

Snarky: Make an online account. Click redeem rewards. Look at options.

Answer: There are a ton of gift cards from a long list of merchants available on the redemption site.

Under “Redeem Miles” there are three subtopics: “Book Travel”, “Request An Account Credit”, and “How Do I Earn Rewards”.

Elsewhere (under “Explore Rewards” – as well as in the FAQ) there is the sentence: ““Redeem miles easily for flights, hotel rooms, car rentals, gift cards, merchandise, and more”.

In the FAQ is this: “You can visit www.capitalone.com to register your account and see a complete description of current redemption offers.” I was unable to locate “current redemption offers” anywhere – and the search function on the Capital One site came up with nothing for that phrase.

I could not find an explanation for what “merchandise” and “more” (separate from "flights, hotel rooms, car rentals, gift cards") would qualify for award redemption. That is why I posted, wondering if anyone was able to locate specifics on this.

Follow their directions and register your account.

Create an account. Click Redeem Rewards. Click Redeem. Click Merchandise. You will see everything from Fandango tickets to Hyatt gift certs to overpriced jewelry. The list is really to long to list here.

Are you looking for something specific?

If you link thru the Capital One rewards you can earn 4 points per dollar spent on Priceline.

I have read the other hundred or so posts and I am starting to get the hang of this thing. But specifically can I call a cruise line or travel agent, book a $1500 cruise with my new Venture Card, then when the bill comes can I use 150000 of my venture points to pay the bill.

Perhaps "more" includes making a donation to a charity of your choosing. That is an option you might consider. They will handle the details for you too.

Yes.

But if you only have, say, 100,000 Venture Miles, you cannot use them to pay off part of your $1500 charge. Your available Venture Miles must cover the entire charge. In this case, I would see if I could break the cruise into a few smaller charges. If you had the agent charge the card 3 times for $500 each, then you'd be able to cover $1000 of charges with your 100,000 Venture Miles.

That is true, but if you and your spouse (I don't think it necessarily has to be your spouse) both have the cards you can transfer points to have a larger balance. I plan on doing that so I will have 220K points

So true! The more I learn about the Venture Miles program, the more I like it. For someone like us, who don't do a lot of traveling, there's a lot of flexibility in how we can redeem our points for non-travel rewards. And unless you want cold, hard cash, these other rewards are available at the same redemption rate (100 VM per $1) as travel offsets.