Hi All,

I happen to run a rewards program for a large FI and am interested in what you really WANT in a rewards program.

Not from a churn & burn standpoint, but for your everyday uses?

What are the best travel rewards cards in the industry outside of partnered airline programs? Chase Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, etc.

Keep in mind, I too churn/burn and seize every opportunity to earn miles/points.

- A

Welcome to Flyertalk.

There are programs which are convertible to airline and hotel rewards (e.g. American Express Membership Rewards, Bank of America WorldPoints, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Diners Club Rewards). There are also programs which are not convertible (CapitalOne Venture Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, US Bank Flexperks, and dozens of similar regional bank programs.) Are you asking about both types?

Hi Mia,

Yes, both types would apply as I am open to any and all suggestions in revamping our program.

Thank you,

- A

Short answer is good value over time. Longer answer and some other comments follows.

SPG gets high marks.

Chase UR and Amex MR are transferable and redeemable. That different cards have different earn rates can be an attraction, but the basic points have to be worthwhile.

Economically, you are working with an alternative currency. Delta Sky Miles are now referred to as Sky Pesos due to tinkering with the program which has devalued them. SPG points on the other hand area revered. The 30K SPG program has people very interested, and it's just 5K more than the usual. So how you approach and decide to manage your points values does matter. Since the world changes, this is a philosophical issue -- decide at the beginning if you will chase (Delta), or try and hold to a standard (SPG)

The other aspect is besides RDM is status and the perks that come with it. Some of these are earned over time, some of these come with the card.

For an FI, status and perks could be limited call wait times, In-country based support as opposed to "overseas" outsourced. These used to be standard features of a company, so it's sad that they are now 'perks' but so it goes in our modern times. Sadly, it takes status and perks to get what used to be a normal part of business XX years ago.

As far as churn goes, very few cards offer renewal bonuses and I find this surprising. Some do when you call retention, but actually increasing earning the longer the card holder is a member would strike me as more of a loyalty reward, than the sign up bonuses, which encourage churning. For example, upon the first year renewal, give 0.1X last years earned points as a bonus, the 2nd year, 0.2X, and so on. This of course, assumes your points are worth having and remain so.

Right now, Chase is offering 5X Gas and 5X Restaurant on Freedom through 9/30. The "Earn" side swings purchases to them right now, but when the bonus ends, it'll to go another card. But it's because the points are worth having, that Chase gets the spend.

Amex has that reputation of having your back with purchase protection, etc, which is outside of the points set up. They do also have a reputation of instantly being the Spanish Inquisition if you make them nervous, but if I can purchase a laptop and they extend the warranty or provide klutz protection, it's a feature that can be more important than the points. Since they don't cover everything, there is room for someone else to move into this space.

The two items above are both very important to me. I am VERY annoyed when I talk with foreign nationals that call me "Sir" instead of "M'am".

Also I haven't heard of the retention bonus idea before... brilliant idea!

The key from my perspective, and I believe for most people on this board, is the ability to get appreciably greater than $0.02 in value per point redeemed -- which only exists in the context of points that can be transferred to airline or hotel programs.

As far as I know, that describes exactly 5 US FI reward programs -- UR, MR, DC, and BoA/FIA Merrill+ (which transfers only to BA) and World Points. Per point, UR clearly wins by virtue of having partners with the best per-point redemption values. They also, on the whole, have the most spend bonuses (although BoA also offers quarterly 5 point/dollar spend categories) -- and all else equal, they get the most spend.

As mentioned above, there's more involved in the "which card to use" decision than just points earning in at least some cases. Aside from purchase protection and similar services, I use Amex first if I'm concerned about fraud/a future dispute.

Similarly, Amex drives significant value via promotions and marketing tie-ins that earn them mind-share (and spend) that they wouldn't otherwise get. The occasional Amex contract lounge in an airport, hospitality booth at an event, or promo statement credit for, say, buying a drink at the US Open, taken together, add significant value over the course of the year.


Anyway, as far as the best non-cobranded rewards card out there, I'm going to call it a tie between the Chase SP and Amex Plat. Obviously the SP is useful for actual spending while the Amex pretty much isn't, but the Amex provides a nice return on the annual fee via lounge access, status in a few programs (rental cars and SPG), and first-ring access to what appear to be senior CS agents when I call them (first-ring CS is also an important feature of the SP). I've even gotten some value out of the concierge program.

I'd love to see some of the other banks step up their proprietary rewards game -- BoA is in the best position (Diners club notwithstanding, as who knows when they'll start issuing new cards again), as it would seem relatively easy for them to add Alaska and Hawaiian transfers, and if they could line up another 2 or 3 EU or AP programs, they'd be well-positioned to compete with UR and MR on the rewards side (if not the CS side). Barclays also has some solid cobranded card partners, and seems positioned to develop a rewards scheme if they're so motivated. Citi could only allow transfers to AA and do alright, but it'd be hard not to gut their cobranded cards in the process.

Anyway, sounds like a fun job. I'm kinda jealous.

Obviously the answer for everyone will be different.

However, I will offer this perspective. I don't want rewards points, I want rewards. In the past, most of my points were on Delta, and I found (as many have) that dometic low-mileage awards were extremely difficult to get, and I've found recently that for international redemptions the Delta website (a) can only at best become maybe 50% useful compared to full functionality of actual award searches and (b) takes quite a lot of experience to reach the point of achieving that 50%.

This isn't a whine against Delta - it's a message that I want my points to be actually redeemable for awards I want, without a Ph.D. in Search. Assuming you are partnering with one or more point vendors, you need to explain that their value proposition has to include ways people can actually redeem their points, not ways to profit by making sure they don't.

I belong to both Delta and United's programs. I want to see any type of compensation given for a complaints in the form of qualifying miles that go towards status level and not your regular everyday non-status points pot. I would also like to see program credit card holders getting either a % discount when purchasing tickets. Paying a partial amount of a ticket with miles should still afford you mileage status flight miles. Maybe not the full 100% but at least some percentage based on how much miles you use to offset the total ticket price. For example in Delta's case I can't see paying 10,000 miles to offset a $100 off of a $1800 ticket from Honolulu to Bangkok and then not get any MQM miles. That's about 13,182 total MQM miles I wouldn't get just for paying down $100. Anniversary bonus miles for renewal of a program credit card. Free checked luggage, discount for lounge day pass are great benny's along with roll over status miles.

Here are my thoughts for a CC:

1. No annual fee. Or if there is an annual fee offer a yearly bonus of 10k or so miles to make it worth it.

2. Make the points transferable to as many partners as possible especially airlines such as UA, US, BA, AF, AA and DL.

3. Ensure the transfers are instant.

4. Use visa/MC

5. Allow points to redeemed for gift cards.

For a FFP

1. Allow one way awards for half the miles.

2. Allow holds on awards for 3+ days.

3. Allow date and routing changes for free even after taking the outbound.

4. Stop the close in ticketing fee.

5. Allow alliance and non alliance partners to be mixed on one award.

CC:
If you're looking for my normal, everyday spend, you have provide >= 2c/$ in value because that is about the replacement value my SPG points. This is how the Chase cards muscled their way into my wallet.

The Freedom/Sapphire/Ink cards all provide good value within their bonus categories so I use them for that. As a side effect, the Chase cards are now "top of mind" so I will sometimes use them for non-bonused categories as well. For most other (Amex-able) purchases, I will go with the SPG card.

Points Program:
Take the best of UR and SPG. Those are the top dogs right now because they're doing a lot of things right:
1. CONSISTENTLY good value per point (obviously). I will not bank into your program if I cannot get good value out of your points. If I can only get good value our of your program booking a category 1 hotel in Iran on Wednesdays in December, it is not a consistent value.
2. Good value over time (e.g. SPG. UR is still too new to decide) so I can bank to them and not worry about devaluation for a while
3. Good partners. Kind of goes hand in hand with #1. Chase UR proved that you do not have to have a lot of partners to bring in customers-just good quality partners (namely, United & Hyatt). I don't care if I can transfer my miles to 1000 programs if none of them are worth my time. Again, SPG does this relatively well.
4. Fees. This isn't THAT big of an issue to me if the fees are reasonable, but looking at how foreign carriers kill people with YQ makes me avoid their programs.