Hmmm, no idea where there's a list. Mostly it's intuitive. I think these are all the characters that generate an accented character: ' " ~ ` ^

From there it's pretty intuitive to get the accented character you want.

Worst stinker of a program? E-rewards without a doubt.

Ridiculous redemption rules, bad award selections and outrageous asking prices (25 dollars for 1000 HHonors points? I can get the same amount of points directly from Hilton.com for 12.5!)

But E-rewards money is fake money. Think of it as 2500 "points" for 3000 HHonors points. It doesn't cost anything to do E-Rewards surveys (except time).

I think it's a great program except for the expiration policy and limited awards. In other words, it's great for a free 12,000 HHonors points/year.

I earned two Southwest reward tickets within the last year without ever having been in one of their planes. There are all kinds of partner opportunities, including triple points from Hertz, double dipping from Hilton Hhonors, etc. Plus, despite stories of a crackdown on eBay sales of their vouchers, there still seems to be pretty brisk business selling them at around $350/pop.

When you add the comments posted above, I think that most people would agree that even with all that some people think is wrong with WN, Rapid Rewards clearly isn't among the issues. If you don't like it, you don't like it.....but there has to be something worse than this.

Stevekoe

Is this unique to Best Western? I think that most hotel programs have a similar policy, but offer some partner activity that can earn points to keep the account active. Does Best Western not have any partners with which you can earn credits, or is their policy more strict in that you have to physically stay in a hotel once per year?

Stevekoe

I wouldn't be so mad if they use terms like "points" or "beans" or some other made up words, but "dollar" is an established currency. When people hear the word dollar, they naturally associate it with a certain level of worth and buying power. I believe many were enticed by their e-mails that promise "20 dollars for surveys" (I know I was). So if the money is fake, and has only half the buying power of the actual thing, they should either make that fact real clear, or drop the term "dollar" altogether.

Think about it, if you join a company that promised you a salary of 100,000 dollars, but later you realized that those 100,000 dollars are custom currencies that's worth only 50,000 in real life, wouldn't you feel cheated?

I agree with you on the "fake" nature of the e-Rewards currency. My problem was that I was spending too much time (which is far more valuable than the piddly little fake-dollar numbers they like to throw around) to try and reach the little awards.

For example: it might take me 2-3 hours of time to reach $50 (in fake money) to redeem 3,000 HH points. I value that at about $20. So, I just spent two hours or more to earn $20.

Oops.

Of course, if I were getting those $75 surveys I've heard about, and could finish it in an hour, now we're getting close to a threshold that is worthwhile. 1 hr = 4500 HH points = $30. Since HHonors points aren't subject to taxes, we're at least in the right ballpark.

Problem was: I wasn't getting $75 surveys. A few $10 surveys if I were lucky, and I eventually got one $25 that I actually qualified for. It was a slow crawl to earn stuff for me, so I got out.

(sarcasm font on)Really, ejross, you're so mean to CO. I was able to redeem "valuable OnePass miles" to get upgraded to Business Class on a transatlantic. Once. On a flight leaving in late September, 2001. And only on the return trip. (sarcasm font off).

After 4 years as a CO Elite, I flew 670 miles on CO last year. I'm hoping to fly even fewer this year.

I do E-Rewards and MyPoints. I've been doing MyPoints almost since they started. And I've always liked it a lot. I saw the redemption values go down, and that bugged me, but I'm getting something for practically nothing- clicking a link and closing a window now and then, and making my purchases through their web site. Big deal. When I'm shopping online, I check my frequent flier shopper site first, to see if I can directly earn FF miles for shopping, and if the site isn't there, I go through MyPoints. I've racked up a lot more points that way, though I haven't decided what to use them for yet. Someone here on FT had a matrix that broke down the value of each reward to show which MyPoint redemption was the best financially, and I think the Starbucks cards rated very highly. Anyway, I always send flowers through MyPoints, and they've always been very good about giving me my points. And now it's even easier to track, now that I learned about the USA Today MileTracker software.

E-Rewards I'm not sure about yet. I'm not impressed with the rewards, frankly, and they all seem to require that you buy something to use them. But I'm racking up my dollars and waiting to see what interests me, and since it hardly takes any time at all, maybe it will prove fruitful in the end. If not, I'll ditch that program, but I'll probably remain a loyal MyPoints user for quite some time.

Now, Points.com really annoys me. And I think the Frontier Airlines FF program is a little weird, because there's no upgrading on their planes, apparently, so for my purposes, there's not much point.

GG

I am not going to stick up for CO too much and I do think collecting CO miles for the sake of it is stupid (do AA instead), but for me as a mid-tier elite they are great. I fly regularly to Australia and so I can use a year of mid-tier elite flying to earn enough miles for one QF award (avaialability is not great, but it's usable if you travel alone and are flexible). And since I would never pay to upgrade, OP only has to do better than the equivalent of the 4*500 mile stickers I get per 10K flight miles on AA (or UA) to do well on that grounds. Which they do. Plus the planes are clean and (EWR apart) the staff are great.

Plus I am used to QF so even CO's award availability seems good...

I understand where y'all are coming from, and I understand that reward availability can suck for many routes, but for my personal circumstances, given I fly on routes mostly served by CO, I'm not unhappy with Onepass at all. YMMV, obviously, but there are two sides to the same coin.

Fourth would be Delta Skymiles. I looked for reward availability from WAS (any airport) to BOM (Mumbai) in January and February and there was NONE, ZILCH, NADA at the Skysaver, but if you want to fork over double the miles they'd happily give you Skychoice!

Who do they think they are kidding?

Perhaps they make you cringe, but the bottom line is that SWA awards are are in huge demand on the open market and - despite reports that the sky is falling due to recent crackdowns on RR sales on ebay - they are still very easy to turn into cold hard cash.

Case in point: someone close to me sold a RR award in the past week or two to an "internet stranger" that needed one short-notice roundtrip, to minimize any possiblility of problems with what some call the Rapid Rewards Police the seller did the following:

1. DID NOT use ebay
3. DID NOT use a ticket broker
2. Actually spoke on the phone to the eventual buyer before the sale to explain the ins and outs of using the award and to "get their story straight" in the unlikely event that questions were asked (they weren't of course)

The end result was a win/win situation for the two parties involved: after expenses the seller ended up with slightly over $375 in their pocket and the buyer saved $200+ from what they would have had to pay for a "normal" ticket.

I agree with Best Western Golden Crown Club being the pits. Not so much for the annual expiration but more for the completely useless systems they use. Not once in the dozen or so stays in Australia I credited to my account did the points post automatically - every time I needed to send in copies of the bill, call, email etc and months later the points would post. The last time they just completely failed to post the points even though I sent in copies of the bill twice and called and emailed etc - they stopped replying to the emails.

As a result I avoid Best Western if at all possible. If you have to stay with them in the US get the miles instead and if you are overseas don't hold your breath for the points.

Hilton of course posts with no problem at all... as does Priority Club etc.

Also avoid Best Western like the plague. Would rather stay in a lodging that did not offer points than go to a BW.

As far as I am concerned BW is the biggest promotion going for the French company (Accra) that owns Motel 6 and other chains in Europe - Ibis, etc.YMMV

Goldpoints: in terms of the highest error rate per transaction, backed up with abhorrent customer service. However, I�m not really familiar with any other portals (I have never had a paid stay in a Raddison, and only use them as a engine to purchase stuff), so perhaps GP is par for the portal course.

I�ve no huge complaints with LatinPass, although it was a heckofalotta work to use the miles, especially as they required a fax (not email) every month to do that 30k transfer to Marriott, then after Marriott dropped off, Hilton. LP was useful to snag a bunch of South/Central tix to places that I might not have otherwise traveled.

Of the big three (Marriott, Starwood and Hilton), Marriott seems the most problematic, hence all my stays now go to *wood and Hilton.

Finally, I think that Southwest fills a nice niche, but clearly they are not trying to attract hardcore frequent flyers, and people who use 'em (i.e. my mother in law, seem to love the flexibility). True Blue (Jet Blue) is the best named FF program, but the one that seems to me to have the most minimal benefits.