One option to get cash back right away is buying $250 ($50 cash rebate toward the $49 annual fee) worth of certificates at the restaurants you like/eat at often. Any dining beyond that point gets you cash back right away. You can even give some gift certs away as real gifts in any occassion or while taking people out for meals.

After topping off my US Airways to a free ticket, I may just switch to iDine Prime. A $20 meal costs you only $16. To me, it's a good deal. Hard cold cash seems better nowadays.



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- I am a Freqnt Miles Maniac and a Ballroom Dance Miniac :-) -

FFManiac

I thought about buying large quantities of gift certificates. Does that work or do they find a way to exclude them because it is not a meal. I know you will be eating eventually. That is why I usually add a gift on to most meals to accumulate them over time

The value of a mile is usually set at 2 or 3 cents. At the amount you saved, that would only equal out into about 1000 miles.

The miles option is a much better deal IMO.

My opinion is that YMMV, and everyone has to do the math on their specifics (as you did for your specifics).

For example, since miles earn for day one but with cashback you have to pay back $49 (unless you're using Diners Club cash back and would have your Diners Club card whether it included iDine cashback or not), which would mean that if you use iDine very little the cashback would be worse deal.

An even bigger variable is how you use your miles. If you are focusing all your mileage on one airline, and only want cheap domestic flights, your analysis makes a lot of sense. But other people who have their mileage spread around in lots of orphaned programs where in each program they don't have QUITE enough for an award, well the calculation for them is how many EXTRA miles do they need to turned their orphan miles into usable miles. That's a quite different calculation.

Also, the value of dollars to miles varies a lot. For example, it may take only 3 times as many miles to get a first class seat on some airlines compared to an economy award, but it takes way more than 3 times as much money to buy a first class seat compared to buying the cheapest economy ticket. In fact, with ANY class above the lowest economy fare, the spread between cash and miles tends to increase.

You also have to factor in if you can deal with capacity controls and advance restrictions. In many airline programs, you need twice as many "rule buster" miles do avoid most capacity controls, but how much is a ticket with the exact same amount/lack of capacity controls? In fact, does the ticket you buy and the award you get even REMOTELY compare to each other on those kinds of issues? Again, it depends a lot on how exactly you'll use your mileage awards...

And it gets even more complicated if you are interested in collecting for overseas flights instead of only for domestic ones. (And, btw, if you're flying 14-hour nonstop flights overseas, how uncomfortable your seat is -- ie, which class of ticket you got -- may become more of an issue than with shorter hops around the US, so this point and the one above can be related.)

On the other hand, it's very simple if you mostly fly domestic discount airlines (like Southwest and JetBlue) that don't participate in iDine. In that case getting cash back is your only option if you have no need for miles (at the rate you'll be earning them) in any airline that does participate. (In my case, I fly Southwest almost always within the US, so I only started colecting iDine miles once I started considering overseas trips.)

And now here's the problem: You can only do the math once you know all this information. But if you don't know whether you're going to need/want to make short-notice flights half a year from now, how do you do the math on that ahead of time? (But the answer to JUST ONE question like that can make a huge difference in the value of miles to you.)


[This message has been edited by Stefan Daystrom (edited 08-24-2003).]

Tekelberry
I think your math is a little off as $268 at .02 cents per mile would be 13,400 Miles. I tend not to be in the crowd that thinks .02 cents per mile. $500 for 25000 miles? For me because HP has lower priced flights I value them at .015/mile or $300 for 20000 miles.

I am going to do the cash for year 1 and then see how it ends up then I will reassess. It just makes it nice when you go on a trip and every time you eat for work you make money. Also in 2 weeks I am trying one of the idine hotels in Tucson. $79 room and $13 back.