I am new to flyer talk and just wanted to know what credit cards are worth signing up for to receive miles and when to cancel, how to purchase, etc. And if there are any other strategies regarding earning mileage for someone who doesn't travel much but has already accumulated a lot of miles. Thank you.

Welcome Nick,

There are lots of threads on this issue... just click search and "Credit Card" and you will have more information than you know to do with.

You will want to decide which airline/hotel you want to accumulate points on.... and then do your research from there.

William

Hi,
Welcome to Flyertalk. You can quite a few offers when you search the forums. Meanwhile here's something I learnt today:
BankOne has a fee-free Credit Card which offers 1 miles for every dollar and a free ticket within continental US for 24000 miles. I think it is good considering that it is a fee free card.
Ofcourse if you already have miles on some carrier then it is better to go with that carrier's card, and as a bonus you usually get a few thousand miles.

Make sure you read the fine print below from Bank One's website.... I also suspect that obtaining the tix -- despite the claim that there are no blackout dates -- will not be easy. Seats will likely be heavily restricted.

Pgary has lots of info on his website: Free Frequent Flyer Miles

Bank One Value Miles Platinum Visa� Card

You can redeem your miles for travel on any major U.S. airline with no blackout dates. Earn 1 mile for every $1 you spend in card purchases.1 And all it takes is 24,000 miles to earn an airline ticket to anywhere in the continental U.S. 48 states. You can also earn miles toward travel to the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe, South America or Asia.

1Miles are not earned on balance transfers, cash advances, or convenience checks. Maximum mile accumulations are 4,000 miles per month and 40,000 miles per calendar year. Miles are not earned on fees for products that protect and insure the balances of the Cardmember's account.

A service fee of $14.95 will be charged for the use of travel agency services for mileage redemption. Subject to program restrictions including space and fare availability, 21 days advance ticketing and Saturday night stay. Value Miles awards are redeemable for flights on American, Delta, United, Continental, Northwest, U.S. Airways and other major airlines. Value Miles are not transferable to other frequent travel programs. Your Value Miles membership guide will be mailed after your account is approved.


[This message has been edited by AAgoraku (edited Feb 26, 2004).]

There are a couple of extensive threads here devoted to the whole home-grown points vs. air-miles vs. rebate card discussion. Try a search on "home-grown" (or try one of the home-grown programs like GoMiles, WorldPoints, etc.).

My conclusion is that although I think I would be a perfect candidate (based on my spending/travel) for a home-grown points card, none of them are what they appear to be. They contain vague T&C's, half-baked websites, poorly-supported processes and procedures, and tend to change at the whim of the card issuer. The changes are never in the favor of the cardholder.

Until a home-grown program comes along and gains enough critical mass to warrant quality processes and support, I won't consider these types of programs. It's too risky to tie up 20,000 or 30,000 points only to find out that I can't get a ticket. I'd rather just have my 30,000 Starpoints and go stay in a nice hotel, even if I have to buy the plane ticket.

(I guess you could consider Diner's Club a "home-grown points" program. If so, then they are an exception - it's a pretty good program that is a hybrid between a mileage card and a points card. They have a critical mass of members and probably won't go away overnight. They have only devalued their points-to-miles conversions once in the past few years, and it was only a mild devaluation.)

A problem with bank "mileage" programs is that they limit you to award tickets that would be cheap anyhow. Where it says "subject to space and fare availability" it means that if a flight doesn't have a really cheap seat open, you don't get it as an award. So, while it is technically true that the program has no blackout dates, airline capacity controls on deep-discount fares create the same effect in practice.

The highest-value awards are for travel without a Saturday night stay, last-minute travel, overseas upgrades, and things like that. You can't get those with this sort of program - the bank buys tickets with real money, and these cost too much.

Another downside is that you can't combine miles in such a program with miles from any other source. Unless you plan to put your company's office supplies bill on your card or you're building a new home with lumber from Home Depot, it takes forever to earn an award. Balanes build up much faster if your flights and hotel stays count too.

That said, there are people whose needs and travel patterns match these programs well. Just make sure you're one of them before you sign up.

Why not get a cash rebate card and buy your own tickets? Citibank has one that gives you 1% (used to give 2%, cheap bas*ards) and Amex has one that gives 1.5%.

Again, this really depends on what you want to do with your miles. I've been half convinced that the best option is to buy the tix anyway, and use the miles for upgrades and other stuff.

Plus, an award ticket is 25k miles whether you snag it 330 days out or 1 day out (pending availability of course). Try getting a ticket that costs the same regardless of when you buy it.

The Citibank one holds your money until you cross thresholds ($10,000 spending, I think). It also has a low annual cap ($300 in rebates, I think). If you are using it as your primary card, you might get to September and find yourself looking for another card. I have this card for the purposes of 0% teaser money, but I don't use it for purchases.

Several of the Amex ones have tiers and fine print related to whether or not you carry a balance. That might be OK if you do a ton of spending and can get into the highest tier quickly. I don't know how long Amex invests your rebate before they actually give it to you.

Chase seems to have a good rebate product called Perfectcard. 1% rebate on everything, automatically credited to your next statement. 3% rebates at any gas station. No fee as long as you are using the card. (They apply a fee only if you keep it open and dormant.) I don't know about a cap, and I say "seems to" because I'm always wary of fine print on these cards.

Well, not only if you keep it dormant; also if you use it only for balance transfers! The waiver for the fee is 9 PURCHASES a year. And we (who do the math) know that we don't want to make purchases while carrying a balance. So if you're going to carry a balance with that card (probably due to one of their 8-month low-interest teasers) you want to make sure you take a billing cycle in between carrying consecutive balances and make exactly 9 purchases early in the billing cycle and pay them off online before the billing cycle ends. That way you have one billing cycle that's all purchases paid in full (and thus no interest), and the biling cycles before and after are cleanly available for balance transsfers (at teaser rates, presumably) only.

I don't know if a cash rebate would be the best deal. Right now, I just booked a couple of award tickets to and from Europe. The tickets are an open jaw (to acommodate a cruise), have stopovers in the U.S. and Europe, and are in business/first class. Cost for this trip would be about $7000.00 if I bought it directly - it's costing me 90,000 miles (equal to $90,000 charged).

If I used a cash rebate for those purchases, it would only net me $900 - which wouldn't even cover the cost of the ticket in coach!

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- Sameer
My Deployment Journal

I have FirstUSA/BankOne's Value Miles. It is the greatest! We just cashed in 120k miles for three tickets to Hawaii. I told them exactly what flights I wanted, and we were e-ticketed within minutes. The only caveat is that there are dollar-limits on the price of the ticket (which I think are reasonable - $700 for Hawaii).

These flights also earn frequent flyer miles from the airline.