Earn miles on multiple programs for same dine?
 

Sorry if this has already been answered...I am a part of the AA iDine program currently, and I am looking at joining the CO iDine program as well. Within both programs, I see a similar list of restaurants that I dine at. If I register for both programs, and dine at the restaurant, will I get 3 miles in AA as well as 3 miles in CO, or does iDine restrict which program I can get miles for?

TIA for constructive answers.

In order to have a second (or third or more) idine account, you need to register a different credit card number. Idine miles are credited to the program based on which credit card you use.
Note that it is possible to get credit in both accounts if you ask the restaurant to split the bill between two credit cards, but you don't get duplicate miles.

You get miles based upon the credit card(s) used to pay for the meal. Your best bet would be to charge part of the bill to each card on each visit to make elite dining status faster. Restaurants seem to understand separating alcohol charges onto another tab, making the assumption you aren't going to be submitting booze for business reimbursement. Or, you can present two cards when the bill comes, stating clearly: "Please charge exactly $5 on this one, and the balance of the tab on the other." Leave the entire tip on the larger tab - rounded up to either $.34, $.67, or an even dollar amount of course, so you don't miss out on a single airline mile! If you ever want to get two dining credits at the same joint with the same airline on the same day, remember to vary the net amounts (at least slightly); otherwise, the system will reject the second one as a "presumed duplicate error" and you'll have to go through the trouble of getting retroactive credit from Rewards Network later. You can split the bill exactly to the penny between two airlines.

Be sure to check the fine print on each restaurant. Most are unlimited visits(although they may be blacked out certain days of the week), but a few are still one-visit-per-month. That means one visit per partner per month - if you dined at one for AA credit, you could still go there again later that same month using your CO-linked card. Or, you could split a visit between two partners and both would count - if it's the tail end of the month say, and you doubt you'd be back again soon.

Good luck and welcome!

Iirc, you should be able to sign up on AAdvantage Dining / AA iDine and get elite status as an AA elite - I don't know if you have CO status and if the program offers "instant" elite status for CO elites, but it's certainly worth a look at each respective website - that would mean 10 miles per dollar, instead of a measly three.

You must create an account first, and register the credit card(s) you want for each airline - you can only register one airline for each credit card you wish to use, but... if you have a Hilton HHonors AMEX, you can get 10 miles and 5 points per dine. ^

As others have mentioned, it is worth checking the resto list online, and check the details. Make sure your intended resto takes your intended card (some accept AMEX but do not award miles on it, for example,) that it offers miles the day you intend to dive (some block popular days like Friday adn Saturday, others may block a specific holiday or day they want to block awards from.) Most restos allow up to $600 monthly, but as Points Scrounger says, be sure you can make more than one visit per month (for most, you can,) before you use the same card in the same month.

rarely, a restaurant enrolled in idine will also be enrolled in opentable or dinnerbroker. the only way to know is to cross-reference the respective websites.

We have a few of those in the SMF area - my favorite accepts my HHonors AMEX and encourages me to book via opentable. (I'll have to admit the peril of all this is that we became friends with their manager, who married the sous-chef - they received the benefit when I gifted them F seats to honeymoon in Thailand. My net is a negative balance with that resto. ;))

What do you get for booking through Opentable or Dinnerbroker? There are some restaurants here in KC that are on Opentable and are in iDine and participate in a local restaurant rewards program (PowerCard) that gets me 6.67% back plus I get 5 Thank You Ponts/Dollar through my Citi mtvU card, add them all together and all of a sudden lunches and dinners get pretty darn cheap. :)

I am pretty new to the i-dine program and am earning 10 AA per $1. I am going to set up a BA account and think there is to use the same credit card account to get miles in both AA and BA.

I use the HH Amex for 5HH and 10AA per $1. Last year Amex had a promo: add another person to your account for 5k HH. You can make that person yourself and have 2 different Amex HH cards with your name. Amex will asign a different account number to the second card, and not run a credit check. You are a co-signer on you own account. Someone even signed-up his dog. I have searched but cannot find the thread. The promo may be over by now, but there is no credit check.

Okay, shoot holes in my theory :p

Happy to oblige your request!
 

It is impossible to link the same credit card to more than one program. If you try to use your existing AA-linked card to join the BA-earning program, the system is programmed to reject doing so.

Re-read my post. I said same credit card account. The two cards have different account numbers.

Let me state this a different way:

You plan on registering your 2nd credit card -- of the account where your original card has already been registered with AA - with BA. You can do that, no problem. On your next restaurant visit, you will have a choice: get 10 AA miles/dollar using card #1, or 3 BA miles/dollar using card #2 (which will also count as the first of your required 12 dines for "elite" BA Rewards Network status).

Here is what I believe you feel will occur, and which I can assure you will not ...

You use the 2nd BA-linked card to get 3x BA miles plus 10x AA miles because the primary card is linked to AA?
Nope. No Way. Forget it.
One cannot "double dip" between airlines on the exact same transaction; Rewards Network does not recognize any "link" whatsoever between the two cards. Your dine with card #2 will post as 3 BA miles/dollar; there will be no posting at AA at all. If you contact Rewards Network about this, they will (correctly) reply that you were eligible for BA miles with that credit card, which you've received. Period.

What Points Scrounger said above. To put it more simply, iDine/RN gives miles based on matching the card number swiped against their database. They won't know that two numbers go to the same credit card account. All they'll see is that a number was used, and credit accordingly based on where that number is registered.

Mike

Having re-read my own post, let me be clear as to what I am trying to do.

Use HH card to earn 10AA per $1 with primary card

OR

have the option to earn 10BA + 5HH per $1 (upon becoming elite) with the co-signer card, which is in my name. Sorry about the confusion.

Yes, that kind of double dipping is fine!

Just a couple of things to keep in mind ...

AA Elite restaurants don't all give BA "basic" (non-elite) dining credit - heck, some won't give any BA credit at all in a few instances. Check your lists before you dine. Never assume a restaurant gives credit in all of your airline plans just because it does in one.

To maximize your overall earnings while working towards BA status, you might think of splitting tabs during this AA promo period so that at least $15 of each dine goes on your AA card, and the balance towards BA status. In your case it might confuse servers as they are identical-appearing cards with different embossed numbers, but worth a try.

Good Luck!

OPenTable.com gets you points on their system when you use them to book - a few restos earn 1,000 points, and most 100. You can then turn those points into credit "cheques" - 1,000 points = anything from $10 US to £15 in the UK, and greater amounts for larger accumulations of points, of course.

I often "triple dip" - book via OpenTable, use my HHonors AMEX card to earn 10 miles and 5 HHonors points per dollar spent. And if they offer an AARP or whatever discount, as the resto we dined in on Sunday, I guess I could call it a "quad dip;" the property offers 10% off AARP on all menu items (though not wine or other alcoholic beverages.)

Not sure whether the policy has changed since these immediately preceding posts
 

I have managed to register without any difficulty all 5 of my credit cards with each of the following Rewards Networks FF programs: AA, UA, NWA, and US Airways.

My best guess is that the policy has changed since 2007.

I doubt the policy has changed, just the technical implementation.

Do a test dine and see what happens. Do you get miles in all programs, or just one of the programs, or no programs at all? If just one of the programs, is it the last one you registered that card with, or a different one? If just one of the programs, if you go back and look at the credit cards registered with each program, does it at that point still show the same card registered with multiple programs?

Once they didn't allow you to register a card with another program without first manually removing it from the previous one. You got an error message.

Then IIRC they changed it so that you could register a card in as many programs as you wanted, and it simply removed that card from the previous one when you registered it in an additional one. You got no error message, but if you went back and checked the original program that card was no longer registered there.

Did you go back and verify that it still shows the same card registered in all those programs? If so, the latter method of lockout may have disappeared.

But all that may be simply because their per-dine process can now weed that out. It may be smart enough to know to only issue a dine to one program (whichever program it feels like, among the list you've registered the card for), in which case there's no need to lock out at registration time (tho it might be nice to alert the user who's doing this by mistake!).

I very much doubt it. The last time I checked (just a couple of months ago) this was definitely NOT possible.

Example: I tried to register a particular card with a particular idine/airline program, and kept getting a cryptic error message. I finally figured out that I had already registered that same card with a different idine/airline program. I deleted the card from that program and was then able to register it with the desired program.

(BTW, there are multiple threads on this same question. Perhaps the threads could be merged....)

Recently, I ordered a M/C for my 17 year old daughter and hung it on to her Alaska account, in order to keep her miles active.

Subsequently, my M/C Idines were showing up on her account. I did not notice that her credit card account # is the same as mine (not so for Amex, btw), and that by adding her card, Idine automatically disabled my M/C card with the same number. Frankly, I’m surprised that I didn’t get a, “this card is already registered on a different program” kind of message.

OK, it does sound like there was a change in implementation. Before, one used to get a cryptic (read: meaningless) error message, as per my example above. Now, the system just automatically un-registers the card from one program and re-registers it to the other.

Perhaps the cryptic error message was actually better! :eek:

I prefer this method - works better in my situation as some local particpants are AMEX-hostile. De-registering a card on one program, and then having to log into the second one to re-register it was a pain!

Don't get too comfortable, I’m pretty sure it’s a glitch; the CSR seemed surprised that I wasn’t messaged on the duplicate card.

Since this is a double-dipping kind of thread:

Can you get miles with an AAdvantage AMEX and the dining program? Meaning that you'll get 1 miles/dollar (amex) + 5 miles/dollar (VIP status in dining program)?

You can do it with the HHonors card, correct?

There is nothing special about the AAdvantage AMEX or HHonors (any more). You get the miles or points that you would normally get for using the card anywhere (through the card), and totally separately you get the miels or points or cashback with the Rewards Network dining program you use.

And you can mix them in any way that you want. Ie, you can earn AA miles from a card while earning UA miles through RN. You can earn Best Western miles from a card while earning Alaska miles thougn RN (I just did a dine like that the other day, because Best Western has no dining program and I have no Alaska card, so it was a reasonable match!).

The only thing that was special about the HHonors AMex at one point is that it used to give extra points at restaurants. So some people liked to use that. However, whether that math really made it worth more than miles or not then, the fact is that extra earning is gone, and now HHonors Amex earns nothing more at restaurants than anywhere else you shop.

The only card that earns more at restaurants right now that I'm aware of is Discover, and that's only if you register and only Oct thru Dec 2009 (Discover has rotatating extra-cashback categories) and it has a cap. But beware: Some restaurants that take Discover don't give miles for Discover, so if using Discover be sure to check the website for each particular restaurant as to whether you'll get miles for Discover, rather than using Discover automatically because you saw the logo at the restaurant.

This post is from a much earlier date in the thread. I have the HHonors American Express (the one with $0 annual fee) and thought it was only 3 points per $.

I just checked on the HHonors Surpass by AmEx and it gives an extra 3 pts. on grocery, gas and drugstores. But I didn't see 5 for dining.

Have the rewards changed since this post?

Thanks,
gg

Specifially, 2007 or about 5 years ago.

I have the HHonors American Express (the one with $0 annual fee) and thought it was only 3 points per $.

I just checked on the HHonors Surpass by AmEx and it gives an extra 3 pts. on grocery, gas and drugstores. But I didn't see 5 for dining.

Have the rewards changed since this post?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, the rewards on the various HHonors credit cards have all changed at least once since 2007, either in terms of how many points you earn or in terms of which categories count and which don't.

I think they used to including dining as a category, but no more.

Btw, even the regular no-fee card HHonors Amex card gives extra points on gas/grocery/drug (GGD), plus phone and internet providors (Verizon and TimeWarner Cable in my case work). But if it once did dining (as I seem to recall), that ended quite a few years ago.

The only card I have that still gives extra points on dining every day is the Marriott Premier Visa from Chase (plus my AA Visa from Citi has double miles on several categories including dining as a temporary promotion through the end of this month, but that might be a targeted promotion). Of note, the Marriott Visa from Chase gives extra points on dining but not GGD, while the Priority Club Visa from Chase gives extra points on GGD but not dining!