credit card awards points

Wondering what people know about the different credit card companys that
offer points that are good for travel on any airline. I only know of
CapitolOne MC/VISA but are there others out there beetter? I currently have
a Delta AMEX that I use for most purchases and have a MBNA VISA I use to use
when it was a carnival cruise card (awarded well) but they have since ended
that and now it is good for any cruise line but you would have to spend
20+g's a year to get any points based on there % system. I am thinking
about dumping it for a new one that will be a bit more usefull maybe. %
rates or no big deal to me since I pay my balance monthly.
Thanks for your input.

The issue with at least one of the "fly any airline" cards is that you must
book through their travel agent, and instead of getting a guaranteed free
flight with "x" points, you get a credit of up to "x" dollars towards the
ticket. If the ticket is within "x" then you're fine, but in our case, this
is how it worked out-

40,000 points (dollars)= "Free" International ticket, up to $800.
Least-expensive flight bookable through WellsMiles- $1461.
Total cost of "Free" ticket- $661

British Airways is offering SFO-CDG on those days for about $1000, so your
40,000 points (dollars spent on that credit card) are actually worth just
$340 in this case. And that's a best-case scenario! Since the
non-discounted fare is what you're going to be looking at from their travel
agent, almost anytime of the year, you could be much worse off if your
travel is off-season. Right now it's easy to get sub-$500 tickets, so the
WellsMilesReward ticket (Wells Fargo credit card) could actually *cost* you
money ($1461-800=$661 for your "Free" ticket vs $500 if you buy one
outright).

The advantage they push on the "any airlines" credit cards is that there are
no blackout dates, but if you use enough standard air miles, you can avoid
those as well. With United, it costs 50,000 points (dollars spent) for a
"saver" coach seat, round-trip, to Europe. The problem is that there are
very limited seats available under the "saver" schedule. But at 80,000
points, you can get any available coach seat on any United plane (no
restrictions).

Pros & Cons? For United's credit card, at 80,000 points for a coach seat,
you're using up quite a few miles! But if you're flying at less-popular
times, you might get away with the 50,000 mile option. For the "any
airline" credit card (or at least WellsMilesRewards), you're spending 40,000
points but may still be $600 away from a free ticket. And, if you're
planning to travel with anyone else, you have to book an expensive
additional ticket through them as well.

Could be that other credit card programs are better than WellsMilesRewards;
the specific thing I'd look for is how the flights are booked. If they only
allow booking of full-fare flights through their own travel agency, it may
not be the deal it seems.

--Mike--
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com

"Brett" wrote in message
ink.net...
Wondering what people know about the different credit card companys that
offer points that are good for travel on any airline. I only know of
CapitolOne MC/VISA but are there others out there beetter? I currently
have
a Delta AMEX that I use for most purchases and have a MBNA VISA I use to
use
when it was a carnival cruise card (awarded well) but they have since
ended
that and now it is good for any cruise line but you would have to spend
20+g's a year to get any points based on there % system. I am thinking
about dumping it for a new one that will be a bit more usefull maybe. %
rates or no big deal to me since I pay my balance monthly.
Thanks for your input.

Don't sign up for MBNA "Worldpoints". They can, & do, change the deal at
their pleasure WITHOUT grandfathering in those members who started
accruing mileage under more favorable rules. So i cashed in & dropped
them, because of such a change. The new rules work, i guess, for people
who spend like mad.

____________________________________

Den Mark Wichar

"First justice, then peace."

"Cogito, ergo VIRIDIS sum!"

"The greatest danger to the U.S.A. is the republican party."
____________________________________

I am super happy with my Orbitz card from Juniper. If you spend $20,000 you
get a free ticket worth up to $400 (up to a 2% kickback). But I haven't
used it that way, because it also gives $100 off any ticket you buy on
Orbitz for every $7500 you spend (a 1.3% kickback), and using it for this
has been so easy and handy that I've just been knocking $100 off the
occasional Orbitz ticket.

What's been nice is how exceptionally easy it is to apply to a ticket. You
go to Orbitz, pull up an itinerary that looks good (like the MKE-MCO I'm
flying next week that was $188 on YX) and then before purchasing Orbitz asks
you if you would like to apply 'points' to the ticket. And if you have
more than 7500 points ($ spent) you just click a box, and VOILA, the ticket
is only $88 instead of $188. A LOT easier than calling an agency and trying
to line up a ticket, and trying to manage the reservation while balancing
the agencies rules versus the airline's rules. I suppose if I waited till
I had 20,000 points I might save by getting a ticket that costs more than
$300 gratis, but a bird in the hand...

I am super happy with my Orbitz card from Juniper...

I have to add that I just cashed in my points total from my MBNA
EliteRewards card as well. It had taken me a goodly amount of time to
accumulate the 30,000 'points' (equivalent to $30,000 spent) good for a
domestic airline ticket in the 48 states. I certainly wasn't going to use
it on a $188 round-trip. But with a trip coming up where I wanted to fly
NW for mileage purposes (and the NW fare was pricing at $533), and with AA
having almost identical flights for $241, I called up the redemption
center.

She asked for flight dates and times, put me on hold for 4 minutes, then
came back and said, "We have the ideal flights for you--on American
airlines!" I said, "But don't you have a flight that maybe connects
through Detroit and arrives at 1:19 instead of 1:40, like Northwest?" She
checked it out and said there was such a flight available. Then she
offered a NW return that happened (I had already checked) to be $150 cheaper
than the return I really wanted, and took an extra 2 1/2 hours, and I asked,
"But isn't there a connection that leaves even later--at 4:55--and gets in
two hours earlier?"

She said there was, and I got the flights that would have cost $533 instead
of the cheaper $361 NW connection, or the cheapest $241 AA flights.

So there is SOME advantage to using a card that accrues points that can be
applied to any round-trip. The 'kickback' in this case was 1.7%, but it was
a rare case and a contorted booking arrangement that made it possible--and
if I REALLY wanted to save bucks I could have applied Orbitz points to the
AA itinerary and gotten it for $141.00 (!!!).

I don't think I'll try to get up to 30,000 again on the MBNA card.

In article . net,
"Brett" wrote:

Wondering what people know about the different credit card companys that
offer points that are good for travel on any airline.

Check http://www.bankrate.com which is a wonderful resource for
shopping for credit cards.