I’ve been having a (private) love affair with fixed-value airline miles over the past few months, and I even went so far as to sign up for the JetBlue credit card in wake of the ridiculous promotion they were offering (from which I netted 75,000 JetBlue miles for a round trip flight that cost me $75). Doctor of Credit explains it well, but the appeal for getting the card was the combination of an (unlimited) 10% points rebate as well as the opportunity to earn Mosaic status after spending $50,000 on the card in a single year. Mosaic status offers unlimited free cancellations of both cash (refund to voucher) and award flights, which is amazing for planning domestic travel since I can speculatively book flights without fear of either not being able to take the flight or finding cheaper flights later on.
Tag: Southwest
In Defense of Delta
Before I dive into what is (intentionally) a controversial topic, I just want to take a second to welcome all our new readers who found us through Doctor of Credit. We’re super excited to have you, and hopefully you’ll find that we have an interesting thing or two to share. And of course, I’d be remiss to thank all of our existing, long-time readers (dad, I’m talking to you) for supporting us and valuing our voices. As we close in on the anniversary of our starting the blog, I couldn’t be happier with how it has turned out, and I know Esther and Michael feel the same way. We’ve managed to break some deals, share some different perspectives on hacking, tell some funny stories, and extend our hobby with our friends in family. What more could we want?
Lessons learned from flying Southwest
I haven’t paid for a Southwest flight, yet I’ve flown tens of thousands of miles with them.
All my travel has been free. Or at least very close to it. The points took me maybe an hour to earn (via a credit card) and cost $99 for the initial annual fee. The voluntary deboard (VDB) vouchers I’ve earned ($392 and $456) were earned on flights that I paid for with points and another voucher.
Free has its costs
Using Southwest LUV vouchers on taxes and fees
This is fairly well-known among those that follow along on Flyertalk or the Saverocity forums, but I recently discovered the following hack that allows you to work around the restriction of these vouchers not being able to be applied to the taxes and fees of a flight:
Basically, what you need to do is to make a dummy reservation with the voucher (of value < voucher) and then immediately cancel that reservation. The voucher then gets converted into “Travel Funds” associated with the initial booking. These can then be applied to any portion of the booking you actually want to make (including the taxes and fees), and since you can add a LUV voucher as an additional form of payment, you can consume the rest of the voucher as part of your new booking.
Intriguing Marriott Premier offer
Update (9/19): Reddit is reporting three versions of the offer (targeted) depending on your Marriott status.
I was poking around last night at some Marriott hotels for a January trip to New Orleans (specifically, for a hotel I could BRG), and I stumbled upon the following Marriott Premier credit card offer during the booking flow:
Reward yourself with a $150 statement credit
- $150 statement credit after your first purchase,* including a Marriott®reservation or anything else. It will appear on your statement within 6-8 weeks. Price for stay and statement credit may post on separate statements.
- Plus 40,000 bonus points after you spend $2,000 on purchases in your first 3 months.*
Although you could go through the flow and collect the link yourself, it doesn’t seem to be unique so you can access the offer directly here.
[DEAD] Possible Companion Pass play?
Update (9/14 11:30AM EST): Wow, that was fast. Marriott pulled Fandango from its portal. This is still worth a read though, in case you ever see 100x in the future.
Via Frequent Miler, the Marriott shopping portal appears to be offering 100 points/dollar spent at Fandango. Frequent Miler outlines the general value of such a deal (75% ‘off’ your movie tickets), but as the title of this post suggests, I’d like to take a different bent.