Where To Transfer Your Amex Points

So many of you have American Express Membership Rewards points. Maybe you got 75,000 on Tuesday…maybe it was 100,000 a couple weeks ago…or maybe you’ve been saving them for a while. You have a few good transfer options for your points. For me, only the last 3 make sense. For some of you, only the last one matters:

  1. Wait for Delta promotions. In case I haven’t made it obvious, I hate the Delta SkyMiles program. If you feel differently, you’ll occasionally find a decent transfer bonus.
  2. Wait for a crappy transfer bonus. You’ll see some weak transfer options pop up for Hilton, Virgin, or other airlines where the math doesn’t really work in your favor. Virgin sometimes works because you can transfer again to Hilton (at a 2 to 1 ratio).
  3. Transfer to a great airline. There aren’t many left for Membership Rewards, but Singapore Air comes to mind. One of the great premium cabins in the world!
  4. Wait for a British Airways promotion. There’s always a bonus popping up (usually 30% to 50%) on transfers to British Air. I’ve done it a few times, and these points are incredible for short flights like the west coast to Hawaii.
  5. Transfer to All Nippon Airways (explained below).
ANA just stopped charging fuel surcharge fees on partner flights with United. This was already the case with US Airways. This is great news. Translation: Fuel surcharges suck. When you use miles to book an international flight and still have to pay hundreds in fees, it takes the fun out of using miles at all. ANA has a great mileage chart based on distance. It’s definitely a great use of your Membership Rewards or Starwood points.

Contests

A few readers enjoyed hearing about the million mile contest yesterday. I know some of you love these contests, so I’ll (very) occasionally post a few. Here’s a couple more going on now:

  • Win 10,000 Choice hotel points and a trip to a Nascar race here
  • Win 5 nights at your choice of any St. Regis hotel
  • Win a million Best Buy points (which transfer to miles) here
  • Win a 5 night trip to Australia from Hawaiian Airlines (Facebook)
  • Win a 10 day trip to South Africa here (Facebook)
  • Win a trip to the Cayman Islands here

5 For Tuesday

  • The every-once-in-a-while 75,000 point offer from the American Express Business Gold card is back. Spend $10,000 in 4 months to get your points.
  • Win a huge 1 million American Airlines miles if you have a great travel photo.
  • Offer for businesses that need to process credit cards. Orion Payment Systems gives you 40 US Airways miles per $1,000 processed (plus 2,500 miles for signing up).
  • 100 free miles for joining the American Airlines shopping mall here. 300 more miles for any purchase, and 600 more for another purchase over $100.
  • Get 30 American Airlines miles for ever dollar spent at FTD.

Check That Email

Got a message from British Airways to opt-in to their communication emails and it earned me a very easy 2,000 points. I pick up a few thousand miles every year just from receiving “junk” mail like this. If you don’t like all the spam, set up a different email account. Don’t have time to read those letters and emails? A while back, lots of people threw out their United Months of Miles postcard too. That little postcard ended up making me 250,000 miles. Just sayin’.

Suntrust Debit Card Open To All

True, Delta SkyMiles aren’t the greatest in the world. But, really, what do we care? It’s free travel and we’re addicted. The Suntrust is better than most other debit cards because you get 1 mile per dollar spent. It’s no longer limited to the same handful of states. With Vanilla Reload cards/prepaid/Bluebird, it’s easy for people these days to spend lots of money and earn tons of miles.