Have A Pet? Want Miles?

Earn 500 to 10,000 US Airways miles for shopping at Pet Food Direct here.

Tuesday’s Deals

  • Earn 30 American miles per dollar spent on flowers for Valentine’s Day.
  • Priority Club’s PointBreak hotel deals are available.
  • Great JetBlue flight deals from NYC at noon EST every day this week here.
  • A possible-to-win 50,000 Starwood point giveaway here.
  • Get 1,500 American Airlines miles on 3-day car rentals through Avis. Use coupon MUAA070 for the miles and AWD# K817156 for 25% off.

Don’t Forget Dining

The coolest thing for a nerd like me is to see an increase in a mileage account and not know where the miles came from. 9 times out of 10, it turns out the mystery miles are from dining out. Over the course of a year, these bonus dining miles add up. So as you keep signing up for credit cards, make sure you remember to register them at Rewards Network. Keep registering those cards, don’t forget to sign up for the bonuses there, and you’ll rack up plenty of mystery miles like me.

A new competitor for Rewards Network is Mogl. Again, it’s really simple. Register your cards and when you eat at restaurants, you’ll get some surprise miles showing up in your account. For me in California, I’m getting an awesome 6 Virgin America miles per dollar spent in Mogl restaurants through February.

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