500 Miles For Donations

For those of you who donate to charity, get a little something for your good deeds here. 250 American Airline miles for a $50 donation and 500 miles for a $100 donation to the Red Cross.

Don’t Take No For An Answer

If you apply for bunches of credit cards, you’re going to hear some No’s. It happens. But getting denied for a card isn’t the final answer. I’ve had a good success rate getting my denials turned around. Below are the phone numbers I use. Chase is by far the best of the bunch. They’ll listen to why you need the card, move credit around, and pretty much do anything they can to help. If a 5-minute phone call can earn you thousands of miles, why wouldn’t you take advantage?

Chase
888-245-0625

American Express
866-314-0237

Citibank
866-606-2787 or 800-763-9795

Bank Of America
866-458-8805

Barclays
866-408-4064

Hotel Getaway Tips

Many emails I get are from people short on hotel points. They’ve booked flights with miles and need to figure out hotel options. Personally, I love to stay in really nice hotels (often just for a weekend getaway) so here are some tips that work for me:

  • Subscribe to emails from Sniqueaway, TravelZoo, TripAlertz, Groupon, and Bloomspot. With 5 subscriptions coming in, I get great offers every single week.
  • Really learn how to use Priceline. My last booking was at the Fairmont hotel in Newport Beach. Normal rates were $139/night. My price? $69. Here’s a good Flyertalk post about Priceline. Remember, Betterbidding.com is your friend.

  • Start building your Hilton point balance. It grows fast. There’s all the Hilton cards I’ve talked about, the 2 Hawaiian Airline cards transfer at a 2-to-1 ratio, and the Virgin card has the same ratio. You can easily hit 500,000 points within a year.
  • Chase and American Express have incredible websites to help with your hotel bookings. I don’t know why these are so rarely talked about. Most people have a Chase card that works, and the website gets you good rates, upgrades, and free breakfast. Visa has a website here, but I’ve never tried it.
  • If you love a hotel stay, introduce yourself to the manager. Usually, they’ll give you their card and you can contact them directly for better rates.
  • Of course, credit cards through Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Hyatt, Hilton, and Fairmont are a huge help.
  • And, finally, the very popular Cash + Points bookings through Starwood

Time To Redeem American Express Points?

Many of you have an American Express card with Membership Rewards points. Until September 28th, Amex is having a “sale,” where you can save 15-40% on redemptions. I’m closing my card soon and don’t want to forfeit the points, so this is great news.

  • The worst use of Membership Rewards points (by far) is on goods like the laptops and televisions they advertise. 
  • An average use is redeeming the points for gift cards. 
  • The best use is always to redeem your points for airline miles. Right now you get a 30% bonus on transfers to Virgin America (so-so) or a 40% bonus on transfers to British Airways. 

Me? I took advantage of the bonus and transferred my 100,000+ points to British Airways.