bromleygirl

With the soaring costs of airfares I've decided I really should get a credit card that offers airmiles and start sticking as many of my bills on it!

Does anyone have any experience of Capital One - both Venture and Venture One plans, Chase Sapphire and the Discover Miles and Escape plans?

Jerseygirl

There has been several threads on this subject...at least one in the last couple of weeks. You can find them by using the search engine or take a look at Tonrob's posts/threads...he's the expert on the subject.

lisa67

Agreed, Tonrob is the "expert" on this.
We have a chase/British airways credit card. We got it when they had an offer for so many air miles if you spent so much in the first few months.
We now have to pay an annual fee, can't remember how much it is but IMO it's well worth it.

penguinsix

Where will you be flying is probably my first question? No point is a card for an airline that doesn't go where you want to go.

bromleygirl

SFO to LHR. I reviewed previous Tonrob posts to get some ideas - wow just reading Flyertalk - there are people out there that really work the system

I've decided to sign up for 2 generic credit cards so I can use the miles on any airline as there are several that I can use.

Englishmum

We love Amex - not only can you choose from quite a number of airlines when you're ready to make a booking for a flight (including BA and Virgin Atlantic) but their travel and car insurance coverage is great too.

The reward points never expire, which is a great plus

But best of all they are superb when one is stuck overseas without a wallet (ie. no cash or credit cards) as my husband once experienced when he was touring the Far East on a three week business trip and left his wallet at home. Amex came to the rescue

tonrob

Feel free to hit me with any questions, although I am traveling a fair bit over the next couple of weeks so may be slow to respond. An AMEX Gold (or Platinum) and Chase Sapphire combo is interesting as you can catch all the big alliances that way, but you'd potentially be splitting up your earning ability right now starting from scratch. Chase currently has better sign-up offers than AMEX.

As Englishmum points out, AMEX has a reputation for great service (and they should for the fees they charge). Chase Sapphire is a newer, less tested beast but early indications seem quite good (and it's cheaper).

k1journey

We had the old Worldperks credit card and got free flights to Scotland from Seattle with it about 5 years ago. Then Northwest got taken over by Delta. It then changed to Worldperks run by USBank.

We tried to get flights through that program in May 2011 and we could only get two with our points so had to pay for the rest of the tickets ourselves. These tickets were quite expensive so we ended up buying all flights on Iceland Air and trading in our points for Visa giftcards.

We have since ended up getting the British Airways card where they gave us a ton of miles for signing up. However now we are having trouble getting these redeemed. I dont think the Olympics is helping this. There are tons of blackout dates.

We have since went back to using the Flex Perks card simply because if we are unable to get flights we want we can always get Visa Giftcards or money off car hire.

Yorkieabroad

Good timing - we just got an offer throuh the post today for a Gold Amex with 100,000 points for spending 3000 in the first 3 months. The other half is racking up about that much a week on business at the moment, so thats no problem.

2 (probably dumb) questions:-
1) The blurb doesn't give any "exchange rate" information - does that mean that it converts 1:1 to airline miles?
2) On top of the 175 annual fee (first year free), there is a $0.0006 per mile conversion fee to a max of 99 per transaction - is that the same on the Chase Sapphire?

Cheers

bromleygirl

Thanks Tonrob - Chase Sapphire is actually one of the two cards I have just signed up for - they have a limited sign up offer of 25k miles plus another 25k miles for spending $3k in the first 3 months.

Have you ever used the credit cards to pay your mortgage payment? from what I can see it can be done but there is a fee to do it.

tonrob

100K's a great offer - I'd be up that like a rat up a drainpipe if I were you.

Transfers 1:1 to most/all airline programmes. Hotel transfers are generally shit and best avoided. Watch out for regular deals for airline transfers, e.g. within the last year or so they've done 2 periods of 30% bonus to BA and one at 50% (that's the one I jumped on). They also did a rebate if you transferred to Delta that equated to a whopping 67% bonus!

The fee you mentioned seems to apply to transfer to US carriers. I paid to transfer to Continental but not to BA.

I'm assuming you're getting the first year annual fee waived?

Watch out for other offers once you get the card for additional points, cash rebates on "Small Business Saturday" and the like.

tonrob

Not paid my mortgage with a card - the fees are too rich for me. I might consider it on a temporary basis to reach a spend bonus, although there are plenty of other ways to do this that are free so even then I'd be hard pressed...

Yorkieabroad

Thanks for that.
Yes, free for the first year, then 175 a year after that.
Re-reading the small print it does say that the 0.0006 is to cover a federal tax, and only applies for US airline redemptions.
It is also triple points on airline spend (ie 3 points per $), double on gas and single on everything else.